ARE
TODAY'S OLYMPIANS TOO COMMERCIAL? DEPENDS...
These
days you don't have to look far to see the connection between salesmanship
and sports--some would even say that the line between sales pitching and
fast pitches has become completely blurred.
At Olympic competitions, athletes' uniforms and equipment bear the discreet
but readily identifiable trademarks of their manufacturers.
After the Games, we are presented with images of Olympians endorsing products
and appearing on cereal boxes. Later, some Olympic celebrities become commodities
themselves, as TV shows and record labels cash in on their fame.
Commemorative
Victory Coins ... the first Olympic medals?
Winged Nike
crowns a victorious chariot on this silver tetradrachm
from Syracuse, 5th century BC.
Museum
Object Number: 29-126-58.
Winged
Nike flies
above to crown the victorious chariot team, while below are shield,
greaves, cuirass, and helmet. Silver dekadrachm
of Syracuse, by the artist Euainetos, early 4th century BC. Museum Object Number: 29-126-41.
Sculptures of Athletes...Commercial Appearances?
Sculptors were commissioned to create statues of victorious athletes to
be set up in the Sanctuary or in the home town of the athlete. According
to Pliny, most of the statues set up in the Sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia
were idealistic images of athletes. We are told that only if an athlete
had won three Olympic victories could a realistic likeness of the athlete
appear in the Sanctuary.
Pausanias, a 2nd century AD Greek traveler, describes a great number of
the statues that he saw in the altis,
the sacred precinct of the Sancuary of Zeus. From the inscriptions on the
stone statue bases and from local guides, Pausanias gives us detailed information--almost
too detailed:
"Dikon, the son of Kallibrotos, won five foot races
at Delphi, three at Isthmia, four at Nemea and one at Olympia in the race
for boys besides two in the men's race. Statues of him have been set up
in Olympia equal in number to the races he won. When he was a boy he was
proclaimed a native of Caulonia, as in fact he was. But afterwards he was
bribed to proclaim himself a Syracusan."
Model of the Sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia, Treasure Terrace.
Courtesy of the British Museum.
Cheating and Bribery? At the Oympics? Unbelievable!
But true. There were statues set up in the altis to commemorate athletes
who had been caught cheating or bribing at the Olympic Games. These monuments
were set up on the roadway leading from the heart of the altis
to the vault that leads to the stadion,
not coincidentally the very path that athletes walked to enter the place
of athletic competition. In the model above you can see this roadway passing
in front of the row of treasury buildings.
