I was thrilled to discover in this article that the Nemean Games have been revived. They have resisted commercializion and recreate the Greek games as nearly as possible, in dress and procedures.
I'm not sure who I thought was competing in these games (high school and college athletes, maybe?), but when I found out they're open to anyone who registers online, they became a little silly in my eyes. I started picturing them as a version of "Toga Day" at the Junior Classical League, or something. Not that the JCL isn't wonderful, it's just doesn't seem like the best model for an ancient Greek athletic contest.
But I was unexpectedly moved by the last paragraph:
This, for me, is the great moment: in that dark tunnel [of the stadium] there are no cameras, no phones, nothing of the modern world, there are only my feet slapping the same rough hard earth that ancient athletes like Telestas experienced. The tunnel exit is crowded with hands that want to slap me on the back, and smiling, cheering faces.
This drawing back from distractions is what attracts many people to classics, I believe. The classics are (more or less) unchanging: there are no Facebook updates, no news headlines we need to check while we're reading the Apology. Reading Sappho or Plato or Cicero can thus resemble a private conversation, the intellectual equivalent of running through the Nemean tunnel. The world needs more of that, not less.
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