Classics Final Exam

Lecture 17

• Equites: horsemen/knights, fought other horsemen, opening act

• White tunic, brim helmet, manica (arm guard), sword, shield

• Provocator/Challenger: from Republic

• Non-brim visor helmet, neck guard, subligaculum (loincloth), greave on left leg, concave rectangle shield, breastplate

• Thraex/Thracian: only ethnic type

• Sica (curved sword), small oblong shield, manica on right arm, brim helmet with griffin, long quilted leggings

• Hoplomachos: from Greek “hoplite”

• Manica on right arm, long quilted leggings, small concave/circular shield, dagger, spear

• Murmillo: heavily armed

• Helmet with angular crest, large oblong shield
• Parmalarii (fans of little shields, underdogs) vs. Scutarii (fans of big shields). Thraex & small shields usually lose

• Retiarisu/Net Man: not based on military attire, speed/agility to fatigue heavy opponents

• Fuscina (trident), net, dagger, galerus (shoulder protection), manica on left arm, greaves

• Secutor/Pursuer/Contraretarius: made to compete against retarius (became most popular pairing)

• Same equipment as murmillo except helmet (brimless, 2 eyeholes)

• Editor: paid for games, decides winner. Emperor was editor of munera (public works for benefit of Roman people)
• Missio: release from death/forgiveness, left arm/left index

• Stans-missus (while standing) vs. Missus (while not standing)

• History Behind Gladiator
• Marcus Aurelius – brain, “Philosopher” Emperor, ‘Meditations’ (no power over outside events, very little to be happy)
• Commodus (son) – brawn, Emperor, first ruler to dress as Hercules, plays a gladiator in the movie Gladiator

• Cassius Dio (historian) – says his reign went from “kingdom of gold to one of iron and dust”
• Ended munera with a mock death of himself (glory). Senators black, helmet taken from Porta Libitiensis (gate of death)
• Dressed as a secutor, tried to kill new consuls when they took office
• Senate, Praetorian Prefect, mistress conspire – poisoned (did not die), strangled by trainer in bath (died)

• Otium (leisure, free time, retirement) vs. Otium Cum Dignitate (leisure with dignity) vs. Negotium (business)
• Pliny the Younger – lawyer, magistrate, witnessed Mt. Vesuvius eruption
• Island of Thera – Eumastes deadlifted 880 pound rock. Olympia – Bubo lifted 315 pound rock over head 1 hand
• Galen (physician) prescribes shoulder, overhead, and partner-resisted (isometrics) workouts in “On Health”
• Harpastum: small ball game (rugby?)
• Trigon: 3 players (each had one scorer and a ball boy). Keep track of missed catches, lowest score is winner
• Gladiatrix: women did gladiatorial combat (Nero forced women and senators to fight)

• Emperor Severus banned female gladiators

• Luvenes/Luventes: aristocratic youth that were of military training age.

• Revitalized by Augustus to serve as a pre-military youth organization (i.e. Trojan Games)
• Palaestra built in Pompeii, Herculaneum

• Virtus: manliness

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Lecture 18

• Balnea: private owned baths, open to public for fee, primarily for hygiene
• Thermae: large-scale public baths, “hot” (advances in engineering)

• Gaius Maecenas – patron of arts during Augustan, first one to give hot-water pool to the people

• Agrippa (general of Augustus) – first thermae, died and gave baths to the people, damaged in fire and rebuilt

• Originally “hot air bath”/sauna and cold plunge
• Completed Aqua Virgo (supplied Baths of Agrippa)

• Gardens of Maecenas – on graveyard (Esquiline Hill), pool/auditorium/library/tower, emperors took (after death of Maecenas)
• Hypocaust Heating: heated baths, floor raised, furnace under connected to tunnel, up flutes in roof
• Apoxyomenos (“Scraper”) of Lysippos – athlete scraping oil from body, copper/bronze → marble, in front of Baths of Agrippa

• Tiberius removed it to his bedroom, substituted with copy, people demanded it back

