Olympia tours are trips through Greece centred on Olympia, a sanctuary in the area of Elis. There the ancient Olympic Games honoured Zeus. Topics range from the games and Hera’s temple to the Olympic flame and the Nike of Paionios. Four short answers deal with Pelops, the Leonidaion, the Nymphaeum and the palaestra. Longer journeys take shape as a classical Greece tour and a 4 day classical tour. Both sit within the full range of Greece tours.
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What are Olympia tours?
Olympia tours centre on the sanctuary of Olympia, where Greeks staged the ancient Olympic Games to honour Zeus. The Greeks gave the games a mythological origin, a start explained through tales of gods and heroes. A sanctuary is ground kept sacred to a god.
The ancient Olympics were a series of athletic contests between representatives of the Greek city-states. Each city-state was a self-governing town with its own farmland around it. The games were one of the Panhellenic Games, a name meaning “of all the Greeks”. Unlike the modern Games, which move between host cities, they always stayed at Olympia.
The festival carried on once Rome ruled Greece, from the 2nd century BC. Sculptors and poets gathered at each Olympiad to show their work to possible patrons. On Olympia tours, an Olympiad means the four-year gap between two games. A patron is a wealthy backer who pays artists for new work.
Compared with the modern Games, the ancient Olympics held fewer events. Greek women also claimed victories as owners of chariots. Horses drew the chariot, a fast cart on two wheels. Within Olympia tours, an event is one single contest inside the wider games. A victor is the winner of such a contest.
- Prestige: As the oldest of the Panhellenic Games, the Olympics carried the greatest prestige.
- Sister games: The Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian Games made up the rest of the Panhellenic circuit.
- Central ritual: The games counted as one of two central rituals in ancient Greece, beside the Eleusinian Mysteries.
In 668 BC, Pisa hired Pheidon of Argos to take the sanctuary away from Elis. Pisa and Elis were both towns. He took it and ran the games himself that year. BC, a term heard on Olympia tours, counts years back from the birth of Christ.
What does the Temple of Hera add to Olympia tours?
Olympia tours draw an early chapter from the Heraion, an Archaic temple at Olympia. Its goddess was Hera, queen of the Greek gods. Archaic refers to the era of Greek history before the Classical age. Heraion simply means the shrine of Hera.
No temple at Olympia is older, and it ranks among the revered temples of Greece. At first, Hera and Zeus shared it as one joint temple. That arrangement ended once Zeus received a separate temple of his own. Within Olympia tours, a joint temple means one building shared by two gods.
Builders raised the Heraion around 580 BC. An earthquake brought it down in the early 4th century AD. Skillous, a polis in Triphylia, stands out as the likeliest donor of the temple. A polis is a Greek city that ran its own affairs. For Olympia tours, AD marks the years of the Christian era.
As late as 173 AD, oak still formed one of the two columns of the opisthodomos. The opisthodomos is the rear porch of a Greek temple, set behind the main hall. A column is an upright post that carries weight from above. Oak is a hard, heavy wood from a broad-leaved tree.
- Uneven shafts: The shafts vary by nearly 0.30 metres across, and one has a different count of grooves.
- Walls: A bottom course of stone carried an upper wall of mudbrick, meaning sun-dried clay blocks.
- Cedar chest: A cedar chest in the temple reportedly hid Cypselus, a tyrant, or sole ruler, of Corinth.
The writer Pausanias saw the bronze disc of Iphitus in the temple. The disc honoured the truce that, according to legend, founded the Olympic Games. A truce means a halt to war agreed by both sides. For Olympia tours, a legend means an old traditional story.
Why does the Olympic flame tie Olympia tours to the modern Games?
Olympia tours carry a modern thread in the Olympic flame. The flame stands as a symbol of continuity between the ancient and modern games. Continuity means an unbroken link across time. A symbol is a sign that represents a wider idea.
Ancient Greek myth gave fire a divine meaning. Prometheus, a figure of myth, was believed to have taken it from the gods by theft. Sacred fires burned at a wide range of Greek sanctuaries, Olympia among them. Divine means belonging to a god. On Olympia tours, a sacred fire means a flame kept for worship.
