GREEK ATHLETICS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE:

LITERATURE, ART, IDENTITY AND CULTURE



Athletics and Literature in the Roman Empire. By JASON KÖNIG. Cambridge and 

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xix + 398. Cloth, $95.00. 

ISBN 0–521–83845–2.



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Greek Athletics in the Roman World: Victory and Virtue. By ZAHRA NEWBY. 

Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. xiv + 314. Cloth, 

$150.00. ISBN 0–19–927930–6.



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Print Version (forthcoming): CJ 103.1: 107-13



Recently the study of ancient athletics, once a lesser and even suspect 

subfield, has become attractive for the burgeoning research on Greek 

culture under the Roman Empire. These two ambitious studies both derive 

from British dissertations (Newby’s with Jas Elsner, König’s with Simon 

Goldhill), and have overlapping concentrations and complementary strengths. 

Together, König’s literary study, enriched by epigraphical evidence, and 

Newby’s art historical study, enriched by relevant texts, reveal the 

sophistication and complexities of textual and visual representations of 

Greek athletics in the Empire. N. discusses some of the same authors (e.g., 

Lucian, Dio, Philostratus) as K., but less extensively, and both have a 

chapter on Pausanias. N. devotes three chapters to Rome and the West, which 

K. covers in one. Convincing and extremely well-read, the authors establish 

significant reinterpretations of later athletic history, art and 

literature.

 

Rejecting a traditional focus on Classical Greece and actual athletic 

practices, these scholars investigate the experiences, 

self-representations, identifications and cultural significance of 

athletics under the Empire. Charging that older studies made uncritical, 

piecemeal use of later sources to support scenarios of athletic decline or 

Roman opposition and corruption, they declare that we must appreciate the 

contemporary cultural discourse and diverse agendas that inspired and 

fashioned later athletic commemorations and representations. Expanding on 

the works of Louis Robert and recent scholarship, the authors show the 

continuing significance of athletics, altered but still vital, different 

but not degenerate, in the lives of later Greek individuals and cities. 

Athletics, and not just intellectual endeavors, remained fundamental to 

Greek ethnicity and the Hellenic tradition under the Empire. Athletic art, 

facilities and festivals were popular and prominent in the 

self-representation of cities, competitors, patrons and intellectuals. 

Simultaneously attractive and controversial, athletics were a central 

subject of cultural debate and productivity, as later Greeks felt compelled 

to negotiate with and appropriate early traditions. Further, while never 

threatening Roman spectacles, from the time of Augustus athletics became an 

increasingly popular form of public entertainment in the West itself. After 

a substantial Introduction, each of König’s next six chapters, all over 40 

pages long, moves from an examination of some athletic institution (e.g., 

education in the gymnasium) and its textual representation toward a 

detailed reinterpretation of a single major text or set of texts. K. 

selects texts that reveal athletics as a high-status activity in civic life 

and festival culture, and a locus of conflicted elite self-identification 

and self-perception, as well as of broader cultural controversies about 

education, bodies, civic virtue and the Hellenic tradition. Relishing the 

variety and complexity of representations and assessments of athletics, he 

shows that diverse literary and epigraphical representations (e.g., Galen’s 

writings and the inscriptions of the famous pankration victor Markos 

Aurelios Asklepiades) shared language, idioms, ambiguities and tensions, as 

they were entangled with cultural controversies and the self-representation 

and cultural self-scrutiny of their authors. In Chapter 1, “Introduction,” 

K. situates himself within the scholarship and establishes his interpretive 

premises. Preferring “Imperial period” to Philostratus’ “Second Sophistic,” 

which denigrates both athletics and later Greek literature, K. charges that 

earlier scholars (e.g., E.N. Gardiner, H.A. Harris), using later texts 

without adequate consideration of rhetorical contexts, internal tensions 

and wider cultural polemics, underestimated the significance of athletics 

in elite identity, education and masculine self-display. In contrast, K. 

