Paul Christesen | Dartmouth College (original) (raw)

Sparta by Paul Christesen

"Histos: Online Journal of Historiography", 2019

This monograph (published as Histos Supplement 10) offers a detailed study and fundamental reinte... more This monograph (published as Histos Supplement 10) offers a detailed study and fundamental reinterpretation of the Damonon stele (a thin slab of stone), the single most important extant inscription from ancient Sparta.

The Damonon stele records victories that two Lakedaimonians (the Spartans' name for themselves), Damonon and his son Enymakratidas, won in the late fifth century BCE in equestrian contests and footraces at nine different local festivals. The inscription on the stele is relatively lengthy and largely intact, and it has long been, and continues to be, a key source for the study of Lakedaimonian history. H. J. W. Tillyard, writing in the early years of the twentieth century, called the Damonon stele "one of the best known and oftenest discussed of early Lakonian inscriptions." Over a century later, the editors of one of the standard resources for the study of Greek epigraphy, the Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, referred to it as "the famous stele of Damonon."

Scholars have repeatedly turned their attention to the Damonon stele because it offers invaluable insight into multiple facets of Lakedaimonian society. Over the course of decades of research, a scholarly consensus has emerged on how to read the inscription on the Damonon stele. The inscription is commonly understood as cataloging dozens of victories won in the four-horse chariot race (the tethrippon) as well as other victories won in the horse-race (keles) and in footraces of various lengths.

Careful study of the wording and structure of the inscription and relevant comparanda suggests many of Damonon’s victories typically understood as having been won in the tethrippon were in fact won in the the kalpe, a contest for mares in which the rider dismounted and ran alongside his horse in the final part of the race. The kalpe was based directly on cavalry training exercises, and the horses that competed in this event were heavy-bodied cavalry horses rather than the light-bodied racehorses used in other hippic competitions. Three fragmentary terracotta votive plaques found in the excavations at the shrine of Agamemnon and Alexandra at Amyklai near Sparta provide strong support for the suggestion that many of the victories listed on the Damonon stele were won in the kalpe.

The re-interpretation of the Damonon stele proposed here has important ramifications, along multiple axes, for our understanding of ancient Lakedaimon. Our knowledge of the program at Lakedaimonian religious festivals is considerably enhanced, because it becomes clear that at least six such festivals included the kalpe. The inclusion of the kalpe in the Lakedaimonian festival circuit suggests that Spartans were eager to emphasize their military capacities and strength. That may well have been in part a response to Athenian successes at Sphacteria and Kythera, the resulting regular incursions into Lakedaimonian territory, and concomitant Spartan concerns about an appearance of weakness.

Most importantly, the new interpretation of the Damonon stele presented here offers a rare glimpse of the Lakedaimonian state at work. It reveals a Lakedaimon that is evolving rapidly in response to emergent military imperatives and Lakedaimonians who are ready, willing, and able to make swift, well-designed changes to the structure of religious festivals, and to manipulate gender expectations, in order to alter the structure of status competition and patterns of conspicuous consumption. Those changes, and the thought processes behind them, reveal a considerable level of complexity in Lakedaimonian thinking about their own social and political institutions and customs. That would not be surprising if manifested in Athens, but it contrasts sharply with the persistent picture of Lakedaimonians as unsophisticated and of Lakedaimon as a staid, conservative place with a static sociopolitical system. Indeed, the capacity of the Lakedaimonian state to make rapid, incremental changes that were in harmony with the overall structure of its sociopolitical system may well have been a key element in Lakedaimon’s unusual stability. Due to the nature of our sources, such changes are typically invisible to us, so the information that can be gleaned from the Damonon stele is of particular importance.

Cambridge Companion to Xenophon, Michael Flower (ed.), 2017

In this essay I explore Xenophon's views of ancient Sparta. The essay begins by exploring four tr... more In this essay I explore Xenophon's views of ancient Sparta. The essay begins by exploring four traits of Sparta and Spartans that Xenophon seems to have found particularly praiseworthy: military competence, dedication to physical fitness, respect (aidos), and self-restraint. (enkrateia). It then considers what Xenophon saw as three crucial flaws
in Sparta and Spartans: a predilection for coerced rather than willing obedience,
a lack of prudence (sophrosyne), and a tendency to privilege their own interests at the expense of their allies (pleonexia). In Xenophon's opinion, those flaws proved disastrous when Sparta found itself in the position of hegemon of much of the Greek world after the end of the Peloponnesian War.

Annual of the British School at Athens, 2018

This article makes use of recently published graves to offer the first synthetic analysis of the ... more This article makes use of recently published graves to offer the first synthetic analysis of the typology and topography of Spartan burials that is founded on archaeological evidence. Our knowledge of Spartan burial practices has long been based almost entirely on textual sources – excavations conducted in Sparta between 1906 and 1994 uncovered fewer than 20 pre-Roman graves. The absence of pre-Roman cemeteries led scholars to conclude that, as long as the Lycurgan customs were in effect, all burials in Sparta were intracommunal and that few tombs had been found because they had been destroyed by later building activity. Burial practices have, as a result, been seen as one of many ways in which Sparta was an outlier. The aforementioned recently published graves offer a different picture of Spartan burial practices. It is now clear that there was at least one extracommunal cemetery in the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. What would normally be described as extramural burials did, therefore, take place, but intracommunal burials of adults continued to be made in Sparta throughout the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. Those burials were concentrated along important roads and on the slopes of hills. The emergent understanding of Spartan burial practices takes on added significance when placed in a wider context. Burial practices in Sparta align closely with those found in Argos and Corinth. Indeed, burial practices in Sparta, rather than being exceptional, are notably similar to those of its most important Peloponnesian neighbours; a key issue is that in all three poleis intracommunal burials continued to take place through the Hellenistic period. The finding that adults were buried both extracommunally and intracommunally in Sparta, Argos and Corinth after the Geometric period calls into question the standard narrative of the development of Greek burial practices in the post-Mycenaean period.

