Montaigne and the Olympic Games

OLympic Stadium in Olympia, Greece

In the days of Montaigne there were no Olympic Games. The original Olympic Games of Antiquity had ended about 400 B.C. (the precise date is not known), while the first modern Olympic Games have been held in 1896. When Montaigne lived – the time of the Renaissance or Rediscovery of Antiquity – it was known that such games had been held long ago, but no one was interested to bring this past to life again. Compared to the day of today there was by far less interest in sport. However, tournaments like in the Middle Ages were still held, jeu de paume was quite popular, especially in France, as were boule games. Other sports practised were running, ice-skating (especially in the Netherlands), weight lifting, wrestling, etc., etc. But there was no competition on a scale that can be compared with what happens nowadays (one practical reason for this was, of course, that there was no good and fast transport system). Montaigne himself liked horse riding; just for pleasure, not for competition. One of his brothers played jeu de paume (and died after a ball had hit his head). So sport belonged to Montaigne’s life and to the society he lived in. Therefore it is not surprising that he mentions sport now and then in his Essays, though not very often. Sometimes Montaigne mentions the jeu de paume, sometimes he mentions sport in quotations or examples from Antiquity, and that’s most of it.
It is in examples that Montaigne mentions the Olympic Games four times in his Essays. Three references are not very interesting. However, one reference to the Olympic Games is, for it tells us a lot about the meaning and significance of sport. Although this reference doesn’t contain an idea of Montaigne himself but one developed by Pythagoras, it’s clear that Montaigne agrees with it. Here it is:
“Pythagoras was want to say that our life resembles the great and populous assembly of the Olympic games, wherein some exercise the body, that they may carry away the glory of the prize: others bring merchandise to sell for profit: there are also some (and those none of the worst sort) who pursue no other advantage than only to look on, and consider how and why everything is done, and to be spectators of the lives of other men, thereby the better to judge of and regulate their own.” (Essays, Book I, 25)
Montaigne refers to this view of Pythagoras in his essay “Of the Education of Children”. First, he says there that we must watch others and see how they behave, so that we can learn from it. In this context he mentions especially the ridiculousness and the arrogance of others. Such examples, such knowledge of what others have done “fortify our sight without closing our eyes to behold the lustre of our own; so many trillions of men, buried before us, encourage us not to fear to go seek such good company in the other world.” And then Montaigne comes with the passage on how Pythagoras interpreted the Olympic Games. With this passage Montaigne wants to say that children – and actually not only children, but everybody – must be like spectators and that they must learn from what they see happening around them. However, to my mind the meaning of this passage is wider. It contains not only the metaphor that a child (and actually everybody) is like a spectator of a sports event, but the passage is a kind of allegory of life. Life is like a sports tournament in which each person has a role to play and in which the occurrences and incidents are like the occurrences and incidents in life. In a sports event like the Olympic Games but also in smaller sports events there are players – the main participants –; there are winners and losers; those who try to profit for personal gain, but are not the main players; onlookers and bystanders; but also others, not mentioned by Pythagoras, like organizers, people in the background who may have the real power, manipulators, cheaters and deceivers, supervisors, innovators, and so on. The more you think about it, the more you’ll see that the Olympic Games and in fact any sports event is a reflection of life. Events like the Olympic Games are maybe too big for it, but smaller events of that kind, local and regional events, can function as a school of life. Then we don’t need to be only spectators, as Montaigne suggests, but we can also play one of the other parts. Every part in a sports event has aspects that are important in life. In this sense, sport is more than relaxation and recreation as is often thought. But can we reproach Montaigne that he wasn’t aware of it? For sport in his days was very different from sport in 2021. Then sport was mainly relaxation and recreation, indeed, and several centuries would have to pass by before it became a real model of life; before it became life itself.