S10E10 - Ancient Olympics Part Deux

The stories featured in Greaking Out are original adaptations of classic Greek myths.

This week's story features groundbreaking athletes, pioneering villains, statue lore, the rage of fandom, and a sporting event which shall not be named.

out

We're back with this season's final episode of Greaking Out the podcast where we talk a lot about Greek mythology But today

we're gonna talk about something coming up right around the corner something sporty Something that happens every few years in different places all over the world something which we will not name

We are not naming this big global sporting event for legal reasons.

Right, so in celebration of nothing in particular, we're going to talk about a series of games held in the ancient world called the Ancient Olympics, which are legally distinct from anything that may or may not be happening in the world right now.

That's right, we're back with more ancient Olympic legends.

The first known ancient Olympic games were held in the summer of 776 BCE

in honor of Zeus.

For the first 13 years, it only consisted of one foot race.

Now, we've already talked about the mythical beginnings of the ancient Olympics a little bit, but here's a quick recap in case you don't remember.

King Pelops, whose dad tried to feed him to the gods and who was super cursed, entered a chariot race to win the hand of the beautiful Hippodamia.

Hippodamia's father already had a prophecy that if his daughter got married, it would mean his own death, so he made all of her suitors race him and he would kill all the losers Pelops cheated to win and it resulted in the death of Hippodamia's father neatly fulfilling the prophecy he also killed the person who helped him cheat just heaping more curses upon his already cursed family but some ancient people credit pelops with organizing the first olympian games Another competing story is that Heracles organized the games in honor of his father after completing his 12 labors.

The ancient Olympics were just one of four different quadrennial ancient games happening in the Greek world.

That's right.

That's why the Olympics were originally every four years, because there were three other games going on the rest of the time that formed kind of a circuit.

The Nemean Games, the Pythian Games, and the Isthmian Games.

Our first ancient Olympic champion is Theogenes of Thassos.

As a child, Theogenes was so strong that he actually picked up a statue from the town square and just decided to carry it home.

Since this was the statue of a god, the townsfolk weren't very happy with him.

Some of them actually wanted to put the kid to death for such an insult.

Fortunately, a wise town elder intervened and simply asked Theogenes to put it back.

The kid was just nine years old after all.

He needed some guidance.

The people of Thassos would eventually go on to witness this former juvenile delinquent become one of the greatest sports figures of the ancient world.

He apparently won 1,400 matches over the course of his 22-year competitive career.

In the ancient Olympics, Theogenes became the first athlete to win in both boxing and pancration in the years 480 and 476 BCE.

And yeah, I just said pancration in the last sentence, but in our previous Olympics episode, I pronounced it as pancration.

As it turns out, both are right.

I'm just mixing it up a little bit.

You decide which one you like better.

Anyway, in addition to that, Theogenes also claimed victory in some 21 other games in the circuit.

But that's not all.

Just for variety's sake, he decided to try running and he even won a long-distance race in the city of Fithia.

He was a legend and a formidable presence, but not everybody loved him.

I mean, for every victory you achieve, that means somebody else takes a loss, right?

With a career like Theogenes, there were a lot of losers, so that means a a lot of people probably resented him at least a little bit.

Maybe this is why when they built a giant bronze statue to honor the fighter after his death, an old rival decided to vandalize it.

But Theogenes was victorious even in death.

As the legend goes, while the criminal was attempting to deface the statue, the bronze structure came loose from its base and actually fell upon the vandal, killing him instantly.

For those of you keeping score at home, home, that would be victory number 141.

And that's when things get wacky because the heirs of the dead guy sued the statue, like petitioned the court that the statue had wronged them.

The statue was then judged guilty and sentenced to be thrown in the sea, which it was.

The statue only killed in self-defense.

I think this was a little bit of an overreaction myself.

After the statue went into the sea, the people of Thassus experienced a famine.

They didn't have anything to eat and their crops were failing.

Someone thought to consult the Oracle of Delphi and the answer was clear.

Bring the statue out of the sea and put it back just like Theogenes did when he was a kid.

After that, the famine ended and the people erected more statues to Theogenes believing that they had healing powers.

Our next legend is an Olympic champion in his own right, but he might actually have preferred to be known as a proud dad.

His name was Diagoras of Rhodes, and he won the boxing crown twice in the ancient Olympics.

In the ancient Olympics, competitors were given a crown of leaves from a laurel tree to celebrate their victory.

In the modern day, Olympic athletes get medals.

Diagoras was not only an Olympic champion, he was also a champion in the other three games in the circuit as well.

A poet named Pindar commemorated one of his victories with a poem that listed the names of the 20 games he won.

And with a record like that comes kind of an immortality.

Diagoras is still celebrated today.

