A black-figure Panathenaic prize amphora painted with athletes competing, around 500 BCE
Terracotta Panathenaic prize amphora, ca. 500 BCE
Marked Olympia

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The ancient Olympic Games

Every four years for over a thousand years, Greek men came to Olympia to run, wrestle, box and race chariots in honour of Zeus. Married women were banned from watching, but a woman could win the chariot race as an owner.

Place
Olympia · Delphi · NemeaEurope
Laid out as
A theme across timeOne idea followed through the eras it crosses.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IThe first race
  2. IIOlympia and Zeus
  3. IIIEvents and rules
  4. IVCheats and bribes
  5. VKyniska, the first woman champion
  6. VIThe end of the games

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Koroibos of Elis
  • Milo of Croton
  • Kyniska of Sparta

Objects

  • Bronze jumping weights
  • Statues of Zeus paid for by fines

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

776 BC to AD 393. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?