1453: Revival of Byzantium

"Citius, altius, forties"

-        "Faster, higher, stronger."

The two 'new officers' squeezed through the crowd, thinking that it must be another ball game which is widely popular among the sailors and local Roman soldiers. It is a nice thing for the troopers to exercise through ball games and increase their bons, though the thing is this kind of games are now largely banned inside army camps due to their natural nature tied with gambling, which can lead to protests and internal fighting. In the end, it causes nothing good except for another round of blood shed within the band of brothers, draining their own allowance, energy, blood and increase the hatred among one another even before they have the chance of marching to their enemies.

However, when the two of them finally managed to have a view of what is going on inside after going beneath the armpit of a gigantic Moskva man, they found out that there is nothing associated with ball games or gambling here. There are two people in the centre of the crowd, facing each other, and in the middle of them there a pile of metal rods, lances and halberds. These two men are obviously from different regions despite both of them are roaring in a Slavic language.

"What is going on my brother?" Antonius asked the almost two meters tall man from Moskva beside him, the later gave this man beneath him a stare and responded. "These two men are having a fair competition of strength, can't you see? It is a race to see who got more muscles!"

Just as the two men are speaking, one man in the centre spit on both of his hands, and with an immense force, he picked six different lances and metal rods, and lifted them up at once, held in his position for five seconds, and then finally letting it down slowly. By then his faces are already fully red in colour, with all the veins popping out on his hands and face. The crowd surrounding him cheered and cried in their native Russian language, some even ran forward to give this burly man a hug. While the other party certainly did not seem so happy, with their arms folded and staring at these merry boys from Moskva.

The surging crowd soon squeezed Antonius and Abdullah away from the front, forcing them to go back wards and finally, after almost suffocating themselves in the crowd, they managed to escape and started gasping for air. After a while Abdullah stopped panting and remarked looking at the crowd of giants. "You know what admiral, I think I know what they are doing now, it looks like these soldiers have organised a match within themselves to see which soldier, from which state has got the most strength, in exchange for their prestige and shame for their opponents."

"Wait… I think I have got an idea!"

"What is it?"

Antonius' eyes sparked as he continued looking at the enlarging crowd of soldiers ahead of him. "I know an efficient way now to keep up their training and at the same time find some work for them to do, why can't we organise a series of competitions between these people… Maybe we can separate them in to different states! And we can organise elective matches within themselves, just like what they do with the kick balls…. And finally hold the finals inside the hippodrome of Thessaloniki, make it an event. I can already see the grand blue print forming up for this match."

"The Caesar's grand blue print, a festival of both masculinity and limit of a human being."

"Aye! That is the name!"

…

The passers by looked at these two men donned in the hats of junior officers with confusion in their eyes, wandering what is the thing that made these two people look so excited about in such a boring place. Antonius could not be bothered with these people, he grabbed Abdullah's hands and ran out of the premise before they attract the attention of any one who actually knows them, hopped on to the carriage and rode off towards the direction of Thessaloniki. Ten plus minute later Halfdan and some other commanders rushed to the spot, only to find nothing but a bunch of metal rods lying around on the ground, and a group of soldiers dispersing away, pretending that nothing has ever happened here.

After a brief meeting with the important senators, the specific plan for this thought of an army wide competition is being recorded down and approved. The entire competition shall be named as 'Olympia' as a commemoration of the ancient game that was once held in Archaia Olympia thousands of years ago which is similarly a series of athletic competitions among the teams representing different city states of that time. The competition shall be over a time span of half a year, with various states competing within themselves first to determine who shall be the fittest to represent their country men.

The first few sports being chosen are running, jumping, weight lifting, swimming, wrestling and sword fighting. More are deemed to come up, but this is all what the senators could think of right now. Within a single day, the administrative order and acknowledgements have been finished and distributed to each garrison and military encampments, it is stated clearly on the orders about the rewards that the winners are able to acquire, including a fortune of wealth, an estate on the out skirt of Thessaloniki, fertile crop fields and medals. As an add on to the fun Antonius even gave up his long stance on the strict prohibition of gambling, and stated that one can 'invest' on the athlete or team that they think have the highest potential, and win credits based on that.

The orders are being spread out like a range of wild fires to the minds of every single soldiers who are enriched with hormones and masculinity who got nothing better to do other than training and gambling all the days. Soon the soldiers divided themselves in to various teams of friends, pals and family members and started training for the respective sport they chose to sign up for during their admin time. Which is a good thing, of course, after the implementation of these rules, the theft, molestation, burglary and other civil cases soon dropped dramatically. The commanders suddenly found their job of maintaining disciplines and order in the encampments much easier, the only things they now need to do is to allocate more grounds for training and maintain the safety protocols as requested on the general orders.

Upon getting their hands on this piece of order, the delegates and leaders from the respective states and countries looked at each other in awe, wandering how did the Caesar of the Romans manage to think of such an ingenious method to train the troops voluntarily with such great enthusiasm. When asked, Antonius simply answered that he thought of this solution when digging through the piles of ancient books and transcripts, finding out on this ancient piece of history about Olympia. While some other leaders realised the advantage these Greeks have in the aspects of culture, science and organisation from their thousand years long history, which is a thing that they do not have back in their own states due to the long oppression of knowledge by the chantries and religious factions who monopolised knowledge of this era.

These delegates wrote the letters back to their lieges and mayors describing this advantage, and instantly after these letters arrived back in their homes it spurred a tide of ardour within the mass public in to studying the art and history of ancient Greeks and Romans. With the rumours being more and more exaggerated, some other city states which is relatively more open minded decided to send their delegates and teams in to joining this so called 'Olympia' event and some aid for the 'crusade'. Unknowingly to Antonius and his crew, this proposal for the new massive sports events unexpectedly turned the wings of history, creating a new tide on the long run of humanity and accelerated another process existent in this era, which is studied by kids in the future schools that is called renaissance.

While there are of course already artists and scientists that are studying such form of more open minded and exaggerated art even before this turn of event, but it is only after this event that people started focusing on the natural healthy beauty of human kind; The body posture and shapes of men and women that are adored by every one, but forced to stay hidden under the complicated regulations and restrictions on what should people wear by the chantry. A year later, an artist in Naples called Niccolò Antonio Colantonio became the very first batch of artists to stop restricting their art work creations to religious manuscripts, instead started focusing on the daily lives of regular citizens of Naples, and after that, numerous similar art works started flourishing from various cities and artists.