A Cultural History of Sport in Antiquity by Paul Christesen

Author:Paul Christesen [Stocking, Edited by Paul Christesen and Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781350282964
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2021-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

CONFLICT IN AND OUTSIDE OF SPORT, TO THE END OF THE CLASSICAL PERIOD (323 BCE)

The first and most important conflict around sport in the ancient world pertained to the very right to practice sport. Sport is by definition hedged by rules that govern how it is played. Such rules can be decided ad hoc by players and be adapted as a particular sport develops. In cases where sport is popular and widely practiced, technical rules to which athletes must conform are frequently decided in advance and sometimes published in written form. For many sport historians, the articulation of a clear set of regulations and a wider bureaucratic framework are perceived as critical turning points for the emergence of organized/institutionalized sport (Guttmann 1978, with the response by Hubbard 2008; see also Chapter 4). Equally important are the frequently informal but culturally conditioned (and hence chronically enduring) rules that dictate who can play or be excluded from sport as well as the social/religious/educational contexts that are deemed acceptable for the practice of sport (Papakonstantinou 2019a: 62–120).

Both formal/technical rules and cultural prescriptions concerning access to sport can be documented starting with the early stages of Greek sport. Infractions of the former could at times lead to interpersonal or even interstate conflicts—witness, for instance, the conflict between Athens and the Olympic authorities in 332 BCE over the punishment of the Athenian pentathlete Kallipos and the ensuing boycott of the games by Athens (Pausanias 5.21.5; Weiler 1991). Here is a case where individual conflict with the authorities over sport expands into a broader level of conflict at the interstate level. Interpersonal disputes and conflicts between individual athletes are also attested; for example, curse tablets (mostly written on thin sheets of lead and deposited underground in wells, graves, etc.) contain vitriolic verbal attacks on athletic opponents and invoke supernatural forces in order to harm them, a practice that suggests a very acrimonious relationship between many athletes (Jordan 1985: 213–22; Tomlin 2007).3

However, the greatest conflicts and disputes about sport in antiquity revolved around the civic and educational value of sport. These debates and conflicts took place on several levels, e.g. by intellectuals, civic authorities, and the engaged citizenry, in literature, institutional contexts, and interpersonal interactions. The echo of these conflicts can be detected in, among other things, the statutory or social regulation of sport as practiced by wealthy elite males, non-elite males, women, children, the elderly, and people of subaltern legal statuses. What sport, and especially athletic victory, meant in all these contexts and for all these groups was, for the Greeks, an evolving field of bodily performance, contestation, and negotiation.

Donald Kyle aptly described participation in Greek competitive sport as being governed by the “oily trinity”: free, Greek, and male (Kyle 2015: 114). (Greek males habitually stripped down and put olive oil on their skin prior to working out or competing—hence Kyle’s “oily” (Kennell 2001 and Chapter 3 in this volume).) Those who did not conform to these fundamental underpinnings of Greek hegemonic masculinity had very limited opportunities to practice sport, especially during the Archaic and Classical periods.

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