Olympic Games and
Spirit Today, the Olympic Games are the world’s largest
pageant (盛典)of athletic skill and competitive spirit. These two opposing
elements of the Olympics are not a modern invention. The ancient Olympic Games,
part of a major religious festival honoring Zeus, the chief Greek god, were the
biggest event in their world. They were the scene of political rivalries between
people from different parts of the Greek world, and the site of controversies,
boasts, public announcements and humiliations. In this section you can explore
the context of the Olympics. The Greek City-states and the Religious
Festival One difference between the ancient and modern
Olympic Games is that the ancient games were played within the context of a
religious festival. The Games were held in honor of Zeus, the king of the Greek
gods, and a sacrifice of 100 oxen was made to the god on the middle day of the
festival. Athletes prayed to the gods for victory, and made gifts of animals,
produce, or small cakes, in thanks for their successes.
According to the legend, the altar of Zeus stood on a spot struck by a
thunderbolt, which had been hurled by the god from his throne high atop Mount
Olympus, where the gods assembled. Over time, the Games flourished, and Olympia
became a central site for the worship of Zeus. Individuals and communities
donated buildings, statues, altars and other dedications to the god. The most
spectacular sight at Olympia was the gold and ivory cult (膜拜仪式)statue of Zeus
enthroned, which was made by the sculptor Pheidias and placed inside the temple.
The statue was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and stood over 42
feet high. A spiral staircase took visitors to an upper floor of the temple, for
a better view of the statue. People who were not Greek could not
compete in the Games, but Greek athletes traveled hundreds of miles, from
colonies of the Greek city-states. These colonies were as far away as modern-day
Spain, Italy, Libya, Egypt, the Ukraine, and Turkey. A city-state, called a
polls, was a typical Greek settlement, with a fortified city and a defensible
citadel at the center of a territory, which might include other villages. The
polls of Attica was made up of Athens and its environs (近郊), for example, and
the Acropolis was its fortress. The Greek city-states began to establish
colonies from the mid-8th century on. After the 2nd century A. D., the Roman
Empire brought even more competitors to the Olympic Games, but regional
differences always gave the Olympics an international flavor. Excellence
and the Competitive Spirit Ancient athletes competed as
individuals, not on national teams, as in the modern Games. The emphasis on
individual athletic achievement through public competition was related to the
Greek ideal of excellence, called arete. Aristocratic men who attained this
ideal, through their outstanding words or deeds, won permanent glory and fame.
Those who failed to measure up to this code feared public shame and
disgrace. Not all athletes lived up to this code of excellence.
Those who were discovered cheating were fined, and the money was used to make
bronze statues of Zeus, which were erected on the road to the stadium. The
statues were inscribed with messages describing the offenses, warning others not
to cheat, reminding athletes that victory was won by skill and not by money, and
emphasizing the Olympic spirit of piety toward the gods and fair
competition. The Olympic Truce(休战) A truce (in Greek,
ekecheiria, which literally means "holding of hands") was announced before and
during each of the Olympic festivals, to allow visitors to travel safely to
Olympia. An inscription (题字) describing the truce was written on a bronze discus
which was displayed at Olympia. During the truce, wars were suspended, armies
were prohibited from entering Elis or threatening the Games, and legal disputes
and the carrying out of death penalties were forbidden. The
Olympic truce was faithfully observed, for the most part, although the historian
Thucydides recounts that the Lacedaemonians were banned from participating in
the Games, after they attacked a fortress in Lepreum, a town in Elis, during the
truce. The Lacedaemonians complained that the truce had not yet been announced
at the time of their attack. But the Eleans fined them two thousand minae, two
for each soldier, as the law required. Another international
truce was enforced during the annual Mysteries, a religious rite held at the
major sanctuary site of Eleusis. The truces of Olympia and Eleusis not only
allowed worshippers and athletes to travel more safely; they also provided a
common basis for peace among the Greeks. Lysistrata, the title character in a
comic play by Aristophanes, makes this point when she tries to convince the
Athenians and the Spartans to end their war. The Ancient
Athletes Athletic training was a basic, part of every Greek
boy’s education, and any boy who excelled in sport might set his sights on
competing in the Olympics. The Olympic competition included preliminary matches
or heats to select the best athletes for the final competition.
Ancient writers tell the stories of athletes who worked at other jobs and
did not spend all their time in training. For example, one of Alexander the
Great’s couriers, Philonides, who was from Chersonesus in Crete, once won the
pentathlon, which included discus, javelin, long jump, and wrestling
competitions as well as running. However, just as in the modern Olympics, an
ancient athlete needed mental dedication, top conditioning, and outstanding
athletic ability in order to make the cut. Self-confidence was
also an asset. A Libyan athlete, Eubotas, was so sure of his victory in a
running event that he had his victory statue made before the Games were held.
When he won, he was able to dedicate his statue on the same day.
Many athletes employed professional trainers to coach them, and they
adhered to training and dietary routines much like athletes today. The Greeks
debated the proper training methods. Aristotle wrote that overtraining was to be
avoided, claiming that when boys trained too young, it actually sapped them of
their strength. He believed that three years after puberty should be spent on
other studies before a young man turned to athletic exertions, because physical
and intellectual development could not occur at the same time.
Victorious athletes were professionals in the sense that they lived off
the glory of their achievement ever afterwards. Their hometowns might reward
them with free meals for the rest of their lives, cash, tax breaks, honorary
appointments, or leadership positions in the community. The victors were
memorialized in statues and also in victory odes, commissioned from famous
poets. Cultural Achievements and the Games The Olympic
festival not only celebrated excellence in athletics. It also provided the
occasion for Greeks to produce lasting cultural achievements in architecture,
mathematics, sculpture, and poetry. The ancient Greeks were
architectural innovators. The temple of Zeus, designed by the architect Libon,
was one of the largest Doric temples built in Greece. Libon tried to build the
temple in an ideal system of proportions, so that the distance between the
columns was harmoniously proportional to their height, and the other
architectural elements were sized proportionately as well. The Greek
mathematician Euclid expressed this ideal ratio in his Elements, a book on
geometry which is said to be the second most popular book of all time, after the
Bible. Greek sculptors developed new poses showing energetic
movement, and depicting the muscles and shapes of the body naturally. Many
sculptures were of athletes, such as Myron’s famous statue of the Discus Thrower
(Diskobolos). We know the names of some sculptors because ancient authors,
including the satirist Lucian, wrote them down. The cultural
achievement most directly tied to the Olympic games was poetry commissioned in
honor of athletic victors. These poems, called Epinicians, were written by the
most famous poets of the day, including Pindar, Bacchylides, and Simonides, and
they were extremely popular. Proof of this is that the playwright Aristophanes
portrays an average, not especially literary Athenian man who asks his son to
sing a particular forty-year-old Epinician poem composed by Simonides. The poem,
and the athlete, live on in people’s memories long after the day of victory. The
Epinician odes were written to immortalize the athletic victors, and they have
lasted longer than many of the statues and inscriptions which were made for the
same purpose. In ancient times, Olympic games were held as a religious festival to honor the Greek gods.