Prologue
The inspiration for this paper came rather unexpectedly. In February 2006, I made the long trip from my home in Sioux City, Iowa, to Torino, Italy in order to witness the Olympic Winter Games. Barely a month later, I found myself in California at the newly-renovated Getty Villa, home to one of the world's great collections of Greco-Roman antiquities. At the Villa I attended a talk about a Roman mosaic depicting a boxing scene from Virgil's Aeneid. The tiny tiles showed not only two boxers, but a wobbly looking ox. ‘What is wrong with this ox?’ asked the docent. ‘Why is he there at the match?’ The answer, of course, is that he is the prize. And the reason he is wobbly is because the victor has just sacrificed this prize to the gods in thanksgiving, by punching him between the eyes. A light went on in my head; I turned to my husband and whispered, ‘Just like Joey Cheek in Torino.’ My husband smiled indulgently, but my mind was already racing. I realized that by donating his victory bonus to charity, Cheek had tapped into one of the oldest and most venerable traditions in sport: individual sacrifice for the benefit of the larger community. It is a tradition that derives from the religious function of the ancient Olympic Games and it deserves to be revived the modern world.
Introduction
Modern sport often evokes its ancient Hellenic heritage. The educational link between sport and character, the sociological link between sport and justice, and the political link between sport and peace all derive from the ideals and practice of athletics in ancient Greece.Footnote 1 The modern Olympic festival conceives of itself as a revival of the ancient Olympic Games and it embraces their history and mythology insofar as they support its mission. One problematic and often overlooked aspect of the Hellenic legacy, however, is the religious character of ancient sport. Whereas common religious belief was foundational to and instrumental in the millennium-long success of the ancient Olympic Games, the modern challenge of uniting a religiously diverse world community has pushed the religious legacy to the sidelines. Given the evidence that religious hegemony was responsible for the demolition of the ancient Olympic Games (they are believed to have been abolished as a pagan festival by the Christian emperor Theodosius), modern attempts to dissociate the Games from religion are certainly understandable. But in jettisoning the Olympics' religious heritage, have we thrown out the proverbial baby with its bathwater? I believe that we may have. The modern Olympic Movement is allowing a commercial paradigm to usurp its higher purpose. In order to ennoble itself, the Olympic Games should redirect its commercial aspirations toward humanitarian goals, thereby reclaiming the ancient connection between Olympic sport and community service.
1. The Ancient Heritage
The connection may not be so distant as it first seems. Even in today's cynical and commercially-driven world of sport-entertainment, athletic champions are often lauded for their ‘sacrifice’. Commonly, the word evokes the sweat and toil of training combined with the semi-monastic life supposedly led by athletes. In almost any other endeavor, the effort and lifestyle required would be termed ‘professionalism’, or perhaps simply ‘hard work’. Why in athletics do we call it ‘sacrifice’? The obvious answer is an ancient one. Most sport in Greco-Roman antiquity was a form of religious sacrifice. Athletic performance at such festivals was considered an offering to the gods, offered as a service to the community. Extravagant rewards certainly were showered upon ancient Olympic athletes,Footnote 2 but the religious context of the Games reveals that such rewards were motivated by perceived community benefits rather than commercial economy. The primary function of the ancient festival was not entertainment or product-promotion, but the collective garnering of divine favor in hope of concrete community benefits such as plentiful harvests, release from disease, or victory in war (i.e. food, medicine, and conflict-resolution). Ancient athletes, in the religious context of the games, should be seen foremost as community servants.
Let me illustrate my explanation with the example, I mentioned earlier. Book five of Virgil's ancient Roman epic, The Aeneid, describes contests in rowing, running, archery, and boxing. Although the text was written in the last century before the Common Era and the games themselves are supposed to be set in the Bronze Age of Troy, modern sports fans would recognize something familiar in the boxing match. A cocky young Trojan named Dares taunts his would-be challengers by asking permission to take the prize without a contest. Reluctantly, a more experienced local Sicilian named Entellus deigns to fight the Trojan, despite misgivings about his advancing age. The match is a classic duel between the larger, slower, but wiser Entellus, and the younger, quicker, more eager Dares. The nimble Trojan dodges one of Entellus' mighty blows, and the heavier man falls to the ground under his own weight. He returns, however, with a vengeance and rains down such a fury of blows on his opponent that the fight must be stopped to save young Dares' life. Entellus is awarded the prize of an ox, and it is at this point that the narrative takes an unfamiliar turn for modern readers. The mighty boxer strikes the animal flush between the horns, ‘bursting the brains out’, and the ox falls lifelessly to the ground.Footnote 3
To make sense of Entellus' gesture, we must first understand the religious purpose of ancient Greek sport and, most specifically, the social function of sacrifice. The ancient Olympic Games are believed to have originated sometime around the 8th century BCE, not far from the time that Homer wrote about the Trojan War. Many scholars believe that the games depicted in Homer's Iliad depict the athletic contests of his own age, rather than those of the Bronze Age Mycenaeans. By the time Virgil writes his ‘sequel’ to Homer's epics (almost 700 years later), sport was major force in Greco-Roman culture. Although both authors depict funeral or festival rather than Olympic Games, the religious association is undeniable. The gods Athena and Apollo actively involve themselves in Homer's games, and when Virgil's Entellus kills the ox, he follows it up with a prayer, describing the animal as payment for this victory and for his successful career.Footnote 4 The animal sacrifice is at once recompense to the gods and to the community that has supported him.
