BMCR 2009.06.42: Perry on Swaddling, The Ancient Olympic Games (2nd ed., revised and updated)

Judith Swaddling, The Ancient Olympic Games (2nd ed., revised and
updated).  Austin:  University of Texas Press, 2008.  Pp. 120.  ISBN
0-292-71893-4.  $19.95.

Reviewed by Jonathan Perry, Department of History, University of South
Florida ([email protected])
Word count:  1740 words
-------------------------------
To read a print-formatted version of this review, see
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2009/2009-06-42.html
To comment on this review, see
http://www.bmcreview.org/2009/06/20090642.html
-------------------------------

Released to capitalize on the excitement generated by the Beijing
Summer Olympics, this book has been only very slightly 'revised and
updated' since its second edition appeared in 1999.  While the author
does not claim that this is a 'third' edition, of a book originally
published in 1980, it is particularly regrettable that it does not also
capitalize upon the remarkable Wunderjahre of publications on the
ancient Olympics that followed the Athens Games in 2004.  The resulting
book is thus even more flawed--and, in fact, virtually obsolete--today,
given the plethora of superior books that are now available to the
growing cadre of classicists willing to teach a course on Greek
athletics.  The only significant addition to the present book is a
short new chapter on the modern Olympic movement, but this tacked-on
element is incomplete and apparently driven by an odd political agenda
(i.e., to denigrate a previous IOC President and burnish the image of
the present one.)

The Foreword by the Princess Royal on p. 6, with Anne's signature
appended, is a good example of the degree of revision throughout, as
well as of the hurdles that remain to be cleared.  Originally composed
for the 1980 first edition and slightly changed for the 1999 edition,
this letter now celebrates the achievements of a different, though
safely British, athlete:  Steve Redgrave (gold medalist rower in five
consecutive Olympics, 1984-2000) has here taken the place of Daley
Thompson (gold medalist decathlete in two Olympics, 1980-1984).  'Over
twenty years' now stands where 'twenty years' formerly stood, and the
spelling error 'familiar cord' has now been corrected to 'familiar
chord'.  However, the name of Theagenes of Thasos remains, incorrectly,
'Theogenes'.

Accordingly, while some 'updating' has been attempted, much 'revision'
must still be done to this book, and even the interested non-academic
reader should be warned that the criticisms leveled by many other
specialists in this field remain intact.  While a few of the specific
concerns noted by Zinon Papakonstantinou in BMCR 2000-06-24 and by
Donald Kyle[[1]] have been addressed here (for example the
misidentification of the Spartan Lichas as a Boeotian), the fundamental
lack of engagement with the latest historical and, to a lesser extent,
archaeological work on this topic continues to hobble the book.  The
most recent surveys by Crowther, Kyle, Scanlon, and Young--each erudite
and thought-provoking--do not appear in Swaddling's bibliography.[[2]]
Moreover, even when a recent book does appear there, as is the case
with Golden 1998, Miller 2004, and Sinn 2000--the author neglects
pivotal contentions in the work, only cosmetically changing the text
and then alerting the reader to these books' existence.[[3]]

Small but important errors continue to mar this already abbreviated
text, and even the book's erstwhile strength, its incorporation of
copious and compelling illustrations, has now been supplanted,
especially by Stephen Miller's lavishly illustrated (and surprisingly
affordable) textbook.  Alexander the Great is still, in place of his
father, credited with compensating an Athenian robbed on his way to
Olympia by Macedonian troops (p. 11), the 'Mastigophoroi' remain
misspelled as 'Mastigophorai' (p. 39), and Mithridates continues to be
described as a 'Persian king' (p. 99).  There are a very large number
of typographical errors in the back matter of the book (particularly in
the 'Further Reading' and 'Illustration Sources and Credits' sections)
that suggest they were the result of a poor transfer (by camera?) of
the text from an earlier iteration.[[4]]  While the artists' sketches
of Phidias' cult statue of Olympian Zeus (p. 18) and the Altar of Zeus
(p. 16) remain intriguing visual elements, the British Museum's model
of ancient Olympia, photos of which are the highlights of Chapter 2,
has been surpassed in recent publications.[[5]]  Examples of this would
include a reconstruction of the statues in the Philippeion in Ian
Worthington's new biography of Philip and a full-color rendering of the
aphesis in the hippodrome in a 2003 Italian book entitled Le antiche
Olimpiadi: Il grande sport nel mondo classico.[[6]]  Swaddling's
hypothetical reconstructions of the discus throw (66), the javelin
ankyle (67), and the proper use of halteres in the halma (69) have been
overtaken by Miller's use of vase paintings to illustrate the mechanics
of each event.[[7]]  (One must admit, however, that an entire sequence
of movements cannot be compiled, merely from these images, and that
many of these reconstructions remain controversial among specialists in
the field.)