Every four years, when the games honoured Zeus, extra fires were lit at his temple. Further fires burned at the temple of his wife, Hera. Today the modern flame is lit every two years before the ruined Temple of Hera. Ruined means broken down and left in pieces by time.
The ceremony at Olympia starts the Olympic torch relay. The relay ends when the cauldron is lit at the Games’ opening ceremony. A relay passes something from one carrier to the next. A cauldron is a large bowl that holds the burning flame. For Olympia tours, a torch is a handheld stick that bears a flame.
- Coubertin Grove: Its first stop is Coubertin Grove, where it lights an altar by the burial place of Coubertin’s heart.
- New custom: The torch relay had no ancient precedent, meaning no earlier model in ancient times.
- First flight: In 1952 the flame first travelled by aeroplane, on its way to Helsinki.
The first time a symbolic flame appeared in the Summer Olympic Games was in 1928, at Amsterdam. On Olympia tours, the Summer Olympics means the warm-season edition of the modern Games. An edition is one single staging of a recurring event.
Which victory does the Nike of Paionios recall for Olympia tours?
Olympia tours link the idea of victory to the Nike of Paionios. This ancient Greek statue shows Nike, goddess of victory. In Greek, the word nike itself means victory. A statue is a figure carved or cast in a solid material.
The sculptor carved the figure from Parian marble, a name meaning marble from the island of Paros. It was found broken into pieces and rebuilt from a large number of fragments. Even so, it still lacks a face, wings, forearms, neck and toes. On Olympia tours, a fragment means a small broken piece.
Nike touches down softly on her left foot, and her drapery blows against her body. Drapery means loose cloth hanging in folds. An eagle flies below her feet, towards the viewer’s left. The ancient Greeks closely linked this bird with Zeus. An eagle is a large bird of prey with a hooked beak.
The statue was put up to commemorate a victory in a battle on land between Athens and Sparta. That fighting aimed to win back Sphacteria, a small island, from the Spartans in 425 BC. The Nike then went up in 420 BC, after the victory. Within Olympia tours, to commemorate means to honour the memory of an event.
- Excavation: Diggers brought the statue to light at Olympia in 1875–76.
- Height: With its pillar the statue stood 8 metres tall, while the figure alone measures 198 cm.
- Ionian custom: Raising an offering on a high pillar was a custom of Ionian origin.
Medals of the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics showed the Nike of Paionios on the front. Ancient Olympia formed the backdrop. A medal is a metal disc given as a prize. On Olympia tours, the front of a medal is called the obverse.
What do travellers ask about Olympia tours, and what are the answers?
Olympia tours prompt four common questions, on the hero Pelops, the Leonidaion, the palaestra and the Nymphaeum. Pelops belongs to myth, while the other three were buildings at Olympia. A palaestra was a training ground, and a nymphaeum was a water building.
Before Olympia tours, who was Pelops in Greek myth?
Pelops was a figure of Greek myth honoured at Olympia. His cult became the myth that explained how the Olympic Games began. He was of Phrygian or Lydian birth and left his homeland for Greece. At night, worshippers poured drink offerings into his sacrificial pit, before daylight offerings to Zeus.
Within Olympia tours, what was the Leonidaion?
The Leonidaion took its name from Leonidas of Naxos, the architect who paid for it and designed it. Inside lay a Doric peristyle of 44 columns, 12 to each side. A peristyle is a court lined with columns. In the late 3rd century AD, an earthquake brought the building down.
On Olympia tours, what did athletes learn at the palaestra?
The palaestra was the ground at Olympia where wrestling was taught and practised in training. Boxing and pankration were the two further martial arts taught there. Pankration meant any method, a free-style fight using any unarmed move. Its length and width measure 66.35 m and 66.75 m. Martial arts are fighting skills.
For Olympia tours, what was the Nymphaeum?
The Nymphaeum was a structure built in the mid-2nd century to share out water across the site. Its name means home of the nymphs, the water goddesses. Herodes Atticus felt the water shortage himself and promised ample water works at his own cost. Long troughs then brought drinking water beside every playing field.