Preface and Acknowledgments
List of Figures
List of Maps
List of Tables
Introduction: Ancient Sport History
Why Sport History?
Word Games: Conceptualizing Sport and Spectacle
Challenges: Evidence, Chronology, and Modernism
Sports and Spectacles as Cultural Performances
Greece and Rome: Positive and Negative Classicism
Sports as Spectacle, Spectacles as Sport
1. Origins and Essences: Early Sport and Spectacle
Mesopotamian Combat Sports and Running
Egypt: Hunting and Sporting Pharaohs
Royal Hunts as a Near Eastern Tradition
States and Sports, Empires and Spectacles
2. Late Bronze Age Minoans, Hittites, and Mycenaeans
Minoan Performances: Rites, Contests, or Spectacles?
Hittite Contests?
Mycenaean Contests?
A Sporting Mediterranean World
3. Sport in Homer: Contests, Prizes, and Honor
Funeral Games for Patroklos: Prizes and Reconciliation
The Odyssey: Sport and Returning Home
Epic Sport as Spectacle
4. Archaic Greece: Athletics in an Age of Change
Athletic Festivals: Types and Terms
Factors and Features in the Growth of Athletics Gymnasiums, Hoplites, and Society
Nudity, Status, and Democracy
Men, Boys, and Erotic Pursuits
The Coming of Age of Greek Sport
5. In Search of the Ancient Olympics
The Olympics of Allusion and Illusion
Modern Myths and Invented Traditions
The Quagmire of Olympic Origins: Explanations and Excavations
6. Ancient Olympia and its Games
The Physical Context: Sanctuary and Facilities
The Olympic Festival: Operation and Administration
The Program of Contests
Olympia and Spectacle: Politics, Problems, and Performances
7. Panhellenic Sacred Crown Games and More
Pythian Games
Isthmian Games
Nemean Games
Variations: Local or Civic Games
8. Athens: City of Contests and Prizes
The Panathenaic Games: Sacred and Civic Athletics
More Athletic Festivals and Athletic Facilities
The Sociopolitical History of Athenian Sport
Contestation, Critics, and Popular Attitudes
9. Spartan Sport and Physical Education
Physical Education: Building the Body Politic
Spartan Athletics
Kyniska: Gender, Politics, and Racing Chariots at Olympia
Not So Strange Greeks
10. Athletes in Greek Society: Heroes, Motives, Access
Athletic Stars and Stories
Pindar on Victory and Glory
Athletes, Social History, and Democratization
11. Females and Greek Sport
Early Greece: Epic and Myth
Spartan Female Sport
Athenian Girls? Races or Rites
The Heraia at Olympia
The Olympic Ban on Women
Hellenistic Females and Competition
Female Athletics in the Roman Empire
12. Macedon and Hellenistic Sport and Spectacle
Philip II: Proclaiming Greekness through Games
Alexander the Great: Conquests and Spectacular Games
Hellenistic Sport and Spectacle
The Hellenistic Legacy
13. Early Roman Festivals, Celebrations, and Games
Etruscan Sport and Spectacle: Ethnicity, Greek Gifts, Roman Roots?
Roman Festivals and Entertainments
Chariot Racing at Rome
Triumphs: Spectacles of Military Victory
Hunts and Beasts: Conquests and Games
Gladiators: Roman Rites and Combats
Early Romans and Greek Sport
Roman-Hellenistic Spectacular Discourse
14. Late Republic and Augustus: Spectacles, Popular Politics, and Empire
The Meaning of Gladiatorial Combat: Infamy and Virtue
Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar: Magnificence and Munificence
Augustus: Consolidation and Imperial Rule through Shows
15. Spectacle, Sport, and the Roman Empire
Emperors, Spectacles, and Scandals
Days at the Track: Chariot Racing
Imperial Triumphs
Gladiators, Arenas, and Empire
Beast Hunts: Nature and Empire
Spectacular Executions: Criminals, Beasts, and Social Order
Greek Games in the Roman Empire
Professional Athletes: Guilds, Prizes, and Hadrian
Assimilation and Accommodation
16. Later Sports and Spectacles: Romans, Christians, and Byzantines
Christian Opposition to Pagan Spectacles
Roman Reactions to Christians
The Waning of Institutionalized Shows in the West
Chariot Racing in the Christian Byzantine Empire
Conclusion: Ancient Sport and Spectacle
Index