My book examines how Greek sport, the Olympics above all, has been used to attain and affirm social status from ancient times until today. This involves more than simply coveting and claiming the rewards of victory. Elite horsemen and athletes devalued or ignored the help they got from charioteers, jockeys and trainers. Women used chariot successes to rival men or boast of besting other women. Greek gladiators, slaves though they generally were, identified themselves as athletes. And the modern Olympic movement takes every opportunity to stress its connections with the ancient games.
In all this, promoting prestige has been more important than truthfulness or accuracy. As a result, our understanding of Greek sport—and of the modern movements which wish to be linked to it—is often wrong. One instance: we tend to oppose the idealized Greeks to the brutal Romans. Yet gladiatorial combat has as much right to be considered sport as the ancient Olympics.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
In a nutshell
My book examines how Greek sport, the Olympics above all, has been used to attain and affirm social status from ancient times until today. This involves more than simply coveting and claiming the rewards of victory. Elite horsemen and athletes devalued or ignored the help they got from charioteers, jockeys and trainers. Women used chariot successes to rival men or boast of besting other women. Greek gladiators, slaves though they generally were, identified themselves as athletes. And the modern Olympic movement takes every opportunity to stress its connections with the ancient games.
In all this, promoting prestige has been more important than truthfulness or accuracy. As a result, our understanding of Greek sport—and of the modern movements which wish to be linked to it—is often wrong. One instance: we tend to oppose the idealized Greeks to the brutal Romans. Yet gladiatorial combat has as much right to be considered sport as the ancient Olympics.