The ancient gods must be having a gloriously raucous time watching all the mortals scurry and worry over the return of the Olympic Games to Greek soil.

Zeus and those other mythic deities on Mount Olympus always were a mischievous and manipulative lot, and one imagines them chortling over the scramble to bring order to a city that has long thrived on chaos - a fine old Greek word.

Fear not: A miraculously transformed Athens will be ready for the Olympics, even if the last nails are hammered in five minutes before the opening ceremony on Aug. 13 and the final flowers and shrubs are planted a minute later. That's simply the Greek way.

"We Greeks succeed even when things are haphazard," said the head of the Greek Orthodox Church, Archbishop Christodoulos. "This is a - should I say it? - a Greek screw-up, which is inherent in our character. But in some miraculous way, it produces good results."

Massive security, the grand obsession in these first Summer Olympics since the 2001 terrorist strikes in the United States and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ought to keep the boogeymen at bay.

At least let's hope so, considering the Greeks have ponied up an astonishing $1.2 billion on all manner of surveillance equipment and manpower - 70,000 police officers and soldiers. NATO is lending air and sea support, and the Israeli and Greek navies, along with the U.S. 6th Fleet, are patrolling the coast.

The docking area of the cruise ships at Piraeus, where 15,000 visitors, state officials and dignitaries will reside, will be a virtual fortress: thousands of special forces soldiers, motion sensors on barbed-wire fences, surveillance cameras, X-ray machines and detectors for radiological, chemical and biological material. Gunboats and helicopters will be on constant patrol.

All the unpleasantness aside, the Olympics are still eminently worth celebrating - as much for their contribution to civilization over the nearly three millenniums since their start in 776 B.C. (albeit with a 1,500-year hiatus before the first modern games in Athens in 1896) as for the noble ideals they continue to extol.

As much as anytime in the world's war-ravaged history, the Olympic Games serve as a reminder of humanity's highest aspirations, the universal quest for peace and the exalted qualities of body, mind and spirit that transcend cultures.

The gathering in Athens of 10,500 athletes from a record 201 countries, along with hundreds of thousands of spectators and a global TV audience of 4 billion, is an affirmation that this planet is not nearly as miserable as it sometimes seems.

It will feel like a wonderful world, indeed, when those athletes march into the grand new Olympic stadium, its butterfly-shaped, steel-and-glass roof finally in place. Or when fans fill the grassy slopes of the ancient field in Olympia, 200 miles southwest of Athens, to watch the shot put competition. Or when they line the route of the marathon, starting, of course, in Marathon.

Doping scandals may mar the games but they also will magnify the triumphs of those who win cleanly and will shine a brighter light on the stories of true courage and class.

Our eyes will be on sprinter and master showman Maurice Greene, back from a motorcycle crash that broke his leg two years ago. He's sporting a new tattoo, a lion whose mane is engraved with the letters G-O-A-T - as in "greatest of all time."

We'll watch Australian Ian Thorpe and American Michael Phelps vie for title of king of the swimming pool, Lenny Krayzelburg defend his backstroke gold and Natalie Coughlin try to become the new Janet Evans.

For inspiration, few can top wrestler Rulon Gardner, going for gold again after a fight for survival two years ago when his snowmobile plunged into icy water in the Wyoming wilderness. Rescued by helicopter the next day, he lost a toe to frostbite.

As if he needed to overcome more catastrophes in the run-up to the U.S. trials, he dislocated his right wrist and crashed his motorcycle.

The women's pole vault pits American Stacy Dragila and two Russians, Yelena Isinbayeva and Svetlanta Feofanova, who have been breaking each other's world records over the past two years.

And what of Kostas Kenteris, Greek's surprise gold medalist in the 200 sprint at Sydney? Voted the most popular man in Greece in a recent poll, his image plastered everywhere, he's been a mystery man the past few years, rarely racing or appearing in public.

There will be the usual shows of patriotic fervor and some uncommon sights: the pride of small bands of athletes from Afghanistan and Iraq representing their troubled homelands; Russian athletes hoping to close the gap on Americans after falling short, 32 golds to 40 in Sydney; the U.S. team aiming for 100 medals overall; and the host Greeks looking to build on their stunning upset at the European soccer championship.

A cook named Koroibos won the lone event at the first Olympics in Greece in 776 B.C. - a sprint that legend says Herakles marked off by putting his feet heel-to-toe 600 times toward the altar of his father, Zeus.

Herakles crowned the victor of that race - the original version of the modern 200 meters called the "stadion" (the root of stadium) - with an olive branch. Then, as now, the runners were called athletes - meaning contestants for a prize.

From that humble start as a religious festival in Olympia, where myth holds that Zeus wrestled Cronus for the kingship of the universe and where Apollo raced Hermes and boxed Ares, the Olympics evolved into the world's largest, most enduring tribute to sports and peace.

Lamentably, the Olympics also has turned into a target for terrorists, prompted drug cheating by athletes, led to bribery by officials and grown so humongous that it now costs host cities ungodly fortunes.

Athens, which had long desired to bring the Olympics back to Greece, got what it wished for, though many in this crowded city of 4 million wound up regretting it.

"Athens was a very difficult city to live in the last three years," Mayor Dora Bakoyianni said. "It will be a wonderful city in September."

The games end Aug. 29.

Construction - slow to start, expensive to finish, traffic-clogging and nerve-jangling throughout - busted Athens' budget and pushed total costs to at least $8 billion. Some analysts claim the final tab could soar to $12 billion.

Giorgos Alogoskoufis, the country's new finance minister, said if Greece, one of the smallest countries to host the Summer Games, were to bid for them today, "I don't think that we would be as excited."

It could leave Athens with years of debt and white elephant stadiums and arenas, but the rebuilding effort spurred by the games has reversed decades of urban decay and turned the city into a decidedly modern, sophisticated and cosmopolitan European capital - with incomparable traces of antiquity.

The white-columned Parthenon, dating to the 5th century B.C., remains an awe-inspiring vision of Greece's Golden Age. Standing before it on the Acropolis and gazing upon the Temple of Athena nearby, we may let our imaginations transport us to the days of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle; Pericles and Alexander the Great; Hippocrates and Herodotus; Euclid and Pythagoras. We touch history with our feet, our hands and our minds.

The marathon route traces the original path from the battlefield of Marathon, where legend has it that a herald named Phidippides began running to Athens to bring news of the Greek victory over the Persians in 490 B.C., then died on the spot after delivering the message: "We won!"

Yet the excitement that precedes every Olympics - the anticipation of thrilling shows of speed and strength, courage and stamina - has been dampened by an abiding sense of dread over terrorist attacks, worries that the last-minute work will compromise security, and the stain of steroid use by some of sports' biggest stars.

Throw in traffic problems, stifling heat and the always-present threat of small, relatively harmless but no less jarring bombings by local political groups, and the result is a general uneasiness. A month before the start of the games, about half the 5.3 million tickets remained unsold.

Expectations of a happy, tranquil and smoothly run Olympics have rarely been lower. No matter what happens on the playing fields, these games will be a huge success and bring great sighs of relief, not to mention nods of thanks to the Olympic gods, if they simply finish without any major trouble.

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Steve Wilstein is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at swilstein(at)ap.org

AP-ES-07-08-04 0026EDT