The International Journal of the History of Sport

Vol. 29, No. 12, August 2012, 1657–1668

The Athletic Body in Classical Athens: Literary and Historical

Perspectives
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Zinon Papakonstantinou*

University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

This paper explores representations of the athletic body in classical Athenian

literature (c.480–336 BCE) and their implications for understanding the role of
sport in ancient Athens during the period in question. In Greek epinician
literature and plastic arts the male athletic body was frequently stereotyped as
a token of physical and moral superiority and as a central attribute of
manliness. On a civic level, in Athens masculinity was also enacted through
group displays of physical fitness and co-ordination performed at the
Panathenaea festival. But there also existed a different strand, visible in genres
such as comedy and medical literature, which viewed the athletic body as food-
devouring, over-trained and muscularly disfigured. It is argued that in Athens
this deviant image of the athletic body can be perceived as part of a wider
discourse that contrasts professional athletes and their bodies to the model of
the adequately trained, militarily efficient and politically involved body of the
ideal citizen.
Keywords: athletic body; classical Athens; epinician poetry; sport critics;
gymnasion; euandria; Panathenaea

Ancient Greeks were not the first to practise sport but they were distinguished
among other ancient civilisations for devoting significant portions of their
literary and artistic production to the subject. This paper focuses on repre-
sentations of the athletic body in ancient Athens during the so-called classical
period, i.e. from about 480 to 336 BCE. During the period in question Athens was
a leading power in the Greek world in political, economic and cultural terms. As
in other parts of the Greek world, many Athenians actively engaged in sport as
athletes or, most commonly, as spectators. The city was host to numerous
festivals that included athletic competitions in their programme. Athenian
athletes distinguished themselves in the Panhellenic periodos, the all-Greek
circuit of athletic competitions, including the Olympic games.1 Moreover, public
and private training facilities (gymnasia and palaestrae) were important grounds
for athletic training and socialisation and were to be found in various parts of
Attica, the region that comprised the territory of the city-state of Athens.

*Email: zpapak@uic.edu

ISSN 0952-3367 print/ISSN 1743-9035 online

Ó 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2012.714929
http://www.tandfonline.com
 1658 Z. Papakonstantinou

The Athletic Body in Greek Literature and the Arts

The Iliad and the Odyssey, the earliest extant complete pieces of Greek literature,
which date to the late eighth/early seventh centuries BCE, contain extensive
descriptions of athletic competitions.2 As its popularity grew, in later centuries
sport became a staple theme in Greek literature. Starting in the late sixth century BCE,
new literary genres dedicated entirely to sport begin to emerge, a development that
went hand in hand with the expansion of the practice of sport and the proliferation
of the athletic contests conducted in every corner of the Greek world. For instance,
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the genre of epinician (victory) poetry consisted of lyric poems written on

commission whose aim was to celebrate the victory or victories of a particular
athlete, usually in a prestigious athletic meeting. Moreover, athletic historiography,
especially in the form of works focusing on the history and victors of the Olympic
games as well as sports medicine, as evidenced by extensive references to athletic
training and medicine in medical manuals, are attested since at least the fifth century
3
BCE. This literary and scholarly output was indicative not only of the wider social
and cultural significance of sport, but also of the way sport was perceived and
performed. In the Greek world, citizens with full rights had during their lifetimes
several opportunities to practise some type of competitive sport.4 That is because, as
the evidence suggests, at some point during the year most communities organised
athletic contests in the context of a religious festival, the celebration of which
involved the community’s members as active participants or spectators. In addition,
starting in the fourth century BCE, many Greek city-states established elaborate
systems of youth civic training that included a substantial physical education
component.5 All these developments contributed to a close familiarity, interaction
and interest in sport by the wider public, and largely account for the prominent role
of athletics in Greek literature and arts.
The genre of epinician poetry was central in shaping Greek attitudes towards the
athletic body. Epinician poets, including Bacchylides and Pindar, specialised in the
production of customised odes for wealthy athletes who were victorious usually in
one of the prestigious Panhellenic games. These poems were publicly performed,
often in the victor’s city upon his return. In conjunction with statues and honorary
inscriptions these odes aimed at commemorating athletic victory by glorifying the
victor in the eyes of his fellow-citizens and by emphasising the value of athletic
success for the entire community.
Pindar and other epinician poets present the victorious athlete in possession of a
body that is fully abled, beautiful to behold and blessed with an inbred athletic skill.
Moreover, according to the same poet, bodies of athletic victors are subjected to
training exertion in order to reach perfection and achieve the consummate prize, a
victory in one of the Panhellenic games. For instance, referring to the victory of
Alkimedon of Aigina in boys’ wrestling in the Olympics of 460 BCE, Pindar declares
that he ‘was beautiful to behold, in action he did not discredit his looks, and by
winning in the wrestling match he proclaimed long-oared Aigina as his fatherland’.6
Similarly, Hagesidamos of Epizephyrian Lokroi, Olympic victor in boys’ boxing in
476 BCE, is praised in exuberant terms for his beauty and strength: ‘I have praised the
lovely son of Archestratos whom I saw winning with the strength of his hand by the
Olympic altar at that time, beautiful in form and imbued with a youthful loveliness’.7
An even more evocative example is provided in Pindar’s Olympian ode 9, written for
Epharmostos of Opous, Olympic victor in men’s wrestling in 468 BCE. As it is often
the case, the poet enumerates the honorand’s previous victories. While he was still a
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 1659

