The Olympic Truce

The creation of the Ekecheiria, the Olympic truce, lies within the traditional story of the founding of the ancient Olympic Games. Two warring kings of the area around Olympia, Iphitos and Cleomenes, joined with the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus in an agreement to hold the Games and to enact and publicize an Olympic truce. Before every Olympiad, then, heralds from Olympia moved around Greece inviting participants and spectators and announcing the truce. Contrary to what many have thought, especially some modern Olympic officials, the Greeks did not cease their wars against one another during the Games or the Olympic truce. Rather, the truce, besides protecting Olympia from invasion, forbade any individual or government to interfere with anyone traveling to and from the Olympics. There is only one known case of the truce being invoked, and then the complaint came from Athens, not Olympia.

Because each Greek city was a separate political state, the ancient Games were international. The Greeks themselves saw that the Olympics had special potential for the promotion of peace among their often warring city-states. This potential was especially important to Pierre, baron de Coubertin, and his predecessors in the modern Olympic revival who believed strongly that the Games were capable of advancing international understanding and the cause of world peace. The Olympics have played that role with marked success, especially among athletes and spectators, if not governments. Emphasis on a kind of Olympic peace has become a major feature of modern Olympic ideology. In the year 2000 Olympic officials established the International Olympic Truce Foundation to encourage the study of world peace and the creation of progress in its pursuit. The foundation is headquartered in Athens and has endeavoured to institute a new kind of official Olympic truce that would, unlike the ancient version, persuade countries not to wage war during the Olympic Games.