Chapter 16

Plays and Pugilism: Enjoying Ancient Greek Entertainment

In This Chapter

● Attending the Greek theatre

● Contrasting tragedy and comedy

● Getting in shape

● Competing in the original Olympic Games

When seeking out good times, the ancient Greeks were a contrary bunch. On the one hand, they loved tragic theatre where noble heroes struggled with terrible choices and met with appalling fates. On the other, they loved comic plays chock full of nasty jokes at the expense of some of the audience and ridiculous gags about farting and sex. They also enjoyed hard, gruelling athletics, including an incredibly violent form of boxing where competitors often died.

Even more strangely, the same people enjoyed events that closely connected all these diverse activities. The games and festivals that the Greeks loved combined athletics and theatre - and they considered both endeavours to be equally prestigious.

Theatre and athletics combined a lot of themes: competition, public celebration, honouring the gods, and literature. Entertainment in ancient Greece was for everybody and enjoyed by everybody.

The type of entertainments that I look at in this chapter date from around 600 BC to the end of the Greek era in the first century BC. However, as you’ll see, they had roots that went back much further into the past and their influence carries on this day.

Making Art Onstage: Greek Theatre

Going to the theatre in ancient Greece was very different from today’s experience of popular long-running shows and entertainment districts with multiple theatres.

Getting in a festive mood

Opportunities to see plays and performances were quite limited in ancient Greece. When productions happened nearly everybody tried to go, because the plays and performances were part of something else, something larger - festivals.

Ancient Greek plays were performed only at certain times of the year, at the same time as specific religious festivals. These plays were massive events that involved the whole community.

The main festivals in Athens were the Lenaia in January and the Great or City Dionysia that was held in March. The dramatic performances were in government-organised competition with each other, and the rivalry was intense. See the later section ‘Competing: And the winner is . . .’ for more.

Touring the theatre

The key venue for the festivals was the theatre itself. In Athens the main venue was the theatre of Dionysus. The space was large and probably held an audience of about 14,000 people.

The theatre of Dionysus was one of the first permanent theatres built by the Greeks so its design was very influential. The theatre was a major public space located next to the Acropolis. A theatre of Dionysus is still in the same spot now but it’s a rebuild of the original carried out by the Romans in the second century AD.

For such an important and well-attended site the actual ‘building’ was pretty basic. Performances took place in the open air with the audience sitting on very simple benches or sometimes just the bare ground. All the views were excellent and, with the exception of a few special seats at the front that were reserved for arkhons and officials involved in the competition, anyone could sit anywhere.

All social classes attended the theatre - much like the Globe Theatre in Elizabethan England where people of all classes met to watch the plays of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and other writers of the day. Entrance was either free or came at a small charge depending upon the nature of the event. It seems quite likely that women attended the theatre but they would have been very much in the minority.

The modern word ‘theatre’ comes from the Greek word ‘theatrori, which means ‘viewing place’ and refers to the seated area for the audience.

The theatre of Dionysus and other ancient Greek theatres had a roughly semi-circular arrangement. As Figure 16-1 illustrates, theatres included:

● Orchestra: The large circle at the centre of the theatre was mostly used by the chorus (see the later section ‘Dealing with a chorus of disapproval’). The Greeks often referred to it as the ‘dancing circle’ because the chorus spent most of their time there and their performance was full of movement and dancing compared to that of the main actors.

● Parodoi: Both the performers and the audience used these two entrances to access the stage and seating areas.

● Skene: This area was most like a modern stage. Behind the platform stood a long building with a flat roof that was used as both scenery and a place for the actors to change. It was this that was actually called the skene although the platform was attached to it.

● Theatron: These terraces were often just cut into a hill and provided seating for thousands of audience members.

Figure 16-1: The plan of a typical Greek theatre.

