On the Olympics on the Blogs of Two Teacher Wus

              Classical Athletics: War and Peace
      Wu Fei 
 
      Among the series of founding myths of ancient Rome, there had long circulated a story like this: after Romulus, the founding father of Rome, had built the city of Rome, he discovered that there were too many men in Rome, but he could not find enough women for them to marry and have children with, and this would surely affect Rome’s future strength and prosperity. So Romulus sent envoys to several neighboring city-states to discuss forging matrimonial ties, but all of the city-states refused him. Romulus then devised another plan: he held athletic contests in the city of Rome in honor of the sea god Neptune, thereby attracting many people from neighboring cities to come and watch, especially the Sabines, who almost came in full force. The men of Rome took the opportunity during the games to abduct Sabine maidens and force them into marriage. In retaliation, the Sabine king Titus Tatius led troops in a surprise attack on Rome, and the two sides fought a fierce battle in the city of Rome. In the end, the women who had already reconciled themselves to becoming Roman wives rushed out and stopped the slaughter between their fathers and brothers on one side and their husbands on the other. Thus Rome and the Sabines formed an alliance, and even Numa, the second king after Romulus, was a Sabine.      

      Like many other legends about the founding of Rome, this story not only cast a shadow once again over the character of the Roman father of the nation whom Romans revered, but even many Romans themselves no longer believed in its truth. Dionysius, Plutarch, Cicero, and others all thought that, according to the strict religious regulations of antiquity, the Romans at the time should have held a solemn wedding ceremony with the Sabine women, rather than there having been any abduction. Although this affair may not have actually happened, and although we do not know what sort of athletic contest Romulus held in honor of Neptune, the story of the abduction of the Sabine women is still quite helpful for us in understanding the spirit of competition in the Greek and Roman world. Because Romulus had failed in his marriage proposals to the city-states, he used athletic contests to attract large numbers of citizens from other city-states, then in an extremely rude manner forcibly seized women from them and compelled them into marriage, which in turn sparked the war between Rome and the Sabines. Yet the result of the war was that the Sabines had to recognize the marriages between their daughters and the Romans, and even formed an alliance with Rome. Though it was war, it was like the teasing and rough play of a wedding-night celebration; though it was marriage and alliance, it was mixed with a strong smell of blood. Romans and Sabines were both enemies and kin, at times fighting and at times making peace; no wonder that after Tatius was later assassinated, many thought it must have been Romulus who had had a hand in it.

      In Greece and Rome, there were very many kinds of athletic contests in various places, but very few developed into “international” competitions across city-states. As many researchers have pointed out, we cannot be misled by modern people’s fantasies about the spirit of the ancient Olympics into thinking that international competition in the classical world was really a paradise of peace and a herald of friendship. These competitions did indeed take peace as their slogan, and in fact also brought about some peace and alliances, but we should understand more clearly that although very few competitions were as dramatic as the one between Rome and the Sabines, they all intertwined peace and war.

      In fact, this double meaning necessarily exists in international athletic competitions both ancient and modern, namely, international competition is at once the greatest embodiment of internationalism and the fullest display of nationalism. When different city-states come together and compete fairly, it naturally has to be built on a foundation of friendship; without this most basic international cooperation and exchange, there can be no international competition. But at the same time, no matter how friendly the form, no matter how civilized the rules, this is after all a competition, and distinctions of rank will always be made; thus the participants of course hope to fully display the glory and power of their own city-state. What the Romans displayed toward the Sabines was precisely this combination of internationalism and nationalism (for the Greeks and Romans of the time, it should have been city-state-ism). On the one hand, Romulus warmly invited the neighboring city-states to come and share in the grand event; on the other hand, he was constantly scheming for his own city-state. The Romans expressed their love for the Sabine women through crude seizure; the Sabines, in turn, had no choice but to take up arms to defend their dignity; the result of the two sides’ scheming and counter-scheming was an alliance between the two city-states that was not all that stable.

      It was precisely around the same time that, in legend, the Romans seized the Sabine women, that Olympia also began to hold an all-Greek athletic festival. After that, Delphi, Corinth, and Nemea successively established similar games. These came to be known as the four great Panhellenic games. All four games were religious celebrations; among them, the games at Olympia and Nemea were dedicated to Zeus, the games at Delphi (which were also music competitions) were dedicated to Apollo, and the games at Corinth, like those founded by Romulus, were dedicated to Poseidon (that is, the Roman Neptune). The largest and most famous of them all, of course, was the competition at Olympia.

