Crying at sunset on the eve of the Olympics

Abstract

What we see here in the photograph I show for the cover of Classical Inquiries 2020.08.28 is a sunset at Olympia, site of the ancient Olympics. Backgrounded by the sunset and facing the camera stand three of a group of travelers who had accompanied me on a travel study program in March 2018, extensively documented in Classical Inquiries. I still remember, with fondness, the festive merriment of the moment when the photograph of our three travelers was taken, which I show here with their cheerful permission. The cheer of that moment in the world of today—as of over two years ago—is counterbalanced, however, by the heroic grief signaled by the setting of the sun on the eve of the Olympics in the ancient Greek world. At the precise moment of that sunset, before the Olympic festival could get underway every four years, the local women of the environs would customarily perform a lament—that is, they would cry while singing and dancing/swaying—and their lament was a song of sorrow for Achilles. But why would you cry for this hero at sunset?