The most audacious decision was to flood the floor. Engineers turned the Olympic Stadium in Marousi into a shallow lake, its surface laid with iridescent fiberglass that shimmered under the lights. A young boy, Michalis Patsatzis, sailed in on a giant paper boat waving the Greek flag, a nod to a nation bound to the sea. Then came the spectacle that director Dimitris Papaioannou had built: a centaur hurling a spear of light, a vast Cycladic marble head rising from the water, breaking apart to reveal the kouros of the Archaic age, then a classical figure, the whole sweep of Greek sculpture conjured from the dark. Lasers traced the solar system across a stone face. It was, Papaioannou said, history viewed through the progression of Greek art.

The second movement was called the Clepsydra, the water clock, and it ran through Greek civilisation like a parade through time. Eros, the god of love, hovered above floats carrying a Minoan fertility goddess with serpents in her hands, the bull-leapers of Knossos, dolphins from the frescoes of Phaestos. A chariot bore Alexander the Great. Byzantine icons gave way to the War of Independence, then to Karagiozis, the irreverent shadow-puppet who has always let Greeks laugh at themselves. At the climax a pregnant woman waded glowing into the lake, the lights dimmed, and points of light rose to form a slowly rotating DNA double helix above the water, humanity's newest attempt to understand itself, set beside its oldest myths.

Then the stadium had to be emptied. In three minutes, 2,162,000 litres of water drained away to leave a dry floor for the athletes. The Parade of Nations followed Greek alphabetical order, which scrambled the usual rituals: Saint Lucia led the way, the United States arrived oddly early, and Greece, as host, sent in only its flag with weightlifter Pyrros Dimas before bringing up the rear with its team. Afghanistan and Iraq drew emotional cheers; Kiribati made its Olympic debut; East Timor marched under its own flag for the first time. The crowd's loudest welcomes went to Cyprus, to Australia, and to Greece itself.

The music was as ambitious as the staging. Bjork sang Oceania as a white sheet from her dress unfurled to cover the gathered athletes, a map of the world projected across it. Dutch DJ Tiesto spun live during the parade, the first DJ ever to do so at an Olympics. At the climax of the torch relay, the flame passed through a chain of Greek champions to sailor Nikolaos Kaklamanakis, who lit not a cauldron but a towering torch that bowed down toward him before rising into the night, a quiet argument that even our greatest machines exist to serve human hands. President Konstantinos Stephanopoulos had declared the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad open. Greece, its organisers had promised, was ready.