Day Fourteen

Sunday, July 10th

Today we went to the small, little-known site of Olympia.

When you entered there was a sacred ground. Athletes mainly came here because of training grounds and a lot came to see the Temple of Zeus. Half of the gymnasium is gone, but you can still get an idea what it was like. Attached to the gymnasium was a poleistra which was private, but the gymnasium itself was for all citizens.

Olympia was another place that had no real government or city-state, but was simply a religious sanctuary. Only priests lived there.

At the games there were four basic foot races. In the poleistra there were more particular sports such as the pankrastion, where the only real rule was that you couldn’t gauge eyes out (breaking of limbs was fine). Wrestling was another common sport, which was done in the nude all lubed up with olive oil. Boxing was another event that the Greeks played, as well as equestrian events and discus throw, javelin throw, and long jump. It’s weird to think how many sports that were popular thousands of years ago are still popular. Time is a social construct!

A win at Olympia was the height of human glory in antiquity. Besides maybe being a general in a famous battle, this was the biggest deal for honor and glory and your family. It was pretty cool being here and seeing all of the different buildings and seeing how organized it was.

There were secular and religious areas to Olympia and there was a festival for Zeus that had sacrifices. The Temple of Zeus was built in 450 BC and had Doric columns. They are starting to do more restoration to it, but not too much. This is interesting to me that they have had all of the materials and restored one column in 2004 and are just now doing the rest, and might not even do all of it. Restoration is weird and interesting.

Winning the games at Olympia was a big deal (obviously). Erecting a statue in Olympia for a winning battle made it so all people that were Greek speaking would see the statue and would inform everyone about your existence and your winnings. The only woman allowed to watch the games was the Priestess of Demeter. Women could go to the games but could not watch them, which is pretty lame but hey the patriarchy really sucks so what can we do?

After this, some of us ran the track. I did more of a jog, but still! I jogged the track of Olympia! How cool is that? Also, props to Kenny for winning this race with a damaged foot!

Here I also got to see the the Philippeion at Olympia, which is AWESOME because I love Philip II and find him to be far superior to his son Alexander. Without Philip, Alexander would not have had his great military style, his military leaders, his preliminary Greek power, and so much more. Seeing this area that was dedicated to Philip was really, really, amazing.

Afterwards we went to the museum, which was filled with a lot of neat stuff. Before the Parthenon in Athens was built- about two centuries before- there were tons of statues and structures and pediments. The statues are still on the east pediment, but a lot of the stuff can now be seen in the museum. Below are some different things you can see in the museum!

After we left the museum we left and got lunch and had a little bit of time in the town. I had a delicious club sandwich (the club sandwiches are SO much better in Greece than in America) and walked around looking at tacky souvenir shops. I bought my one tacky tourist item of the trip: a Jack Daniels- style Sparta shirt. I don’t know why I bought it, since I’m not in Sparta, but something came over me. Maybe I just miss whiskey, I don’t know.

That night we swam in the pool again before our buffet dinner. Afterwards we hung out for a bit and went to bed. Ready for a traveling day!