The media keep whining about the hotels in Athens. Will there be enough? Will they be air-conditioned? At Olympia, there was exactly one hotel, the Leonidaion, and only ambassadors bearing gifts for Zeus could stay there. Everybody else had to sleep outside. The rich folks had fancy tents. The rest of us just slept in the fields. We didn't grumble about it. If the ground wasn't comfortable for sleeping, we just drank more wine until we passed out.
You modern sports fans are a bunch of crybabies. In the old days, we expected to be uncomfortable at the Olympics. You were hot and dirty and hung over and you smelled like a donkey, but you didn't mind because the 40,000 other spectators were just as hot, dirty, hung over and smelly as you.
(Jason Reed -- Reuters)
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| _____ Countdown to Athens _____
• The Olympics are less than a week away and organizers are pulling the pieces together for the Aug. 13 opening.
_____ From The Post _____
• Dana Vollmer will be one of those tales of courage that come up during the Olympics.
• Michael Wilbon: In Athens, the new can't hold a torch to the ancient.
• Lauryn Williams is far more interested in chasing goals she can see rather than those she can imagine.
• Notebook: Jerome Young reportedly tested positive for the banned drug EPO at a meet last month.
_____ Live Online _____
• Tony Azevedo, the top scorer on the U.S. Men's Water Polo team, took questions July 28.
• Alexander Kitroeff discussed his book, "Wrestling with the Ancients: Modern Greek Identity and the Olympics," and the history of the Games on July 27.
_____ On Our Site _____
• Photos: Swimming trials.
• Photos: Track and field trials.
_____ Swimming's Wonder Boy _____
• Phelps's main training partners and buddies reflect on blown chances. (July 27)
• Coach Bob Bowman has been the guiding force for Phelps. (July 4)
• Gallery: Coach shows the way to Athens.
• Numerous endorsements already have made Phelps a millionaire. (June 1)
• Gallery: The road to the Games are paved with gold.
• Phelps expected to be the Games' most-decorated athlete. (April 18)
• Gallery: Phelps making a splash.
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"You put up with it all," said Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher from the first century A.D., "because it's an unforgettable spectacle."
He was right. It was one helluva spectacle. Not just the Games but the whole scene. Between sporting events, you took a tour of the Temple of Zeus. You listened to orators and poets and storytellers. You watched the sword-swallowers, the acrobats, the dancers, the fire-eaters. There were beauty contests, Homer-reciting contests, eating contests.
"The Olympic festival," writes Perrottet, "was the Woodstock of antiquity."
Of course, some people hated the Olympics. In fact, one of the attractions of the Olympics was the soapbox orators who mocked the Olympics. One was Diogenes, a Cynic philosopher who said the athletes were ignorant brutes who possessed "less soul than swine."
Diogenes explained why he came to the Olympics to deliver speeches to the sports fans he despised: "Just as a good doctor rushes to help in places full of the sick, so it was necessary for a wise man to go where idiots proliferate."
Looking back on it, I guess idiots did proliferate. Hey, I was one of them. But it sure was fun while it lasted.
The End, and Beginning
Huh? What did you say? Speak up, sonny, I'm 2,000 years old, I don't hear too good anymore.
You want to know what happened to the ancient Olympics? Why they ended back in A.D. 394?
Well, the short answer is: The Christian killjoys killed them off.
In A.D. 312, Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, which included Greece, I'm sad to say. The Christians hated the Olympics because it was a pagan festival. They didn't like us worshiping Zeus and they didn't like the nudity. As Poliakoff says, "This celebration of the flesh was highly problematic for Christians."
In A.D. 394, Emperor Theodosius I banned pagan festivals, including the Olympics. After that, the Christians stole the great statue of Zeus and carted it off to Constantinople, then burned the Temple of Zeus. That's what happens when religious nuts take over your government.
For 1,500 years, we didn't have any Olympics. Then in 1896, a French baron named Pierre de Coubertin started the modern Olympics, with the Games in Athens that year.
