AMIDST THE CROWD AT THE CYPRUS RALLY

 

“Welcome, let me find you a seat over with the dignitaries,” one of the organisers of the Cyprus Rally greeted me as I arrived at Federation Square.

“No need,” I responded. “To paraphrase Groucho, I wouldn’t dream of joining any dignitaries that would accept me as one of them. I’m going to mingle with the crowd, instead.”

Soon after, Victorian Minister Steve Dimopoulos arrived. “Let me see if I can find you a seat, Steve,” I offered.

“No need,” he responded. “I prefer to mingle with the crowd.”

I stood next to longtime friend and educator, Pontian community stalwart Kostas Pataridis, who along with Yiota Stavridou is responsible for putting together a remarkable exhibition showcasing the Hellenic history of Cyprus at the Cyprus Community. Kostas was extremely tired but he made the effort to attend because, as a descendant of Genocide victims, he sees value in remembering and in expressing solidarity with the oppressed everywhere.

“I took the kids to their soccer match this morning and I came straight here. Once this is done, I’ll go to the launch of your book: “The Librarian of Cappadocia.”

“I’ve postponed the launch,” I informed him, touched. “When I realised that the dates conflicted, it was a no brainer that Cyprus takes priority.” What I didn’t tell him was that it was also my beloved niece’s first birthday and that I had snuck out of her birthday party to a chorus of raised eyebrows by my kinfolk.

“Leave him,” my sister said. “Cyprus is important.”

As we listened to the speakers, some elderly gentlemen sidled up to me. “Why do they torture the crowd with speech after speech, all of them saying the same thing. The crowd is getting tired and restless. Have an introduction, a keynote address and then move to the concert. Or are we merely trying to feed egos here.”

Given that I was one of the speakers, I refrained from comment. “Nonsense,” one of his companions interrupted him. “This is important. Here are politicians from both major parties, State and Federal and all of them are affirming that the invasion and occupation of Cyprus is illegal. This sends an important message to the world. Australia is with us.”

“I’m not saying Australia isn’t,” another of their friends cut in. “But notice that two of the speakers are former leaders of their Federal and State parties and thus rivals of the current leaders. What wisdom lies in inviting those who by their very existence threaten the leadership of the current holders of power?”

This was an astute observation, and I could not help but offer my own opinion: “In my view, these speakers are well respected members of parliament and good friends of our community, not only in word, but in deed. They are not guests. They are part of our community and have every right to be here.’’

“How much are they paying you?” the old man snorted sarcastically.

Towards the rear of the crowd, a bearded man draped in the Greek flag, accosted another draped in the Cypriot flag: “An interesting white cloak you are wearing. But what is that bird poop that has fallen on it?” I took this as an offensive reference to the map of Cyprus and expressed my outrage. “Relax,” both men laughed. “We are friends and always have arguments as to whether the Cyprus Issue would be better solved via both parts uniting with their mother countries, or by becoming truly independent. It’s just a joke, albeit in poor taste.”

Nearby, a left-leaning community activist stood shaking his head. “This is not right,” he exclaimed angrily. “All these speakers are acting as if the coup did not happen. As if the Junta did not exist and as if Greece and the Junta’s Cypriot supporters bear no responsibility for the Invasion. And by the way, we have heard a good deal about the war in Ukraine by the speakers, but nothing at all about Palestine. What is going on? Is this a form of racism?”

“Take a look around you,” I suggested. “I see in this crowd, Greek flags, Cypriot flags, Ukrainian flags, Assyrian flags and a gorgeous flag bearing the Mandylion of Christ, which paradoxically enough is also used by the Russian army. Yet nowhere do I see any Palestinian flags. Moreover, given Hezbollah, Hamas’ ally’s recent threats towards Cyprus, do you think that there is sufficient context to emphasize other issues, at the expense of the 50^th anniversary of the invasion of Cyprus?”

“Hmph,” he grunted. “Fascist.”

As I do at every Cyprus rally, I went to greet the black clad ladies who carry photographs of their loved ones. They have born the anguish of not knowing where their brothers, fathers and husbands have been for decades. Some of these, as in the case of a lady who attends my parish church, have also had to experience the grief that comes with learning that their loved one, taken prisoner by the invaders, was murdered, in violation of International Law and denied a decent burial for decades. She described in detail how her brother’s remains were eventually retrieved, identified and delivered to her family for burial. When I asked whether the internment of her brother’s remains allowed her to achieve a sense of finality, since I was unaware of the Greek term for ‘closure,’ she shook her head sadly and tears rolled down her creased cheeks. “I’ve been coming to these rallies ever since 1974. And in all that time, I still cannot understand why people have to be so mean to each other.”

