In ancient Greece, an agonothetes wsa the president or superintendent of the sacred games. At first the person who instituted the games and defrayed the expenses was the Agonothetes; but in the great public games, such as the Olympic Games and Pythian Games, these presidents were the representatives of different states, or were chosen from the people in whose country the games were celebrated; thus at the Panathenaic festival at Athens ten athlothetae were elected for four years to superintend the various contests.
At the Olympic Games, the stadion (the actual building) was big enough for twenty competitors, and the race was a 200-yard (about 180-meter) sprint.
The race began with a trumpet blow, but there were officials (agonothetes) at the starting blocks to make sure there were no false starts.
There were also officials at the end to decide on a winner and to make sure no one had cheated (if the officials decided there was a tie, the race would be re-run).
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