[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
The study of ancient sports has entered maturity. When I started teaching ancient Greek athletics in the 1990s, the bibliography was still dominated by an ‘event-oriented sport history.’ [1] Despite excellent work focusing on sports and social status, social and cultural themes were less frequently addressed.[2] Mark Golden’s excellent Sport and Society in Ancient Greece (Cambridge 1998) significantly contributed to establishing ancient Greek sport as a legitimate subject for social and cultural history. Subsequently, scholarly activity in this field has surged, evidenced by the emergence of handbooks, companion volumes, and a notable increase in publications on the cultural history of ancient sports.[3] The contributors to the volume under review are among the foremost contributors to this subject.
Simultaneously, modern sport history has witnessed even greater growth. While some publications still emanate from sport enthusiasts (so-called ‘fans with typewriters’), sport history has evolved into an established academic subject. Social and cultural historians have explored various issues, including the body, masculinity, violence, nationalism, health regimes, and race through the lens of sport. There have even been several diachronic histories of sport, yet few attempts have been made to integrate the ancient experience of sport with that of later periods as most studies tend to leap from classical Greece to 19th-century England, which is normally seen as the birthplace of modern sport.[4]
The volume under review is the first of a six-volume series on the history of sport from antiquity to the modern era, overseen by the prominent modern sport historians Wray Vamplev, John McClelland, and Mark Dyreson, that aims to alter this approach.[5] Aligned with other cultural histories published by Bloomsbury, the volumes in this series follow a consistent chronological structure with the same thematic chapters for each period. The intention behind this structure is to offer readers the flexibility to choose between synchronic and diachronic approaches, but there is no real effective integration. It would have been useful to have a chapter (by the series editors) to justify the selection of individual themes and generally address the question of whether activities labeled as “sport” in modern Western society held similar cultural significance in different historical contexts.
This volume contains minimal references to the history of sport in later periods, highlighting perhaps a relative isolation of ancient sport historians from the concerns of their modernist colleagues. Furthermore, the series as a whole lacks a concluding evaluation of the development of each specific theme over time. In any case, the diachronic approach advocated by the series may be challenging for most readers due to the steep price of $650 for the hard copy series, likely restricting access to only the most dedicated individuals.[6] The volume’s content, despite its broad title, predominantly focuses on Classical Greek and Roman history, excluding the Bronze Age, Egypt, and the Ancient Near East. Additionally, there is an imbalance between the discussions of ancient Greece and Rome, with Roman sports receiving somewhat superficial attention often disconnected from Greek discussions.[7]
Despite these reservations, the volume is certainly suitable for a course on ancient (Greek) athletics. Christesen and Stocking provide a general introduction, offering a survey of the main developments of Greek sport up to the end of the classical era. Christesen teams up with MacLean to explore the purpose of sport in Greek and Roman society, emphasizing its role as a marker of Greek identity through the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Remijsen’s chapter adeptly explores how sport influenced — and was influenced by — the ways time and space were experienced locally and on a wider scale, avoiding the Greek-Roman dichotomy found in other chapters. Instead, she points out how festivals were instrumental in creating the growing experience of interconnectedness of the ancient Mediterranean resulting in a kind of compression of time and space that we often associate with the role of sport in the modern globalization process.
While most articles in the volume approach sport from the perspective of festivals and contests, Christian Mann discusses the world of the gymnasion. Mann is rightly critical of the traditional view that the gymnasion originated in training for hoplite warfare, emphasizing its early role as a place for aristocratic terpsis, an idea that could have been further developed. The rest of the chapter provides a dense overview of trainers and training practices, tools and technologies, and the economic dimensions of training and sport.
The significance of rules and regulations in defining ancient sports is discussed by Sarah Murray in a compelling chapter. She places their development in a broader social and cultural context, exploring different explanations for the increase in evidence for rules and regulations in later periods, especially the Roman era, which may be associated with the development of sport as a separate cultural field. Papakonstantinou examines the theme of conflict and accommodation through a consideration of two institutions: the gymnasion and the festival. He discusses how organized and regulated competition served as a means of creating individual distinction, benefiting elite classes throughout various periods. The festival setting, on the other hand, promoted and represented an image of a well-ordered society. Papakonstantinou is one of the few contributors to dispense with a separate discussion of Roman sports, focusing instead on the blending of Greek and Roman experiences in a case study of the Anatolian city of Stratonikeia.
