In cold blood: dead athletes in Classical Athens

Abstract

Dead young men were commonly represented as athletes on classical Attic grave stelai, either alone or with a smaller subsidiary slave figure. This paper explores the ways in which the context of death re-figures the athlete, playing on the connotations of victory statues while simultaneously exploiting the gap between the athletic body on display and the absent presence of the dead body beneath the surface. Bodies are at issue on the grave stelai, not least since Greek athletes train and compete naked. By interrogating the ways in which the athletic body is mobilized in different contexts – the commemoration of victory and the commemoration of death – I explore the ways in which ancient Greek culture puts to work sport and the sportsman.