Olympic Games (interesting, actually)

[Jona Lendering]

he started no such Greek/Latin primacy project, because that has been in existence since the 14th century. That's what the whole Renaissance is about -- searching, and finding, in the Classics, the source for a lot of the wisdom that people then took and transformed in their daily lives.

Yes and no. Indeed, the Renaissance had a lot to do with "going back to before Rome". But any Renaissance author would say that before Greece, there was Babel and the Jews. It is only Winckelmann who creates a cultural theory that makes Greece, and not the Near East, the cradle of civilization. I like the guy -he's one of my heroes- and he has a case when you define culture as art and art as perfect imitation of the human anatomy. Fortunately, there is more to be said about civilization.

It's also somewhat surprising to see you, who maintains such a respected scholarly site named after a Roman author, stating so blaze that the Alexandrian Library was a "copy", and that the Babylonians had a "scientific institute". First of all no mainstream scientists believe this, so if you have some proof, then shouldn't the claim be stated a lot more circumspectly than it has been?

I think that Paul-Alain Beaulieu, "De l’ Esagil au Mouseion: l’ organisation de la recherché scientifique au 4e siècle av. J.C." in: Pierre Briant en F. Joannès (eds.), La transition entre l’ empire achéménide et les royaumes hellénistiques (vers 350-200 avant J.-C.) (2006) is a reasonable and recent summary of mainstream scholarship. Although I admit that historians and archaeologists tend to be more open to ideas like Beaulieu's than classicists.

Secondly, this notion is certainly false, because the Babylonians or anyone else never had science, in the modern sense in which the Greeks had invented it. They collected astronomical data for religious purposes, and they were never able to put it to scientific use for thousands of years,

I think that is incorrect. The development of System-A and System-B (= algebraic descriptions of planetary movements) is science as science, and has no religious implications. The same can be said for Babylonian mathematics - tablet Plimpton 322 shows an interest in mathematics that is purely scientific (twentieth century BC). As to my use of the word "algebra", which is usually not used before the Middle Ages, seer Jens Hoyrup, "Pythagorean 'Rule' and 'Theorem' - Mirror of the Relation between Babylonian and Greek Mathematics", in: Joh. Renger, Babylon. Focus mesopotamischer geschichte [etc], 1999 Saarbrucken.

There's a famous story in Herodotus how when the Spartans defeated a Persian squadron, they stripped them down to search for hidden items, and, tanned and chiseled as they were, beheld the sight of flabby, pale-skinned "soldiers". I think the historian records that they actually started laughing.

I know the story, but as far as I can remember, it's not from Herodotus. That being said, you are right that the "worship" of sporters is Greek - but that's not the issue. The issue is whether the Olympic Games, in its first stage, may not have had eastern influences. I think that the claim deserves serious study; it's not unlike other eastern influence - think of the "orientalizing style" in Greek painting, the use of eastern motifs by Herodotus, the use of the alphabeth, the introduction of sacred prostitution in Corinth.