Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. For a full discussion of the social class of Olympic victors, see Young 1984, 89–176. 2. As Nicholson (2005, 21) explains, ‘what motivated anxiety about professional trainers was that, by appearing to add new abilities such as skill to their pupils, they threatened the idea that the qualities on which victory depended were inherited, and, second, that, while the training was traded as a commodity, the relationship between trainer and patron was sufficiently complex that to represent it in other terms was convincing’. 3. The story is told in Pausanias VI.10.1–3: ‘After all of these comes Glaukos of Karystos; they say that by descent he came from Anthedon in Boiotia from Glaukos the daemonic spirit of the sea. But his father was called Demylos, and they say he began as a labourer on the land; when the ploughshare fell out of the plough he stuck it in again using his hand for a hammer. [2] Demylos happened to see what the boy had done, so he took him along to Olympia to box. Glaukos had no experience as a boxer and his opponents hurt him, and when he was boxing with the last one, people thought he was too badly hurt to carry on: and then they say his father shouted out to him “Come on son, the one for the plough”, and he hit his opponent a harder punch and suddenly found he had won.’ 4. According to Kyle (2007, 209); Pausanias says only that his island was named after him. 5. The story is told, in slightly different versions, by Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War VI.56–9), and Aristotle, The Constitution of the Athenians, XVIII. 6. Pericles' Funeral Oration, in Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 2.2 (Jowett translation). 7. Aeschines, Against Timarchus 1.4–5, quoted in Hansen (2004, 177). 8. Morris 2004, 53, citing Ostwald. 9. Arnold (2002, 490) argues that this connection between sport and democracy is one of the things that makes sport an important part of education for democracy. The second connection, equality, is discussed in the next section. 10. The story is recounted by Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.40.4–5. 11. Poliakoff 1978, 70–1. 12. In the Greek mind the two are very closely linked since their conception of freedom (eleutheria) was derived primarily from the idea of not being a slave (Ostwald 2004, 164). 13. Kroton's was apparently a successful strategy; their athletes won 11 of the 26 stadion crowns between 588 and 488, taking the top seven places at one Olympiad (Nicholson 2005, 128). 14. For more on the religious function of the games, see Chapter 2. 15. In case there were odd numbers of competitors, one would draw a lot without a match and be given a bye (ephedros) for that round. Those who won without ever drawing a bye were given the proud title of anephedros (Miller 2004, 50). 16. For a full account of this phenomenon see Nicholson (2005). The enduring effects of this belief is reflected in the stigma attached to coaching by the aristocratic culture surrounding the early modern Olympic Games, as artfully depicted in the movie Chariots of Fire. 17. Mouratidis (1984, 55) explains that women were not allowed to enter the sanctuaries of Heracles or participate in sacrifices offered to him because it was believed their presence might diminish the warriors' or heroes' power. Since the Olympic games was originally a festival in honour of Heracles, women were naturally excluded and the prohibition survived even after the coming of Zeus. 18. Xenophon, Agesilaus 9.6, Plutarch, Ages 20.1, both quoted in Kyle 2007, 191. 19. Socrates' relationship with athletes and gymnasia is the subject of the next chapter. 20. Plato's Meno depicts Socrates guiding a slave boy to find a geometric theorem. 21. Unlike Socrates and Plato, most Greeks believed that women were irrational, and this is precisely why they were excluded from government (Jameson 2004, 286) – only further proving the link between rationality and democracy. 22. This argument is developed in Reid 2006b.
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