• Baths of Titus – son of Vespasian (Colosseum), built in park of Nero, gift to the people
• Baths of Trajan – largest baths, library (Greek Literature, Latin)
• Baths of Caracalla – son of Emperor Septimius (general, power in Year of Five Emperors), gymnasia, shops, library (2nd bath)

• Killed brother Geta, took power for himself
• Started during reign of Septimus Severus, built as propaganda to win favour of people
• Art of athletics in the exedra of Palaestra (realistic portrayal of victorious athletes)
• Roman copies of Greek sculpture

• Farnese Heracles – Heracles at rest on lion skin, by Lysippos, originally bronze, centerpiece of frigidarium, two copies (also holds Apples of Hesperides),major departure from “classical ideal” of other Greek statues

• Caracalla one eye and one hand, lives in house that he destroyed himself, doesn’t acknowledge gods of household

• Baths part of daily life, Egalitarian (elites & non-elites in same water), moral problem (“bath nothing but road to luxury”)
• Baths = Roman tech + ancient Greek traditions (public exercise, nudity)

• Rome conquers Greece
• Sulla sacks treasure at Olympia & Delphi (pay military campaign), moves Olympic to Rome (no Stadion), dies, moved back
• Caesar has first Greek stadium in Campus Martius (for Triumph games)
• Augustus “spectaculum athletarum”

• Actian Games – equestrian, gymnic, gladiators
• Augustalia/Sebasta Games in Naples – iso-olympic, wreaths of wheat as prize (cash for music contest), 30 day training

• Neroneia Games – music/wrestling/equestrian, 5 years, took place only 1 more time, Nero then went to compete in Greece
• Capitoline Games – music/gymnic/equestrian, 4 years, by Emperor Domitian, honored Jupiter, footraces for women

• Domitian constructed first permanent Greek stadium and music hall (odium) in Campus Martius

• Olympic Games in decline        ?        

• Problems – Sulla’s Olympic Games, Nero’s visit to Olympia
• Renaissance of growth – Olympic Games more international (opened to non-Greeks – Asia/Egypt/Africa)

• Construction at Olympia – Augustus starts Emperor Cult (rededicates Metroon, his statue), Leonidaeum (hotel for guests)
• Synods/Synodoi: official, professional athletic guilds
• Iselastic Games – the “stipends” (salary, pay, allowance) of Iselastic Games

• Iselasis: formal entry into city via wall (tearing down wall ritual – with such victors, no need of walls)
• Professional athlete inscription – shit ton Iselastic contests

•  4 Types of Games in Greek:

• 1) Stephanitic/Crown (7) – Capitoline, Actaian, Sebastan, Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, Isthmian
• 2) Iselastic
• 3) Ecumenical/“Iso-Games” (started in Hellenistic Period)
• 4) Private (put on by wealthy patrons)

• Paideia/Education: major source of Elite identity. Athletics became part of this

• Septimius Severus (positive) – daily routine (court, ride horse, gym, remaining duties)
• Geta Severus (positive) – had interests in wrestling and athletic activities
• Caracalla (negative) – violent, forgot all his intellectual training, destroyed everything Geta enjoyed (including athletes)

• Second Sophistic: 1st-3rd centuries CE revival of Greek intellectual tradition of 4th century BCE

• Sophism: wisdom
• Knowledge and virtue could be taught (oratory/rhetoric) and allowed for social mobility
• Elites employed Second Sophist teachers

• Polemo – taught son of Trajan
• Herodes –  taught Marcus Aurelius
• Antipater – taught the Severan emperors
• Philostratus – taught the Severan emperors

• Roman Emperors put their heads on nude athletes (adopt Greek visual paradigms)

 Lecture 19

• Anacharsis (book): strangeness and mockery of ancient athletics, while explaining its logic
• Lucian – rhetorician and satirist (expose/criticize foolishness using humor/irony/ridicule)

