Pythy observations

With the Canada Games over and the Olympics a year away, Classics professor Jack Mitchell is seizing this down time to re-establish a competitive diversion of another kind.

This Friday, he’s bringing back the Pythian Games.

Truth be told, we’ve never held them here. Indeed, they have not taken place since since 394 AD, but a classicist’s sense of time differs slightly from most other mortals.

Like the Olympic Games, the Pythian Games—named after the myth of a serpent slain by the Greek god Apollo at Delphi—were held every four years. Ancient Greece had four sets of games like this. Every year there was a contest with a different focus.

“They all were contests of performance, music, literature and athletic performance,” Dr. Mitchell explains. “Olympia was more athletic, Delphi was more literary, but they all had elements of the same thing together.”

Wine, poetry, togas

So, wine, music, poetry and theatre will flow in the Classics Library and Dr. Mitchell will emcee the Pythian Games in a toga.

This is how it happened: Soon after he started in Department of Classics last September, departmental chair Dr. Hankey asked him to revive the games.

Dr. Mitchell’s own research focuses on ancient education and the arts of performance and oratory. Plus, he wrote and performs a Homeric epic poem about the battle of the Plains of Abraham.

In short, the Pythian Games fell right into his bailiwick.

“(Dr. Hankey) put two and two together,” says Dr. Mitchell. “He wanted to foster spoken Greek and Latin and the spoken performance of any text.”

While you will hear ancient languages—Classics major Bruce Russell for example, has a busy schedule performing in a choral ode from Euripides, a Latin text and an original composition—students from many other departments will step up as well.

About 30 students will perform everything from Al Purdy to Pushkin and Woody Allen to Catullus. Performances will be made in English, Middle English, Latin, Greek, Turkish, German, Russian, Welsh and yes, even Elvish.

“No one knows what to expect. It could be totally chaotic,” says Dr. Mitchell, with a slightly wicked anticipation in his voice.

The Wasteland

“It’s gonna be such a random night,” agrees Leah Collins Lipsett.

Ms. Lipsett, a music major, will perform an abridged version of T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland.

She memorized the famous poem a few years ago as a bet with her high school English teacher. He didn’t believe she could memorize it. She bet him $25 she could. She did it over one long summer hiking through Norway with only her parents for company.

“It was very appropriate: ‘Here is no water, but only rock,’” she says dramatically, “I came back and recited it for my school and got my money.”

Now she’s got another chance to perform for cash.

“Obviously when you have something like that memorized, you use every excuse you can to trot it out! So I was like, yes!”

Daniel Gillis, a music and religious studies major, will perform a modernist piece of music: a guitar piece by German composer Hans Werner Henze called, “You Beautiful Stream.”

“I read a little bit about the Pythian Games,” he says, in preparation. “Apparently all the competitors used to wash their hair in the Castilian Spring before competing, so I’m going to hopefully have the Castilian Spring in mind when I play.”

Eyes on the prize

Prestige was the prize in the ancient Pythian Games. Winners received a sprig of laurel and huge fame. At Dalhousie, four cash prizes, from $250 to $100 are up for grabs. Drs Peter O’Brien and Leona MacLeod will play the King and Queen and judge the competition.

“At first—as a lot of arts people are—I was skeptical about the idea of a competition,” says Mr. Gillis. “But I don’t know why we have to separate the arts from things like sports. They certainly weren’t so separate in the ancient world. The gymnasium was where people went, learned their sports and then got their philosophical education.”

For Dr. Mitchell, the end goal is less about being programmatic and more about enjoyment.

“I wanted to get literature out of the books and get it into people’s daily lives. It’s amazing how much talent is out there. We just need to provide more venues for people to express their love of literature and music.”

He says the Department of Classics plans to do this every year.

“Hopefully, we’ll have a blast.”

Event details

The Pythian Games take place Friday, March 18 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the Classics Library, Room 1184 in the Marion McCain Arts & Social Sciences Building.