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감동과 환희가 가득찼던 그날을 기억하며... Seoul Olympic Museum

Olympic History

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Birth and Demise of the Ancient Olympics
No record is found as to when exactly the ancient Olympic games were first staged.
The year 776 B.C. is often quoted as the first Games according to the known records,
though anthropologists and archaeologists firmly believe that Olympic festivals took
place long before then.
The poet Homer claimed in one of his works that Pelops, the good of affluence, founded
the Olympics in 1370 B.C. Another theory goes that Achilles staged an Olympic Games
in 1250 B.C. in honor of Patroclus, one of his generals, after he had won the Trojan War.
Still another belief is that the Olympics were events in which youths from nearby city
states assembled periodically to observe religious services and then compete in sports,
and that these events subsequently grew into a Pan Greek games. The largest of such
religious services were those of Olympia which began in 776 B.C., of lsthmus in 588 B.C.,
of Pedieas in 582 B.C. and of Nemea in 573 B.C. According to a historian, Herodotus, the
ancient Olympics were hosted first by the city state of Pisatan. Later, the hosting was turned
over to both Elis and Sparta and then eventually solely to Elis.
  • It is said that three months before an Olympiad, the king of Elis proclaimed that a "holy truce" in all of Greece to encourage participation in the games. In ancient Greece, many city states existed within the single Hellenistic cultural sphere. The spirit of harmony and peace that underlay the ancient Olympics meant that even battles between city states were halted in favor of sports competitions at least once every four years, and this was in an age of almost constant warring.

    The Olympics were so sacred and inviolable that thousands of spectators watched the final boxing bouts at the Olympian stadium even when the country's survival itself was endangered by the Persian invasion in 480 B.C.

  • The ancient Olympics were a sort of mixture of religion and arts. The Greek people, who worshipped many gods, assembled in Olympia from all over the country during the Olympics and first observed religious ceremonies at pantheons. Art and cultural events, too, were considered no less important than religious ceremonies.
  • Still, what was more important was the fact that the Olympic competitions were of a like a military battle in nature to some extent. Since it was a time when excellence in both mind and body was emphasized in military aspects, it was no wonder Olympic competitions were an occasion to test the military drills. Nonetheless, the ancient Olympics declined quickly with the spread of the Roman Empire.
  • The Olympic spirit had prevailed with its lofty morality and piousness when Greece reigned as the ruler of the Mediterranean. But when the host country lost its political independence and Roman leaders began to use the Olympics for political propaganda, the Olympiad showed signs of corruption and decay.
  • Finally in 393 A.D. Roman Emperor Theodosius I abolished the Games, branding them as pagan rituals. The trend for Roman rulers to look down on physical exercises, after Christianity was adopted as the state religion, was one of the factors behind the abolition of the Olympics.
  • he ancient Olympics, which had held 293 times in 1,200 years, thus came to an end. Afterwards, the historic city of Olympia suffered pillage and destruction. In 500 A.D. the Roman Emperor ordered all pagan pantheons destroyed and all those remained in Olympia were demolished. Several hundred years later, an extensive earthquake and flooding of the Alfios River buried the area in mud, and together with it, the relics of the 1,000-year cultural festival seemed lost forever.

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