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An agonistic culture? Athletic competition in archaic and classical Spartan society
... Los espartiatas debían vestir con sobriedad y modestia, sin signos externos de distinción: "se adornaban con el perfecto estado físico de su cuerpo", sentencia Jenofonte (Lac. 7.3); después de reparar, recuerda el historiador ateniense, en que "los que 9. Con carácter general: Patrucco (1975); Hodkinson (1999); Mann (2001: 121-163); Cordano (2013); Christesen (2018). ...
... Mucho más recientemente, desde una posición hipercrítica, Paul Christesen (2007: 159-160) ha sugerido que Hipias pudo encontrarse con lagunas en sus fuentes, sobre todo para el período anterior a comienzos del siglo VI a. C., y habría tratado de colmarlas con nombres de espartanos al objeto de agradar a éstos, cuyo papel en establecer el control eleo de Olimpia consideraba capital; por su parte, Cathy Morgan (1990: 102) sospechaba que en los primeros tiempos el acceso a los juegos debió de estar limitado y condicionado de alguna forma por una Esparta con serios intereses geopolíticos en el Peloponeso central y occidental. Para Stephen Hodkinson (1999Hodkinson ( : 161-165 y 2000 el descenso en vencedores olímpicos no implica un menor deseo en participar y obtenerlos y, en cualquier caso, ni fue tan acusado ni habría comenzado a mediados de siglo, sino dos o tres décadas atrás. Roberto Patrucco (1975: 406, 412) negaba incluso una ruptura o discontinuidad en la práctica deportiva espartiata, ni siquiera bajo dominación romana, y pensaba (ibid. ...
... y 6.13.2, que atribuye erróneamente a Quíonis siete victorias, cuatro en el stadion y tres en el diaulos; cf. Christesen (2010: 34-35); como el crotoniata Astilo se naturalizó siracusano, Hodkinson (1999: también luchador, cuya memoria se honró con una estatua en Esparta (Paus. 3.13.9)-y ...
... Early tem ples at Artemis Orthia and Pellana (Spyropoulos (2002) are also part of this same fashion for investment ίη the sacred; if anything Sparta may have been rather late ίη building temples to house its cult images. Οη the other hand, Spartan participation ίη the early Olympic games is borne ουι by I1laterial offerings, figurines and bronzes, as well as by the early victor lists (Hodkinson 1999;Christesen, this volume, Chapter 21). ...
... The earliest surviving inscription recording the prizes won ίη the children's Paidikos .Agon at Artemis Orthia has been dated to the early fourth century BC -Arexippos dedicated five sickles to Orthia οη winning the choral competition for boys. Even so, theSpartans viewed athletic success with a simi1ar ambivalence and set limits to its advertisement (Hodkinson 1999), but also pushed at those limits (Christesen 20Ι Ο). One can sense a tension between the celebration ofindividual achievement, wealth and family ambition against a theoretical equality under the ru!e oflaw and the kings. ...
In the archaic period the archaeology of the city of Sparta is still very much one of cult sites and funerary monuments. The modest size of the early Laconian temples seems just as characteristic of classical monuments in the region. Mycenaean power in Laconia and Messenia was brought low at the end of Late Helladic IIIB, roughly 1200 BC. Given the ancient tradition that the first Messenian war happened before 700 BC, it has been suggested by modern scholars that the abandonment of sites such as Nichoria in the middle of the eighth century was the result of aggression. Sparta in the tenth to ninth centuries BC may have looked something like Nichoria, first the wide distribution of the finds and second the indications that cult was already carried out at major sanctuaries, marking Sparta's proto-urban status.
... À l'époque de la guerre du Péloponnèse, il s'agissait de la figure montante du général d'armée victorieux ; et aussi de celle de l'athlète dont la vertu principale, la nikè, rejaillit sur Brasidas comme le montrent les dons des Scionéens (IV, 121, 1). L'anecdote de l'offrande des bandelettes est d'autant plus intéressante qu'elle se rapporte à un Spartiate issu d'une cité où l'excellence aux jeux est, semble-t-il, considérée comme inférieure à l'excellence guerrière 26 . Il devient dès lors certain que Brasidas n'apporte pas ses valeurs avec lui : ce sont bien les autres Grecs qui les lui attribuent -ceux de Chalcidique dont les Scionéens, les Amphipolitains mais aussi des Macédoniens, des colons grecs affiliés à Thasos, installés en Thrace et associés aux événements 27 : tous virent en Brasidas une forme d'incarnation de la nikè. ...
In his History of the Peloponnesian War (V, 11, 1), Thucydides recounts events that occurred in Amphipolis, involving Brasidas and Hagnon, the Athenian oikist. Extensive historical studies have dealt with this subject but a fresh approach involving the history of religion may cast new light on it. Hagnon's expulsion from the city has so far been explained with political arguments but these are not the only ones to be taken into account: social, psychological, imaginary and religious factors may allow us to qualify the context in which Hagnon, who was granted the promise of a cult during his life as a city founder, was deprived of it, in a logical but still complex process. The events of-422 in Amphipolis deserve to be examined from the perspective of cultic dynamics, which were particularly active in the last three decades of the ifth century B.C. © 2018 Presses Universitaires de France, Departement des Revues. All rights reserved.