I have been attending the Cyprus Rally ever since I was an infant. I remember my grieving parishioner as a young mother, her grief infused with vitality and righteous indignation. Now I see her, old and grey, with a walking stick, her grief overlain with bitterness, her sorrow with bewilderment. I tell her that it is for her and her friends that I am drawn to the rally every year and she sighs and gives me a hug. “You know those verses in the Greek national anthem: «Από τα κόκκαλα βγαλμένη, των ελλήνων τα ιερά»? I’m convinced that these words refer to my brother. My brother died so we can be free. But what I still can’t understand after all this time, is why.”

A young, newly arrived from Greece attendee attempts to yell pejoratives aimed at the perpetrator and politicians in Greece and is restrained by some of the older members of the crowd. “There is no place for that sort of behaviour here,” they reprimand him sternly. “Come on!” he exclaims indignantly. “You guys are so wooden and lifeless. Droning on and on and on. Where is the fire, where is the passion? Don’t you people feel anything?” I pointed him in the direction of my elderly co-parishioner, still weeping as she clutched the photograph of her brother.

When I was called upon to speak, I did so in Greek, even though I had been asked to speak in English. This is because I felt that all that could be said in English, would most ably be said by the politicians and other community leaders chosen to do so. My message, however, was not directed towards the mainstream but rather to those who I have known all my life, seeing them albeit once a year, who have grown grey defying wintry Melbourne, who have seen their hopes and aspirations diminish, but who nonetheless refuse to resile from their duty or abandon their faith. I chose to address them in the form of a poem, because it is the poets, whether Solomos, Palamas, Seferis, Elytis, Ritsos or so many others who traditionally spoke directly to the hearts of the people, in a discourse that defies rhetoric, eschews stereotypes and cliches but instead forms a narrative that has sustained us both in times of elation as well as loss and despondency. I said:

“To the murderers, to the rapists,

to the oppressors, to the conquerors,

to those who drown all hope,

who violate every moral law

whose hands are soaked in the blood

of the baptistery of violence,

and  have the temerity to call this peace.

To those,

Who refuse to let wounds heal,

but instead let them fester,

Who do not know how to let hearts meld,

but fence them off and enclose them with barbed wire,

 with guns and with words.

Who do not know how to unite, but only how to divide.

To those

Who shamelessly engrave their sins on Pentadactylus for all the world to see

Who tremble at reconciliation, who fear forgiveness,

who are hostile to love, and identify  with death.

To them, we answer with the words of the poet:

These trees don't take comfort in less sky

 these rocks don't take comfort under foreigners' footsteps

these faces take comfort only in the sun,

these hearts take comfort only in righteousness

And we here also take no comfort in anything less than the freedom of Cyprus.

And here before everyone and under the protection of Panayia, we swear by the sacred ideals of humanity that as long as we exist, however few  we may become, that we will never stop fighting for justice, freedom, democracy and the liberation of Cyprus.”

 

“Stirring words,” a spectator opined as I came off the stage. “You seemed very angry.” The truth is I was. Whereas in my youth I viewed the issue variously as one of imperialism, or of competing nationalisms and violation of International Law, ever since I became a father, I view it as one of betrayal. We all take great care in endeavouring to infuse in our children values of tolerance, fairness, decency, empathy, open-mindedness and kindness. We lead them to believe that these character traits are prized, that they constitute a code to live by. And then we unleash them upon a world where injustice prevails if it is our interest for it to do so, where we all make pious noises about upholding the right while we do the opposite, or even worse, hold our tongues in the face of iniquity. How can I convince my children and my niece of the logic of our system of beliefs, when after fifty years, the World we have brought them into tolerates an illegal regime that has entrenched itself by means of violence and continues to enforce a system of apartheid?

 

Sharing these reflections with an Assyrian gentleman in the crowd, he shook his head slowly. “We have not had a country for 2,400 years,” he whispered sadly. “But we are still here. Through all the pain, the constant persecution, the genocides, the hypocrisy of the world powers and the indifference of others – all of it. We are still here. And sometimes, that is more than enough.”