Greek theatres were not amphitheatres! The word amphi means ‘on both sides’, like in amphora, which was a double-handled jar. Amphitheatres were, therefore, double theatre spaces, making a full circle. Amphitheatres were mostly built during the Roman period (roughly 300 BC to 330 AD) and used for gladiatorial games. A good example is the Colosseum in Rome, which was originally called the Flavian Amphitheatre.

Most of the larger cities would have had a permanent theatre but smaller towns would erect a temporary structure for when performances were put on. Historians have no direct evidence that the theatres were used for other events (when plays weren’t on) but given their size it seems likely that they may have been used as meeting places.

Acting up

Acting was a very specific skill in ancient Greece - and an activity that was exclusively male. Women never appeared on stage and men played all the female parts. As a result, the Greeks considered actors to be unusual in that they allowed themselves to appear like women.

Being seen and heard

The acoustics in ancient Greek theatres were tremendous. Members of the audience at the back of the theatre were able to hear every word spoken by the actors onstage, despite the fact that they were separated by around 20 metres across the orchestra and a further 80 metres to the back of the the-atron. It required tremendous skill on the part of the actors to be audible for the length of a play (probably about 90 minutes). I’ve been to many Greek theatres and the acoustics still work today - you can stand in the orchestra and speak in a relatively clear and loud voice to be heard at the very back. Amazing!

The view was different. With no television projection technology, all the audience saw were the actors in front of the skene or in the orchestra. These sight limitations meant that the acting had to be very physical and not particularly realistic. Gestures were most likely large, exaggerated, and obvious.

Getting into costume and wearing masks

To accommodate the large venues, the Greek actors relied on very large costumes and masks. Masks were made of wood, brightly painted with big, obvious features meant to convey two things: the age of the character and their mood.

Masks and costumes helped male actors to play female roles and enabled the actors to swap roles if necessary. These elements minimised subtle and naturalistic acting, requiring the actors to use expansive gestures and elaborate vocalisations to get their points across to the audience. (It’s no coincidence that characters in Greek plays are usually introduced and briefly described in the dialogue - it helped the audience even back then to identify who had just appeared on stage!)

Competing: And the winner is . . .

During a festival, all the plays were in competition with each other for the overall prize. First, second, and third prize were awarded to the plays and the winning poets.

The system of judging was rather strange. City officials appointed ten judges from the citizen body and they held a secret ballot at the end of the day’s performances. They’d each drop a pebble into a jar, the colour of which corresponded to the poet who they’d chosen. Of these ten votes only the first five were drawn out and counted. It must have led to some very controversial results, although there are no recorded cases of anybody appealing!

As far as we know there were no material prizes; only the honour of winning. However, the winning poets could expect to be asked to perform some of their work at expensive symposia (refer to Chapter 15) following a victory so at the very least they’d get some decent dinners out it and would more than likely get paid as well!

The playwrights (the Greeks referred to them as ‘poets’) submitted their plays to the arkhons (see Chapter 7), who then selected three pieces for each competition. During the fifth century BC many poets wrote numerous plays, and competition was fierce. For example, out of the 92 plays written by the great dramatist Euripides, only six won first prize at a festival (although as all the works were submitted in groups of three it means that 6 out of 30 won rather than 6 out of 90). Once every five submissions!

Each poet in the competition was assigned a wealthy citizen, known as a khoregos, who paid for the production, including the actors, dancers, and all other expenses. Serving as the patron of a play was considered to be an extremely prestigious honour.

The poet was also assigned by lot his lead actor, whom the Greeks referred to as the protagonist. The poet directed the play himself.

At each festival, a poet typically presented three tragic plays and a satyr play - a short, comic version of a myth that provided some light relief at the end of the day. The plays weren’t necessarily trilogies, although they frequently had similar themes. The audience sat through the whole offering in one day - it probably took the best part of six hours!

The vast majority of plays were produced only once because the poets didn’t want to enter them twice for a festival. More popular plays were taken on tour to small rural festivals or sometimes revived many years later. For example, Alexander the Great (see Chapters 10 and 11) had a love of tragedy and regularly asked for his favourites to be performed at festivals, sometimes more than 100 years after these works were first produced.

