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in those around us. In India the gross national product per head was
$ 52 in 1957 and the expectation of life was 32 1 / 2 years in 1950. Disease
and malnutrition through undernutrition there cause debility and death.
In New Zeeland the gross national product per head was $ 1,249 in
1957 and the expectation of life was 68.3 years in 1962, in 1962, in England
it is 67.8 years. Such malnutrition as exists in these latter countries
is due to overnutrition. Obesity and atrophy of the muscles through
disuse are major causes of the unfitness which we see there. To produce
fitness, exercise has more relevance to the rich than food to the poor.
But there is evidence - and the presence of athletes at the Olympic
Games from the developing countries is part of such evidence - that
rich and poor, developed and still developing communities, are all concerned
with physical prowess and physical fitness for which exercise
and training, as well as food, are essential.
Before examining more closely the nature of this concern it will
be helpful to look again at the past and in particular at the Graeco-Roman
world. The civilization or succession of civilizations that evolved there
has had a profound and continuing influence upon the western world
and upon the development of the commonwealth. After fifteen hundred
years it is possible to take a detached view of the Greaco-Roman world
which may help us in the more difficult task of seeing our own world
in perspective.
The Olympic Games observe a four year cycle. They in turn look
back to a time when the succession of the seasons, drought and storm,
the rising and setting of the sun, and the phases of the moon loomed
larger in men's lives than they do to-day. Lunar months and solar
years rarely coincide, but every eight years they do coincide, ninety-nine
lunar months are almost equivalent to eight solar years. The first records
of the great religious and athletic festival at Olympia in 776 show that
it was held after the summer solstice between the grain harvest and the
grape harvest every fiftieth and forty-ninth alternately, and this had
been the practice for hundreds of years. The myths about the origin
of the festival indicate too that it was intimately connected with agriculture
and the health of cattle and stock. One myth told how Oenomaus,
King of Pisa, had ordained a chariot race for any suitor who
sought his daughter Hippodamia in marriage, how Pelops, a Phrygian
came and accepted the challenge and how Oenomaus was thrown and
killed in the race. Pelops, wrote Sir James Frazer, was the lineal
descendant of the divine King or Weather magician. His physical prowess
was credited with power to bring fertility and growth to crops and stock.
His kingdom depended on a contest and he had periodically to defend
his title. Victory and defeat were sacrificial. The degree of vigour expend-
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