• Assyrian (wrote in Greek), traveled Ionia/Italy/Greece/Gaul

• Solon – Athenian stateman, lawmaker, poet

• Reforms in Athens – abolished debts (including slaves),  4 classes (wealth and agriculture – 500 Pentakosiomedimnoi, 300 Hippeis,200  Zeugitai, <200 Thetes), prevented export on agricultural products (except olive oil)
• Left Athens, traveled as wise man, laws not changed for 10 years

• Anacharsis (person) – “Scythian Philosopher”, traveled to Athens to be friends with Solon, first foreigner to get Athenian citizenship, gave “outsider’s perspective” on habits and customs (i.e. strangeness of Greek athletics)
• Ethnographic Surrealism
• Location of conversation between Solon and Anacharsis is in Gym of Apollo

• Hippocrates of Cos – founder of Western medicine

• Illnesses – acute, chronic, endemic, epidemic
• School of Medicine – stressed professionalism and discipline, “Hippocratic Oath” (after his death, take care of patients)
• Hippocratic Corpus – combination of works of Hippocrates and those that followed his works

• Galen of Pergamon – only doctor to improve upon Hippocratic medicine

• Humoral Theory: body has four humours for health/mental, imbalance causes disease (natural not gods) – blood/air, yellow bile/fire, black bile/earth, phlegm/water OR sanguine, choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic
• Interest in anatomy, human dissection banned, worked on monkeys/pigs
• De Motu Musculorum –  motor/sensory nerves, muscle tone, agonists/antagonists
• “That The Best Physician Is Also  A Philosopher” – link between medicine and philosophy
• Opposed athletics coach (gymnastikes) – “who knows body better? Doctor or coach?”
• “Protrepticus” – argument against athletics, exhortation to study the arts

• Tuche: chance
• Techne: skill/craft/form – everybody has to be good at something (animals instinct, humans knowledge)

• Gymnasticus: only surviving handbook of ancient athletic training, response to Galen’s attack on athletics

• Claims that athletics (gymnastike) is not just a techne (skill) but a sophia (wisdom/knowledge). Philostratus says that it is knowledge in both medicine and physical training. A sophia combined with both the technai of medicine + paidotribe (physical education of the young)

• Philostratus – part of the “Second Sophistic” (revival of oratory)
• “First Sophistic” – Gorgias, Critias, others, declamations on philosophical themes “make the weaker argument stronger”
• Paidotribes: the one who wears out the child (through exercise), part of the staff in Gymnasion

• Gymnasiarchos: leader of gym (40-60, elected annually)
• Paidonomos: decides who graduates (over 40)
• Didaskalos: teacher
• Paidotribes: physical trainer, teaches the moves
• Kitharistes: kithara player/instructor

• Why does Philostratus suggest that athletes be compared to an impossible standard represented in sculpture? Improvements
• Tetrad – example of ancient training science, based on general adaptation syndrome

• General Adaptation Syndrome – subjected to stress, body goes through 3 phases (alarm, resistance, exhaustion)
• “Periodization and Supercompensation Cycle”
• 1) Preparation (short, intense) – athlete enters alarm phase, starts resistance
• 2)  Intensity (long, intense) – tests athlete’s capacity, moves to exhaustion
• 3) Recovery – recovery from exhaustion
• 4) Performance – established new base line, work capacity greater than before, skill acquisition

• Why does Philostratus dismiss a method of training that is well grounded in modern science?

