Discrimination in Swimming Has a Greco-Roman Pedigree by Karen Eva

Publiation: Nikola Benin, Ph.D

When I say I’m a classicist writing a book about the history of swimming, people always say the same things: Oh, yes, the Greeks and Romans loved to swim! Herodotus says the Greeks swam and saved themselves at the Battle of Salamis while the Persians drowned. And Plutarch says Julius Caesar was a great swimmer! Yes, a book about how well people swam in the ancient world would be terrific! Don’t leave out Lord Byron — he swam across the Hellespont, you know. With a club foot!

Yes, I say, thanks, absolutely. But for two centuries we’ve used the Greeks and Romans in ugly ways to push marginalized people out of swimming pools. We’re falling into — no, we’re diving enthusiastically into — a trope so old that we should be able to recognize it by now. In this movie, we are the Greeks and Romans and they are us. We read Plato and Herodotus and Caesar as if they were our teachers and leaders rather than subjects we are studying. In this version of reality, the Greeks and the Romans (that’s us) are good and everybody else is bad. White people (that’s us) can swim, because we’re civilized. Other people aren’t civilized, so they can’t swim. This false dichotomy and racist trope, as we will see, is a big part of why black children are now drowning at five and a half times the rate that white children drown.

We know better. We don’t take Aristotle’s word for it that some people are just naturally slaves (anymore). We don’t follow Herodotus in thinking that the Persians were ruled by despotism while the Greeks were free. Most of us know that girls who get raped didn’t secretly want to be raped. We no longer despise people involved in trade as mere merchants in comparison to noble warriors. Hmm, maybe our old stories about Classics and swimming could also use a second look?