What was it like going to the Olympics 2,400 years ago? Instead of London 2012, how about Olympia 388 B.C.?
If you came from abroad, you would have hired space on the deck of a cramped cargo vessel. Coming by land, you almost certainly would have walked, sleeping out in the warm August nights along the way.
It was safe enough. The games were a religious festival, spectators traveling to and fro were pilgrims, and that meant protection from harm under the Panhellenic 'sacred truce' -- not a ban on warfare but usually an effective guarantee of safe passage through war zones for passing sports fans.
New arrivals at the remote, rural spot in the northwestern Peloponnese where the games were held every four years -- always at the same place -- would probably have been exhausted by the journey and keen to rest up. Fat chance! Directed to the 'Olympic village,' they would find a vast, partly tented, partly open-to-the-skies encampment, with inadequate water supplies, heaps of stinking refuse and huge improvised latrines. The air was alive with millions of flies, mosquitoes and wasps. The dumps were overrun with rats. By the end of the five-day festival, no one had washed properly for a week, and you could smell the games a mile away.
In the Olympic stadium, you sat on a grassy bank under the searing heat of the midsummer sun. It was the same in the nearby Hippodrome, where the equestrian events were held. Naked athletes participated in foot races, the pentathlon, horse and chariot races and in three combat sports -- wrestling, boxing and the almost-no-holds-barred pankration. That was the crowd's favorite, because there were virtually no rules and it was all blood and pain.
Half the Olympic program, on the other hand, was given over to religious ritual: processions, hymn-singing, incense-burning, gory animal sacrifice and strange incantations by exotically attired priests. The Olympic site wasn't just a sports stadium; it was part-sanctuary, part-art gallery, part-heritage trail. Behind a dazzling colonnaded facade sat a gold-and-ivory statue of Zeus, divine master of ceremonies -- a stone god so huge that, had he stood up, his head would have gone through the temple roof. Outside was a mountainous heap of ash -- an altar formed of a thousand sacrifices. All around stood more shrines, altars and statues.
The athletic events honored Zeus. The Greeks told stories about the mythic heroes Heracles and Pelops to explain why there was a great festival at the site -- both heroes were claimed as founding fathers who gave thanks for divine assistance. But the sanctuary also honored an earth-mothers' union of fertility deities -- Granny Gaia, Mommy Rhea and Daughters Hera and Demeter. The only woman allowed into the stadium to watch the contests was, in fact, the high priestess of Demeter of the Earth-bed -- a relic of an age when the goddesses dominated Olympia.
Otherwise, the menfolk left their respectable women at home and headed off for the festival with fathers, brothers, sons, friends, neighbors and (male) lovers. Fringe events might include philosophy lectures, poetry readings and sundry charlatans and cranks offering to predict the future, but the real added attraction of the games wasn't the cultural Olympiad but the sexual one. At the Olympics, parties went on through the wee hours, and hundreds of prostitutes, both women and boys, touted their services until dawn.
A few things might seem familiar to us. Greek sport, for example, was as professionalized and politicized as our own. Dewy-eyed fables about backcountry ploughboys making it to Olympic stardom were exactly that. The truth was that most athletes were aristocrats who invested heavily in their training and expected to earn big prize money at the hundreds of local athletics festivals around Greece. As for politics, the Olympics was nothing if not a pageant of parochial hatreds and city-state rivalries, often laced with class antagonism, where oligarchic states like Sparta clashed on the running track with democracies like Athens.
Many things, though, would have seemed radically different. The classical Olympics were always run by a board of nine from the local town (Elis), so there were no international spats, no corruption scandals, no hijacking of the games to whitewash dictators.
There were no tickets, no VIP seats, no privileges for the great and the good. It was first-come, first-served, and if you got up late, bleary-eyed from the previous night's carousing, that was just tough.
In their heyday, the ancient Olympics -- before Macedonian warlords and Roman politicians sullied them -- had more in common with one of today's free open-air music festivals than with the corporate carnival planned for London this year. Besides the sport, sacrifice and sex, a profound spirit of democracy and egalitarianism suffused the games. Provided, of course, you were a freeborn Greek man -- not a women, a foreigner or a slave.
