The boxing and wrestling matches came last, and these were the roughest and fiercest of all the contests.
On the last day of the festival the prizes were awarded. They were very simple, but more highly valued than greater honours could have been. Each prize consisted of a wreath of olive, which had been cut from a sacred olive tree with a golden knife by a boy especially chosen for the purpose, and an old tradition required that both his parents should be alive. These wreaths used at one time to be placed on a tripod in the sight of all the people, later, a beautiful table of gold and ivory was made for them. A herald announced the name of the victor, his father's name and the city from which he came, and then one of the judges placed the wreath on his head. This was the proudest moment of his life, and though other rewards followed on his return home, nothing ever quite equalled that glorious moment.
The last day of the festival was given up to sacrifices to Zeus, followed by banquets and feasting which lasted late into the night. Every kind of honour was shown the victors: poets wrote odes celebrating their victories, and sculptors made models for statues of them, for to every athlete who had won three victories was granted the honour of being allowed to have his statue erected in the open space outside the temple of Zeus.
DISCOBOLUS OF MYRON.
5th Century B.C.
Vatican Rome.
The festival over, the victors and their friends and the great throng of spectators returned to their homes. The victors were not only proud on account of their own achievements, but for the glory they had brought to their city. The news of the approaching arrival of a victor was sent on ahead, and the day of his return to his native city was always honoured by a public holiday. In some places it was an old custom to pull down a part of the city wall and make a special entrance, in order that he who had brought the city such glory might enter by a path never before trodden by other men. Songs of triumph were sung to greet him, and he was led to his father's house along a road strewn with flowers. Rich gifts were presented to him, and in every way he was treated as a man whom the city delighted to respect and honour. At Athens the returning victors were honoured by being allowed to dine thenceforth at the public expense in the hall where the councillors and great men of the city took their meals.
Pausanias, the traveller to whom we owe descriptions of so much in ancient Greece that has now perished, visited Olympia, and he tells us that
many a wondrous sight may be seen, and not a few tales of wonder may be heard in Greece; but there is nothing on which the blessing of God rests in so full a measure as the rites of Eleusis and the Olympic Games....
and Pindar, the Greek poet who has most often sung of the Olympic Games, summed up the feelings of every victor in the words: "He that overcometh hath, because of the games, a sweet tranquillity throughout his life for evermore."