Greek athletics, perhaps in their origin but certainly in their Olympic manifestation, were a form of religious sacrifice.Footnote 5 Long before 776 BCE, Olympia had been a holy place reserved for religious rites and gatherings. The purpose of such sanctuaries and festivals was to mark off a place dedicated to the god, and then to offer gifts to him or her, either in gratitude for fortune gained or in the hope of good fortune to come. Ancient Greeks believed that gods controlled things that they couldn't; things like health, fertility, weather, even love. The relationship between human and divine in this realm was seen as one of exchange.Footnote 6 I pray that my ships or army are successful, offering some portion of the benefits if they are. These items (usually a tithe of the booty collected) are left in the sanctuary as payment on my vow (hence ‘votives’), and they become the property of the god.Footnote 7 During a typical animal sacrifice, one or more prize bulls or lambs is selected, stunned, killed, and butchered on the spot. The thighbones are burnt on the altar along with some fat, the savory smoke a way of attracting the sky-dwelling god to the sanctuary to hear worshippers' prayers. The rest of the meat is roasted and fed to the worshippers in a public banquet.Footnote 8
Somewhere along the line a footrace was added to sacrificial ritual at Olympia.Footnote 9 Part of its purpose may have been to entertain worshippers while the meat was butchered and cooked,Footnote 10 but it is easy to interpret the race itself as a kind of sacrifice – another way of attracting the god's attention and favor. The ‘track’ was originally located within the sacred area and the race was run in a straight line from the far end of the grounds toward the altar upon which the offerings would be made.Footnote 11 The Olympic winner (then, as now) did not receive a prize, but in a way, became himself a prize for the god. The tokens of victory: a palm branch, olive wreath, and ribbons tied around his head and limbs, are all associated with sacrificial animals and priests.Footnote 12 Also like the sacrificial victim, the winning runner demonstrates his outstanding willingness to come forward to be sacrificed.Footnote 13 Given the gods' involvement in the outcome of Homer's funeral games, one may even interpret the Olympic race as a chance for the god to select the victor; to pick his own symbolic sacrifice – the one that pleases him most.
Accurate selection of a pleasing sacrifice was essential since so much was thought to be riding on the favor of the gods. This created a persistent epistemological problem in Greek religion; one important enough to be addressed directly in Plato's dialogue Euthyphro. It may be that Olympic-style sport, designed to select single winners from varied pools of contestants, was developed at least partly as a response to this problem.Footnote 14 In any case, the victor's status as a symbolic sacrificial offering is vividly evidenced by his being given the honor of lighting the sacrificial flame.Footnote 15 Remembering that the purpose of the smoke is to attract the attention of the god, we might speculate that the Games themselves did the same – not just by the skill and prowess displayed, but also by drawing large numbers of pilgrims to the festival. The better the show and the larger the crowd the more likely the deity was to turn his or her attention to the festival and therefore to the prayers of the worshipping community. The quantity and value of votive offerings housed at Olympia was renowned in the ancient world and stood as tangible evidence of the festival's practical success. Prayers made to Zeus in association with the Games were apparently being answered, so it makes sense that several other religious festivals followed Olympia's example and added contests of various kinds.
