Olympia: The Epicenter of Tourism in Ancient Greece

The palaestra successful past Olympia was wherever wrestlers, boxers, and pankration practitioners trained. Credit: George E. Koronaios / Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0

Tourism was wide successful ancient Greece, mostly driven by the large sporting events of the Panhellenic Games held astatine Olympia, Delphi, Isthmia, and Nemea. Thousands from crossed Greece and the Greek satellite made the travel to specified events, a travel that could instrumentality days. According to modern calculations, up to 50,000 radical traveled to Olympia.

The fig is astonishing fixed the limitations to question astatine the time. Greek roads were poorly developed owed to the fragmentation of Greek nine astatine the authorities level and the utmost outgo of constructing roads successful Greece’s mountainous terrain. There was besides a information of unit connected Greek roads arsenic travelers were prone to beryllium accosted by highwaymen. As such, having a ample entourage was utile for protection, and the proscription of valuables was risky.

Traveling to past Olympia for the Games. Painting by Heinrich Leutemann. Public Domain

It took Athenians 5 to six days to get to Olympia, and six sailing days were needed to get to Olympia from confederate Italy. Despite these limitations and owed to the ineffable quality of the games, determination was adjacent a play of truce declared crossed Greece to let for harmless travels for those who wished to attend.

There, successful archaic and classical times, travelers saw buildings, sculptures, and paintings. Later on, during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, Olympia and different sports centers became an obligatory halt of the Greek and Roman elites.

Sports, religion, and taste tourism successful past Greece

In a comprehensive effort connected the subject, Fernando Garcıa Romero, prof of Ancient Greek astatine the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, noted that spectators and tourists had divers motivations for attending the Games. For many, religion was the premier motive for traveling to Olympia since the main sports games were held there. They were captious centers of pilgrimage passim antiquity.

Secondly, Olympia, Delphi, Isthmia, and Nemea were besides the main centers of sports tourism successful past Greece, and determination appears to beryllium nary uncertainty that specified tourism existed determination successful the strictest sense.

Moreover, the Games attracted taste tourists who came not lone for the diversion contests but besides to respect the architectural, sculptural, and creator treasures of Olympia. Cultural tourism astatine sanctuaries similar Olympia and Delphi encompassed architecture, sculpture, painting, literature, and philosophy. The beingness of poets, writers, orators, and philosophers added different furniture of entreaty to the Games, making them some diversion and intelligence gatherings.

“Olympia was the astir important gathering constituent for literate and intelligence activities successful Ancient Greece, due to the fact that authors and thinkers gave publicity to their works and ideas there, exploiting the information that the Olympic Games gathered unneurotic the top assemblage of Greeks,” Romero said.

Famous orators, writers, and philosophers—such arsenic Anaxagoras successful the 5th period BC, Plato and the mathematician Euclides successful the 4th period BC, oregon the Pythagorean Apollonius of Tyana successful the archetypal period AD—often stirred large excitement among spectators. Romero wrote:

“One could perceive crowds of wretched sophists astir Poseidon’s temple shouting and reviling 1 another, and their disciples, arsenic they were called, warring with 1 another, galore writers speechmaking aloud their anserine works, galore poets reciting their poems portion others applauded them, galore jugglers showing their tricks, galore fortune-tellers interpreting fortunes, lawyers innumerable perverting judgement, and peddlers not a fewer peddling immoderate they happened to have.”

Postcard published connected the juncture of the Olympic Games successful 1906. Credit: Public Domain

Overcrowding and circuit guides successful Olympia and Delphi

By antiquity’s aboriginal centuries, Olympia and Delphi had go specified salient destinations for taste tourism that we adjacent person records indicating the beingness of circuit guides—individuals tasked with explaining the creator and architectural marvels to visitors.

Some past sources, however, knock these guides for being overly verbose and rigidly attached to their scripts. In his treatise On the Oracles of the Pythia complained:

“The guides were going done their prearranged [program], paying nary heed to america who begged that they would chopped abbreviated their harangues and their expounding of astir of the inscriptions.”

Beyond the tours, Olympia and different large sanctuaries took connected the ambiance of bustling markets. In the 3rd period BC, the comic writer Menander famously summed it up successful 5 words: “Crowd, market, thieves, dice games, chatters.”

Pausanias, the 2nd-century traveler and geographer, besides noted the commercialized frenzy:

“The tiny traders marque themselves booths of reeds oregon different improvised material. On the past of the 3 days they clasp a fair, selling slaves, cattle of each kinds, clothes, metallic and gold.”

In short, arsenic historiographer Romera observed, Pythagoras was close erstwhile helium said that Olympia, during the Games, was the perfect clip and spot to observe quality quality successful each its complexity.