young athlete he attempted to compete in the ‘beardless’ (ageneioi) age-category at

the games in Marathon in Attica, but the officials decided that he was too old for
that age-group and assigned him to the men’s category. Faced with a group of older
and more experienced athletes he performed brilliantly: he defeated all his opponents
without falling once and finished his performance with a victory lap while the
spectators cheered his beauty, youth and victory.8
Even on the rare occasions that epinician poets had to acknowledge a less than
perfect body – e.g. in the case of Melissos of Thebes, who as Pindar admits was ‘paltry
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to look at’ – the athlete is compensated with other traditional Greek attributes of
manliness including cunning, strength and boldness.9 These qualities, in addition to
moral excellence, were articulated in the slogan-concepts of arete and kalokagathia.10
Once victory is achieved and the victory ode is performed the athlete is the talk of his
town and his body articulates physical strength and beauty, social dominance and
sexual potency:11 in short, it becomes the normative body, a body that is often
described by epinician poets and other authors as an ‘adornment’ to his homeland.12
The epinician poetry genre flourished roughly from 520 to 450 BCE and its
popularity among victors spread throughout the Greek-speaking world, including
Athens. For reasons that lie beyond the scope of this paper, the genre appears to
have lost much of its momentum and appeal after 450 BCE. Nonetheless, the athletic
body continued to be idealised by certain literary authors. Consider, for example, the
description in a work by Xenophon of Athens regarding the effect that the presence
of Autolykos of Athens, a young athlete and victor of the pancration in the
Panathenaea games of 421 BCE, had on the participants of the celebration that
allegedly took place shortly after his victory:
A person who took note of the course of events would have come at once to the
conclusion that beauty is in its essence something regal, especially when, as in
the present case of Autolykos, its possessor joins with it modesty and sobriety. For in
the first place, just as the sudden glow of a light at night draws all eyes to itself, so now
the beauty of Autolykos compelled every one to look at him.13

Here, the familiar from epinician poetry topoi of physical beauty and sexual allure
are combined with certain commendable character traits, such as modesty and
sobriety, displayed by the athletic victor. It is worth noting that following this
introduction, in the rest of the work handsome Autolykos assumes statuesque
proportions as he is presented as a mute spectator of his own victory party.
The awestruck reaction of some Athenians in the face of Autolykos’s beauty
perhaps intimates some of the feelings that athletes, their bodies and their artistic
representations, especially in victory statuary, were expected to stir among sport
fans. Visual representations of the athletic body, in the form of statues and vase
iconography, were produced in the Greek world since at least the sixth century BCE.
In a reference to athletic training and contests, artistic renderings almost always
depict the athlete in the nude or scantily clothed. This includes both free-standing
statues set up at the sites of competition and in the victor’s city as well as statues and
reliefs set up as grave-markers of young men.
Yet as recent scholarship has demonstrated, protocols of male nudity in Greek
painting and the plastic arts are more complicated than previously thought.14
Besides articulating a largely idealised picture of bodily manliness, artistic renderings
of athletic nudity came to signify citizen status or even participation in a certain
social group. Moreover, different iconographic conventions appear to have been in
 1660 Z. Papakonstantinou