The plays themselves took two forms: tragedy and comedy. The forms were very different but equally respected.

Delving into tragedy: Tears and fate

Tragedy was the earliest form of Greek theatre. It was probably invented in Athens in as early as 550 BC, growing out of the traditional religious hymns that the Greeks sung at festivals. These hymns known as dithyramb were based on a mythological and religious theme and sung solo. Over time a second voice joined the hymn, turning it into a dialogue that eventually became a play. The earliest play that survives is The Persians by Aeschylus, which was produced in 472 BC.

The fifth century BC was when tragedy took the form students and scholars still study today. This period is also the time when the three great tragic poets were at work:

● Aeschylus (525-456 BC): Wrote 80 plays of which 7 survive

● Euripides (485-406 BC): Wrote 92 plays of which 19 survive

● Sophocles (496-406 BC): Wrote 120 plays of which 7 survive

The subjects of tragic plays were very familiar to audiences because the stories were nearly all based on Greek myths. This meant that the audience was almost certain to know how a play ended before it even began. For the Greeks, the ideas of plot and suspense weren’t very important. Tragic poets were much more concerned about the portrayal of the characters and the ideas that the plays were exploring. It isn’t that unusual an idea to us now. Everyone knows how films like Titanic are going to end and they’re still hugely popular. Theatre performances of Hamlet or Macbeth end in the same way - but the way that they’re performed and interpreted is what the audience finds interesting.

The ancient Greeks didn’t really have history as such (see Chapter 21).

Nor did they have a religion that set out an ethical code of behaviour (see Chapter 22). Therefore, the myths that had existed for generations filled gaps in their knowledge and beliefs. In the tragic plays, the mythological characters explored ethical and moral issues that were relevant to the way people led their lives, providing something that history and religion didn’t.

	Tragedy: The Greatest Hits
Quite a few Greek tragedies still survive. Here's a rough guide to some of the best to investigate.
Play	Poet	Plot
Agamemnon	Aeschylus	Agamemnon returns home from the Trojan war and is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Orestes (Agamemnon's exiled son) then returns home and kills his father's murderers before being haunted with guilt. These plays, known as the Oresteia, are the only existing complete trilogy of plays.
The Libation Bearers
The Eumenides
Oedipus	Sophocles	The classic tragedy. See the later sidebar 'Oedipus: A complex case'.
Antigone		Oedipus's daughter strives for the right to bury her brother who's been killed fighting against their home city.
Philoctetes		Philoctetes, hero in exile, holds the famous bow of Heracles that the Greeks need to win the war in Troy. Odysseus is sent to take it from him at any cost.
Ajax		The great Greek hero Ajax is furious at being denied the armour of the dead Achilles and his anger drives him to the brink of madness.
Medea	Euripides	Cruelly spurned by the Greek hero Jason, who she helped to steal the Golden Fleece, Medea plots to avenge herself.
Trojan Women		The fate of the wives and mothers of Troy's fallen warriors is laid bare in this harrowing play.
The Bacchae		Cadmus, the king of Thebes, offends the god Dionysus and pays a terrible price at the hands of his followers.

Meeting a typical tragic hero

The main method for exploring ethical and moral issues was the role of the tragic hero. During the plays, tragic heroes typically underwent philosophical journeys that ended with suffering great loss and often death. Usually, the journeys are the result of mistakes or transgressions that the characters commit. Very often, the heroes are said to have a fatal or tragic flaw.

This play contains strong, bloody violence

The nature of Greek tragedy usually means that hugely unpleasant things took place: murder, suicide, mutilation, and incest, just to start with. However, all these things happened offstage (and are often vividly described by a servant or messenger who unwittingly witnesses the gruesome event) because the idea of them was thought to be terrible enough without enacting the cruel deeds.

