In order to better understand the framework in which Hellenistic athletes operated, it is necessary to give some preliminary information on new developments in the field of athletics. Unveiling what was new in Hellenistic athletics may also prove a promising way to demonstrate that the Hellenistic age was not only a period of its own right in the history of sport but was very innovative in terms of athletics. This way it may become clear why a history of decline cannot be a reasonable approach to Hellenistic sport.

2.1 Enlarging the Agonistic Landscape: New Athletic Festivals in the Hellenistic Period – An “Agonistic Explosion”?

The most important framework of Hellenistic athletics is constituted by the various Panhellenic, regional, and local games that Greek athletes travelled to in order to take part in competitions. Louis Robert’s famous observation of an “agonistic explosion”Footnote ¹ due to the foundation of numerous new contests has to be subjected to slight modification today, since Thomas Heine Nielsen has shown in great detail that the increase in the number of games was based upon a much broader fundament than previously assumed.Footnote ² The agones represent an aspect of athletic competition in the Hellenistic age that has been comparatively well studied.Footnote ³ Yet, previous research has analyzed important, but rather single aspects of the athletic festival culture of the period. A comprehensive study of Hellenistic agones as once requested by Angelos ChaniotisFootnote ⁴ that would start from a list of all existing contests in this period (in the way Thomas Heine Nielsen has collected the material for Archaic and Classical games) still represents a desideratum.Footnote ⁵

At the current state of research, we can safely assume that the expansion of the Greek world in the Hellenistic period must have brought about an increase in the total number of athletic festivals. Greek contests of varying levels of prestige were held from OlbiaFootnote ⁶ in the North to AlexandriaFootnote ⁷ in the South, from KentoripaFootnote ⁸ in the West to BabylonFootnote ⁹ in the East. Not all of these contests, however, were full-scale agones and belonged to the same category. Whereas games like the isolympic Ptolemaia of Alexandria, though not able to challenge the status of the grand four, tried their best at becoming an important part of the agonistic festival culture of the day, the contests in Babylon and Kentoripa, for instance, were rather minor festivals that simply aimed at engaging the local youth in athletic activities held at the local gymnasia. Such “gymnasion contests” clearly flourished during the entire Hellenistic period.Footnote ¹⁰ Characteristics of these competitions were not only a local catchment area but also paramilitary disciplines (e.g., katapaltes, euhoplia, and hoplomachia),Footnote ¹¹ which appear to have been “a typical phenomenon of the Hellenistic period,”Footnote ¹² and contests such as eutaxia, euexia, and philoponia, sometimes in the form of team competitions.Footnote ¹³ The intervals between the respective iterations of these contests could be as short as only one month.Footnote ¹⁴ The flourishing of “gymnasion contests” is sometimes taken as an indication for the ever-increasing importance of wars in the Hellenistic world, and probably rightly so.Footnote ¹⁵

Yet apart from such minor and purely local contests which were, above all, an element of state education, some Hellenistic regions developed an especially rich festival culture of full-scale agones. Such regional festival cultures can be identified, for instance, in Boiotia and Asia Minor, which both constituted new hotspots in the agonistic landscape of the period.Footnote ¹⁶

The most well-known example for the aforementioned changes in the agonistic landscape is given by the efforts the citizens of Magnesia on the Maeander undertook in order to raise the status of their local festival, the Leukophryena.Footnote ¹⁷ In 222/21, they proposed to enhance their status to that of the “holy crown games.” The proposition was rejected,Footnote ¹⁸ but fourteen years later, the Magnesians tried again, and this time they were successful. They sent envoys across the Hellenistic world and proudly presented the positive responses of more than 100Footnote ¹⁹ cities, federal states, and kings on inscriptions in the Southwest corner of their agora, a very prominent place (epiphanestatos topos, as the Greeks would have put it). This spectacular diplomatic initiative was motivated by an epiphany of Artemis Leukophryene and sanctioned by an oracle from Delphi. As Peter Thonemann observed in one of the inscriptions (i.e., the famous foundation document for the Leukophryena),Footnote ²⁰ the Magnesians explicitly highlighted that “they were the first of those dwelling in Asia in favor of establishing a stephanitic contest.”Footnote ²¹ The claim is justified and a provocation of Magnesia’s rival city Miletus, which had begun to operate in a similar manner with its own festival, the Didymeia, in the meantime.Footnote ²²

Despite being the first in Asia Minor to take the initiative for such a Panhellenic enterprise, the Magnesians were certainly not the first Greeks at all to do so. The Koans had already “set the trend”Footnote ²³ in 242/41, when they sent at least forty-three delegations (theoriai) across the Greek world in order to make dozens of cities and kings recognize their local Asklepieia as an agon stephanites and to accept the inviolability (asylia) of their sanctuary.Footnote ²⁴ As in Magnesia, the inscriptional letters of acceptance were proudly erected on marble stelai in an important place (in the Asklepieion). As John Ma has pointed out, the inscriptions witnessed the world that mattered to Kos.Footnote ²⁵ They can thus be read as a testimony for “peer polity interaction” in the Hellenistic age and as an indication for what the Groningen project calls “Connecting Contests” in the Hellenistic world.

The foundation of the Leukophryena as well as the establishment of the Asklepieia do not represent isolated cases but are rather part of a general trend.Footnote ²⁶ Taken as a whole, there can be no doubt that the third and second centuries saw important changes in the structure of the agonistic landscape: Several agones were either newly established as crown games or upgraded to that level, a category that was formerly almost exclusively reserved for the grand four at Olympia, Delphi, the Isthmos, and Nemea. The evidence for most of the new crown games has been collected in a seminal article by Angelos Chaniotis.Footnote ²⁷ According to Louis Robert, the development was triggered by the foundation and splendid first celebration of the Egyptian Ptolemaia in 280/79.Footnote ²⁸ Robert Parker, however, has shown that there are earlier examples like the Asklepieia of Epidauros and the Hekatomboia/Heraia of Argos – one may also think of the PanathenaiaFootnote ²⁹ – and that it would be too far-fetched to understand the establishment of the Ptolemaia as a turning point, at least with regard to the history of agones stephanitai or “‘Panhellenic’ festivals,” as he calls them.Footnote ³⁰

But new developments in the agonistic landscape of the period did not only take place in Asia Minor or Egypt. Hellenistic Boiotia is another case in point (Map 2.1). Although most of the Boiotian games such as the Herakleia of Thebes and the Eleutheria of Plataiai had already existed long before the Hellenistic age,Footnote ³¹ it was no earlier than in this period that “almost every town in Boiotia had its own”Footnote ³² crown games; and there can be no doubt that these festivals were highly important for the organizing communities themselves.Footnote ³³ As a third-century poet put it, Plataiai had been quite a boring town in those days and became “a polis only at the festival of the Eleutheria.”Footnote ³⁴ According to the surviving evidence, Hellenistic Boiotia’s most important festival, however, turned out to be the Basileia of Lebadeia for which we dispose of a very rich epigraphic documentation including prominent victors like a Ptolemaic king.Footnote ³⁵ In addition, the Trophonia were held as an important athletic festival at the same location.Footnote ³⁶ Other Boiotian contests founded or newly established as crown games included the Mouseia of Thespiai,Footnote ³⁷ the Ptoa of Akraiphia,Footnote ³⁸ the Charitesia of Orchomenos,Footnote ³⁹ and the Amphiaraia of Oropos,Footnote ⁴⁰ which took place at a sanctuary that was claimed by both the Athenians and the Boiotians. Games such as the Erotideia of Thespiai,Footnote ⁴¹ founded probably at the end of the third century,Footnote ⁴² or the Pamboiotia of Koroneia, a common festival of the Boiotian koinon instituted between ca. 285 and 250,Footnote ⁴³ also turned into an essential part of the athletic festival culture of the Hellenistic world. What is more, a city such as Tanagra organized two known agones, the SarapieiaFootnote ⁴⁴ with contests for performers and the Delia which included athletic disciplines.Footnote ⁴⁵ Even in a backwater like AkraiphiaFootnote ⁴⁶ a second agon, the Soteria, flourished in the first century, probably alongside the more ancient Ptoa.Footnote ⁴⁷