Note: This article has two parts: main text and supplementary materials (appendices listing of burials in Sparta, available here and on the ABSA website).

A Companion to Ancient Sparta, A. Powell (ed.), 2018

This paper offers an overview of the sports in ancient Sparta.

Classical Antiquity, 2012

This article seeks to situate the athletic activities of Spartiates and their unmarried daughters... more This article seeks to situate the athletic activities of Spartiates and their unmarried daughters during the Classical period in their broader societal context by using theoretical perspectives taken from sociology in general and the sociology of sport in particular to explore how those activities contributed to the maintenance of social order in Sparta. Social order is here taken to denote a system of interlocking societal institutions, practices, and norms that is relatively stable over time. Athletics was a powerful mechanism that helped to generate consensus and to socialize and coerce individuals. It thus induced compliance with behavioral norms on the part of both females and males and thereby contributed meaningfully to the maintenance of social order in Sparta. Athletics inculcated conformity to norms that called for females to be compliant, beautiful objects of male desire. Athletics had an equally profound effect on Spartan males because it inculcated compliance with norms that valorized subordination of the individual to the group, playing the part of the soldier, and meritocratic status competition. Athletics may well have also to some degree empowered both Spartan females and males, but its liberatory dimensions can easily be unduly amplified. There is an ever-present dialectic in athletics, between its ability to reinforce norms that underpin the prevailing social order and its ability to foster individual autonomy. In the case of Sparta, the balance in that dialectic always inclined very much toward the former.

Historia, 2010

Kultur(En): Formen Des Alltäglichen in Der Antike. Festschrift Für Ingomar Weiler Zum 75. Geburtstag, 2013

This paper examines the evidence for the Olympic victor Ladas and argues that he was a Lakedaimon... more This paper examines the evidence for the Olympic victor Ladas and argues that he was a Lakedaimonian perioikos.

Spartan Society, T. Figueira (ed.), 2004

The existing scholarship on the reasons why the Spartan mirage came into being emphasizes the dis... more The existing scholarship on the reasons why the Spartan mirage came into being
emphasizes the discontent provoked by democratic governance in Athens, the
polarization created by the long-running hostility between Sparta and Athens,
the penchant, common among Greek philosophers and political theorists, for
constructing ideal states, the need to explain the decline in Spartan power in
the fourth century, and the role of early Sparta as the embodiment of virtue
in Hellenistic philosophy. While it is dear that these were all factors of some
importance, they focus solely on the political and military spheres. The ancient
sources, on the other hand, manifest an abiding fascination with the structure
of economic activity at Sparta. It is, therefore, well worth asking the question of
why economics played such a large role in ancient descriptions of Sparta.

The answer is to be found in a widely-shared value system that incorporated
normative conceptions of how households were expected to acquire and
consume resources. This value system enshrined an idealized economic order,
which retained its conceptual force in spite of a general awareness that it was
unrealizable. There was, as a result, a strong and persistent desire to make this
ideal economic order real, or at least to imagine a place where that was possible,
a desire that was satisfied in part by projecting the idealized economic order
onto Sparta. This was not mere happenstance. The Lycurgan politeia was the
product of a series of reforms that pushed economic realities in the direction of
the ideal. As a result, the divergence between the normative and normal was
smaller in Sparta than in much of the rest of Greece, making it the perfect site
for a pseudo- historical utopia.

Journal of Hellenic Studies, 2006

Xenophon's "Cyropaedia" can be read as a pamphlet on practical military reform with special relev... more Xenophon's "Cyropaedia" can be read as a pamphlet on practical military reform with special relevance to the Spartan state. The inclusion of a series of proposals for the reform of the Spartan army in the work has not been recognized because Xenophon presented those proposals in the guise of a reform of the Persian army undertaken by Cyrus. There was, however, no historical basis for this part of the "Cyropaedia," and there is no trace of a major military reform in either the Greek or the Persian tradition about Cyrus as it existed before Xenophon ; Cyrus' military reform was thus an authorial invention. Xenophon inserted a military reform into the "Cyropaedia" as a way of presenting a proposal for the restructuring of the Spartan army. The program of military reform enacted by Cyrus, if implemented in Sparta, would have the effect of increasing the number of men in their phalanx and assembling a sizeable, highly trained group of horsemen. Xenophon thus used Cyrus' army in the "Cyropaedia" to show what a revamped Spartan military might look like, at a time when the Spartans were struggling desperately to maintain their position in the face of a powerful Boeotian army.