      Regarding the origin of the Olympic games, the Greeks probably had three accounts. Pindar said that Heracles of Thebes founded the games at Pisa to celebrate his victory over Augeas, king of Elis, and dedicated them to his father Zeus; in another passage, Pindar said that they were founded by Pelops, king of Asia Minor, because he had won a chariot race against the king of Pisa; Strabo, meanwhile, said that the earliest games were jointly founded by Iphitos, king of Elis, and Lycurgus of Sparta. Phlegon, writing in the age of Hadrian in the Roman Empire, synthesized these accounts and said that the original games had been participated in by Peisos, Pelops, Heracles, and others, but were later interrupted for a time, and then were restored by Lycurgus, Iphitos, and Cleoisthenes of Pisa together. According to this account, Apollo of Delphi, through an oracle, ordered them to restore the games, to have all the city-states participating in the games proclaim a truce, cease conflict, and to inscribe this order on Iphitos’ discus and place it in a temple of Hera. Phlegon dated the year of the restoration of the Olympics to 884 BCE, but the philosopher Hippias of Elis and Aristotle successively dated it to 776 BCE.

      Whichever account one accepts, they all fully show that an important result of the Olympic games at Olympia was the achievement of peace among the city-states. The widely accepted account of Iphitos and Lycurgus founding or restoring the Olympics clearly proves the relationship between the Olympics and peace. Even those who accept the first two accounts often think that the Olympics first of all served to achieve peace among the Greek city-states. For example, the orator Lysias’s “Olympic Oration” makes this very clear:

      “Gentlemen, we ought to commemorate many of Heracles’ deeds, but especially remember that it was he, out of love for the Greeks, who first convened this contest. Before that, the city-states were like strangers to one another. But he, after crushing tyranny and punishing violence, established an athletic contest, a challenge to wealth, a display of wisdom in the fairest part of Greece, enabling us to gather together for these delights of eye and ear of ours, because he thought that our gathering here would be the beginning of mutual goodwill among the Greeks.”

      Before every Olympic Games, three envoys would set out from Elis, wearing olive wreaths and carrying scepters, and travel to every city-state in Greece. Their duty was to announce the exact date of the festival to the various Greek city-states, to invite everyone to participate, and, most importantly, to proclaim to the Greeks the “Olympic truce.” Thus people called them “truce envoys.” At first, it was enough to suspend hostilities for one month, but later this was extended to two or three months, so that those coming from afar could return home safely. According to this truce, anyone participating in the festival was forbidden to take up arms, and was also forbidden to begin legal disputes or carry out capital punishment.

      More than three hundred years after the establishment of the Olympics, in 480 BCE, the various Greek city-states united and defeated the Persian invasion. At the Olympics held in 476 BCE, when Themistocles, the Athenian hero who resisted the Persians, entered the stadium, people no longer paid attention to the athletes, but surrounded him to praise and cheer. The Persian Wars made the Greeks especially aware of the significance of harmony and unity for all of Greece. Thus the Greeks began to hope that, by establishing a completely neutral court of judges, they could resolve conflicts among the city-states. The temple of Zeus at Olympia was responsible for appointing, from among its priests, a committee to handle this matter. The first case handled by this committee at Olympia was a dispute between Boeotia and Athens, and afterward it mediated many similar cases. Thus Olympia became a symbol of peaceful coexistence among the Greek city-states. The Zeus festival at Olympia seemed truly to have brought sacred peace.

      But we still cannot overstate the “internationalism” of such competition and the peace it brought about. This internationalism not only coexisted with city-state-ism, but was precisely sustained by this city-state-ism. So long as city-state-ism existed, athletic competition on the field could still always possibly turn into a war of swords and spears, just as we saw between the Romans and the Sabines. And to understand this point, we need to look at the Olympics within the broader religious, cultural, and political background of Greece as a whole.

      The city-state was the basic political and religious institution of the Greeks and Romans. Although there were religious festivals that crossed city-state boundaries, before Alexander and the Roman Empire it was not yet possible for a political entity transcending the city-state to emerge. Coulanges, in his famous The Ancient City, describes in detail the process by which the city-state system arose, pointing out that the ancient peoples’ earliest religion was household religion, and the most sacred thing was each household’s hearth fire; hence each family had different gods, even if the gods’ names were the same. Later, different households united to form phratries; phratries united to form tribes; and tribes united to form the city-state. The union of the households was also the union of the household gods of each family. Each city-state had its own sacred fire and its own religion, and its high priest was the ruler of the city-state. The main rites of city-state religion included common meals, various festivals and celebrations, purification rites, and so on. The laws of the city-state derived from religion, and thus the citizen assembly also had a religious character; the political and legal assemblies of the city-state likewise became part of the rites of city-state religion. Among these rites, the common meal, purification rites, the citizen assembly, and so forth were all things requiring the participation of the entire body of citizens. Coulanges’s research is simply an excellent interpretation of Aristotle’s account of the origin of the city-state and his famous dictum that “man is by nature a political animal.”

