The Olympics in ancient Greece were never primarily about the athletes; rather, the festival's heart and soul was the experience shared by those who participated. Athletes and spectators came from all over the Greek-speaking world to Olympia every four years, drawn by a desire to interact with their fellow countrymen and gods.
In the midst of nightmares
Two worlds mysteriously converged at Olympia for the Greeks during five days in the late-summer heat: the domain of regular life, with its human boundaries, and a supernatural sphere from the days when superior creatures, gods, and heroes filled Earth.
Greek athletics, like modern-day athletics, immersed participants in performances that stretched the limits of human capability. On the other hand, the Greeks saw the cauldron of rivalry as a potential catalyst for revelations, allowing ordinary mortals to mingle with the extraordinary immortals for a brief moment.
“Humans are creatures of a day,” remarked the poet Pindar, famous for the victory songs he composed for Olympia champions. But what exactly is humanity? What exactly isn't it? A person is only a shadow of a dream, but when Zeus sends down a flash of light, a brilliant light falls on humans, and their lives can be as sweet as honey.”
On the other hand, these epiphanies could only happen if witnesses were physically present to immerse themselves – and engage in – the spine-tingling encounter with the holy.
To put it another way, Greek athletics and religious experience were inextricably linked.
Athletes and onlookers alike were making a pilgrimage to a sacred site at Olympia. An Olympic Games in the current era can legitimately be held in any city chosen by the International Olympic Committee. However, the ancient games may only take place in one location in western Greece. The most profoundly moving moments didn't even occur in the 40,000-seat stadium or the wrestling and boxing stadiums.
Instead, events happened in the All this grove, where Hercules is claimed to have built an altar, sacrificed bulls to Zeus, and planted a wild olive tree. Easily half of the festival's activities engaged spectators, not in feats like discus, javelin, long leap, foot race, and wrestling, but in feats like discus, javelin, long jump, foot race, and wrestling.
Thousands gathered in the All this on the second day's evening to reenact the death ceremonies of Pelops, a human hero who had raced a chariot to win the daughter of a local chief. The Great Altar of Zeus, a pile of cemented ashes from previous sacrifices that stood 22 feet tall and 125 feet around, was the site of the final sacrifice on the morning of the third day. 100 bulls were slaughtered and their thigh bones, wrapped in fat, burned atop the altar in a ritual known as the hecatomb so that the rising smoke and aroma would reach the sky, where Zeus could devour it.
Many a spectator must have trembled at the prospect of Zeus hovering over them, smiling and recalling Hercules' first sacrifice.
Another, more visual meeting with the god awaited only a few yards from the Great Altar. An enormous picture of Zeus on a throne, 40 feet high, stood in the Temple of Zeus, built between 468 and 456 B.C., with his skin carved from ivory and his garments made of gold. He clutched the elusive goddess of triumph, Nike, in one hand and a staff in the other, on which his sacred bird, the eagle, was perched. The colossal monument was reflected in a gleaming lake of olive oil that encircled it.
Athletes performed naked during events, copying mythological heroes like Hercules, Theseus, and Achilles, who transcended the border between human and superhuman and were often shown naked in painting and sculpture.
The players' nudity signaled to onlookers that they sought to relive the shudder of encounter with the divine in the ritual of athletics in this hallowed site. A forest of hundreds of naked statues of men and boys stood in the All this, all past conquerors whose likenesses set the bar for aspiring newcomers.
“There are many truly marvelous things one can see and hear about in Greece,” noted Pausanias in the second century B.C., “but there is something unique about how the divine is encountered at... the games at Olympia.”
a sense of belonging and community
The Greeks lived in little states strewn across the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions, between 1,500 and 2,000.
The Olympics might entice a Greek living in Southern Europe and another living in modern-day Ukraine to interact briefly in a festival celebrating not only Zeus and Heracles but also the Hellenic language and culture that produced them since sea travel in the summer was the only viable way to cross this fragile geographical web.
Aside from athletics, poets, philosophers, and orators performed in front of politicians and businessmen, with everyone sharing an "oceanic emotion" of what it meant to be unified as Greeks for a brief moment.
We'll never be able to explain to the Greeks how the marvel of television works and how its electronic eye attracts millions of spectators to current games via proxy. Visitors to Olympia, on the other hand, engaged in a different kind of spectator sport.
The ordinary Greek word for the observer – “theatês” – is linked to both “theatre” and “theôria,” a unique form of seeing that necessitates travel from one's home to a place where something magnificent develops. Visiting an oracle or participating in a religious cult, Theôria opens a portal into the sacred.
After attending an athletic-religious celebration like the Olympics, an ordinary spectator, a theatês, became a theôros – a witness to the sacred, an envoy returning home the miracles seen abroad.
It isn't easy to picture Tokyo TV visuals reaching similar results.
The empty stadia will not attract any gods or genuine heroes, no matter how many world records are set or unparalleled achievements are achieved at the 2020 Olympics: The games in Tokyo are considerably less enthralling than previous modern games.
While medal counts will confer fleeting glory on some nations and disappointing shame on others, perhaps a dramatic moment or two will unite athletes and TV viewers in an oceanic feeling of what it means to be "cosmopolitan," world citizens, celebrants of the wonder of what it means to be human – and perhaps, briefly, superhuman as well.
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