Some dream of going to the Olympics. I’d long dreamed of going to Olympia. I wanted to take a solo road trip like no other, searching for the four sites of the ancient Greek athletic games — Isthmia, Nemea, Delphi and Olympia — precursors to the Olympics spectacle opening in Rio on Aug. 5.
Collectively known as the Panhellenic Games, they were open to athletes across the Greek empire, but Olympia’s festival was always the most prestigious. The first to be established (in 776 B.C.) and the last to go (abolished in A.D. 393 by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I, a Christian who deemed them pagan rituals), the games at Olympia took place every four years — this was one way the Greeks measured time — with the other three held in the interval.