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  3. The Ancient Greek Olympics Today’s Olympic Games are based on what took place at Olympia, in Greece, nearly three millennia

The Ancient Greek Olympics Today’s Olympic Games are based on what took place at Olympia, in Greece, nearly three millennia

admin2013-03-11  18
问题                           The Ancient Greek Olympics
    Today’s Olympic Games are based on what took place at Olympia, in Greece, nearly three millennia ago. What were the ancient Olympics like, and how different were they from those of modern times?
Origins
    Traditionally it has always been said that the Games started at Olympia in 776 BC, about the time that Homer was born. But for several centuries before that date Olympia had been a cult(祭祀仪式) site for the worship of Zeus, a numinous (精神上的) location away from human dwellings, overlooked by a hill, with the sacred River Alph flowing through it.
    What was it that caused people to change from honouring Zeus solely with dedicatory offerings, to honouring him through athletics? Several factors seem to have been involved. One is the rise of the Greek polls(城邦), or city-state. As city-states in different locations grew, each wanted a means of asserting its supremacy, so would send representatives to Olympia to become supreme in physical competition.
    Connected with this is the development of military training. The Games were an attractive means of getting men fit. Another factor is the traditional Greek view that the gods championed a winner, so by establishing a competition aimed at producing supreme winners, they were thereby asserting the power and influence on humans of the supreme god, Zeus.
Earliest Races
    For the first 13 Olympics there was only one event, the stadium race, which was a running race up one length of the stadium. How long this race was is a matter for conjecture(猜想), as the ancient stadium, 192 meters long, visible at Olympia now, did not exist then.
    Boxing, wrestling, and the pancration (the ’ all-power’ race, combining all types of physical attack) soon followed, along with the pentathlon (五项全能), and horse-and-chariot racing. A race while wearing armour was introduced in 520 BC, and even a mule race ( in 500 BC, but it was not generally popular).
Religion and Politics
    Religion pervaded the ancient Olympics. Zeus was thought to look down on the competitors, favouring some and denying victory to others. ’ You could spur on a man with natural talent to strive to wards great glory with the help of the gods’, says Pindar in a victory-ode. If an athlete was fined for cheating or bribery (human nature stays much the same over a few millennia) , the money exacted was used to make a cult statue of Zeus.
    A grand sacrifice of 100 oxen was made to Zeus during the Games. Olympia was home to one of Greece’s great oracles, an oracle to Zeus, with an altar to him consisting of the bonfire-heap created by burnt sacrificial offerings. As the offerings were burnt, they were examined by a priest, who pronounced an oracle -- an enigmatic and often ambiguous prediction of the future -- according to his interpretation of what he saw. Some athletes consulted the oracle to learn what their chances in the Games were.      The Greeks tried to keep some aspects of politics out of the Olympics, but their efforts met then, as such efforts do now, with limited success. The Olympic truce was meant to lead to a cessation of hostilities throughout Greece, to allow competitors to travel and participate safely, but it was not al ways observed.
    And it is clear from the victory odes of Pindar and Bacchylides that the Sicilian tyrants in the fifth century aimed to strengthen their grip on affairs by competing in the equestrian events at the Games, and by commissioning famous poets to compose and publicly perform odes celebrating their victories.
Nakedness and Women
    Sow naked, plough naked, harvest naked’, the poet Hesiod ( a contemporary of Homer) advises. He might have added ’ compete in the Games naked’ , for that is usually understood to be the standard practice among the ancient Greeks. Some dispute this, for although the visual evidence for it -- the painted decorations on vases -- generally shows athletes performing naked, all sorts of other people (e. g. soldiers departing for war, which they would presumably have done clothed) are also shown unclad.
    Also, some vases do show runners and boxers wearing loin-cloths, and Thucydides says that athletes stopped wearing such garments only shortly before his time. Another argument is that it must have been impractical to compete naked. On balance, however, it is generally thought probable that male athletes were naked when competing at the Games.
    Women did not participate at the main Olympic festival. They had their own Games, in honour of Hera, where the sole event was a run of five-sixths of the length of the stadium -- which would have preserved in male opinion the inferior status of women. Whether women could even watch the festival is disputed.
    Unmarried virgins, not soiled by sex or motherhood and thus maintaining the religious purity of the occasion, probably could. Festivals (and, for example, funerals) were among the limited occasions when women, especially virgins, or parthenoi, had a public role. At the Games unmarried girls, besides helping with the running of the festival, may have taken the opportunity to find a fit future husband.
Athletics Fans and Haters
    Not all Greeks admired athletes.’ It isn’t right to judge strength as better than good wisdom’, writes Xenophanes (sixth to fifth century BC). Just because someone has won an Olympic victory, he says, they won’t improve the city.
    The tragedian Euripides expressed similar sentiments in his play Autolycus, now only surviving in fragments. In it he describes how athletes are slaves to their stomachs, but they can’t look after themselves, and although they glisten like statues when in their prime, become like tattered old car pets in old age. Galen, physician and polymath of the first century AD, also attacked athletics as un natural and excessive. He thought that athletes eat too much, sleep too much and put their bodies through too much.
    But in the end the detractors of athletics lost out to the sympathisers. The person who most idealised tile Olympics was Pindar, from Thebes, midway between Delphi and Athens. Pindar composed odes for victors at the Olympic and other Games in the fifth century BC, comparing their achievements to those of the great heroes of the past -- such as Heracles or Achilles -- thus raising them to an almost divine level.
    He thought that, though mortals, their superhuman feats of strength had temporarily elevated them to another realm and given them a taste of incomparable bliss. ’ For the rest of his life the victor enjoys a honey-sweet calm’, he writes.
    For Pindar, the Olympics stood out among the Games.
    ’Water is best; gold like fire that is burning during the night is conspicuous outshining great wealth; but if, my heart, you desire song to celebrate the Games, look no further than the sun for an other radiant star hotter in the empty day-time sky, nor let us proclaim a contest better than Olympia’.
The original running race is about 12 meters long.
选项 A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案C
解析 通过阅读题干可以知道是关于最初的比赛长度的，即属于第二个小标题下的。我们在第二句中可以知道How long this race was is a matter for conjecture。即总长度是多少还在猜测中，即不能确定是多少。
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