As a result, the heroes - and the audience - know more about themselves and recognise their faults and mistakes. The Greeks referred to the process as pathos (suffering), mathos (understanding), or anagnorisis (recognition).

Women were often the lead characters in the plays. Characters such as Medea, Hecuba, Antigone, Clytemnestra, and Electra dominate the plays they appear in and are fascinating multi-layered characters. However, they would have all been played by men!

Dealing with a chorus of disapproval

The chorus delivers most of the commentary on the action in a tragic play.

In ancient Greece, these performers generally stayed in the orchestra and commented on the things that the other characters were doing, sometimes providing the back story too. Very often the chorus is in opposition to the main character and his or her actions. Most interactions between the chorus and main actors involved the chorus leader who was the only person that spoke directly to those on the skene.

We don’t have any evidence of the sort of music played, because none of it has survived. However, if you read a good translation of one of the plays you can see how lyrical the words are and how easily they could be chanted rather than spoken.

Aristotle wrote a book called The Art of Poetry. Here he sums up what good tragedy should do:

The tragic fear and pity may be aroused by the Spectacle [the onstage action], but they may also be aroused by the very structure and incidents of the play - which is the better way and shows the better poet.

The gods help out at fast!

In many plays a resolution is found to the terrible problems of its human characters by the appearance of one or more of the Olympian gods (which I describe in Chapter 19). Often the gods do something to tie up loose ends that humans could never do. This might seem like a bit of a cop-out but remember that the ideas rather than the plot are the important bit!

Oedipus: A complex case

Probably the most famous Greek tragedy is Oedipus Tyrannus (also known as Oedipus Rex or Oedipus the King) by Sophocles. Aristotle thought the play was the greatest tragedy ever written.

The story of Oedipus, the king of Thebes, goes as follows:

● Prior to the beginning of the play, Oedipus as a young man fled Thebes after a prophecy said that he would murder his father and marry his mother. Eventually, Oedipus returned to Thebes, defeated the fearsome Sphinx, married the widowed queen Jocasta, and became king as his reward.

● As the play opens, Thebes is undergoing a terrible plague. The oracle at Delphi (see Chapter 21) tells Oedipus that he has to punish the man who murdered the previous king Laius. Oedipus determines to do so despite the warnings of various people.

(During these conversations, Oedipus finds out that Laius and Jocasta had a child who was left to be exposed - see Chapter 15 - but was eventually adopted by others.)

● Eventually, Oedipus discovers that he in fact murdered Laius in a roadside argument - and worse, that Laius was his father and the queen, Jocasta, his mother. Grief-stricken, Oedipus blinds himself and says the following famous words:

Ah God, ah God: all come true and be known! Let this be the last time that I see the light of day. Cursed in my parents, cursed in my marriage, cursed in the blood I have shed!

Oedipus Tyrannus proves that human beings cannot escape who they are and that fate is unavoidable. Oedipus's fatal flaw is his pride and arrogance that blinds him to the warnings of others to stop his search before he uncovers the tragic truth.

The appearance of the gods like this gave rise to the expression 'deus ex machine', Latin for ‘god out of a machine’ because when the gods appeared they were lowered down on a cradle at the back of the skene. The expression is now used to describe any situation where something unlikely happens to sort out a plot!

Considering comedy: Sex and satire

Greek comedy was very different to tragedy (see the preceding section ‘Delving into tragedy: Tears and fate’) but followed rules in a similar way.

● Comic plays were entered in festival competitions and paid for by a wealthy khoregos.

● Ideas were very important in comedy, but spectacle was too. The chorus usually wore impressive costumes and featured loud singing and intricate dancing.

● Comic plots are absurd. By mixing fantasy with elements of real life, the Greek comic poets virtually invented satire, the genre that involves poking fun at the establishment and criticising it using comedy. For example, in the surviving Greek comedies, men fly away to live in a land run by birds (The Birds), a sausage seller becomes the chief politician in Athens (Acharnians), and Euripides and Aeschylus have an imaginary poetry competition in Hades (The Frogs).

