1'The Life of the Athlete and Athletics in Daily Life 2' Athletics and Eroticism

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1.The Life of the AthleteandAthletics in Daily
Life2. Athletics and Eroticism

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Lecture Summary

• Professionalism vs. Amateurism
• Professional Athletes
• Professional Trainers
• Amateur Athletes
• Athletics and Eroticism

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Professionalism vs. Amateurism

• False and anachronistic dichotomy
• Amateur French term derived from the Latin,
  Amator (Lover) and Amo (I love)
• Professional Derived from Latin term
  Professio (Public Declaration) Confused with
  Proficio (to make progress/advantage/profit)
• Neither Professional nor Amateur imply
  payment
• Professional vs. Amateur Public vs.
  Private not Paid vs. Unpaid

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When is an Athlete Professional?

• Athletes require training and equipment
• Athletes also need to eat and pay their bills
• Athletics in the Homeric world a prerogative of
  the aristocracy (thus prizes are honorific)
• Athletics in the later Archaic and Classical
  periods are increasingly egalitarian but still
  dominated by the economic elite
• Chrematic games become increasingly common
• Stephanitic games often come with cash prizes
• Evidence of athletes earning a living as
  athletes

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Kinds of Remuneration for Athletes

• Cash prizes
• Prizes in kind (olive oil, wine, etc.)
• Public rights and benefactions of a material value

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Cash Prizes for the Panathenaic Mousikos(IGII2
A120 4th Century BCE)

• 1st Prize Gold crown worth 1,000 drachmas 500
  silver drachmas (33,000)
• 2nd Prize 1,200 drachmas (26,400)
• 3rd Prize 600 drachmas (13,200)
• 4th Prize 400 drachmas (8,800)
• 5th Prize 300 drachmas (6,600)
• Note 1 drachma ca. 22 US at the low end (S.G.
  Miller 2004 134)/average wage for a workman was
  1 drachma per day

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Prizes in Kind at the Panathenaia

• Winner of the boys stadion won 1,944 liters of
  olive oil at 5/liter (9,720)
• Total value for all gymnikos events ca. 500,000
  (S.G. Miller 2004 135)
• Two horse chariot victor awarded 140 amphoras x
  38.9 liters/amphora x 5/liter of olive oil
  27,230

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Cash Value of a Stephanitic Victory

• Material prizes not awarded at stephanitic games
• Cash/material awards could be given to victorious
  athletes at home
• Evidence for such practices at a very early date
  (i.e. Croton Solon)

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Solon and the Value of a Crown Victory(Plutarch,
Solon 23.3)

• 3 In the valuations of sacrificial offerings,
  at any rate, a sheep and a bushel of grain are
  reckoned at a drachma the victor in the Isthmian
  games was to be paid a hundred drachmas, and the
  Olympic victor five hundred the man who brought
  in a wolf, was given five drachmas, and for a
  wolf's whelp, one the former sum, according to
  Demetrius the Phalerian, was the price of an ox,
  the latter that of a sheep. (B. Perrin, 1914)

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Prizes in Kind for Crown Victories(IG
12.77.11-17, ca. 440-432 BCE)

• Those citizens who have won the athletic
  competitions at Olympia or Delphi or Isthmia or
  Nemea shall have a free meal every day for the
  rest of their lives in the prytaneion, and other
  honors as well. All those citizens who have won
  the tethrippon or the keles at Olympia or Delphi
  or Isthmia or Nemea shall have a free meal every
  day for the rest of their lives in the
  prytaneion. (S.G. Miller, 1991)

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Overpaid Athletes?The Case of Theagenes of
Thasos (fl. 480 BCE)

• Boxer and Pankratiast
• Won 1400 victories 24 stephanitic and 1,376
  chrematic (Pausanias 6.11.2-9)
• The cash value of each chrematic victory is
  unknown
• The cash value of a Panathenaic victory in the
  pankration 25,000/total earnings of
  44,400,000 (S.G. Miller 2004 213)

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Trainers, Agents and Coaching Staff

• Material investment in athletic competition was
  substantial
• Victory was lucrative and training imperative
• Evidence of trainers (paidotribes boy
  smoother) who design stringent diets and
  training regimens
• Evidence for sport as a commercial enterprise

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The Athletes Regimen(Galen, Exhortation for
Medicine, 9-14)

• Train daily
• Eat (force-feed) to the point of gluttony
• Sleep far more than the average person
• gymnastai (trainers) make athletes fat by
  stuffing them with blood and flesh
• Bodies deteriorate quickly after retirement
• Rarely live to old age

