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By Kerry Tremain
Bull hunting actually had a shot at becoming more than a professor’s pipe dream. When the current Greek minister of culture needed someone to help relate the country’s antiquities to the modern Olympics, Miller’s work made him a logical choice.Miller, who will retire in December after 32 years at Berkeley, has devoted most of his professional life to excavating and analyzing the ruins at Nemea, whose stadium was one of four major sites for the ancient Greek competitions (the others were at Delphi, Isthmia, and of course Olympia). A former football player and a sports fan whose classes attract many Cal athletes, Miller had to ignore flak from other classics scholars who argued that ancient athletics weren’t worthy of study. In 1996, he and colleagues in Nemea began staging running competitions at the restored stadium there. Earlier this year, Yale published his latest book on the games. It has a matter-of-fact name, Ancient Greek Athletics, and a sober academic tone--the New Yorker called it an “exhaustive survey”--but it includes a claim that is both controversial among classicists and relevant to contemporary politics. The Olympics have long borne weighty symbolic meanings, particularly as a trope for world peace, but Miller argues further that the ancient games, which began around 776 B.C., nurtured some basic democratic values that took hold in Greek city-states. In other words, Greek athletics helped give birth to democracy itself. Miller hoped the recent games would bring this history to light. Three years ago, at the minister’s request, he submitted a detailed plan to do so. “I suggested that two weeks before the actual games they should start a pentathlon at Olympia, and two days later move to Nemea for competitions in running,” he says. “Then on to Epidauros for competitions in acting, another ancient Greek tradition. People could recite 20 lines from Euripides in ancient Greek, and an international panel of judges would decide who did the best job. We could give people specifications on how to make a tortoise-shell kithara [a kind of lyre], and a copy of the Hymns of Apollo. At Delphi, the site of an ancient theater, they could sing while accompanying themselves on the kithara.” His suggestions were ignored. But the enormous success of the Olympic committee’s last-minute decision to hold the shot put in the ancient stadium, Miller says, vindicates his belief that the world hungered for Greece to put its ancient history on display. “The javelin throw could have been at Delphi, the discus at Nemea. The Athenian stadium, which holds 70,000 people, is the only marble stadium in the world. It was originally constructed around 340 B.C., reconstructed in marble in 140 A.D., and then rebuilt again in marble for the first modern Olympic games in 1896. The Parthenon is in the background. Shouldn’t we have had the opening or closing ceremony there?” he asks. According to Miller, the Greeks had emphasized their antiquities in bidding for the 1996 Olympics (the centennial of the modern games), only to lose out to Atlanta, which was better equipped with modern telecommunications and infrastructure. “I think people involved with the Athens bid were stunned by that rejection,” he says. Afterwards, Greece decided to “forget the antiquities, to go for the new fancy stuff--the Metro, satellite dishes, and the like.” Besides, ordinary Greeks have an ambivalent attitude toward their antiquities, Miller says. Defensive about their modernity, Greeks are sort of in the 21st century, sort of not; sort of in Europe, sort of not. “For people who live outside Greece, the antiquities are a great source of pride,” he says. “But the vast majority of Greeks know very little about them except that if they plan to build a house and antiquities are discovered where they wanted their basement--bam! Their dreams are shattered. The value of their property plummets. At Nemea, fortunately, we’ve gotten past that. The area was purchased by the government, and people have come to realize that in the area where the University of California digs, they’re okay, they’re good antiquities.” Miller has almost finished the third of an expected ten volumes detailing his findings at Nemea; his “retirement” will largely be spent completing the other seven. “They are the nitty-gritty of what we’ve found and what we think about it. In the long term, this is the importance of my work, without which my theorizing will have no meaning.” Of his theories, Miller’s views concerning the role of the games in promoting democracy are probably the most hotly debated. He admits they are hard to prove. One piece of evidence is circumstantial. Athens was not, as is commonly thought, the birthplace of democracy. Democracy developed in several