The theme of social distinction also recurs in Miller’s chapter on segregation, inclusion, and exclusion. Miller extends the discussion to the relationship between sport and political identity, encompassing ethnic Greek identity. He also addresses gender, rightly pointing out that sport was mainly a male pastime. In the context of Rome, he discusses the presence of women in the audience (cue: Ovid) but misses the opportunity to discuss the increasing participation of women in Greek athletic contests of the imperial age. Stocking’s discussion of minds, bodies, and identity commences with the somewhat neglected role of sport in debates on mind-body dualism. The ways trainers and doctors positioned themselves as experts on the body are explored, extending the discussion to Late Antiquity and early Christianity when the Greek term askesis (or training) started to convey a different view of the body.
The volume concludes with an elegantly written chapter on the ‘representation’ of sport by the archaeologist Nigel Spivey. He provides an overview of how the image of the victorious (nude) athlete gained iconic status and developed over time. The emphasis is rightly on the visual representation of the athletic body, but Spivey does not exclude literary sources, especially Homer. However, a notable absence is a discussion of the role played by epigraphic sources in the representation of athletic victory.
In conclusion: the volume under review is a useful addition to the ever-growing bibliography of ancient (and especially Greek) sport. However, its limitations in scope, the rather limited discussion of Roman sports, the lack of thematic justification, and the low degree of integration with the historiography on sport in different historical periods detract somewhat from its overall effectiveness.
Authors and Titles
Introduction, Paul Christesen and Charles Stocking
1.The Purpose of Sport, Paul Christesen and Rose MacLean
2. Sporting Time and Sporting Space, Sofie Remijsen
3. Products, Training and Technology, Christian Mann
4. Rules and Order, Sarah C. Murray
5. Conflict and Accommodation, Zinon Papakonstantinou
6. Inclusion, Exclusion and Segregation, Peter J. Miller
7. Bodies and Identities, Charles Stocking
8. Representation, Nigel Spivey
Notes
[1] Cf. Christesen and Stocking, p. 3 in the volume under review.
[2] E.g. Pleket, H W. “Zur Soziologie des antiken Sports.” Mededelingen van het Nederlands Historisch Instituut te Rome 36 (1974): 57-87; reissued in: Nikephoros 14 (2001): 157-212.
[3] A regular overview of the ever-increasing bibliography is published in the journal Nikephoros (from 1986 and 2011 by Wofgang Decker, from 2012-2105 by Sofie Remijsen and Zinon Papakonstantinou who also produced an online version via Mannheim university: https://nikephoros.uni-mannheim.de (last consulted 30 January 2024), which seems up-to-date until 2018. Werner Petermandl has since 2023 taken over responsibility for the revived Nikephoros.
[4] But see Behringer, Wolfgang. Kulturgeschichte des Sports: Vom antiken Olympia bis zur Gegenwart. München, CH Beck, 2012 especially for his discussion of sport in the early modern period; McClelland, John. Body and Mind : Sport in Europe from the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. London [etc.]: Routledge, 2007, discusses Rome and the Middle Ages, but leaves out Greece altogether.
[5] Wray Vamplew, John McClelland and Mark Dyreson. A cultural History of Sport vol. 1-6. London etc., Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. See: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/cultural-history-of-sport-9781350461062/. The other volumes in this series are vol. 2 : A cultural history of sport in the medieval age edited by Noel Fallows; vol. 3: A cultural history of sport in the Renaissance edited by Alessandro Arcangeli; vol. 4: A cultural history of sport in the age of Enlightenment; edited by Rebekka von Mallinckrodt; vol. 5: A cultural history of sport in the age of industry; edited by Mike Huggins; vol. 6: A cultural history of sport in the modern age edited by Steven Riess.
[6] Although e-books are initially available as part of a designated online platform, the strategy employed by Bloomsbury appears more as a marketing tactic to make university libraries subscribe to the rather costly platform, than a thoroughly considered and useful approach designed for teachers and other individual readers.
[7] Gladiatorial munera are mentioned frequently, but we get relatively little on other Roman sports, such chariot races. Various authors emphasise that Romans experienced sport mainly as spectators, but Roman attitudes to Greek athletics (and the wider body culture) are not discussed at length. There is unfortunately no chapter on the later reception of ancient sport.