Paul Christesen

Dartmouth College · Classics

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 improba...

SPARTA AS SEEN BY THE ATHENIANS - (P.) Cartledge, (A.) Powell (edd.) The Greek Superpower. Sparta in the Self-Definitions of Athenians. Pp. x + 239. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2018. Cased, £65. ISBN: 978-1-910589-63-2. - Volume 69 Issue 2 - Paul Christesen

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 few...

ASPECTS OF ANCIENT GREEK ATHLETICS - (T.H.) Nielsen Two Studies in the History of Ancient Greek Athletics. 1. A Survey of the Proliferation of Athletic and Equestrian Competitions in Late Archaic and Classical Greece. 2. The Prestige of a Nemean Victory. (Scientia Danica. Series H, Humanistica, 8, vol. 16.) Pp. 299, maps. Copenhagen: The Royal Dani...

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...

POLITICS IN SPARTA - (P.A.) Rahe The Spartan Regime. Its Character, Origins, and Grand Strategy. Pp. xviii + 212, ills, maps. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016. Cased, US$38. ISBN: 978-0-300-21901-2. - Paul Christesen

The single most important source for athletics in Sparta in the classical period is the Athenian soldier, philosopher, and author Xenophon. Spartiate boys and men who were talented and motivated athletes had a large number of opportunities to participate voluntarily in formally organized sports competitions that had no immediate connection to the S...

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...

Introduction: Interpreting Xenophon's Views on Sparta Xenophon's affection for Sparta ran so deep that he was willing to introduce deliberate distortions into his writings in order to present Sparta and its leaders in a favorable light. Xenophon's ostensible praise for Sparta masks a deep-seated dislike for Sparta and its leaders. Both of these opi...

The two volumes that make up Sport in the Greek and Roman Worlds form part of a series, Oxford Readings in Classical Studies, designed to offer a representative selection of influential scholarly essays on particular authors, works, or subjects. Both volumes have an identical introduction in which the editor, Thomas Scanlon, provides a history of h...

This chapter explores one aspect of the sport-politics nexus in ancient Greece: the relationship between sport and democratization. The relationship between sport and democratization evolved throughout the course of Greek history. The chapter focuses on the seventh through the fourth centuries BCE. The remainder of the chapter is divided into four...

This chapter discusses what is known about Spartan sport and considers the role of sport in Spartan society. Sport fostered cohesive social relations among Sparta's male citizens and in that way contributed meaningfully to maintaining the remarkable political stability that characterized Sparta for more than four hundred years. In the Classical per...

The introductory chapter of A Companion to Sport and Spectacle in Greek and Roman Antiquity begins with definitions of terms such as sport, athletics, and spectacle, and then gives a brief introduction on the developments in Greek sports history. The chapters in the Companion focus on the societal context in which various activities took place and...

Organizers and judges of the Olympic and Nemean Games (IGIV 587) and the Asklepieia Games at Epidauros (IG IV2 98–9).Keywords:classical civilization;Greek history

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 S...

From the informal games of Homer's time to the highly organized contests of the Roman world, Miller has compiled a trove of ancient sources: Plutarch on boxing, Aristotle on the pentathlon, Philostratos on the buying and selling of victories, Vitruvius on literary competitions, and Xenophon on female body building. Arete offers readers an absorbing...

The date of the first-ever Olympic Games seems unimpeachable. But recent analysis shows that it is nothing more than a statistical approximation – one of the earliest ever made. The approximator – our proto-statistician – was Hippias of Elis. Before statisticians claim him as one of their own, they should know that he fudged his data. Paul Christes...

Deities of Particular Significance to MacedoniansDeath as a Passage into an AfterlifeOpenness to Foreign InfluencesTombs not TemplesRole of the KingDivine RulersConclusion Bibliographical Essay

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 to...

Both sports and choral dancing became increasingly important parts of Athenian life over the course of the sixth and fifth centuries. In the century and half after 566 the Athenians established numerous contests in athletics and dancing, built three public gymnasia, erected monuments to successful choruses and athletes, and offered lavish rewards t...

History - Clarke(K.)Making Time for the Past: Local History and the Polis. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. xii + 408. £70. 9780199291083. - Volume 129 - Paul Christesen

This essay explores the origin of the date of 776 bc for the first Olympiad. That date was established by Hippias of Elis c.400 bc 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....

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...

This book is a comprehensive examination of Olympic victor lists. 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 for the first Olympics, are addressed. Olympic victor lists emerge as a clearly defined type...

In Aristocracy and Athletics, Nigel Nicholson examines the portrayal of charioteers, jockeys, and athletic trainers in Greek victory memorials (epinikia, statues, vases) produced between 550 and 440 b.c.e. He argues that reliance upon paid, professional assistance put aristocratic victors in a quandary because it ran counter to their insistence on...

Xenophon's Cyropaedia can be read as a proto-novel, a biography, or as an essay on leadership or constitutional theory. This article argues that the Cyropaedia can and should also 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...

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Sometime around 400 BC Hippias of Elis assembled the first cumulative list of victors in the Olympic Games. In the centuries that followed the victor list was regularly updated and widely circulated. The enduring popularity of Olympic victor lists, which the Greeks called Olympionikai , was due to the fact that, by the fourth century BC, numbered O...

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