Olympia
We spent the morning in Olympia learning about the games in antiquity. Here are some of the things I found interesting, or I didn’t know before coming here:
- Greek men competed naked - Greek women competed with little clothing on. They never met since the men competed in July and women in early spring.
- The temple of Zeus housed this massive statue, and a smaller and earlier temple to Hera stood within the stadium.
- Priestesses of Hera sparked the Olympic flame as they still do today (although they are actresses now, not priestesses)
- Plato won 3 times at the Olympic games
- Participants were warriors not athletes. If they won, they had the honour of standing on the front lines in battle, and probably died an honourable and quick death LOL
- One of the events was a mix of boxing and wrestling which reminded me of MMA
- All wars stopped during the Olympics, including the war with the Persians - the Greeks took a month off to prepare for the 5 day religious and honourable event.
- 100 oxen were sacrificed for Zeus and the meat was shared amoung the approx 40,000 pilgrims, nobles, royalty and warriors.
- Greeks ate only sacrificed meat at religious festivals so they actually ate much less meat then we eat today... the idea that we must eat meat everyday because we are carnivores certainly doesn’t come from antiquity.
- Although women could not compete or watch men, the wealthy ones would send their chariots and horses to compete, and their names would be honoured if their horses or chariots won a race.
Delphi
I had been looking forward to Delphi since we first started to plan this trip. However, I must say that Delphi was a bit of a disappointment... the site itself was great, and the temple of Apollo as impressive as I imagined. But there seemed to be something missing... I guess I was expecting the oracle center of the Mediterranean world to feel more... I don’t know... magical? I cant say that I felt anything other then hot, LOL. Our guide was fairly good, although she seemed rushed, and later we found out that she had another group right after us. There seemed to be a bit of a herding feeling in Delphi... like they were putting us through an assembly line and then sending us off to the museum.
One of the things that was missed which I was hoping to see was the place where the Pythia (priestess/oracle) sat and gave her prophecies. Apparently, the location was somewhere in the basement of the temple and we could not walk there as no one is allowed on ancient ruins. We were told that at one point, right under the temple of Apollo, there were two tectonic plates - not much of geologist so bare with me, LOL - this split in the earth’s core would send up Methane gases. If the priestess stayed near the gases under the temple then she became intoxicated with the god (Apollo) and went into a frenzy of hallucinations (a side effect of methane gas) and spoke, or mumbled, or cried, which a male priest then translated into a prophecy. Around 4th century A.D. a great earthquake moved the plates into a locked position and the god was no more...
Overall both Olympia and Delphi have been interesting. The best part about Olympia was pretending to race Ken on the ancient track, LOL, and Delphi... maybe drinking from the sacred fountain where the ancients were said to wash themselves and drink before they went to see the oracle.
Next, Meteora - monasteries from the 12th century built on rocks the size of mountains :)
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