applies recent studies of rhetoric, representation, identity and bodily 

display to athletics, and, like New Historicists, reads claims, valuations 

or assertions as contestations that indicate alternative opinions or rival 

claims to identity and status. Declaring that “culture” lacks objective 

reality and is an ideal presented and imagined in different ways for 

multiple purposes, he sees identities, cultures and texts not as 

monolithic, but as contested, unstable and ambiguous. For K., 

identification—the suggesting of individual, local, professional or broad 

Hellenic identities—involves the “never-ending and always partly 

subconscious” (p. 11) negotiation between shared and highly contested 

opinions, between self-confidence and fixity against uncertainty and 

instability. K.’s Introduction, however, grows lengthy when he summarizes 

the history of early athletics and the modern misuse of ancient athletic 

customs, in the first instance to note early social elitism, athletic ties 

to education, and a critical literary tradition, and secondly to suggest 

parallels between the Imperial era and modern times, as representations in 

both ages exaggerate athletic continuities and mix imitation with 

distortion.



Chapter 2, “Lucian and Anacharsis: Gymnasion Education in the Greek City,” 

demonstrates how Lucian reveals the absurdity and irony involved in 

hallowing athletic forms of Hellenic tradition. Lucian satirically 

juxtaposes and undermines two conflicting conventions, one applauding the 

gymnasium for preserving authentic Hellenic traditions and providing 

respite from everyday life, the other rejecting the military or political 

value of gymnastics and mocking archaizing attempts to recreate Classical 

culture. K. explains that gymnasium inscriptions themselves include 

conflicting viewpoints, at times suggesting or denying the practical 

usefulness of athletics, at others stressing connections with or distance 

from agonistic festivals. Chapter 3, “Models for Virtue: Dio’s ‘Melankomas’ 

Orations and the Athletic Body,” with all but one of K.’s 12 illustrations, 

shows that representations of athletes in statues and inscriptions involve 

cultural aspirations and tensions, as they praise victors as beautiful and 

inspiring citizens, but also espouse unattainable ideals of proportion and 

virtue. Similarly, while Dio’s funeral orations for Melankomas seem to 

praise and criticize athletics inconsistently, K. shows how Dio examines 

and reveals persistent problems in his own life and career concerning the 

challenge of combining the virtuous life of philosophy with participation 

in civic and political life. Chapter 4, “Pausanias and Olympic 

Panhellenism,” continues current re-evaluations of Pausanias’ recording, 

ordering and structuring of Olympia as an emblem of Panhellenic culture. K. 

argues that Pausanias’ selection and emphasis of athletic commemorations 

(inscriptions and statues), his “Olympic enumeration as thaumatography” (p. 

174), reflects contemporary tension between attempts to recapture or 

distance the past. Turning to Rome and Latin epic, Chapter 5, “Silius 

Italicus and the Athletics of Rome,” examines the contested place of 

athletics at Rome and in formations of Roman identity. As Rome introduced 

and later institutionalized athletic contests, the Roman elite used 

athletic stereotypes in literature as a “peg” (p. 212) for their own 

cultural self-examination. K. suggests that Silius in Punica 16 added 

violent gladiatorial combat to the Greek funeral game tradition to express 

Roman anxieties about the brutalizing, desensitizing effects on society of 

prolonged exposure to conquest and civil warfare.



Chapters 6, “Athletes and Doctors: Galen’s Agonistic Medicine,” and 7, 

“Philostratus’ Gymnasticus and the Rhetoric of the Athletic Body,” discuss 

doctors, trainers and rival opinions about athletics and proper care of the 

body. Galen, advocating balance and moderate exercises that benefit both 

body and soul, presents the medical profession as a true philosophical art 

in contrast with the fraudulent expertise of avaricious athletic trainers 

who abuse bodies with harmful regimens. For his part, Philostratus defends 

athletic training as an analytical form of wisdom in order to champion the 

value of rhetoric in contemporary cultural self-scrutiny. His ideal trainer 

was a moral representative of Hellenism who, like Philostratus himself, 

could interpret both athletic bodies and the reflection of Hellenic 

traditions in contemporary athletics. K.’s work closes with a brief 

Conclusion, a detailed bibliography and three indices.



