Peter Jones

Ancient and modern: The wrong ancient gods

issue 19 May 2012

The Royal Mint has just released some gold coins to celebrate the London Olympics. John Bergdahl, who designed them, explained the source of his ‘inspiration’ as ‘the first Olympic Games in ancient Greece, where the first athletes pledged their allegiance to the gods of Olympia.’

Really? That ‘gods of Olympia’ will have set the alarm bells ringing for most readers, because there were no ‘gods of Olympia’.

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