Flame

Fire is an important source of human civilization and a sacred object in the hearts of our ancestors. As an important part of the sports meeting, the torch has a history of more than 27 years. Legend has it that Mount Olympia in ancient Greece was the habitat of the gods. In order to commemorate Prometheus, the fire god who stole fire for mankind, the locals held a sacrificial ceremony in front of the altar every four years.

The ceremony of lighting the flame in the ancient Olympic Games originated from the myth that human beings stole the flame from the sky in ancient Greece. In front of Zeus in Olympia, the flame was lit on the altar according to religious ceremonies, and then the torch was carried all over the city-states to convey the message that the Olympic Games was about to begin. All the city-states had to call a truce, forget hatred and war, and actively prepare for the Olympic Games. Therefore, the torch symbolizes peace, light, unity and friendship.

According to the tradition of the Olympic Games, the torch should arrive in the host city the day before the opening ceremony and be lit on the opening day. The torch must abide by the Olympic ceremony during the journey or the celebrations when it arrives in the host city, and must not be used for advertising. However, with the help of the Olympic torch, the host countries often arrange representative and distinctive figures, such as Olympic gold medalists who win glory for their country, to hold the torch high in front of enthusiastic and appreciative audiences, and then run to the torch platform to light the flame after a round trip.

The flame must be located in an obvious position in the General Assembly Hall and have a good view. It is better to see the flame outside the General Assembly Hall. During the Olympic Games, the flame must not be extinguished. When the flame is extinguished, the Olympic Games will officially end.

Prometheus

In Greek mythology, human beings were created by Prometheus. He also served as a teacher of mankind, and taught them everything that was useful to people and could make them satisfied and happy. Similarly, people also thank him and repay him with love and loyalty. But Zeus, the highest god, asked human beings to worship him, so that human beings must give him the best things. Prometheus offended Zeus as a defender of mankind.

As his punishment, Zeus refused to give fire, the last thing that humans needed to complete their civilization. But Prometheus thought of a way to steal the fire with a long fennel branch and bring it to mankind when the flaming sun car passed by.

So Zeus was furious. He sent someone to take Prometheus to the Caucasus Mountain, tied him to a steep cliff with a chain that would never earn him money, so that he could never sleep, and his tired knees could not bend. A diamond nail was nailed to his undulating chest. He endured hunger, wind and sun. In addition, Zeus sent an eagle to peck at Prometheus' liver every day, but the eaten liver grew back. In this way, day after day, year after year. Until a hero named Herakles rescued him, he endured this indescribable pain and suffering.

Now we often compare Prometheus to someone else who would rather sacrifice himself.

in p>1936, an exciting torch relay ceremony was held for the first time in Olympic history. The torch passed through seven countries, namely Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Germany, with a total distance of 3,5 kilometers, and 3,331 people participated in the torch relay. All the cities where the torch passed held a grand welcoming ceremony and set up special altars to light it. The huge torch relay was a great success, which not only aroused the world's enthusiasm for the Olympics, spread the Olympic spirit, but also set an example for the subsequent Olympic Games.

The flame originated from ancient Greek myths and legends. According to legend, Prometheus, the ancient Greek god, stole fire from Zeus and brought it to the world to save the hungry and cold mankind. In ancient Greece, before each Olympic Games, people lit the flame in front of the temple of Hera. After the founding of the modern Olympic Games, this tradition was not followed at first. Until the 7th Antwerp Olympic Games in 192, in order to mourn the people who died in the First World War, the organizers lit the torch symbolizing peace in the main venue, but neither the torch relay nor the fire was collected from ancient Olympia. In 1934, the International Olympic Committee decided that during the Olympic Games, the Olympic flame should be burned in the main venue from the opening to the closing, and the flame must be collected from Olympia, the ancient Olympic site in Greece, and transmitted to the host city in the form of torch relay. Since then, the torch relay has become an essential ceremony for every Olympic Games.

