Olive Oil and the Ancient Olympic Champions
The olive did not just feed the ancient Greeks — it crowned their heroes. At the Games the olive was the prize, the glory and, quite literally, the wealth handed to champions.
At Olympia, the only prize for victory was the kotinos — a wreath of wild olive, cut with a golden sickle from a sacred tree near the temple of Zeus. Athletes also rubbed their bodies with olive oil to train and compete, and scraped it off afterwards with a strigil. To win was to be crowned by the olive itself: honour, not money, was the Olympic reward. That very austerity was the point — the wreath was priceless precisely because it could not be bought.
The wreath and the oil
Olympia guarded its purity. The wild-olive wreath was the whole prize, and the tree it came from, the kallistephanos or ‘beautiful-crown’ olive, grew in the sacred precinct near the great temple of Zeus. Winning it made a man famous for life — cities would reward their own Olympic victors handsomely on his return — but at the Games themselves the reward was symbolic. Oil was everywhere else in the athlete’s world, though: rubbed on to warm and protect the skin, mixed with dust for grip and sun, then scraped away with the sweat and grime at the end.
Liquid gold at the Panathenaic Games
At Athens’ Panathenaic Games, the prize was money — in oil. Victors received large quantities of sacred olive oil, pressed from Athena’s own groves, in specially painted prize amphorae, each holding roughly forty litres. The amount scaled with the event: a winner of the sprint might take around sixty amphorae, while the victor of the four-horse chariot race could win as many as a hundred and forty. That was a genuine fortune, since olive oil was food, light and trade all at once — and the exported oil was tax-free to boot. The prize amphorae themselves are now museum treasures.
Two prizes, one economy
Here is the contrast worth noticing. Olympia gave a wreath and no cash; Athens gave a warehouse of oil. But both prizes point at the same truth: olive oil was the standard of value in the Greek world. Even the ‘symbolic’ Olympic wreath was cut from an olive, and the ‘valuable’ Athenian prize was simply olive oil in bulk. When a whole civilisation measures both its highest honour and its richest reward in the same tree, you are looking at the true currency of that world — and it grew on a hillside.
| Olympic prize | The kotinos — a wild-olive wreath, no money |
|---|---|
| Olympic tree | The sacred ‘beautiful-crown’ olive near Zeus’ temple |
| Athletes and oil | Rubbed on to train and compete; scraped off with a strigil |
| Panathenaic prize | Sacred olive oil in painted amphorae (~40 L each) |
| Sprint winner | Around 60 amphorae of oil |
| Chariot-race winner | Up to 140 amphorae — a real fortune |
The prizes compared
| Games | The prize |
|---|---|
| Olympia | A wild-olive wreath (kotinos) — pure honour, no cash |
| Panathenaia (Athens) | Sacred olive oil in prize amphorae — real wealth |
| Amphora size | Roughly 40 litres of oil each |
| Sprint (stadion) win | About 60 amphorae |
| Four-horse chariot win | Up to 140 amphorae |
| Shared meaning | Both honour and wealth measured in the olive |
Why the olive crowned champions
- Olympia’s prize was priceless because unbuyable — a wreath, not a purse.
- Athens paid champions in bulk sacred oil, a genuine fortune of the day.
- Athletes trained slicked in oil, then scraped clean with a strigil.
- Both honour and wealth in the same tree — the true currency of the Greek world.
Olive oil and the ancient Games: common questions
What was the prize at the ancient Olympics?
The kotinos, a wreath of wild olive cut from a sacred tree near the temple of Zeus — honour, not money.
Did Olympic champions win oil?
Not at Olympia itself, where the prize was only the wreath. But Athens’ Panathenaic Games paid victors in sacred olive oil.
How much oil did a Panathenaic winner get?
A lot — roughly sixty amphorae for a sprint win, and up to a hundred and forty for the four-horse chariot race, each jar about forty litres.
Why did athletes use olive oil?
They rubbed it on to warm and protect the skin while training and competing, then scraped it off with a strigil afterwards.
Was the oil prize actually valuable?
Very — olive oil was food, light and trade at once, and the exported prize oil was tax-free, so it amounted to a real fortune.
The contrast between the two great Games says everything. Olympia gave only a wild-olive wreath, priceless precisely because it could not be bought; Athens paid its champions a warehouse of sacred oil, up to a hundred and forty forty-litre jars for the chariot race. Different prizes, one truth: olive oil was the currency of the Greek world. When a civilisation measures both its highest honour and its richest reward in the same tree, that tree is the real money — and it grew on a hillside.
Drawn from accounts of the ancient Olympic and Panathenaic Games and surviving prize amphorae.