A few recent archaeological discoveries are mentioned in this revised
text, e.g. an athlete found at Taranto who may be the historical Ikkos
(93), as well as a tablet found at Olympia that seems to indicate that
Games were held there after the traditional suppression date of 393 CE
(100).  Nevertheless, it is far more important, even in a text designed
for a non-specialist audience, to address issues that have, in the past
few decades, been investigated--and disputed--by the many superb
scholars in this field.  There has been a great deal of controversy in
recent years, especially since David Young's pioneering work on the
vaunted 'amateurism' of the ancient athlete, on the class status of the
athlete, and on the question whether athletics devolved from a
'gentlemanly' pursuit in the Games' early centuries into a
'professional' endeavor in the Hellenistic and Roman eras.[[8]]  There
is no effort here to address Mark Golden's path-breaking analysis of
the myths associated with Olympia, particularly regarding Heracles and
Pelops, in his unsurpassed Sport and Society in Ancient Greece (1998),
and Hugh Lee's rigorous examination of the arrangement of the events in
the Olympic program, published in 2001, seems to have made no dent on
the reconstruction of the five days of events offered on p. 53.[[9]]
Miller's analysis of Diagoras of Rhodes in a particularly stimulating
chapter of his 2004 book seems not to have altered the treatment of
this figure on Swaddling's p. 81, and Nigel Crowther's many meticulous,
creative, and invariably authoritative investigations, particularly of
judging scandals and the local organizers of the festival, have not
been incorporated into Chapter 8, on 'Politics, Scandals and
Propaganda'.[[10]]

While there is very little here that will facilitate discussion among
scholars of ancient athletics, the book is also error-prone, and
singularly infelicitous, in its coverage of the modern Games.  The
sections of the book that address the modern Olympic movement, from the
planning and staging of the 1896 Athens Games described in Chapter 9
and throughout the new Chapter 10, seem to have been composed for a
2004 revision--and not altered since.  This is suggested by the
statement that the 1896 Athens stadium is not used for official track
races today, even though the 2004 Marathon culminated, in a
particularly breathtaking moment, in that stadium.  Moreover, the book
claims that 'nowadays', some 10,000 athletes compete in 'over 200'
disciplines, even though the statistics from Beijing, which the author
could have extrapolated even if the final figures were not available at
the time of publication, tallied over 11,000 athletes, in some 300
events.[[11]]

This book's newest chapter, entitled 'The Olympic Games since 1896',
seems to have been written by Stewart Binns, judging from the
'Acknowledgements' of the main author on p. 116.  If this is correct,
Binns would seem to have been a good choice to compose a brief survey
of, especially, the late-20th-century Games, having served (at least as
of 2004) as the Director of the Olympic Television Archives Bureau
(OTAB), under the umbrella of the International Olympic
Committee.[[12]]  Binns has also done a singular service to Olympic
historians by reconstructing films of the 1956 Melbourne Games, and
this makes his omission of Melbourne in the list of 'Helsinki, Rome,
Tokyo and Mexico City' (p. 111) all the more astonishing.  The chapter
is a lively one, albeit studded with odd word choices and neologisms
like 'shambolic' (p. 107), but it does not do an effective job in
hitting the highlights of modern Olympic history, even in a bracing
seven-page sprint.

Clearly anticipating the London Games in 2012, the text focuses
particular attention on London's previous brushes with Olympic history,
in 1908 and 1948.  Surprisingly, Binns does not mention the most
important innovation of the 1908 Games, i.e., the final determination
of the distance of the Marathon, from Windsor Castle to the royal box
in the White City Stadium, at precisely 26 miles, 385 yards (26.20739
miles).  Another very famous incident that punctuated these Games--at
least to American observers--involved an Irish-American athlete, who
refused to lower his nation's flag as he marched past King Edward VII.
(The athlete, Michael Sheridan, is credited with having said, 'This
flag dips to no earthly king.')  The scanty (one-paragraph) coverage of
the Nazi Olympics of 1936 constitutes another conspicuous failure in
the text, which does not even mention that the torch relay, the most
recognizable and du rigueur event in contemporary Opening Ceremonies,
was first staged in Berlin.[[13]]

The most troubling aspect of this chapter, however, is its indulgence
in a strange bit of backstairs (though recently exposed) IOC intrigue.
These highly personalized statements come at the expense of the
'diminutive and wily Spaniard', Juan Antonio Samaranch, and to the
benefit of Jacques Rogge, 'a highly respected Belgian surgeon' (and
three-time Olympic competitor in yachting events, which Binns does not
mention).  The text seems to make Samaranch solely responsible for the
commercialism and corruption that dominated news coverage of the
Olympic movement in the 1990s and early 2000s, culminating in the
humiliating scandal that swirled around the awarding of the 2002 Winter
Games to Salt Lake City.

