Thomas Scanlon – Professor of Classics at the
University of California at Riverside
Thomas Scanlon, Professor of Classics

Dear Mr. Havadjias,

As a professor who has studied and published books and articles on the Olympic Games for 25 years, I am writing in support of your proposed Monument of the Immortals, to honor Olympic Victors from both the ancient and modern Olympics with a physical memorial at Olympia, Greece. The idea is a marvelous one that will pay tribute to the heroes of the centuries of peaceful competition that has taken place as part of the ancient and modern Olympic Games.

A monument itself is in harmony with the ancient custom of setting up as permanent a memorial as one can which will keep alive the memory of a very honorable tradition and remind each generation of the much greater history of which we are a part. By including the known ancient Olympic victors, the monument sends a strong message that the world is participating in a global and thousands-of-years old project of sporting competition among nations of the civilized world.

Ancient Olympia in Greece is the perfect location for such a monument. It is the epicenter of the ancient and modern Olympic movements. In the ancient world, the site of Olympia was thickly crowded with monuments advertising the achievements of the victors from all over the Mediterranean region. Yet these monuments vied with one another for attention, pre-eminence and extravagance; it became a place of monuments remembering victors, but also monuments competing with one another and underlining the conflict among states. Your idea for the Monument of the Immortals is actually an improvement on the ancient custom by emphasizing unity among the ‘tribe of victors’ whose origins cross national and racial and temporal lines of humankind. All will be honored equally, not because of where they are from, but because of what they did.

With the proposed monument in place, I envision Olympia as becoming a site of almost spiritual pilgrimage by travelers from all over the world who respect and support the values for which the Olympics stand. At present the site of Olympia has an air of spiritual calm, and the beautiful display of archeological remains and the museum remind visitors of the ancient past. But there is no prominent memorial on that site to link the revered past to its modern ‘child’, and many visitors must wonder why the modern Olympics are virtually unrecognized at Olympia in public view. This proposed monument would fill that obvious gap and re-dress the balance with a clear link to the modern extension of the tradition.

I wholeheartedly support your efforts and encourage others to do so in every way possible.

Yours sincerely,

Thomas F. Scanlon
Professor of Classics
University of California, Riverside
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Chair,
Department of Comparative Literature and Foreign Languages
University of California
Riverside, CA 92521-0321
(909)787-5007 x1462; fax (909)787-2160
http://www.ucr.edu/CHSS/depts/litlang/index.html