Peloponnese Trip II: Olympia

I'm back, after two weeks of dealing with network issues courtesy of CNU's IT department. It's still not really fixed, but it's livable for a while.

Olympia (as in Olympic games, but not Mt. Olympus, which is far, far to the north), between the site and the museum, took up a whole day by itself. It's also the halfway point in the trip, at least if you're going by when I filled up the first of my two camera memory cards. This, even more that the Acropolis post, is a popcorn and tea occasion.

We spent both this night and the previous night in the town of "Ancient Olympia". That is the town's official name, as evidenced by their trash cans, although Wikipedia stubbornly refers to it only as Olympia. There is no "Olympia" or even "Modern Olympia" or "New Olympia". Just "Ancient Olympia", most of which seems to be only a year old, since the forest fires of last summer took out at least part of the area.

As for ancient Ancient Olympia, the site was only used as a religious sanctuary, starting sometime way back in the 800s BCE. The first games supposedly took place in 776, though modern scholars are hesitant to accept any number in Greek history that hasn't been independently verified. The games, part of a big festival to Zeus, were always held in the summer, at Olympia, every fourth year. They were the most important of four big Panhellenic games/festivals, the other three of which didn't start up until the 500s. It was so important that in the Hellenistic period certain historians started using the games as a sort of Panhellenic dating system. "The 3rd year of the 86th Olympiad", for example, as opposed to "the year in which Jimbo was the eponymous archon in Athens" or "the 23rd year in the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphos". Originally the games were limited to Greeks, but later included Macedonians (who were sort of Greek) and Romans (who were not Greek but were good at killing Greeks who pointed that out). Women were not allowed on the grounds during the games, though there were a few races for girls, which the Spartans almost always won, and one Spartan king had a chariot team entered in his daughter's name out of spite for the people who ran the festival.

Wiki's got a really nice map of the sanctuary at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Plan_Olympia_sanctuary-en.svg. We entered the site from the northeast corner, moved roughly clockwise around the site, and then broke for lunch before hitting the museum.

The Philippeion, built by Philip II of Macedon as a shrine/monument to his family.
Walking along the south wall of the temple of Hera. This is the oldest building on site, and some people think that it was a temple of Zeus rededicated to Hera when the newer one was built.
Looking in. You can see a couple of monuments in front. Remember that all of the important rituals take place outside the temple, which leaves the inside mostly empty. In later periods the inside of this temple was used as a sort of museum, where statues dedicated by Olympic victors would be stored. Other fun fact: those columns aren't original. The temple was built with wooden columns, which were replaced with stone as they started to rot.
The alter of Zeus, conveniently placed in the shade.
The columns from the temple of Zeus. The reason that they've fallen over so neatly is because they were pulled down by goons sent by Theodosius II, a Byzantine emperor who was Christian in the Spanish Inquisition sense.
That's one column base, just to show you the scale.
A few of the treasuries. There are a bunch of these at Delphi, as well, if not at the other Panhellenic sites. Cities built these partly to serve as treasuries, but also as a sort of embassy/clubhouse for citizens attending the games.
The Olympic stadium.
I bet you're all really underwhelmed. If it makes you feel better, just pretend the shots of the one in Messene (next post) are at Olympia. There would have been stone seating here during the Roman period, anyway.
Looking along. The stadium building is named after the stadium race, which is named after the stadium unit of measurement. It varied from place to place, but at Olympia at stadion was about 200 yards.
AJ testing out the starting blocks.
Deanna and Dan doing the same. This inevitably resulted in a race, especially since it was only 90-something degree that day.
Dan got a slight head start and would have been whipped in ye olden days. Doug won, but got gypped since nobody had a laurel crown handy. The Greek government probably won't even honor his right to build a statue of himself on site.
The competitors walking back.
Leaving. This is also Roman, but unlike the seating has survived pretty well.
All of these rocks are from dedications and statues and such. They're a bit too heavy to use in a zen rock garden, so the excavators have just put them in neat little rows.
A Roman building. I think this is the Leonidaion, which was basically a hotel built by and for wealthy Romans. Both that pit surrounding it and the ring in the middle would have been filled with water.
The wall of a Roman bath.
The professors looking inside.
More Roman stuff! I'm going to arbitrarily say that this is the workshop of Phidias.
The workshop of Phidias. It's a bit of a misnomer because most of what you can see was built after he was dead. Phidias was the guy who made the cult statue for the Parthenon, and was hired on to build a similar statue of Zeus for the new temple they were building. To make sure the scale was right, he had a workshop the same dimensions as the main room of the temple. That was probably a good idea, since the most famous description of the statue mentions how the seated Zeus would burst through the roof of the temple if he ever decided to stand up. The statue was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Afterwards the workshop was preserved as a heroon to Phidias, and later turned into a church by Theodosius, which is why it looks like a church.
A peristyle. This is part of the gymnasium complex, near where we got a nice student-presented lecture on combat sports.
And that's it for the site! Hopefully I can get the next half done in under two weeks.

