The Glory of Men and Gods

In August 2008, the 29th Olympic Games of modern times will open in Beijing. The great tradition born in ancient Greece and revived in the 1890s by Pierre de Coubertin has long transcended the Old World. Beijing will see athletes from countries where Apollo and Artemis were unknown, sharing the desire to test the limits of human vigour, surpass their rivals and be acclaimed as Olympic champions. The modern world has ancient Greek paganism to thank for the idea of a sports competition. While in our society, top sportsmen and women are headline news and the focus of paparazzi, the fame of Greek athletes was even more colossal: they were regarded as semi-divine and favourites of the gods. Almighty Zeus looked after them; Pallas Athena mused over their fates. Dionysus invited them to share his goblet, nymphs lusted after them, and even Aphrodite eyed them with a playful smile…

Legend attributes the Olympics’ foundation to Heracles (Hercules), who built the Olympic stadium and other buildings as an honour to his father Zeus, after completing his twelve labours. Their setting was Elis, at the foot of the Mount Olympus, whose summit was the abode of the gods, the Greeks believed. Starting in 776 BC, the Games were staged every five years, on the first full moon after the summer solstice. They could not be cancelled for either war or calamity, being a central reference point of Greek history and culture. Everyone wanted to see the heroes esteemed by the gods, or perhaps try their own luck in the competitions.

The Olympics were held in a sacred enclosure called the Altis, watched over by a Temple of Zeus, god of thunder, where a ritual sacrifice marked the onset and end of the Games. The Greeks conceived them as Man’s gift to the gods, and it was with childish pride that men displayed their skills in front of the Immortals. Unlike today, not only physical prowess was tested; competitions between musicians and poets ran alongside the sports events.

Any free male citizen of any Greek city-state could participate; all he had to do was swear to his Hellenic origin and moral purity, and confirm he had been in training for ten months (first time competitors had to undergo a preliminary test, and train for thirty days in Olympia supervised by local trainers). Applications to participate went to the judges, elected from the citizens of Elis, who could reject any applicant considered unworthy of the gods presiding over Olympia.

The six-day event attracted people from all over the Hellenic world – not only to watch the games and listen to poets and musicians, but to trade, negotiate or dissolve treaties, and debate politics and philosophy. Tents and cabins were erected in the grove between the temple and the stadium, which could hold 40,000 spectators. Rich people and invited guests from other city-states stayed in villas that probably cost a fortune to rent, like flats with balconies overlooking centre court at Wimbledon nowadays.

In this strictly male world (women were banned from the stalls as well as the arena), Greeks could stumble on friendship, love, patronage, shame or even exile. At no other time or place would a citizen find himself so close to the gods or to the Fates spinning the web of his destiny, as he would in the Altis grove in an Olympic year…

Following an inaugural sacrifice in the Temple of Zeus, the purple-robed judges proceeded to the stadium (a word derived from stadion, a Greek unit of length). There, a herald called out the names of the competing athletes – who stood there stark naked, oiled, and dusted with sand.

Each athlete and judge had to swear an oath to be honest and not succumb to bribery. There was a special guard to watch out for any cheating or other breach of the rules, and dishonest athletes were beaten with rods and disgraced throughout Greece.

To determine their order, everyone drew lots in the form of a token, before competing in groups of two, three or four – the winners then competed against each other. Such a knockout system has been called “Olympic” ever since…

The opening event was the stadion, a race one stadion (400 metres) long. This basic unit was multiplied for longer races called the dolichos, involving six, ten or even twelve laps. More than once, the winner would finish this race alone, and it once happened that a Spartan called Ladas dropped dead on the spot after winning. The Greeks believed that he had been thus gifted by the gods and met a truly heroic end.

Starting from the 65th Olympic Games in 520 BC, the races would end with the hoplitodromos, in which athletes ran carrying shields, wearing bronze helmets and greaves. This event is immortalized in The Iliad (XXIII, 754- 783), where Homer describes not only the race but the technique using one’s arms as well as legs. In Roman times athletes no longer wore greaves or helmets, but simply ran holding shields.

Next came wrestling, the favourite sport in Greek gymnasiums. Wrestlers approached each other with arms raised, warily anticipating a clench a hurl. Painful holds were allowed, such as twisting a thumb. Once downed, a wrestler could continue fighting until his shoulders touched the ground three times, in which case the match was lost.

Wrestling was followed by the pentathlon, which in ancient times consisted of the jump, racing, discus throwing, javelin throwing and wrestling. For the long jump, athletes used pearshaped lead or stone weights, which they swung and dropped at the last moment, to give themselves extra impetus. The long jump was up to 50 Greek feet (15 metres) long; the ancient world record is attributed to Phayllus of Crotona, who is said to have leapt 55 feet...

Discus throwing was another ancient sport mentioned by Homer. The discus was a heavy metal plate; one found on Egina Island was 7.7 inches in diameter and weighed about four pounds. Athletes competed to see who could throw the farthest, and also in precision, throwing discs a fixed distance. The record for discus throwing, 95 feet, was also set by Phayllus. An allied event was javelin throwing (akontismos), learnt by every youth in the gymnasium as a military skill. At the Olympics, javelins were thrown at targets, not people.

Gymnastics usually finished with the pankration, a hybrid of wrestling and boxing. Athletes fought using their fists, wrapped in leather straps; when one fell down, wrestling began. Few men survived such fights unharmed; noses, ears and teeth were most frequently damaged.

The Games were crowned with the hippodrome, chariot and horse races. Chariot races were divided into two classes: quadriga, where the chariots were pulled by four horses, and biga, where they were pulled by two. Only rich Greeks could afford Olympic horses and rigs, so regardless of the skill of the charioteer the prize would go to the horses’ owner. Kings, oligarchs and even courtesans would sometimes send their horses to the Olympic races...

An Olympic champion (called an olympionic) instantly became an idol throughout Hellas, especially in his own city-state. The champion was led by judges to the Temple of Zeus where the awards ceremony was held for the god to see. A kotinos, or wreath of olive leaves entwined with white ribbon, was placed on his head, and hymns to Heracles were sung. Then there was a feast in his honour, hosted by the community of Elis, which joined in with gusto – sharing a celebration with the victor was the spectator’s privilege.

The champion’s return to his home town occasioned another, still more grandiose festival. All free citizens would come out to greet him as he arrived in a chariot pulled by four white horses, and led them to the temple to lay a wreath on the altar of the local deity. He was henceforth exempt from taxes and duties; had a seat of honour at festivities; and was glorified by poets and a statue of himself in the town. Champions’ statues were also placed in the sacred Altis of Olympia, where there were several hundred still standing at the end of the Roman era. The most esteemed were so-called iconic statues, ones that actually resembled the athlete.

According to Pliny, only three Olympic champions were so honoured...

The Olympics’ decline mirrored that of ancient Greece. As Rome became all powerful, its own gods, rituals and festivities prevailed throughout Europe and Asia Minor. The final nail in the coffin followed the advent of Christianity as the state religion, which condemned the Olympics as a vestige of paganism. In 394 AD, the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius I banned assemblies in Elis as sinful and depraved, and that was the end of Olympic competitions for the next sixteen hundred years...

Yet the Greek admiration for human prowess and physical beauty could not be forgotten. With the European Renaissance, one work of Greek art after another inspired artists, aristocrats and scholars, and a whole new ethos of beauty, striving and perfectionism. With his anatomical studies and designs for flying machines, Leonardo Da Vinci epitomized the urge to understand, exalt and expand the limits of human capability. The history of humanity is one of triumphing over physical constraints. Every one of us inwardly yearns for Olympus, to be superhuman, if not a god…