Aristophanes: Old comic genius

The most famous of Greek comic poets is Aristophanes (447-385 BC) who had an amazingly successful career and won many prizes. Quite a number of his plays still survive today.

The plays are coarse and elaborate fantasies that deal with contemporary issues and very often mock the decisions of Athenian politicians. For example:

● In Lysistrata, the women of Athens refuse to have sex with their husbands until they stop the Peloponnesian War. (This strategy seems about the only thing Athens didn’t try during this long war with neighbouring Sparta; see Chapter 8.)

● The Athenian demagogue Kleon (see Chapter 8) tried to prosecute Aristophanes for slandering Athens in his play Babylonians in 425 BC. Kleon was unsuccessful, and Aristophanes took his revenge by mercilessly mocking Kleon in his next four plays. Kleon would have been in the audience for every one of them (Chapter 25 has more on this and Kleon)!

The comedies of Aristophanes had a very specific structure with key elements:

● The entry of the chorus (parodos) was always very spectacular with the actors dancing and singing while wearing extremely elaborate costumes.

● The following agon was the real meat of the play. Two sides debated issues through songs and speeches.

● The final key element was the parabasis where the chorus again took centre stage. The chorus leader directly addressed the audience and presented a long speech about the ‘big issue’ of the play. (The poet also usually left some room for some pleading to the judges to award him victory!)

Following is an excerpt from the parabasis in Aristophanes’s Wasps, a satire on the Athenian jury-courts (see Chapter 7). The chorus leader complains that all the people that collect their jury pay don’t contribute to the war effort.

It makes us wild to think that those who've never raised a hand, or risked a single blister to defend their native land can draw their pay with all the rest: I think that the rule should be, that if you haven t got a sting you get no jury fee!

Aristophanes included a lot of sharp political satire, but he also appealed to those looking for cheap laughs. His plays are full of sexual innuendo and jokes at the expense of members of the audience. Some real-world Athenians are mocked for being effeminate, people’s wives are slandered, and foreigners are usually portrayed with ludicrous comic accents.

Audiences at a comedy knew what they were coming to see and, in fact, expected to see familiar elements in place. Some characters appear again and again in the plays, in particular the crafty slave. Aristophanes even joked with the audience about this repetition. At the beginning of his play Frogs, the slave Xanthias asks his master, ‘What about one of the old gags, sir? I can usually get a laugh with those.’

The comedy of Aristophanes provided something for everybody: outrageous spectacle, absurd plots, knowing satire, and jokes about Heracles farting after too much pea soup. What more could you ask for?

Menander: 'Alternative' comedy

Greek comedy didn’t stop with the death of Aristophanes but it did change. The foremost comic poet after Aristophanes was Menander (341-291 BC). Menander’s comedies dropped much of the satire that was Aristophanes’s main thrust and instead were about the lives of ordinary Athenians with plots based around mistaken identity and overheard conversations. The play that survives in full is Dyskolos, a witty comedy about a cantankerous old man.

Extending to today: The influence of Greek theatre

The plays that the ancient Greeks enjoyed still have tremendous impact on today’s stage entertainment - as well as books, television, and film.

William Shakespeare was well aware of the tragic poets and their impact on what he wrote. The mental crises and unwise actions of characters like Hamlet and Macbeth would have been very recognisable to Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

Ancient Greek comedy has stood the test of time too. The broad playing to the audience by the actors and stock characters to be found in Aristophanes’s plays carried on through the Roman theatre and the commedia del arte plays that were popular during the Renaissance. And satire has become an established comic tradition, showcased every day on late-night comedy shows.

Getting Physical: Athletics and the Olympic Games

Athletics was big news in ancient Greece. Physical training for boys and young men was seen as vital for their personal wellbeing and education (see Chapter 14). And as most Greek cities defended themselves with citizen militias, the bodies of the male citizens had to be kept fighting fit.