Sparta: The Body Politic, A. Powell and S. Hodkinson (eds.), 2010

The goal of this article is to pursue answers to two questions about Ephorus' Histories: How was ... more The goal of this article is to pursue answers to two questions about Ephorus' Histories: How was the Lycurgan politeia portrayed in the Histories? How did Ephorus' portrayal of Sparta in general and the Lycurgan politeia in particular fit within and contribute to the overall narrative structure of the Histories? There are numerous other aspects of Ephorus' description of Sparta - the foundation of the Spartan state, Lycurgus' biography, Sparta's actions in the numerous wars fought in the fifth and fourth centuries, to name just a few - that would repay detailed analysis. However, the Lycurgan politeia seems to have been of critical importance to Ephorus' conception of Sparta and to his understanding of historical process in the broadest sense of the term and so merits pride of place. We will see that the narrative in the Histories was constructed as a diadochy of hegemonies and that Ephorus sought to elucidate a universally applicable explanation for the rise and fall of hegemonic states. Ephorus had a special interest in Sparta because he took it as a prime example, possibly the archetype, of the reasons for the acquisition and loss of hegemony. The Lycurgan politeia warranted close attention because Ephorus saw it as the source of Spartan hegemony. According to the account found in the Histories, the instauration of the Lycurgan politeia in what we would call the early ninth century, along with favorable geography, led directly to Sparta assuming the position of hegemon for nearly five hundred years. The Lycurgan politeia was derived from the Cretan politeia established by Minas and Rhadamanthys and transmitted to Lycurgus by Thales during the former's visit to Crete. Lycurgus made Sparta a hegemon by fostering homonoia (concord) and andreia (courage) among its citizens. He cultivated homonoia by imposing austerity and self-restraint, in part by means of mandatory commensality for adult males, and by eliminating tryphi (luxury) and pleonexia (greed), in part by means of instituting an unusually high degree of communalization in regard to wives, children, and property. He cultivated andreia by ensuring that citizens received proper agoge (discipline) and paideia (education). Hegemony helped ensure Sparta's eleutheria (freedom), which Lycurgus saw as the greatest good for a state. The Spartans eventually lost their hegemony because of the erosion of their andreia due to gradual neglect of Lycurgus' ordinances and the infiltration of tryphe and pleonexia, evident in the introduction of gold and silver coinage in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War.

Sparta in Modern Thought: Politics, History, and Culture, S. Hodkinson and I. Macgregor Morris (eds.), 2012

The next part of the paper centers on the second half of the eighteenth century, when an alternative view of land tenure in Sparta- that land was communally held - enjoyed considerable popularity. Gabriel Bonnot de Mably was the first to elaborate that belief, which was vociferously rejected by many of his contemporaries, such as Jean-Francois Vauvilliers. Even the most enthusiastic Laconophiles, however, were at that time not inclined to remake France in Sparta's image. The gap between ancient republic and
modern monarchy appeared unbridgeable, and discussions of Spartan land tenure had a rather abstract quality.

The third section examines a major shift that took place with the French Revolution, which brought republican government to France and made radical societal change seem feasible. Ancient republics no longer felt nearly as distant, and it became possible to contemplate the imposition of a communitarian property regime. During the Revolution Francois-Noel (Gracchus) Babeuf boldly proposed putting an end to private ownership of land and pointed to Sparta as an exemplar. The shift brought about by
the French Revolution was subsequently reinforced by the emergence of socialism as a major political force.

In the fourth section of the paper I seek to show that nineteenth-century French discussions of Spartan land tenure had a much more serious air than in previous centuries. Revolutionaries and socialists were eager to portray Sparta as a successful polity in which land was communally owned and to present Sparta as a precedent and model. Other, more conservative thinkers strongly opposed this characterization and use of Sparta.

Finally, I argue that the politicization of discussions of Spartan land tenure extended into what was ostensibly purely scholarly work. This is apparent in the series of exchanges that took place in the years 1864-1889 between Fustel de Coulanges, one of the most influential ancient historians of the nineteenth century, and the Belgian economist and socialiast Emile de Laveleye. Both men wrote repeatedly on the question of land tenure Sparta; Coulanges composed a substantial treatise on that specific subject. Despite his protestations of political innocence, Coulanges consistently went out of his way to attack the socialists' conception of Sparta; and both
Coulanges and Laveleye produced notably partial treatments of Sparta's property regime. After the end of the nineteenth century, Spartan land tenure rapidly became a largely academic matter. Marx and Engels evinced little interest in Sparta, and the rise of Marxism as the dominant form of European socialism meant that the question of Sparta's property regime no longer resonated with contemporary political concerns.

Sports by Paul Christesen

A Companion to Ancient Sparta, A. Powell (ed.), 2018

This paper offers an overview of the sports in ancient Sparta.

Classical Antiquity, 2012

This article seeks to situate the athletic activities of Spartiates and their unmarried daughters... more This article seeks to situate the athletic activities of Spartiates and their unmarried daughters during the Classical period in their broader societal context by using theoretical perspectives taken from sociology in general and the sociology of sport in particular to explore how those activities contributed to the maintenance of social order in Sparta. Social order is here taken to denote a system of interlocking societal institutions, practices, and norms that is relatively stable over time. Athletics was a powerful mechanism that helped to generate consensus and to socialize and coerce individuals. It thus induced compliance with behavioral norms on the part of both females and males and thereby contributed meaningfully to the maintenance of
social order in Sparta. Athletics inculcated conformity to norms that called for females to be compliant, beautiful objects of male desire. Athletics had an equally profound effect on Spartan males because it inculcated compliance with norms that valorized subordination of the individual to the group, playing the part of the soldier, and meritocratic status competition. Athletics may well have also to some degree empowered both Spartan females and males, but its liberatory dimensions can easily be unduly amplified. There is an ever-present dialectic in athletics, between its ability to reinforce norms that underpin the prevailing social order and its ability to foster individual autonomy. In the case of Sparta, the balance in that dialectic always inclined very much toward the former.

