This past April, a solemn ceremony was held in front of the ruined Temple of Hera in Olympia in southern Greece. Serious young men and women dressed in classical-style costumes danced and sang while a torch was lighted from the focused rays of the sun. The torch then began its long trek, first through Greece and thence to Switzerland, before crossing the Atlantic to Brazil, where a team of more than 12,000 relay runners carried it around the country to 83 cities and 500 towns before it reached Rio de Janeiro, its final destination.
In Rio next Friday evening, at the climax of a celebration in the Maracanã Stadium, to the resounding cheers of a packed audience and watched globally by perhaps four billion people, the torch flame will be used to light a massive caldron. And the 27th modern summer Olympic Games will begin.
The official website of the Games proclaims that the torch “emphasizes the link between the ancient and modern Games and underlines the profound connection between these two events.” But what were those ancient Games really like? And how profound is the connection?
The ancient Games were celebrated for over a millennium from the eighth century B.C. (before the Homeric poems were written down) to the fifth century A.D. (after Alaric’s sack of Rome). To survive for so long, they needed to adapt to suit changing realities, while at the same time offering a stable forum not just for competition among the participants but for exchange among the spectators.
The Games provided opportunities for the sale of food and merchandise, for artistic, literary and philosophical discussion, and for political summits among powerful leaders. Like their modern counterparts, they were a unifying force, bringing far-flung people together in one place at one time to celebrate a common ethos.
But like so much in antiquity, what at first seems reassuringly familiar proves on closer examination to be bewilderingly alien. Exploring the ancient Olympics can seem like falling down the rabbit hole or gazing into a curiously distorting mirror.
While today’s Games stress inclusivity, their ancient counterparts were rigidly exclusive. To compete in this celebration of not just Greek (and, later, Greco-Roman) identity but of proud god-fearing masculinity, you had to speak Greek, be free from the pollution of murder—and be male. Women couldn’t even be spectators. Only the priestess of Demeter could attend.
The chief reason for these restrictions is that the original Games were not really about sport at all. Rather, they were one part of a major male religious festival in honor of the great god Zeus. Indeed, Olympia, site of the Games, was named for Mount Olympus, where Zeus was considered to have had his throne.
Olympia was a rural sanctuary in a fertile valley between two rivers. No one quite agreed what made the site so sacred. Some said it was because Zeus defeated his father Cronus here and seized supreme power. Others maintained that, after cleansing the Augean stables and then defeating the local king in battle, the hero Heracles inaugurated the early Games in Zeus’ honor. Still others told how Pelops, Zeus’ grandson, established them, having won the hand of a local princess, Hippodameia, after sabotaging her father’s chariot to win a race, for which she was the prize. The father died as a result, and Pelops, haunted and remorseful, set up the early competitions in his honor.
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