But would one be far off the mark in also criticizing the IOC's
decision to award the 2008 Summer Games to China?  That regime's
repressive policies were revealed by the internet blackout imposed in
August 2008, when China's leaders reneged on their promise of free and
open communication made to the 'respected' Rogge.  Binns makes the
common mistake of suggesting that the modern Olympic truce--a noble, if
misconstrued, attempt at instituting an across-the-world suspension of
hostilities for the period of the Games--is proclaimed today, 'just as
in ancient times' (114), and he sees today's games as 'a testament to
human endeavour and idealism'.  If this is so, can one imagine a more
'idealistic testament' than that made by protesters against Chinese
violations of human rights, especially during the worldwide torch relay
in early 2008?  This book may be correct in suggesting that Olympism
'has come to represent a set of values' but one might more accurately
argue that those 'values' are currently determined by the
market.--which took a similar tumble in 2008.


------------------
Notes:


1.    Donald G. Kyle, review of Swaddling 1999, Journal of Sport
History 28 (2001): 129-130.

2.    Nigel B. Crowther, Sport in Ancient Times, Westport, CT: Praeger,
2007; Donald G. Kyle, Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World, Malden,
MA: Blackwell, 2007; Thomas F. Scanlon, Eros and Greek Athletics,
Oxford, 2002; David C. Young, A Brief History of the Olympic Games,
Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004.

3.    Mark Golden, Sport and Society in Ancient Greece, Cambridge,
1998; Stephen G. Miller, Ancient Greek Athletics, New Haven: Yale,
2004; Ulrich Sinn, Olympia: Cult, Sport, and Ancient Festival,
translated by Thomas Thornton, Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2000.

4.    A small sample would include: 'Olympistn' for 'Olympism' (115),
'Fundaco/n' for 'Fundacio/n' (115), 'DA1' for 'DAI' (116), 'Ausgrabuug'
for 'Ausgrabung' (117), and 'Museo dells Terme' for 'delle Terme'
(117).

5.    The book began life as a guide to a 1980 exhibition on the
Olympics at the British Museum.

6.    Ian Worthington, Philip II of Macedonia, New Haven: Yale, 2008;
Mario Pescante e Piero Mei, Le antiche Olimpiadi: Il grande sport nel
mondo classico, Milano: Rizzoli, 2003.  The discovery of the Hippodrome
site at Olympia in mid-2008 by researchers at the Johannes
Gutenberg-Universitaet Mainz will generate renewed attention to and
conclusions concerning ancient equestrian events.  Further, see
http://www.sciencedaily.com?/releases/2008/07/080714145253.htm
(http://www.sciencedaily.com?/releases/2008/07/080714145253.htm).

7.    On each issue, compare the superior treatment by Miller 2004, pp.
60-74.

8.    Among many other works, see especially David C. Young, The
Olympic Myth of Greek Amateur Athletics, Chicago: Ares, 1984.

9.    Hugh M. Lee, The program and schedule of the Ancient Olympic
games, Nikephoros Beihefte; Bd. 6, Hildesheim: Weidmann, 2001.

10.    Now conveniently gathered in Nigel B. Crowther, Athletika:
studies on the Olympic games and Greek athletics, Nikephoros Beihefte;
Bd. 11, Hildesheim: Weidmann, 2004.

11.   Figures taken from the official Beijing site (available at
present, apparently without censorship):
http://en.olympic.cn/games/summer/2008-09-17/1636369.html
(http://en.olympic.cn/games/summer/2008-09-17/1636369.html).

12.    Information on Binns and the IOC may be found at:
http://www.olympic.org/uk/news/olympic_news/week_uk.asp?weekDate=07/12/2004(http://www.olympic.org/uk/news/olympic_news/week_uk.asp?weekDate=07/12/2004)
and http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/JOH/JOHv8n3/johv8n3h.pdf
(http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/JOH/JOHv8n3/johv8n3h.pdf).

13.   Moreover, the deliberate exclusion of German-Jewish athletes and
the efforts, on multiple fronts, to boycott international participation
in these Games, are not mentioned here, and the interested reader
should be alerted to the riveting online exhibit on these topics that
is now available at the website of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
One of many superb online exhibits, this one is available at:
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/olympics/
(http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/olympics/).