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| Diskobolos of Myron, the thrower of the discus in the Olympics and other Panhellenic games. The marble statue dates to the fifth century BCE. Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome. Courtesy Wikipedia. |
If you can escape
the toxic vortex of the twenty-first century and dream of a time our world was
being born, you would have to travel to ancient Greece.
Hellas
Hellenes (Greeks)
have always called their country Hellas (Greece). But Hellas was not one
country but something like a couple of thousands small states spread all over mainland
Greece and the Mediterranean. Hellas was the Greek United Nations: employing
the diplomatic niceties of peace but perpetually bickering and, often, fighting
border conflicts and, sometimes, real wars.
Yes, the Greeks of
hundreds of states were one people with the same language, piety for the same Olympian
gods, and similar traditions like reading Homer and investigating the natural
world and the heavens.
Athletics
The best of the
Greeks, including Homer, embraced the education of the mind. But they also
added athletics as an end and a means to an end: educate the Greeks to live
well and preserve their freedom.
Athletics meant competing
peacefully in sprint and long distance footraces, throwing of discus and the
javelin, jumping, wrestling, boxing and horse and chariot races in order to
tame the violent in human nature while, at the same time, honoring the gods
that made their athletic and other achievements possible.
The religious
dimension of Greek athletics was ancient and powerful. It’s impossible to
separate athletics from the worship of the gods. The Olympics celebrated Zeus;
the games at Delphi honored Apollo; the Isthmian games in Corinth centered on
Poseidon; in Nemea and Dodona in Epiros in northern Greece, Zeus was the divine
sponsor of the games.
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| Gold coin representing Zeus from Lampsakos, a polis in the Troad in northwestern Asia Minor (Greek Ionia). Coin dares to about 360 BCE. Courtesy Wikipedia. |
Pausanias, a Greek
doctor from Asia who toured Greece in the second century, said that Greece was a
land full of sights and memorable stories. But nothing in Greece did Zeus bless
more than the Olympic games (Guide to
Greece 5.10.1).
The sibling to athletics
was the cultivation of the mind with works of civilization: reading and
writing, geometry, astronomy, philosophy, poetry, theater, sculpture, painting,
architecture, and technology.
The Academy of Plato
and the Lyceum of Aristotle included a palaistra
(wrestling) school for the vigorous physical education of the students.
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| Palaistra or wrestling school in Olympia. The teaching of sports in the Palaistra complemented the teaching of Greek, trigonometry, astronomy, philosophy and the arts of civilization. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia. |
The Greeks knew they
had to find a way out of strife and civil wars. Enemies surrounded most of
their small poleis. If they failed to tone down their aggressive competitiveness,
they were doomed.
Who founded the Olympics?
Herakles offered an
alternative way to the politics of hubris. He was born in Thebes the son of
Zeus and a mortal mother, Alkmene. He was a powerful demigod with great virtues
and tremendous courage and fortitude. He became the greatest hero of the Greeks
through good works: killing monsters and evildoers. He served the common
interest.
Pindar, 518-after 440
BCE, the Theban lyric poet credits Herakles with the founding of the Olympics (Olympian 2.1-7). It’s quite possible he
did. Among other honors, the Greeks thought of Herakles as the patron god of
athletes.
Pelops
Another hero sharing
with Herakles the honor of establishing the Olympics is Pelops dating from the
late second millennium BCE. Peloponnesos means the island of Pelops. This was a
daring man. When he heard that Oinomeos, king of Pisa, challenged any one to
compete with him in a chariot race, he volunteered. Pelops won the contest and killed
Oinomaos. He married a woman horse-tamer, Hippodameia, daughter of Oinomeos.
Achilles and the games honoring Patroklos
The third possible
influence in the founding of the Olympics comes from Achilles, king of Phthia
in Thessaly. His mother was Thetis, a sea-nymph daughter of the sea-god Nereus.
Achilles was the greatest Greek hero in the Trojan War. His uncontrollable
wrath shaped the ten-year conflict. The death of his best friend, Patroklos,
shocked him so much he reentered the war and killed Hektor, a Trojan hero who
had killed Patroklos.
Achilles honored
Patroklos by sponsoring athletic competitions.
The prizes for the
victors in the Patroklos funeral games go to the first, second and third winner
– a tradition dropped in the Olympics that rewards only the first winner.
Achilles sponsored
the following games: chariot race, boxing, wrestling, footrace, close combat,
discus and javelin throwing, and bow and arrow competition. He was generous
with the prizes, which included gold, iron, cauldrons, tripods, mixing bowls, a
“silver-studded sword,” horses, mules, oxen, and “beautifully girdled women.”
Achilles is proud for his solid-footed horses because they were immortal, gift
of Poseidon to his father Peleus (Homer, Iliad
23.256-24.6).
Homer also briefly
mentions athletics when Odysseus finally arrives in Phaiakia (Kerkyra), his
last stop before arriving home at Ithaca. Young men of Phaiakia compete at
jumping, running, boxing, wrestling, and the throwing of discus. In fact, one
of those young me, Laodamas, invites Odysseus to try his hand at some sport. “There’s
no greater fame a man earns in life than the glory he wins with his feet and
hands,” Laodamas tells Odysseus.