      Aristotle says in the Politics that households form villages, villages form city-states, and the city-state is according to nature, the end of man, and thus within the city-state man completes his nature. Why is it that man cannot complete his nature within the household? Or, why can the city-state not further unite with other city-states to form a larger political community? Why is it that only life within the city-state is the most natural and the best life?

      The city-state that Aristotle speaks of is no longer merely a mechanical union among households, but the city-state after undergoing the series of revolutions described by Coulanges. By that time, household religion had become unimportant, the aristocrats from the great families no longer held the political power of the city-state, democracy and electoral institutions had basically been established in the various city-states, and people could already think about the good life with philosophy rather than relying solely on traditional religious rites. None of this was possible within the household or in the early city-state. The city-state became a trinity of religion, politics, and philosophy. Thus Aristotle summed up the development from household to city-state by saying that people come for the sake of living, but end up realizing the good life. This way of life cannot and does not need to be further extended into a larger political community. Coulanges says:

      “The ancients could neither establish nor even conceive of a social organization different from the city-state. The Greeks, the Italians, after much reflection and long thought, never thought of allowing several cities to unite on equal terms and coexist under a unified government. Though city-states might, out of calculation of immediate interests, form temporary alliances with one another, complete unity was impossible. Religion made each city self-contained, unable to blend into another body; independence was the creed of the city-state.”

      In a city-state of a few thousand people, everyone could gather for all kinds of religious rites, hold citizens’ assemblies, and conduct fair elections; but if city-states united, it would be impossible for all citizens to dine together in common meals, impossible for everyone to attend the purification rite, and impossible for everyone to vote. To Greeks and Romans, this was a fundamentally impossible political arrangement. Even when one city-state defeated another, it could not annex it and form a larger state; it would either destroy the conquered city-state and reduce its people to slavery, or else still preserve its sovereignty. Thus, even after the Persian Wars, at the time when all Greece was most united, people may have come up with the institution of arbitration courts, but they had no intention of uniting all Greece into one state. The aforementioned Lysias, although in his speech he praised the Olympic Games for bringing about amity among the city-states, never went any further and turned amity into unity.

      Therefore, when different city-states formed alliances, we cannot take this to mean that the city-states had united into a larger political entity. Such a federation certainly also had common altars, heroes, gods, festivals, as well as various banquets and celebrations. At the federation’s common festivals and rites, it became possible to hold athletic contests. The four great Panhellenic games were the largest of these contests, and thus became the largest-scale religious rites among the Greek city-states. However, such federations always remained limited to religious activities; there would, when necessary, be joint military actions, but very little joint political action, and one absolutely cannot take the activities at Olympia as a federal parliament attended by the city-states. Even the necessary truce during the games was only the piety required by a temporary act of worship; it was not true pacifism. The games never had the authority to permanently forbid warfare between city-states. At the Pythian Games at Delphi, the spoils of war were even used as prizes for athletes, and Zeus at Olympia also accepted many spoils of war as offerings. The priests at Olympia were also military advisers. The cities participating in the games not only vied in sport, but also built war memorials in abundance, boasting against one another. The true purpose of the Olympic truce was to express glory to the lord god Zeus; the truce was only a secondary consequence of this religious purpose.

      Since the Olympic Games were merely a religious gathering among independent city-states, and not a political union, such athletic contests naturally also became occasions for each city-state to display its own glory. At the Olympic Games of that time, the city-states did not send formal national teams as they do now; the athletes who competed generally represented only themselves. But the win or loss of each athlete still greatly affected the glory and strength of the city-state to which he belonged. Thus, competition at the games naturally became competition among the city-states. The city-states still cared deeply about their athletes’ performances, and victorious athletes would also receive enormous rewards in their own city-states. During the Peloponnesian War, the much-controversial Athenian general Alcibiades pleased the Athenians by using his excellent results in the Olympic Games. Cicero also commented that what Olympia offered was “not only sport, religion, and revelry. The city-states would send representatives and individuals for various reasons, for ambition or curiosity.”

