Sport and Identity in Ancient Greece

Zinon Papakonstantinou

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781317051121
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

From the eighth century BCE to the late third century CE, Greeks trained in sport and competed in periodic contests that generated enormous popular interest. As a result, sport was an ideal vehicle for the construction of a plurality of identities along the lines of ethnic origin, civic affiliation, legal and social status as well as gender.

Sport and Identity in Ancient Greece delves into the rich literary and epigraphic record on ancient Greek sport and examines, through a series of case studies, diverse aspects of the process of identity construction through sport. Chapters discuss elite identities and sport, sport spectatorship, the regulatory framework of Greek sport, sport and benefaction in the Hellenistic and Roman world, embodied and gendered identities in epigraphic commemoration, as well as the creation of a hybrid culture of Greco-Roman sport in the eastern Mediterranean during the Roman imperial period.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Greek sport and identities

In book 27 of his Histories Polybius (27.9.7–13) recounts the well-known story of the Olympic boxing final of 212 BCE. One of the finalists was Kleitomachos of Thebes, Olympic boxing and pankration champion in 216 BCE and admittedly the most accomplished combat sport athlete of his day. His opponent was Aristonikos from Egypt, a rather unknown athlete and possibly an Olympic rookie who, we are told by Polybius, was sponsored by king Ptolemy IV Philopator with the goal of defeating the formidable Kleitomachos. Polybius maintains that at the beginning of the fight spectators at Olympia supported the underdog Aristonikos, but then Kleitomachos addressed the crowd and wondered why were they supporting an Egyptian who was fighting for king Ptolemy against a Theban who was fighting for the honor of Greece? This put the crowd to shame who cheered Kleitomachos and pushed him to his second consecutive Olympic boxing crown.

This episode touches on some intriguing facets of ancient Greek sport, including issues of identity, difference and recognition. The extensive network of athletic facilities and competitions in the ancient Greek world as well as the popularity that Greek sport enjoyed until late antiquity are well-documented. Furthermore, the subject of Greek sport has attracted considerable scholarly attention since antiquity. Renaissance humanists were followed by eighteenth and nineteenth-century classicists who established a presence in the field through numerous, and at times commercially successful, publications on ancient (mainly Greek) sport.¹

However, it is only in the last 40 years that a systematic study of Greco-Roman sport from an analytical, as opposed to fact-establishing, perspective has emerged. Earlier generations of scholars working on the subject of Greek sport were for the most part concerned with collecting and collating the evidence and “setting the record straight.” This effort, praiseworthy in many respects, was often marred with biases, e.g. the promotion of the idea of sport amateurism as a genuine ancient Greek practice or misconceptions regarding the ancient Olympic truce. Hence during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s much effort has been expended in trying to dispel misrepresentations and myths and “set the record straight” again, this time vis-à-vis an earlier generation of scholarship.² Parallel to these more recent scholarly endeavors, there was an ongoing attempt by sectors of the ancient Greek sport field to communicate with other cognate subfields, especially historians and social scientists working on the subject of modern sport. Many among the latter have made great advances in our assessment of sport as a social and cultural phenomenon by using carefully constructed, sophisticated analytical models.³ The level of engagement of ancient sport historians with methodological developments in cognate disciplines, especially social and cultural theory, is crucial. At the present juncture, this constitutes one of the most viable and promising routes: as the field of ancient sport progresses and the possibilities of renewed debates on the basis of the extant evidence diminish, the need to map out additional avenues of interpretative and comparative research becomes a necessity.

The concept of identity is a fundamental concept in any attempt to explore novel thematic and analytical possibilities in the history of Greek sport. But what exactly is identity? The issue of identity has received renewed attention by social and cognitive scientists in recent years, as well in public discourse– it would not be an exaggeration to claim that we currently live in the age of identity. Sports studies in general have kept pace with these developments.⁴ In part responding to multiculturalism and globalization, sport and identity studies scholars have come to appreciate the fluid and dynamic nature of the concept and practice of identities. Identity formation is largely recognized as a process of self and collective categorization. Moreover, identities are also seen as constructed relationally and as constitutive of several contingent factors. That is why identities are multifaceted and malleable, cognitive and performative. In the words of Kath Woodward, a scholar active in both identity and sport studies, “identity occupies the interface between the personal and the social, the psychic and the social.”⁵

