Section 4. Greek Athletics.
It is this conception which gives, or appears at least in the retrospect to give, a character so gracious and fine to Greek athletics. In fact, if we look more closely into the character of the public games in Greece we see that they were so surrounded and transfused by an atmosphere of imagination that their appeal must have been as much to the aesthetic as to the physical sense. For in the first place those great gymnastic contests in which all Hellas took part, and which gave the tone to their whole athletic life, were primarily religious festivals. The Olympic and Nemean Games were held in honour of Zeus, the Pythian, of Apollo, the Isthmean, of Poseidon. In the enclosures in which they took place stood temples of the gods; and sacrifice, prayer, and choral hymn were the back-ground against which they were set. And since in Greece religion implied art, in the wake of the athlete followed the sculptor and the poet. The colossal Zeus of Pheidias, the wonder of the ancient world, flashed from the precincts of Olympia its glory of ivory and gold; temples and statues broke the brilliant light into colour and form; and under that vibrating heaven of beauty, the loveliest nature crowned with the finest art, shifted and shone what was in itself a perfect type of both, the grace of harmonious motion in naked youths and men. For in Greek athletics, by virtue of the practice of contending nude, the contest itself became a work of art; and not only did sculptors draw from it an inspiration such as has been felt by no later age, but to the combatants themselves, and the spectators, the plastic beauty of the human form grew to be more than its prowess or its strength, and gymnastic became a training in aesthetics as much as, or more than, in physical excellence.
And as with the contest, so with the reward, everything was designed to appeal to the sensuous imagination. The prize formally adjudged was symbolical only, a crown of olive; but the real triumph of the victor was the ode in which his praise was sung, the procession of happy comrades, and the evening festival, when, as Pindar has it, "the lovely shining of the fair-faced moon beamed forth, and all the precinct sounded with songs of festal glee," [Footnote: Pindar, Ol. xi. 90.— Translated by Myers] or "beside Kastaly in the evening his name burnt bright, when the glad sounds of the Graces rose." [Footnote: Pindar, Nem. 6. 65.]
Of the Graces! for these were the powers who presided over the world of Greek athletics. Here, for example, is the opening of one of Pindar's odes, typical of the spirit in which he at least conceived the functions of the chronicler of sport:
"O ye who haunt the land of goodly steeds that drinketh of Kephisos' waters, lusty Orchomenos' Queens renowned in song, O Graces, guardians of the Minyai's ancient race, hearken, for unto you I pray. For by your gift come unto men all pleasant things and sweet, and the wisdom of a man and his beauty, and the splendour of his fame. Yea, even gods without the Graces' aid rule never at feast or dance; but these have charge of all things done in heaven, and beside Pythian Apollo of the golden bow they have set their thrones, and worship the eternal majesty of the Olympian Father. O lady Aglaia, and thou Euphrosyne, lover of song, children of the mightiest of the gods, listen and hear, and thou Thalia delighting in sweet sounds, and look down upon this triumphal company, moving with light step under happy fate. In Lydian mood of melody concerning Asopichos am I come hither to sing, for that through thee, Aglaia, in the Olympic games the Minyai's home is winner." [Footnote: Pindar, Ol. xiv.—Translated by Myers.]
This is but a single passage among many that might be quoted to illustrate the point we are endeavouring to bring into relief—the conscious predominance in the Greek games of that element of poetry and art which is either not present at all in modern sport or at best is a happy accessory of chance. The modern man, and especially the Englishman, addicts himself to athletics, as to other avocations, with a certain stolidity of gaze on the immediate end which tends to confine him to the purely physical view of his pursuit. The Greek, an artist by nature, lifted his not less strenuous sports into an air of finer sentiment, touched them with the poetry of legend and the grace of art and song, and even to his most brutal contests—for brutal some of them were—imparted so rich an atmosphere of beauty, that they could be admitted as fit themes for dedication to the Graces by the choice and spiritual genius of Pindar.