      Since the Greek Olympic Games were founded in 776 BCE and continued until they were finally discontinued, they were held every four years with almost no interruption in between. However, this did not mean that the Olympic Games had nothing at all to do with violence and war; the truce did not always remain effective. During the Peloponnesian War, Elis and Athens stood together, and therefore refused Sparta permission to participate. At the Olympic Games of 420 BCE, Elis barred the Spartans from entering the temple of Zeus and also forbade them to compete. Fearing that the Spartans might use force to enter the temple, they had no choice but to station heavy troops to guard the stadium, and the entire contest ended in a state of alarm and anxiety.

      Elis had long controlled Olympia, but the city-states of Pisa and Arcadia were also always coveting the temple of Zeus at Olympia. In 365 BCE, the Arcadians, with the assistance of the Pisans, captured Olympia and seized the temple of Zeus. The next year, the Arcadians hosted the Olympic Games. But the people of Elis themselves did not observe the Olympic truce; instead, during the very holding of the games, they attacked the Arcadians and retook Olympia by force.

      Besides Olympia, the sanctuaries of the other three games also failed to escape the invasion of war. For example, the Argives once captured Nemea and moved the Nemean Games to Argos. In 388 BCE, during the Nemean Games, the Spartans disregarded the truce and attacked Argos; later the games were moved back to Nemea.

      After Rome grew powerful, these holy sites likewise could not avoid being consumed by the flames of war. Sulla once plundered the temples at Olympia and Delphi, using the loot as military pay, and in 80 BCE he moved the Olympic Games to Rome. The Roman emperor Caligula also once transferred the statue of Zeus to Rome.

      The history of this classical athletics has always been accompanied by the clashes and slaughter of different city-states. The reason the city-states could gather at Olympia and elsewhere to hold the games was, on the one hand, that everyone had to worship the same gods, and on the other, that each city-state also had to pursue its own glory and strength. The premise of internationalism is city-state-ism. And since the city-states existed independently of one another, competition among them was inevitable, including not only athletic competition but also, necessarily, armed confrontation.

      To understand the classical spirit of competition, one must view it in the broader political and cultural context of the classical city-state. Competition among city-states was not a transcendence of the city-state system, but rather an affirmation of that system and its religious worship. The spirit of Olympia is the combination of internationalism and city-state-ism. It could bring great prosperity to the politics and religion of the ancient city-states, but it could not bring about a universal spirit that transcended the city-state. The festivals at Olympia were not meant to abolish competition among the city-states, but to encourage athletic competition in a peaceful manner. The greatest support one can give to the Olympic spirit is to fully display the power of one’s own city-state at the Olympics. Perhaps in precisely this sense, philosophers like Plato still had considerable reservations about the Olympic Games.

      It is precisely because the spirit of Olympia does not represent a universal spirit that transcends the city-state that, after Olympia was later incorporated into the Roman Empire—especially after Christianity, this universalizing religion, destroyed the old city-states and their religions—such athletic contests gradually declined, and the Olympic Games were the last of the four great games to be discontinued. Although the Olympic Games were still able to continue during the Roman Republic and in the early Roman Empire, Olympia was first plundered by Sulla and Caligula, then invaded by barbarians, then suppressed by Christian prohibitions, and later continually eroded by earthquakes and natural disasters. In 426 CE, even the temple of Zeus was burned down. After that, not only did the gods who had protected Olympia one after another abandon this place, but even its inhabitants moved away in turn. Olympia eventually became a deserted place. Thus, the Olympic Games, together with the spirit of the classical city-state that they represented, were buried underground, quietly awaiting the archaeologists more than a thousand years later.
 

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Guchuo:

Whether Greek city-state democracy, philosophy, or the Olympic Games, the consistent “spirit” is “freedom.” War or competition is “the pursuit of excellence”; the victor displays his excellence and becomes a “hero,” while the loser, though he may well feel humiliated, will more often feel only shame, because he is not as excellent as his opponent, and he will respect the victor. This is utterly different from any aggressive, conquering, or plundering struggle: those wars begin with resentment, and what they reap is hatred; war is launched out of hatred and contempt, and in the end it still brings back hatred and contempt. But the Olympic spirit tells you: fight because of respect and friendship, and in the end what you reap is also respect and friendship.

The article says that “the Olympic Games first and foremost are about achieving peace among the various Greek city-states”; I do not think so. The main purpose of the Olympics is not peace, but the pursuit of excellence, or in other words the pursuit of “virtue.” Just look at Lysias’s “Olympic Speech” as cited in the article: is not the main point of the Olympics precisely that “…this is a challenge to wealth, a display of wisdom in the fairest part of Greece,”

Only in this way can we easily understand why “the priests at Olympia were also military advisers. The cities participating in the games not only vied in sport, but also built war memorials in abundance, boasting against one another.” — because the competitions at Olympia themselves were war, and war itself was “mutual boasting.”

