Scholars and academics periodically debate whether Ulysses’s amorous interlude at Ramla l-Ħamra in Gozo actually happened or whether Malta’s sister island was actually the remote island of Ogygia in Homer’s Odyssey or whether this epic poem should be considered as a navigational treatise.

In my opinion, Homer’s achievement rests more on the Odyssey’s symbolic dimension, its metaphorical challenge and its outstanding literary merits being, together with the Illiad, the first truly great works of Western literature.

I would be doing a great injustice to our erudite great ancestors if I fail to mention the Homeric Collection in our prestigious national library at the Bibliotheca in Valletta, which not only boasts in the incunabula section (books printed before 1501) a history of Troy – a very rare edition printed in Venice in 1499 under the heading Dicty Crenensis Historia Troiana Venetiis Christopherus de Pensiis – 1499, but also 11 very rare editions about Ulysses’s 10-year voyage in the Mediterranean before returning to his wife Penelope in Ithaca.

It suffices to highlight the impact these two epic poems have made on the imagination of writers, dramatists, poets, archaeologists and artists who all represented the principal protagonist Ulysses as the archtype of the eternal wanderer – the questing spirit of man, “to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield” as Lord Tennyson points out in his dramatic poem Ulysses.

Athletic contests and other sporting feats were essential elements of the Mycanean culture, sporting excellence being an adjunct for many festivities, funerals, military assemblies and tribal gatherings

Ulysses’s adventures are an eloquent symbol of man’s craving for a secret back door to another world, the great escapist dream common to us all, applicable to all generations with unbounded optimism that man, whatever his misadventures, can safely navigate through life’s never-ending battles.

An sixth-century BC Greek vase decorated with two boxers.

Tennyson’s exhortation as he appealed to his friends in his great poem to continue this quest throughout life deserves to be highlighted: “Come, my friends/It’s not too late to seek a newer world.” The Church interprets Ulysses’s frightful voyage as the prototype of the Christian Everyman in medieval literature.

Of particular interest to the sports historian is the fact that both in the Odyssey and the Illiad, Homer makes it abundantly clear that athletic contests and other sporting feats were essential elements of the Mycanean culture, sporting excellence being an adjunct for many festivities, funerals, military assemblies and tribal gatherings.

But if Homer’s epics are legends, how can we conclude that this sporting ethos actually existed in Mycanean culture?

A sixth-century BC Greek vase showing a victory celebration after a sports contest.

I think Charles Seltman, in his outstanding book Women in Antiquity, has the answer, arguing that “you only evolve, embroider and recite legends about an imaginary hero because your civilisation affords some scope... where there is legend there is a scope”.

The competitive spirit, which in ancient Greece gradually evolved into an intense athletic ideal, permeates Greek mythology as the gods struggle against themselves for the right to be guardian gods of cities and states.

The choice of a husband was often made after a sporting contest; Ikaros gave Penelope in marriage to Ulysses when he defeated all his rivals; Pelops gave his daughter in marriage to Oinomos after the latter had won a chariot race against all her suitors; Atalanta would only marry the man who outran her. This spirit of competition gathered momentum in the burning desire of noble Greeks to be the first both in life and contests as when Peleus warned his son Achilles before the battle of Troy: “Be the best distinguished among all others”, a reference which in terms of modern sporting jargon we call the ‘agon’ drive.

A sixth-century BC Mycanean vase depicting the winner of a chariot race.

View of Ramla l-Ħamra Bay from Calypso’s Cave, reputedly the abode of the nymph Calypso. A possible games site?

Homer’s brilliant narratives about the competitive spirit in man feature in all Greek mythology. Obviously they are an indication of the sporting cult in the daily life of the Mycanean culture, of which Malta presumably formed part, as evidenced in the impressive Bronze Age village of In-Nuffara, with its numerous silos for the storage of food and water, standing majestically close to Calypso’s cave overlooking iconic Ramla l-Ħamra, which is also rich in Roman remains.

Homer’s vivid descriptions of the sporting traditions of the period are exquisitely rich. The games in the two epic poems were occasioned by different events. In the Illiad it was a funeral rite and the games related to religious ceremonials organised on a sandy beach near the grave where Patrocolos was slain. The games started with a chariot race, followed by boxing and wrestling contests, foot races, duel in armour, discus and spear throwing and archery.

The prizes were awarded by the brave Achilles, the angry young man of the Illiad, and consisted of expensive slaves, golden cups, bulls, mules and amphorae.

All the athletes were given a souvenir for their participation. Among the trophies there was an exquisite silver mixing bowl, “the most beautiful bowl in the world for it was the work of Sidonian and Phoenician craftsmen which merchants had brought over the sea to the harbour of Lemnos” (Illiad, Book XII).

Homer’s brilliant narratives about the competitive spirit in man feature in all Greek mythology. They are an indication of the sporting cult in the daily life of the Mycanean culture, of which Malta presumably formed part

The dearth of written documents about the prehistory of the ancient Olympic Games, which officially started in 776 BC, compelled sports historians to look for sources in Greek mythology and the epic works of Homer.

Judging from the funeral games we may safely conclude that Homer anticipated the ancient games both in spirit, whereby he amply demonstrated the urge “to taste the joy of competition”, and in the sports events outlined above, which were adopted in a different form in the ancient Olympic Games, to be revived by Baron De Coubertin in the modern games in 1896.

(Concluded)