Map 2.1 Boiotia

Taken as a whole, the plurality of the Boiotian gamesFootnote ⁴⁸ reflected the diversity of the Boiotian religious landscape, the landscape of an ethnos, which did not dispose of only one federal sanctuary, but of many.Footnote ⁴⁹ Yet this agonistic landscape was not a permanent constellation but was subject to historical change. In other words, Greek contests clearly had a history, a simple fact that nonetheless sometimes tends to slip our attention when we focus so much on Olympia and the stable-looking periodos of the four most important games. In the Hellenistic period, the history of Greek games was very dynamic in that it included innovations in the structure of the festival culture (iso-games,Footnote ⁵⁰ agones stephanitai), foundations of new contests but also the end of some festivals or their temporary discontinuation due to wars. The first iteration of the Soteria of Akraiphia that we know of, for instance, was not necessarily the very first one, but only took place as the “first after the war.”Footnote ⁵¹

However, the discontinuation of an athletic festival as a result of wars is not unique to Boiotia. The most prominent case is known from an inscription that was brought to light in Olympia in 1954 and 1955.Footnote ⁵² Probably in 216, the Akarnanian League resolved a decree by which the confederacy agreed to accept, among other things, the responsibility for reestablishing the annual contest of the AktiaFootnote ⁵³ after extensive warfare during the Social War (220–217) had brought the games to an end. The city of Anaktorion that had until then been responsible for the organization of the festival was obviously not able anymore to take on the financial burden.Footnote ⁵⁴

No doubt, the omnipresence and growing importance of wars in the Hellenistic age had an impact on the Greek athletic festival culture, an observation that holds true especially for the wars of the Roman expansion in Greece and Asia Minor. At the Amphiaraia and Rhomaia in Oropos, for instance, there even was a contest – probably a running event – that was called the “good news of the Roman victory.”Footnote ⁵⁵ That way a single sporting event served to commemorate the Roman conquest in a positive way. Although this particular discipline certainly constituted a new invention that was not followed elsewhere, the concept itself was part of a larger trend of the period. It was precisely during the Hellenistic age that commemoration days flourished even more than before.Footnote ⁵⁶ A military victory was the most common reason for the creation of a festival as a commemoration day, and, in the case of the particular event at Oropos, it represented another typical feature of Hellenistic festivals: the discipline, but also the entire games, was celebrated in honor of the Roman people.Footnote ⁵⁷ For this purpose, the Greater Amphiaraia of past times became the Amphiaraia and Rhomaia. Since the first half of the second century, several organizers of Greek games acted accordingly so that the title Rhomaia was attached to already existing contests.Footnote ⁵⁸ In other cases, several agones were simply newly founded as Rhomaia.Footnote ⁵⁹ Additionally, festivals and contests could also be named after successful Roman generals and politicians. The most opportunistic example is clearly represented by the Sylleia at Athens established after, and in spite of, the siege of the city by Sulla.Footnote ⁶⁰

Taking into account all the wars of the Roman expansion, the Mithridatic Wars had the most serious impact on Greek festival cultureFootnote ⁶¹: Greece became “a battlefield of foreign ambitions,”Footnote ⁶² and it was Sulla who even transferred the historic and venerable Olympic Games to Rome in the year 80. This, however, was a one-time event. It is rather astonishing how the Greek agonistic culture survived the wars of the first century and seems to have flourished even more since the Augustan age. Despite some problems in the first half of the first century,Footnote ⁶³ the Olympic Games never lost their number-one status as the most prestigious athletic festival.Footnote ⁶⁴

Finally, some words on the ancient (and modern) classification of agones: As Sofie Remijsen has shown, the term periodos is first attested for around 180Footnote ⁶⁵ and was probably triggered by the spread of the label of “crown games” in the third and second centuries.Footnote ⁶⁶ Nevertheless, the grand four had clearly existed as a group of the most prestigious contests already in the Late Archaic period,Footnote ⁶⁷ but their distinctive feature had consisted in the wreaths awarded as victory prizes, a feature that was no longer suited to set these games apart when agones stephanitai flourished all over the Greek world. So the term “periodos” was coined in order to refer to the four games top athletes would not miss on their “circular tours” through Greece. It has to be noted that the stability of the periodos is a factor that distinguishes the Hellenistic period from the Roman Imperial age, when the number of the “periodic” games increased due to imperial interventions and when the Aktia and the Italian games of the Roman Kapitolia, Sebasta of Neapolis, and Eusebeia of Puteoli were included as well.Footnote ⁶⁸

The fact that we cannot find the term “periodos” prior to the end of the third/beginning of the second century also means that successful athletes did not call themselves periodonikai up to this period.Footnote ⁶⁹ Other athletic “titles” such as triastes (“triple winner’ in running events) or “successor of Herakles” that described an athlete who had triumphed in both the wrestling and pankration finals at Olympia in one and the same year equally go back to roughly the same period.Footnote ⁷⁰ Kapros of Elis, for instance, became the first “successor of Herakles” in 212,Footnote ⁷¹ and Leonidas of Rhodes even achieved the honor of a four-time triastes between 164 and 152.Footnote ⁷² We do not know how exactly Kapros and Leonidas presented their victories to their fellow citizens because we are lacking the respective victor inscriptions. Yet it is difficult to imagine that “titles” played no role in these inscriptions. Hence “the creation of titles to demonstrate the superiority of a given athlete”Footnote ⁷³ has been described as a new development of the Hellenistic period (which no doubt increased in the Roman Imperial age)Footnote ⁷⁴ with good reason. The athletes’ need for setting themselves apart, which manifested itself in the (monos kai) protos-formulaFootnote ⁷⁵ of victor inscriptions, was at least in part a result of the fact that no records (times and distances) were recorded in antiquity.Footnote ⁷⁶ When new games flourished all over the Greek world and several contests were raised to the status of crown games, the athletes’ need for distinguishing themselves must have increased. So the emergence of athletic titles in the Hellenistic age reflected the growing agonistic landscape and the elevated status of several agones.

To sum up, a new wave of athletic festivals took over in the third and second centuries including several contests that raised their status to that of crown games. Furthermore, the category of iso-games was invented in the third century. Both categories were, above all, introduced to lift the status of the respective festival; yet to really achieve at this goal, it needed the acceptance of other Greek communities willing to recognize this status. This is why the organizing communities sent “sacred embassies” all over the Greek world, a phenomenon that clearly let to more connectivity and to what may be called “peer polity interaction.”Footnote ⁷⁷ Furthermore, such growing “networks of concrete and symbolical interaction”Footnote ⁷⁸ also fostered an identity of place, since the athletic festivals, as we have seen in the case of the Eleutheria of Plataiai, clearly mattered a lot to the local communities that organized them. The attempts at raising the status of local games in Asia Minor and in Boiotia to that of crown games might at least in part be interpreted as a response to the growing “agonistic market”Footnote ⁷⁹ of the Hellenistic period. In other words, the expansion of the Greek world in the last third of the fourth century also triggered changes on the local level of the Greek festival culture. In short, a process of universalization produced a particularizing response. Sociologists call this phenomenon “glocalization.”Footnote ⁸⁰ Without pushing the idea too far, we can observe that at least in the third century, universal developments and local tendencies mutually affected each other. In Section 2.2, we will analyze in detail how the “universal side” of this process worked.

2.2 Announcing the Games: Theoroi, Theorodokoi, and the Epangelia of Greek Contests

The custom of sending “sacred envoys” (theoroi) all over the Greek world in order to announce an upcoming festival (epangelia) and of declaring a holy truce (ekecheiria)Footnote ⁸¹ for the time of the event has attracted some scholarly attention for about the last twenty years.Footnote ⁸² Yet it does not constitute a new development of the Hellenistic age.Footnote ⁸³ Still rather new are the lists of theorodokoi at the beginning of this period which included the names of individuals appointed by their home state to receive the delegates.Footnote ⁸⁴ The lists were arranged following geographical criteria and clearly represent our best evidence for the practice of the epangelia. They are, however, “not simply transcriptions of actual itineraries, but they also serve the purpose of honoring the participants or advertising the size of the sanctuary’s catchment area.”Footnote ⁸⁵ Especially the last aspect is of essence, since it was the sanctuaries that provided for the erection of the lists. So there must have been a benefit for the administration of the shrines that prompted them to undertake the effort of recording the local hosts from all over the Greek world in inscriptions which could become as long as 647 lines.Footnote ⁸⁶

