<P> One other myth, this one occurring after the aforementioned myth, is attributed to Pindar . He claims the festival at Olympia involved Heracles, the son of Zeus . The story goes that after completing his labors, Heracles established an athletic festival to honor his father . </P> <P> The games of previous millennia were discontinued and then revived by Lycurgus of Sparta, Iphitos of Elis, and Cleisthenes of Pisa at the behest of the Oracle of Delphi who claimed that the people had strayed from the gods, which had caused a plague and constant war . Restoration of the games would end the plague, usher in a time of peace, and signal a return to a more traditional lifestyle . The patterns that emerge from these myths are that the Greeks believed the games had their roots in religion, that athletic competition was tied to worship of the gods, and the revival of the ancient games was intended to bring peace, harmony and a return to the origins of Greek life . </P> <P> Since these myths were documented by historians like Pausanias, who lived during the reign of Marcus Aurelius in the AD 160, it is likely that these stories are more fable than fact . It was often supposed that the origins of many aspects of the Olympics date to funeral games of the Mycenean period and later . Alternatively, the games were thought to derive from some kind of vegetation magic or from initiation ceremonies . The most recent theory traces the origins of the games to large game hunting and related animal ceremonialism . </P> <P> The Olympic games were held to be one of the two central rituals in ancient Greece, the other being the much older religious festival, the Eleusinian Mysteries . </P>

What city-states competed in the ancient greek olympics