170 PHOENIX That is not to say that there should not be more books like this. There definitely should, and many more. DuBois’s topics are fascinating, refreshing, and compelling, and more than once I found myself asking, “why isn’t anyone else talking about this?” I found the style of the book to be at times overly hesitant, and at times combative, forgivable qualities in a project that is trying to work through problems rarely if ever addressed before, and in the face of some intransigence on the part of the discipline. But if, as I hope, others will pursue her questions, tell her kinds of stories, and take the scholarly stance she has, duBois’s book will have been worth every page. Concordia University Sean Gurd Greek Sport and Social Status. By Mark Golden. Austin: University of Texas Press. 2008. Pp. xvi, 214. Mark Golden is an important voice in the field of the study of ancient Greek sport. He has done much to establish the subject as a proper topic for ancient social history, taking it away from the modernizing and antiquarian approaches that have dominated the field for long. His 1998 introduction for the Cambridge Key Themes series eschewed the usual chronological treatment of individual disciplines.1 There he argued that ancient sport should be seen as part of a “discourse of difference” whereby ancient Greeks distinguished and ranked men above women, free men above slaves, and Greeks above barbarians. His analysis was limited to the archaic and classical periods, and we were left wondering how the author’s theories could be applied to the history of Greek sport in the hellenistic and Roman periods, when Greek games were more popular than ever. In the present study Golden takes his analysis beyond the classical age, but this is not strictly a Volume Two. His aim in this volume is to show that there are many ways in which Greek sport has been used to claim and enhance social status. In Chapter One, Golden shows how trainers, jockeys, drivers, and assistants were always necessary to secure athletic or equestrian victory. For most of the time, however, they were written out of the picture by the victors (although trainers are occasionally mentioned by Pindar). However, trainers and coaches (though not jockeys) became more visible both in literature (cf. Philostratus Gymnasticus) and in epigraphic documents. Golden attributes this to “a new attitude towards victory” that he also sees reflected in the growing commemoration of draws or tied victories. I don’t agree, however, that athletes were more “prepared, even eager to share credit for victory” (39). Golden does not take into account sufficiently that these attestations are the result of a change in the epigraphic self-presentation of athletes (as was demonstrated by S. Brunet).2 Inscriptions were getting longer and more detailed, as athletic achievement became more important as a badge of individual status (as Golden himself indicates). Athletes and their trainers (often former athletes themselves) may simply have wanted to cash in on any athletic achievement they could. As athletes were not getting any less elitist, they would still be baffled by the modern maxim that “to participate is more important than winning.” 1 M. Golden, Sport and Society in Ancient Greece (Cambridge 1998). 2 S. A. Brunet, Greek Athletes in the Roman World: The Evidence from Ephesos (Unpublished dissertation, University of Texas, 1998). BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 171 In Chapter Two Golden explores the implications of the obvious but often neglected fact that ancient Greek sport was embedded in a slave-owning society. Golden musters what evidence we have for the sporting activities of ancient Greek slaves. As sport served to distinguish the free from the slave, it may come as no surprise that the evidence is meager indeed, apart from the jockeys or drivers, or the (undervalued and underrepresented ) helpers and assistants without whose labor all gymnasia would have come to a standstill. Slaves could be admitted to some gymnasia on festive days, but probably only to take a share in the distributions of oil (cf. SEG 42, 1743). A text from hellenistic Egypt shows that owners may have invested in the athletic training of...