The Olympian Theatron and the Battle of Olympia

Abstract

Once only—seven years after the battle of Leuctra—there was actual fighting within the sacred precinct, the Altis, of Olympia,—in the 104th Olympiad (364 B.C.). From time immmoreial, before and since that year, the inhabitants of Elis, as Polybius (iv. 73) phrased it 200 years later, ‘enjoyed on account of the Olympian games’ so unique and privileged a dispensation that Olympia and the whole of Elis was a Holy Land, and feared no ravages of war. The Eleans, by the same token, were ideally conceived of as living consecrated lives (ίερὸν βίον) and enjoyed immunity from battle and sudden death. In his account of the one and only battle of Olympia, Xenophon—writing after he had lived for twenty-three years within an afternoon's stroll of the Olympian Altis—alludes in passing to the θέατρον by way of explaining just where the fighting took place.