Another young man,
Euryalos, insults Odysseus, telling him he looked more like a captain of a ship
rather than an athlete. This angers Odysseus. He grabs a discus and throws it
further than any local. Then he tells the Phaialians he was the best in
athletics among the Greeks at Troy (Odyssey
8.97-253).
The Olympics
The very ancient
religious-athletic traditions of the Greeks finally found a formal expression
in the Olympics in Olympia located in northwestern Peloponnesos. This is early
eighth century BCE – a time of troubles for Greece.
Pausanias reported that
Iphitos started the Olympics. Iphitos, a prince from Elis, a polis about forty
kilometers north of Olympia, consulted the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi. The
priestess of Apollo told him he and the people of Elis should revive the Olympics,
including the Olympic Truce or ekecheiria
(holding of hands) (Guide to Greece
5.4.5-6).
Iphytos did that and
the first Olympiad took place in 776 BCE. The only game in the first Olympiad
was the stadion, a sprint footrace of
about 200 meters.
The people of Elis
administered the Olympics for centuries. They built the infrastructure for the
quadrennial games. The magnificent temple of Zeus was at the center of the
Olympics. In early fifth century BCE, Pheidias sculpted the statue of Zeus from
gold and ivory (chryselephantine). On his right hand, the seated god held a
two-meter statue of Nike, goddess of victory.
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| Zeus Nikephoros (Zeus holding Nike, goddess of victory). Alexandrian Age, 2nd-1st centuries, BCE. Courtesy Wikipedia. |
Every four years,
Greek athletes and thousands of spectators gathered at Olympia for a truly
great athletic competition and a magnificent festival of food, entertainment,
and renewal of the Greek identity -- Hellenism. Writers read their work.
Politicians spread their ideas. Dancers and musicians produced shows. Greeks
from one polis met Greeks from all over Greece and the Mediterranean. They talked
about the athletes and their hopes and fears. The Olympics became a meeting
place for understanding and fixing Greece.
The Olympic Truce,
the holding of hands, forbade conflict around the time for a new Olympiad. Yes,
the ekecheiria was a small step, but
it helped in building a more cohesive and civilized country.
Were the athletes evil?
Not every Greek
loved the Olympics. In late fifth century BCE, the poet Euripides denounced the
festival as a waste of time and the athletes as evil, being slaves to their
jaws and servants to their belies. Instead of watching athletes and taking part
in useless pleasures, Euripides urged the Greeks to honor good and virtuous men
governing poleis and other men with good ideas for the abolition of strife and
war (Autolykos, fragment 282).
Seven hundred years
after Euripides, Galen, the greatest Greek physician since Hippokrates,
associated athletes with pigs, force-feeding themselves flesh and blood (Galen,
Exhortation for Medicine 9-14).
Athletics and civilization
Euripides and Galen
missed the significance of the Olympics. Like dozens of Panhellenic athletic
and religious festivals, the Olympics gave meaning of what it was to be Greek. They
were laboratories searching for the magic of what keeps people civilized.
Pausanias tells us
that athletes learned that not money but swiftness of foot or strength of body
win Olympic victories. In addition, Pausanias reports that athletes and their
fathers, brothers and coaches took an oath in front of a bronze statue of Zeus of
Oaths (Zeus Horkios). Zeus was holding
a silver-plated thunderbolt in each hand. The athletes and their supporters and
trainers stood in front of the statue and slices of meat from a boar sacrificed
in honor of Zeus. They swore not to shame the Olympics by bribes or other
unethical conduct (Guide to Greece
5.21.2-4; 5.24.9-10).
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| Death of Ladas by George Murray, 1899. The runner Ladas is dying while receiving the crown of victory at the Olympics. Courtesy Wikipedia. |
We learn from
Lucian, a second century Greek writer that the spectator in the Olympics would
probably find himself in the midst of huge cheering crowds. One could barely help
but admire the virtues of the athletes: their physical beauty, dramatic skills
and daring, enormous pride and unbeatable tenacity and passion for victory. It
was not surprising that one could hardly stop cheering and applauding the
athletes and the games (Anacharsis
9-14).
But the most exalted
treatment of athletes was that of Pindar. He made a living by praising victorious
athletes. He said an athletic victory brings beauty to a manly deed, lifting the
mind above the “pursuit of money.” Man, Pindar said, is ephemeral. What is he
and what is he not? Man is a dream of a shadow. Yet, when the gods bless men
with a ray of sunshine, a brilliant light settles on them. Their lives become
gentle (Pythian Ode 8.70-98).
The Olympics lasted for
1,167 years. In 393 of our common era, the Christian emperor Theodosius I brought
them to an end.
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| Unearthed ruins of the temple of Zeus in Olympia. Courtesy Wikipedia. |
A millennium-and-a-half later, Greek and French intellectuals
revived them. The first modern Olympics took place in Athens in 1896.
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| Greek postage stamp honoring the first modern Olympics in Athens, Greece, 1896. |
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