An Interview with Professor Peter Bien

Peter Bien is a professor of English at Dartmouth College.

These questions and answers were taken from an interview recorded with Professor Peter Bien on November 10, 1995 at Dartmouth College. The answers are paraphrased from his responses.

Table of Contents

• What is the difference between the events now and the events then?
• In addition to athletics what else was Olympia a center for?
• What did the word athlete mean to the Greeks of Olympia?
• What is the meaning of the Olympic games?

Q: What is the difference between the events now and the events then?

A: First of all, the competition included artistic composition and poetry. Secondly, the event was very political. As everyone knows, there was a truce that accompanied this, so that people from all parts of Greece and very often people who were not very friendly to one another could come and they would all congregate there and they would not only watch the games but they would do political business. In that sense, it is very much like what happened recently at the anniversary of the UN. People did not use that time just to celebrate the UN; they used it to talk to one another in very useful ways. It also happens in great state funerals. There was one in Israel just two days ago; heads of state that don't usually talk to each other, including Arabs and Jews, were all together and those special occasions are used for political discussion.

Q: In addition to athletics what else was Olympia a center for?

A:Olympia was a great center of art as well as athletics and also for religion, as we can see from the statue of Zeus but also from the way that the Greeks projected certain things about their civilization through the sculpture they chose to place in the temple of Zeus.

Q: What did the word athlete mean to the Greeks of Olympia?

A: In Greek, the word from which we get "athlete" meant most basically somebody who contends, who takes part in a contest. This is what athletes do, but not only athletes. The word is related to "athlos," which is a contest for a prize. When you are a contestant for a prize these is also toil, trouble, and labor for that prize; in Greek, all of those things are contained in the word "athlete."

Q: What is the meaning of the Olympic games?

A: The most basic meaning, I think, is this: Celebration in sport of the excess energy possessed by a civilized people.