places in Greece at the same time, but the earliest and clearest development took place in Kroton, in southern Italy, which was then a part of Greece. Kroton was also what Miller calls the “jock factory” of antiquity. “It became proverbial: the slowest of the Krotoniates was the fastest of the Greeks,” he says. He believes that Kroton’s political and athletic achievements are closely related. Critics of Miller argue that the games were limited to a narrow segment of society: in order to compete, you had to be Greek, you had to be male, you had to be a free man, and you had to be able to leave home for weeks at a time to train and go to the festivals. These critics contend that the games were more elitist than democratic. Miller counters that the ancient literature indicates the winners’ occupations included plowboy, shepherd, fishmonger, cowherd, and cook, which suggests that the games were open to more than the elite. He also finds evidence of democratic values in how the ancient races were run. At Nemea, the archaeological team uncovered stone starting blocks and a mechanism for insuring a fair and equal start to the race. Simply put, the best man won, regardless of his position in society. “Athletics aren’t the whole story, but they provide one critical feature to the development of democracy, and that is equality before the law,” Miller says. “When you go out and put your toes into that starting booth, there is no favoritism for the rich over the poor.” The ancient competitions were conducted entirely in the nude; even their word for the games, gymnikos agon, translates as nude competition or struggle. Miller believes that the athletes’ nudity was a great equalizer. “Social position cannot be easily discerned in the locker room; economic privilege does not propel one set of legs faster than another. The participants…are democrats striving to excel with their beings, not their possessions,” he writes in Ancient Greek Athletics. Miller thinks that’s still the case. “When we were growing up, as teenagers, we had certain feelings about our position in society,” he says. “But when we got into the locker room and took our clothes off, we were all the same.” What about the inevitable bodily comparisons, the taunts, and the towel flipping? “That went on, too. But were the rich kids the only ones snapping the towels and belittling others?” As he speaks, Miller travels easily back and forth over 25 centuries of history. He’s developed a palpable regard for the ancients as real human beings, and ponders the coins and shards and ancient graffiti in Nemea the way others do photographs of their grandparents. For Miller, the difference between the Corinthians or Athenians sitting together in rooting sections at Nemea, and Cal fans doing the same at the Big Game, is small. To illustrate the way the ancient athletes haunt his work, he tells a story about sitting one evening with a friend on a hill overlooking the arena at Nemea. “The sun was going down and it was very quiet, then a little wind blew up. Suddenly little puffs of dust went down the track like so many feet. We both sat silently, not sure we wanted to confess what we’d seen,” he says. A constant in Miller’s work is his impassioned defense of the role of athletics in society and in the life of the mind, in the past and today. He relates the story, for example, of an offensive lineman who was underperforming in his class at Cal. The player complained that the professor expected too much. “How’s that?” Miller asked. The lineman replied that he was just a football player and too dumb to be at this University--his coaches had told him so. “I hit the ceiling,” Miller says. “Lack of self-esteem in the classroom translates into its lack on the field, and vice versa. I’ve seen it time after time.” (Partly as a result of Miller’s protests, the coach was fired.) Beyond admiration for individual athletes’ talent and discipline, people appreciate the Olympics as a respite from war, when national pride both flourishes and is sublimated in athletic competition. Miller claims to have found plenty of evidence of that ancient value in Athens this year. Despite widespread anti-Americanism in many countries including Greece, for instance, Miller says that Cal swimming star Natalie Coughlin became a crowd favorite. “I think she came across as a woman who’s not out to conquer the world, but is just trying to do her best. Somehow she managed to project that, despite the physical distance between the swimmers and the crowd.” Miller described another incident that epitomized his own idealism about the Olympics. It occurred at a basketball game between Spain and China. A contingent of 1,500 Spaniards was at one end of the basketball court, with about half that many Chinese at the other. China’s team was clearly outclassed, and lost. “At the end of the game, the Spanish stood up and started shouting, ‘Long Live China! Long Live China!’” Miller says. “At the other end of the court, you could see the faces of the Chinese fans register disbelief, as if wondering whether they’d heard correctly. But when the Spanish tapered off, the Chinese shouted out, ‘Thank you! Thank you!’ “That’s what the Olympics are supposed to be about.” Berkeley's medalists Cal athletes brought home the gold...and more
