Dana Schwartz (0:00)

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Dana Schwartz (1:01)

to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Erin Menke. Listener discretion advised. One quick announcement before we start today's podcast. If you are a listener of this show, you might be interested in the fact that I have a book coming out in May. It's a book by S.D. coverley, which is a pseudonym very cleverly of my first initials transposed that I co wrote with a friend of mine and the book is called the Arcane Arts. It's a dark academia sort of romantic fantasy novel about magic and a graduate student and a professor doing illegal secret magic. It's a really fun sexy adventure thriller time not for kids, which is also part of the pseudonym explanation. But if you're a listener of the show, I really think you would like it and if you're interested in it at all, I would beg you actually please to pre order it. Pre orders are the number one way you can support an author. If you have friends writing books, really forgo their Christmas and birthday and anniversary gifts. Just pre order their books. So look it up. The Arcane Arts. It's in the episode description, a link and if you're interested, please pre order. Thank you so much. In 2013, Queen Elizabeth II of England achieved a major coup at the Royal Ascot. She won the Gold cup with her horse, whose name, in fittingly nonsensical fancy horse fashion, was named Estimate. The Royal Ascot consists of many different horse races, but the golden cup is the oldest and arguably the most prestigious. So winning was certainly a feather in Queen Elizabeth's well structured pastel colored hat. But it's not the only race her horses have won. Queen Elizabeth's horses have given her over two dozen Royal Ascot victories across decades, from a horse named choir boy in 1953 to to more recently, a horse named Tactical in 2020. Queen Elizabeth II's daughter, Princess Anne shared the late Queen's interest in horses. In 1976, Princess Anne actually competed at the Olympics in Montreal in the equestrian events. Unfortunately for Princess Anne, though, she came in seventh in dressage during the cross country event. On the second day of the equestrian competition, her horse got bogged in mud and fell with Anne riding him after hitting a fence. Ann suffered a concussion, but they managed to finish the course, albeit with no hopes of making it to the podium. Even so, I think you'll agree there's still something dazzling about a Princess at the Olympics. Romantic even. But would you believe me if I told you that Princess Anne wasn't actually the first Princess to compete in those prestigious games? In fact, someone had beaten her to it by more than a thousand years. I'm Dana Schwartz and this is Noble Blood. The Olympics as they exist today, literally today in Italy as I record this podcast, are actually relatively more modern than you might think. The Olympics as we know them only came about in 1896, but a lot of the imagery, like the laurel leaves that are used now on the metals and a lot of the events of purposefully harken back to the ancient Olympics in Greece. Incidentally, in order to pay respect to that, Greece is always allowed to go first in the procession of countries during the opening ceremony, while everyone else mostly goes in alphabetical order. The ancient Olympics date back to 776 B.C. when we have the first recorded Victoria Coroebus of Elis, who won a foot race. Technically, the entire competition was known as the Panhellenic Games, with festivals taking place at multiple locations around Greece. But the largest and most prestigious competition was at Olympia, the Olympics honoring Zeus. It was the festival at Olympia that took place every four four years with the other games at Isthmias, Nemea and Delphi held in between. The Panhellenic Games continued for a millennia, even through the second century after Greece came under Roman rule. In 373, the Roman emperor Theodosius I banned the festivals as pagan, but inscriptions and literary sources indicate that the games continued on into the early 5th cent century and it truly was a Pan Hellenic event, uniting people from various city states and athletes from all over the Greek empire. Since the competition was open to all free born Greeks, whether they be Athenian, Corinthian Spartan, what have you. But it's Sparta that we're actually most interested in today. Particularly one Spartan athlete, Siniska, a princess who became the first woman to ever win at the Olympic Games. Unfortunately, as is the case for a lot of women in ancient history, much of what we know about Zeniska's life comes from filling in the empty spaces in the stories of the men in her life. Her father was King Archademus II of Spain Sparta, and she was likely born around 440 BC. We're not even certain that Ziniska's real name was actually Siniska. It's possible it was a nickname. Its translation is like female puppy or little hound. And it's likely the feminization of her grandfather's nickname, which had been Siniskos. If Siniska was a nickname, it probably communicated that she was a spirit sporty and athletic girl who enjoyed hunting. And though as daughter of a king, she was certainly born into a position of exceptional privilege, Spartan women were actually comparatively given more freedom than their Athenian counterparts. Spartan women could legally own and inherit property. And from anecdotes about Spartan soldiers receiving letters from their mothers, we can infer that women could read and write. A lot of what we know about Spartan women comes from people in