 

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 27 July 2024

PETER JASONIDES AND EPIRUS

 

My first conversation with the late Peter Jasonides relating to Epirus took place at a Pontian «παρακάθ’». The traditional Pontian song «Τρυγόνα» was playing and we were comparing lyrics, as there is also an Epirotic version.

“Let me explain the song for you,” Peter offered, his face flushed in pride. “The turtle dove (which symbolises a beautiful girl), is in the forest, gathering wood. She is described as wearing an apron and socks and is likened to a crown, which probably denotes that she is of marriageable age and also acts as proof that Pontians consider their women to be royalty.”

“Fascinating,” I replied. “In the Epirotic version, the turtle dove is just that. A woman asks the turtle dove, since she can fly and perch on high, whether she has seen her husband. The turtle dove replies in the affirmative, confirming that she spotted him just yesterday lying in a field, with black birds pecking at his eyes.”

“Oh my god,” Peter exclaimed, choking on his drink. “Can you Epirotes be any more morbid? What is it with you people?”

It is a question I have always asked myself and I told him of my long held belief that Epirotes are obsessed with dead owing to the fact that the entrance to Hades was traditionally held to have been at the region’s Acheron River, by classical accounts, including Pausanias  and later Dante's Inferno, with Charon ferrying the souls of the dead across it. According to folk etymology, the word Acheron meant “joyless,” which is exactly how the uninitiated describe Epirotic music. Proving that Epirus occupied a liminal space where the boundaries between life and death are blurred, close by near Parga, is the Necromanteion, or Oracle of the Dead, where the living would go to speak to their dead ancestors.

“That would make sense except for one thing,” Peter responded. “We Pontians also had a Necromanteion. It was in Pontoheraclea, and we are still not as morbid as you are.”

“Actually,” I corrected him, “Pontoheraclea was in Bithynia, so it really isn’t a part of Pontus at all”

“Yes it is.”

“No it isn’t…”

When Peter was firmly convinced of something, it was exceedingly difficult to disabuse him of his misapprehension. He attributed this to his «Ποντιακό κεφάλι» a form of unique psychological brachycephaly that did not easily permit the permeation of ideas that challenge one’s world view. I believe that he was extremely disappointed when I informed him that the Epirotes talk of «Ηπειρώτικο κεφάλι» and he spent the next hour trying to identify the nuances that would distinguish between the two afflictions, only stopping to give me a death stare when I had the temerity to utter a Pontian joke: Γιατί οι Πόντιοι έχουν μεγάλο κεφάλι; Γιατί τα παίρνουν στο κρανίο». I never repeated the same mistake ever again.

One of the reasons that Peter was drawn to Epirus was because like Pontus, it is situated on the margins of Hellenism, the regions that in Greek we call “Acritic” which is just another way of saying extreme. Both of us espoused extreme forms of Hellenism and he was particularly enthused that members of the same Byzantine imperial family, the Komnenoi, established the Despotate of Epirus in the West and the Empire of Trebizond, in Pontus, in the East. Often he would call me to compare the parallel trajectories of both entities, both struggling to assert a variant form of the Romaic identity, both sandwiched between aggressive powers that wanted to call them their own. It was this idea, of being away from the centre of power and yet established an alternative narrative of one’s own that intrigued him, not in the least because he could appreciate how a similar process could be developed in Australia, which is about as far from the cultural centre he paid homage to as you could go.

It is also for this reason that he was immensely proud of his relative, Leonidas Jasonides, who was present at the declaration of the Autonomous Republic of Pontus in Batumi in 1919. My argument, that this fledgling state could never have been viable owing to the inability of Greece to defend it, the competing interests of foreign powers and the demographics of the region he brushed off derisively. When he learned of my fascination with Autonomous Epirus, a state that was declared in the face of Albanian repression in Northern Epirus in 1914, he studied it closely, comparing its armed struggle with that of the Pontic Guerrilla movement and lamenting at how, according to him, the motherland betrayed the aspirations of both. The only difference between the two entities in his mind, was that when we commenced these discussions, the Greeks of Northern Epirus were still largely to be found in their ancestral homes whereas the Pontians were not. As the years progressed, the Northern Epirots began to migrate en masse to Greece and elsewhere, leaving Peter shaking his head. “Why on earth would you leave your country?” he would shaking his finger at me accusingly. “We were forced, we had no choice. But you guys do.” His voice then assumed a plaintive tone: “Why would you leave your country?” I said nothing. A few weeks later though, I was woken in the middle of the night by a telephone call. Peter was on the other end sobbing. He had stayed awake all night, reading an account of the suffering of the people in Hoxha’s Albania and the destruction of their religious and national identity.” It’s a form of genocide he repeated over and over again.

