The naked Olympics : the true story of the ancient games

720 Pages·2004·2.68 MB·English

by  Thelander

THE NAKED OLYMPICS
THE TRUE STORY OF THE ANCIENT GAMES
ILLUSTRATIONS BY LESLEY THELANDER
TONY PERROTTET
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS
NEW YORK
2004 Random House Trade Paperback Original
Text copyright 2004, 2012 by Tony Perrottet
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Originally published in the United
States in trade paperback and in slightly different form by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random
House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2004. and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of
Canada Limited, Toronto.
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Film stills from Olympia, Ben-Hur, and The 300 Spartans are reproduced courtesy of Photofest.
Photographs on pages 4, 5, and 66 copyright © 2004 by Tony Perrottet
Illustrations are by Lesley Thelander and are reproduced courtesy of the illustrator.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Perrottet, Tony.
The naked Olympics: the true story of the ancient games / Tony Perrottet.
p. cm.
1. Olympic games (Ancient) I. Title.
GV23.P47 2004 796.48—dc22 2003066728
Random House website address: www.atrandom.com
eISBN: 978-1-58836382-4
Cover design: Robbin Schiff
Cover illustration: Philippe Lardy
v3.1
If the Olympic Games were being held right now, you would see why we Greeks attach such
paramount importance to athletics. Oh, I can’t describe the scene in mere words. You really should
experience firsthand the incredible pleasure of standing in that cheering crowd, admiring the
athletes’ courage and good looks, their amazing physical conditioning—their great skill and
irresistible strength—all their bravery and their pride, their unbeatable determination, their
unstoppable passion for victory!
I know that if you were there in the Stadium, you wouldn’t be able to
stop applauding.
—LUCIAN, Anacharsis, C. A.D. 140

Acknowledgments
THE STUDY OF the ancient Olympics is a crowded field, and one that I
entered with some hesitation. Ever since the Victorian era, when modern
interest in athletics was revived, scholars have pored over every detail of
Greek physical culture. (Energetic dons at British universities even took
to the arenas with handmade discuses and practiced running naked to
see if it improved speed.) The volume of scholarship has only increased
with the popularity of the modern Olympics, reborn in 1896 in Athens.
Was it possible to say something fresh about a subject that invites a new
spate of books every fourth year?
But reading through the voluminous literature, I realized that most
serious works on the Olympics maintained a very narrow (and often
excruciatingly dry) focus. Nobody had tried to re-create the ancient
Games in their sprawling, human entirety—as the ultimate pagan
festival, a mass gathering where the Greeks’ favorite sports were
combined with religious ceremonies and every possible ancient
entertainment. To answer my own central question—What was the
actual experience of attending this extravaganza?—I would need to write
a different book. So I decided to approach the Games day by day, step by
step, weaving together the strands of evidence to recapture what it was
like to be a part of the ancient Olympics as a spectator, an athlete, or
one of the overworked officials.
Naturally, this excursion into antiquity could not have been written
without the help of many people.
I would particularly like to thank Dr. David Gilman Romano, senior
researcher at the Mediterranean section of the University of
Pennsylvania, for generously providing his time and advice. As both a
classicist and a former track champion, he is uniquely qualified to
connect ancient evidence with actual practice, and bring Greek sports to
life. Of the many fine scholars working in the field, I must acknowledge
a debt above all to James Davidson and Lionel Casson for their
groundbreaking works on daily life in the ancient era, and to Stanley
Lombardo for his luminous translation of Homer.
In Greece, while I was researching at ancient Olympia itself, Dr.
Helmut Kyrieleis of the German Archaeological Institute very kindly
showed me around the recent excavations and helped interpret many
puzzling aspects of the site, while the experts Frank and Patricia, raising
a column of the Temple of Zeus, kindly invited me to their home for
dinner, providing the only square meal I had in modern Olympia, one of
Greece’s more mercenary service towns.
I would also like to offer my thanks to my excellent editor, Susanna
Porter, for her ongoing encouragement and perceptive advice on the
manuscript; her assistant, Evelyn O’Hara, who brought the strands of
text and artwork seamlessly together; the inspired art director Robbin
Schiff; my energetic agent, Elizabeth Sheinkman; and Rob Weissman, for
his enthusiastic support and advice on modern athletics.
Of course, my broadest debt is to my wife, Lesley Thelander, who
helped nurse this book from its earliest drafts; without her patient
assistance, detailed editing, and regular infusions of humor, it would
have remained a formless mass. Thanks finally to budding pentathlete
Henry Perrottet, who kept me suitably fit while writing about ancient
sports by running me ragged around the playgrounds of Manhattan and
beaches of Sydney.