Interpreted in the context of ancient religious sacrifice, then, the athlete's Olympic success not only brings glory to himself and to his family, it also benefits the entire community by attracting the gods' attention to their prayers and bringing concrete goods such as successful harvests and release from disease. The most immediate and tangible example of practical community benefit from worship was, of course, the banquet of meat from the sacrificed animals. In a world without freezers such meat-based meals were rare, and much care was taken in the proper butchering and apportioning of the meat.Footnote 16 In addition there were important psychological benefits to witnessing the athlete's success. Since athletic victory was believed to come from a combination of toil (ponos), sweat, and divine favor, it inspired onlookers to forge ahead with their day-to-day struggles, called ‘agones’ just like the Games themselves. Further, the gathering of diverse (and sometimes warring) peoples on neutral ground to worship a common deity had a bonding effect.Footnote 17 It unified and pacified the group, building real community ties as symbolized in the ritual of sharing a common meal at the conclusion of the festival.Footnote 18
So Entellus' killing of the victory ox, in its socio-temporal context, is not a senseless act of violence. Instead, it should be viewed as a religious sacrifice that expresses a venerable athletic tradition. The victorious individual offers his earned glory back to his community, inspiring their hearts, filling their stomachs, and strengthening their bonds: he is an honored and honorable community servant.
2. A Modern Misunderstanding
The modern revivers of the Olympic festival were clearly aware of its religious heritage. As John MacAloon puts it, Pierre de Coubertin ‘continuously and unambiguously regarded [Olympism] as a religious phenomenon’.Footnote 19 But Coubertin did not seek to revive the religious function of the Olympic Games – a function I characterize above as one of community service. Rather, he sought to make athletics themselves a kind of religion, a concept he called religio athletae. Coubertin described his vision thus:
The primary, fundamental characteristic of ancient Olympism, and of modern Olympism as well, is that it is a religion. By chiseling his body through exercise as a sculptor does a statue, the ancient athlete “honored the gods”. In doing likewise, the modern athlete honors his country, his race, and his flag. Therefore I believe I was right to restore, from the very beginning of modern Olympism, a religious sentiment transformed and expanded by the internationalism and democracy that are distinguishing features of our day. Yet this is the same religious sentiment that led the young Hellenes, eager for the victory of their muscles, to the foot of the altars of Zeus.Footnote 20
Undeniably, Olympic symbols, rituals, and ceremonies give the modern Games a religious aura. But the ancient religious function of the games (i.e. to benefit the community) seems to have been lost. In fact, the Olympic symbols have come to be regarded as the source of the Games' commercial rather than spiritual power. The Olympic rings are one of the most widely recognized brand logos in the world and the source of a large portion of the movement's revenue.Footnote 21 Has the sport's religious heritage been perverted into crass commercialism?
I think there is at minimum the risk that it has and I think that the culprit, paradoxically, may be ‘amateurism’. It was Avery Brundage, a most zealous adherent of the amateur concept, who reluctantly presided over the influx of revenues from sponsorship and television into the Olympic movement. Brundage's commitment to amateurism supposedly derived from a desire to preserve the ancient ‘purity’ of sport – to keep ‘sport for sport's sake’ and prevent it from becoming a medium for personal promotion or commercial gain.Footnote 22 Twisted interpretations of the ancient Olympic Games (for example, as the exclusive province of wealthy elites) were trotted out to support this autotelic athletic illusion, but it was all for the benefit of the benefactors. Amateurism was, as Olympic scholar David Young puts it, ‘the ideological means to justify an elitist athletic system that sought to bar the working class from competition.’Footnote 23 The early IOC culture was one of modern aristocrats – people who did not work day to day in order to earn their bread, and who often regarded with derision those who did.Footnote 24 The ‘purity of sport’ really meant the purity of the athletes in terms of breeding, class, and often race. Native American champion Jim Thorpe had his medals stripped, ostensibly for having accepted money to play baseball, but many say he was singled out for punishment because of his race and class.Footnote 25 Most of us lucky enough to have jobs we love do not regard our salaries as a force of corruption. We might do the work for free, if we were independently wealthy. It is part of who we are; our profession. Olympic amateurism amounted to exclusion based on nobility of class, not nobility of motivation.
Ancient athletes never were amateurs in the modern sense.Footnote 26 Lucrative prizes were awarded at countless regional festivals, and Olympic victors were routinely granted immense public honors, including tax exemptions, choice seating at public events, and free meals for life in the municipal dining facilities. Evidence for such rewards can be found in no-less famous a text than Plato's Apology of Socrates. Unfortunately, pleasant fantasies about ancient aristocracies kept people like Brundage from asking the crucial question of why such rewards were offered to ancient athletes and what does it mean for modern Olympic sport? The answer to this question, in the context of ancient religion, however, is hardly a mystery. Athletic victors provided a valuable, community service by attracting the favor of the gods. In fact, it is precisely in this context that Socrates says he deserves the rewards given to Olympic victors for his own community service to Athens. He points out that the Olympian victor only makes the citizens think they are better off, whereas his philosophical questioning truly improves them.Footnote 27 Socrates' skepticism about religious traditions (he has just been convicted of atheism) is the exception that proves the general rule that Olympic victors were valued and rewarded as community servants.
