Games and Sanctuaries in Ancient Greece

Isthmia is a genitive noun with the meaning 'of the Isthmus.' It generally refers to the site that held the famous Isthmian Games near Korinth on the Isthmus. A natural assembly place for many Greeks and travellers. Isthmia in Antiquity was one of Greece's large Panhellenic sanctuaries and played host to the Isthmian Games (founded in 584BC) and hence held... [continue reading]

Located in the western Peloponnese, Olympia was an ancient Greek sanctuary site dedicated to the worship of Zeus, in whose honour Pan-Hellenic Games were held every four years from 776 BCE to 393 CE. First inhabited in the second millennium BCE, the first archaeological record of dwellings dates from 1900 to 1600 BCE. The Kronion hill at the site was perhaps... [continue reading]

Greece is a country in southeastern Europe, known in Greek as Hellas, and consisting of a mainland and an archipelago of islands. Greece is the birthplace of Western Philosophy (Plato), Literature (Homer), Mathematics (Pythagoras), History (Herodotus), Drama (Sophocles and Aristophanes), the Olympic Games, and Democracy and Science (these last two most notably... [continue reading]

Delphi was an important ancient Greek religious sanctuary sacred to the god Apollo. Located on Mt. Parnassus near the gulf of Corinth, the sanctuary was home to the famous oracle of Apollo which gave cryptic predictions and guidance to both city-states and individuals. In addition, Delphi was also home to the panhellenic Pythian Games. The site was first... [continue reading]

The city of Athens, Greece, with its famous Acropolis, has come to symbolize the whole of the country in the popular imagination; and not without cause. Athens, which began as a small, Mycenaen community (though still worthy of the massive Cyclopean stonework which characterized the great palaces of the Poloponnese) grew to become a city which, at its height, epitomized... [continue reading]