Chapter 1 - Introduction

Summary

The Introduction sketches the history of research on Hellenistic athletics. It shows that the topic has not achieved much scholarly attention in the past due to the old (and spurious) assumption that the period constituted a “dark age” of sport history. The chapter explains the book’s focus on athletic and equestrian victors and substantiates the study’s methodological approach: Based upon the compilation of a database that includes all the available, mostly epigraphic and literary, sources on Hellenistic athletes, victor epigrams are identified as the key medium for the presentation of agonistic fame in the Hellenistic period. Sixty-one pieces of agonistic poetry form the main evidence for the following case studies. They are grouped into (local, regional, or empire-wide) clusters of epigrams in order to identify characteristic features of the agonistic discourse of each political unit. The aim is to investigate the impact political structures had on the respective agonistic cultures.