We campaigned together for many years for official recognition of the Pontian Genocide. During that time, I was able to convince him that it was not only a Greek Genocide, given that its scope was broader than just the Pontian region, extending to Christian populations in Asia Minor in general. One evening, while in a meeting discussing the reliability of statistics as to the victims, he interrupted the speaker, looked over to me and said: “Did you know that when the Romans conquered Epirus, they took away 150,000 Epirote slaves with them?”

“Yes, and the population of the region never recovered,” I agreed.

“Well, that is a form of Genocide. Why is this not recognised by anyone? I move that this meeting recognise this event right now. Genocide is something that should concern the Panhellenion, not just the affected regions.”

Whereas I tended to be excoriatingly critical of the motherland, Peter’s love for it was all encompassing. One of his greatest sources of pride was his tremendous command of the Greek language and the fact that he could generally not be distinguished as an Australohellene while on many of his sojourns to the home country, largely because he was a linguistic magpie who could assimilate all the latest jargon and patois into vocabulary. He believed it was his ability to establishing a rapport with Greek politicians by speaking to them on their level and register that allowed him to campaign effectively on issues relating to Pontian Hellenism and he castigated me for being antagonistic and excluding them from our calculations and field of action altogether, for his was a broad and generous view of Hellenism.

“Be that as it may,” I responded. “Your situation is different to ours. The motherland has gathered your people unto its bosom and has made them into voters and tax-payers. Our people across the border are neither of those things.”

“What they need to do is rise up,” Peter determined. “Did you know that there are one million crypto- Pontians in Turkey ready to assert their ethnic and linguistic rights?” I dismissed this form of wishful thinking, telling him the story of the mullahs of the village of Of, who in the nineteenth century, petitioned the Ottoman government not to allow the Ofites to register themselves as Greek, as they had only recently converted. “But that is it!” he enthused. “They have never forgotten! They are ready to rise up!”

Peter died and there still is not a Pontian state. He was right about the national awakening, though. A good number of the current inhabitants of Pontus are embracing their heritage, displaying an interest in learning Romeika, the Pontian language and preserving a purer form of it than that spoken in Greece, or the diaspora, as it lacks the permeation and influence of Modern Greek. Having taught himself the Pontian dialect, he would often call me to discuss the differences between Romeika as spoken in Pontus, and the dialect he knew. On most of those occasions, the conversation would end when he would hang up the phone, incensed at my maintaining that a term which he swore was ancient Greek, was actually a Turkish loan-word. Nonetheless, it was his concern that the linguistic diversity of Greece was dying out that encouraged me to write literature in the Epirote dialect. One of those stories, which he was the first to read and critique, is now an act in a play that is currently touring his beloved motherland.

The last time I spoke to Peter was a few days before his death. He called me excitedly to inform me that he had read somewhere that itinerant Epirote stonemasons were responsible for the construction of many of the bridges of Pontus in Ottoman times. For a person that spent his life building bridges between communities, the past and the present and the chasm of political and ideological divides, I thought this to have been eminently fitting. Then for some inexplicable reason he turned the conversation to the Epirote custom of playing a funereal lament on the graves of the dead, usually on the clarinet. It was only as I saw his Greek flag draped coffin emerge from the church and inch closely to the hearse, when the kemenche began to rasp its lament and a hundred Pontic voices joined in unison to send him on his way that I understood. He had the soul of an Epirote.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 20 July 2024

THE ISLAND OF MISSING TREES: THE TRAGEDY OF CYPRUS

 

In Turkish author Elif Shafak’s 2021 novel: “The Island of Missing Trees,” the trauma of the division of two communities is highlighted through the discovery of her hybrid past by Ada, whose father is Greek and mother Turkish. The main protagonist’s name immediately denotes a nuanced, polysemic identity: It can either be short for Ellada, a popular name in Cyprus at one time among the Greeks, or ada, which means island in Turkish. Regardless of emphasis, one thing is certain: her name encompasses a multitude of affiliations relating to her country of origin, including instead of excluding its complex and many facets.

