Did ancient Greeks let women compete in the Olympics?

Ancient Olympians were renowned for their strength and agility, but were any of these athletes women? And were there other sporting opportunities in which women in ancient Greece could compete?

The ancient Olympics involved people from all over Greece and sometimes beyond and lasted from about 776 B.C. to A.D. 393. For much of this time, the restrictions against women appeared strict, wrote the writer Pausanias, who lived during the second century A.D. He noted there was a law to throw any "women who are caught present at the Olympic games" off a cliff (translation by William Jones and Henry Ormerod).

While the ancient Olympic games were largely off limits to women, there were other athletic competitions that women could compete in — particularly those involving running. There was even a series of footraces, called the Heraea (also spelled Heraia), held in honor of the goddess Hera, that took place at Olympia on the Peloponesian Peninsula, where the games were held.

Pausanias wrote that "the contest is a running event for unmarried girls," with three different age categories (translation by Waldo Sweet), and that it was held every four years at Olympia.

"Here is their method of running. They let down their hair, let the tunic hang down a little above the knee, and uncover the right shoulder as far as the breast," Pausanias wrote. Depictions of females dressed like this and engaged in athletic activity have been found on ancient Greek artifacts.

"To the victors they give crowns of olive leaves and a share of the cow which they sacrifice to Hera," Pausanias wrote, noting that the winners may also "set up statues with their names inscribed." Footrace competitions among females were also held at other ancient Greek sites.

Women also entered chariot teams (consisting of a driver and four horses) into ancient competitions — including the Olympics — but they didn't necessarily drive the chariots. Nor were they allowed to watch the Olympic games, although there were rare exceptions.

However, as the owner of a chariot team, they could claim victory. Kyniska, a sister of a king of Sparta, became the first-known female victor of the Olympic games when her chariot team won in 396 B.C. Kyniska owned and bred the winning horses, and an inscription from a statue base says that she was the "only woman in all Greece" to win the Olympics (translation by Donald Kyle).

Ancient texts and archaeological remains indicate that females also took part in other sports, such as wrestling. Evidence of formal female competitions is limited, but that doesn't mean they didn't occur.

"There is literary evidence that, especially in Sparta, females engaged in things like wrestling for educational purposes," Heather Reid, professor emeritus at Morningside University in Iowa, told Live Science in an email.

In Sparta, there was actually a requirement that young females practice wrestling, among other sports, in order to build and maintain muscle. The ancient poet Propertius, who lived during the first century B.C., wrote that he was "impressed that a naked girl may take part in games in the midst of men wrestlers without incurring criticism" (translation by Waldo Sweet). He also wrote that females in Sparta practiced pankration, an ancient form of mixed martial arts.

After marriage

The number of athletic competitions available to women after they were married seems to have been limited. Reid said that "women's athletics, like men's athletics, seems to have arisen out of rites of passage. In the case of females the ritual involved the transition from child to Parthenos … woman eligible for marriage." Reid noted that married women who owned chariot racing teams could still claim victory as their owner.

Georgia Tsouvala, a history professor at Illinois State University, said that married women in Sparta might have been able to compete in some competitions.

"I imagine that might have been possible, if the competition was local," Tsouvala told Live Science in an email. "For example, we know that Spartan women continued to use the gymnasium and palaestra [wrestling school] even after they got married and got pregnant."

Roman-controlled Greece

During the time of Roman rule over Greece, which started in the second century B.C., there appears to have been an increase in the number of female athletic competitions, with more records mentioning female footraces.

Onno van Nijf, an ancient history professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, said that it's not clear why the number of female competitions increased in Roman times. The "Romans had an ambivalent attitude to Greek athletics, and a real explanation of the phenomenon has yet to be established," he told Live Science in an email.

There are a number of artifacts dating to Roman times that mention female athletes in Greece. One inscription describes a woman named Hedea who lived during the first century A.D. and won multiple competitions in foot racing and chariot racing and was awarded Athenian citizenship for her victories.

Another inscription dating to the late first century A.D., from the island of Kos, lists the members of a wrestling school on the island. All the names are men, except for a woman named Hetereia Prokilla. She and the other wrestlers are listed as "presbyteroi," a name that "can refer to a mature individual but also to important members of the city," Tsouvala said.

Whether she competed against men on the island is not clear, and we know little about her. From "the inscription we can assume that she was a member of the elite and a Roman citizen," Tsouvala said.

One of the best-known surviving artifacts that appears to depict an ancient Greek female athlete is the "Vatican runner" (also known as the "Running girl" or "Atalanta Barberini"). Dating back around 2,000 years, it shows a young woman wearing a chiton, a type of dress, similar to that described by Pausanias, and she appears to be running a race. It is now in the Vatican Museums.