There's actually a soccer team named after him, Diagoras FC, and the Rhodes International Airport is known as Diagoras in his honor.

You know you're a legend when they name an airport after you.

But despite all of the honors and fame, Diagoras was clearly most proud of his children.

His sons were both athletic competitors and looked to their dad as a role model.

This was something Diagoras encouraged in all of his kids, even his daughter, but we'll get to that later.

So after years of practicing and training, Diagoras' two sons were ready to start competing.

Diagoras was bursting with pride when his oldest son won the ancient Olympic championship in Pancration twice.

And then his second son won the same event a few years later.

Pancration, meaning all powers, allowed competitors to combine moves from boxing, wrestling, and other kinds of fighting.

It was most similar to the modern mixed martial arts.

Yes, thank you for clarifying that, Oracle.

You were not allowed to bite in the Pancration.

Okay.

Or...

Poke someone's eye out.

Yes, sure, those are some good rules.

I mean, you can't just have people biting and poking eyes out, willy-nilly.

Anyway, after his second son won the Olympics in 448 BCE, Diagoras was beside himself with joy.

As soon as the match ended, the crowd erupted with cheers.

The two brothers lifted their dad on their shoulders and carried him around the stadium to even greater fanfare and cheers.

It's a moment that's been captured in classical style art paintings and bronze statues that still stand in the city of Rhodes to this day.

The joy was obvious on Diagoras' face, and the legend goes someone in the crowd shouted out to him something like,

Even if you ascend to Olympus in the afterlife, it probably won't get any better than this.

Those words proved to be an omen though, because as the story goes, Diagoras died at that exact moment.

I am not programmed for emotion.

But even I can tell that this is sad.

Yeah, it is sad and kind of ironic, but I guess if you're gonna go out, at least Diagoras went out happy.

But that is actually only part of the story of the children of Diagoras.

You see, Diagoras also had another son and a daughter.

His third son, Doriaeus, had just as many athletic accolades as his father.

According to Aristotle, Dorius won 20 crowns on the circuit alone.

He was so famous that his name came to mean athlete.

He also had a hand in politics and at one point was condemned to death for convincing Rhodes to leave Athens' League of Greek States, which was kind of like an ancient gang of city-states formed to defend against the Persian Empire.

Because he was such a beloved athletic competitor though, he was later pardoned of his crimes.

Diagoras' daughter, on the other hand, was not necessarily as decorated as the rest of her family, mainly because,

well, she was a woman, and women weren't allowed to even watch the Olympic Olympic Games, let alone participate in them.

Her name was Calipatria, and she was also the mother of an athlete.

Shocker.

After the death of her husband, some think that Calipatria began to take a direct hand in training her son.

When she finally got her son registered to compete in the ancient Olympic Games, there was no way that Calipatria was going to miss this.

So, she disguised herself as a man and posed as her son's trainer.

And she actually might have gotten away with it, but of course, her son was victorious.

Suddenly, every eye in the crowd was on her as they roared and cheered with approval.

Calipatria was so excited that she jumped into the competition area and, in the process, revealed more of herself than she would like, let's say.

She was immediately discovered and arrested.

We have a very different approach towards women and sports in our time.

In the United States, a law was passed in 1972, commonly known as Title IX,

which prohibits gender-based discrimination in school and education programs, specifically sports.

Right, but it's actually called Title IX.

That's what I said.

No, you said Title IX, but it's actually referred to as Title IX.

Do I need to explain Roman numerals to you?

No, no, I get it.

I'm just saying that you don't pronounce the actual.

You know what?

Never mind.

Let's just move on.

Anyway, Callipatria was dragged before the judges of the games who would decide her punishment.

According to law, she could be put to death for such an offense.

But when the judges challenged her, Callipatria proclaimed that if any person should be allowed to see the games, it was her.

She had a father, two brothers, and a son who were all Olympic champions.

The judges thought it over, but not for long.

They quickly decided to forgive Callipatria and let her go.

After this incident, the judges put a new law in place that then required all trainers to strip naked before entering the arena.

Yeah, they definitely had some weird rules in the ancient Olympics, and they seem to feel really differently about nudity than we do, but at least this story has a happy ending.

There was no death.

So, by comparison, yes.

Any story you can walk away from, I always say.

You know what?

It's break time.

Yeah, I think we need a break.

Let's take a moment.

We're going to regroup.

I'll have a sip of water.

Talk amongst yourselves.

We'll be back after this short message right here on Greaking Out.

Hey, parents, Greaking Out Book 2 is coming out in September, but you can pre-order now.

Get ready to encounter a god kidnapped by pirates.

Sheep uses camouflage, a super shiny fleece, some dangerous metalworking, the world's most perfect animal, a really heavy boulder, and much more.