Cambridge University Press, 2012

This book explores the relationship between sport and democratization. Drawing on sociological an... more This book explores the relationship between sport and democratization. Drawing on sociological and historical methodologies, it provides a framework for understanding how sport affects the level of egalitarianism in the society in which it is played. The author distinguishes between horizontal sport, which embodies and fosters egalitarian relations, and vertical sport, which embodies and fosters hierarchical relations. He also differentiates between societies in which sport is played and watched on a mass scale and those in which it is an ancillary activity. Using ancient Greece and nineteenth-century Britain as case studies, he analyzes how these variables interact and finds that horizontal mass sport has the capacity to both promote and inhibit democratization at a societal level. He concludes that horizontal mass sport tends to reinforce and extend democratization.

Companion to Sport and Spectacle in Greek and Roman Antiquity, P. Christesen and D. Kyle (eds.), 2014

This paper explores how sports reflected and contributed to the wave of sociopolitical democratiz... more This paper explores how sports reflected and contributed to the wave of sociopolitical democratization that transformed the Greek world in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE.

"A Companion to Sport and Spectacle in Greek and Roman Antiquity" presents a series of original e... more "A Companion to Sport and Spectacle in Greek and Roman Antiquity" presents a series of original essays that apply a socio-historical perspective to myriad aspects of ancient sport. Featuring contributions from a wide range of international scholars in various Classical antiquity disciplines, readings focus on the status and roles of participants, organizers, and spectators while addressing such themes as class, gender, ethnicity, religion, violence, and more. Introductory essays on the historiography of Greek and Roman sport are followed by specialized readings relating to Greek sports in specific locales such as Athens and Sparta. Subsequent readings relating to the Roman Empire focus on sport and spectacle in the city of Rome and in various Roman cities and provinces. Distinctions between “sport” and “spectacle” are examined and understanding sport and spectacle as part of a broader social canvas, rather than isolated activities, is emphasized. Offering a wealth of insights to our current understanding of the role of sport and spectacle in the ancient world, "A Companion to Sport and Spectacle in Greek and Roman Antiquity" represents an invaluable scholarly contribution to ancient sport studies.

Onward to the Olympics, G. Schaus and S. R. Wenn (eds.), 2007

This paper argues that athletics became a much more prominent and important part of everyday life... more This paper argues that athletics became a much more prominent and important part of everyday life in the Greek world in the sixth century BCE due to ongoing, broader shifts toward a more democratized sociopolitical order.

This book is the first comprehensive examination of the lists of Olympic victors that were assidu... more This book is the first comprehensive examination of the lists of Olympic victors that were assiduously maintained by ancient Greeks for more than a 1,000 years. The origins, development, content, and structure of Olympic victor lists are explored and explained, and a number of important questions, such as the source and reliability of the year of 776 BCE for the first Olympics, are addressed.

Traditio, 2006

Olympic victor lists are critical to our understanding of the chronological underpinnings of Gree... more Olympic victor lists are critical to our understanding of the chronological underpinnings of Greek history. Over 100 fragments from roughly twenty different Olympionikai have come down to us, but Eusebius' Chronika supplies the only extant, complete list. The last critical edition of Eusebius' Olympic victor list is that of Alfred Schoene, Eusebi Chronicorum libri duo (Berlin, 1866-1875). A revised critical edition of this list - based on Paris, BNF, gr. 2600 and on an Armenian translation made ca. A.D. 450 - is here given together with an English translation and an array of relevant background information.

A Tall Order: Writing the Social History of the Ancient World (Essays in Honor of William V. Harris), edited by Z. Varhelyi and J.-J. Aubert, 2005

Hippias' Ὀλυμπιονικῶν ἀναγραφή can be dated to 400-360 BCE. The list of Olympic victors compiled... more Hippias' Ὀλυμπιονικῶν ἀναγραφή can be dated to 400-360 BCE. The list of Olympic victors compiled by Hippias is of considerable interest, particularly since it was the first such list and later lists of Olympic victors were based upon it. This project was above all political; it was intended to reinforce Elean claims to Olympia in the face of Spartan hostility.
"

"Histos: Online Journal of Historiography", 2019

Cambridge Companion to Xenophon, Michael Flower (ed.), 2017

Annual of the British School at Athens, 2018

Note: This article has two parts: main text and supplementary materials (appendices listing of burials in Sparta, available here and on the ABSA website).

A Companion to Ancient Sparta, A. Powell (ed.), 2018

This paper offers an overview of the sports in ancient Sparta.

Classical Antiquity, 2012

Historia, 2010

Kultur(En): Formen Des Alltäglichen in Der Antike. Festschrift Für Ingomar Weiler Zum 75. Geburtstag, 2013

Spartan Society, T. Figueira (ed.), 2004

Journal of Hellenic Studies, 2006

Sparta: The Body Politic, A. Powell and S. Hodkinson (eds.), 2010

Sparta in Modern Thought: Politics, History, and Culture, S. Hodkinson and I. Macgregor Morris (eds.), 2012

A Companion to Ancient Sparta, A. Powell (ed.), 2018

This paper offers an overview of the sports in ancient Sparta.

