Alluring Anecdotes about the Olympic Games

The 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo are now officially underway, having been delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have absolutely no interest in sports and, in all likelihood, I will not watch any part of the ongoing Olympics. Nonetheless, I do know a little bit about Olympic history, due to my intense study of ancient Greece and Rome and, on account of the occasion, I’ve decided to share a few of my favorite anecdotes about Olympic history.

The first is a legend about why ancient Olympic athletes were required to compete naked, the second is about a woman who disguised herself as a man in order to attend the Olympic Games, the third is about how women were sometimes able to compete in the ancient Olympic Games due to a loophole, and the fourth is about how the modern Olympic Games at one point included competitions for literature and the arts.

Why the athletes at the ancient Olympic Games were nude

Most people today are aware that all athletes at the ancient Greek Olympic Games were required to perform nude. No one knows why or how this rule emerged, but the ancient Greeks had at least one etiological myth that was apparently meant to explain why athletes were required to be naked. The ancient Greek travel writer Pausanias (lived c. 110 – c. 180 CE) retells this story in his book The Guide to Greece 1.44.1.

The story goes that, originally, all Greek athletes always competed wearing loincloths. Then, at the Olympic Games in 720 BCE, a runner in the footrace named Orsippos of Megara accidentally lost his loincloth while he was running. Despite losing his loincloth, Orsippos kept running. He eventually won the race and became the first athlete to be crowned victor naked. From then on, according to Pausanias, the Greeks always trained and competed nude.

Pausanias declares his skepticism of the traditional account, instead insisting that Orsippos deliberately let his loincloth slip off because he knew that a naked man can run much faster than a man wearing a loincloth. Historically speaking, however, it is unlikely that any version of this story is true; someone probably just made it up as a retroactive explanation for why Greek athletes competed nude.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an Attic black-figure Panathenaic prize amphora dating to between c. 333 and 332 BCE, depicting three men running nude in the Panathenaic footrace

The woman who disguised herself as a man in order to watch her sons compete

Because all athletic activities at the ancient Olympic Games were done in the nude, all women of the citizen class were strictly forbidden from being present at Olympia while the games were happening, because it was considered improper for them to view male nudity. There were other athletic competitions that only women were allowed to compete in. Notably, the Heraian Games was an athletic competition for women that took place at Olympia every four years. These competitions for women, however, were far less prestigious than the Olympics for men.

Diagoras of Rhodes was a famous Olympic boxer who lived in the early fifth century BCE. He had three sons, all of whom went on to win Olympic victories of their own. He also had a daughter named Pherenike, who was given the nickname Καλλιπάτειρα (Kallipáteira), which means “She with the Beautiful Father.” Pausanias records in his Guide to Greece 5.6.7–8 that Pherenike was the only citizen woman who was ever caught at Olympia during the Olympic Games.

Pausanias relates that Pherenike was a widow and her son Peisirrhodos was competing in the Olympic Games, so she disguised herself as a male gymnastic trainer in order to accompany him to Olympia and watch him compete. After he won, she was so thrilled that she leapt over the enclosure in which the trainers were accustomed to stay and accidentally revealed her true sex.

The Hellanodikai (i.e., the judges responsible for ensuring obedience to the rules) spared Pherenike from punishment on account of the glorious victories that her father, her three brothers, and her son had all won. Nonetheless, they implemented a new rule that, from that day forward, all trainers would be required to strip naked before entering the precinct in order to prove to everyone that they were truly male.

ABOVE: Painting by the French Neoclassical painter Auguste Vinchon from 1814 showing what he imagined it might have looked like when Pherenike’s brothers carried her father on their shoulders after the second eldest brother won his Olympic victory

Women who actually competed in the ancient Olympic Games

Eventually, some Greek women managed to exploit a loophole that allowed them to compete in the male Olympics. You see, women were forbidden from attending the games, but they were not technically forbidden from competing in them, meaning women were allowed to compete in the games, but only if they were not actually present for the competition.