Furthermore, Socrates' did not advocate the abandonment of religion (he claimed that his own service to the city was directly motivated by the god), rather he sought a more functional and rational approach. Some say that Socrates' death was itself a sacrifice for the good of rational humanity generally. Unfortunately for the Olympics, when the IOC abandoned the religious function of sport, it lost the venerable tradition of sacrifice. Prompted by their obsession with amateurism to view sport as an exclusive and self-contained club, the Olympic Games ceased to look beyond sport for meaning. Religio-athletae made a religion of sport and when television money started flowing into the IOC, it was decided that those funds should be ‘devoted to the future of amateur sport’.Footnote 28 While there is no doubt that the modern Olympic Movement was and is justified in securing its own financial survival, I contend that it should, like Socrates, have adopted a rational and functional approach to its religious heritage by committing itself to a humanitarian cause. The ideals declared in the ‘Fundamental Principles’ of the Olympic Charter, should be imagined and supported in concrete ways by the movement. Just as the ancients imagined that athletic victory would bring food, medicine, and conflict resolution to the Panhellenic community, we moderns should direct athletic profits toward providing food, medicine, and conflict resolution to our own world community.
Instead of this historically-sanctioned humanitarian turn, however, the movement experienced what Barney, Wenn, and Martyn call ‘a philosophical shift’, and under Brundage's successors, the IOC was transformed into a corporate entity with a commercial identity. Critics decry the commercialism of the games, but is it anathema from an ancient point of view? As a religious festival, the ancient Games were not a ‘for-profit’ operation. In fact, commercial activity – including the selling of food and drinks – was generally not allowed within ancient Hellenic religious sanctuaries or gymnasia. On the other hand, there were all kinds of vendors outside the Altis at Olympia selling all kinds of goods and services from the religious to the decidedly unreligious. It seems to me that the real concern about commercialism in the Olympics is not so much that they sell Coca Cola, but rather that their purpose should be reduced to selling Coca Cola.Footnote 29 There certainly is a cultural paradigm under which modern sport is seen as nothing more than a television commodity and athletes view themselves as professional entertainers – have the Olympic Games become absorbed into this paradigm?
For their own sake, I hope not. Anything more than a superficial understanding of the economics of the modern Olympic Games will reveal that the source of their fiscal viability just is the complex of heritage, ideals, and higher purpose that ‘over commercialization’ seems to threaten. According to economist Holger Preuss, the Olympic aura, nourished by Olympic ideals, creates what he calls a ‘globally valid ideology’. Preuss identifies this unique Olympic ideology as ‘the basis for the power, the financial resources and the lasting existence of the IOC’.Footnote 30 In short, if the Olympics abandon their ideology and reduce themselves to a commercial entertainment product, they will no longer be viable as a commercial entertainment product.Footnote 31 By making a concrete commitment to humanitarian service, the Olympic movement, and sport more generally, can better embody its ideals, respect its ancient heritage, and ensure its long-term financial health. In this regard, some athletes have already taken the lead.
3. Reviving a Heritage of Service
The enduring and inspiring connection among Olympic sport, sacrifice, and service survives in a story that moves among Sicily, Olympia, Athens, and Torino, between the 12th BCE and February, 2006. Let us return for a moment to the Aeneid's scene of Entellus' sacrificing his prize bull. Strange as it may seem at first glance, this act might be taken to symbolize an enduring ideal for both the social role of athletes and the social value of sport. To discover how, we may compare Entellus' act to another athlete's post-victory gesture at the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Torino, Italy. After winning the gold medal in the 500 meter sprint, American speed skater Joey Cheek announced in the inevitable post-race interviews that he would be donating his $25,000 United States Olympic Committee victory bonus to Right to Play, ‘an athlete-driven international humanitarian organization that uses sport and play as a tool for the development of children and youth in the most disadvantaged areas of the world’.Footnote 32 Cheek's gesture not only highlighted his inspiring personal integrity, it presented a welcome image of American generosity and compassion at time when their international reputation was more commonly associated with military belligerence and blind economic self-interest. Furthermore, Cheek's action gave his bitterly divided country something to agree about; it was an image of American virtue that everyone could rally around.