Individuals usually possess numerous co-existing, often intersecting and at times conflicting identities, e.g. gender, ethnic, social class, religious, racial, cultural to name just a few. These can be envisaged as concentric and interconnected rings which are demarcated by visible and non-visual symbols.⁶ In certain contexts, one or more of these identities can be salient. A pivotal issue is the process whereby these identities are conceptually developed and negotiated both by the self and by others. Social and cultural factors play a crucial, although not an exclusive, part in identity construction. A related issue is the practical means through which identities are instantiated in the public sphere. Embodied practices, including sport, are fundamental in this process, as are performances and facets of the materiality of commemoration of sport achievements (e.g. honorary inscriptions, statues). It should also be noted that since contextual factors are critical in forging identities, it can be deduced that as conditions and practices change so do identities. In other words, there is always a wider historical dimension to identity that explains the shifts in the content of individual or collective identities over time.⁷

These insights on the nature of identities have a great potential for enhancing our understanding of the various manifestations of identity in the ancient Greek world. A prudent deployment of comparative interpretative models usually goes hand in hand with the adoption of novel research themes and questions. In recent years a series of analytically focused and methodologically rigorous scholarly works has renewed interest in issues of identity in the ancient world.⁸ Much of this scholarship has focused initially on perceptions of ethnic identity, although more recently some scholars have turned into a more thorough examination of social status, civic and gender identities. In the field of Greek sport, recent work has laid the foundation for further sustained study on how identities were articulated and negotiated through Greek sport. Such works include Mark Golden’s books and articles (especially 1997, 1998, 2008) that examine issues of social class and gender in connection with sport; Tom Scanlon’s examination of women’s sport, as well as other aspects of athletics, in the Greek world (1999, 2002, 2008); Thomas Nielsen’s study (2007) on the role of Olympia in the formation of a city-state culture during the Classical period; Christian Mann’s (2002; 2010; 2011) work on the interconnectivity between Greek and Roman sports and the negotiations of identity that it entailed;⁹ and finally numerous studies that have highlighted the importance of sport in the process of constructing and negotiating a Greek cultural identity among the elites of the Greek-speaking communities of the Roman empire (König 2005; Newby 2005; van Nijf 1999, 2001, 2003a, 2003b, 2010). Other recent works on ancient Greek athletics examine social and cultural aspects of sport that are related to identity construction.¹⁰ All these works are valuable and pioneering in their own way but as they engage only a portion of the extensive swath of evidence related to Greek sport, they also serve to highlight the immense potential of studying in conjunction Greek identities and athletics, broadly defined. It is the aim of this monograph to contribute further to these scholarly debates through a series of case studies that systematically explore facets of the performance and representation of identities through and by sport in the ancient Greek world.

Greek sport enjoyed a long period of popularity from the eighth century BCE to the end of the third century CE. These were centuries of expansion: more events, more games and more athletes were added until Greek sport reached its apogee in what Louis Robert had memorably called the “explosion agonistique” of the Roman Imperial period.¹¹ However, the history of Greek sport was not merely a story of quantitative increase. Even though the basic framework of Greek agonistic life, which largely consisted of the top-tier interstate games, the plethora of local contests, the ephebeia and other forms of physical education that centered around the gymnasia and palaistrai, was easily recognizable by Greeks and non-Greeks alike, behind the surface loomed an astonishing variety of sport-related practices that contributed to the richness and the complexity of Greek sport. Such practices included local variations of athletic rules for contests, malleable conditions for participation in citizen-training programs as well as ever-evolving forms of representation and commemoration of athletic achievements and benefactions. In such a context, the meanings generated by Greek sport were always shifting and adapting to the exigencies and contingencies of the moment. Most importantly for our purposes in the Greek world, as in modern times, sport was a signifier and a constituent of multiple, frequently overlapping, identities. As Mark Golden aptly expressed it, “Greek sport was enveloped in a series of hierarchies in which events, festivals, genders, nations and other groups were ranged and ranked no less than individuals.”¹²