Creaking out Heroes and Olympians is available wherever books are sold.

Hey there!

Do you ever wonder what would happen if Cinderella started her own rock band or if Medusa realized just how cool her hair was?

Well, there's a Webby award-winning show called Girl Tales that takes classic stories and puts a unique twist on them, giving girls the chance to save the day, use their intelligence and bravery, and show that they can be the heroes of their own stories.

If you are ready for an adventure, find Girl Tales wherever you get your podcasts.

Okay, I feel better.

Yes, thanks for the break.

We're back with more Greaking Out.

Our next Olympic legend is named Melancomas of Caria.

And yes, he was another boxer, and yes, he was descended from another Olympic champion, his father, also named Melancomas.

Melancomas is a name that refers to a person's appearance.

In this case, they were both black-haired.

This was in like 49 CE, so it was about 500 years after Diagoras and family, but Melancomas was different from any other fighter in any other sport.

I guess he wasn't the biggest or strongest fighter in the the ring, but he certainly seemed to have the heart of a champion and he had a plan.

Some scholars believe that Melancomas was not a real person.

We mostly know of him through the writings of a philosopher named Dio of Prusa.

And some believe he was a character Dio created to deliver his philosophies.

Yeah, so keep in mind, this is a legend.

It may or may not be true.

Melancomas had an interesting strategy for fighting Which was in a way to do nothing He didn't punch at all.

He was 100% defense instead of practicing punches or kicks or throws melancomas focused his training on stamina endurance and quickness He became an expert at blocking punches and avoiding blows.

He would move quickly around the ring to make his opponents chase him and tire themselves out.

And if he did get cornered, Melancomas excelled at blocking and repelling punches and kicks.

Some say he could hold his arms up and block continuously for two straight days.

In fact, there's a legend that says he could fight through an entire day with ease.

After a while, probably a very long while, his opponents would simply give up and Melancomas would be declared the winner.

In contemporary boxing, when the fighters seem to hug, it is called clinching.

This is usually initiated by one of the boxers to rest and tie up an opponent's arms so they can't punch.

Our next sports legend was kind of a villain too, depending upon who you ask.

His name was Astulus of Croton, and he might be the first free agent in the history of sports.

In professional sports.

A free agent is a player who is not under contract to any specific team.

This means the player can go to another team if they want.

Astulos was a runner and he was fast.

At the Olympics in 488 BCE, Astoulos was a big winner and he returned to Croton as a champion in two races, Stadion and Dialos.

The Stadion is a 200-meter race.

The Dialos is twice as long, 400 meters and he won those races multiple times over the years so Astulos was a very popular man in Croton He was kind of like a local hero they built a statue in his honor people called his name and waved to him in the street and he probably got a lot of free desserts at restaurants but eventually Astulos became a victim of his own success You see the people of Croton weren't the only ones who were impressed with Astulos.

He had friends who lived in Syracuse, a city on the island of Sicily, and they really wanted to bring an ancient Olympic victory or two or seven to their hometown.

So they began to try to convince Astoulos to run in the next ancient Olympics for Syracuse instead of Croton.

There are stories of bribes, money, fancy clothes, a nice house in Syracuse, etc.

We don't know exactly what led to the decision, but eventually Astulos was convinced and he decided to switch allegiances in the next Olympics and represent Syracuse instead of his home of Croton.

A heel turn is when a character in a story who used to be good and virtuous starts acting badly and for selfish purposes.

This term is used in professional wrestling in the U.S.

Exactly, yes.

Astulos performed kind of a heel turn here.

And not surprisingly, the people of Croton were crushed when Astulos took his crown home from the ancient Olympics in 484 BCE because now his home was in Syracuse.

You can also probably imagine how they felt four years later when he did it again.

The entire city of Croton was more than a little bit upset with their former favorite son.

What happened to loyalty to your hometown, to your family?

Astulos was a total celebrity in Syracuse, but in Croton, things had changed.

He was now persona non grata.

Persona non grata is a Latin phrase that means unwelcome person.

You've probably figured that out already.

In fact, in Croton, Astoulos was not just unwelcome, he was downright hated.

His family home was taken from him and turned into a prison, a great sign of disrespect.

His statue was torn down and destroyed, and even his own family members had to publicly denounce him.

He was so reviled in Croton that he was literally exiled from that city forever.

He couldn't even come home for a visit.

Though it is more accepted today, sometimes modern sports fans get very upset when athletes go to play for another team.

However, it is a normal part of many modern sports.

Yeah, today it's normal for most people who play sports professionally to play for many different teams throughout their career.

So you could say Astulos was a pioneer of sorts.

Unfortunately, while he was one of the greatest ancient Olympic sprinters, Astoulos of Syracuse, formerly of Croton, had to stay far away from his hometown.

