This is a paraphrase from a report that Baron Pierre de Coubertin wrote from Athens, Greece on March 26, 1896, little more than a week before the inaugural modern Olympic Games got underway.  His intention was to draw parallels between the noble aspirations of humanity from ancient days and modern times.  As the Olympic Games were being reborn, the Baron’s thoughts focused on the common experience of humanity through the ages—the eternal hopes shared by all for a better life and a more peaceful world.  This is from his Olympic Letter from Athens, which appeared on the front page of the French Journal des Débats on April 6, the day the Games began. He must have calculated the time it would take for his letter to reach his editor in Paris.

“(In) a few hours ... A crowd will ascend the staircases, fill the benches that rise one above another, and mass themselves in the passages. A very different crowd, no doubt, from that which last entered a similar stadium, animated, however, by like sentiments, by the same sympathy for youth, and by the same desire for human harmony.”