The Greeks were the first people in the world to play, and they played on a great scale. All over Greece there were games, all sorts of games; athletic contests of every description ... contests in music, where one side outsung the other; in dancing ... games so many that one grows weary with the list of them.... Wretched people, toiling people, do not play. Nothing like the Greek games is conceivable in Egypt or Mesopotamia.... Play died when Greece died and many a century passed before it was resurrected.23