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World Series. World Cup. Super Bowl. Olympic Games. To us who live in a culture saturated with sports, the desirability of contests at the ultimate level to determine the very best athlete or team seems patently obvious. But is it so obvious? To be sure, human beings in all times and places have enjoyed sports and games, in which competition is often a major part of the appeal. But it is a significant change to move athletics beyond play or recreation, to create a culture in which athletics is a serious occupation and preoccupation, and athletes are celebrities of the highest order. Championship competition is the arena in which the athletes merit extreme-one could say excessiveadulation and remuneration. Only the ancient Greeks and ourselves have placed such a society-transforming premium on athletics. The history of the ancient Olympics is a story that has been told before, but it is a story worth recounting to focus on the steps by which Greek civilization became synonymous with athletics. Furthermore, that story is still being written, for recent scholarship has uncovered exciting new discoveries which shed new light both on the end of the ancient Games and on their revival in the nineteenth century.
"If you yearn to celebrate great games, look no further for another star shining through the deserted ether brighter than the sun, or for a contest mightier than Olympia." (Pindar, Olympian 1.3-7, for Hieron of Syracuse in honor of his victory in the single horse race at Olympia in 476 B.C.)1
To us, as for the Greeks, Olympia is synonymous with athletics, for the Games held there every four years were the apex of sporting competition. The program of events contained three categories of contests: track and field; the heavy or combat events of boxing, wrestling, and the pankration (a combination of boxing and wrestling); and the equestrian contests. Contestants were divided into men and boys, the latter being twelve to eighteen years of age. In an age without birth certificates it was left for the officials to decide if an athlete was to compete as a boy or a man. The wide range of ages for the boys-twelve to eighteen-may surprise us, and indeed other festivals were to introduce several categories of boys...