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Dromeus and the Athletes DietPausanias, 6.7.10

• A man from Stympalos was Dromeus (i.e., the
  Runner) in name and in deed, for he won the
  dolichos twice at Olympia, twice at Delphi, three
  times at Isthmia, and five times at Nemea. It is
  said that he thought up the idea of a meat diet
  previously athletes fed on wet cheese. (S.G.
  Miller, 1991)

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A Healthy or an Unhealthy Lifestyle?Herodikos
the Paidotribes(Plato, Republic, 406a-b, 390-380
BCE)

• The followers of Asklepios did not make use of
  the existing paidagogical medicine in the
  treatment of illness before Herodikos. He was a
  paidotribes who became sickly and then mixed
  gymnastic with medical practice and thereby wore
  himself down first of all, and then many others
  he prolonged his life too much. (S.G. Miller,
  1991)

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Demokedes of KrotonPhysician, Trainer, and Free
Agent(Herodotus, 3.129-133)

• The history of Demokedes was that he left his
  native Kroton in order to escape the harsh
  treatment of his father. He went first to Aigina
  where, within the first year, he surpassed the
  other doctors even though he was untrained and
  had no medical equipment or instruments. In the
  second year, the people of Aigina paid him a
  salary of 132,000. The next year the Athenians
  hired him away with a salary of 220,000 and the
  year after that Polykrates offered him
  264,000.It was largely because of Demokedes
  that Krotoniate doctors came to have such a high
  reputation. (S.G. Miller, 1991)

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The Business of Sport?Trainers, Agents, Owners
and AthletesZenon Papyri 59060 ca.257 BCE

• Hierokles to Zenon, Greetings!.You wrote to me
  about Phyrrhos that I am to train him only if I
  am really certain that he will win, for money is
  not to be thrown away.it seems to Ptolemaios
  (the trainer) as much as man can know, that he is
  already better than those currently in training
  who have been at it for a long time.I have every
  hope that he will win a crown for you. Please
  send along to Pyrrhos as soon as possible a
  bathing suit of goat skin, but if it cannot be,
  then of light calf skin. Please also send him a
  chiton and a himation and a mattress and a
  mattress cover and a pillow and some honey.
  (S.G. Miller, 1991)

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Sport and Athletics in the Private Sphere

• Athletics and competition were central features
  of public life
• Have evidence for sport and games as part of
  daily leisure life
• Athletic training was part of a general education
  (not just in Sparta)
• Gymnastic activities, the palaistra, and various
  ball games were a daily part of leisured life for
  men, women, children, and adults

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Sport and Education

• The gymnasion and the palaistra were the places
  for educating boys
• Boys were divided up by age category
• Gymnasion was managed by a Gymnasiarch (Over 40
  years old elected annually set curriculum)
• Gymnasiarch assisted by a Paidonomos (Lit. Child
  Authority Over 40 appointed position
  specialized in different subjects evaluated
  progress)
• Didaskalos (A teacher specialized in a specific
  subject, i.e. music, grammar, rhetoric,
  mathematics etc.)
• Paidotribai (lit. Boy Smoothers) were physical
  trainers (learn running, wrestling, discus,
  javelin etc.) Not necessarily training
  professional athletes
• All of these posts were salaried
• Education was limited to the socio-economic elite
  class
• Reinforced the notion of athletics and
  competition as leisure

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Sport and Leisure

• Hunting
• Games and non-gymnastic activities
• Ball Games

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Hunting

• No longer a matter of survival or a display of
  prowess
• A pastime loved by the wealthy elite
• Required wealth 1.Slave-bearers, 2.Hunting dogs,
  3.Horses
• Often required travel in order to hunt exotic
  animals (i.e., Lions)

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A Boar Hunt(Sparta, ca. 555 BCE)
http//ca.search.yahoo.com/search/images/view?back
http3A2F2Fca.search.yahoo.com2Fsearch2Fimage
s3Ftab3DImages26p3DHunting2BAncient2BGreece
26btn3DSearch26ei3DUTF-826fr3Drogersfp-imp26
b3D21w350h319imgurlwww.sikyon.com2FSparta
2FArt2Fvase07.jpgrurlhttp3A2F2Fwww.sikyon.co
m2FSparta2FArt2Fsparta_peg04.htmlsize37.9kBn
amevase07.jpgpHuntingAncientGreecetypejpeg
no21tt24oided1afcb1b8e8fde2eiUTF-8
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Macedonian Lion Hunt
http//www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Cities/Pella.html
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Non-Gymnastic Games

