How Our Sports Stars Channel the Ancient Olympians

I recently traveled to Olympia, Greece, site of the original Olympic games. Times may have changed, but athletes haven't.

I recently traveled to Olympia, Greece, site of the original Olympic games in the eighth century BC.  As tends to happen when we encounter antiquity and ponder the present, I was struck by the sense of progress and immutability alike.

The ancient games were for males only: women were not even allowed as spectators.  (There was allegedly a single exception.  The daughter of legendary boxing champion Diagoras snuck in to watch her son compete.  The authorities chose not to punish her, perhaps not wishing to mess with a family of star pugilists.) The games were also Greek only, and featured a small number of events.  In every respect, the modern Olympic Games are more inclusive, welcoming men and women from all over the globe who compete in numerous events of all stripes.

In fundamental respects, however, modern sports are continuous with their ancient ancestry.  For starters, in the ancient games cheating was a major concern.  It proved so problematic that the Greeks punished it through public humiliation: They prominently displayed statues (called “Zanes”) with the engraved names of every athlete caught cheating.  This was almost three millennia before Russian judges and doping scandals caused so much angst about the lost purity of the games.

In the ancient Olympics, athletes were really secondary.  First and foremost, the games honored Zeus.  To this day, the site of the games contain remnants of offerings to the Gods.  Winners in particular were expected to donate a work of art or other mark of reverence to display gratitude and awareness that human athletic prowess is a dispensation from above.

That may seem primitive, but is certainly not outdated.  Just listen to athletes interviewed after big wins (“first I’d like to thank Jesus Christ”) or watch baseball players arrive at home plate after they hit home runs.  Increasingly, they point skyward, making sure to give credit where it is truly due.  In the twenty first century AD, like the eighth century BC, athletes worship a God whom they presume to follow the sports pages.

But my principal takeaway from Olympia is uplifting.  A fascinating aspect of the ancient games (the Olympics and also other major competitions like the Pythian Games in Delphi) is that warring city-states would lay down their arms to come compete against one another.  That spirit survives – just think of Rex Ryan and Bill Belichick shaking hands after each Jets-Patriots grudge match.  You might say that’s just ritual, that those two would rather engage in a steel cage match than be forced to be civil with one another, but rituals are revealing. The post-game handshake serves as reminder that athletic competition is just that – it isn’t war.

In antiquity, as now, sports played an important role in the human experience, channeling our species’ aggressive instincts into competitions that produce inspiring achievement without leaving the defeated dead.

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