(Geiseric) in 455, he fled to Constantinople, where in 464 he was made consul, and about the same time married Placidia, daughter of Valentinian III. and Eudoxia. This afforded Genseric, whose son Hunneric had married Eudocia, the elder sister of Placidia, the opportunity of claiming the empire of the West for Olybrius. In 472 Olybrius was sent to Italy by the emperor Leo to assist the emperor Anthemius against his son-in-law Ricimer, but, having entered into negotiations with the latter, was himself proclaimed emperor against his will, and on the murder of his rival ascended the throne unopposed. His reign was as uneventful as it was brief.
See Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xxxvi.; J. B. Bury, Later Roman Empire.
OLYMPIA, the scene of the famous Olympic games, is on the right or north bank of the Alpheus (mod. Ruphia), about 11 m. E. of the modern Pyrgos. The course of the river is here from E. to W., and the average breadth of the valley is about 34 m. At this point a small stream, the ancient Cladeus, flows from
the north into the Alpheus. The area known as Olympia is
bounded on the west by the Cladeus, on the south by the Alpheus,
on the north by the low heights which shut in the Alpheus valley,
and on the east by the ancient racecourses. One group of the
northern heights terminates in a conical hill, about 400 ft. high,
which is cut off from the rest by a deep cleft, and descends
abruptly on Olympia. This hill is the famous Cronion, sacred to
Cronus, the father of Zeus.
The natural situation of Olympia is, in one sense, of great beauty. When Lysias, in his Olympiacus (spoken here), calls it “the fairest spot of Greece,” he was doubtless thinking also—or perhaps chiefly—of the masterpieces which art, in all its forms, had contributed to the embellishment of this national sanctuary. But even now the praise seems hardly excessive to a visitor who, looking eastward up the fertile and well-wooded valley of Olympia, sees the snow-crowned chains of Erymanthus and Cyllene rising in the distance. The valley, at once spacious and definite, is a natural precinct, and it is probable that no artificial boundaries of the Altis, or sacred grove, existed until comparatively late times.
History.—The importance of Olympia in the history of Greece is religious and political. The religious associations of the place date from the prehistoric age, when, before the states of Elis and Pisa had been founded, there was a centre of worship in this valley which is attested by early votive offerings found beneath the Heraeum and an altar near it. The earliest extant building on the site is the temple of Hera, which probably dates in its original form from about 1000 B.C. There were various traditions as to the origin of the games. According to one of them, the first race was that between Pelops and Oenomaus, who used to challenge the suitors of his daughter Hippodameia and then slay them. According to another, the festival was founded by Heracles, either the well-known hero or the Idaean Dactyl of that name. The control of the festival belonged in early times to Pisa, but Elis seems to have claimed association with it. Sixteen women, representing eight towns of Ehs and eight of Pisatis, wove the festal robe for the Olympian Hera. Olympia thus became the centre of an amphictyony (q.v.), or federal league under religious sanction, for the west coast of the Peloponnesus, as Delphi was for its neighbours in northern Greece. It suited the interests of Sparta to join this amphictyony; and, before the regular catalogue of Olympic victors begins in 776 B.C., Sparta had formed an alliance with Elis. Aristotle saw in the temple of Hera at Olympia a bronze disk, recording the traditional laws of the festival, on which the name of Lycurgus stood next to that of Iphitus, king of Elis. Whatever may have been the age of the disk itself, the relation which it indicates is well attested. Elis and Sparta, making common cause, had no difficulty in excluding the Pisatans from their proper share in the management of the Olympian sanctuary. Pisa had, indeed, a brief moment of better fortune, when Pheidon of Argos celebrated the 28th Olympiad under the presidency of the Pisatans. This festival, from which the Eleans and Spartans were excluded, was afterwards struck out of the official register, as having no proper existence. The destruction of Pisa (before 572 B.C.) by the combined forces of Sparta and Elis put an end to the long rivalry. Not only Pisatis, but also the district of Triphylia to the south of it, became dependent on Elis. So far as the religious side of the festival was concerned, the Eleans had an unquestioned supremacy. It was at Elis, in the gymnasium, that candidates from all parts of Greece were tested, before they were admitted to the athletic competitions at Olympia. To have passed through the training (usually of ten months) at Elis was regarded as the most valuable preparation. Elcan officials, who not only adjudged the prizes at Olympia, but decided who should be admitted to compete, marked the national aspect of their functions by assuming the title of Hellanodicae.
Long before the overthrow of Pisa the list of contests had been so enlarged as to invest the celebration with a Panhellenic character. Exercises of a Spartan type—testing endurance and strength with an especial view to war—had almost exclusively formed the earlier programme. But as early as the 25th Olympiad—i.e. several years before the interference of Pheidon on behalf of Pisa—the four-horse chariot-race was added. This was an invitation to wealthy competitors from every part of the Hellenic world, and was also the recognition of a popular or spectacular element, as distinct from the skill which had a merely athletic or military interest. Horse-races were added later. For such contests the hippodrome was set apart. Meanwhile the list of contests on the old racecourse, the stadium, had been enlarged. Besides the foot-race in which the course was traversed once only, there were now the diaulos or double course, and the “long” foot-race (dolichos). Wrestling and boxing were combined in the pancration. Leaping, quoit throwing, javelin-throwing, running and wrestling were combined in the pentathlon. The festival was to acquire a new importance under the protection of the Spartans, who, having failed in their plans of actual conquest in the Peloponnese, sought to gain at least the hegemony (acknowledged predominance) of the peninsula. As the Eleans, therefore, were the religious supervisors of Olympia, so the Spartans aimed at constituting themselves its political protectors. Their military strength—greatly superior at the time to that of any other state—enabled them to do this. Spartan arms could enforce the sanction which the Olympian Zeus gave to the oaths of the amphictyones, whose federal bond was symbolized by common worship at his shrine. Spartan arms could punish any violation of that “sacred truce” which was indispensable if Hellenes from all cities were to have peaceable access to the Olympian festival. And in the eyes of all Dorians the assured dignity thus added to Olympia would be enhanced by the fact that the protectors were the Spartan Heraclidae.
Olympia entered on a new phase of brilliant and secure existence as a recognized Panhellenic institution. This phase may be considered as beginning after the establishment of Elean supremacy in 572 B.C. And so to the last Olympia always remained a central expression of the Greek ideas that the body of man has a glory as well as his intellect and spirit, that body and mind should alike be disciplined, and that it is by the harmonious discipline of both that men best honour Zeus. The significance of Olympia was larger and higher than the political fortunes of the Greeks who met there, and it survived the overthrow of Greek independence. In the Macedonian and Roman ages the temples and contests of Olympia still interpreted the ideal at which free Greece had aimed. Philip of Macedon and Nero are, as we shaD see, among those whose names have a record in the Altis. Such names are typical of long series of visitors who paid homage to Olympia. According to Cedrenus, a Greek writer of the 11th century (Σύνοψις Ἱστοριῶν, i. 326), the Olympian festival ceased to be held after A.D. 393, the first year of the 293rd Olympiad. The list of Olympian victors, which begins in 776 B.C., with Coroebus of Elis, closes with the name of an Armenian, Varastad. who is said to have belonged to the race of the Arsacidae. In the 5th century the desolation of Olympia had set in. The chryselephantine statue of the Olympian Zeus, by Pheidias, was carried to Constantinople, and perished in a great fire, A.D. 476.
