That final of the traditional Olympic Video games was held greater than 1,600 years in the past. For one last time, the strongest and quickest males locked right into a ferocious competitors to search out the best athlete on this planet. Certain, we introduced the Olympics again by identify in 1896, however it wasn’t the identical. A lot has modified, and loads of traditions the traditional Greeks loved didn’t get carried over to the Olympics we watch at the moment.
10The Ritual Sacrifice Of Animals
The Olympics started with the athletes getting into a temple. There, they stood earlier than an imposing statue of Zeus brandishing his thunderbolts. A sliced piece of a boar flesh could be put earlier than them, they usually must swear an oath to the gods over it, promising to obey the foundations of the video games.
It was an odd method to begin, however it was nothing in contrast what was to return. The true spotlight got here on day three, when a procession of 100 bulls had been marched to the Nice Altar of Zeus and ritually slaughtered by monks earlier than a crowd. A number of the meat would get eaten, however the animals’ thighs could be burned to a crisp as a sacrifice to the gods.
9Consuming Sheep Testicles As A Efficiency-Enhancer
The Greeks seen testicles as a performance-enhancing drug. From watching eunuchs and castrated animals, they’d discovered that there was some sort of connection between testicles and manliness. They didn’t fairly perceive the biology, however they knew there was a hyperlink, they usually had been fairly positive one of the simplest ways to turn out to be manly was to eat as many testicles as potential.
In fact, there have been alternate options. Some would prepare by consuming a ground-up mixture of donkey hooves and rose petals. Others would eat dwell bees.
A couple of took a dirtier route. They’d attempt to place curses on their opponents, which the Greeks had been fairly positive actually labored. There are tales from the Olympics that inform of athletes veering astray or not making it to the beginning block, errors the Greeks chalked as much as magical hexes.
8Athletes Competing In The Nude
We’re not totally positive why the Greeks insisted on letting all of it grasp free. In response to one legend, it began when a runner tripped on his loincloth and determined to say to hell with garments. Others assume that the Greeks took competing bare as a matter of pleasure, believing that solely a barbarian would attempt to disguise his nakedness. Both method, they didn’t simply go bare, they made a present out of it. They’d lather themselves up with olive oil and parade across the stadium exhibiting off.
The folks beloved it. Some even wrote poems about it. We’ve got one from a poet named Bacchylides, who was making an attempt to explain an athlete throwing a discus. He received so caught up within the second, although, that he threw in, “In such a method, amid the huge, circling crowd of the Greeks, did he show his wondrous physique.”
7The Thong That Simply Covers The Tip
They had been virtually totally bare, anyway. Some athletes indulged in a single little allowance: the kynodesme. This was one thing kind of like a jockstrap or a thong, besides that it coated nothing however the tip of the penis. It could be tied across the athlete’s waist, with a tiny little bow across the penis as an ornamental flourish.
This wasn’t out of modesty—actually, it didn’t even cowl up your genitals. All it coated was the foreskin, which, to the Greeks, was an extremely priceless physique half. They seen lengthy, draping foreskins because the epitome of handsomeness. Greek artwork is stuffed with males with absurdly lengthy foreskins. They present up so usually that historians aren’t even positive if these are work of a really perfect man or if that’s simply actually what historical Greek genitals regarded like.
Generally, the kynodesme had an aesthetic worth. Some had been elongated to make the foreskin look greater than it actually was. It was such a preferred look that some folks wore them at dwelling as a substitute of simply on the video games.
6Mass Prostitution
Prostitutes and events had been big elements of the Olympic video games. Ladies from everywhere in the Mediterranean would journey out to the Olympics to promote their our bodies. Within the 5 days of the video games, a prostitute might make as a lot cash as she made all through the entire 12 months.
A few of these ladies made ends meet by working as weavers in the course of the day. So, while you walked down the streets in the course of the day, the prostitutes could be out on the streets weaving. They’d be half-naked, weaving clothes as saucily because it’s potential to weave garments, hoping to lure in one other shopper.
