Ancient Olympics: Today Vs. Ancient Greece

1717 Words7 Pages

Olympics: Today vs. Ancient Greece So far, Ancient Greece is one of the biggest empires in the world. Ancient Greece is known as its Olympics. The origins of the Olympics recorded in the 8th century BC. The following text will mention about the Ancient sports that were competing in Greece and the differences between Today's Olympics and Ancient Greece's Olympics. Firstly, a brief information about the Olympics itself. There are no certain information about how and why the games started but there are some myths. According to these myths, the guardians of the infant god Zeus held the first foot race, or the Zeus himself started the games to celebrate his victory over his father Cronus for control of the world. Another tradition states that after the Greek hero Pelops won a chariot race against King Oenomaus to marry Oenamaus' daughter Hippodamia, he established the games. The Olympic games were so important …show more content…

In Ancient Greece, a woman competing in Olympic Games was unthinkable. The punishment of a woman -especially a married woman- participating in any kind of sports that were holding in Olympics was a death penalty. But, women had their own sports competition called Heraia. While Olympic Games were holding in honour of god Zeus, Heraia was holding in honour of goddess Hera. The Heraia, just like Olympics, were holding every four years. But these competitions consisted of running races only. Today, women have the chance to compete in Olympics. There are a lot of women athletes in all of the competitions that are holding in Olympic Games and they represent women perfectly with their hard work and their