Classic Class Ancient World Sports Essay

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Greek Sports

Sports in the ancient world evolved from the military traditions and are a reflection of the important elements of ancient life. When we consider the different elements of the ancient games, we see violence, beauty, the power of the gods and a social function, all of which are important factors in the ancient Greek games. This paper will explore the connection between sport, military and art in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.

Sports & Military

Sporting tradition probably came from Greece, and Greek cities were surely the first to host massive sporting events on the scale of the Olympic Games. In this time, societies had strict rules with regards to the roles that people played in society. Wars and armed conflict were frequent, as a means gaining territory and power, as the Greek world was little more than a collection of loosely-tied city-states and small kingdoms. The constant warring demanded that any serious ruler should have a standing, professional or at least semi-professional army. Now, an army needs to be trained in order to beat other armies, so that is what they did.

The training exercises therefore became modern sports. This is because of the competitive nature of the young men who participated in these sports. For example, there were no completive sports to come from weaving the loom -- despite Penelope's apparent prowess -- nor were there any sports involving the speed at which one could plow a field. They used a wreath as a reward, not a yoke. No, the games came from military training because this is where groups of men would gather and these competitive men would eventually structure games to celebrate their skills and endeavors. These games were emerge as sports. Eventually, these sports became organized, with rules that allowed competitors from different parts of Greece to compete according to a common and understood set of rules. Thus, sports were born.

The sports included things that related to combat and military endeavor. Games of stamina turned into long-distance running, and games of speed into the short-distance running events. Throwing of weapons was a natural competition, as were wrestling and boxing. Chariot racing became a popular sports as well. For every sport in the ancient world, there is a combat connotation, until we get to Roman sports.

The Romans had a different aesthetic to the Greeks in the sporting world. Where the Greeks preferred sports as artistic expressions of violent military training, the Romans just went in for the blood-letting. Roman sports therefore featured gladiator fights, executions like an unarmed condemned man fighting a beast, and that sort of thing.

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If people didn't die, it wasn't a sport to the Romans. So the subtlety and nuance was replaced by gore for the Roman audiences.

Beauty

If the Romans eschewed anything even remotely beautiful in sport, the Greeks reveled in it. The Greeks really felt that the athletic body was the pinnacle of human physical achievement. They love looking at the naked bodies of athletes, and this was a major attraction of sports. Indeed, there was much open homosexuality in Greek sports. Beyond that, though, all Greek art sought the ideal form, and the result of this quest was that a lot of art depicted athletics, like the discus thrower. The result was that there was a real blending of art and athletics in terms of what the Greeks felt was beautiful. The popularity of both art and athletics also highlighted the Greek body ideal.

The different sports also reflected what the Greeks thought about the ideal body. The ideals of human physical achievement were important, but there were clearly different types of achievement, for example speed, strength, and skilled events were all different types of events. Each one reflected different skills that could be used on the battlefield, and the laurels and victory gave the most successful athletes substantial bragging rights. Perhaps the most famous non-Olympic athlete was Phidippides, who ran from Marathon to Athens, thereby creating the modern marathon. Even though he was not specifically an athlete, he was one of the most important Greeks in athletic achievement for this. The marathon was invented in the modern era.

Gods

What aspect of ancient culture could be discussed without talking about the gods. The gods were the rulers of all of ancient life, and people routinely assumed that their successes and failure were the work of unseen gods. As such, they expended considerable energy trying to win the favor of the gods. Homer wrote about sacrificing oxen 100 at a time -- the unstinting sacrifices -- and some of the major sporting events were a reflection of that. The gods were in assistance of some of the participants -- surely Hermes was involved in some capacity but other gods were too. Many game were dedicated to the gods, and took on a religious element to them in that way. Worship was part of the sporting production, though not an event unto itself. The god Zeus was key to the Olympic Games, which were held in his honor

Synthesis

From the Greeks onwards, sports were an important part of ancient society. It is interesting to note that after the Roman era went into decline….....

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