operation in different visual media. Hence Athenian black and red-figure vase
iconography depicts a range of activities related to athletic training, competition and
victory in a manner that foregrounds, through a decorative – but not empiricist –
elaboration of bodily details, the self-fashioning of the athlete and his body.15 At the
same time Athenian funerary stelae of youths who were identified as athletes, in
principle evoke the activities of the gymnasion.16 The extent to which average
Athenians could afford the time and resources to partake of physical training and
other educational activities at the gymnasion and compete systematically in athletic
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contests is the subject of an ongoing scholarly debate.17 Yet regardless of the levels of
popular participation, athletics was viewed by some intellectuals in classical Athens
(e.g. Isocrates) as a part of a nexus of educational practices, inscribed in the body,
which were instrumental in the construction of gender and civic identities.18
Two further points in connection with Greek artistic representations of the
athletic body need to be made. First, extant material indicates a close association,
especially in ancient Athens, between the artistic imagery of youthful athletes and
warriors.19 Both sets of images, especially those portraying deceased individuals,
present a body that is proportional, strong and visibly, though its nudity,
masculine.20 Secondly, there is an explicit link between visual representations of
the male body and the physical descriptions of athletic victors in contemporary
epinician odes during the late archaic and classical period. It is very likely that in
many cases all the different media of representation of athletic victory (i.e. vase-
painting, statuary and literature) were meant to be complementary and be deployed
in conjunction with each other. Yet due to their striking visibility and their
prominent display in civic spaces and Panhellenic sanctuaries, statues of athletic
victors were especially critical in the process of commemoration of the athlete and
his victory. From the perspective of elite athletes who could afford to commission
poets and sculptors to immortalise their victories, competition, epinician poetry and
statuary were repeated performances, in different media, location and time, of
hegemonic masculinity and social dominance. Victory poetry and statues jointly
visualised for contemporary and future audiences a monumental victorious athletic
body.
Hence even though Greek representations of the athletic body followed certain
literary and visual conventions, they were also elaborations of a particular and often
partisan set of perceptions on sport and bodily culture that very often originated
with the athletes themselves. In other words, to a large extent victory poetry and
plastic arts articulated and promoted a self-aggrandising portrayal of upper-class
athletic victors.21

Sport Critics and the Athletic Body

In the ancient Greek world reception of athletic victory, poetry and imagery was
complex and culturally contingent. Athletics was a widely popular activity.
Spectators thronged the sites of competition and most athletes were admired and
respected. Moreover, cities often handsomely rewarded their successful athletes,
especially the Olympic champions as well as those who achieved a victory in one of
the prestigious Panhellenic games. But at times dissonant, minority voices emerged.
A crucial factor for understanding critical discourses towards sport and the athletic
body during the fifth and fourth centuries BCE is the shift in the way athletic
competition and victory was perceived. There is evidence to suggest that before the
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 1661

fifth century BCE aristocratic athletic victors largely promoted an image of athletic
success as a token of legitimisation that was devoid of explicit references to the
victor’s community. For instance in athletic contests in the Homeric epics, poems
that assume and promote a social system where a small ruling elite is firmly in
control, there is a clear-cut distinction between the sporting practices of the elites and
those of the commoners. Hence it is widely assumed that aristocrats and other
individuals in possession of extraordinary physical attributes can compete only
against each other. Similar to victory in the battlefield, in Homer victory in sport
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reaffirms the deeply entrenched position of aristocratic ascendancy in every aspect of