The earliest of these lists stem from Epidauros and date to 360/59 and 356/55 respectively.Footnote ⁸⁷ They mention theorodokoi for the delegates (theoroi) of the local Asklepieia in Northwest Greece, Southern Italy, and Sicily.Footnote ⁸⁸ In combination with Epidaurian decrees honoring theorodokoi, the lists show that the Asklepieia were announced in at least eighty-two poleis in the fourth century including even the Propontis and Cyprus.Footnote ⁸⁹ Other Peloponnesian lists and decrees honoring theorodokoi come from Argos,Footnote ⁹⁰ Nemea,Footnote ⁹¹ Lousoi,Footnote ⁹² and Hermione.Footnote ⁹³ The most impressive and complete example, the so-called “great Delphic list,” dates to the year 220, and covers probably seven different routes including Ionia (1), Boiotia and the Peloponnese (2), Thessaly and Macedonia (3), Crete and the Cyrenaica (4), Cyprus and Syria (5), Northwestern Greece (6), and Southern Italy plus Sicily (7).Footnote ⁹⁴ All in all, it “provides a catalogue of the Hellenistic world”Footnote ⁹⁵ excluding only the Black Sea region and Egypt which were clearly also part of Delphi’s epangelia system.Footnote ⁹⁶ According to the list, the “sacred envoys” travelled to at least 300Footnote ⁹⁷ different cities to announce not only the Pythia but also the Delphic Soteria founded after 277 as a commemoration day for the victory over the Galatians.Footnote ⁹⁸ What we find here can be best described as “a map of relations in a world of peers.”Footnote ⁹⁹ The agents of these relations were almost exclusively (independent) poleis and the network they joined was based upon mutual recognition. Yet, due to its historical dimension, all of this must not be conceived as a static system because the lists were very sensitive to changing historical situations,Footnote ¹⁰⁰ for instance, when a city received a new name.

We do not find, however, the same sensitivity in the Delphic lists with regard to new foundations in the Hellenistic East, which do hardly ever appear.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Although we are far from having a complete set of data here, it seems as if the organizers of the Olympic Games behaved somewhat differently in this respect and deliberately invited Greeks from the fringes of the oikoumene already in the Classical period.Footnote ¹⁰² In any case, as Louis Robert has already shown,Footnote ¹⁰³ the lists should not simply be interpreted as lodging lists since they “have a political character.”Footnote ¹⁰⁴ The listed poleis represent only a selection of recognized poleis in a world of city-states – the ones that joined the network.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ This network did not constitute an “imagined community”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ in the sense of a mere illusion but really connected the poleis of the Hellenistic world.

One last question, then, needs to be addressed, and it is a tough one. In case the Epidaurian list of the year 360 coincided indeed with the onset of the habit of erecting inscribed lists of theorodokoi in the respective sanctuaries (as we might reasonably assume), we cannot help but ask whether that change in the epigraphic habit reflected a new mentality or if it was mere chance. In other words, can we find a particular historical reason for this new phenomenon? We might at least argue that by the middle of the fourth century, the Greek world had become more connected; and the need for staying connected in the expanding world of Alexander and his successors certainly increased. Therefore, understanding the essence of Greek athletic festivals as “Connecting the Greeks”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ clearly is a promising approach to the topic, and I tend to interpret the rise of the theorodokoi lists as a reflection of this connectedness.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

2.3 Staging the Games: The Extension of Athletic Facilities in Panhellenic Sanctuaries in the Hellenistic Period

Another aspect of the framework of Greek athletics that underwent some changes in the Hellenistic period concerns the “materiality” of the Hellenistic festivals.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ It was the athletic facilities of no fewer than three of the four most important Greek athletic contests, namely that of Olympia, Isthmia, and Nemea, that saw increasing building activities in the Hellenistic period.

In Olympia, it is striking that buildings which had been exclusively or primarily used to agonistic ends constituted a main part of the building activities in the sanctuary from the fourth to the second centuries.Footnote ¹¹⁰ The oldest of these buildings is the probably still late Classical Leonidaion (about 340),Footnote ¹¹¹ which served as a lodging place for the athletes taking part in the Olympic Games. Following, in chronologic order, were the first palaistra (roughly 250)Footnote ¹¹² and the gymnasion (ca. 180),Footnote ¹¹³ which were both constructed surprisingly late in Olympia.Footnote ¹¹⁴ It was also in the second century that Olympia’s stadion received its vaulted entranceway.Footnote ¹¹⁵ In about the middle of the second century, an exclusive facility including an eating place and a modern bathhouse was constructed.Footnote ¹¹⁶ In the first half of the first century, then, an anonymous patron donated a magnificent entry gate to the area of the gymnasion.Footnote ¹¹⁷ The public bath was renovated in the middle of the first century.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Probably around the year 40, shortly after the technique was invented, Olympia received a highly modern bath with a system of central heating (hypocaust).Footnote ¹¹⁹ What is more, a lavish extension of the theokoleonFootnote ¹²⁰ and the construction of building C that replaced the older building G belong to the first century.Footnote ¹²¹ Taken as a whole, especially the third and second centuries saw the heyday of agonistic building activities in Olympia.Footnote ¹²²

In Delphi, there seem to have been less building activities at sport facilities in the Hellenistic period than in Olympia. Yet the Southern wall of the stadion bearing the famous fifth-century prohibition that banned wine on the premisesFootnote ¹²³ might actually belong to the time around the year 300.Footnote ¹²⁴ During this construction phase, a new starting mechanism (hysplex) may have been built as well.Footnote ¹²⁵ Additionally, Delphi’s gymnasion was constructed in the second half of the fourth century, between 330 and 300.Footnote ¹²⁶ Its facilities including a palaistra, a paradromis, and a xystos are clearly older than the corresponding ones at Olympia, which is due to the fact that, in contrast to Olympia, there was a polis in its vicinity whose citizens regularly used the athletic facilities in the time between the festivals.

In Isthmia, a new stadion was built in the late fourth and early third centuries.Footnote ¹²⁷ It has not been fully excavated, but it is clear from the test trenches that this later stadion represented a “major project”Footnote ¹²⁸ of the building activities in the sanctuary in this period. It is also evident that it was built somewhat farther away from the Temple of Poseidon than its predecessor.Footnote ¹²⁹ We should be careful not to jump to the conclusion that this indicated a “trend toward distancing athletics from their religious center.”Footnote ¹³⁰ This might have actually been the case, but in order to solve the question of the precise relation between sports and religion in Greek antiquity, it would need a comprehensive analysis. In any case, the athletic facilities at the Isthmos received a proper remodeling at the beginning of the Hellenistic period.

Yet the clearest example for the trend of upgrading the athletic facilities of the most important sanctuaries in the fourth and third centuries certainly stems from Nemea. It was at Nemea that “a major building program”Footnote ¹³¹ was launched when the games returned from Argos in around 335. In addition to a bath, which included an elaborate hydraulic system and which appears to have been “the first at a festival site,”Footnote ¹³² the most important part of the remodeling of the athletic facilities of the sanctuary was the construction of the Early Hellenistic stadion complex that was built in around 330–300.Footnote ¹³³ West of the stadion itself, even a locker room (apodyterion) has been excavated as “a simple structure with a three-sided colonnaded court open to the air.”Footnote ¹³⁴ From this location, the athletes entered the stadion via an impressive vaulted entrance tunnel. It is a fair assumption that some of the graffiti found on the walls inside the entrance tunnel were scratched by athletes waiting for the competitions to begin.Footnote ¹³⁵ As modern visitors of the site immediately realize, passing through such a tunnel creates a “transforming”Footnote ¹³⁶ effect. What is more important, however, is the impact it had on the spectators. The existence of the vaulted entranceway (krypte eisodos) certainly helped staging the entry of the athletes as a spectacle – an effect that must have been true for Olympia’s stadion tunnel as well.Footnote ¹³⁷

It is with good reason that Barbara Dimde has recently outlined further characteristic elements of the monumental design of (Early) Hellenistic stadia, including the hysplexFootnote ¹³⁸ as a spectacular technological innovation for the starting line in running events, and the sphendone that was integrated into some stadia at one of the narrow sides of the dromos as a semicircular bulge as to enlarge the number of seats for the spectators.Footnote ¹³⁹ The sphendone, which may have actually caused a “quasi-amphitheatrical” impression to a part of the audience, was already an element of Nemea’s Early Hellenistic stadion at the time of its construction.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ The enlargement of the auditorium made sure that the new technology of the stadion tunnel was acknowledged by the entire audience.Footnote ¹⁴¹

The games of the Hellenistic period grew more and more into spectacles. This is why Cicero called the Olympics a big mercatusFootnote ¹⁴²; it is why Olympia is described as a “tent city” in the ancient sourcesFootnote ¹⁴³; and it is also why exceptionally high numbers of spectators are attested for the Olympics of 276 and 208.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Such large crowds gathered together in a comparatively small space certainly brought about some ensuing problems in the area of hygiene and crime.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ Their mere existence, however, can be interpreted as an indication for the “spectacularization” of the games in this period.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ Also, the distribution of coins found in Nemea seems to indicate that the preferred way of watching the games was sitting next to one’s fellow citizens for most of the spectators, in “fan blocks,” as we might add using an analogy deriving from modern football.Footnote ¹⁴⁷

Yet this does not mean that the games degenerated in one way or another, since more spectacle does not automatically imply less authenticity.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ On the contrary, it rather indicates an ever-growing interest in athletic contests in this period.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ According to the archaeological evidence, Greek games clearly flourished at least from the fourth to the second centuries. Yet, it is also true that the big four suffered to varying degrees during the second and first centuries. The Nemean Games were transferred back and forth from Argos to Nemea,Footnote ¹⁵⁰ the Isthmian Games could no longer be held at the site after Mummius had destroyed Corinth in 146 – they were relocated to Sikyon – and Delphi was called a “very poor”Footnote ¹⁵¹ sanctuary by Strabo in the first century. Even the Olympic Games had some problems, even though they never lost their reputation as the most renowned athletic festival in the Greek world.Footnote ¹⁵² But as we will see, this is ought to be interpreted as an indication for a temporary economic crisis due to wars rather than as a crisis in terms of athletics.

