A Companion to Sport and Spectacle in Greek and Roman Antiquity

Paul Christesen, Donald G. Kyle

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118610053
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

A Companion to Sport and Spectacle in Greek and Roman Antiquity presents a series of essays that apply a socio-historical perspective to myriad aspects of ancient sport and spectacle.

• Covers the Bronze Age to the Byzantine Empire
• Includes contributions from a range of international scholars with various Classical antiquity specialties
• Goes beyond the usual concentrations on Olympia and Rome to examine sport in cities and territories throughout the Mediterranean basin
• Features a variety of illustrations, maps, end-of-chapter references, internal cross-referencing, and a detailed index to increase accessibility and assist researchers

SECTION I

Greece

PART I

The Background

CHAPTER 1

Greek Athletic Competitions

The Ancient Olympics and More

Donald G. Kyle

1 Introduction

Before the start of the Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE the reluctant Corinthian Adeimantos remarked that “at the games those who start too soon are flogged,” and the eager Athenian Themistokles responded that “those who start slowly win no victory crown.”¹ Herodotus (8.59) could use this athletic metaphor because the practices and terms of sport were common knowledge to most ancient Greeks.² In the present day, on the other hand, most people are unfamiliar with the “nuts and bolts” of ancient Greek sport. This essay, accordingly, provides a basic overview of the contests, contexts, categories, terms, and rules of sport in Archaic and Classical Greece (700–323 BCE). It focuses on “athletics,” a term derived from the Greek words for contest (athlos) and prize (athlon) (Scanlon 2002: 7–9; Kyle 2007: 9–11). “Athletics,” taken as a subset of the broader, more inclusive term, “sport,” applies herein to public, physical competitions with prizes.

We begin with some matters of perception and approach. The ancient Olympics, with their wreath prizes, huge crowds, and famous victors, were the pinnacle of Greek athletic competition. Since the Olympics were revived in the late nineteenth century CE, the ancient Olympics have frequently been viewed through the prism of the modern Olympics. Despite evidence and scholarship to the contrary (Young 1984, 2004: 138–57), people eager to accept the historical authenticity of the modern Olympics have been inclined to accept illusions and outright misconceptions about the ancient Olympics. The modern games did adopt some ancient events (e.g., running, wrestling), but they also incorporated modern events (e.g., shooting, bicycling) and invented new traditions. The ancient Olympics, in fact, had no medals or second prizes, no team or women’s events, no winter or water sports, and no ideology of universal brotherhood and peace. The modern games, however entertaining and admirable, have become more and more removed from those of ancient Olympia.

This essay concentrates on the events at the ancient Olympics because such events were fairly standard and practiced in most ancient Greek communities, but it is important to realize that there was no rigid uniformity throughout Greek athletics. Like the city-states themselves, Greek athletics show both broad patterns (e.g., footraces and wrestling, limited female participation) and regional variations (different local events and prizes). They also show both continuity (ongoing, close ties to religious festivals) and change over time (more games and nontraditional participants). As Jason König (2010: 8) writes, “Underlying the shared, Mediterranean-wide athletic practice was a vast range of different local cultures, each with its own priorities and its own debates.”

To understand Greek athletics thoroughly, and to investigate social issues, scholars have gone beyond Olympia and the other “crown” games, which conventionally are called “stephanitic” because they awarded only wreaths (stephanoi in Greek). Scholars now also study games held in cities and sanctuaries as part of local athletic festivals; these local games are conventionally termed “chrematitic” because they typically awarded prizes of material worth (from the Greek chremata, meaning valuable items).³

2 From Funeral Games to Athletic Festivals

The earliest literary account of Greek athletics comes from Homer’s Iliad (23.262–897), which describes how Achilles organized funeral games consisting of eight events (starting with a chariot race and ending with a spear-throwing contest) for his dead friend Patroklos. With elite warrior athletes and substantial material prizes (weapons and war plunder), these funeral games suggest the use of athletics as surrogate combat. Elsewhere Homer (Iliad 22.158–64) contrasts funeral games that featured horse races with rich prizes, such as elaborate bronze cauldrons and women, with more humble occasions that featured footraces offering simple prizes such as sacrificial beasts or oxhides. His Odyssey (8.97–253) describes noble youths in Phaiakia competing in public but more casual contests, not for prizes but to entertain their guest Odysseus. Homer’s athletic world, then, which probably reflects the ninth to eighth century, already shows patterns and variations. (For more on sport in the Homeric poems, see Chapter 3 in this volume.)

By the Archaic period (700–480) the phenomenon of Greek athletics had grown greatly (Christesen 2007b) and was even more complex and varied. Athletic contests were associated with competition for glory and status, militarism, eroticism, and conspicuous consumption and display. Competitions could apparently include traditions from sources as varied as funeral games, initiation rituals, and hero cults, but there was a pattern: most formal public athletic competitions were held as components of religious festivals.