life.
Another striking example of elite appropriation and objectification of sport
during the archaic period is provided by the story of the Olympic tethrippon (four-
horse chariot race) victory by Kimon I of Athens in 532 BCE. According to
Herodotus (6.103) Kimon I, a member of an old and distinguished family, had been
banished from Athens during the rule of the tyrant Peisistratus. While in exile
Kimon won the Olympic tethrippon in 536 and then in 532 BCE. Immediately
afterwards Kimon came to an agreement with Peisistratus, who gave him permission
to return to Athens in exchange for allowing the Athenian tyrant to be proclaimed
victor in the tethrippon of the 532 Olympics. Following his return, Kimon won under
his own name an additional Olympic tethrippon victory in 528 BCE. This blatant act
of commodification of Kimon’s 532 Olympic victory is indicative of the way some
sixth-century aristocrats perceived and manipulated sport.
Negative assessments of sport and athletes appear before 500 BCE but are largely
disjointed and marginalised. For instance, in a poem performed in Sparta the late
seventh-century poet Tyrtaeus (fr. 12 West) denigrates athletic talent and physical
beauty on the grounds that they do not contribute to effective military skills. About a
century later, Xenophanes (fr. 2 West), a philosopher from Colophon in Asia Minor,
launches a scathing attack on civic authorities for honouring athletic champions with
material rewards, on the basis that athletes do not contribute anything to the
economic welfare and good governance of their cities. For these intellectuals, the
excessive popularity and accolades that athletes enjoy constitute a case of misplaced
priorities on behalf of the citizens and civic authorities.22 It is difficult to appreciate
the full impact of these sports detractors. However, it is worth noting that by the
early fifth century epinician poets who actively eulogized their wealthy patrons/
successful athletes also underscored the value of athletic victory for the victor’s
community at large. This is a significant departure from the archaic elitist perception
of athletic success as an exclusive aristocratic preserve, a perception exemplified in
the story of Kimon’s 532 Olympic tethrippon victory.
While early sport critics focus on the immediate value and practical utility of
sport, the emphasis of sport detractors, especially among authors and intellectuals
active in Athens after c.450 and throughout the fourth century BCE, shifts largely
towards the athletic body itself. Old themes of inadequate intellectual skills and
military preparedness also crop up but often these themes are tied up with arguments
of physiological and physiognomic nature. It is certainly no accident that the
increased interest towards deviant aspects of the athletic body displayed by Athenian
literary authors and intellectuals coincide with the proliferation of athletic training
facilities and the number of opportunities for practising sport in the city of Athens.23
As Isocrates points out in the Panegyricus (44–45), Athens was the host city of
numerous and admirable festivals, which afforded athletes the opportunity to exhibit
 1662 Z. Papakonstantinou

their fine attributes and allowed spectators to see athletes exerting themselves on
their behalf. Besides athletic competitions, the same festivals often incorporated
in their programme other performances, including religious ceremonies, processions
and theatrical plays. Hence in classical Athens sport was integrated into an
advanced and multifaceted performance culture which brought greater visibility
on athletes and their bodies.
Among the Athenian literary authors that discuss athletes and athletics, the
comic playwright Aristophanes is a special case that needs to be treated with
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caution.24 Aristophanes often parodies and criticises athletic practices for satirical
effect. Yet the popularity of his plays should lead us to assume that, burlesque
elements aside, at least some of the views articulated in his jokes were shared by
Athenian audiences. Similar to other authors, at times Aristophanes portrays
athletics as a folly unsuitable for a sensible, mature man (Clouds, 413–20). However,
when it comes to the Athenian youth the poet is critical of their ‘lack of training’
(Frogs 1088). This rebuke must be viewed in the context of a familiar theme in
Aristophanic comedies which contrasts the good old days with the degenerate
present. Hence compared to the robust, trained ancestors the Athenian youth of
Aristophanes’s day are often depicted as unfit weaklings. In a passage from the Frogs
(1087–98), a play produced in 405 BCE, Aristophanes provides a vivid description of
an untrained Panathenaic torch-racer, described as ‘hunched’ and ‘pale’, hobbling
along the streets of Athens while being physically abused by the spectators.
Such descriptions of out-of-shape athletes were clearly meant to generate a laugh,
but are also symptomatic of a wider Athenian discourse on athletic training, eating
habits and bodies. Several authors identify a voracious appetite as a well-known
attribute of athletes. In Aristophanes’s Peace (33–5), to eat like a wrestler appears to
be synonymous with gluttony. Moreover, in a play entitled Autolykos the fifth-
century playwright Euripides (fr. 282 Nauck, 4–6) singles out the athletes’ gluttony
as the main reason for their inability to achieve a happy life: they are slaves to their
jaws and subject to their stomachs. Similarly, in another play by the same author
(Antiope fr. 20 Kambitsis) those who lack wealth and overindulge in physical fitness
are addicted to the unbridled nature of their bellies and thus make bad citizens.
Achaeus, a tragic poet contemporary with Euripides, associates athletic exercise with
overeating (fr. 3 Snell) and the athletic body with luxury (fr. 4 Snell). Xenophon,
Plato and Aristotle also comment on the excesses and dangers of athletic diet. For
instance in the Nichomachean Ethics (2.1106b) Aristotle alludes to the over-
consumption of food by top athletes through a reference to Milo, a famous and very
successful fifth-century wrestler who was allegedly consuming several kilograms of
meat on a daily basis.25
It is worth emphasising that athletic training and dietary practices also receive
considerable coverage in ancient Greek medical manuals. In the Hippocratic corpus,
a collection of medical treatises written by various authors but attributed to
Hippocrates, diet and exercise are two important cornerstones of healing. References
to athletes and athletic practices are often used as case studies to elucidate techniques
of diagnosis and cure.26 Furthermore, medical authors often reveal a preoccupation
with the exaggerations of athletic diet, especially the overconsumption of meat
(Regimen in Health, 7). This state of affairs, in conjunction with overspecialisation in
training, results according to medical and other authors in the physical disfigurement
of the athletic body.27 Moreover, according to Plato athletic diet and training
induces drowsiness and sloth and as a result athletes ‘sleep their lives away’.28 Their
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 1663

