The First Olympics
The early Greek games were not as pristine as we like to imagine
The original Olympians also were professionals in the sense that they trained and competed virtually full time. Entrants in the very earliest games may well have honed their abilities in the margins of their regular working lives. One early winner was said to be a cook, another a goatherd. But by the classical period, roughly 470 to 350 B.C., top athletes were shuttling among major, pan-Hellenic games at Delphi, Isthmia, and Nemea, in addition to Olympia, as well as myriad less-prestigious sporting events, known as "money games."
Moreover, the ancients were just as serious about training regimes as professional athletes are today. In the late fifth century B.C., for instance, meat diets were thought to enhance performance. Celebrated wrestler Milo of Kroton reputedly once ate 40 pounds of meat and bread at a sitting. And like modern Olympians, the ancients pushed themselves to the point of injury. Decrying this "extreme" conditioning, the physician Galen wrote: "Perhaps someone will say that they have a blessing in the pleasure of their bodies. But how can [that be] if during their athletic years they are in constant pain and suffering not only because of their exercises but also because of their forced feedings? And when they reach the age of retirement, their bodies are essentially if not completely crippled."
Also like today, cities competed for the winningest coaches. The Greek historian Herodotus describes the peripatetic career of Demokedes, a trainer from Kroton, who was lured away to Aigina for a salary equivalent to 12 times that of a skilled worker. A year later, he took a job in Athens for almost double that, and the following year a position on the island of Samos, off the coast of Asia Minor, for more still. (There, his luck ran out, at least temporarily. Samos was conquered by the Persian King Darius, who was so pleased to learn that the famed trainer was in residence that he wouldn't let him leave. Eventually, Demokedes escaped, however, and made his way to Kroton, which took him back in.)
Hostilities. There is no ancient equivalent of the horror of 1972 Olympics in Munich, where 11 Israeli athletes were killed after being taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists. The Greeks certainly were brutal enough in their ways of vengeance and war to undertake such an act. But they admired athletes as paragons of human physical excellence, so they didn't target them in their endless feuds.
Still, much like today, cities fought over control of the games--and the money, prestige, and political power that went along with hosting them, according to David Romano, an adjunct professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Around 365 B.C., for instance, the Arkadians took Olympia by force, and in 364, they hosted the games. The wrestling portion of pentathlon was in progress when the Elean Army marched in to take back Olympia. A pitched battle ensued in the Sacred Grove, where, according to ancient author Diodorus, spectators cheered on soldiers fighting hand to hand. The Arkadians won, but before the next Olympiad, they gave in to pressure from their allies to return Olympia to Elis, which forever after refused to recognize wins from the 364 games.
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