Naturalist's Almanac

Sometime during the month we now call July, thanks to Julius Caesar, in the year we now know as 776 B.C., thanks to the Christian religion, a young Greek named Coroebos won a footrace in Olympia. Thus began the official history of the ancient Olympics, a quadrennial athletic competition that incidentally offered the Greeks their first timeline.

The decision to record Coroebus’s name had more to do with the Greeks’ growing respect for athletes than with any felt need to keep track of time. Four centuries later, however, when Greek historians were trying to make sense out of the different time-reckoning systems used by different city-states, the long list that began with Coroebus offered a single national timeline.

This timeline consisted of four-year units known as Olympiads. Coroebus’s victory marked the beginning of the first Olympiad, which lasted until the year we know as 772 B.C. Although 772 marked the beginning of the second Olympiad, it was also linked to the first by the way the Greeks counted.

They counted inclusively, so the years from 776 to 772 included 776, 775, 774, 773, and 772. That’s why the Olympic symbol includes five linked circles instead of four. The circles can be thought of of individual years, and five of them linked can be thought of as one segment in an unbroken chain of years that stretches for over a millennium.

The ancient era of the Olympics — and the timeline based on its Olympiads — came to an end when Greece lost its power first to the Romans and then to the Christians. The athletic competitions and attendant record-keeping faltered during the 3rd century A.D. and ceased altogether in A.D. 393. That year the Christian Emperor Theodosius I decreed the Olympics pagan distractions and abolished them.

The Olympiads persisted until the year A.D. 440, but the old timeline was no longer supported by quadrennial athletic competitions with a growing list of winners. By 1896, when the modern Olympics reinstituted the old traditions, every year had its own assigned number in the new Roman-Christian timeline that recently hit the year 2000.

MORE INFORMATION

Olympiads - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympiad

This article explains the ancient history of the Olympics and Olympiads and gives examples of what years belonged to what Olympiads. It also talks about the modern Olympics and modern uses of the word Olympiad.

Olympic Sports Added by Olympiads
http://www.nostos.com/olympics/#Chronology%20of%20athletic%20events%20added%20to%20the%20Olympic%20Games

This chart shows which sports were added to the ancient Olympics during which Olympiads. The chart is the second item in a long article on the history of th Olympics.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Olympics
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Olympics/faq11.html

This site offers detailed answers to 11 questions along with some attractive graphics.