Prometheus is one of the titans. In the war between Zeus and the giant, he sided with the new Olympus God. He made the first man from clay. Athena endowed this man with soul and sacred life. Prometheus also spent a lot of time and energy creating fire and giving it to human beings. Fire makes man the spirit of all things. After that, the first joint meeting between God and man was held. This meeting will decide which part of the roasted animal should be given to God and which part should be given to human beings. Prometheus cut a cow and divided it into two parts: he put the meat under the skin and the bone under the fat. Because he knew that selfish Zeus loved to eat fat. Zeus saw through his tricks. Prometheus was partial to human beings, which made Zeus unhappy. Therefore, he arbitrarily took fire away from human hands. However, Prometheus managed to steal the skyfire and secretly brought it to mankind. Zeus was furious at his reckless disobedience. He made other mountain gods chain Prometheus to a rock in the Caucasus mountains. A hungry eagle comes to peck at his liver every day, and his liver always grows back. His pain will last for 3 thousand years. And he resolutely faced suffering and never lost courage in front of Zeus. Finally, Hercules restored the friendship between Prometheus and Zeus, found the golden apple and killed the eagle, thus saving the old friend of mankind.

Athena

Athena's name, which is abbreviated from Athenaa or Athenaia in Greek, is written as Athene, Athenaie in Ionia dialect (the name can be seen in the name marked on the relief map of besieged Troy), written as Athana, Athanaia in Dorian dialect and athenaea in Eolia dialect. (We can also see another way to write her name in a picture of Odysseus's Home painted by French painter bouguereau: Athhnh. There is no etymological explanation for this word in Greek. Since Athena's name is the same as the name of the city of Athens, people have been debating whether the goddess is named after the city or the city is named after the goddess since ancient times.

In Greek place names, many city names end with -ene, such as Mykene, which means -ene is a typical place name suffix. But Athena has a nickname Pallas Athene, which is often called Athena 1 in Homer's epic. This shows that the goddess originally had a name Pallas. Later, with the development of Athenians' worship of her, she was called Pallas Athena, which means "pallas of Athens". Later, Athena could be used alone as the name of the goddess. So finding out the meaning of pallas is the key to finding out the origin of Athena. Regrettably, people have not yet understood the meaning of this word. Some people interpret it as "Maiden", while others interpret it as "the weapon-brandishing". However, due to its shortcomings, it cannot be universally agreed, and it can only be regarded as a possibility, not as a conclusion. So we must go to the myth to find the origin of Athena.

Athena is widely worshipped in the Hellenistic world, with Athens as the center. The city has a typical symbol of Greek religious art, the Parthenon. The name means Maidens' Apartment, which is the residence of the goddess maids. But Athena has been an important god since ancient times. Her name has appeared on the linear letter B. There are also a lot of descriptions of fairy tales that preserve the elements of ancient legends. Athena was also called "mistress" on Mycenae slate.

according to the pirasky people, the goddess Athena was born on the lake Tritonis in Libya. Three Libyan Nymphs found her, so they dressed her in goatskin clothes and nursed her to grow up. When she was a young girl, she accidentally killed her little friend pallas in a play. In order to express her condolences, she put pallas's name before her own. She later came to Athens by way of Crete. (See Apollonius)

Because this material is recorded according to the legend of the ancient people Pilaski, many scholars have been led to associate the origin of Athena with the goddess of Libya. There are several circumstantial materials for this view:

"It seems that the clothes worn by Athena's idol and the Ajis jacket were learned by the Greeks from Libyan women. Because except that Libyan women's clothes are made of leather and the ears of their goatskin jacket are not snakes but grass buttons, their clothes are the same everywhere else. And the name itself proves that the clothes of the statue of Pallas Athena came from Libya. ..... "(Herodotus" History ")

" The people who are adjacent to the Macleod Egyptians are Oseses; There is a Triton River between them and the Marcos, and they live on the shore of Trionis. ..... They hold a blessing ceremony to Athena once a year. During the blessing ceremony, their girls are divided into two teams and fight each other with stones and sticks. According to them, this is to worship the monotonous goddess Athena in the way of their ancestors. " (Herodotus History)

The discovery of Greek archaeology shows that Libyan immigrants have entered Crete as early as 4 BC, and historical records are basically consistent with archaeological discoveries.

so what kind of god is pallas? Greek mythology is very inconsistent, but the most common ones are: Athena was born by Zeus and raised by Triton, the river god. pallas was the daughter of Triton and Athena's playmate, and was killed by Athena by mistake. But it is also said that pallas is one of the Titan gods-the son of Eurybia and Cleos, or the father of the moon goddess, and so on. However, in "Ancient City-States" written by Fustelde Coulanges in 1885, it was also mentioned: "Whenever a warship goes out to sea, the tablet of Pallas, the sea god, must be painted golden." So it seems that Athena has something to do with the god of the sea. But on the whole, different opinions show that after the Libyan goddess was introduced into Greece, she was in contact with pallas, worshipped by the original inhabitants of Greece, which led to various opinions.