Folks threw drunken events that devolved into orgies and went on till daybreak. Some wouldn’t sleep all through the entire video games, and hardly anybody would take a shower. By the tip, town most likely stunk like a cross between a fitness center and a brothel as a result of that’s just about precisely what it was.
5Pankration, The Blended-Martial Arts Sport With No Guidelines
The Greeks had a sport known as Pankration that was kind of like our fashionable blended martial arts. Two males would lock into fight, free to make use of no matter combating type they wished till one submitted. Aside from bites, eye-gouges and beating the genitals, the whole lot was allowed.
Pankration rivals might do virtually something, they usually did the whole lot. A number of the strikes they used had been extremely brutal. One fighter, Sostratos of Sikyon, earned the nickname “Mr. Fingertips” as a result of he appreciated to begin matches by breaking his opponents’ fingers. One other fighter, Arrhachion, actually killed himself making an attempt to win. Whereas he was being strangled between a pair of thighs, Arrhachion dislocated his opponent’s toe. His opponent gave in, and Arrhachion died from suffocation, turning into the primary Olympian to win whereas useless.
4Chariot Races That Killed Folks
The chariot races had been extremely lethal. There would normally be about 40 chariots on the tracks, and as they turned, their wheels would lock collectively. Some would go flying off-course and crash, whereas others would go flying proper into the viewers. In a single case, a race began with 21 chariots, however by the point it ended, just one was left standing.
The game claimed numerous lives, normally in entrance of a cheering crowd. That could be why the rich individuals who owned the chariots usually didn’t journey them. As an alternative, they might rent different folks to journey within the chariot race for them and will nonetheless win an Olympic wreath for paying another person to threat his life.
3The Race In 70 Kilos Of Armor
The final foot race of the Olympics could be the Hoplitodromos, and it was loopy. The rivals would come to the beginning line with a helmet on their heads, metallic greaves on their shins, and a protect of their palms. They carried 50–70 kilos of armor with them, they usually’d be anticipated to run in it.
They wore nothing else. This was the Olympics. They couldn’t put on garments. They had been simply bare folks in helmets and shin guards.
The Olympians must run 400 meters as shortly as they might with all this armor weighing them down. We’ve tried to recreate it with fashionable athletes, and it was disastrous. Nobody might maintain their protect up after 70 meters, they usually had been staggering and struggling to maneuver after 275 meters.
2Not Letting Ladies Enter, Even If They’re Competing
Virgin women might watch the Olympics. They had been inspired, actually, as a result of they’d attempt to hook up with the athletes. Grownup ladies, although, couldn’t. With the only exception of the Priestess of Demeter Chamyne, who would watch over the Olympics atop an ivory altar, ladies couldn’t get in it doesn’t matter what.
That together with ladies who had been competing. A Spartan girl named Cynisca entered a chariot crew into the Olympics. She funded and skilled them, however she wasn’t allowed using them. She was pressured to rent males to journey her horses for her and wasn’t even allowed to observe them go round.
She gained—twice. She even had a monument made in her honor contained in the Olympic stadium. Being a lady, although, she wasn’t allowed to observe them unveil it, and she or he was by no means permitted to stroll in and see it.
1 Demolishing The Winner’s Metropolis Partitions
The winners had been handled like gods. On the ultimate day of the Olympics, they obtained wreaths from a wild olive tree. Statues had been constructed of their honor. Songs and poems had been written for them. They had been paraded dwelling in a chariot, given heaps of cash and warranted that they might by no means should pay taxes once more.
Some cities, although, thought all that wasn’t going far sufficient. Their winners deserved slightly extra. A metropolis with robust males, the Greeks believed, wanted no partitions to defend itself. And so, when their athletes got here dwelling, they tore down an entire part of their partitions and let the successful Olympians march over the rubble.
Mark Oliver is a daily contributor to Listverse. His writing additionally seems on a variety of different websites, together with The Onion’s StarWipe and Cracked.com. His web site is repeatedly up to date with the whole lot he writes.
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