Classical Antiquity, 2012

This article seeks to situate the athletic activities of Spartiates and their unmarried daughters... more This article seeks to situate the athletic activities of Spartiates and their unmarried daughters during the Classical period in their broader societal context by using theoretical perspectives taken from sociology in general and the sociology of sport in particular to explore how those activities contributed to the maintenance of social order in Sparta. Social order is here taken to denote a system of interlocking societal institutions, practices, and norms that is relatively stable over time. Athletics was a powerful mechanism that helped to generate consensus and to socialize and coerce individuals. It thus induced compliance with behavioral norms on the part of both females and males and thereby contributed meaningfully to the maintenance of
social order in Sparta. Athletics inculcated conformity to norms that called for females to be compliant, beautiful objects of male desire. Athletics had an equally profound effect on Spartan males because it inculcated compliance with norms that valorized subordination of the individual to the group, playing the part of the soldier, and meritocratic status competition. Athletics may well have also to some degree empowered both Spartan females and males, but its liberatory dimensions can easily be unduly amplified. There is an ever-present dialectic in athletics, between its ability to reinforce norms that underpin the prevailing social order and its ability to foster individual autonomy. In the case of Sparta, the balance in that dialectic always inclined very much toward the former.

Cambridge University Press, 2012

Companion to Sport and Spectacle in Greek and Roman Antiquity, P. Christesen and D. Kyle (eds.), 2014

Onward to the Olympics, G. Schaus and S. R. Wenn (eds.), 2007

Traditio, 2006

A Tall Order: Writing the Social History of the Ancient World (Essays in Honor of William V. Harris), edited by Z. Varhelyi and J.-J. Aubert, 2005

Historia, 2010

Chionis of Sparta won multiple Olympic victories in the seventh century and sometime around 470 B... more Chionis of Sparta won multiple Olympic victories in the seventh century and sometime around 470 BCE received at both Sparta and at Olympia honorifi c monuments that portrayed him as a seven-time Olympic victor and one of the oikists of Cyrene. After reviewing the relevant evidence, I will seek to show that those monuments were erected as part of the process of making Chionis into an object of heroic cult. Regardless of how one reads the evidence, it is clear that Chionis was singled out by the Spartans for special honors long after his death. I suggest that this was the result of the Agiad royal family attempting to use Chionis to help restore their standing in Spartan society; their position had been severely damaged by the actions of Pausanias, titular head of the Agiad dynasty, who in the years after the Persian Wars became notorious as a Medizer and fomenter of helot rebellion. The elevation of Chionis benefi ted the Agiads because their social status was enhanced by close association with a prominent Olympic victor and because the characterization of Chionis as an oikist of Cyrene facilitated the establishment or renewal of close ties between the Agiads and the Battiad monarchs of Cyrene. Those ties added signifi cantly to the power and prestige of the Agiads in Sparta while legitimizing the Battiadsʼ position in Cyrene. 1 These arguments are important for two reasons. First, they offer a rare glimpse into political activity within Spartan society in the fi fth century and, more specifi cally, into how status competition was played out. The fashion in which Chionisʼ status was exploited shows the Agiads displaying a perhaps surprising ingenuity in their rivalry with their peers. Second, if one accepts that Chionis was indeed heroized, the fact that he became the object of cult and the reasons why that seems to have happened would suggest that the current scholarly understanding of how and why athletes were heroized may need some revision. The prevailing view is that cults for athletes were established by communities as a whole and helped resolve intra-communal tensions. The example of Chionis would indicate that heroization of athletes could also be initiated by and serve the interests of sub-polis groups and could actually exacerbate rather than resolve intra-communal tensions. In addition, the augmentation of the roster of heroized athletes would suggest that the number of such individuals may have been underestimated and would call into question much of the earlier scholarship that, under the infl uence of the 1 All dates are BCE unless otherwise indicated. All translations of ancient Greek literary and epigraphic texts are my own unless otherwise indicated. Abbreviations are as given in the Lʼannée philologique and LSJ. Greek words and names have been transliterated in such a way as to be as faithful as possible to original spellings while taking into account established usages for well-known individuals and places. I am grateful to Paul Cartledge, Thomas Figueira, Kathryn Holroyd, Stephen Hodkin-son, Donald Kyle, and Gerry Schaus, all of whom provided invaluable comments on earlier drafts. Responsibility for the views expressed here and for any errors or omissions is solely my own.

Nikephoros, 2002

A detailed diachronic analysis of the usages of γυμνάζω in occurrences listed in the TLG-D databa... more A detailed diachronic analysis of the usages of γυμνάζω in occurrences listed in the TLG-D database reveals that this verb was coined to describe "civic nudity," which can be defined as regular, nude exercise that took place in gymnasia. With an appendix listing all the occurrences organized by author, by type of author and by date.

The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, 2012

This encyclopedia entry provides a brief overview of what is known about the organizers and judge... more This encyclopedia entry provides a brief overview of what is known about the organizers and judges of the Olympic Games, the Hellanodikai.

Kultur(en): Formen des Alltäglichen in der Antike. Festschrift für Ingomar Weiler zum 75. Geburtstag, P. Mauritsch and C. Ulf (eds.), 2013

Oxford Handbook of Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World

How to Do Things with History, 2018

How to Do Things with History is a collection of essays that explores current and future approac... more How to Do Things with History is a collection of essays that explores current and future approaches to the study of ancient Greek cultural history. Rather than focus directly on methodology, the essays in this volume demonstrate how some of the most productive and significant methodologies for studying ancient Greece can be employed to illuminate a range of different kinds of subject matter. These essays, which bring together the work of some of the most talented scholars in the field, are based upon papers delivered at a conference held at Cambridge University in September of 2014 in honor of Paul Cartledge's retirement from the post of A. G. Leventis Professor of Ancient Greek Culture.

