Sport and the city (original) (raw)

Abstract

The Hellenistic period witnessed a second rise of the Greek city, when Greek style urbanism spread from the western Mediterranean to the depths of present day Afghanistan. New poleis were founded by Alexander and his successors, and later by Roman emperors - but ancient Greek cities flourished too. These cities were remarkably similar in terms of architecture, but there were also strong similarities on the level of political culture, where democratic institutions went often hand in hand with an increasing oligarchization[globalization led to a homogeneization]. It is a striking illustration of the priorities of these new cities that so much effort was put into the construction and maintenance of institutions that were concerned with Greek athletics. Every city constructed a stadium, and one or more gymnasia, that became the symbolic centers of Greek urban life (a „second agora”in the words of Louis Robert). Moreover, we also see a virtual explosion of athletic contests that functioned at local, regional and interregional levels. Cities appointed liturgists and magistrates to oversee these institutions, sent out and received festival observers, and invited or subsidized successful athletes; and athletic victors could expect to receive the highest forms of civic praise. In fact athletic training and competition provided each city with a package of values, institutions, laws, and symbols, that was crucial to the self identification of the later Greek city. I suggest two reasons why this was the case. A rich athletic life offered all cities, even those with less than impeccable Greek credentials, a chance to partake of a Panhellenic festival culture, whose symbolic gravity point was formed by the great traditional sites of Olympia, Delphi, Isthmia and Nemea. In this way Greek cities were able to feel part of a global -imagined- community of Greeks. At an individual level these festivals offered the new polis elites a chance to acquire symbolic and political capital as generous festival organizers; but also as athletes and performers.

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