The ancient Greek rules for chariot races dictated the winner was the person who legally owned the chariot that won the race. This person was not necessarily required to be the person driving the chariot at the race, meaning that a woman could own a chariot, have a man drive it for her at the Olympics, and claim the victory for herself.

The first woman to compete in the ancient Olympic Games was Kyniska, the daughter of the Eurypontid king of Sparta Archidamos II. Pausanias records in The Guide to Greece 3.8.1 that she was extremely eager to compete in the Olympic Games from a very young age. For most Greek women, this would have been a hopeless dream, but Kyniska happened to be both extraordinarily privileged and extraordinarily lucky.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an Attic black-figure hydria dating to between c. 530 and c. 520 BCE depicting a charioteer and a hoplite riding in a chariot pulled by four horses

Modern authors often portray ancient Sparta as some kind of paradise for women. I wrote an entire article in June 2021 about how this perception is deeply inaccurate in many ways, especially when you consider that the vast majority of all women in Sparta were enslaved helots who were ruthlessly subjugated and oppressed. Nonetheless, Sparta was unusual in the fact that it strongly encouraged young women of the elite citizen class to pursue athletics in ways that other Greek poleis generally did not.

Kyniska also happened to live at a time when Sparta’s power was at its peak. In 404 BCE, Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War. As a result, Sparta became the most powerful polis in the entire Greek world, exerting hegemonic power over most other Greek poleis. In around 400 BCE, Kyniska’s brother Agesilaos II became the Eurypontid king of Sparta. Agesilaos quickly demonstrated that he was a fierce and determined ruler who would use his power to further his own ends. He was not the sort of person people were inclined to say “no” to.

In 396 BCE, Kyniska entered her own chariot and horses into the Olympic chariot race and had a man ride in the chariot to drive the horses for her. Since her chariot won, she won the glory for having won the race, even though she was not actually present for her own victory. Kyniska entered her chariot and horses into the chariot race again in 392 BCE and won the race a second time, making her officially a two-time female Olympic victor who never set foot in Olympia during the Olympic Games.

What’s even more interesting is that Kyniska apparently opened the door for other Greek women to compete in the Olympic chariot race. Twenty-four years after her second victory, in 368 BCE, a wealthy Spartan woman named Euryleonis entered her own chariot and horses into the chariot race and had a man drive them for her. She won the chariot race, making her the second female Olympic victor.

A wealthy courtesan named Bilistiche won the foals’ four-horse chariot race in the 264 BCE Olympic Games. Polykrates of Argos, a commander for the Ptolemaic Kingdom, had three daughters named Zeuxo, Enkrateia, and Hermione, who competed and won victories in the chariot races at the Panathenaiac Games from 192 to 184 BCE. In 84 BCE, a woman from Elis named Theodota won the foals’ four-horse chariot race and another woman from Elis named Timareta won the two-horse chariot race.

ABOVE: Illustration by Sophie de Renneville from her book Biographie des femmes illustres de Rome, de la Grèce, et du Bas-Empire, dating to before 1823, intended to represent the Spartan princess Kyniska racing in her chariot, even though she did actually not ride in her chariot at the Olympic Games

Baron de Coubertin’s God-awful poetry

The Olympic Games in ancient Greece were an important occasion for poets. Many poets would travel to Olympia in order to recite their own poems or poems they had memorized to large audiences. Many poets also wrote ἐπινίκια (epiníkia), or odes praising the athletic victors. The renowned poet Pindaros of Thebes (lived c. 518 – c. 438 BCE) wrote fourteen odes in honor of victors at the Olympic Games that have survived. Of these, his “First Olympian Ode” is the most famous.

Charles Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin, was a French aristocrat who is best known today for having founded the modern Olympic Games. He founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894 and organized the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. Baron de Coubertin was an idealistic traditionalist who firmly believed in the ideal of mens sana in corpore sano (“a sound body in a sound mind”). He wanted to imitate the ancient Olympic Games in every possible aspect—including an emphasis on the importance of the arts.

