Aug 2, 2012

August 2, 2012 12:16 pm August 2, 2012 12:16 pm London Stereoscopic Company/Getty ImagesCrowds walking around the Olympic Stadium in Athens, during the first modern Olympic Games in 1896. In this week’s Riff , Heather Havrilesky writes about watching the “beautiful young masochists” of the Olympic Games on television. Below, some anticipatory thoughts about the Games that were published in this paper almost 40 years before the modern Olympics began, on Nov. 19, 1858. From the Star of the East we obtain further particulars respecting the proposed revival of the Olympus Games. The startling announcement that such a measure was in contemplation may have caused some readers of The Times to brush up their school-boy recollections by a hasty glance at the Classical Dictionary, and the anachronism may have struck them as no less singular than that the celebration should take place at Athens, instead of on the grassy banks of the river Alpheus in far-famed Olympia. Yet this is to be the sober fact. . . . The games are to be celebrated every four years, and to last eight days. During the festival, the agricultural products of the country and its manufacturers are to be placed on exhibition. . . . But to the evidences of material prosperity are to be added works of painting and sculpture and poetical effusions, which are likewise to be submitted to the inspection and judgment of crowds that are expected to assemble from all quarters to view the games. Horse and foot races, and trials of bodily strength, may, we presume, be expected to form part of the entertainment, and the stadium of Athens will become vocal, as in the Panathenaea of old, to the shouts of beholding multitudes. What happened to the paintings and sculpture and poetical effusions?