Newby’s work, with some 95 helpful illustrations (including nine color 

plates), explores the prominence, significance and social and cultural 

roles of athletics for both Greeks and Romans by focusing especially, 

although not exclusively, on the abundant visual and material evidence. 

Applying art historical expertise to well-selected examples over a broad 

scope, N. demonstrates that athletics were crucial to Greek ethnicity and 

were indeed significant in the West. Like K., she examines athletics in 

constructions of Greek culture and identity, and in negotiations with Roman 

culture and power. Unlike K., she reads athletics as a generally positive 

form of self-fashioning. Later Greeks, while celebrating contemporary 

accomplishments, consciously asserted their Hellenic identity as worthy 

heirs of classical Greece by evoking ennobling links to athletic, 

intellectual and military virtues of the past; and athletics aided an 

ultimately positive interaction between Greek and Roman culture, and 

between Eastern Greeks and the Imperial administration, especially via the 

emperor cult. Her work consists of nine chapters: an Introduction, a 

Conclusion and seven main chapters organized into two parts, on the Roman 

West and the Greek East.



N.’s Introduction asserts the continuity, vitality and centrality of 

athletics in Greek self-representation at the individual, civic and 

regional levels, and in Rome’s perception of Greek culture, in part because 

the majority of athletes were Greek. She outlines the growth and acceptance 

of athletics from Augustus to the Severans as part of the Empire’s 

“spectacle culture” or system of public entertainments, in part because 

movements of peoples from the East brought a more cosmopolitan culture to 

the West. Part One, “Athletics in the Roman West,” discusses the evidence 

for Greek athletic contests at Rome, exercise in baths and athletic 

decorations (mosaics and sculpture) in villas. Chapter 2, “Greek Athletics 

in the Heart of Rome,” details the introduction of athletics in Roman 

spectacles from 186 BC on, the patronage and festivals of Augustus and 

Nero, major developments with Domitian’s stadium and his festival of 86, 

continued support under the Antonines and a zenith under the Severans, 

notably Alexander Severus, a “keen athlete” (pp. 63, 74–5), and Julia 

Domna. N. declares that the Romans gradually but enthusiastically accepted 

athletics, and that, in addition to mosaics and monuments, literary 

criticisms of athletics, as in Juvenal and Tacitus, show popularity rather 

than opposition. She concedes that, with different ideological values, few 

Romans went beyond watching contests or exercising in baths, and she 

explains how Rome carefully controlled athletics by imperial supervision 

(e.g., of officials and pensions), locating the synod headquarters at Rome 

and inserting Roman festivals into the hierarchy of Panhellenic crown 

games. Chapter 3, “Visualizing Athletics in the Roman Baths,” examines 

numerous athletic scenes in mosaics from baths in Italy (e.g., Ostia, 

Pompeii), Western provinces and the Baths of Caracalla at Rome. Beginning 

with Agrippa’s baths in the Campus Martius, N. suggests public baths with 

palaestra areas encouraged exercise and athletic training, and bathers, 

drawn by the exotic and erotic Greek allure, appreciated and associated 

with the activities depicted in mosaics and statues, even imagining 

themselves as the athletic “stars” of the day. She notes similar interests 

in Gallia Narbonensis and North Africa, in cities like Massilia with Greek 

roots, or those, like Gafsa, with aspiring local elites or imperial 

patronage, but she admits that the rest of the West was less enthusiastic. 

Chapter 4, “Idealized Statues in Roman Villas,” examines the fashion of 

decorating bathing areas or peristyles of villas, especially those 

constructed under Domitian and Hadrian, with carefully selected and 

arranged copies of idealized Classical Greek statues. Statues of athletes 

with strigils suited bath complexes, and the beauty and eroticism of 

pentathletes’ bodies enhanced the popularity of images of discus throwers. 

Statues evoked the Classical gymnasium, but the activities nearby were more 

mental than physical.



