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Where are the paintings?
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Patience, brothers. Soon we will reveal the secrets of this painting.
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Discover Olympia's splendor under the watchful eye of the gods.
This workshop was built for the renowned Phidias after his work on the Akropolis of Athens.
In 435 BCE, Phidias came to Olympia to begin working on the great chryselephantine statue of Zeus.
He died five years later, shortly after completing his masterpiece.
This grand statue would have become one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Phidias' workshop was located right next to the Temple of Zeus.
Its structure has been well preserved, mostly owing to its conversion to a church in the 5th century CE.
Archaeologists have also discovered lots of ancient materials in the surrounding area, such as casting molds and sculpting tools.
The most famous artifact, however, is a cup bearing an inscription that aggresively states: "I belong to Phidias!"
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Phidias was part of Perikles' inner circle. Gowever, this did not prevent him from being accused of impiety and exiled from Athens. He was charged with stealing gold intended for the statue of Athena in the Parthenon, and for attempting to portray himself and Perikles on the shield of Athena. Many other friends of Perikles, such as Aspasia and Anaxagoras, were also persecuted around the same time.
On the fifth and final day of the Olympic Games, victors attended a ceremony where they were crowned with olive wreathes and showered in flowers.
The crowns came from the sacred olive tree of Zeus, which was planted near the god's temple.
A young boy trimmed the branches with a golden sickle before giving them to the hellanodikai to turn into wreathes.
After the crowning ceremony, it was time for great feasting and celebration.
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The list of Olympic winners is known mainly from two sources: Pausanias and Eusebius. By cross-referencing these sources with other documents, we know that there were approximately 3,500 winners from 776 BCE to 277 BCE. However, only about 800 of these people are officially known.
Amongst the victors were several remarkable athletes, such as Kallias of Athens. Kallias not only won the pankration event 472 BCE, but he was also the first Athenian to win at each of the four Panhellenic Games.
Diagoras of Rhodes, meanwhile, won the boxing event in Olympia in 464 BCE, and his two sons and two grandsons were also Olympic victors.
But perhaps the most famous athlete from antiquity was the boxer Theagenes of Thasos. In Olympia, he won the boxing event in 480 BCE, and the pankration event in 476 BCE. He also won ten times at the isthmian Games, nine times at the Nemean Games, and three times at the Pythian Games, in addition to winning several other regional games. After his death, Theagenes was made a hero by his countrymen, who honored him with a cult.
