The Ascent of Olympus

Abstract

Olympus as an idea pervades Greek literature: Olympus as a mountain of earth and stone seems to have been little considered. Unlike Delphi, it was neither a Mecca to which pilgrims travelled nor a Jerusalem for which they would wage a Holy War. Apparently it did not occur to Greeks to climb mountains unless they wanted to get to the other side. Pausanias in his comprehensive wanderings mentions Olympus only to say that lions from Thrace used to roam there, and that an athlete once unarmed slew a lion, a great and mighty beast, on the mountain. The successor of Pausanias, Herr Baedeker, omits Olympus entirely: Le Guide Bleu to Greece informs us that ‘l'exploration méthodique de l'Olympe ne remonte pas au delà de la fin du XVIIIe siècle et début du XIXe’, and recommends Marcel Kurz, Le Mont Olympe, as the best book on the subject.