Part Two, “Athletics and Identity in the Greek East,” demonstrates the 

importance of athletic festivals and ephebic education for claims to status 

and cultural identity. Chapters 5, “Training Warriors: The Merits of a 

Physical Education,” and 6, “The Athenian Ephebeia: Performing the Past,” 

discuss ephebic training, contests and festivals in Athens and Sparta as 

evidenced by texts, inscriptions and commemorations (e.g., herms, stelai, 

dedications). N. reads later ephebic contests and military performances 

(e.g., Athenian naval mock battles and parades in armor recalling Salamis 

and Marathon, Spartan whipping contests promoting courage and endurance) as 

evocations of past glories and incitements to traditional virtues and 

values. Using inscriptions, Lucian and Pausanias, she argues that later 

Greeks saw the ephebic training of cadets as essential for producing fit, 

beautiful and patriotic soldier-citizens—even during the Pax Romana. In 

Chapter 7, “Olympia and Pausanias’ Construction of Greece,” N., like K., 

discusses both Pausanias’ attention to Archaic and Classical victor 

monuments at Olympia in his construction of a Panhellenic past, and the 

enduring value of victor statues for civic claims to identity and 

achievement. Chapter 8, “Gymnasia, Festivals, and Euergetism in Asia 

Minor,” discussing various locations (e.g., Aphrodisias, Hierapolis, Side), 

but focusing mostly on sculpture in the gymnasia at Ephesus, shows the 

desire by donors of facilities, decorations and festivals to publicize 

their status and ethnicity. As opportunistic individuals and rival 

communities, with roots of varying depths, Eastern Greeks sought validation 

and advancement. Honors for recent athletic victors, like cults to ancient 

victors, represented positive links between past and present. Euergetism 

also assisted the accommodation or solicitation of Roman imperial rule, as 

in the foundation of sacred crown festivals, for which the emperor was 

consulted, received acclamations and was flattered in monuments and coins. 

Rather than resistance or domination, N. paints a picture of assimilation 

and negotiation, as Greeks, especially elite patrons and fathers of 

ephebes, asserted their superior cultural identity, but accepted imperial 

patronage and supervision. A summarizing Conclusion, bibliography and index 

complete the volume.



I offer a quibble and a caution. The essential Greek meaning of “athletics” 

concerns physical contests for prizes, but both K. and N. use “athletics” 

broadly to include bathing, private exercise, personal care of the body and 

relaxation at villas. Gymnastic affectations in decorating villas were no 

more athletic than Trimalchio’s “exercises” at the baths, nor do rhetorical 

or Christian metaphorical appropriations of athletic terms and imagery 

constitute athletic activities. Also, as the authors acknowledge, their 

studies concentrate on the urban elite, to which most athletes, ephebes, 

benefactors and intellectuals belonged. Public baths allowed some social 

equalization, but even the magnificence and decoration of baths (or villas) 

do not prove that lowly or rural Romans bathed or exercised regularly. 

Baths and gymnasia may say more about the intentions of donors than the 

habits of the lower classes. Most Romans and non-elite Greeks probably 

continued to experience intense athletics indirectly as viewers of public 

games.



An art historian stressing nostalgia, allusions and idealizing more than 

conflict and ambiguity, N. draws sound conclusions from often-fragmentary 

physical evidence and copies by usually unknown artists. A cultural 

historian elucidating complexities and tensions, K. details highly nuanced 

readings of (generally) complete texts by known authors. Seeking a broader 

audience, both translate documents and summarize arguments made and to be 

made, but each main chapter of both works harnesses well over 100 learned 

footnotes.



Essential for scholars and serious students of ancient literature, art and 

sport, these stimulating works expand, refocus and raise the study of 

athletic art and literature to the level of sophisticated cultural history. 

Both get beneath the surface of documents and decorations, exposing 

Imperial (and modern) layers of reception, perception and representation. 

Like the authors and artists they interpret, K. and N. rewrite history and 

reevaluate culture according to their tastes, tensions and needs; they 

negotiate in their present with the near and distant past, promoting their 

scholarship in rivalry with earlier readings of athletics, and tempting us 

with stimulating new approaches.



DONALD G. KYLE 

University of Texas at Arlington





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