Understood simply and within the relevant temporal and cultural contexts, the connection between Entellus' ritual sacrifice and Joey Cheek's Olympic gesture becomes clear. In the tradition of religious, athletic, and specifically Olympic sacrifice, Cheek's donation provided personal inspiration, practical benefit, and a unifying spirit to the wider community. Indeed a second medal brought another $15,000 bonus, which Cheek also donated, this time challenging other athletes and sponsors to follow suit. The result was over $300,000 US earmarked to help refugee children in Chad and the Darfur region of Sudan. Said Cheek, ‘I am thrilled that so many people watched my race and cheered for my teammates and me, but it means much more to be able to help someone else’.Footnote 33 Both Entellus and Cheek may be seen as heroes who put their athletic prowess in the service of their communities.
Joey Cheek is hardly the first modern athlete to sacrifice his spoils to a cause beyond himself. At Athens 2004, swimmer Otylia Jedrzejczak won Poland's first swimming gold then auctioned her medal to raise $80,000 for a children's hospital near her hometown. Jedrzejczak's story is quite explicitly one of religious-athletic sacrifice. After reading a book about a boy suffering from leukemia, she says she ‘made a promise to god’ that if she won the gold medal in Athens it would be dedicated to help children suffering from leukemia.Footnote 34 Just like an ancient athlete, she prayed for victory, won, and then paid her ‘votive’ as promised. It may even be the case that knowing their victories could help others gives some athletes that winning edge. Cyclist Lance Armstrong has attributed his success partly to the desire to help cancer survivors.Footnote 35 Professional athletes everywhere set up charitable foundations to support causes close to their hearts. America's National Football League has made a major public commitment to the United Way. Whether interpreted as divine intervention or simple motivation, the most sporting of all athletic advantages must be the athlete's awareness of his or her social responsibility.
Athletes who put sport in the service of their communities effect in our modern world the venerable benefits of ancient athletic sacrifice. First is the psychological benefit: inspiration. Not only were Cheek, Jedrzejczak, and others inspired by the opportunity to do some good in the world, their athletic success in turn provides inspiration to people engaged in a variety of struggles. The second benefit of sacrifice is more tangible. Like the roasted meat from the sacrificial animal, the money raised by athletes provides for the basic needs of people everywhere. Food and medicine, as well as the space and facilities to play are of immediate benefit, especially to children in refugee camps. The Olympic Charter declares play to be a human right.Footnote 36 Finally, athletic sacrifice provides for community bonding. Not only do the actions of philanthropic athletes unify their nations and communities, sport itself provides a public example of rule-governed, non-violent conflict resolution. By organizing soccer leagues in African refugee camps, organizations such as Right to Play have been able to cultivate peaceful tribal interaction among youths who had known nothing but sectarian violence.Footnote 37 Which brings us back to the most ancient founding principles of the Olympic Games: the pacification and unification of diverse peoples.
Conclusion
Modern sport has shed its ancient religious function, not least because it serves a world community, which contains a variety of [often conflicting] religions. Cynics might say that the religious function has been replaced with a commercial one. Sport is a branch of the entertainment industry they say, its potential for social utility surrendered to its immense profit potential. A closer look reveals, however, that some of sport's ancient religious heritage survives in modern times. The Olympic opening procession, oaths, torch, and flame still evoke the Games' higher purpose as a community-building ritual meant to reward and inspire. As in Ancient Greece, the athletic contests attract large and diverse audiences, drawing attention to the movement's goals of humanism, justice, and peace – goals, after all, that are as much within our own power as that of any god. In effect, the Games are now praying to us. Enlightened athletes, officials, and spectators have the ability to uncover the educational and inspirational potential of athletics and bring them back to the fore. Athletes should be regarded neither as entertainers nor as revenue-earners, but as community servants whose personal sacrifice can and should benefit the others.
The gestures of individual athletes and small organizations like Right to Play are not enough, however. Modern sport organizations, especially the Olympic Movement, need to publicly commit themselves and their sponsors to concrete humanitarian goals consistent with their stated ideals, partnering as appropriate with established service organizations. Anti-Olympic campaigners may argue plausibly that the most effective humanitarian act the Olympic movement could perform would be to eliminate the Games. Olympic supporters, however, can respond with the vision of the Games' immense public profile being turned toward beneficial projects – as has been done with limited results in the area of environmentalism. If the Olympic movement commits itself publicly to community service, not only will it revive an important aspect of its ancient heritage, but it may well change the culture of sports in general. It's time that athletes and sports self-consciously abandon the modern commercial paradigm and return to their ancient and venerated roles in honorable public service. Olympic champions Otylia Jedrzejczak and Joey Cheek have shown that this is still possible. The connection between sport, service, and sacrifice is as old as contest itself.Footnote 38