At the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden, Baron de Coubertin introduced Olympic art competitions in five categories: architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture. The rules held that, in order to be submitted, a work needed to be inspired by sport and original (i.e., not previously published in any format). Juries would decide which works were the best and award gold, silver, and bronze medals accordingly.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the founder of the modern Olympic Games Baron de Coubertin, taken before the mid-1920s

Now, as it happens, Baron de Coubertin himself secretly submitted a poem for the literature competition titled “Ode to Sport.” The poem was written in the German language and accompanied by a French prose translation. It was formally registered as having been composed by two fictional German poets named “Georges Hohrod” and “Martin Eschbath.”

Baron de Coubertin’s poem won a gold medal in the literature competition for that year, despite the fact that it is unbelievably bad. It is exactly the kind of poem you would expect a fanatically sports-obsessed conservative French aristocrat and would-be amateur poet born in the nineteenth century to write.

You can read the complete poem in the original German on the Olympic World Library website, but I will present the first three stanzas here along with my own English translation to give my readers a taste of just how bad this poetry really is:

“O Sport, du Göttergabe, du Lebenselixier! Zeit,
der fröhlichen Lichtstrahl wirft in die arbeitsschwere
der du ein Bote bist der längst vergangenen Tage,
wo die Menschheit lächelte in Jugendlust, rötete
wo der aufsteigende Sonnengott die Gipfel der Berge
und scheidend den Hochwald in leuchtende Farben tauchte.”

“O Sport, du bist die Schönheit!
Du formst den Körper zu edler Gestalt,
hältst fern von ihm zerstörende Leidenschaft
und stählst ihn durch dauernde Uebung.
Gibst schöne Harmonie seinen Gliedern
und gefälligen Rythmus seinen Bewegungen.
Du verbindest Grazie mit Kraft
Und Geschmeidigkeit mit Stärke.”

“O Sport, du bist die Gerechtigkeit!
Vergeblich ringt der Mensch nach Billigkeit und Recht
in allen sozialen Einrichtungen;
er findet beide nur bei Dir. Höhen,
um keinen Zoll vermag der Springer seinen Sprung zu
nicht um Minuten die Dauer seines Laufs.
Die Kraft des Leibes und des Willens Spannung ganz
bestimmen die Grenzen seiner Leistung.”

Here is my own English translation, trying to keep it as literal as possible:

“Oh Sport, you pleasure of the gods, you elixir of life! Time,
which casts the happy light beam into drudgery.
You are a messenger from a long bygone time
in which Mankind smiled in youthful delight,
in which the rising Sun God reddened the top of the mountain
and submerged the high forest in luminous colors.”

“Oh Sport, you are Beauty!
You form the body into a kingly figure,
you keep it far away from destructive lust,
and you make it hard as steel it through constant exercise.
You give beautiful harmony to its limbs
and pleasing rhythm to its motions.
You combine grace with power
and flexibility with strength.”

“Oh Sport, you are Justice!
In vain, Man struggles for equality and justice
in all social institutions;
he finds both only with you.
No one can add an inch to the height of his jump,
nor a minute to the duration of his run.
The might of the body and the pressure of the will totally
determine the limits of achievement.”

The poem goes on a lot longer than this, but I figure that this is probably all that most of my readers will be able to stand.

The 1948 Summer Olympic Games in London were the last edition to include competitions for the arts. The 1952 Summer Olympic Games in Helsinki did not include artistic competitions. In 1954, the IOC voted to end the Olympic art competitions and replace them with an art exhibition, arguing that all the artists who were submitting work were professionals and that Olympic competitors were supposed to be amateurs.

ABOVE: Photograph taken by Wilhelm Limpert showing the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels visiting the Olympic Art Exhibition at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin