The Greeks loved their games

The ancient Greeks made a distinction between sacred games and prize games.

The big, prestigious games — the Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian and Nemean — were athletic competitions staged in a religious setting. The idea was that a display of human excellence was an appropriate offering to the gods.

The sacred games were central to the culture. We think today in terms of nations, but the Greek world of 2,500 years ago was made up of perhaps 1,500 poleis, city-states, most of them small, with their own laws and ways. The Greek people, as a whole, kept in touch by attending the games. They kept track of history by dating events according to which Olympiad an event had occurred in. A sacred truce prevailed for a month on either side of the five-day festival. The games were bigger than war.

The prizes at the sacred games were wreaths: olive at Olympia, laurel at the Pythian games at Delphi, and wild celery at the Isthmus of Corinth and Nemea.

It was, like college athletics, high-minded and noble.

It got to be such a big deal that the athletes could cash in. Eventually, hundreds of games sprang up offering cash prizes. They were popular, in the same kind of way that sports have become popular in American culture. The amount of money that changed hands shocked people whose ideals still involved competing for a wreath.

The thinkers of the day had their say:

• Xenophanes complained that people should be known for intellectual achievement, not for their athletic prowess. I heard university professors say the same thing decades ago.

• Aristotle thought athletics ought to be a part of a broader education. But he also thought the extremes of training practiced by elite athletes contradicted the idea of education. A desire for excellence should be instructive, not destructive. 

• Galen, the father of medicine, was appalled by the injuries. But he also railed against the practices of those who proclaimed themselves professional trainers, some of whom had strange ideas about diet.

The striking thing to me is this: Those conversations took place centuries ago, but they have a contemporary ring. In the last couple of thousand years, we’ve harnessed machines, split the atom and learned to fly to the moon. But we haven’t come to an agreement on some basic features of our broad, shared culture.