For the better part of four decades, Paul Cartledge has spearheaded intellectual developments in the field of Greek culture in both scholarly and public contexts. His work has combined insightful historical accounts of particular places, periods, and thinkers with a willingness to explore comparative approaches and a keen focus on methodology. Cartledge has throughout his career emphasized the analysis of practice - the study not, for instance, of the history of thought but of thinking in action and through action.

The assembled essays trace the broad horizons charted by Cartledge's work: from studies of political thinking to accounts of legal and cultural practices to politically astute approaches to historiography. The contributors to this volume all take the parameters and contours of Cartledge's work, which has profoundly influenced an entire generation of scholars, as starting points for their own historical and historiographical explorations. Those parameters and contours provide a common thread that runs through and connects all of the essays while also offering sufficient freedom for individual contributors to demonstrate an array of rich and varied approaches to the study of the past.

Cambridge University Press, 2007

Traditio (Studies in Ancient and Medieval History, Thought and Religion), 2006

Olympic victor lists are critical to our understanding of the chronological underpinnings of Gree... more Olympic victor lists are critical to our understanding of the chronological underpinnings of Greek history. Over 100 fragments from roughly twenty different "Olympionikai" have come down to us, but Eusebius' "Chronika" supplies the only extant, complete list. The last critical edition of Eusebius' Olympic victor list is that of Alfred Schoene, "Eusebi Chronicorum libri duo" (Berlin, 1866-1875). A revised critical edition of this list - based on Paris, BNF, gr. 2600 and on an Armenian translation made ca. A.D. 450 - is here given together with an English translation and an array of relevant background information.

A Tall Order Writing the Social History of the Ancient World Essays in honor of William V. Harris, 2005

International Journal of The History of Sport, 2009

This essay explores the origin of the date of 776 BCE for the first Olympics. That date was estab... more This essay explores the origin of the date of 776 BCE for the first Olympics. That date was established by Hippias of Elis c.400 BCE when he compiled the first complete list of Olympic victors. Contrary to what one might expect, Hippias did not arrive at the date of 776 on the basis of written records pertaining to the Olympics or to Olympic victors. Instead, he calculated the date of the first Olympiad by associating that Olympiad with a famous Spartan lawgiver named Lycurgus, who was a member of one of the Spartan royal families and who was believed to have helped organize the Olympic Games. Hippias used a list of Spartan kings to determine the number of generations between his own time and that of Lycurgus. He then assigned a fixed number of years to each generation and ended up with a date for Lycurgus and hence the first Olympiad. The inaccuracies inherent in this approach mean that the date of 776 for the first Olympiad is at best an approximation. The excavators at Olympia have suggested a date closer to 700.

Brill's New Jacoby, 2016

These essays, which appeared in 2015 and 2016, form part of an online database of translations of... more These essays, which appeared in 2015 and 2016, form part of an online database of translations of and commentaries on historical writings from ancient Greece and Rome that survive only in fragments.

Cambridge Companion to Xenophon, M. Flower (ed.), 2017

Brills New Jacoby, 2015

International Journal of the History of Sport, 2017

Hoosiers has a special, undeniable appeal. This film tells the fictional story of a basketball te... more Hoosiers has a special, undeniable appeal. This film tells the fictional
story of a basketball team from a small high school in Indiana
that defeats a team from a much bigger school to win the state
championship. When it was shown to test audiences, Hoosiers
scored the highest preview rating in the history of Orion Pictures.
A poll conducted by USA Today in 1998 named Hoosiers the best
sports movie of all time, and it topped ESPN.com’s list of the ‘25 Best
Sports Films: 1979-2004’. In 2001, it was selected for inclusion in the
National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as a motion picture
that is notably ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’.
The source of Hoosiers’ special appeal has, however, remained
somewhat mysterious. This article seeks to show that Hoosiers has
inspired unusually intense devotion because it artfully dramatizes
concerns about authoritarianism that are deeply embedded not just
in American sports, but in American society as a whole, and because
it elegantly presents an emotionally satisfying resolution for those
concerns (albeit one that works solely within the bounds of a fictional
film).

Greece & Rome, 2003

There has been growing interest in the importance of value systems. The incentives embedded in va... more There has been growing interest in the importance of value systems. The incentives embedded in value systems play a role in structuring economic activity. This in turn brings economic rationalism to the fore, since economic analysis tends to take account of value systems through varying degrees of economic rationalism ; different definitions of economic rationalism contain different assumptions about values. A re-examination of evidence for income-maximizing economic rationalism in 4th-cent. Athens, especially in regard to silver-mining and to investment practice (e.g. Demosthenes 35, 10-13 ; 36, 11 ; Aeschines 1, 105), leads to the conclusion that rationalism played an important role in shaping economic activity but was not the only factor.

Materiali e Discussioni, 2002

We argue that the "Satyricon" should be read against the background of the Roman literary traditi... more We argue that the "Satyricon" should be read against the background of the Roman literary tradition of the early Empire, with its fondness for the transgression of generic boundaries and its evident resistance to producing continuous narrative. Petronius' work is a purposefully constructed generic monstrosity, a multi-layered fusion of elements drawn from a large number of highly divergent literary forms which are combined and re-combined in order to surprise, delight and entertain an educated Roman audience highly attuned to the subtleties of genre. It is, to use Trimalchio's words, ex omnibus
in unum, nee hoc nee illud (50.7).

