Ancient olympic ideal: the conjuction of beauty and sacred

Por: Georgios Xiarchos e Zoi Alexandri.

Athens 2004: Pre-olympic Congress

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The so far analysis of ancient Olympic ideal is focused in its meaning, its purpose and its expansions and not particularly in its fundamental aesthetic and religious roots. This paper is attempting to analyse these last parameters in historical terms, focusing in the action area of the ancient Olympic games, since they provoked the development and shaping of the harmonic combination of two fundamental ideas: The beautiful and the sacred.


The research procedure comes through the thorough study of ancient sources and the archaeological findings. Major historical facts and periods of ancient history are carefully examined in order to define the degree of concurrence between those two meanings and there final shaping into a unified and indivisible form.


The results that come up from the study of the origin and participation of the beautiful and the sacred in the Olympic ideal strengthen the ascertainment that the ideal remains alive and inalterable only when the two parameters coexist harmonically


Consequently, any attempt to separate or eliminate these two ideas, impoverish and undermines the effect ancient Olympic ideal has on human conscience. Nowadays, the suppression of beautiful from exaggeration and the loss of the sacred, since Olympic games have no evident religious reference lead to the contestation of the Olympic ideal. That is why a permanent and continuous educational effort is necessary in order to restore beautiful and defends sacred, as cultural means necessary for the development of modern Olympic sport.





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