Olympia

o-olim'pi-a, a city of ancient Greece. It was situated on the sacred plain of the Alpheus in Elis, a small country of the Peloponnesus. According to all accounts it was formerly a city of great magnificence. Dust storms, land washed from the neighboring hills, land slips, and silt from the overflowing of the Alpheus have, however, covered the site of the city with earth to the depth of ten or twelve feet. In the latter half of the nineteenth century an association of Germans, led by Ernst Curtius, the writer of Greek history, undertook excavations on an extensive scale. By an arrangement with the Greek government they were required to relinquish all treasures of art discovered, but they were to be permitted to make casts. Many thousands of fragments of sculpture are preserved in a museum established by the government of Greece for that purpose. The central building was found to be a Doric temple of the Olympian Zeus. It formerly contained a statue of Zeus by the sculptor Phidias, reputed to be the greatest work of art produced in Greece. It outranked the statues of Athena and Zeus at Athens. This temple was surrounded by about forty other buildings, including a vast number of shrines, treasure houses, porticoes, banquet halls, baths, fountains, and other structures. They were destroyed during the fifth century of our era by order of the Christian emperor, Theodoric II, who deemed it unwise to preserve attractive relics of paganism.

Olympic games in honor of Zeus, the father of the gods, were celebrated here each fourth year. At first they were local. The earlier festivals consisted of foot racing; but later chariot races, wrestling, boxing, throwing the quoit or discus, and hurling the javelin were introduced. Still later, the poets, artists, and orators of Greece contended for popular applause. An immense concourse of people from the farthest isles and colonies of the Greeks came together. The assemblage was so great that the merchants came with their wares, and the games took on the aspect of a great fair such as is held at Nijni-Novgorod or leipsic at the present time. The proclamation of treaties and other matters of importance to the Greeks were made at this time.

The Olympics held so important a place in public estimation that the historians reckoned time in Olympiads. The first Olympiad began with the victory of Coroebus in the foot race of the year corresponding to 776 B. C. The games were abolished 394 A.D., about the 293d Olympiad.