Companion to Ancient Macedonia, J. Roisman and I. Worthington (eds.), 2010

This paper discusses six ways in which Macedonian religions was distinctive: (1) deities of parti... more This paper discusses six ways in which Macedonian religions was distinctive: (1) deities
of particular significance to Macedonians, (2) an understanding of death as passage
into an afterlife, (3) openness to foreign cults, (4) the tendency to expend resources
on the construction of tombs rather than temples, (5) the role of the king as chief
intermediary between the gods and the Macedonian people, and (6) the deification
of rulers.

Classical World, 2010

A number of currently popular video games focus on the ancient world, and the experiences that th... more A number of currently popular video games focus on the ancient world, and the experiences that the generation of students now entering high school and college have had playing such games is enormously important in shaping their view of ancient Greece and Rome. The purpose of this article is to suggest ways in which video games might be used as a tool for teaching about the ancient world. We look specifically at three games, "Rome: Total War," "Glory of the Roman Empire," and "CivCity: Rome," and assess the pedagogical potential of each.

The Oxford History of the Archaic Greek World (OHAGW) Brief Project Description project director... more The Oxford History of the Archaic Greek World (OHAGW)
Brief Project Description

project directors: Paul Cartledge (Cambridge University), Paul Christesen (Dartmouth College)

The Archaic Greek world was remarkable for its diversity. As Greeks dispersed throughout the Mediterranean basin, the different environmental and human ecosystems they encountered almost inevitably led to important differences among widely scattered communities. Moreover, even communities situated relatively close to one another often responded in remarkably different ways to similar demographic, political, social, and economic challenges. At the same time, Greek communities had important commonalities, most notably language, and were bound together by a loosely structured but highly active network of commercial, cultural, diplomatic, and military ties.

Diversity and uniformity are thus key issues for a broad range of scholarship on the Archaic Greek world. There is, nonetheless, a long-established tendency to focus attention on a limited number of communities, most notably Athens. That tendency has been frequently lamented, and with good reason: it implicitly homogenizes and inevitably impoverishes our perceptions of the Greek world. Decades of excavation and scholarship have greatly enriched our knowledge of dozens of Archaic Greek communities. The resulting information, however, has not been integrated and synthesized as regularly as it should be, for a variety of reasons. Of particular importance is the fact that much of this information is scattered among hundreds of publications. Even in cases where individual communities, such as Corinth and Miletus, have been the subject of scholarly monographs, the resulting publications take widely varying approaches with respect to the types of evidence considered and the methodologies used. The resulting lack of commensurability makes integration and synthesis difficult.

OHAGW will provide detailed studies of 32 sites, sanctuaries, and regions in Greece during the Archaic period. Each essay in OHAGW will be built around the same set of eleven rubrics, so that it will be possible to read either vertically (reading a complete study of a single site) or horizontally (reading, for example, about the economic history of a number of different sites). Taken together, these studies will add unprecedented depth and subtlety to our evidence for and understanding of diversity and uniformity in the Archaic Greek world.

- total expected length c. 1.25 million words
- will be published by Oxford University Press in hard copy and digitally in stages starting in 2021

In this article I review the many prior interpretations of Herodotus' description (9.85) of the t... more In this article I review the many prior interpretations of Herodotus' description (9.85) of the tombs of the Lakedaimonians at Plataia and consider the implications for our knowledge of Spartan burial customs.

This is a polished draft of an essay that will appear in "Classica et Mediaevalia."

Luxury and Wealth in the Archaic to Hellenistic Peloponnese, 2020

In this essay I argue that in Plutarch's descriptions of Sparta, τρυφή, which is habitually trans... more In this essay I argue that in Plutarch's descriptions of Sparta, τρυφή, which is habitually translated as "luxury," actually meant something much closer to the English terms "decadence’ or "invidious, tasteless ostentation." Plutarch should thus be read as saying that the Spartan lifestyle limited self-indulgence, in part by banishing goods and services understood as leading to moral corruption and socially disruptive display of wealth, rather than saying that everything that we would normally put under the heading of "luxury" was absent from Sparta. Re-interpreting Plutarch along those lines removes one of the major remaining props of the belief in an austere Sparta in which luxury was entirely absent.

Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici, 2002

... 7. On the Argonautica, see Beye 1982. 8. On this point, see Nisbet-Hubbard 1970. 9. For Ovid&... more ... 7. On the Argonautica, see Beye 1982. 8. On this point, see Nisbet-Hubbard 1970. 9. For Ovid's work, see Holzberg 1997. On Propertius, see Commager 1974; M. Hubbard 1974 and now Janan 2001. During the period stretching from the Page 7. Genre in Petronius 141 ...

American Journal of Philology, 2014

and of course, they have their own body of literature to sift through in regard to readings and e... more and of course, they have their own body of literature to sift through in regard to readings and emendations. The most notable crux is the verb †φυλάσσει† from the final line of fr. 286 on the “Cyndonian quinces,” preserved via a quotation in the thirteenth book of Athenaeus. Again, wilkinson addresses every relevant conjecture for this odd verb. in the fragment, the subject of the verb is the darting Thracian boreal wind, thus it is he who “guards” and to many critics this seems too static a verbal action. Nonetheless, it is necessary to retain the text as handed down by the tradition and to discuss it within the confines of the commentary. The approach is similar for all the manuscript fragments; wilkinson incorporates and offers an even-handed presentation of the bibliography with her own interpretation and analysis. The book is very well edited, with only a few typos. for instance, a line number from s166 in P.Oxy. 2735 is incorrectly referred to in the commentary (96), one line askew from what is printed in her text, although this does not seem to be a consistent problem. The only complaint is that wilkinson has discussed a limited number of the oxyrhynchus papyri fragments, for there are three others containing poetry or commentary on ibycus: 2081, 2260, and 3538. Also, there are a number of minor manuscript quotations that wilkinson discusses in the introduction but does not reproduce in her edition of the text. However, what is presented is well considered and deliberated. This is the fullest treatment of ibycus to date and is a worthy and necessary study of this poetic innovator of the sixth century, one of the canonical poets of the Greek literary tradition.

