On May 25, 2004, the Olympic Flame for the 2004 Athens Games was lit in Olympia. This was the 108th anniversary of the modern revival of the games in 1896.

This flame was carried across the globe by over 10,000 torchbearers to each city that had previously hosted the games. Finally, on August 13, after traveling over 48,400 miles, the final runner, Nikolaos Kaklamanakis, lit the Olympic cauldron at the opening ceremony of the 2004 Summer Games.

This specimen is a pair of wood and metal sections of one of the torches crafted for the 2004 Olympic Relay. These gas-powered torches were made with olive wood and aluminum to represent the two-toned sides of an olive leaf, a symbol of peace and the ancient Athenian city-state.

In 2004, this was one of several torches which carried the flame around the world. Each specimen comes housed in an acrylic jar that is encased within a glass-topped riker display box. The box measures 4 1/2" x 3 1/2". A small information card is also included, which serves as the certificate of authenticity.

The modern Olympics are a revival of the ancient Greek games where athletes from across the nation’s city-states competed against each other in feats of strength, speed, and agility.

During these games, a truce was honored across Greece, putting an end to any feud or battle for the sake of peace. Hundreds of years later in the 19th century, various sporting organizations attempted to mount extensions of these ancient games, but it was nobleman Pierre de Coubertin who was successful in reviving the games as a global competition and a touchstone of modern sports.

Coubertin, inspired by the idea of the Olympic Truce, hoped to use the 3,000-year-old concept of the Greek Olympiad as a practical, hands-on extension to the peace education movement of his day. Coubertin’s goal was nothing less than peace among all nations, which he hoped to bring about through a program of sport emphasizing the unique value of each human body.

In 1894, he founded the International Olympic Committee, with the first games held two years later in Athens, Greece. Spyridon Louis, a Greek shepherd, became a national hero in his home country after winning the marathon race in just under three hours.

Much of the iconography of the Olympics comes from an unexpected source: the 1936 games held in Nazi Germany. Despite a considerable boycott campaign, Avery Brundage (President of the International Olympic Committee) was courted by the Nazi Regime, who wished to exploit the games as a propaganda tool. As part of this, the Nazis devised the Olympic torch relay to ferry the Olympic flame from Olympia to Berlin across nearly 2,000 miles.

For all the Nazi’s propagandizing, however, it was the black American Jesse Owens who won the day, bringing home four gold medals in track and field events.

During the Berlin Games, Owens took home four gold medals: the 100m dash with a 10.3 second time, the 200 m with 20.7 seconds, the long jump with 8.06 m, and finally the 4x100 m relay with 39.8 seconds. It stands today as one of the greatest achievements of athleticism in the history of the Olympics. At the beginning of the 1984 Olympic Relay, Owens’ granddaughter Gina Hemphill ran the torch’s first kilometer, a link from the Olympics of today to Owens’ fantastic achievement.

Just as the games have grown and changed over the years, so has the relay. In 2004, the torch was carried by runners on a 78,000 km (48,400 mi) journey between all cities that had hosted the games since 1896. Over 10,000 torchbearers traveled with the flame, and a specially-equipped Boeing 747 was used to carry the burning flame overseas.

On August 13, 2004, the flame arrived in Athens to kick off the 2004 Olympic Games, which marked the first time Greece hosted the games since 1896.

While the flame was consistent throughout the trip, many torches were crafted to carry it. The shape of the torches used was designed to evoke the image of an olive leaf, a symbol of peace and the ancient Athenian city-state.