habits, therefore, should be forsaken by those who, due to their station in life, need
to be active and vigilant.

Athenian Contests of Manliness and Beauty

There is certainly a degree of rhetorical exaggeration in these critical discourses on
the athletic body. Nonetheless, the thematic and chronological proximity of
Athenian sport critics with other contemporary discourses on athletic victory and
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bodily culture cannot be coincidental. In addition to representations of elite

athletic bodies in epinician poetry and art, starting in the fifth century BCE there
appears to be a heightened interest in Athens on various facets of masculinity and
bodily culture of the Athenian citizenry at large. For instance, the athletic
programme of the Panathenaea, the grand religious and athletic festival of ancient
Athens, included an event called euandria, a term that can be translated as ‘manly
excellence’ or ‘manly beauty’.29 The euandria was a competitive event in which
well-built, good-looking young men engaged in some kind of performance. The
exact nature of the performance is uncertain, but it might have involved public
displays of group fitness and co-ordination. In terms of performance – but not in
their ideological overtones – displays of euandria might be comparable to public
gymnastic and fitness displays attested in some parts of the modern world.30 Be
that as it may, for our purposes it is important to emphasise that in the
Panathenaea festival the euandria contest was open only to Athenian citizens.31
Participants competed in groups selected according to their affiliation with one of
the ten Athenian tribes in a contest that has been described by a modern scholar as
‘a celebration of manhood’.32 In addition to the euandria, an event called euexia
(‘good conditioning’, ‘vigour’) is attested in several Greek city-states. In euexia
contests, which in many known instances were conducted in the local gymnasion,
individuals competed in fitness and healthy appearance, bodily attributes that they
no doubt acquired after long periods of systematic training and dieting.33 The well-
built, rigorous and fit athletic bodies of participants in euandria and euexia contests
evoke the representations of athletic bodies in epinician poetry and art of the sixth
and fifth centuries BCE. Yet whereas epinician odes and statuary celebrated the
athletic victories and bodies of a restricted number of wealthy athletes, in the case
of the Athenian euandria civic authorities promoted and rewarded the performance
of youthful physical fitness of numerous Athenians in the archetypal civic festival
of the Panathenaea.
All the above should not lead us to believe that the proportionate and fit bodies
presented in the euandria contests were a model that everyone in Athens could aspire
to. Athenian notions of sport and physical beauty were certainly complex and at
times ambivalent. Moreover, our sources do not always make clear the exact nature
of the connection that might have existed, in the mind of most Athenians, between
sport and good looks.34 Nevertheless, the eagerness of Athenians to advance in their
civic festivals a particular blueprint of performance of manly physical fitness and
beauty should be probed vis-à-vis the contemporary scathing attacks, voiced by
numerous Athenian intellectuals, on the excesses of sports training, diet and bodily
culture. More specifically, it is worth exploring the possibility that both these
aspects – i.e. critiques against overtrained athletic bodies, fitness and appearance
contests in civic festivals – might be related to wider perceptions on the normative
body of the Athenian citizen.
 1664 Z. Papakonstantinou

Conclusion
During the classical period Athens was a democracy. Decision-making on the most
important matters rested primarily with two bodies, a council of 500 which consisted
of citizens appointed for one year and selected by lot and a popular assembly which
met several times during the year and which could approve, reject or modify the bills
proposed by the council of 500. Moreover, the cornerstone of the justice system was
the popular courts which were manned by hundreds of jurors selected from the entire
citizenry, regardless of their social and educational background. Overall, Athenian
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democracy operated on the rather idealised principle of continuous, enthusiastic and