Elif Shafak’s characters navigate an intensely traumatic past where even the natural world, symbolised by the fluctuating state of health of a fig tree growing at the place where Greek and Turk first fell in love with each other. Significantly, this is a fig tree that is given a voice and afforded a character of its own, for that tree is the island itself. The choice of the fig tree is fraught with symbolism. Mentioned in the Quran, it also symbolises the loss of innocence, as exemplified by Adam and Even choosing to cover their shame with fig leaves upon eating the forbidden fruit. Jesus in the Gospel of Luke used the fig tree to hint at the end times: “Look at the fig tree, and all the trees; as soon as they come out in leaf, you see for yourselves and know that the summer is already near.” At the same time, in the Gospel of Mark, He cursed the fig tree that bore no fruit. This arguably, is the Cyprus of today, an island divided by a deep slash of hatred, perpetuated by the invader’s belief that in the twenty first century, two civilised peoples cannot live together as equals but rather, must only co-exist in parallel with each other, in a form of ritualised apartheid. This truly is a fig tree that is cursed, for it grows in poisoned soil. That poison, the poison of prejudice, fear of the other and a complete refusal of those holding the fig tree hostage to view all of its figs as its legitimate constituent parts has stunted its growth, rendered it sickly and non-viable. It is a withering, dying, twisted thing, perverted from its true course.

In the novel, Kostas, Ada’s father, manages to ensure the survival of the fig tree and the memory of his beloved, by taking a cutting and removing it altogether from its blighted soil. Even though the climate of his adopted country, England, is inimical to the survival of the fig tree, through a careful burying of the tree during the harsh Britannic winter, he is able to find a way to make it endure. It is this cutting, the author possibly implies, that conveys and perpetuates the true essence and vitality of its mother and is able to carry on, even as its progenitor plant, mired in disease, withers and fails. This element of the novel is both hopeful and deeply troubling. On the one hand, the author suggests that removed from the context of the bad blood, the hostility and the violence, the very essence of Cyprus, life itself, can thrive. In like vein, she may possibly be suggesting that the human cuttings of Cyprus, its exiles and their descendants, transplanted throughout the diaspora are best placed to propagate the true meaning of all that Cyprus signifies, for they are doing so on soil unblighted by trauma.

Nonetheless, it becomes apparent that a condition precedent to such survival or renewal is the act of “burying” the fig tree. To what extent does reconciliation depend on an agreed or mutual ‘burial’ of the past? Can targeted amnesia or a tacit agreement to gloss over controversial aspects of Cyprus’ history truly constitute a feasible pathway towards a ‘solution’ to the island’s current problems or does it in fact exacerbate and feed already existing resentment and paranoia? Given that this process of renewal in the novel takes place upon the soil of Cyprus’ erstwhile colonial dynast, is Elif Shafak implying that the wounds that have afflicted Cyprus are so deep that there is no hope of recovery and instead she should be allowed to die a natural death, with the very best of her legacy to live on in climes and countries that played a large part in creating her woes in the first place?

Main protagonist Ada’s place in the novel belies such an approach. Neither Greek, nor Turkish, exposed to none of the history that has shaped her parent’s lives, she experiences deep existential angst and mental anguish when she is unable to place her mother’s death in context. However, her slow and painful rediscovery of the past does not seem in any way to effect any meaningful change on the island that was responsible for her existence. Instead, it helps her to come to terms with herself, on another island, where all are free to choose their own identities, remember or forget, in relative peace and safety.

Significantly, the climax of the novel comes in the realisation that Ada’s dead mother’s spirit has merged with that of the Fig Tree. The girl’s mother is at one with Mother Cyprus, and it is this consubstantial identity that we are compelled to consider: one that is able to transcend borders, natural and man-imposed barriers and imbue its children with support, warmth, guidance and inspiration wherever they may be.

