1. Problems, models and sources; 2. Athletic participation and education; 3. The democratic support of athletics; 4. Athletics in satyric drama; 5. The common culture of athletics and war; 6. The democratisation of war; 7. Conclusion: athletic ephebes.
This book explains why the democracy of classical Athens generously sponsored elite sport and idolised its sporting victors.
David M. Pritchard is Senior Lecturer in the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at the University of Queensland. He has held research fellowships at Macquarie University, Sydney, the University of Copenhagen and the University of Sydney. In 2013 Dr Pritchard was the Charles Gordon Mackay Lecturer in Greek at the University of Edinburgh. He has edited War, Democracy and Culture in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 2010) and co-edited Sport and Festival in the Ancient Greek World (2003). He is currently finishing a monograph on public spending in democratic Athens.
'This is a vigorous and valuable book, supported by a thorough
familiarity with the ancient evidence and with modern scholarship.
It is also timely, as our democracies (surely the most sports-mad
societies since the Greeks) return to the use of war as an
instrument of policy.' Mark Golden, University of Winnipeg
'Dr Pritchard's book is the first book-length study of athletics in
classical Athens since 1987 and the first of its kind ever: a
penetrating inquiry into the position occupied in Athenian life and
popular thinking by athletics. It will put the study of this
subject on an entirely new footing.' Thomas Heine Nielsen, SAXO
Institute, Copenhagen
'Revealing interrelationships among three major and still topical
themes in the history of the most famous and best-attested Greek
city-state, Dr Pritchard's thorough and detailed work argues that
sport, democracy, and war shared positive notions of effort, value,
and virtue, notions that spanned the classes of citizens and
assisted social cohesion … [Pritchard] suggests that,
paradoxically, there was democratic support by common Athenians -
including sailors in Athens' expanded navy - for what are often
seen as elitist athletic activities. He shows how sport and war
came to be seen as positively symbiotic in democratic Athens … With
fresh interpretations of Athenian satyr plays, popular culture, and
military and festival expenditures, this major study will certainly
stimulate lively discussion about ancient sport, democracy, and
war.' Donald G. Kyle, University of Texas, Arlington and author of
Athletics in Ancient Athens and Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient
World
'Pritchard's monograph is a significant achievement. For those
interested in any or all of its three components - sport, democracy
and war - it is recommended reading. For those interested in
Athenian culture, however, it should be considered absolutely
essential.' Jason Crowley, The Journal of Hellenic Studies
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