uninhibited participation of all male citizens, from the poorest to the most privileged,
in most aspects of the working of the state. As a result, Athenian masculinity was
constantly negotiated and performed, through action and speech, in every aspect of
the public sphere.35 In the dominant political discourse of democratic Athens, the
normative body of the citizen was a body that asserted its masculinity through
deliberation and voting in the popular assembly, adjudication in popular courts and
fighting in the battlefield alongside one’s fellow Athenian citizens. Even physical
fitness could be enacted through the co-ordination of group efforts, as in the
Panathenaic euandria, a contest that was designed to foster civic identity through the
exclusion of non-Athenians.
Hence despite the popularity of athletics and even though Athenians admired
and honoured successful athletes, concerns over athletic diet, intensive training
and the realisation that active, full-time athletes had little choice but to abstain
from most aspects of familial, social and political life (Plato Laws, 7.807c) in
order to train for competition converged and shaped an image of an overfed,
over-trained and by implication civically inefficient athletic body, which had an
affinity with the body of the apragmon, i.e. the indifferent, often socially isolated
and hence civically dysfunctional, citizen. There was in fact in classical Athens a
parallel discourse regarding the passive, quiet citizen which bears resemblances to
the literary topoi examined above regarding the overspecialised athlete.36 In a
nutshell, the very bodily practices of dedicated athletic training and competition
which contributed to the construction of hegemonic masculinity among sixth and
early fifth-century elite athletes, in classical Athens partly undermined the
athletes’ claim to normative male status. In a culture that largely promoted
the participation of average citizens in athletics and other physical activities in the
Panathenaea tribal events and rewarded successful athletes, voices of dissent
towards the excesses of the athletic body were symptomatic of the complexity and
contested nature of perceptions and practices of sport, masculinity and the male
body.

Note on Contributor
Zinon Papakonstantinou is Assistant Professor of Classics and History at the University of
Illinois at Chicago.

Notes
1. For sport in classical Athens in general Kyle, Athletics in Ancient Athens is still
fundamental. For known Athenian athletes see ibid., 195–228; for festivals with athletic
contests in ancient Athens see Osborne, ‘Competitive Festivals and the Polis’.
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 1665

2. Kyle, Sport and Spectacle, 54–71; Papakonstantinou, ‘Sport’.

3. Athletic historiography and victors’ lists: Christesen, Olympic Victor Lists. Sports
medicine and medical manuals: Visa, ‘L’image de l’athlète’.
4. Affluent Greeks retained an edge in elite competitive sport due to their unencumbered
availability of time and material resources. See Pleket, ‘The Participants’ and ‘Zur
Soziologie des antiken Sports’; Golden, Sport and Society, 141–75.
5. Chankowski, L’e´phe´bie helle´nistique; Kennell, Ephebeia and ‘The Greek Ephebate’.
6. Pindar, Olympian 8, 19–20. Translations of Pindaric passages are based on William H.
Race’s translations in the Loeb Pindar edition, with slight modifications.
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7. Pindar, Olympian 10, 99–104.