When Athena was Hellenized and became the object of worship of many city-states, the work of describing an orthodox sacred origin for this goddess began. The following is a story about the birth of Athena:

"Now, Zeus, the king of gods, first married Metis. She is the cleverest person among gods and mortals. When she was about to give birth to Athena, the goddess of bright eyes, according to the advice of Uranus and Gaia, Zeus tricked Metis and swallowed her into his stomach. ..... Because he was afraid that she might give birth to a child with weapons more powerful than thunderbolt. ..... But Metis immediately became pregnant with Pallas Athena, and the father of mankind and gods gave birth to this daughter from his own mind on the bank of Tolitong River. ..... Athena accepted aegis in that place, and with it, her strength surpassed that of a god living in Olympus. When Zeus gave birth to Athena, she was armed with aegis and full-body weapons. "

In this way, through the story of Athena's "rebirth" from Zeus' mind, she was born with dignity and became a member of the holy family. Although this story of Athena's birth is not the only one, it is regarded as the most accurate by the ancients, because it is thought to be spoken by Athena's priests.

There is such a record in the Divine Spectrum:

"... they suggested Zeus to do this in order to prevent other gods from taking the throne among the eternal gods instead of Zeus; Because Metis is destined to give birth to several extremely clever children, the first one is Tritognia (Athena), a girl with bright eyes, who is equal to her father in both strength and wisdom. But after that, Metis will give birth to a proud son to be the king of gods and mankind. However, Zeus swallowed her in his stomach first, so that the goddess could give him advice and get good luck. ..... Metis, the mother of Athena, the planner of justice and wiser than gods and mortals, remained in Zeus' belly. The goddess Athena accepted the aegis in that place, and with it, her power surpassed all the gods living in Olympus. [This aegis became Athena's terrible weapon. When Zeus gave birth to Athena, she was armed with Aegis. From this description, it seems that we can see some symbol of the historical evolution of ancient Greece. Zeus represents the religious belief of Achaeans, the ancestors of real Greeks who created Mycenae civilization and later Crete civilization and moved to Greece around 2 BC, while Metis symbolizes the spiritual belief of the original indigenous people in Greece. To regard Metis as a goddess of wisdom may represent that the Greek civilization at that time was better than that of the later immigrants. When Zeus swallowed her, it was the fusion of different religions and civilizations of aborigines, Achaeans and immigrants from West Asia, thus forming a new Greek classical civilization system-"Athena"-of course, this word is only a metaphor, and the symbol of Greek orthodox religion is still Zeus, not Athena, because she is not the "son" in "prophecy", so she did not really replace Zeus in the end. This somewhat represents the submission of the conquered people at that time; However, although Metis was swallowed, she remained in Zeus' stomach, which symbolizes that these peoples still retain their own traditions to some extent.

The legend that Athena became the patron saint of Athens is related to the struggle between the goddess and Poseidon. When Athens was first built by a Phoenician, Poseidon and Athena competed for the honor of naming it. Finally reach an agreement; The man who can provide the most useful things for mankind will become the patron saint of the city. Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and made a war horse. Athena, on the other hand, turned into an olive tree-a symbol of peace and prosperity. Because the war horse is considered to represent war and sorrow, Athens was named after the goddess. The goddess soon put the city under her protection. On the Acropolis in Athens, there is still one of the most famous buildings in ancient Greece-the Parthenon, which worships the goddess Athena.

Athena is the god of art, craft and women's handiwork. She is dexterous with both hands and can't stand the challenges of others. A Lydia girl named Alekney seems to despise Athena's ability and often boasts that she will be able to strike if she has the chance.