And we ask ourselves, did Para-Olympic competitions also take place in ancient Greece - the cradle of the Olympic Games, and it turns out that there was. Except May, no disabled people actually participated in them, but, and sorry if I offend the entire public, despite being a feminist, women, and to be precise - virgins.
20 They used to be called Para-Olympic Games, which were competitions after the modern Olympic Games, and which were intended for the disabled and any disabled, and today they are called Paralympic Games. The origin of the word "para" is Greek and means - "next to", "beside", "along", "near" and the like.
And we ask ourselves, did Para-Olympic competitions also take place in ancient Greece - the cradle of the Olympic Games, and it turns out that there was. Except May, no disabled people actually participated in them, but, and sorry if I offend the entire public, despite being a feminist, women, and to be precise - virgins.
I will not exaggerate words or even letters about the condition of women in the ancient era, and even in ancient Greece, whose name is associated with democratic and liberal developments and philosophical academies, but that words are separate and deeds are separate. Women in ancient Greece were inferior to men, with the exception of certain, somewhat rare occasions, and the intention of sporting activity. Women were not educated in Greece on the laps of the gymnasiums and apebions, which emphasized athletic physical activity, but in any case they were allowed to engage in somewhat delicate, personal activities, such as playing ball. And to be more precise, we find physical activity in relation to balls and even in the gymnastic context in ancient Egypt, long before the classical Greek culture.
And with us, in the ancient Jewish tradition, with a clear Greek and Hellenistic and even Roman influence, we find the concept of "girls' ball", when the reference is to ball games between girls/women and perhaps even in the ritual aspect, and this to the harsh protests of the Sages.
And back to our topic, women were excluded from physical activity, sports, in ancient Greece and were even forbidden, if they were married, to even watch sports competitions, including Olympic competitions, due to the male activity that took place completely naked, lest they be caught thinking of sin.
In any case, the Greeks realized that it would be impossible to totally exclude women from sports activities, so they found a "halakhic", religious-ritual alternative in the form of sports games intended only for women, and in fact for virgins. These games were held quite close to the end of the Olympic competitions, and can be called "Paralympic". These were held in honor of Hera, the wife of Zeus, the father of the family of gods (the one in whose honor the official Olympic Games were held), and participating in them was a virtue, religious, for the fertility of the woman/virgin. The competitions were short, and in fact only one of them took place and it was a run for a 160 m course (different from the short men's run along the "stadium" - about 192 m, and of course not naked, but in a short Greek tunic).
It will be noted, on the sidelines, some interesting facts. One, and not at all cynical, is as follows: the Greeks agreed, under some pressure and in an economic context, that competing horses and competitive horse-drawn carriages could be owned by women. The first of them was Kinisca, a member of the Spartan royal family, whose chariot in a "quadriga" (a chariot drawn by four horses) won a competition at the beginning of the fourth century BC. The victory was also celebrated by casting a monument in Olympia with an inscription that indicated the winning chariot, its conductors and the owner of the chariot.
A hundred years later, Ballistichei, the royal concubine of Ptolemy II, Philadelphus, won the chariot race at Olympia in 268 BC, she also owned the chariot. Four years later, her chariot won the "bigay" (a racing chariot drawn by a pair of horses).
In the course of the first century BC, six members of the same family from Alexandria won victories from their chariots at Olympia, and two of them were women.
The last winner known to us in the field of horse chariots was Cassia from the city of Elis (a city that was responsible for holding the Olympic Games) in the middle of the second century AD.
If we wander from the Olympic Games in ancient Greece to another Games site, secondary to the Olympic Games, which was also held once every four years, but not at the time of the Olympic Games, we will discover some interesting phenomena. It took place in the city of Delphi and was dedicated to the god Apollo, in which three athletic girls from the city of Tralees in the first century AD won by driving a racing chariot. Real driving and not owning the chariot. And it is worth noting in any case that driving chariots in the Greek style required high skill, considerable strength, the ability to control the quartet of horses and not to mention their position in the width of the chariot and no less the ability to navigate between the competing chariots. One of the girls, Dea Shema, won a runner's race in the Nemean Games dedicated to Zeus and held once every two years. The same Dea also took first place in playing music in the Pan-Athenian competitions in Athens and she claims she even won a chariot driving in the Isthmian competitions in honor of Poseidon, while she was dressed in battle armor ("Anophilion Armati" in Greek).
The second - from the well-known Latin poet, Juvenalis, because it indicates women who lifted weights.
And don't make it easy for us. Long, long before the "bra-burners" and solfargists in Europe of the modern era, women, especially in ancient Greece, fought for equal rights and at least their physical rights. Their success was minimal and temporary, but "even the longest journey begins with a small step".
And in the face of this, hiding behind ancient Olympic slogans, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the reviver of the modern Olympic Games, forbade the participation of women in the renewed Olympics in Athens in 1896, and they had to wait four years until the second Olympics in 1900, which was hosted by the city of Paris, while Limitation to compete but only in two branches - in tennis and golf, and so gradually in the later competitions. Only in the ninth Olympics, in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, did women participate in the athletics track for the first time, and that was in 1928.
