The Fading Allure of Greek Athletics

This paper examines the allure of ancient athletics by examining its disappearance in Late Antiquity. Focusing on the spectator experience at the athletic games, the paper argues that the elites of the ancient cities, on whose investments athletic education and competitions depended, started to look at athletic contests in new ways. They may still have imagined themselves as successful athletes during the excitement of the contest, but they stopped identifying the athletes on display as their peers. As athletics, and the competitive spirit connected to it, lost its role in the education of the lower layers of the ruling classes, many spectators no longer had personal experience with the different sports and were, therefore, no longer potential athletes themselves. The spectators moreover stopped associating athletics with moral virtues: striving for physical excellence gradually became regarded as a vain pursuit, contradictory to the Christian ideal of humility. The perception of the athletic competition gradually shifted from an exemplary ‘contest’ to an exciting, but potentially dangerous ‘show’.