Games were seen as an appropriate way to honor gods and heroes, and a fundamental tie between religion, sanctuaries, and games endured for centuries. Before competing, athletes prayed for divine assistance, swore sacred oaths, and vowed dedications to major deities such as Zeus and Athena and to gods especially associated with athletics such as Hermes and Herakles. Victors were thought to enjoy divine favor, some great athletes were thought to have magical powers, and some dead athletes were venerated with hero cults (see Chapter 20). The prominence of athletics increased over time, with more events, dedications, statues, and expanded facilities, but religion continued to hallow and regularize the games. Athletics never secularized the festivals, nor did the contests become a surrogate religion or a replacement for piety. When Christian emperors suppressed athletic contests such as the Olympics in the fifth century CE, they did so out of concerns about persistent pagan piety.

3 The Historical Ancient Olympics

The sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia in the city-state of Elis in the northeastern Peloponnese housed the earliest, greatest, and longest-enduring Greek athletic festival.⁴ (The political entity of Elis, whose territory encompassed a fair amount of the northwestern Peloponnese, had its capital at an urban center called Elis; see Map 8.1.) Athletic contests were also established at the sanctuaries at Delphi, Isthmia, and Nemea in the sixth century, about a hundred years after the foundation of the Olympic Games. These four competitions became known as the “circuit” (periodos) of sacred crown games (see Map 1.1). Olympia was the fixed site of the Olympic Games, which were held every fourth year in late summer (July–August) at the second full moon after the summer solstice. The timing corresponded with a lull in agricultural work, and the event was correlated with an astronomical phenomenon understood by all. By the fourth century, numbered Olympiads, the four-year periods from one set of games to the next, and the names of the men’s sprint race winners in those Olympiads, provided the basis for a common chronology for the Greeks (Christesen 2007a: 1–15).

The traditional foundation date of 776 for the ancient Olympics has been challenged since antiquity (Christesen 2007a: 18–21), and archaeology now suggests that major contests at Olympia developed only around 700. Limited and local games probably arose slowly at Olympia, perhaps in response to gatherings of worshippers and as a supplement to an early religious festival. By the seventh century Olympia offered events in two broad categories: gymnic or “naked” contests (gymnikoi agones: track and field and “combat” (fighting) events) and equestrian or hippic contests (hippikoi agones: horse and chariot races) (Miller 2004a: 31–86).

Before each Olympics, heralds (spondophoroi) from Elis traveled throughout the Greek world announcing the upcoming games, inviting athletes, spectators, and groups of envoys from Greek states, and proclaiming the so-called sacred truce (ekecheiria). This truce or armistice was not a general or common peace. It forbade the entry of armies into Eleian territory during the Olympics and ordered safe passage through any state for travelers to and from the games. The truce assisted the success of the games, but it has been overly idealized in modern times. It did not stop wars throughout Greece (Lämmer 2010). The fiercely independent city-states politicized games and decorated sanctuaries with monuments and trophies commemorating Greek military victories against fellow Greeks as well as non-Greeks. The truce helped make it possible for athletes and spectators from Greek communities throughout the Mediterranean basin to converge on Olympia and, despite local differences of dialect and laws, take part in an experience grounded in a shared religious piety and enthusiasm for sport. The Olympics were thus “Panhellenic,” which should be understood as meaning that they were open to all free Greek males and attracted visitors from a geographically diverse array of Greek communities. It does not, however, mean that Olympia or other Panhellenic sanctuaries such as Delphi were havens of peace and harmony (Scott 2010: 256–64). (For further discussion, see Chapters 8 and 19.)

Map 1.1 Sites of the periodos games.

Preparations began 10 months before the start of the games, at the city of Elis (located about 25 miles north of Olympia), with the selection of officials, originally called diaitateres but later (by c.480) called Hellanodikai, “judges of the Greeks.” By 400 there were 9 Hellanodikai and from 348 the number remained 10 (Pausanias 5.9.4–6). These men, apparently chosen by lot from a preselected group of Eleian citizens, learned the proper customs from Eleian officials (nomothetai, Pausanias 6.24.3). As the sponsor of the games, Elis had headquarters for these officials and also training facilities for athletes. Aspiring athletes had to train at the city of Elis for a month prior to the games (Philostratus Life of Apollonius of Tyana 5.43). As was probably the case at most major games, the judges supervised and scrutinized athletes to ensure their competence and to dissuade or select out any deemed unworthy (Pausanias 6.23.1–4). (For more on the Hellanodikai, see Chapters 8 and 17.) At Elis, as in their prior training at home at their local gymnasion (gymnasium, a place for exercising nude) or palaistra (wrestling school), and in the upcoming games at Olympia, all gymnic athletes (but not equestrians) had to be completely nude. They applied olive oil to their bodies before exercise and later used a metal scraper or strigil (stlengis) to remove oil, sweat, and dirt. Such intriguing customs, and the related homoeroticism, have been much debated (Scanlon 2002: 64–97, 199–273; see also Chapter 13, which includes an excursus on nudity).

Athletes at Olympia differed not by ethnicity but by event and age. All free Greek males were eligible, but females, non-Greeks, and slaves were excluded from direct participation. Olympic contests were held among men (andres), who most probably were 18 years of age and up, and, from 632 on, among boys (paides...