To sum up, the Early Hellenistic period clearly saw increasing building activities in the athletic facilities of the four most important Greek places of festival competition. These building activities continued long into the second century and included technological innovations aiming at an increasing interest in the staging of events, an interest that can similarly be observed in the arrangement of processions as part of Hellenistic festivalsFootnote ¹⁵³ or in the public behavior of Hellenistic kings.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ Public life was highly staged at that time and this trend was further intensified, either from the side of the kings or from the side of the poleis. Undoubtedly, athletics were part of this process.Footnote ¹⁵⁵

2.4 Preparing and Conducting the Games: New Developments in the Program and the Organization of the Contests

Before the competitions started, the stage had to be set, meaning that the athletic facilities had to be prepared. Such preparatory measures are described at great length in a long Delphic inscription dating back to the year 247/46.Footnote ¹⁵⁶ In the form of a list, the inscription records the contracts with various workers responsible for the measures.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ They included digging and leveling the ground of the tracks in the gymnasion as well as the embellishment of the xystos, which was also surrounded with fresh white earth. Some minor repairs were done in the boxing room (sphairisterion) and the apodyterion needed plaster work. Apart from these works in the gymnasion, the stadion was prepared as well: The back slope, where the spectators sat, was cleaned and repaired. The race track shone bright with new white sand that was applied to the stadion floor. Moreover, thirty-six wooden kampteres were constructed for the runners.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ We have already seen that a vaulted entrance to the Pythian stadion was constructed out of perishable materials. What is more, the hippodrome had to be cleaned up. Last but not least, in both arenas, the stadion and the hippodrome, the starting mechanisms were installed. All these preparations were certainly undertaken to secure a successful conduct of the games.

There can be hardly any doubt that such measures were not only conducted in 247/46. On the contrary, similar preparations must have taken place every four years when the games were held – and the same is true for Olympia, Isthmia, and Nemea and other important contests as well.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ We know from vase paintings that these measures were part of the organization of Greek games already in the Late Archaic and Classical periods.Footnote ¹⁶⁰ So the careful preparation of athletic facilities does not represent a characteristic of the Hellenistic period. It is, however, for the first time attested in the written record of this epoch. It may thus not have constituted a new phenomenon, but it clearly represents a component of the framework of athletics that we do only know little about with respect to earlier periods of Greek history.

However, with regard to another element concerning the organization of athletic contests, we can indeed observe some changes in the Hellenistic period: the traditional year in which each new event was introduced in Olympia. In the entire Hellenistic age, three new disciplines joined the program: the two-horse chariot race (synoris) for foals in 264, the single-horse race (keles) for colts in 256, and – “after an unconscionable delay”Footnote ¹⁶¹ – the pankration for boys in 200.Footnote ¹⁶² After these changes, the program remained the same until the end of athletics in Late Antiquity. Contests for the age class of the “beardless” (ageneioi), for instance, were never introduced at Olympia, a fact that reveals to some degree what has reasonably been called “Olympic conservatism.”Footnote ¹⁶³

According to Pausanias, the same three events “were many years afterwards introduced from Elis”Footnote ¹⁶⁴ at the Pythian Games. Yet this observation does not correspond to the dates Pausanias himself gives for the first iterations of these events.Footnote ¹⁶⁵ In fact, the three events actually joined the Pythian program earlier than its Olympic counterpart.Footnote ¹⁶⁶ As a consequence, the only new event in the Pythian Games of the Hellenistic period was the two-horse chariot race for colts which took place for the first time in 314/13 and was won by Ptolemy I.Footnote ¹⁶⁷ The moderate extension of the program of both games goes hand in hand with an overall trend that we find more events for young athletes in the Hellenistic age than in the periods before. At Isthmia and Nemea, contests for the beardless were already part of the program in the fifth century. But it was precisely the local games that often disposed of a perplexing variety of different age classes.Footnote ¹⁶⁸ At the Asklepieia of Kos, for instance, there were paides Pythikoi and paides Isthmikoi in addition to the categories of men and the beardless.Footnote ¹⁶⁹ The Athenian Theseia which were reorganized shortly after 167 “to mark the recovery”Footnote ¹⁷⁰ of Lemnos, Imbros, and Skyros categorized the boys into three groups: the first (paides tes protes helikias), second (tes deuteras helikias), and third age class (tes trites helikias). This means that there were five age classes altogether. Furthermore, “the torch race had divisions for paides, ephebes, ex-ephebes, neaniskoi, and men.”Footnote ¹⁷¹ In second-century Chios, we find three different divisions of ephebes (neoteroi, mesoi, and presbyteroi) in addition to the competitions for boys and men.Footnote ¹⁷² The Herakleia on Chalkis had the boys split into paides pampaides and paides epheboi so that, combined with the events for men and the beardless, there was a total of four age classes.Footnote ¹⁷³ For the Late Hellenistic Erotideia of Thespiai then, pampaides and paides presbyteroi are attested.Footnote ¹⁷⁴

Whatever the reasons for the creation of additional age groups, it is important for the purpose of our study that the variety of age classes increased in the Hellenistic age. Although this certainly had to do with the rise and spread of gymnasion agones in this period, it is worth noting that a surge in age classes is also found among contests like the prestigious Asklepieia of Kos or the Erotideia of Thespiai. Taken as whole, I agree with what Mark Golden observed as a motive for the introduction of new age classes: “The expectation was that local boys would win more than their share of these events.”Footnote ¹⁷⁵

A similar strategy based upon the idea of ensuring that locals won enough prizes without risking to downgrade the status of the entire contest can be seen behind the reform of the Panathenaic Games which, in addition to events open for all entrants, also included contests that were restricted to Athenian citizens only in the second century.Footnote ¹⁷⁶

Another strategy to enhance the attractiveness of an athletic festival (in this case for foreign entrants) can be seen in the rare instances where prizes for the runner-ups (deuteroi) were awarded, like it was the case in Kos from 174/73 on.Footnote ¹⁷⁷ In the earlier victor lists of these games, only the victor is mentioned. Since the Greeks were in general rather obsessed with winning, awarding a prize to the second place was certainly not a common technique that can be interpreted as an attempt of making the games more appealing.Footnote ¹⁷⁸

2.5 Rewarding the Champions and Financing the Games: Athletic Prizes, Hellenistic Poleis, and the Institution of Agonothesia

So, apart from the fact that some contests rewarded the runner-up, what kind of victory prizes did Greek athletes receive during the Hellenistic period and what was new about this economic aspect of ancient athletics?Footnote ¹⁷⁹

It is generally known that victors at the four most important athletic festivals received crowns as prizes, which were of high symbolical value: wreaths of olive branches at Olympia, laurel crowns in Delphi, pine at the Isthmos, and wild celery in Nemea.Footnote ¹⁸⁰ In opposition to these “botanical rewards,”Footnote ¹⁸¹ other contests gave cash prizes. This is why – following Louis Robert – a hierarchy of agones hieroi kai stephanitai and the less renowned agones thematikoi (or chrematitai) has been established.Footnote ¹⁸² Yet, as Harry Pleket has shown, ancient reality was clearly more complex than this strict dichotomy would suggest.Footnote ¹⁸³ In 247/46, even the famous Pythian Games added metal objects called brabeia to the traditional victory prizes, consisting in wreaths of laurel.Footnote ¹⁸⁴ At the far less prestigious Hermaia of Beroia, a gymnasion contest, we do not only find weapons as prizes but also wreaths.Footnote ¹⁸⁵ Other contests rewarded the winners with items of high material value “to lure elite contestants to participate”Footnote ¹⁸⁶: At the Panathenaic Games, for instance, the winners received an extraordinary amount of amphorae filled with olive oil,Footnote ¹⁸⁷ in Argos victors were awarded bronze shields,Footnote ¹⁸⁸ in Pellene, they received coats (chlainai),Footnote ¹⁸⁹ and at a festival in honor of Apollo Triopios near Knidos (as well as at several other games), winners got bronze tripods.Footnote ¹⁹⁰ Even living animals (athla empsycha) or a special share of the sacrificial meat were given as prizes.Footnote ¹⁹¹