As a way of illustrating this point, one may think of the use and the meaning attached to olive oil, a basic commodity in the ancient world, in connection with sport. In the Archaic and Classical periods the evidence for a link between olive oil and athletics is almost exclusively visual, i.e. black and red-figure vases that portray athletes anointing themselves with oil and then scraping it off after training or competition. The discovery of strygils, the specialist instruments used for removing the oil and dirt from athletes’ bodies, complements the picture. Not much is known regarding the provision of oil during this early period, hence it is assumed that it was largely provided in gymnasia and other facilities by civic authorities. This use of oil was, in other words, rather esoteric and confined to the sub-culture of habitual trainees and professional athletes. Moreover, the provision and management of anointing oil was considered routine business that was largely devoid of a wider range of ideological connotations, hence the relative lack of interest in the extant sources of the late Archaic and Classical period on the subject. However, by the second century CE the use of oil for sport and leisure (e.g. baths) was transformed into an iconic act of Hellenic cultural identity and hence its provision emerged as a highly coveted and prestigious agonistic benefaction. Numerous inscriptions, primarily honorary decrees for gymnasiarchs, agonothetai and other benefactors, provide elaborate details on the provision and use of oil. The duration, quality and quantity (and sometimes the price) of anointing oil provided to all interested groups were highlighted and became the object of praise by communities. Hence the often generous terms of disposal of anointing oil, e.g. throughout day and night, for gymnasion trainees but often other groups, occasionally including foreign visitors, women and slaves, are frequently enumerated in detail in the same honorary monuments. While some of these benefactions were undertaken on the occasion of prominent local festivals, others were related to the daily supply of agonistic oil in gymnasia and other facilities. At times women of affluent backgrounds were also involved, on their own or in conjunction with their husbands, in the acts of dispensing oil to gymnasion trainees and other beneficiaries. Inscribed memorials of oil providers were often accompanied by reliefs that pointed visually– e.g. through a portrayal of oil urns and other germane accouterments– to the nature of the benefaction undertaken by the honorees. We can clearly argue therefore that by the Imperial period, as wealthy benefactors had substituted civic treasuries as the main suppliers of agonistic oil, the provision of this sport staple has become a prime locus for the performance and representation of gendered elite and other status identities.

This complex network of meanings and identities concerned merely the supply of anointing oil. When we move from supply to consumption, it becomes evident that the prescribed use of oil by gymnasial groups and other recipients articulated a particular social hierarchy that largely reflected the division of a community into distinct status groups divided along gender, legal and age (e.g. full citizens, minors, elderly) lines. Members of subaltern groups (e.g. women, slaves, non-citizens) were given the opportunity to occasionally, especially during major civic agonistic festivals, partake of anointing oil in gymnasia and baths. During these occasions subaltern groups entered into a liminal state that allowed for temporary role-realignment of their social standing– I elaborate this point in Chapter 6.1c.

Moving beyond the supply and use of anointing oil in Greek sport and leisure, a closer look at the extant source material reveals a plethora of other sport-related commodities and practices that essentially operated as ritualistic microcosms of civic life. In Greek communities far and wide sport was thus a live and protean cultural practice, a recipient as well as critical generator of signification. The meanings engendered and propagated through sport were in turn subject to representation, negotiation and conflict. It was this dual quality of sport as signified and signifier of both conflict and accommodation, in conjunction with its almost unrivalled appeal to people from all walks of life, that makes it an ideal entry point to the study of individual and collective identities.

Book contents

Sport is an embodied, socially performed practice. Its materiality and discursive features were the principal cornerstones through which Greeks perceived and negotiated sport, including sport-related identities. The material aspect of Greek sport practices included the physical bodies of athletes, trainers, officials and spectators, the venues (stadia, gymnasia, palaistrai, baths) as well as the various items of athletic equipment or other germane accouterments (e.g. discuses, javelins, boxing gloves, anointing oil). An adequate amount of such material remains related to Greek sport has survived through the centuries. Stand-alone inscriptions or inscribed monuments, most commonly statues with inscribed bases, dedicatory inscriptions of athletic venues as well as informal graffiti scratched on these monuments and other surfaces stood at the intersection of materiality and discourse. Literary sources of all kinds as well as written documents with a more limited target audience (e.g. formal or informal communications written in papyrus) operated primarily on the discursive and ideological level.

For the purposes of our exploration of multiple identities through sport, our access to this material is skewed towards discourse and representation. Representation can be defined as the sum of practices, materiality and ideologies through which a cultural order and a system of classification is communicated, reproduced, explored and negotiated. As Kath Woodward puts it, “it is through representation that meanings change and are reformulated. Representation offers an appropriate vehicle for the interrogation of the relationship between the personal and the social in the construction of identity.”¹³ Representation has a subjunctive component, but what is more widely transmitted is reflexive, and thus conducive to potentially re-shaping shared perceptions about practices or personae. Representation is usually achieved through discursive means and formulated in monumental/material fashion (e.g. commemorative statuary) or inscribed on the bodies of the protagonists of our stories. In the case of ancient sport, the extant evidence allows for a more in-depth analysis of discursive systems of representation at the expense of corporeality....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction: Greek sport and identities
• 2. Status, elite identity and social hierarchy in archaic Greek sport
• 3. Games, spectators and communal identities
• 4. Rules, eligibility and participation
• 5. Bodies, life-narratives and civic service
• 6. Liminality, reflexivity and hybridity
• 7. Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index