• Death of Gerenus – won wrestling Olympics, drank/ate/partied for days before returning to training → told his coach he is “raw and badly disposed”, coach annoyed that he had interrupted the tetrad (no longer had stronger baseline) and still gave him such intense training that it eventually killed him

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Lecture 20

• “Crisis of the 3rd Century” – 25 different emperors ruled Rome (“soldier emperors”)
• Tetrarchy – Diocletian emperor, Maximian co-emperor (“augustus”), Calerius & Constantius “junior co-emperors” (“caesar”)
• Edict Against the Christians – during Diocletian’s reign; prosecution of Christians, scriptures, worship areas

• Edict of Milan – by Constantine and Licinius, end persecution of Christians
• Constantine ruler of East/West empires, converts (first Christian Roman Emperor), Christianity dominant
• Constantine moves capital of Roman Empire to Byzantium (Greek city), renames it Constantinople

• Spectacles used for Christian persecution (i.e. Damnatio ad Bestias) – started with Nero

• Tunica Molesta – wrapped in animal skin, thrown to dog
• In arena, punishment equivalent to worst criminals

• Olympic Games religious festivals of pagan gods, athletics imitated anthropomorphic gods (superbodies), was against Christian “asceticism” (severe self-discipline and avoidance of indulgence)
• Games continued even after Christianity became dominant religion
• Intolerance of polytheistic worship – Constantine orders all gold/silver/other metals to be removed from pagan temples

• Edict (for intolerance) – closure of temples “in all places and cities”, threaten death, confiscate property
• Similar policy by Theodosius I (last emperor before split of Roman Empire)

• 394/393 – popular date for end of Olympics

• Based on Credenus (Byzantine historian) – games ceased at time when Theodosius I died
• Does not say Theodosius ended them, seems games continued and only religious ceremonies ceased
• Statue of Zeus moved to Palace of Lausus in Constantinople (Istanbul)

• Lausus – eunuch at court of Theodosius II, named “guardian of our godly and religious empire”, collected “art” ( religious statues from Greek temples)

• 450 – alternative date for end of Olympics (during Theodosius II), fire caused Eleans to abandon the site

• Olympia ended more slowly
• Polytheistic religion ends but Olympics continued

• Earthquakes cause Olympia to be completely abandoned (old religious site now a new religious site)
• Circus (chariot races) increased, gladiatorial games decreased in popularity

• Greek style athletic events incorporated into chariot racing
• Oxyryhynchus Papyri (6 races) – procession & singing rope dancers → singing rope dancers → dogs chase gazelle → mimes → athletes → 6th race

• Factions spread to other cities (especially Contantinople), treasure official in Constantinople in charge of festivals & horses
• Chariot factions no longer private (public)
• Presidency of provincial games given to imperial officials
• Porphyrius – from Libya/Byzantine raised in Constantinople, first charioteer victory monument while living, abused popularity

• Slaughter of Antioch – lead Greens (faction) to synagogue, killed worshippers
• With Greens, prevented riot against Emperor Anastasius

• Chariot racing linked to imperial power (thus church did not attack chariot racing)
• Hippodrome of Constantinople – symbol of Roman empire (tripod of Platea, obelisk of Thutmosis III, 7 statues of Porphyrius)

• Used until Constantinople sacked

• OVERALL – Christianity did not end ancient sport/spectacle, no real official date for end of Olympics, Olympia abandoned due to earthquakes, gladiatorial games decreased popularity, circus (chariot racing) imperially sponsored

• Greek War for Independence – independence from Ottoman empire, Russia/UK/France, philhellenism (love for Greece)

• Many European & North American aristocrats took up arms (i.e. Lord Byron, English poet of Romantic movement)

• Pangiotis Soutsos – poet and reported, called for revival of Olympics 3 times

•  “Dialogue of the Dead”, “Ruins of Sparta”,  “people would respect Greece if Olympics revived”

• The Zappas Olympics – official revival, inspired by Soutsos

• Zappas – Albanian of Greek descent, hero in Greek War for Independence, fortune in land/agriculture in Romania
• Paid fully, initial rejection by Rangavis (Greek minister)
• 1st (official revival), 2nd (restored Panathenaic stadium in Athens), 3rd (controversial, university students, upper class)

• William Brookes – not really revival, England doctor, established “Olympian Class”, inspired by Soutsos and Zappas

• “International Communication of Revival” – writes to British ambassador in Athens, suggests Greeks adopt his program
• Establishes International Olympian Association in Liverpool (only English)
• London “Olympics” – minor success, protests (only professionals/workers competed & ban on non-aristocrats → origins of amateur athletes participation), various nations