After breaking for lunch, we went through the site's museum. In addition to some nice sculpture from the temples, there were a bunch of dedications from Olympic victors and visitors to the site.
Among them: griffins! Roar! Screech! These guys are from the Archaic period, and a nice example of Greeks getting artistic inspiration from their eastern neighbors.
This one is also a bit more practical. He's made of bronze and would have been the center of some hoplite's shield. Then again, I'm not sure to what degree a bronze plate would actually improve the already sturdy Greek shields. In any event, it looks cool.
An here's an illustration of a fully armored hoplite. He'd be armed with a long spear (6' or so off the top of my head, which is still nothing compared to the 20' Macedonian sarissa) and a shorter sword used as a backup weapon. This depiction is a little idealized, since many men wouldn't have been able to afford the full set and would have skipped over things like the foot armor and the piece covering the inner forearm.
A rooster, also from a shield. Chickens had the complete opposite symbolism for Greek soldiers than for modern Americans.
A bunch of Greek helmets, dedicated by Greeks who had looted them from the armies of rival poleis.
A freaky shield with a gorgon on it. While I'm on the subject of shields, I feel obligated to retell the story about one of the Spartans who had painted a life-size fly on his shield instead of a gorgon or a chicken or something. When questioned about it by his friends, he told them that he'd be so close to his enemies that the fly would look like a lion.
A bronze bracelet, which was probably much prettier when it was shiny.
A pediment from the treasury of Megara. I don't remember and can't tell from this picture what the sculpture is, but the odds are better than even that it's Lapiths fighting centaurs.
Decorated terra cotta from another building.
Nike of Paionios. The goddess of victory doing what she does best: coming in for a landing to crown the winner of a competition.
The helmet of a particularly famous guy. I don't have my notes with me to doublecheck, but if I remember correctly it belonged to Mardonius, the guy Xerxes left in charge of the second invasion of Greece after their defeat at Salamis. He's mostly famous for losing the battle of Plataea, which was the defeat of the Persian land forces in Greece.
A horse, of course.
One of the pediments of the temple of Zeus, presented in glorious panorama. Here are the center and left parts of the same. It depicts the battle between drunken centaurs and their human hosts at the wedding feast of Perithoos, the king of the Lapiths. In the middle is Apollo, flanked by Perithoos on one side and the best man Theseus on the other, which a bunch of Lapiths and centaurs further out. Perithoos' other big story in Greek myth is one of history's great Bad Ideas. He enlists Theseus' help in trying to abduct Persephone, Hades' wife, so he can be married to a daughter of Zeus (Theseus picked the easier target of Helen, who was rescued by her brothers and later married off to Agamemnon). Anyway, the two make their way into Hades and, tired and hungry, stumble into a gigantic dining room filled to the brim with a spectacular feast. As soon as they sit down, vines grow up around them and keep them stuck to their chairs. Eventually Herakles stumbles through in his quest to abduct Hades' dog and rips his friend Theseus free, but Perithoos ends up spending all of eternity stuck in a dining room in hell.
The left, center and right shots of the other pediment. This one tells the story of Pelops, who won his wife through a rigged chariot match with her father. The middle figure is Zeus, who is, among other things, the god of Not Cheating and Punishing Oathbreakers, present to remind us that, although Pelops won the race, he was cursed for his treachery, so much so that his descendants were doing wacky things like eating each others' children until his great-grandson Orestes sorts things out. The middle shot is the first one on my second big memory card. The right one is notable because the center figure, that philosopher, is both old, ugly, and showing actual emotion, all things that Greek sculpture avoided until this point.
The metapes of the temple depict the labors of Herakles. This shot's of Athena telling him what to do.
Another one. Between the picture size on Panoramio, damage to the sculpture, and the lack of my notes, I have no idea which two labors those are. This one show him holding up the heavens while Atlas gets the golden apples of the Hisperides for him. Athena's helping out and looking bored.
An artist's rendering of the big cult statue. Aleko assured us that it's completely wrong.
The Hermes of Praxiteles. Even though it's a marble, a lot of people seem to think this is the original work of one of the great sculptors of classical Greece. Dr. Bloy doesn't agree, for a number of reasons involving the finish and that huge thing he's leaning on.
A bull. It just occurred to me that I know the verb for mooing in Latin but not in Greek. It has also occurred to me that I should probably not be left alone in an empty library media center for six hour stretches at night, lest I start mooing at strangers in dead languages over the internet.
A Roman emperor. I think this one's Hadrian, though it might be Marcus Aurelius. Or it could be someone completely different; while I only recall seeing Augustus, Caligula, and those two, this guy looks a little off from the usual Hadrian.
Agrippina Minor. She was Claudius' second wife, and presumably poisoned him so that his son, Nero, could take over. A bit of a momma's boy at first, Nero eventually got so sick of her that he sent her on a cruise in a specially-designed boat that was supposed to fall apart once it got out to sea. Unfortunately, Agrippina was a really good swimmer and made it back to shore. Nero sent goons after her instead, and, while they killed her, they didn't earn him any style points in being a Bad Emperor.

And that's it! May the rest of these updates be less trouble than this one. We spent that night in Olympia and left in the morning to hit three lesser-known sites: Bassae, Messene and Mystra, ending up in Sparti for the night.