other places writing about them. From the outside, their reputation was as promiscuous and domineering, loud, dominant, sexual. The poet Propatius wrote about how much he wished his own mistress felt free to openly live with him like a Spartan woman who would walk out in public with her lover. And as you might imagine from what ideas you have about Sparta, maybe from a film and the fact that this episode is about the Olympics, Spartan women were also quite athletic. Young men in Sparta were required to train in state sponsored athletic programs. It's very possible that there were similar programs in place for young women, though they wouldn't be training in combat. There were laws requiring women to be fit as their brothers. And young unmarried women could be horseback riding, wrestling, running, and doing what we consider to be track and field events. Of course, all that gallivanting around stops when when you get married. But while other young women in Greek city states might get married around 14, almost certainly to someone much older, young women in Sparta were getting married around 18 or later to men around their age. But before we start imagining Sparta as some comparatively feminist paradise, it's important to remember the only reason young Sparta Spartan women were free from the confines of domestic labor in the way their, say, Athenian counterparts weren't, was because Sparta had a robust system of slavery where most of the population was enslaved. So when we're talking about Spartan women, most people aren't thinking of the many, many women in Sparta who were quite literally enslaved and had none of the freedoms we're talking about. But we can imagine that Siniska, as a free woman, whose father was king and whose brothers would be kings after him, grew up privileged, active, athletic, running around and competing alongside other young women with the relative freedom that came from not needing to marry extremely young. But Siniska wanted to compete on a bigger stage. Siniska might have been a Spartan woman, but she was still a woman, which meant that she wouldn't actually be allowed to compete in the Olympics. There's actually a pretty healthy debate among historians today still about whether or not women were even allowed to attend the Olympic Festival at all, even as Spanish spectators. But there was a loophole, for women could technically compete in the Olympics in the chariot races. They couldn't be the ones driving the chariots, but they could be the ones who owned and trained the horses. And in the chariot races, the person who owned and trained the horses was the actual competitor. Why did Ziniska enter the Olympics? Well, according to some sources, she was encouraged to compete by her brother, the future king Agesilaus ii. It seems like a nice, encouraging, brotherly thing to do, but according to some contemporary sources, Agesilaus was actually a sporting purist who thought that chariot racing as an Olympic event was fundamentally unmanned, manly, and only showed off how wealthy someone was. Winning just because you were able to own and train fast horses was victory without merit. And so, according to some, he encouraged his sister to enter the competition in order to prove that the entire thing was a sham, to shame any men who might want to compete. After all, how legitimate could their sport be if a mere woman might be able to win? But we have to take those accounts with a grain of salt. The writers almost certainly had their own agendas, and in my personal opinion, that seems like the sort of post hoc anecdote designed to make Agesilaus look manly and clever after the fact. Because, in truth, after Siniska won, he certainly didn't do a see girl stink victory lap. She became famous and honored and made their family all the more famous and acclaimed. If he did convince her to enter the chariot race, it's distinctly possible he just believed in his sister, wanted her to win, and wanted to use an Olympic champion sister to bolster up his own career in politics. Whatever the motivation, in 396 B.C. siniska entered the Olympic competition with a team of four horses that she had trained herself. She won. Four years later, in 392, she entered again, second time and again came in first place. Historians aren't sure whether she was actually even allowed to be proud of present at the Olympic event where she won. As I mentioned earlier, there's still healthy scholarly debate about whether women or maybe unmarried girls were allowed to attend the Olympics. But win she did. And in order to commemorate her victory, Siniska commissioned a set of bronze statues for the temple of Zeus. In statues of herself, her charioteer and the horses that ran them to victory. She accompanied the statues with a plinth and an inscription. Kings of Sparta are my father and brothers. I, Siniska, victorious with a chariot of swift footed horses, have erected this statue. I declare myself the only woman in all all Hellas to have won this crown. A monument commemorating her victory with the same inscription was erected in Sparta. And though the hero shrine at the plane tree grove in Sparta had previously only ever been an honor granted to Spartan men, mostly kings, Siniska became the first woman to receive that honor too. It's a legacy that proves that that when Siniska achieved victory at the Olympics, just like today, her countrymen back home were extremely proud of her. That's the story of Siniska, the first woman to ever win at the Olympics. But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about what made the ancient Olympics special foreign.