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Arete: Greek Sports from Ancient Sources, Expanded edition

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This collection of excerpts from ancient sources concerning
athletes, athletic contests, skills, prizes, and the
athletic "mystique" is excellent. For it gives a
generous overview from different sources, from different
ancient venues, and from different time periods. The
reader gains a growing sense of the awe and reverence
in which skilled as well as beautiful athletes were
held, both by spectators at the events as well as
through the fame which they gained that was passed
down in inscriptions, statues, poetry, and the
memories of those who heard of their skills and
victories even in distant places.
The excerpts are not excessively long, but they are
highy interesting and instructive. The topics covered
by chapters are: the Earliest Days of Greek Athletics/
Nudity and Equipment/ The Events at a Competition
(Running, Wrestling, Boxing, Pankration, Pentathlon,
Equestrian, Music, Poetry and Prose Composition, Acting,
Painting)/ Organization of a Panhellenic Festival/ Local
Festivals/ Role of the Games in Society/ Women in
Athletics/ Athletes and Heroes/ Ball Playing/ Gymnasion,
Athletics, and Education/ Spread of Greek Athletics in
the Hellenistic Period/ Greek Athletics in the Roman
Period/ Amateurism and Professionalism/ Nationalism
and Internationalism/ Our Ideal and the Reality.
As the author, Stephen Miller, explains in the
"Introduction": "A definition of -arete- would
include virtue, skill, prowess, pride, excellence,
valor, and nobility, but these words, whether taken
individually or collectively, do not [completely]
fulfill the meaning of -arete-." *** "...the word
-arete- still carries with it a notion of ephemeral
excellence and of transient triumph that make its
translation an exceedingly risky business."
In any particular chapter, the sources cited
may include: Pausanias (author of the famous Guide
Book to Greece), statue inscriptions, Athenaeus
(author of the multi-volume -Deipnosophists-,
Scholars at Dinner), Diodorus Siculus, poetic
excerpts from the -Greek Anthology-, Plutarch,
the ancient poet Pindar, Plato's dialogues, Aristotle's
treatises, as well as many other Greek and Roman
sources.
The title which I chose for this review comes from
the chapter titled "The Events at a Competition"
and shows both the striving for excellence,
and the transience of the accomplishment (if
not the fame). The 3 excerpts concern the
athlete Phayllos of Kroton, who was a pentahlete.
Some of the ancient writers thought the pentathlete
was the physically most perfect and beautiful
of the athletic competitors. The excerpts come
from "The Suda", "a lexicon compiled toward the end
of the 10th century after Christ and based upon a
variety of earlier material" [Miller]. As "The
Suda" says: "Beyond the dug-up area": beyond
measure. A metaphor from the pentathlon [jumping
pit]. It is said to come from the pentathlete Phayllos
of Kroton who, when the skammata used to be 50 feet,
first exceeded them with his jumps, as the epigram
on his statue says: 'Five and fifty feet flew Phayllos'."
The transience and the agony of ancient competitions,
for they were even more brutal in some physical
aspects than any modern events, come in the 3rd
excerpt: "'To jump beyond the dug-up area': with
reference to doing something hyperbolically, because
Phayllos jumped more than 50 feet and tore up his
leg."
-- Robert Kilgore.