Our last Olympic legend is a true groundbreaker.

As we've mentioned a couple of times now, in ancient Greece, women were strictly forbidden to participate in the Olympic Games.

In fact, most women weren't even allowed to attend the Games at all.

But there were some gray areas where women could be involved at least a little bit.

And one of these areas was chariot racing.

Our legend's name is Canisca, and she was a princess of Sparta.

You've heard a little bit about Sparta by now already, I'm sure.

It was a famous Greek city-state known for its independent streak and fierce warriors.

Also, Helen and Clytemnestra were both royalty of Sparta.

Right, even the women in Sparta were trained in athletics.

They weren't expected to train for combat specifically, but they still learned how to throw a javelin, hold a spear, and the like.

This seemed to be true for all Spartan women, even royals like Canisca.

But she was a little different.

She was driven to be a champion.

Canisca was determined to win an Olympic crown.

She was born sometime around 440 BCE and and she was the daughter of the Spartan king.

The name Kiniska literally means female puppy.

Maybe it was given to her as a nod to her playful spirit, but it's more likely that the name was a tribute to her grandfather whose name was Kiniskos, which means male puppy.

Either way, Kiniska certainly had a playful and adventurous spirit.

Not much is known about her childhood, but when her father passed away and her brother became king, he encouraged Kiniska to pursue her interests.

Specifically, he noticed that she had a talent with handling horses and may have nudged her in that direction.

Canisca dedicated her life to raising and training racehorses.

But of course, everyone, even the Spartans, knew that married women were forbidden from attending the Olympics.

You still remember what almost happened to Calipatria, right?

But Kiniska would not be denied.

She cleverly found what we in the business call a loophole.

A loophole is defined as an ambiguity or inadequacy in a system of rules, laws, or security, which can be used to circumvent or avoid the purpose of the system.

You see, in most ancient Olympic sports, the winners were the competitors who showed up and competed on the field.

The boxers, the wrestlers, the guys who threw the javelin, the dudes who threw the discus, the runners who ran around the track, etc., etc.

They were all there competing in front of the crowd.

But it was was different for horse racing.

Just like in today's races like the Kentucky Derby or the Preakna Stakes, the victory goes to the horse and its owner, not the athlete who rides the horse.

Kiniska didn't have to drive the chariot to win an Olympic crown.

In fact, she didn't even need to show up to claim Olympic victory.

Kiniska competed in the four-horse chariot race called the Tethripin.

It was a dangerous sport to participate in.

Even just practicing it was risky.

You had to train four horses to work together to pull a chariot as fast as possible.

It is commonly held wisdom that a single horse can pull an average of 6,000 pounds.

But two horses pulling together will be able to pull three times that.

Right, so four horses could pull

6,4 and a lot.

Yes.

Kiniska was up to the task.

She trained the horses personally and entered her best team into the ancient Olympics.

She came out victorious in two successive games, the first in 396 BCE and the second in 392 BCE.

Now she may not have been able to be in the stadium herself, but that didn't mean that people weren't talking about Kiniska.

News of her victory was carried by messengers all across Greece.

In Sparta, there was a great celebration prepared in her honor.

Soon, people all over Greece were talking about how a woman had won an ancient Olympic contest.

The Spartans honored their princess in a sacred grove, the first woman to receive this honor.

There were life-size bronze statues of Kiniska, her chariot, her horses, and the charioteer erected at Olympia, by the princess herself, in fact.

And the inscriptions read,

Kings of Sparta were my fathers and brothers.

I, Kinisca, victorious at the chariot race with her swift-footed horses, erected this statue.

I claim that I am the only woman in all Greece who won this crown.

But it didn't stay that way.

Kiniska's achievement began to inspire other female athletes and, as time went on, other women would compete in the chariot races.

To this day, there are a lot of sports organizations dedicated to women named after the Spartan princess Kiniska.

And so there you have it.

A whole bunch of bona fide legends who had nothing to do with magic or gods or Mount Olympus or anything like that.

They were regular mortals who found success with talent, ingenuity, and a lot of hard work.

I'd say these were well-earned Olympic crowns.

That's it for this season, listeners.

Enjoy whatever global sporting event may or may not be happening this summer.

We'll see you next season.

Listen and you'll see it spreaking

out.

National Geographic Kids Greaking Out is written by Jillian Hughes and Kenny Curtis and hosted by Kenny Curtis, with Tori Kerr as the Oracle of Wi-Fi, audio production and sound design by Scotty Beam, and our theme song was composed by Perry Gripp.

Dr.

Meredith Saffron is our subject matter expert, Emily Burquette and Lori Broda are our producers, and Emily Everhart is our senior producer.