• Pierre de Couertin – pedagogy (education), visited England and saw fields, “sport can create moral/social strength”

• Visited Brookes, does not initially support revival (“no need to invoke memories of Greece”), eventually supports
• Congress of Paris – framed as call for reform → International Olympic Committee, London 1896 (opposed) → Athens 1896, Demetrios Vikelas first elected IOC president

• Athens 1896 – first modern Olympics, April 6-12, Greek Day of Independence, 80000 attended

• Opening ceremonies in newly renovated Panathenaic stadium
• Panathenaic Stadium – original location of ancient, first excavated and re-built for Zappas Olympics, refurbished again
• 14 countries (not Canada), 9 sports (athletics, cycle, fence, gymnastics, shoot, swim, tennis, weightlift, wrestle)
• Men’s Marathon – most notable, by Michel Breal, inspired by Browning’s “Pheidippides”

• Spyridon Louis – Greek water carrier, winner → symbol of Greek identity and freedom
• Spyridon Belokas – 3rd place, disqualified, traveled part of course by carriage

• Female Athletes – women not allowed in 1896

•  Stamata Revithi – ran marathon course day after official marathon (5.5 hours), prevented from entering stadium
• Violet Percy – first female to officially compete in a timed marathon (3.5 hours)
• Joan Benoit – women not part of Olympic marathon till Los Angeles Olympics (2.5 hours)

• “Athletics”

• Track – 100m, 400m, 800m, 1500m, 110 hurdles
• Field – long jump, triple jump, high jump, pole vault, shot put, discus throw
• Discus Throw – first international competition, Robert Garrett (USA, trained with 10kg and quit, found out only 2kg)

• Exception to Principle of Amateurism – fencing (professionals only), Courbertin says “fencers are upper-class”
• Other Events – gymnastics (by Germany), swimming (Bay of Zea), weightlifting (Launceton 1 hand, Launceton & Vigo tie 2 hand)
• Medal Ceremony – 1st place (silver medal, olive branch, diploma), 2nd place (copper medal, laurel branch, diploma)

• Did not receive typical gold/silver/bronze → retroactively awarded gold, silver, bronze medals to winners
• Medal – Zeus holding Nike (front), Athenian Acropolis (back)

• Eugen Sandow – “father of modern bodybuilding”, strongman performer, “living Greek sculpture”, “muscle display”
• Body Culture Movements

• Olympism (dynamic) and Bodybuilding (static), both understand the “impossible ideals” but continue to pursue
• Both influenced by artistic notions of “Hellenism” (“beauty, eurythmia, symmetria”)

• Major excavations of Olympia by German Archaeoloical Institute in Athens

• Temple of Zeus, Temple of Hera, Metroon, Bouleuterion, Philippeion, Echo Stoa, Treasuries, Palaestra
• Museum held artifacts

• Berlin  1936 (“Nazi Olympics”)

• Many countries boycotted, Spain held “People’s Olympiad” for countries that boycotted (“Spanish Civil War”)
• Soviet Union had “Spartakiad” instead (reference to Spartacus)

• Leni Riefenstahl’s “Olympia” – documentary of 1936 Olympics, German film director, Nazi party propaganda

• “Triumph of the Will” – films Nazi Party Congress in Nuremburg
• Paid to film the 1936 Olympics, claims “Olympia” was “for the sake of beauty, not propaganda”

• Torch Race – invented by Berlin Olympics, symbol of world peace or propaganda?
• Jesse Owens – black, many athletic victories in Berlin 1936

• “Snubbed” by Hitler – 1st day, Hitler shook hands with German victors only (IOC said he needs to greet all or none)
• Says he was not snubbed by Hitler, but my his own president (FDR); racism in both Germany and USA

• Athens 2004 (Reclaiming Hellenism) – back to Athens, Greece

• The price of Philhellenism
• Redesigned Gold Medal of 2004