Tony Perrottet’s book ‘The Naked Olympics: the True Story of
the Ancient Games’ was released to coincide with the Athens olympics of 2004;
talking about it might not be wholly timely, but can there be a wrong time to
talk about naked, oiled men and the slaughter of 100 white oxen? I thought not.
(And by the way, the book isn’t about ‘naked running’ – a phrase runners use to
describe the now rare experience of heading out without a satellite watch pacing
their every step).
Perrottet highlights a healthy number of differences between
the ancient games at Olympia and their modern incarnation – as we might have
guessed, badminton and dressage were not included. In fact, few of today’s
disciplines were: events were limited to boxing, wrestling, ‘pankration’ (a
vicious combination of boxing and wrestling), chariot racing, pentathlon (discus,
javelin, standing jump, running, and yes, more wrestling), and running. The
latter took place as lengths of a straight track, over distances of roughly
200m, 400m, 1500m, and 5k.
But although it mentions these differences, the book does
its smallminded best to boil everything down to American capitalist values. We
are shown why various aspects of the Greeks’ games show them to have been
Americans who just didn’t know it yet – they are ‘brash’, ‘nouveau riche’, they
spend their time in ‘sports bars’ seeking out ‘potential for business’. Perhaps
some of these elements are even correct; but the impression the author gives is
of someone ignoring historical variety in the name of some pretty predictable
values.
Despite himself, though, Perrottet presents us with some of
the good stuff. Who knew that the games were held, every four years,
continuously from 776 BC to 394 AD (when they were banned by Christians)? Or
that every competitor had to prove his Greek heritage? The Greeks were far from
the modern Olympics’ universalist message – Johnny foreigner just wasn’t allowed
to play.
So, what’s the message that we can take from the Greek
Olympics? To take part, you needed to be good either at fighting, or at short
sprints. You needed to not be a barbarian from outside Greece, and certainly –
horrors! – not a woman. But if you still qualified, you got a chance to be
crowned with laurel leaves, to enjoy glory without end – and also without
payment or reward. Something that the author of ‘The Naked Olympics’ does his
level best to ignore.
