The stature and influence of the Olympic Games in Ancient Greece is hard for us to comprehend today. Every four years for twelve centuries, the Greeks turned their eyes toward Olympia as if the gods themselves were competing. Mythic and mystic, breathtaking and awe inspiring, the Games were unmatched in their cultural prestige. Like few people of our time, Baron Pierre de Coubertin had an exquisite sense of the role of the Ancient Games in the classical world. Although he was a critical, analytical student of history, he idealized the Hellenic mythos and the rituals of ancient sport. He often expressed his reverence for the Greeks of antiquity in his writing, as he did in his 1908 article, “Why I Revived the Olympic Games,” which appeared in the Fortnightly Review of London. The quote above is my rewrite of the original translation below. 

“For centuries athleticism, its home in Olympia, remained pure and magnificent. There states and cities met in the person of their young men, who, imbued with a sense of the moral grandeur of the Games, went to them in a spirit of almost religious reverence. Men of letters and of the arts, ready to celebrate the victories of their energy and muscle assembled around them; and these incomparable spectacles were also the delight of the populace.”