• Evidence of various games associated with
  childrens play
• astragaloi (knuckle-bones) and kyboi (dice)
• bembyx Yo-yo
• trochos stick and hoop

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Other Non-Gymnastic ActivitiesThe bembix
http//www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/ModernSport.htm
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Other Non-Gymnastic ActivitiesThe trochos -
490-450 BCE
http//www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/ModernSport.htm
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Leisured Athletic Activities

• Swimming (never a competitive event Greeks swam
  for pleasure or physical training)
• Diving
• Ball Games

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Diving - Tomb of the DiverPaestum
http//www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/ModernSport.htm
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Ball Games Episkyros(Pollux, 9.103 180 CE)

• The names of childrens ball games were
  episkyros, phaininda, aporhaxis, ourania.
  Episkyros was also called ephebike and common
  ball. It was usually played with opposing teams
  of equal number. In the middle a line was drawn
  with a chip of stone which they called skyros.
  They set a ball on this line, and each team drew
  another line behind the opposition. The team
  which got the ball first threw it over the
  opposition, whose job it was to grab the ball
  while it was still moving and throw it back the
  other way. This would continue until one team
  pushed had pushed the other over the back line.
  (S.G. Miller, 1991)

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EpiskyrosMarble Statue Base ca. 510 BCEAthens
National Museum
http//www.acanomas.com/images/historia/olympic.jp
g
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Phaininda, Aporrhaxis and Ourania(Pollux,
9.105-107)

• Phaininda got its name from its inventor,
  Phainindos, or from the word for feinting, since
  the player fakes a throw to one player, but
  actually throws to another, and thus deceives the
  player who expected the ball. This resembles the
  game with the small ball which is called
  harpaston from the word for snatching away. One
  might call Phaininda the game with the soft ball.
  Aporrhaxis has the form of bouncing the ball
  vigorously on the ground, and dribbling it again
  and again with the hand. The number of bounces is
  counted. Ourania is played with one player
  bending backward and throwing the ball up into
  the sky. The others compete snatching the ball
  before it falls back to the ground. When they
  dribbled a ball against a wall, they counted the
  number of bounces. The loser was called the
  donkey and had to do whatever he was told. The
  winner was called the king and gave the orders.
  (S.G. Miller, 1991)

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ephedrismos(Pollux, 9.107)

• Ephedrismos is played by setting up a stone at a
  distance and trying to hit it with balls or
  stones. The one who does not knock it over has to
  carry the one who did, with his eyes held shut by
  the other one, until he happens upon the stone,
  which is called the dioros. (S.G. Miller, 2004)

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ephedrismos (500-490 BCE)Ashmolean Museum, U.K.
http//www.klassischearchaeologie.phil.uni-erlange
n.de/realia/spiele/spiele2.html
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Early Football?
http//www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/ModernSport.htm
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keretizein (510-500 BCE)National Museum in Athens
http//www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/ModernSport.htm
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Summary

• We should not divide athletics and athletes into
  professional and amateur but into public and
  private
• many athletes did not earn a living at sport but
  won prizes and money
• Athletics did become a major commercial
  enterprise but there is no evidence that anyone
  engaged in sport as their sole occupation
• Athletics were part of the Greek education system
• Athletic games were encouraged for and played by
  Greek children, like children everywhere in
  history

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Athletics and Eroticism

• In Ionia and many other places where people live
  under the rule of the barbarians pederasty is
  considered base. This is shameful to the
  barbarians because of their tyrannical
  governments, as are also philosophy and the
  passion for athletics philogymnasia. For, I
  suppose, it is not in the interests of the rulers
  that the subjects have high thoughts, nor strong
  bonds of friendship or society, which eros most
  especially above all these other practices is
  accustumed to create.(Plato, Symposium 182b-c)

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Sex and Sport

• contemporary association of sport and sex clear
  in pop culture movies (Personal Best 1982)
• Sexual appetite of football players
• Multi-million dollar endorsement contracts by
  attractive sports idols, i.e. Michael Jordan,
  etc.,
• Sexy ads

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Eros

• Greek males practiced sexual relationships both
  with women (wives, hetairai, prostitutes, slaves)
  and with other males (including citizen boys, but
  mostly non-citizen prostitutes)
• Not an issue of sexual orientation i.e. either
  homosexual or heterosexual which is a modern
  dichotomy
• Relationships with other males permissible - but
  ONLY if the partner of an adult male citizen was
  of inferior social status.
• A sexual relationship between two adult males of
  equal social status was considered to be shameful
  and unacceptable

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eros

• Greek God in Greek creation myth (Hesiod,
  Theogony