For this reason many cities, including Athens, provided a gymnasion (exercise area) at public expense so that exercise was available to all male citizens and metics. Many other exercise areas were available in the city, including the popular palaestra, or wrestling ground.

The palaestra were like private gyms where richer citizens met and exercised. They also had other uses: Older Greek men pursued the affections of younger boys and paid court to them (see Chapter 15) and important social meetings often took place, in which Greeks made political and business deals.

Working out at the gym

The modern word gymnasium comes from the Greek gymnasia. This word is derived from gumnoi, which means ‘completely naked’, because in Greece all exercise was carried out in the nude.

Unsurprisingly, only men attended the gymnasia. To the Greeks, athletics was hugely competitive; the word athlon itself means ‘prize’. Whatever event you were taking part in, it was vital that you did everything for victory.

The activities at the gymnasium were fairly standard (see the later section ‘The Olympic schedule’) and included running, chariot-racing, boxing, wrestling, and some field events such as throwing. All these activities produced physical abilities that were very useful for fighting in wars.

The Greeks saw athletic achievement as a fitting subject for poetry, and the well-regarded poet Pindar of Boeotia (518-438 BC) wrote a huge amount about it. The following excerpt comes from a poem celebrating the achievement of a man called Timodemus in the pankration (an incredibly tough fighting sport) at the Nemean Games in 485 BC. Pindar compares the start of Timodemus’s athletic career with the beginning of an epic poem.

Just as the women of Homer, the singers of woven verses, most often begin with Zeus as their prelude, so this man has received a first down-payment of victory in the sacred games by winning in the grove of Nemean Zeus.

The spirit of competition was alive throughout the ancient Greek world, and regular international events were held. Most cities held their own games but the more important international events were the Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian Games.

Bigger than all these, however, were the games at Olympia - the Olympic Games.

Attending the original Olympic Games

The Olympic Games were hugely influential. They are, arguably, the longest lasting single event from the ancient world. Every four years between 776 BC and AD 395 the greatest athletes in the Mediterranean (and sometimes beyond) gathered together to compete at the town of Olympia.

Like the dramatic festivals (see the earlier section ‘Getting into a festive mood’), the games were held in honour of a god - in this case Zeus (see Chapter 20). The games brought huge fortune and fame to Olympia. The town eventually constructed a vast complex of temples, stadiums, and other buildings, the ruins of which you can still visit today (see Chapter 18). Thousands of people would have flocked to Olympia. They were probably wealthy because they needed to be able to afford to be away from work for a lengthy period of time.

The Greeks were so proud of the Olympic Games that they went as far as using them as a method of historical dating. Records often refer to events as having taken place in ‘the year of the 28th Olympiad’ rather than in a specific year.

The Olympic schedule

The events at the Olympics were fairly standard from the first games to the last. Although the Greeks added some events over time, the main ones were as follows:

Boxing: This sport was similar to modern boxing but contestants didn’t wear gloves and instead fought with leather strapping on their hands. It was fought until a knockout with no rounds - just one long single bout.

Discus: This event was a little like the modern shot put because the ancient Greeks used flat, round stones that weighed about 4 kilograms. Whoever threw furthest won.

● Equestrian: The Olympics also featured some horse-racing events. The chariot races and horse races were most popular, but there was also a mule-cart race that featured very small carts. The Sicilian Greeks probably introduced the mule-cart race (they were good at it because of mining!), but the event wasn’t popular and the Greeks dropped it after 14 games.

● Javelin: This category was an obvious test for a war-related skill, although the athletes used lighter javelins that were designed to travel a long distance rather than penetrate armour. Some sources claim that athletes regularly achieved throws of more than 90 metres.

● Long jump: This event was much harder than the modern version. Athletes jumped from a standing start holding weights!