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In the reply on Weiming BBS:

What, exactly, was the theme of the forum discussion? The notice I received said it was “about the Olympics and the spirit of ancient Greece…,” but in those two articles I did not see any discussion of the “spirit of ancient Greece,” nor did I even see much interpretation of the “Olympic spirit”; rather, there was only some opportunistic linking to the fashionable “universalism.” But as Wu Lao shi has already mentioned, the spirit of ancient Greece is not universalism, so what, exactly, is the spirit of ancient Greece? Wu Lao shi did not discuss it.

The article “Classical Athletics” says that the ancient Olympic Games did not embody a universalist spirit, while “Olympia” then says that the modern Olympics embody universalism. But what, exactly, is the Olympic spirit? Since the classical Olympic Games did not carry a universalist spirit, how could the modern Olympics carry it? Why do modern people want to endow the Olympics with a universal spirit? Is it merely because of the progress of the times? Or because the Olympic spirit has been misinterpreted? Wu Lao shi did not discuss any of this. And why are the so-called universalism and internationalism seemingly taken for granted as good things? (I happen to oppose this.) Wu Lao shi also did not discuss that. Even what the so-called universalism actually is, Wu Lao shi did not clarify.

I have already left a message on Wu Lao shi’s blog pointing out his conflation of “universal spirit” and “peace.” The universal is not necessarily peaceful (and may instead be the establishment of a world empire by violent means), and peace does not necessarily require universal spirit (for example, the ancient Greek Olympics required only peace, not universality). Rather, I would say that “the universal” and “peace” are simply questions on two different dimensions; only in modern times, due to the rise of universalism, have the universal and peace been conflated—because modern people think that if people are each independent and mutually distinct (anti-universal), this will inevitably lead to conflict, and thus “anti-universal” and the pursuit of peace seem incompatible. But this means that modern people have already lost the largeness of spirit that the spirit of ancient Greece embodied in the classical Olympics: mutual respect for complete independence, respect for the “Other.” This breadth of mind has been all but lost in modern times, yet modern people instead think they are more tolerant than the ancients; in fact, it is a joke.

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On Wu Guosheng’s blog: 

The Olympics are about to be held, and one detail is worth debating: were the ancient Greek Olympics “for fun” rather than “competition”? No, they were not. The ancient Greek Olympics were not only competition, but could also be called “war,” and the priests at Olympia were also military advisers.

In my view, the ancient Greek Olympics were both “for fun” and “war,” and moreover a most lofty form of war. This is much like the form in classical war where there would often be a duel between the “heroes” of the two sides. Ancient Greek war was sacred; (as Wu Lao shi says) slaves had no right to take part in battle, and the heroes rather than cannon fodder charged at the very front, so the fair combat between the heroes of the two sides was nobler than the chaotic fighting of soldiers. The Olympics then provided a more fair and more lofty form of competition. Just as when heroes duel, the soldiers of both sides must cease fighting in order to show respect and create the conditions for fair combat, when the heroes gather at Olympia for the noblest contest, all the city-states should cease fighting.

If by “playing” one means putting process before outcome, then the ancient Greeks certainly were not like that. The purpose of the Olympic Games was precisely to display one’s “wisdom” (virtue). Victory could bring the athlete not only supreme glory, but also glory to the polis as well, even though the athlete competed only as an individual. The Olympics embodied an ancient Greek spirit of “striving for excellence.” This spirit made Greek warfare transcend utility as well: not only must one defeat the opponent, one must defeat the opponent in a fair and noble manner; otherwise one’s excellence could not be manifested.

Ancient Greek democracy and science arose from a way of life that loved argument, and this too is related to the culture of “striving for excellence.” Debate is also a way of showing excellence through fair competition. In addition, the spirit of “freedom” also seems to be continuous with “striving for excellence,” because a fair and sacred form of competition must not rely on external force to defeat the opponent; rather, one must fully and completely display one’s own power in order to reveal one’s glory. At the same time, one must respect one’s competitor to the utmost, because if the opponent is weak, victory will not be able to display glory; only when the opponent is also strong can victory reveal one’s own excellence. Therefore, a competition that displays excellence already contains within it the independence of both oneself and one’s opponent, and reverence for that independence.