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ed in races and contests was thought to transfer to powers of growth
and fertility. To-day sacrifices and athletic contests as techniques in
agriculture and animal husbandry have been replaced by more scientific
methods, yet is there not a vestige of primitive beliefs in the striving
of the nation states to prove their vitality in international sport? Does
the sporting press sound a faint echo of the same beliefs in its anger
or its sense of shame and humiliation when athletes or footballers fail
to justify the hopes and expectations of the masses?
At the beginning of the fifth century B.C., in the golden age of Greek
athletics the poet Pindar sang the praises of the victors in the Games.
"The brazen heaven he cannot climb, but as for all the bright achievements
which we mortals attain, he reacheth the utmost limit of that
voyage". (Pythian X 22-29).
It was not long before the games began to change their character.
Solon, ruler of Athens, had been the first to introduce money payments
for athletes. Rewards in kind and in cash became general. Then after
the final defeat of the Persian invaders in 479 B.C. two great power
blocks developed in the Hellenic world one led by Athens, the other
by Sparta. The Olympic Games did not escape exploitation for political
purposes. Towards the end of the century the Athenian Alcibiades
"seeing that the festival at Olympia was beloved and admired by the
whole Greek world", - This is his son speaking - "and that not only
athletes were the object of envy but that also the cities of the victors
became renowned, and believing that expenditure on the Olympic Festivals
enhanced the city's reputation throught Greece, reflecting on
these things he entered a larger number of teams (for the chariot race)
than even the mightiest cities had done and they were of such excellence
that they came first, second and third. When he had brought his mission
to an end he had caused the successes of his predecessors to seem petty
in comparison with his own and those who in his day had been victors
to be no longer objects of emulations."
Payments to athletes, commercialisation and political exploitation
changed the character of the great athletic festival from genuine contests
between ordinary citizens to entertainments conducted by professional
performers who had been undergoing intensive and specialised training
and were organised into guilds and unions. When the Romans conquered
Greece in the second century B.C. success in the Games no longer had
any political significance for the city state of the victor, but the Romans
allowed and encouraged the Games to continue as commercial public
entertainment. In this form they survived for more than six hundred
years until, in the fifth century A.D., the invasions from the North,
the impact of Christianity and lack of public support brought about
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