August 6, 2004

• THE OLYMPICS AS RELIGION

  PBS had an interesting two-parter on the other night. A sort of history and visual reconstruction of the Olympic games. They complained that in our time, the athletes on camera could not be filmed as they actually participated (nude), but had to be filmed in jocks. The reconstructed contests were interesting but the comments of the various college prof/experts were even, to me at least, more interesting.
  The Olympic games were religious ceremonies which were performed every four years for about 1200 years. Classic Greek calendar dates were by the Olympiad.
  The basic idea seems to have been to strive to become as god-like as humanly possible. Since the Greeks formed their gods in their own images (as most of us do) and since they admired courage, guile, physical beauty and strength; and saw their gods as the epitome of these attributes, athletic training and contests were central to their culture, or at least the male part of it. Women were forbidden, on pain of death, to even watch the games, much less participate.
  In the contests themselves, just about anything was legal except biting and eye gouging. One boxer actually disemboweled his opponent and deaths in the contests were apparently frequent. Winning was the only recognized end; all the other contestants were more or less disgraced.
  The idea of amateurism would have confused the Greeks, there was no such thing in their world. Anyone could compete and it was expected that the athlete himself or his city-state would support the long training any one of the contests would take. The most famous races, the chariot, were mostly driven by slaves, though there was one famous race where the emperor Nero drove his own. He fell off but was declared winner anyway. After his demise, his winning was reversed.

  • 4:17 pm
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