8. Pindar, Olympian 9, 89–94.
9. Pindar, Isthmian 4, 42–51. Melissos is further praised for his Isthmian and Nemean
chariot-race victories as well as for his family tradition in equestrian sports.
10. Bourriot, Kalos kagathos; Weiler, ‘Inverted Kalokagathia’ and ‘Das Kalokagathia-Ideal’.
11. See Pindar, Pythian 10, 60 where the victor is described as an object of interest for
unmarried girls. On the athletes’ erotic appeal as depicted in literature and statuary see
Steiner, ‘Moving Images’; Scanlon, Eros and Greek Athletics, ch. 8; Fisher, ‘The Pleasures
of Reciprocity’.
12. Victor as an adornment and source of glory to his city: Pindar, Nemean 2, 8; Isthmian 6,
66–71. Bacchylides, 6, 15–6; 10, 17; 13, 58–83. Cf. Pindar, Nemean 6, 45–50 where the
victor’s family achievements provide an opportunity for eulogists to adorn their
homeland.
13. Xenophon, Symposion, 1.2, 8–9.
14. Osborne, ‘Men Without Clothes’; ‘Sculpted Men of Athens’; and The History Written.
See also Porter, ‘Introduction’ for the complex interface of historical and idealised bodies
in the ancient world.
15. Neer, Style and Politics, 54–5, 93–5 and passim.
16. See Turner, ‘In Cold Blood’.
17. For a discussion of the relevant evidence and an exploration of various aspects of sports
participation in classical Athens see Fisher, ‘Gymnasia and the Democratic Values’;
Miller, ‘Naked Democracy’; Pritchard, ‘Athletics, Education and Participation’ and
‘Sport, War and Democracy’. Pritchard’s arguments regarding the practical constraints
lower-class Athenians faced when considering regular participation in the activities of the
gymnasion and competitive athletics are to a certain extent plausible. However, the
extensive calendar of tribal events in various Athenian festivals (Osborne, ‘Competitive
Festivals’) and the fact that during the classical period wealthy Athenians defrayed the
costs associated with the recruitment and training of tribal teams (Wilson, The Athenian
Institution, 35–44 and passim) must have eased many of these constraints, thus allowing a
more representative sample of Athenian youths to get actively involved in tribal
competitive and physical display activities.
18. Hawhee, Bodily Arts. For participation in the activities of the gymnasion as a means of
articulating gender and group identities see Kyle, Sport and Spectacle, 87–88. Despite the
role of athletics in elite theories and practices of youth education and upbringing, for
many Athenian intellectuals the body and its physical training were considered as inferior
in nature to the mind; see Young, ‘Mens Sana in Corpore Sano?’.
19. Lavrencic, ‘Krieger und Athlet?’.
20. Clairmont, Classical Attic Tombstones.
21. For the coalescence between epinician poetry and statuary in the commemoration of
athletic victory see Steiner, ‘Moving Images’ and Images in Mind, ch. 5; Smith, ‘Pindar,
Athletes’. It should be noted that the multi-layered network of Athenian artistic
representations of the nude, including the athletic, male body has been rendered even
more complex by the agenda of early pioneers of classical scholarship, especially art
historians, who for a host of reasons have idealised ancient Greek visual and literary
depictions of the male body. See Osborne, ‘Men Without Clothes’; Weiler, ‘Das
Kalokagathia-Ideal’.
22. For ancient critics of Greek sport see Papakonstantinou, ‘Ancient Critics’.
23. For athletic facilities in classical Athens see Kyle, Athletics in Ancient Athens, 56–101.
24. Kyle, Athletics in Ancient Athens, 131–4.
 1666 Z. Papakonstantinou

25. For the excesses of athletic diet see also Xenophon, Memorabilia, 3.14.3; Plato, Republic,
1.338c–d; Aristotle, Politics, 1338b40–1339a10; Nichomachean Ethics, 2.1106b; and
possibly Alexis fr. 168 Kock; Theophilus. fr. 8 Kock.
26. Visa, ‘L’image de l’athlète’.
27. Hippocrates, Aphorisms, 1,3; cf. Xenophon, Symposion, 2.17; Aristotle, De Generatione
Animalium, 4.768b29–33.
28. Republic, 3.403e–404a; cf. Amatores, 132c.
29. The earliest reference to the Athenian euandria is IG II2 2311, an inscription of the early
fourth century which records events and prizes in the Panathenaic games. See further
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Crowther, ‘Male ‘‘Beauty’’ Contests’ (¼ Crowther, Athletika, 333–9); Boegehold, ‘Group

and Single Competitions’ argues that the euandria was a choral competition, a suggestion
that does not square well with ancient sources which emphasise the physical aspects of the
contest.
30. Roubal, ‘Politics of Gymnastics’; Van Steen, ‘Rallying the Nation’.
31. Euandria contests were held for Athenians and non-Athenians at the Theseia, another
major festival of ancient Athens. See Crowther, ‘Male ‘‘Beauty’’ Contests’, 287 (¼
Crowther, Athletika, 335); Bugh, ‘The Theseia’; and Kennell, ‘Age Categories and
Chronology’ for references to primary evidence. It is plausible that a similar contest
existed at the Theseia during the classical period as well. Bugh and Kennell consider the
euandria as military displays. Euandria contests are also attested in other parts of the
Greek world. See Crowther, ‘Male ‘‘Beauty’’ Contests’.
32. Crowther, Athletika, 336.
33. For euexia contests see Crowther, ‘Male ‘‘Beauty’’ Contests’ (¼ Crowther, Athletika,
333–9) and Crowther, ‘Euexia, Eutaxia, Philoponia’ (¼ Crowther, Athletika, 341–4).
34. Osborne, The History Written, 27–37 elaborates this point but underemphasises the
importance Athenians placed on physical fitness and its public performance as evidenced
by the euandria contests.
35. Roisman, The Rhetoric of Manhood.
36. Carter, The Quiet Athenian.

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