Class part among tourists astatine the Games

The statue of Zeus was located wrong the Doric temple of Olympia. Credit: Public Domain

Visitors to Olympia during the Games did not flight the inconveniences of wide gatherings. The monolithic influx of spectators, each anxious to permission astatine the aforesaid time, created logistical chaos—especially erstwhile it came to securing transportation.

Lucian noted the vexation of departure delays:

“Soon the Olympic Games were ended, the astir splendid Olympics that I person seen, though it was past the 4th clip that I had been a spectator. As it was not casual to unafraid a carriage, since galore were leaving astatine the aforesaid time, I lingered against my will’.

Accommodation astatine Olympia was besides a challenge. Facilities were highly limited, forcing astir visitors to campy successful makeshift huts oregon cloth tents scattered astir the sanctuary. The comfortableness and luxury of these shelters varied drastically depending connected the economical presumption of their occupants. Fine meals and due bathing were luxuries enjoyed lone by the affluent few.

The historiographer Diodorus of Sicily (1 BC) described the luxurious tents wherever the tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse was lodged during his enactment successful the sanctuary for the Games of the twelvemonth 388 B.C. These lavish tents were yet sacked and destroyed by an aggravated assemblage that, driven by the antiauthoritarian person Lysias, protested against the beingness of the tyrant successful Olympia and his unbearable ostentation—including his highly decorated pavilions, four-horse chariot teams, and reciters.

A akin critique is recovered successful a code by the orator Andocides (5th period BC), who condemned the excessive show of Alcibiades astatine Olympia:

“Then again, look astatine the arrangements which helium made for his enactment astatine Olympia. For
Alcibiades, the radical of Ephesus erected a Persian pavilion doubly arsenic ample arsenic that of the Athenian authoritative deputation; Chios furnished him with animals for sacrifice and with fodder for his horses; portion helium requisitioned vino and everything other indispensable for his maintenance from Lesbos.”

Plutarch made a akin point:

“The Ephesians equipped Alcibiades with a structure of magnificent adornment; the Chians furnished him with provender for his horses and with innumerable animals for sacrifice; the Lesbians with vino and different provisions for his unstinted amusement of the multitude.”

In stark contrast, the overwhelming bulk of visitors endured acold much humble conditions—often forced to stock tents with strangers. Comforts were scarce, portion inconveniences were many.

Inconveniences endured by tourists

Ancient sources often item the discomforts spectators faced amid the overwhelming crowds and stifling vigor of the Greek summer. Olympia, successful particular, is repeatedly singled retired arsenic a spot wherever carnal hardship was portion of the experience.

In the 2nd period AD, the satirical writer Lucian of Samosata drew a nonstop examination betwixt the comparative comfortableness of diversion festivals successful Macedonia and the challenging conditions successful Olympia:

“In a precise good metropolis of Macedonia, truthful different, convey goodness, from Olympia with its deficiency of space, its tents and huts, its stifling heat’”

Some accounts adjacent turned these discomforts into the worldly of jokes oregon hyperbolic threats. Claudius Aelianus, penning a small later, recounted a humorous anecdote astir a antheral from the land of Chios who threatened his servant with what helium considered the worst imaginable punishment:

“A antheral from Chios was annoyed with his servant and said: ‘I volition not enactment you successful the treadmill, but I’ll instrumentality you to Olympia’“

Not surprisingly, the biographer of philosophers Diogenes Laertius told america that, successful the sixth period BC, the celebrated Thales of Miletus, the begetter of philosophy, “died arsenic helium was watching an diversion contention from heat, thirst, and the weakness incidental to precocious age.”

Still, contempt the heat, crowding, and basal accommodations, Olympia and the different large festival sanctuaries continued to gully monolithic audiences. Their entreaty laic successful the uniqueness of the acquisition and the unparalleled prestige of the Games.

As the philosopher Epictetus observed successful the 2nd period AD:

“And bash they not hap astatine Olympia? Do you not swelter? Are you not cramped and crowded? Do you not bathe with discomfort? Are you not drenched whenever it rains? Do you not person your capable of tumult and shouting and different annoyances? But I fancy that you carnivore and endure each this by balancing it disconnected against the memorable quality of the spectacle.”

No uncertainty Olympia and the different large diversion sanctuaries wherever the Games were held connection immoderate of the richest insights into the improvement of tourism successful Graeco-Roman antiquity. Apart from the large municipality centers similar Athens, Alexandria, and Rome, fewer places could rival the magnetic propulsion of these ineffable sporting venues.

The Olympic, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean Games not lone gathered tens of thousands of visitors from crossed the Greek—and aboriginal Graeco-Roman—world but besides brought unneurotic radical from each walks of life. As historiographer Javier Gómez Espelosín Romero noted, these festivals supply a uncommon and vivid accidental to recognize the scope and texture of past tourism.