Campaign Agones: Towards a Classification of Greek Athletic Competitions (original) (raw)
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Greek athletics were of high political significance in view of their place in religion and communal festivals. This is reviewed in terms of votive offerings; the status of a group, a ruler, or an individual within a community; interstate rivalries, colonization and state for mation; elite status, kudos, and political capital, especially in chariot-racing. The exam ples of Cleisthenes of Sikyon and the Alcmaeonids of Athens, among others, are dis cussed. The rivalry of Athens and Sparta in athletics and chariot events is also examined, e.g. the cases of the Spartans Lichas, Cynisca, and Agesilaus, and the Athenian Alcibi ades. The participation of 'peripheral' Greek cities (Italy, Sicily, Cyrene) in Panhellenic games bolstered their Greek identity and served their rulers too. Macedonian rulers, e.g. Alexander I, Philip II and Alexander the Great, notably took part in Greek games for the fifth century on, and so asserted their Greek identity and their domain. The Panathenaic Games served political aims not only for Athenian elite, but also for Ptolemies and Mace donians.
SYNCRETISM OF AGON, ATHLETICISM AND WAR IN ANCIENT GREECE
SUMMARY Despite the fact that warfare was the most frequent subject of Greek writers and artists as well as the fact that almost every generation of ancient Greeks witnessed or participated in numerous war clashes and campaigns, the features of Greek warfare and terminology used in its description, reveal the context which differs significantly from the usual practice. It may seem unusual, but warfare in the ancient Greece was not induced by conventional motives that used to start conficts, but by the same drive that led to the creation of ancient athletic Games, which was agon, the spirit of competition. The purpose of this work is to point out the agonal nature of the ancient Greeks, which affected their achievements in athletic competitions as well as at the battlefield. The historical method and the method of theoretical analysis were used in this paper. The results of research suggest that there were mutual permeation of athleticism and warfare in the ancient Greece.
Phoenix (Toronto), 2014
The theme of this volume is the role of sport and spectacle in society, and, in the case of Macedonia, these topics are intertwined from the beginning, as well as inexorably connected with Macedonians' ethnic identity. Although sources for early Macedonian history, beyond foundation legends, are sketchy, they deal primarily with the light thrown on the subject by the Persian interest in and invasions of Greece at the end of the Archaic period (700-480 BCE 1). The key figure is King Alexander I "Philhellenos" (reigned c.495-c.450), who played a complex political game that included shifting alliances and allegiances with both Persians and Greeks. Alexander I used sport, and specifically the Olympics, to identify with the Greeks (or more importantly to permit them to identify with him). In a story recounted by Herodotus (5.22), which Herodotus claims to have heard personally from Alexander himself, Alexander had wanted to compete in the stadion race at the Olympics, but was challenged by the other Greek athletes on the grounds that he was not a Greek, but a barbaros. 2 Alexander then claimed descent from the royal family (the Temenids) that in mythical times ruled the Greek city of Argos, and this was accepted by the Hellanodikai (the officials who presided over the Olympic Games, see Chapters 8 and 17). He was allowed to compete, but the race ended in a dead heat, and Alexander declined a rematch, giving up any chance of the victory. The fact that Alexander chose competing at Olympia as the method of declaring his own and his dynasty's Greek ethnicity shows that sport and ethnicity were tied together from the start in Macedonia. Also, this challenge to the Greek ethnicity of both the Argead House and the Macedonians remained a leitmotif throughout the Classical period (480-323), and sport was one of the means by which Macedonia answered that ethnic question.
the Hellanodikai matched athletes by age and ability (p. 114). This follows the Loeb translation, but the text clearly states that the o¸cials matched those di ¶erent in skill, which seems to involve some kind of seeding. These quibbles, however, should not take away from the merits of the book. This is a pleasant, interesting, and enthusiastic work on Greek festivals and sports, which draws heavily on the sources. For students and the educated reader, it will become a standard work for some time. Even without footnotes, scholars too will want to read M.'s tale on athletics.
T.H. Nielsen, A Note on the Number of Events in Classical Greek Athletics
This note demonstrates that during the archaic period a reduction in the number of events featured at Greek athletic festivals took place and produced the agon gymnikos, which was essentially similar to the program at Olympia. It goes on to ask how this reduction came about and suggests that it was caused by the influential and prestigious Olympic model as well as by the intense peer polity interaction of Greek culture. It ends by briefly hinting at some of the advantages of the fact that the agon gymnikos was basically the same all over the Greek world.
Alexander and athletics or How (not) to use a traditional field of monarchic legitimation
K. Trampedach - A. Meeus (edd.), The Legitimation of Conquest. Monarchical Representation and the Art of Government in the Empire of Alexander the Great, Stuttgart 2020, 61-75.
The considerations outlined in this article are divided into four sections. First, a general description will be given of how ancient rulers engaged in agones to legitimise their leadership. It is only against this background that Alexander’s dealings with athletics can be put into perspective – the peculiarity, not noticed in previous scholarship, is that he did not apply the usual strategies of Greek rulers, but instead excessively relied on a different form of athletic and musical contests, for which I propose the category of ‘campaign agones’. A description of these campaign agones, their disciplines and participants will follow, and, finally, an interpretation of Alexander’s relationship to athletics with regard to the volume’s general aim, a better understanding of the king’s strategies to legitimise his power.
An essay on the extent and significance of the Greek athletic culture in the classical period
2014
Most people know that in antiquity, as in our day, the Olympics were celebrated every four years. Most classicists know that in antiquity the Olympics were not the only major athletic festival in existence, but formed a part of the famous periodos (“tour”, “circuit”), a series of four athletic festivals which were scheduled with an eye to each other in such a way that every year saw one or two celebrations of games in this most prestigious group of festivals.1
The genesis of the present collection of articles dates back to 2000, when a conference on the theme of "Olympia and the Olympics: Festival and Identity in the Ancient World" formed a part of the "cultural lead-up to the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games" (x). As the editors note (xxv n. 59), the modern Olympics traditionally generate books etc. on the ancient Olympics and so, if nothing else, at least ensure some regularity of public attention to matters ancient. Not all the contributions, however, originate from the symposium; those of e.g. Miller and Crowther were commissioned after the event "to fill out the book's treatment of key topics and themes" (xv). As published, the volume's stated aim is to explore in detail the cultural, religious, political and social significance in the archaic and classical Greek world of athletics and festivals as well as how sporting and musical competitions "led the way, throughout the archaic period, in the crystallization and development of the polis and in the creation of its juridical and political practices" (xv). That, indeed, is a very ambitious undertaking but in fact some of the contributions, such as e.g. those of Ben Brown and Peter Wilson, tackle these issues directly.