A young athlete pours from a cylindrical flask called a lekythos to rub over his body before competition or exercise.
 
 
 
 

These two athletes are holding an instrument called a stlengis (in Latin, strigil) used to scrape off oil after competition or exercise.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Here is a closer look at a stlengis along with another type of oil jar, a spherical flask called an aryballos.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Originally, the olive oil used as a prize in the Panathenaic games was produced from the fruit of  olive trees that were sacred to Athena and were supposedly the descendants of the olive trees that she caused to grow in her contest with Poseidon.  Later the oil was contributed by owners of olive orchards as a state tax (perhaps the original sacred trees had died off).

Modern scholars have not been able to determine the practical point of athletes' use of oil, but David Sansone¹ has suggested that they believed it increased their strength (cf. the anointing with oil in the Roman Catholic ceremony of Confirmation to confer spiritual strength).
 

Note
1. Greek Athletics and the Genesis of Sport (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, 1988).

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