Philotimo and the Olympic Games, Credit where Credit is Due

It is time to help restore some pride and philotimo to the people of Greece. What better opportunity than the London Olympics? Credit where credit is due.

Constantine Trypanis (1909-1993), one time Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek at Oxford, and a former Minister of Culture and Sciences, was also a good poet, who published several volumes in English, including "The Stones of Troy" (Faber and Faber,1957). There are several poems to which I often return, including Paxoi and Miss Fitzsimon, but the one which relates to the Olympic Games is called Varazdates.


In a note, the poet explains that by a strange irony of fate the last recorded victor of the national (Olympic) games was Varazdates, a Persian from Armenia, who won the boxing in A.D. 385.

Here are the first three verses of the poem, spoken by a proud (but slightly ironical?) Greek:

Others, Armenians, Persians, may now fill
The list of victors, lay their heavy claims
To the Olympic crown- but we are still
The most refined spectators of the games.


We can admire like cultured men the skill
Of boxer, wrestler, runner as it shames
Its rival. They are no longer Greeks - but still
We are the best spectators of the games.


How can we drive the youth of Greece to drill
Like clumsy gladiators? Our aims
Are different, higher. Are we not sill
The most refined spectators of the games?

***

Strange ironies of fate...


Contantine Trypanis Obituary

Professor Trypanis was also the editor of the still indispensable The Penguin Book of Greek Verse (1971), which I've carried with me around the world since I went  to Ethiopia in 1971.