There are many things missing in Cyprus. Trees, people, memories, an order and way of things that seems impossible to re-acquire. But there are also things that are being found. Just recently, some of my fellow-parishioners discovered the bones of their brothers, missing persons since 1974. Others, returning to their homes in the north for the first time, re-discovered photo albums or precious household possessions, retained by those who came to occupy their homes. Greeks and Turks travelling to and from the occupied north and democratic free Cyprus are re-discovering that despite the propaganda by those who wish to legitimise violence as a means of keeping their illegal regime in power, both peoples are united by infinitely more things than divides them.

A case in point, is the Cypriot diaspora. In countries such as Australia, both communities have shown that they can live side by side with each other, engage with each other, debate and dispute each other and befriend each other in a climate of mutual respect and friendship. By “burying the fig tree,” that is, being sensitive to each other’s trauma and avoiding hurtful and impolite behaviour, the soil of pain is gradually healed, allowing such collaborations as the one I enjoyed with the late lamented Fahri Kiamil, in assisting with the organisation of the Melbourne Harmony Festival. In his accountant’s office in Brunswick, he sang me songs of his homeland Cyprus, in Turkish, and I sang him songs of my grandfather’s ancestral place of origin in Tralles, now known as Aydin. We never could agree on who was to blame for the invasion of Cyprus. The only thing we did agree upon was that war and violence are unacceptable and that all involved were diminished as a result.

It may be that Cyprus will never be re-united. If so, this would be a tragedy. While we, the transplanted ones, have the luxury of burying Elif Shafak’s fig-tree from a place of safety, far removed by time and position from the scene of the crime, those still living in a land blighted by invasion and kept apart by a military regime deserve a just resolution, one founded upon International Law and the principals of Human Rights. Until that time, we can only pray that the spirit of Cyprus, whether mediated through a fig tree, memory, or lethe, maintains in all her children, an imperishable love for their island of origin, one that will ultimately enable them to surmount their hurt, their trauma and their pain, to overcome their curse and bring them together once more, flourishing, and bearing fruit for all to savour.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 13 July 2024

THE OTHER OLYMPICS

 

According to the International Olympic Committee’s homepage, the ancient Olympic Games ceased their operations in 393AD. The various neopagans that punctuate our paroikia blame Christian intolerance for this and in particular a purported decree by the Emperor Theodosius II, even though evidence exists to indicate the Olympics were held after this date, and that the Games were declining in popularity even before the Christianisation of the Roman Empire. The court poet Claudian then refers to the Olympics in A.D. 399, after the demise of the emperor who supposedly banned them.

Indeed, scholars now contend that it is more likely that the flooding and earthquakes that extensively damaged the sporting venues of Olympia and invasions by barbarians are what caused the Games terminal decline, a fire that burned down the Temple of the Olympian Zeus having dealt the final coup de grâce.

What is generally overlooked however is the fact that there was not one but several Olympic Games throughout the Greek speaking world, including those of Aegae in Macedonia, in existence in the time of Alexander the Great, those of Alexandria, those of Anazarbus in Cilicia, Attalia in Pamphylia, in commemoration of which coins were struck, Cyzicus in Mysia, Cyrene in Libya, Dion in Macedonia instituted by Archelaus I of Macedon, lasting nine days, corresponding to the number of the Muses, at which Euripides wrote and presented his play the Bacchae, Ephesus, Magnesia and Nicopolis in Epirus.

Perhaps the greatest Olympic Games however in late antiquity were those of Antioch, which, during late Hellenistic and Roman times was one of the largest, most vibrant and multicultural cities of the world. Proving that the trade in sporting rights, teams and franchising is not a modern phenomenon but has its roots in hallowed antiquity, in 44AD, the citizens of Antioch, whose games were originally called the Daphnea being sacred to Apollo and Artemis, purchased from the Eleans of the original Olympia, the right to call their games Olympic as well. While considered historically part of Syria, the region around Antioch, now known as Hatay, was These Games were under the control of the Syriach, the chief priest of the Roman province of same name and the Alytarch, who as leader of the Olympic police was charged with the responsibility of ordering the rabdouchoi, rod-bearers, and the mastigophoroi, scourge-bearers, to administer punishment to athletes who didn’t obey the rules, providing a distinct dimension to the definition of the term Games, and all this, aeons before latex was invented.