Taken as a whole, the variety of different prizes seems to have grown in proportion to the number of athletic festivals in the Hellenistic period. Therefore, the changes in the “agonistic market”Footnote ¹⁹² brought about some changes in the nature of athletic prizes as well. Prizes that had been an integral part of athletic festivals right from the beginning became a characteristic element of the games, since they were used to define the status of a contest (agon stephanites vs. thematikos agon) and sometimes even lent their name to the festival (“Shield of Argos”). That way they became an emblem or – in the case of Argos – even a metaphorical expression for the contest.Footnote ¹⁹³ In sum, we should keep in mind that ancient reality was more complex than the binary opposition “crown games” vs. “money games” suggests, and that this opposition is based on ancient terminology that implies that the nature of the prize, at least symbolically, mattered greatly at the time.

Yet, the prizes awarded by the organizers of the festivals are only one side of the story. The other is represented by honors and financial rewards the victors received from their hometowns.Footnote ¹⁹⁴ They included a celebratory entrance into the city, monetary rewards, honorary statues,Footnote ¹⁹⁵ and privileges such as the ateleia, proedria, and honorary citizenship or membership of the council. The precise nature of the privileges as well as the amount of the rewards were defined by civic laws of the respective hometowns. Although the mere existence of such laws is already attested for in the Classical period,Footnote ¹⁹⁶ they seem to have been systematized no earlier than in the Hellenistic period.Footnote ¹⁹⁷ It is especially the financial rewards for successful athletes given by their hometowns that demonstrate that the symbolic and economic aspects of athletic prizes were inextricably linked. This is yet another indication for the observation that “fame and money” did not “circulate well separated from each other”Footnote ¹⁹⁸ in the world of Greek athletics.

Generally, the community that organized the games was responsible for awarding the athletes their prizes and for reimbursing them for all other costs at the place of competition. In practice, the funds derived from a variety of sources including not only the civic treasury but also sacred property, endowments, public subscriptions, and contributions of agonothetai or other benefactors.Footnote ¹⁹⁹ For several cities, the obligation to fund festivals became a financial burden in the Hellenistic period. This is, at least in part, why the institution of the agonothesia, together with other forms of private benefaction like the gymnasiarchia, spread and flourished in this age.Footnote ²⁰⁰ However, it seems that the sums that were actually paid by Hellenistic agonothetai, as we find them mentioned in honorific decrees and in the benefactors’ reports submitted to the civic authorities (apologiai), were usually not very high.Footnote ²⁰¹ It is true that an agonothetes like Eurykleides son of Eurykleides from Kephisia spent the exorbitant sum of seven talents for the organization of one or more unknown Athenian festival(s).Footnote ²⁰² Others like Nikogenes son of Nikon from Philaides and Miltiades son of Zoïlos from Marathon likewise invested enormous amounts of money when they had become agonothetai of the Theseia of 161/60 (Nikogenes)Footnote ²⁰³ and 155/54 (Miltiades),Footnote ²⁰⁴ respectivelyFootnote ²⁰⁵; and the same applies to Polemaios and Menippos of Kolophon whose “magnitude of their outlay” for the Klaria of Kolophon “in all probability would have made them stand out even among the most generous public benefactors of Hellenistic cities.”Footnote ²⁰⁶

Yet such expenses seem to have represented an exception rather than the rule in this period, as Zinon Papakonstantinou has recently argued.Footnote ²⁰⁷ The vast majority of Hellenistic agonothetai did not spend much of their own money but rather “acted as financial managers”Footnote ²⁰⁸ of the funds provided by civic authorities and gave some extra money on top.Footnote ²⁰⁹ Some of the resources provided for the agonothetai actually appeared as what we call today earmarked funds.Footnote ²¹⁰ In the Roman Imperial period, then, the role of agonothetai does not seem to have changed fundamentally.Footnote ²¹¹

But whatever the general amount Hellenistic agonothetai usually paid for, the remaining evidence shows that they did not regularly cover “the entire bill.”Footnote ²¹² We can see this in cases where an agonothetes actually paid for all the expenses of a festival ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων, because such lavishness was proudly emphasized in the honorific decreesFootnote ²¹³ and thus did not represent common behavior. In most of the cases, however, the best agonothetes seems to have been the one who gave the most on top of what he had received from the local authorities. This is where the competitive aspect of the matter comes into play, since the generosity and the success of an agonothetes could be measured by contrasting what he “was expected to contribute (…) to how much he ended up actually spending.”Footnote ²¹⁴ This, in consequence, could be compared to what his predecessors and successors had been and would be ready to invest.

So what kind of activities was funded by the additional money from the agonothetai? In addition to the regular victory prizes,Footnote ²¹⁵ agonothetai paid for the costs of the sacrificial victims,Footnote ²¹⁶ or the meals of officials and victorious athletes.Footnote ²¹⁷ They covered the attendance fees (symboloi)Footnote ²¹⁸ and sponsored the spectators’ meals.Footnote ²¹⁹ Some even paid for everything that was necessary for the conduct of the athletic games.Footnote ²²⁰ All in all, the growing diversity of athletic contests in the Hellenistic period brought about a striking variety in the duties and responsibilities of Greek agonothetai which grew more complex in this age.

Yet, not only did the spectrum of possible expenditures sponsored by an agonothetes become more complex; the same is true for the resources of athletic festivals. For a prestigious – and expensive – contest like the third-century Asklepieia of Kos, the enormous amount of 60,000 drachmae was raised by public subscriptions of about 260 individuals.Footnote ²²¹ In another case, we hear of a board of agonothetai which was in charge of a contest collectively organized by several cities.Footnote ²²² But there was still room for increased complexity in Roman Imperial times: For instance, daily allowances for the spectators of athletic festivals are not attested for before the first century AD. What is more, the emergence of the agonothesia dia biou as a notable phenomenon also belongs to this period.Footnote ²²³

Taken as a whole, the agonothesia clearly flourished in this period, even if it did not represent a completely new institution. It thus belongs to the elements of the framework of Greek athletics that did not see a decline, but rather some further development. Being an agonothetes, entailed “an opportunity to shine” and included some “political capital”Footnote ²²⁴ for the benefactor. This is why we find some of the most renowned Hellenistic politicians and members of the royal families among the agonothetai.Footnote ²²⁵

2.6 Providing the “Infrastructure” of Hellenistic Athletics: The Hellenistic Gymnasia

In contrast to Hellenistic athletics in general, the Hellenistic gymnasion is comparatively well studied.Footnote ²²⁶ Recent research has shown that its most prominent aspect is probably how widely the gymnasion spread in the Hellenistic world. We find Hellenistic gymnasia not only in the regions that had already belonged to the Greek world in the Archaic and Classical periods such as the Peloponnese, Central and Northern Greece, the Aegean and Asia Minor, Southern Italy and Sicily, Southern France, the Cyrenaica, and the Black Sea region but also in the newly established Hellenistic settlements of Egypt and the Near East.Footnote ²²⁷ Even non-Greek settlements such as Jerusalem and Tyriaion in Phrygia had a gymnasion in the Hellenistic period,Footnote ²²⁸ and we know of a gymnasion contest in Babylon at the end of the second century.Footnote ²²⁹ Yet it actually is as far East as in Alexandria on the Oxus (Ai Khanoum in modern Afghanistan) that French archaeological excavations brought to light “one of the largest gymnasia.”Footnote ²³⁰ Thus the spread of the Hellenistic gymnasion reached almost as far as Alexander’s military campaign.Footnote ²³¹ In sum, it can be stated that the margins of Greek athletics also constituted the margins of the Hellenistic world.

