It is with greatest pleasure that I take part in this most propitious initiative meant to revive the noble tradition of the Olympic Truce, which was a sacred principle in Ancient Greece.

As Herodotus justly reminds us, this was a rule that the Greeks respected and accepted as obvious and natural, and which took only Barbarians by surprise. Neither the impending dangers nor the preparation for wars were enough reason to deter the Hellenic people from their goal of peace. Peace was, in their view, a correlation of game.

They did not fight for a prize, which had no monetary value, but rather and solely for honour, for the pleasure of achieving perfection and savouring glory. The celebration of the Olympiads and also other games was in fact an opportunity for man to assert himself as a superior being, one of education and culture, and for the polis to express itself as a space of conviviality and citizenship.

It is in the firm belief that these Olympic traditions enfold a universal message and that peace is a legitimate aspiration shared by all men that I endorse this Statement in support for the Olympic Truce, hoping that it may guide us as a compass and cardinal point.