The Line at Olympia

Cut into a slab of white marble at Olympia is a row of shallow grooves, just wide enough for a man's bare toes. The first runner whose name we still know wedged his feet into them and listened for a trumpet. He was a cook from Elis named Koroibos, and in 776 BC he ran one short race and won. History remembers the baker's name — and forgot the kings who sat watching.

Key Terms

Koroibos
A cook and baker from Elis who stepped to the marble starting line in 776 BC and became the first Olympic champion on record.
Stadion
The original Olympic footrace, about 192 meters; also the root of our word stadium.
Balbis
The marble sill cut with shallow toe-grooves where runners set their bare feet before the trumpet sounded.
Arete
Excellence; being the very best at what you do.
Kleos
Immortal glory or fame, earned by great deeds and remembered long after you die.
Hubris
Dangerous, overreaching pride that ignores limits and brings ruin.
Polis
An independent Greek city-state: an urban center plus its farmland, run by its own citizens, with its own laws and army.
Hellas
The name the Greeks gave their shared culture: one language, one set of gods, one set of heroes — even though they were never one country.
Panhellenic
"All-Greek"; sacred sites and festivals (like Olympia) where every polis could gather safely under a holy truce.
Pindus
The great spine of mountains running down the center of the Greek peninsula, splitting valley from valley.
Homer
The poet tradition remembers as blind, credited with shaping the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Troy
The Bronze Age city on the coast of modern Turkey that a Greek fleet crossed the sea to besiege.
Helots
The conquered people of Messenia, forced to farm for their Spartan masters and outnumbering them seven to one.
Solon
The Athenian lawgiver who canceled the debts that were turning poor citizens into slaves, in 594 BC.
Diolkos
The paved stone trackway at Corinth used to drag entire ships across nearly five miles of dry land.
Delphi
The sacred site on the slopes of Mount Parnassos where a priestess spoke the god Apollo’s answers.
Pythia
The priestess who breathed sweet fumes rising from a crack in the rock and fell into a trance to speak for a god.
Sacred Truce
A sworn promise that paused every war in Greece for the length of the festival games.
Olympia
The quiet green valley where, every four years, Greeks gathered to learn who was strongest and fastest.
Andreia
The Greek virtue of courage — the willingness to face real risk for the sake of something worth winning.

From the Lesson 7 Visual Atlas

The stadium at Epidaurus in the Peloponnese, with mountains closing it in on every side. The low row of stones across the track in the foreground is a starting line, the balbis, with grooves cut for a runner's bare toes. This is not Olympia, and this track was laid out about 400 BC, nearly four centuries after Koroibos ran. It is here because I have stood my students on a line like this one, in a valley like this one, and asked the question this lesson asks: what made a thousand warring cities one people? A race, it turns out, had more to do with the answer than any king.
c. 400 BCThe stadium at Epidaurus in the Peloponnese, with mountains closing it in on every side. The low row of stones across the track in the foreground is a starting line, the balbis, with grooves cut for a runner's bare toes. This is not Olympia, and this track was laid out about 400 BC, nearly four centuries after Koroibos ran. It is here because I have stood my students on a line like this one, in a valley like this one, and asked the question this lesson asks: what made a thousand warring cities one people? A race, it turns out, had more to do with the answer than any king.
Acrocorinth, the fortress rock above Corinth, with olive trees and dry hillside below. Walls run along the summit; Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Franks, Venetians, and Turks all held it in turn, because whoever held this rock held the road between northern Greece and the Peloponnese. The soil is thin and sun-baked, and a handful of defenders on a height like this could hold the only road against an army. Rock like this split Greece into hundreds of separate city-states.
ClassicAcrocorinth, the fortress rock above Corinth, with olive trees and dry hillside below. Walls run along the summit; Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Franks, Venetians, and Turks all held it in turn, because whoever held this rock held the road between northern Greece and the Peloponnese. The soil is thin and sun-baked, and a handful of defenders on a height like this could hold the only road against an army. Rock like this split Greece into hundreds of separate city-states.
Two plates from a Greek taverna today: grilled lamb patties with potatoes, and a village salad of tomato, cucumber, onion, and olives under a slab of feta, olive oil, and oregano, with bread beside it. Thin soil and a hot sun could not grow much grain, but they grew olives, grapes, and herbs, and fed sheep and goats on the hillsides for milk, cheese, and meat. Ask the room which of these foods a Greek of 776 BC could not have eaten: the potatoes and the tomatoes came from the Americas more than two thousand years later. The rest is the ancient Greek table.
ClassicTwo plates from a Greek taverna today: grilled lamb patties with potatoes, and a village salad of tomato, cucumber, onion, and olives under a slab of feta, olive oil, and oregano, with bread beside it. Thin soil and a hot sun could not grow much grain, but they grew olives, grapes, and herbs, and fed sheep and goats on the hillsides for milk, cheese, and meat. Ask the room which of these foods a Greek of 776 BC could not have eaten: the potatoes and the tomatoes came from the Americas more than two thousand years later. The rest is the ancient Greek table.
The Serpent Column at Delphi, with the columns of the Temple of Apollo behind it and the mountains across the valley. Three bronze serpents twist together into one column, cast from the Persian weapons captured at the battle of Plataea in 479 BC and inscribed with the names of the thirty-one Greek cities that fought there together. This is a modern copy standing where the original stood; the emperor Constantine carried the original off to Constantinople, where it still stands. Thirty-one rival cities, one column, one list of names: that is kleos, glory written down so it cannot be erased, as the name of Koroibos was.
c. 479 BCThe Serpent Column at Delphi, with the columns of the Temple of Apollo behind it and the mountains across the valley. Three bronze serpents twist together into one column, cast from the Persian weapons captured at the battle of Plataea in 479 BC and inscribed with the names of the thirty-one Greek cities that fought there together. This is a modern copy standing where the original stood; the emperor Constantine carried the original off to Constantinople, where it still stands. Thirty-one rival cities, one column, one list of names: that is kleos, glory written down so it cannot be erased, as the name of Koroibos was.