The geographical spread of the Hellenistic gymnasion went hand in hand with a monumentalization of the gymnasion as a building type which started in the fourth centuryFootnote ²³² and clearly included its sculptural decoration.Footnote ²³³ Yet the Hellenistic gymnasion did not only spread as a type of building,Footnote ²³⁴ it also expanded with regard to its significance: In the Hellenistic age, it increasingly became the place of a universal paideia of body and mind.Footnote ²³⁵ That way it turned into “a characteristic institution of Greek political communities”Footnote ²³⁶ and a marker of Greek identity from an internal as well as from an external point of view. The well-known fact that the Greeks practiced athletics nakedly made them stand out from non-Greeks all the more.Footnote ²³⁷ In Hellenistic Egypt, a part of the population, the members of the Greco-Macedonian ruling class, even called themselves “the people from the gymnasion” (hoi apo or ek tou gymnasiou) at times.

The gymnasion is one of the characteristic places of a Hellenistic polis.Footnote ²³⁸ According to Plutarch, it does not necessarily appear among the constitutive elements of a Greek polis,Footnote ²³⁹ but we may wonder whether it wasn’t in fact constitutive for a city. From the perspective of the non-Greek inhabitants of Tyriaion and Jerusalem, the (successful) attempt at raising the status of their settlement to that of a polis quite naturally included the construction of a gymnasion.Footnote ²⁴⁰ The institution was of essence when it came to the question of how to build a polis, and it was therefore essential for the identity of Hellenistic cities.Footnote ²⁴¹ So it is with good reason that Louis Robert coined the term of the “second agora”Footnote ²⁴² because it reflects the importance of the gymnasion for the political community so well.Footnote ²⁴³ Yet there were other aspects to the gymnasion: following Harry Pleket, it primarily represented “the infrastructure of Greek athletics”Footnote ²⁴⁴ in that it provided “the training ground for athletes, who competed first in local contests held at gymnasia and as part of urban festivals and subsequently, if they had sufficient talent and ambition, in higher level games.”Footnote ²⁴⁵ Elaborating on this thought, the gymnasion constituted a prerequisite for any advanced level of athletic competition. In terms of athletics, the gymnasion stood for everyday sporting activities and lower-level competition, whereas top-level athletics were found at games with an “international” catchment area.Footnote ²⁴⁶

Who practiced at a Hellenistic gymnasion then? It is certainly true that we cannot understand the Hellenistic gymnasion as a monolithic block, an institution that was the same in each and every Hellenistic town.Footnote ²⁴⁷ But there were characteristics Hellenistic gymnasia shared that extended beyond the local particularities. As for the question of who trained in Greek gymnasia, we have to take into account local differences. On a more general level, however, some basic observations are possible.

The main user groups of the gymnasion were the age classes of the ephebes and neoi who trained there usually for a year.Footnote ²⁴⁸ There has been a lively debate on the question of whether “the ideology of the gymnasium”Footnote ²⁴⁹ represented by disciplines such as eutaxia, eukosmia,Footnote ²⁵⁰ and euandria and values such as sophrosyneFootnote ²⁵¹ and philagathia reflected an active role of the practitioners in civic defense.Footnote ²⁵² If so, the neoi might have actually performed “an important civic role by supplying manpower for a city’s citizen army rather than merely being young men between 20–30 years of age”.Footnote ²⁵³ In my opinion, the fact that the paramilitary disciplines such as katapaltes or hoplomachia constituted a characteristic phenomenon of the Hellenistic period is a strong argument in support of this view.

But it is also evident that the ephebes and neoi were not the only groups present at the gymnasion.Footnote ²⁵⁴ People of all age groups used it on a regular basis, and there was a long lasting, if not lifelong, close bond between the citizens of a polis and their gymnasion. For Pellene, for instance, we hear of an obligatory participation in the gymnasion for everyone who wanted to be registered in the citizenship lists.Footnote ²⁵⁵ We can thus confidently assume that usually all male citizens, sometimes foreigners as well,Footnote ²⁵⁶ practiced athletics in the cities’ gymnasia.

This, however, does not mean that all male inhabitants of a polis were allowed to exercise there. It is the famous gymnasiarchic law from Beroia that gives us detailed information on social groups that could be excluded from the gymnasion:

So the people who had no access to Beroia’s gymnasion can be categorized into eight groups: slaves, freedmen and their sons, disabled persons (apalaistroi), male prostitutes, craftsmen, drunks, and lunatics (mainomenoi) were excluded.Footnote ²⁵⁸ Women would have constituted the eighth group if we consider that only gender-specific (male) terms appear in the law.Footnote ²⁵⁹ All those groups clearly represented “people on the fringes of Greek sport.”Footnote ²⁶⁰ Yet they were not all necessarily forbidden to enter the gymnasion. Slaves, for instance, although usually excluded from all athletic training and competition except from horse racesFootnote ²⁶¹ where they were hired as jockeys and drivers,Footnote ²⁶² were always present at the gymnasion, but “they were doing things other than sports,”Footnote ²⁶³ such as working as palaistrophylakes or paidagogoi.Footnote ²⁶⁴ It is interesting to note that not the building itself, but the activity of undressing and practicing athletics divided the free and the unfree parts of the population here, as Christian Mann has rightly pointed out.Footnote ²⁶⁵

The fact that freedmen and their sons and even “those engaged in commercial craft” were excluded from Beroia’s gymnasion shows that not all citizens were allowed to enter on a regular basis. A similar passage of the recently published ephebarchic law from Amphipolis points in the same direction. Here the access to the gymnasion is restricted to “those being worthy” (τοῖς ἐν τοῖς τειμήμασιν οὖσιν).Footnote ²⁶⁶ Nevertheless, it remains hard to decide to what extent generalizations are possible on the basis of Beroia’s case. For example, it does not seem to be mere chance that the freedmen appear as a category in its own right in a city that had one of the most voluminous collections of manumissions that has survived from Greek antiquity.Footnote ²⁶⁷ However, this does not imply that freedmen were usually allowed to participate in other Greek gymnasia. We might expect rather the opposite. Whether or not we believe that the provisions cited earlier were representative for the situation in most Hellenistic gymnasia, the law from Beroia provides insight into the world of a Northern Greek gymnasion at the beginning of the second century. Similar laws probably existed in almost all Greek poleis that had a gymnasion.Footnote ²⁶⁸

Yet it is not only from the law from Beroia that we know about the functions of Hellenistic gymnasiarchs. Honorary decrees for gymnasiarchs are very helpful in this regard as well. We have already seen that the principal of a gymnasion often acted as a rich benefactor. In this capacity, the role could also be assumed by a wealthy woman able to cover the necessary expenses.Footnote ²⁶⁹ According to Olivier Curty, the main function of a gymnasiarch was to provide the oil for the athletic training, a task that constituted one of his most important duties.Footnote ²⁷⁰ In a late second-century decree from Sestos, for instance, the Greek citizens of the polis practicing athletics are referenced by the term οἱ μετέχοντες τοῦ ἀλείμματος (“the people who have a share in the oil”).Footnote ²⁷¹ The fact that the oil used by the athletes in order to anoint themselves prior to the training becomes a metaphor for athletics itself shows how important a task the provision of the oil was. Yet it was certainly not the gymnasiarch’s only duty: He also oversaw the administration of the gymnasion, was in charge of its embellishments, and enforced discipline among the ephebes and neoi.Footnote ²⁷² He provided the training equipment (including weapons),Footnote ²⁷³ hired teachers and coaches, and set the curricula.Footnote ²⁷⁴ He took care of the water supply of the gymnasion and organized and sponsored repairs of the buildings,Footnote ²⁷⁵ but, most importantly, he oversaw the funds he received from the city. The gymnasiarchic law of Beroia indicates that the gymnasiarch’s monetary function was essential. The last part of the inscription is all about money and about the question of what had to be done if the funds were not properly overseen.Footnote ²⁷⁶ All in all, the variety of the gymnasiarch’s functions was exceptionally high even compared to other polis officials.Footnote ²⁷⁷

However, the gymnasiarch did not do everything on his own, but had several helpers including paidonomoi and ephebarchs.Footnote ²⁷⁸ All his functions were part of a form of gymnasiarchia that dominated in the Hellenistic world, although it was not the only one known to the Greeks. As Christof Schuler has shown, we have to distinguish this form of gymnasiarchia from an older, rather liturgical one that we know in particular from Athens and which, most of all, included the function of lampadarchia.Footnote ²⁷⁹ A gymnasiarch responsible for the lampadarchia primarily organized the training of teams for the torch races of a particular festival and gave the money for this event.Footnote ²⁸⁰ The dominating form of gymnasiarchia in the Hellenistic period, however, was a yearly office.Footnote ²⁸¹ Gymnasiarchs were elected by the assembly,Footnote ²⁸² swore an oathFootnote ²⁸³ when they took on their duty, and had to give account of their actions when their year of office was over.Footnote ²⁸⁴ The gymnasiarchia consequently appears as an ἀρχή in our sources.Footnote ²⁸⁵ In Beroia, there was even an age requirement for the position: A gymnasiarch had to be between 30 and 60 years old.Footnote ²⁸⁶