Getty Images古典奥运会充满着血腥和痛苦，还有大量的虫子。
参加2400年前的奥运会会是什么感觉？先别管2012年伦敦奥运会了，来看看公元前388年的奥运会是什么样子的吧。
如果你来自海外，你可能要在一艘狭窄拥挤的货船甲板上租用一个位置。如果从陆路前来，你差不多只能步行，在暖热的八月一路风餐露宿。
旅途安全是没有问题的。当时的奥运会是一个宗教节庆，来来往往的观众都是朝觐的教徒，这就意味着他们可以得到“神圣休战”（sacred truce）的庇护免受伤害──神圣休战不是一个禁止战争的协定，但它为途经战争地带的体育迷提供了一个有效的安全保障。
当前来参加四年一度的奥运会的人刚刚到达伯罗奔尼撒半岛（Peloponnese）西北部的偏远乡野──每次都是在这个地方──时，很可能因旅途劳顿而疲惫不堪，非常渴望能好好休整一下。不太可能！走进“奥运村”，他们会发现一片广阔的露营地，一部分支起了帐篷，一部分裸露在蓝天下。营地供水不足，眼前成堆的垃圾臭气熏天，临时公厕巨大无比。空中到处飞舞着蚊蝇和马蜂，垃圾场老鼠成灾。等到五天的节庆结束时，没有人在一周内好好洗漱过，一英里以外的地方就可以闻到奥运会的那股子气味了。
奥林匹克体育场内，你要头顶盛夏的烈日坐在草坡上，附近举行马术项目的竞技场里也是如此。运动员们赤身参加竞走、五项全能、赛马和战车比赛以及三项格斗运动──摔跤、拳击和几乎没有任何限制的搏击。搏击是最受观众青睐的项目，因为它实际上没有规则，有的只是血腥和痛苦。
另一方面，奥运会一半的安排都是进行宗教仪式：列队游行、唱圣歌、烧香、血淋淋的动物祭祀和穿着怪异的祭司祷念奇怪咒语。奥运会场地不仅仅是一个体育场，它还是神殿、画廊和古迹寻访线的综合体。在正面光彩夺目的廊柱之后端坐着宙斯（Zeus）这位众神之王的黄金象牙雕像──这座石头神像是如此之大，假如他站起身来，头肯定会冲破神庙的屋顶。外面是堆积如山的灰烬──由千头祭祀动物筑成的祭坛，周围矗立着更多的神殿、祭坛和雕像。
比赛项目的设置旨在向宙斯致敬。希腊人用赫拉克勒斯（Heracles）和珀罗普斯（Pelops）这两位神话英雄的故事来解释为什么这个地方有如此盛大的节日──这两位英雄据称是向神助表达感恩的鼻祖。同时这个神殿也是用来祭拜司管生育的大地母亲之家──祖母盖亚（Gaia）、母亲瑞亚（Rhea）、女儿赫拉（Hera）和得墨忒耳（Demeter）。获得许可进入体育场观看比赛的唯一一位女性就是大地之神得墨忒耳神庙的女祭司──该神庙是众女神统治奥林匹亚时代的一处遗迹。
男人们把他们可敬的女人留在家里，跟他们的父亲、兄弟、儿子、朋友、邻居和（男性）情人一起出发参加这个节庆。附加的项目可能包括哲学讲座、诗歌阅读、以及各式各样的表演和预测未来的奇特活动。但是奥运会真正的附加魅力不是文化奥林匹亚，而是它的色情元素。在奥运会上，派对一直持续到凌晨，数以百计的卖淫者，有女性也有男童，提供色情服务直到黎明。
有几样东西对我们来说似乎比较熟悉。比如，希腊的体育运动跟我们一样是职业化和政治化的。寓言中来自穷乡僻壤的农家孩子变成了奥运会明星也就是天真的寓言而已。事实上，大部分运动员都是贵族出身，他们花了大笔金钱进行训练，以期在希腊各地的运动会上赢得巨额奖金。至于政治，奥运会完全是地方仇敌和城邦对手之间的盛会，不时会发生一些阶级对抗，斯巴达（Sparta）那样的寡头政治国家在赛场跑道上会和雅典（Athens）这样的民主国家发生冲突。
然而，很多东西与我们现在截然不同。古典奥运会总是由来自当地城邦（Elis）的九人委员会管理，因此没有国际争执，没有腐败丑闻，没有粉饰独裁者的劫持绑架。
那时的奥运会没有门票，没有贵宾席，名人大腕也得不到优待，凡事讲求先来后到。如果你因为前一天晚上的寻欢作乐而起得晚了，就会很麻烦。
古代奥运会在其全盛时期──马其顿军阀和罗马政客们玷污奥运会前──与其说和今年在伦敦举行的这场企业嘉年华会类似，还不如说与今天的露天音乐会有更多的共同点。除了体育运动以外，祭祀、性和深厚的民主与平等精神都充斥着整个赛会。当然，前提条件是你一个希腊男性自由民──不是女人、外国人和奴隶。 |
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