Summary
Title: The Ancient Olympics: A History
Author: Nigel Spivey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192804332
Pro:
• Concise but detailed look at Greek life and athletics
• Explores just what sports and athletics mean to people
Con:
• None
Description:
• History of ancient Greek Olympics
• Covers Greek philosophy, religion, culture, and athletics
• Explains both the ideals and the reality of Olympic sports
Book Review
To understand what the ancient Olympics were and what they meant to the Greeks, it is necessary to understand what athletics and exercise in general meant to them, as well as what they thought about the human body. Thus, Nigel Spivey‘s The Ancient Olympics: A History is about much more than the Olympics — it’s also about Greek aesthetics, politics, history, religion, and culture. A teacher of classics as well as an athletics coach at Cambridge, Spivey has written a short but wide-ranging work that covers a lot of ground without overwhelming the reader.
One of the keys to understanding the Greek view of athletics lies in the word itself. Of Greek derivation, it means “to struggle or to suffer for a prize“ — and in ancient Greece, both struggle and suffering were fundamental to athletic competitions, especially the Olympics. These were not peaceful matches where the glory was in simply being able to compete. For the athletes, winning was everything while the losers faced terrible scorn and abuse back home.
Being a winner was worth dying for — and some did. Others were beaten to bloody pulps in ferocious boxing contests. Some cheated and were held up for derision for it. Those who won, however, had statues erected to them and their names were entered into the records, some of which survive even to this day.
A common ideal about the Olympics is that they are a unifying event, bringing athletes together in the spirit of harmony and friendship. Maybe they are, sometimes, but that isn’t an accurate description of how the Greeks viewed the Olympics. For them, athletics was basically “war minus the shooting” (to quote George Orwell, writing about modern sports).
The military and political rivalries translated directly into athletic rivalries. Athletic victories were almost as good as military victories — something that isn’t so foreign to us today, as demonstrated by the intense Olympic rivalry between the United States and the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War. This might sound like a criticism, but it’s not — war minus the shooting is certainly better than war with the shooting. It’s simply that our idealized demands upon what athletic competition is supposed to be are far more exacting than human nature can deliver upon, both today and in ancient times.