To sum up, the gymnasiarchia was another element of the framework of Greek athletics that clearly flourished in the Hellenistic period.Footnote ²⁸⁷ By developing from a liturgy into an elected office, the gymnasiarchia became a “state institution” at the beginning of the Hellenistic age.Footnote ²⁸⁸ Again, it should not be suggested that the gymnasion and the gymnasiarchia remained the same during the Hellenistic period. From the late second century onwards, honorific decrees for Greek benefactors increased in number and became more and more elaborate. The growing number of exceptionally wealthy and generous benefactorsFootnote ²⁸⁹ seems to have brought about a change in the history of the Hellenistic gymnasion. Yet the phenomenon of the great benefactors of the second and first centuries has been interpreted very differently by modern research. Whereas some scholars see a change in the epigraphic habit and tend to emphasize the aspect of continuity,Footnote ²⁹⁰ others do believe that the phenomenon reflected a changing reality in which the number of benefactors, the degree of their honors, and the amount of their expenses increased because Greek city states had become politically dependent and were reliant on an increasing number of rich benefactors who dominated the scene.Footnote ²⁹¹

As for now, the state of research can be characterized as follows: Although some lavish and politically influential benefactors already belonged to the third century,Footnote ²⁹² the bulk of evidence actually points to the Late Hellenistic period; and although we should not overemphasize a process of “aristocratization” and must certainly be aware of different developments in the various Greek city states,Footnote ²⁹³ it nevertheless cannot be denied that the wars of the second and first centuries had an impact on the financial situation and hence on the domestic political life of Late Hellenistic poleis.Footnote ²⁹⁴

Later in this study, we shall return to the question of how much the athletes were concerned by these new political developments of the Late Hellenistic period. We will try to answer the question whether, from the point of view of the athletes, these changes actually constituted a watershed in Hellenistic athletics or if we must rather emphasize the continuities with the fourth, third, and early second centuries.

2.7 Supporting the Athletes: The Onset of Talent Promotion in the Third Century

Having looked into new developments in the sphere of the Hellenistic gymnasion, let us now turn to another aspect of athletic training in the Hellenistic age. According to the surviving evidence, a stately (and sometimes privately) funded talent promotion set in in the third century. This novelty can be observed on three different levels: the level of the kings, the level of the cities, and the level of private patrons.Footnote ²⁹⁵

The first example known to us is found in the Histories of Polybius who tells an interesting story about the Olympic boxing finals of 216. One of the opponents, the famous superstar Kleitomachos of Thebes, had the reputation “of being an invincible athlete.”Footnote ²⁹⁶ To “put an end to it,” king Ptolemy IV Philopator is said to have trained “Aristonikos the boxer, who was thought to have unusual physical capabilities for that kind of thing (…) with extraordinary care, and sent to Greece.”Footnote ²⁹⁷ We will deal with this passage in more detail later, but it is already clear that the Ptolemaic king’s “care” for an unknown athlete is striking. The care was part of the vivid interest the dynasty took in athletics in general.Footnote ²⁹⁸ The intention was to show the Greeks that the Ptolemies, although kings over Egypt, still belonged to the Greek world. The financial support for Aristonikos was part of this strategy. And yet, Ptolemy did not choose the easy way out: Unlike other sole rulers before him, he did not make efforts to attract an already famous and successful athlete.Footnote ²⁹⁹ His “aim was not to recruit a champion” here, “but to develop a future star.”Footnote ³⁰⁰

In the same century, a wealthy entrepreneur named Zenon resided in Egypt and had excellent relations to the Ptolemaic court.Footnote ³⁰¹ His extensive papyrus archive containing more than 1,000 documents includes a letter that is dated to before 5 May 257. After the salutation, the letter sets in as follows:

At the end of the letter, we find the plea for a mattress (stromation),Footnote ³⁰³ “a trunk for six drachmae”Footnote ³⁰⁴ and “two jars of honey.”Footnote ³⁰⁵ In another version of the letter, this plea is complemented by the request for a shirt (chiton) and a cloak (himation), among other things.Footnote ³⁰⁶ The letter’s sender, a certain Hierokles, was the principal of a palaistra in Alexandria. A young athlete called Pyrrhos trained there, and apparently Zenon wanted to hear what Hierokles had to say about the boy’s progress. According to the letter, Pyrrhos’ coach Ptolemaios was positive about the boy’s prospects and stated that Pyrrhos would outrank his training partners in the future.Footnote ³⁰⁷ The fact that Pyrrhos obviously needed financial and material support shows that he originated from the lower strata of society. He obviously had not regularly attended the gymnasion before because he had developed a training deficit in comparison with other young athletes.Footnote ³⁰⁸ However, Zenon’s motivation to make the boy’s training possible was not altruistic. He was not so much interested in athletic training itself.Footnote ³⁰⁹ He rather aimed at having a share in the athletic glory that Pyrrhos was likely to earn in the time to come by supporting the athlete financially.Footnote ³¹⁰

It seems that Pyrrhos was not the only youngster who received financial or material support from Zenon: In another letter sent to him by a certain Zenodoros,Footnote ³¹¹ Zenodoros thanks Zenon for a cloak that his brother Dionysios had received from the wealthy benefactor. Dionysios had recently won in an unnamed contest at the “games of Ptolemy on Sacred Island.” Now Zenodoros asks for another, softer, cloak for his brother who wanted to compete at the Arsinoeia. The discipline of Dionysios’ victory is not mentioned, but it is clear that he was either an athlete or a performer. Last but not least, there is evidence in Zenon’s archive for the existence of “an aspiring musician in need of a new instrument to complete his musical training and compete successfully.”Footnote ³¹² The same musician, Herakleotes, also asked for a monthly stipend of food, wine, and – perhaps – clothing.Footnote ³¹³ We cannot say for sure whether or not Herakleotes received what he had asked for, but Zenon definitely seemed to have been the right man to address, if you were in need of such a favor.

Yet it was not only Hellenistic kings and private benefactors who took care of the talent promotion of young athletes. A similar case is attested in early third-century Ephesos,Footnote ³¹⁴ where a fragmentary inscription records an official decree of the polis stating that the city shall finance the training and travelling of a young athlete called Athenodoros son of Semon.Footnote ³¹⁵ The winning argument of the application submitted by his coach Therippides is that Athenodoros had already been successful and that even greater athletic victories were to be expected in the time to come. So the decree explicitly and self-confidently states that “he will win more competitions.”Footnote ³¹⁶

It is interesting to note that we encounter the name of the coach here, since trainers were not frequently named in the context of Greek athletics – they were considered hirelings.Footnote ³¹⁷ Yet there were exceptions. Especially in a “technical discipline” like wrestling, coaches were of prevailing importance. Thus it comes as no surprise that it was an Olympic champion in wrestling, a certain Kratinos from Achaian Aigeira, who “asked the Eleans for permission to set up a statue of his trainer at Olympia in addition to his own.”Footnote ³¹⁸ Such a gesture, however, was an unusual undertaking, and Pausanias, our source of reference for this story, explicitly emphasizes that Kratinos was famous for his superior wrestling technique.Footnote ³¹⁹ Consequently, Kratinos may have depended on his coach to a degree that was higher than usual. Also, there is additional evidence that the prestige of coaches in the Hellenistic period increased. When Antipatros from Bouthroton won the Olympic stadion race of 136 and was announced by the herald as an Epirotan, “this was so important for the whole community that they honored his trainer from Teos with the proxeny.”Footnote ³²⁰

However, the growing prominence of athletic coaches in the Hellenistic period cannot be taken as a general rule – it may have had to do with another observation, namely that there were more athletes originating from the lower strata of society in this epoch.Footnote ³²¹ Although it is true that we do not know much about Athenodoros’ social background, the simple fact that he received financial support from the polis suggests that he did not come from a well-off family. So Athenodoros is awarded no fewer than “a sports scholarship covering the expenses for trainers and for travels to competitions”Footnote ³²² here. Yet this was not all he received from the polis. As another Ephesian inscription shows, Athenodoros was also officially naturalized in the city and received the same privileges as other Ephesian nemeonikai. In the words of the decree:

It is important to note that Athenodoros’ case is not isolated. A certain Timonax son of Dardanos similarly received financial support from Ephesos at about the same time after his father had applied for sponsorship.Footnote ³²⁴ Therefore, we may actually say that this polis appears as “a pioneer in promoting sports talent.”Footnote ³²⁵ Yet other cities clearly cared about their athletes as well. As we will see later,Footnote ³²⁶ the city of Miletus similarly invested in supporting its most promising athletes with coaches who went along when they travelled to competitions.

