'A pageant of parochial hatreds'

Classics lovers already know that the ancient Olympics were far more messy, agonistic and political than popularly perceived. But this article, by an archaeologist who has written a book on the ancient Games, sketches an intriguingly vivid picture. It's nice if you need inspiration for a lecture or just an antidote to the anachronistic purity of the torch lighting ceremony last week:

We imagine the Olympics to have been high-minded and healthy—all about purity of mind and body. Thinking thus, the ancient “Olympic Village” would have come as a shock. With up to 100,000 people camping in the open, it was a sprawling, squalid shantytown of temporary structures, fast-food stalls, drink stands, carts, tethered animals, heaps of refuse, open-air latrines, and heaving, jostling, sweating crowds of people.
Hardly anyone got any sleep, with parties often carrying on until dawn and rowdy groups of drunks stumbling back to their camps in the dark. Citizen-women did not attend the games, but the place was packed with “barbarian” prostitutes, ranging in price from top-of-the-range hetairai to cheap pornai. And that was just the women; ancient Greek men were bisexual. Many attended with their male lovers, while others hoped to make fresh conquests. Despite modern permissiveness, many of those attending the London 2012 Games would probably have been taken aback by the sex-fest of the ancient festival.

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