Everyone knows that the Olympians of ancient Greece were all male and competed in the nude. For the Greeks, especially the youths – who took great pride in the perfection of their bodies, displaying themselves openly in both the gymnasium and sports arena – body and spirit were inseparable. Aware of this, our modern-day minds might naturally presume that physical pride meant physical arrogance, and that the most beautiful of them strutted around, hips cocked and pelvises forward, as aloof and self-centered as runway models.

In fact, beauty, as both a physical and spiritual ideal, was expressed in ancient Greece through a balance of composure, modesty, and self-respect. How else could youthful perfection inspire pangs of awe and admiration, rather than mere desire and envy? “Greek confidence in the body,” wrote Kenneth Clark, “can be understood only in relation to their philosophy [which] expresses above all their sense of human wholeness. Nothing that related to the whole man could be isolated or evaded; and this serious awareness of how much was implied in physical beauty saved them from the two evils of sensuality and aestheticism.”

The Greek belief in the unity of the physical and the spiritual-and the belief that beautiful form in competition needed to be rewarded by beautiful form in art-is manifest in the Met’s wonderful show “The Games in Ancient Athens: A Special Presentation to Celebrate the 2004 Olympics.”

If you have not visited the Greek galleries at the Met recently, this exhibition, which includes nearly 50 objects from the museum’s holdings – red- and black-figure vases, marble sculptures, grave stelae, bronze statuettes, silver coins, and a bronze strigil (the metal scraper used to cleanse the skin after it had been rubbed with oil after exercise)- is a timely excuse to do so. The works, created from between the sixth and the fourth century B.C., all relate in one way or another to games in Athens. And, as they are scattered throughout the larger Greek collection, they inspire you to sprint from vitrine to vitrine, in search of the green olive wreath label that identifies the show.

The exhibition begins with pottery, including nine large Panathenaic vases, bronze statuettes of deities and athletes, and a glistening, white marble discus that swells like a torso. The vases – amphorae decorated on one side with Athena, and on the other with illustrations of the competitions, including chariot races, wrestling, and running events – were each filled with 42 quarts of olive oil harvested from the sacred groves of Athena and awarded as trophies to the victors.

Athena was the goddess not only of war but also of wisdom. She sprang from Zeus’s head fully armed with shield, helmet, and spear, and on the vases she stands like a supporting central column or a large immovable oak. In one vase, awarded for chariot racing (c. 530 B.C.), her hair cascades like oil itself, as if poured from the vessel’s lip. Her flat, black shield and tunic, a checkerboard pattern, hold her undulating hips and legs in tension with the red plane.

The vase is experienced first as an object, rooted by gravity – in repose. But the churning charioteer and horses, or the runners – their limbs in motion, pulling them gleefully forward, causing the figures to fly as a single entity like some many-legged

animal – carry us at quickened speed around the vase’s circumference. The action begins at the base. Sprouting fronds shoot upward, circling the vases on their bodies and lips. In all of the prize amphorae, as in Greek art of the period in general, equilibrium is maintained between the decorative function of the ornamentation on the vase and the racing, heroic energy of the event depicted.

On a vase awarded for chariot racing (c. 540-30 B.C.), reins, whip, and harness straps sweep beautifully into mane. Horses’ legs spread like birds’ wings as they lift the horses and chariot in flight. In the best amphorae, the painter takes his cues from the rise and swell of the vase, as well as from its handles, whose curves, like serpentine roots that have risen above ground, seem to have given birth to every curve and turn in the illustrations.

Most often, as in “Vase with Running Men” (c. 367-66 B.C.), attributed to the Kittos Group, the sprinting figures act as one rhythmic machine. Their arms and legs rotate against the reddish plane (which, now faded, is almost golden). The lead runner is separate from the other two and his rear foot appears to look back at them, almost comically, like a smiling lioness or a dog with his head out of a car window.

In another Panathenaic prize am phora, signed by Nikias as potter (c. 560 BC), its three prancing, rubbery men, whose bulging legs zigzag like lightning bolts, appear to push off from the rectangular frame as if from the edge of a swimming pool. In the prize amphora attributed to the Berlin Painter (c. 480-70 B.C.), the four trotting runners appear suspended in space. The lead man, his knife-like foot having penetrated the framing column ahead of him, lowers his head and relaxes his stride, as if in the first action of release after crossing the finish line.

One of the best of the Panathenaic prize amphorae on view is a black-figure vase (c. 530 B.C.) attributed to the Euphiletos Painter. The group of five sprinters spring forward as if they had just left the starting line, exchanging their pointy limbs with one another in endless movement and variety. And as you circle the vase, all but the lead runner disappear from view.

Also included in the show are two marble grave stelea for athletes, one of which is just shy of 14 feet high, and the larger-than-life marble copy of Polykleitos’s “Diadoumenos,” from c. 430 B.C. bronze original. Then there are two gorgeous marble heads of youths: a Roman copy (A.D. 41-45) of a discus thrower, also attributed to Polykleitos (450 B.C.) and “Head of an Athlete,” a Roman copy (A.D. 139-92) of a bronze statue (c. 450-25 B.C.).

The “Head of an Athlete” has beautiful, curling locks of hair, heavy, roving eyelids, and lips parted in an lovely act of pause. His roiling hair is charged with promise and abandon. His slightly curving neck drops with a sudden eroticism. His down turned head suggests modesty and restraint, the weight of competition, and the fear of the unknown. Yet his broad nose, which juts forward and spreads across his face as if he were vigorously inhaling life, betrays the hunger of the athlete and innocence of youth. “The contrast between the polished flesh and the deeply drilled hair on this head would have held special appeal for clients in the second century A.D.,” reads the identification label.

No doubt. And I bet that it will still appeal during the Olympics of 3004.