Greek Sport and Social Status

Three. GREEK GAMES AND GLADIATORS

Three GRE E K GA M E S A N D GL A DI ATOR S Before we make the long journey back to Greek and Roman antiquity, let us linger a while in the more recent past and recall two films of the ’80s and ’90s. First, Chariots of Fire, a British film that won the Oscar for best picture in 1981. Since 1981 may itself count as ancient history for some readers—almost all my students have been born since—I will briefly review the film, which takes its title from a line in William Blake’s poem “Jerusalem .” It is based on the real-life stories of two members of the British track team at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris: two sprinters who were once rivals and in the end ran—and won— in different events. Harold Abrahams took the gold medal at 100 meters; Eric Liddell was champion in the 400.1 Chariots of Fire contains many elements relevant to Greek sport and social status. For example—to return to a theme of my first chapter—Abrahams uses a professional trainer to gain an advantage over his opponents and incurs criticism as a consequence . It is not quite what a gentleman would do, especially as the trainer, Sam Massabini, is part Arab and so all the more out of place. What is most relevant here, however, is what we may call the ethos of the film. This owes a great deal to the idealized image of ancient Greek athletics and of the Olympics above all that was prevalent at its dramatic date, 1924. It was indeed still in place at the time of the film’s release, a few short years before business bought the 1984 Games just down the road from Hollywood, in Los Angeles. (Is it a coincidence, an irony or an omen that Peter Ueberroth, the architect of those games, T4796.indb 68 T4796.indb 68 9/26/08 7:57:04 AM 9/26/08 7:57:04 AM Greek Games and Gladiators 69 was born on the day Pierre de Coubertin died?) Abrahams and Liddell train hard and are fiercely competitive. But they do not wish to win for personal motives alone. Each, in his different way, is an idealist, spurred on by a cause greater than himself; each is an outsider, seeking recognition for his people or his principles. Abrahams is a rich man, the son of a financier, seemingly at home in the lush Cambridge colleges in which much of the film is set. But he is also a Jew. Liddell, on the other hand, is the son of a Christian missionary, himself devout and devoted to doing God’s work, so much so that he will not run on the Lord’s day. As the plot develops, the rivals enter separate events: Liddell, British champion at 100 and 220 yards the year before, competes at 400 meters because heats for the shorter races are held on Sunday. Both succeed. Their later lives diverged. Abrahams became a power in British amateur athletics and the author of the Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on the Olympic Games; Liddell died in China during the Second World War, a missionary like his father. But together their intertwined tales underscore the symbolic power of sport and its ability to diminish difference, all the more so in that the story, rooted though it is in rivalry, ends with both protagonists as winners. Let us turn to another recent film: Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe, the New Zealander who moved to Australia and uses a British accent to play “The Spaniard,” a devoted father whose little son speaks Italian.2 (“I soldati! I soldati!,” he cries, when he sees the soldiers sent to kill him and his family.) Crowe is Maximus , once a Roman general and then a slave and a gladiator; he kills the evil emperor Commodus in single combat in the arena before succumbing to his own wounds. Gladiator takes place in a very different world than Chariots of Fire. The green lawns of Cambridge give way to the dungeons in which gladiators are penned—dark satanic mills if there ever were; the sunlit running track is replaced by the Colosseum, where men are forced to kill for the profit of their owners and the pleasure of the crowd. The film nods in the direction of deeper issues, even inventing a history in which Rome was founded as a republic T4796.indb 69 T4796.indb...