Event

This lecture addresses the neglected problem of elite sport in classical Athens. Democracy may have opened up politics to every citizen but it had no impact on sporting participation. The city’s sportsmen continued to be drawn from the elite. Thus it comes as a surprise that nonelite citizens judged sport to be a very good thing and created an unrivalled program of local sporting festivals on which they spent a staggering sum. They also shielded sportsmen from the public criticism that was otherwise normally directed towards the elite and its conspicuous activities. The work of social scientists suggests that the explanation of this problem can be found in the close relationship that nonelite Athenians perceived between sporting contests and their own waging of war. The disturbing conclusion of this paper is that it was the democracy’s opening up of war to nonelite citizens that legitimised elite sport.