This work presents current approaches and new avenues of enquiry into ancient sport and spectacle. It discusses historical perspectives, contest forms, contest-related texts, civic and social aspects, and use and meaning of the individual body. Greek and Roman topics are interwoven under each heading to simulate contest-like tensions and complementarities, juxtaposing, for example, violence in Greek athletics and in Roman gladiatorial events, Greek and Roman chariot events, architectural frameworks for contests and games in the two cultures, and contrasting views of religion, bodily regimens, and judicial classification related to both cultures. It examines the social contexts of games, namely the evolution of sport and spectacle diachronically and geographically across cultural and political boundaries, and how games are adapted to multiple contexts and multiple purposes, reinforcing, for example, social hierarchies, performing shared values, and playing out deep cultural tensions. The work also pays some attention to other directing forces in the ancient Mediterranean (e.g. Bronze Age Egypt and the Near East; Etruria; and early Christianity). The volume addresses important themes common to antiquity and modern society, such as issues of class, gender, health, and the popular culture of the modern Olympics, and gladiators in cinema. It presents contests and spectacles as venues of connection and as opportunities for the negotiation of status and the exchange of value, broadly for example how early panhellenic sanctuaries responded to economic stakeholders, and how groups and individuals in the later Roman empire forged social and political links through the circus events.
Why did the male nude come to occupy such an important place in ancient Greek culture? Despite extended debate, the answer to this question remains obscure. In this book, Sarah Murray demonstrates that evidence from the Early Iron Age Aegean has much to add to the discussion. Her research shows that aesthetics and practices involving male nudity in the Aegean had a complicated origin in prehistory. Murray offers a close analysis of the earliest male nudes from the late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, which mostly take the form of small bronze votive figurines deposited in rural sanctuaries. Datable to the end of the second millennium BCE, these figurines, she argues, enlighten the ritual and material contexts in which nude athletics originated, complicating the rationalizing accounts present in the earliest textual evidence for such practices. Murray's book breaks new ground by reconstructing a scenario for the ritual and ideological origins of nudity in Greek art and culture.
Streszczenie: Wiedza w zakresie antycznych igrzysk panhelleńskich przekonuje, że wywodzący się ze Sparty atleci z różnych powodów nie zdominowali tych agonów i bynajmniej nie uchodzili za ich wy-bitnych faworytów. Tymczasem współczesny sport chętnie i często (najbardziej spektakularnie w onomastyce klubów sportowych) nawiązuje do antycznej Sparty. Dzieje się tak dlatego, że najważniejszy element ciągle żywego Spartan mirage stanowi spartańskie militarne wychowanie. Poddawane idealizacji okazało się w założeniach i celach zbieżne z systemem wartości przypisywanym sportowi przez dziewiętnasto-i dwudziestowiecznych edukatorów, mentorów i polityków. Najwcześniej i najpełniej fenomen ten pojawił się w Holandii. Słowa kluczowe: antyczna Sparta, agōgē, greckie agony, recepcja antyku, Spartan mirage , onomastyka sportowa, holenderskie kluby piłkarskie.
Summary: The Spartan mirage in the modern sports movement We know that the athletes who came from Sparta did not dominate the ancient Panhellenic Games, although they were by no means regarded as outstanding favourites of these agones.
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 improbable. The interpretive challenges presented by 9.85 have been the subject of lively scholarly debate since the eighteenth century because this passage potentially provides important evidence for Spartiates’ funerary, religious, and educational customs. With an eye to facilitating future research, this article offers a detailed conspectus of the extensive collection of relevant scholarship and, in part by drawing upon evidence from the archaeological excavations of the Tomb of the Lakedaimonians in the Kerameikos, identifies one reading, which involves athetizing part of 9.85, as the preferred interpretive approach.
This chapter explains that Spartan religion was distinctive in relation to the religious systems of the other Greek poleis, and in particular to that of Athens. The Spartans believed in the existence of supernatural beings, that is in gods and heroes, who intervened in human affairs. Sacred space was enhanced and enlarged as Sparta grew in power and prosperity. The two colossal archaic statues of an armed Apollo, holding a spear in one hand and a bow in the other, protected the five villages that constituted the polis of Sparta. The Spartans had a distinctive ethos that was based on a collective mentality, similarity of lifestyle, communal institutions, and martial values. The three most important Spartan festivals, the Karneia, Hyakinthia, and Gymnopaidiai, were all in honour of the youthful god Apollo. Spartan women indeed participated in religious activities, but in ways that were peculiarly appropriate to and adapted for the Spartan ethos.
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