Coughlin won five medals and now holds six world records, including the only under-a-minute time in the 100-meter backstroke, the event that yielded the first of her gold medals in Athens. For the other, she swam a blistering first leg to guide the women’s 4x200 meter freestyle relay team to a new world record. She also won silver in the 400-meter freestyle and medley relays, and bronze in the 100-meter freestyle. Returning to the United States, Coughlin showed herself to be as poised and unflappable outside the pool as she is in it. Interviewed by dozens of media outlets, she remained unerringly polite and graceful, generously praising her teammates, her coach Teri McKeever (who accompanied her to Athens as the first woman member of the swim team coaching staff), and her school. She told California Monthly that McKeever is “an amazingly genuine and progressive coach, not at all arrogant. First of all, she’s female--and it’s ridiculous there are so few women coaches in a sport where more than half of the athletes are women. She is easy to talk to, and open to your ideas and opinions about your own training.” About the University, Coughlin says, “A lot of schools claim they combine great sports and academic programs, but it’s a lie. Cal can honestly tell recruits that they’ll get a world-class education. It’s the most important reason I came here.” Coughlin plans to complete her psychology degree in the spring. She also signed an endorsement deal with Speedo that gives five percent of her earnings to the Cal swim team. Beyond swimming, she says she’ll probably pursue a career in broadcasting. She debuted with Fox Sports recently, announcing the “Tiburon Mile,” a swim meet and benefit for the Special Olympics. “I enjoy it, and it’s a way to stay connected to sports,” she says. There were ten other medalists from Berkeley.
Star defender Joy Fawcett ’90 is one of the “Fab Five” soccer legends from the team that won the 1991 World Cup. A former player with the San Diego Spirit, and UCLA’s first women’s soccer coach, Fawcett helped lead the U.S. team in Athens to an overtime 2-1 victory over Brazil and the gold medal; she adds it to an Olympic gold in 1996 and silver in 2000, as well as two World Cup championships. In her first Olympic games, Haley Cope ’02 (left) fell to eighth behind Cal teammate Natalie Coughlin in the 100-meter backstroke, but picked up a silver in the 400- meter medley relay. Cope also was one of a group of Olympians who posed nude for Playboy magazine. “I know it sounds lame,” she told the Washington Post, “but it was really artistic.” Twenty minutes before the men’s eight rowing crew won gold, Megan Kirkmaat ’00 and Laurel Korholz ’93 picked up a silver medal for the U.S. women in the same event, finishing behind Romania’s team. Kirkmaat claims she was an “unathletic” kid, but her two sisters and brother are all college athletes; sister Rebecca rowed at Cal. Korholz had previously rowed with two Olympic and seven world championship teams. Senior swimmer Duje Draganja ’05 of Croatia was one of several Cal athletes who competed in the Olympics for their home countries. Draganja won silver in the 50-meter freestyle race, finishing just .01 second behind gold medalist Gary Hall of the U.S. Born in Canada to American parents, Jake Wetzel ’00 rowed for the United States at the 2000 Olympics, but this year helped propel Canada’s four-man team to a silver medal. Wetzel is also an avid biker who raced on the national cycling circuit and went to the 1994 Mountain Biking World Championships. Synchronized swimmer Tammy Crow ’05 overcame negative publicity and serious injuries--both resulting from an accident in which her boyfriend and one of his students were killed--to help win a bronze medal for the U.S. team. She will finish her degree at Berkeley by writing her thesis on “How the Olympics is used as a political tool.” After losing a cliffhanger in the semifinals against Italy, the U.S. women’s water polo team, including Cal alums Heather Petri ’02 and Ericka Lorenz, beat Australia to capture the bronze medal. A founding member of her high school’s women’s water polo team, Petri was an All-American at Berkeley and graduated with a degree in biology. Lorenz, a formidable scorer, was the team’s youngest player at the Sydney Olympics. |
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