Far from the Olympics being banned for religious reasons, as late as 465AD, some seven decades after the supposed abolition of the Games, Emperor Leo passed an edict directing that curiales, that is, well to do citizens who were expected to procure funds for public building projects, temples, festivities, games, and local welfare systems could no longer serve as alytarchs but rather, that this role had to be played by the Comes Orientis, the Count of the East instead. Prior to that, in 430AD, Antiochos Chuzon, praetorian prefect of the East and consul, who was also a key figure in the compilation of the Codex Theodosianus, personally provided an endowment for the convening of the Games. This suggests a level of state sponsorship and interest in the Olympic Games of Antioch that belies simplistic interpretations as to the demise of the institution in its entirety.

Just as everything is bigger and brighter now under the AFL than it was under its small-town predecessor the VFL, so too were the Olympic Games of Antioch. According to Byzantine chronicler John Malalas, a good deal of money was expended not only in renovating existing infrastructure but also in constructing new facilities for the multitude of sporting events to be hosted at the Games, including a number of wrestling pits, a monomacheion for combat sports, a hippodrome and a large palaestra called the Plethrion which, it is believed, occupied thousands of square meters in the centre of the city. The main Olympic stadium was situated in the sacred grove of Apollo and Artemis at Daphne on the outskirts of the city, and the pagan sophist Libanius, teacher of Saint John Chrysostom tells us that it was referred to by the populace at large as the «στάδιον Ὀλυμπικόν».

Not only the sporting events themselves, but the associated entertainment accompanying them seems to have drawn the ire of Christian preachers of the time, especially in relation to the various processions that took place through Antioch towards the Olympic Stadium, indicating that the Christians of Antioch, a city in which the new religion was dominant, were heavily invested in and willing participants of the Olympic Games. The Monophysite prelate Severus of Antioch for example, felt the need to compare the metaphorical athlete Athanasius to the violent athletes of the Olympics, who had arrived in the city from all the realms of the Greek world. In one of his homilies, he invites his flock to compete in his Christian arena, rather than in the one at Daphne “which is madly anticipated,” acknowledging the hold that the Olympics had over the Christians of that era. In particular, he fulminated against the excessive amount of depilation his Christian flock undertook and the skimpy garb they wore, when participating in the Olympic procession, imploring them to understand that this was tantamount to giving glory to Zeus.

It appears that entreaties of this nature fell largely on deaf ears, so entrenched were the Olympics in the culture of Antioch. Saint Palladius the Hermit describes his church as virtually empty during the Olympic festival of 404, as all had flocked to Daphne to watch the Games. In 408, he referred to the Olympics as “Heracleian,” evidencing the manner in which their pagan origin existed in parallel with the emerging Christian world. In vain did the sermons of the Antiochene clerics admonish people to consider all facets of their existence in terms of their Christian affiliation. The reality was much more nuanced, as the citizens also identified with kin, their professions and their social networks. Standing above religious differences, the ten kilometre Olympic procession elicited an identification with the city and with citizenhood, that no amount of preaching could compromise.

While lasting until 521AD, some 128 years after the supposed abolition of the Elean Olympic Games, the Olympic Games of Antioch finally came to an end via Imperial Edict by Justin I. This was not due to any religious consideration or the need to enforce Christian conformity. Instead, there was a temporary blanket ban on all games in the Empire of any description, in reaction to the riots of the Blues, supporters of one of the rowdy horse-racing factions of Constantinople. A subsequent riot of similar nature a decade or so later, would see the destruction of the first Saint Sophia. After the ban, it was not an easy matter for the Games to be reconvened. A terrible fire swept through the city in 525AD. There were catastrophic earthquakes in 526 and 528 and funds that would have been utilised to the repair and rebuilding of sporting infrastructure were sorely needed to aid the afflicted citizens and were applied to general reconstruction instead. Further calamities ensued. In 540, Antioch was sacked by the Persians and 300,000 of its citizens were deported to Mesopotamia. A year later, there was the advent of bubonic plague which wiped out the majority of the city’s remaining population.

Although Antioch would remain in Byzantine hands for another century, it was constantly subject to the depredations of the Persians and then the Arabs and it never recovered its former glory. In 637, it was taken by the Arabs and by the time it was reconquered some three centuries later by Nicephoros Phocas, it remained a frontier town, valued as part of the overall Byzantine strategy of maintaining the integrity of the eastern borderline after the Seljuk conquest of Anatolia. By that time, Antioch’s Olympic legacy, beyond the writings of the chroniclers, had long been forgotten.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 6 July 2024