Sparta in Modern Thought

The goals of this essay are to trace why and how treatments of Spartan land tenure in French sour... more The goals of this essay are to trace why and how treatments of Spartan land tenure in French sources evolved over the course of the period in question and to show that they responded to contemporary political concerns and typically present convenient caricatures rather than careful analyses of historical evidence. I begin by arguing that in the first half of the eighteenth century a number of inter-related factors helped give Sparta in general, and the system of land tenure in Sparta in particular, prominent places in French thought. The erosion of the controls imposed by French monarchs, evident from the publication of Francois Fenelon's "Telemaque" in 1699, made possible overt discussion of political and economic reform. The decline in the authority of the Catholic Church that came with the Enlightenment and the concomitant replacement of Biblical models with material and precedents from classical antiquity, along with the insertion of Sparta into a long-standing debate about the merits and dangers of luxury, helped produce a general interest in Sparta. Land seizures that were occurring as part of colonialism stimulated theoretical work on the origin and justification of private property. The arrival in France of what has been called classical republicanism generated interest in the highly specific subject of the system of land tenure in Sparta, and Sparta became an example of a polity in which republican government was underpinned by an egalitarian distribution of private property and in which austerity reigned supreme. Montesquieu and Rousseau played particularly significant roles in focusing attention on the Spartan property regime. The next part of the paper centers on the second half of the eighteenth century, when an alternative view of land tenure in Sparta- that land was communally held - enjoyed considerable popularity. Gabriel Bonnot de Mably was the first to elaborate that belief, which was vociferously rejected by many of his contemporaries, such as Jean-Francois Vauvilliers. Even the most enthusiastic Laconophiles, however, were at that time not inclined to remake France in Sparta's image. The gap between ancient republic and modern monarchy appeared unbridgeable, and discussions of Spartan land tenure had a rather abstract quality. The third section examines a major shift that took place with the French Revolution, which brought republican government to France and made radical societal change seem feasible. Ancient republics no longer felt nearly as distant, and it became possible to contemplate the imposition of a communitarian property regime. During the Revolution Francois-Noel (Gracchus) Babeuf boldly proposed putting an end to private ownership of land and pointed to Sparta as an exemplar. The shift brought about by the French Revolution was subsequently reinforced by the emergence of socialism as a major political force. In the fourth section of the paper I seek to show that nineteenth-century French discussions of Spartan land tenure had a much more serious air than in previous centuries. Revolutionaries and socialists were eager to portray Sparta as a successful polity in which land was communally owned and to present Sparta as a precedent and model. Other, more conservative thinkers strongly opposed this characterization and use of Sparta. Finally, I argue that the politicization of discussions of Spartan land tenure extended into what was ostensibly purely scholarly work. This is apparent in the series of exchanges that took place in the years 1864-1889 between Fustel de Coulanges, one of the most influential ancient historians of the nineteenth century, and the Belgian economist and socialiast Emile de Laveleye. Both men wrote repeatedly on the question of land tenure Sparta; Coulanges composed a substantial treatise on that specific subject. Despite his protestations of political innocence, Coulanges consistently went out of his way to attack the socialists' conception of Sparta; and both Coulanges and Laveleye produced notably partial treatments of Sparta's property regime. After the end of the nineteenth century, Spartan land tenure rapidly became a largely academic matter. Marx and Engels evinced little interest in Sparta, and the rise of Marxism as the dominant form of European socialism meant that the question of Sparta's property regime no longer resonated with contemporary political concerns.

Classica et Mediaevalia

At 9.85 Herodotus states that after the Battle of Plataia, the Lakedaimonians buried their dead i... more At 9.85 Herodotus states that after the Battle of Plataia, the Lakedaimonians buried their dead in three separate graves: one for the ἱρέες, one for the rest of the Spartiates, and one for helots. Taken together with 9.71, this passage suggests that all of the Spartiates decorated for bravery at Plataia were priests, which seems prima facie improbable. The interpretive challenges presented by 9.85 have been the subject of lively scholarly debate since the eighteenth century because this passage potentially provides important evidence for Spartiates’ funerary, religious, and educational customs. With an eye to facilitating future research, this article offers a detailed conspectus of the extensive collection of relevant scholarship and, in part by drawing upon evidence from the archaeological excavations of the Tomb of the Lakedaimonians in the Kerameikos, identifies one reading, which involves athetizing part of 9.85, as the preferred interpretive approach.

The Cambridge Companion to Xenophon, 2000

Historia Zeitschrift Fur Alte Geschichte Revue D Histoire Ancienne, 2010

Nikephoros Zeitschrift Fur Sport Und Kultur Im Altertum, 2002

Sport and Democracy in the Ancient and Modern Worlds, 2012

Roisman/A Companion to Ancient Macedonia, 2010

Olympic Victor Lists and Ancient Greek History, 2007

Sport and Democracy in the Ancient and Modern Worlds, 2012