● Pankration: This event was incredibly tough and violent and involved a fight in which any style was allowed. Only two things were barred: biting and eye-gouging. The fights were amazingly fierce, and many participants died.

● Pentathlon: This event involved the discus, javelin, long jump, running, and wrestling. It was really hard work, but if somebody won the first three events, the authorities cancelled the other two because nobody else could win.

● Running: Like the modern Olympics, running events were numerous in the original games and included:

• The stadion, which was the length of the stadium (about 200 metres)

• The diaulos, or ‘there and back again’, which involved running the length of the stadium and back

• The dolichos, which was a full 12 laps of the stadium

• One additional (and odd) foot-race which involved running the standard stadion sprint while wearing armour (refer to Chapter 5 for what this armour would have been like).

● Wrestling: Very different from the WWF today! Wrestling was very formal. The winner was whoever forced his opponent’s back, hips, or shoulders to the ground. The successful fighter was known as the triakter or ‘trebler’ because you needed to cause three falls to win the contest.

Jam-packed competition

The Olympic Games themselves took place over only five days with an opening and closing ceremony. Each day featured a different group of events. For example, all the fighting disciplines took place on the fourth day. The final day saw the procession of all the victors to the Temple of Zeus, where they were crowned with wreaths of wild olives and showered with leaves.

Girls just wanna have fun!

Although women were excluded from the gymnasia in cities, they did partake in athletics and even had their own festival at the Olympic Games - The Heraea, in honour of Hera, the wife of Zeus (see Chapter 20).

The Heraea featured only one event, a foot race that was 25 metres shorter than the male stadion. It seems strange to cut it short in this way but it emphasises the tendency of the Greeks to put limits on opportunities for female achievement.

The inequalities didn't stop there either. Married women were banned from attending the games, in case all the naked flesh tempted them to stray! Curiously, young virgin girls were allowed to attend - perhaps so they could check out future husbands.

The laurel crown was all that the victors won - that and the eternal fame of being an Olympic victor. Sponsors of other non-Olympic events offered material and financial prizes, but nothing was prized as highly as an Olympic victory - rather like an Olympic gold medal today.

Cheats never prosper

Although the fame for winning in the Olympics was unsurpassed, the shame at being caught cheating was equally intense. The games were policed by a group of soldiers called the alytai, who publicly flogged anybody caught cheating. Additionally, the names of the winners were inscribed on stone tablets around the Olympic stadium, and so were the names of cheats.

Heralding the new Olympics

The ancient Olympics probably came to an end in around AD 390, when the Byzantine emperor, who was a Christian, banned all pagan festivals. Several attempts were made to revive the games, and athletics carried on elsewhere throughout the region. However, the next official Olympics held in Athens wasn’t until 1896. The instigator was a French nobleman called Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

One of the main features and symbols of the Olympics nowadays is the torch and the journey that it goes on to arrive at the games from the last venue to the next (in 2008, Athens to Beijing). Most people think that this is an ancient tradition, but it isn’t! The torch was only used in the ancient Olympics as a baton on a six-horse relay race called the lampadedromiathat took place as part of the opening ceremony. De Coubertin adopted the torch because he thought it was appropriate for the revival of an ancient tradition. Remember that trivia when you’re watching the next Olympic opening ceremony!

The greatest Olympian: Milo of Croton

The ancient Olympics featured many great champions, but the greatest of them all was probably Milo of Croton. A great wrestler, he won at five successive Olympic Games (a 20- year period) as well as another 25 at the other festivals.

Milo favoured a method of training that involved carrying around a four-year-old cow for a number of months to build up his shoulder muscles. Apparently, he then ate the animal - in one sitting. Another story says that Milo downed three big jars of wine (about 9 litres!) for a bet.

Unfortunately, Milo died when he attempted to split open a tree trunk with his bare hands and got them stuck. He was trapped there and in the night wild animals attacked and ate him. Whether these stories are true or not, Milo was a phenomenal Olympian and probably the greatest of all time.