To conclude, the third century saw manifold activities of Hellenistic kings, private benefactors, and Greek poleis who were invested in financially and materially supporting athletic talents. We cannot say for sure whether such activities had already taken place earlier, but the bulk of our evidence points to this century and shows that talent promotion at least intensified in this time. We have already seen how crucial the third century was in terms of the foundation of new contests and the construction of athletic facilities. With this in mind, it is not surprising to see sports sponsorship intensify as well. Especially the support of penniless, but promising youngsters with good coaches seems to have been a favorite measure of the century. It is interesting to note that, in addition to the aforementioned chronological concentration of the sources, there is a geographical hub in Asia Minor and Egypt. No doubt, “this was where the decisive sporting innovations originated”Footnote ³²⁷ in the Hellenistic period.Footnote ³²⁸

2.8 Bribing the Opponents: Corruption at Hellenistic Contests

When in 332 the Athenian pentathlete Kallippos was sentenced by the Elian judges to pay a considerable amount of money because he had bribed his competitors, the Athenians took initiative and sent a diplomatic mission headed by one of their most renowned orators, the famous Hyperides, to convince the Elians to withdraw the fine.Footnote ³²⁹ Yet, the Elians stood firm, whereupon the Athenians chose to abstain from participating in the Olympic Games until they were virtually compelled by the Delphic oracle to pay the sum. So in the end, the Athenian efforts did not help: six statues of Zeus (called Zanes in the local Elian dialect) were set up at the entrance of the stadion in Olympia in order to remind every athlete that an Olympic victory must not be bought.Footnote ³³⁰

Kallippos, however, was neither the first nor the only athlete who was convicted for having bribed his competitors at Olympia. Rather, his scandal appears as one case in a series of instances of athletic corruption at Olympia which are reported by Pausanias.Footnote ³³¹ The earliest of these cases of Olympic fraud was initiated by the Thessalian boxer Eupolos, who had bribed three of his competitors in 388. As a fine, he had to pay a sum high enough for the erection of six Zanes statues.Footnote ³³² In addition to the Kallippos scandal, Pausanias reports only one other case of Olympic corruption that happened during the Hellenistic period, when the wrestler Philostratos from Rhodes bribed his opponent Eudelos.Footnote ³³³

Until at least the middle of the 1970s, classical research has interpreted the Olympic fraud scandals reported by Pausanias as a clear indication of a moral decline of Greek athletics setting in during the Hellenistic period.Footnote ³³⁴ The idea was that when more athletes from the lower strata of society entered the contests, athletic festivals ceased to be competitions held among aristocrats who were only interested in agonistic glory and who did not care whether there was money to earn. However, this idea is too simplistic a concept and ignores, for instance, that aristocrats remained the driving force for athletic success in most city-states until the Roman period, as Harry W. Pleket has shown.Footnote ³³⁵ We should also bear in mind that Pausanias reports no more than two single occasions of Olympic bribery for the entire Hellenistic age, one in the year 332 and another probably in 68 – there is no evidence for the third and none for the second century. What is more, Pausanias also mentions epigrams found on each of the six statues set up from the fines paid by Eupolos and for Kallippos.Footnote ³³⁶ Three of those statues bore inscriptions in praise of the Elians who must have been proud of their severe actions against bribery. In the early Imperial period (in the year 12), they even sentenced one of their own fellow citizens when Damonikos, father of the wrestler Polyktor from Elis, was fined for having bribed the father of his son’s opponent.Footnote ³³⁷

Such incidents were probably the reason why not only the athletes but also their fathers, brothers, and coaches had to swear a solemn oath.Footnote ³³⁸ This Olympic oath was designed as a countermeasure against athletic malpractice. The idea behind it was to make sure that all athletes abided by the rules. According to its wording and its underlying concept, this oath was one of the most serious ones in the Greek world. Pausanias, who gives the most important testimony of the Olympic oath, is very clear about this aspect:

By explicitly stating that Zeus Horkios had two thunderbolts, Pausanias illustrates that this deity cannot simply be understood as “the externalized form of what we call ‘conscience’,”Footnote ³⁴⁰ as some scholars believe. His main function was to create a severe scenario of serious divine punishment in case of misbehavior, not just to inspire the good in people.Footnote ³⁴¹

But the seriousness of the punishment was not only emphasized on the divine level, it also played a role in the concrete countermeasures against malpractice on the human level. It is striking that we find a penalty in the field of athletics which was usually reserved for slaves in the Greek world: flogging. The fact that this measure was an accepted punishment for freeborn Greeks shows that the issue of malpractice in sport was taken very seriously by the organizing authorities and the Greeks in general.Footnote ³⁴²

All of these penalties and countermeasures, however, were not able to guarantee that malpractice entirely disappeared from Greek athletics. From the Asklepieia of Epidauros, for instance, we know of another instance of bribery. The respective inscription dating to the second century reads as follows:

The expression of “corrupting the competition” (to phtheirein ton agona) is the same term that is found in Plutarch’s account of the Kallippos scandal.Footnote ³⁴⁴ Thus we may deduce from this parallel text that similar malpractices took place at Epidauros. It is noteworthy that bribery extended to the running events (stadion race) here, in which this form of cheating must have been more complicated since more competitors were involved.Footnote ³⁴⁵

In any case, it is true that complaints about widespread corruption increase in our evidence in the Roman Imperial period.Footnote ³⁴⁶ Yet it is also important that we must not “rush to conclude that systematic corruption was therefore a late development in the history of ancient Games.”Footnote ³⁴⁷ Bribery and other forms of athletic malpractice must rather be expected to have been part of sporting competition since the early days of athletics.Footnote ³⁴⁸ The fact that the first Zanes statues were erected in 388 does not mean that they actually witnessed the earliest occasion of athletic bribery at Olympia. Just think of Astylos of Kroton who took money from the tyrant Gelon in order to be announced as a Syracusan citizen some 100 years earlier.Footnote ³⁴⁹

To sum up, corruption occurred at several athletic contests in the Hellenistic period. In some instances, malefactors became even naughtier in the Roman Imperial age. Yet corruption must have been a problem since the days athletics were invented, and if the problem was actually more widespread in later periods of ancient athletics, this development should be understood first and foremost in geographical terms: The entire agonistic landscape had expanded dramatically, which entailed that the opportunities to cheat increased remarkably. Therefore we should not integrate these cases of athletic corruption into a master narrative of moral decline in ancient athletics. Rather, we need to emphasize that the athletic expansion of the fourth and third centuries also included the invention of new mechanisms developed to publicly expose athletic impostors.

2.9 Summary

To put it in a nutshell, the Hellenistic period saw major developments in the framework of Greek athletics: Athletic contests grew in number and spread all over the Greek world that had vastly expanded as a consequence of Alexander’s military campaigns. During the third and second centuries, several contests were able to raise their status to that of an agon stephanites, and athletic facilities of the big four and other contests were considerably extended. Such building activities at the places of competition triggered a process due to which athletic festivals developed more and more into a spectacle. Additionally, the field of athletics grew into what we would call today “mass sports”: Gymnasia proliferated throughout the Greek world and the gymnasion increasingly “became a symbol of Hellenic culture and one of the most important external features of a polis.”Footnote ³⁵⁰ Following the proliferation of the gymnasion in the Hellenistic period, gymnasion agones with new types of athletic contests flourished. In addition to new disciplines, these agones also had a broader variety of age classes. What is more, talent promotion set in on a new level in the third century.

All of this, however, is not to say that everything changed in the field of athletics after Alexander’s campaigns. As it is so often the case in history, demarcations between historical periods should not be understood too rigidly. In our case, some important changes were deeply rooted in the first half of the fourth century and had already set in when Alexander started his military expedition. This is, for instance, true for the “athletic” building activities at the places of competition (stone stadia) and for the emergence of new media that served to record the routes sacred envoys (theoroi) took when they travelled to announce important games. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the general framework of Greek athletics adapted to the changes brought about by the evolution from the comparatively small world of the Late Archaic and Early Classical periods to the enlarged Greek world of the Hellenistic period.