Greek PantheonSacred Site
Olympia
The sanctuary of Zeus and site of the ancient Olympic Games, featuring a colossal statue of Zeus—one of the Seven Wonders.
About Olympia
Zeus's games, not Olympus
Olympia in Elis is a sanctuary of Zeus in a river valley, not the mountain of the gods. The games were a Panhellenic truce-festival; Pindar's odes pay the victors in myth. Pausanias walks the Altis: Pelops's precinct, Hera's older temple, Pheidias's chryselephantine Zeus. Foundation stories disagree (Heracles, Pelops, local kings). What is solid is the archaeology and the victor lists. The mountain Olympus is a different coordinate; the name is a cult title of Zeus, not a postal error.
On the map
Olympia among other places of the Greek Pantheon.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Pausanias, Description of Greece 5.10
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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