#pankration

Ancient Olympics Rocked Greece

Every four years, Greeks gathered at Olympia to honor Zeus with epic sports. These games ran from 776 BCE to 393 CE, drawing crowds from across Greece and beyond. They shaped culture so deeply, ancient calendars revolved around them.

Key Facts

Held every four years at sacred Olympia in western Peloponnese.

Lasted nearly 1,200 years across 293 straight Olympiads—no skips!

Honored Zeus, king of Greek gods, with athletes competing nude.

Panhellenic event: United rival city-states in truce during games.

Ended in 393 CE when Roman Emperor Theodosius I banned pagan festivals.

Historical Context

Ancient Greece buzzed with city-states like Athens and Sparta, often at war. The Olympics started in 776 BCE as a religious festival at Zeus's sanctuary. They grew into the ultimate cultural bash, pausing feuds for competition.

Historical Significance

Games defined Greek identity, inspiring unity and heroism. Victors became instant celebrities, with statues and free meals for life. They even set the Greek calendar—events dated by Olympiad. Modern Olympics revive this ancient thrill, linking past to present.

Obviously this is NOT balanced, but the basic concept here is a series of LL6 1v1s between pankrati characters for fun.

Around 510 BC in Kerameikos, a palestra scene depicting two wrestlers is sculpted from Pentelic marble for the grave of an athlete. In those days, Hermes was the patron of gymnasia and palaestrae where the athletes trained. In this illustration I attempted to recreate the wrestlers in a pankration tournament as they fight for everlasting glory, overseen by their divine protector.

Also, my mail this year is not being delivered in a timely manner and this is my peace offering. Please, Hermes I am begging you so hard, stop fucking with my mail.

There’s this handsome devil, out just before Thanksgiving, 2023. It’s the first in the Candle Light Press Classical line. Kulseth and Larmour draw a line connecting modern Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and ancient pankration fighting. It may be the first such book written by at least one person who’s been in a proper fight or three. I served as editor and saw this work through production. It’s an incredibly interesting work and I hope you’ll check it out.

Here’s their blurb:

What has Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to do with the Ancient Greeks? A lot, according to Joshua Kulseth and David Larmour, investigating the connections between the Greek pankration and contemporary BJJ and MMA. They argue that today's Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gyms, training, and competitions offer the closest modern analogy to Ancient Greek wrestlers and pankratiasts and to the ideals of Greek agonism embodied in the Olympic Games.

Their book, Agony: Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and the Greeks combines Kulseth's first-person narrative of experience in combat sports with Larmour's expertise in ancient Greek athletics, literature and mythology, and is illustrated by original artwork by Jeremy Smith.

When we struggle today for self-improvement or victory in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts, the ancient Greeks walk among us-not only the ordinary citizens of Athens or Sparta doing their daily training in the local palaestra, but also famous athletes like Milo and Arrichion, heroes of myth like Odysseus and Heracles, poets like Pindar and Sophocles, and even gods like Zeus and Prometheus.