Map 9.1 Plan of ancient Sparta.
In his history of the Persian Wars Herodotus recounts a story about the Persian king Xerxes sending a spy to observe the Greek forces stationed at Thermopylai. The Greeks know that they are about to be attacked, and in all likelihood killed, by a massive Persian army, yet the spy finds the Spartan soldiers on guard duty exercising in the nude and combing their hair. According to Herodotus (7.208), the Spartans’ behavior baffled Xerxes. The Spartans, however, were simply following their normal routine, which included devoting a good deal of time to sport. Indeed, sport played a prominent role in Spartan life for centuries.
The goal of this chapter is to discuss not just what is known about Spartan sport, but also to give due consideration to the role of sport in Spartan society as a whole. As we will see, sport fostered cohesive social relations among Sparta’s male citizens and in that way contributed meaningfully to maintaining the remarkable political stability that characterized Sparta for more than four hundred years.
The discussion that follows reflects both the nature of the sources at our disposal and the need for relative brevity. The sources for Spartan sport, which consist almost entirely of literary texts and inscriptions, come largely from the Classical (480–323 BCE) and Roman (31 BCE–476 CE) periods and tell us primarily about the activities of Spartan male citizens (Spartiates) and, to a lesser extent, of their unmarried daughters.1 We know relatively little about Spartan sport in other periods or about the sports activities of members of other groups, such as slaves and married women, which made up the majority of the population of the Spartan state. By the Roman period Sparta had become an unimportant place, but in the Classical period it was one of the most powerful states in the Greek world. We will, therefore, focus on the Classical period and on Spartiates. (For further discussion of the sports activities of Spartan females, see Chapter 16 of this volume.) It should also be noted that we will look carefully at choral dancing, which was an essential part of life in Sparta and which was in many ways very similar to sport, not least because it was an intensely physical activity that was frequently carried out on a competitive basis.
The single most important source for sport in Sparta in the Classical period is the Athenian soldier, philosopher, and author Xenophon (c.430–354). Xenophon served as an officer in a unit of mercenary soldiers that worked for the Spartans and was an admirer of their lifestyle. The years he spent fighting alongside Spartans and the friendships he developed with some of their leading men made it possible for him to write knowledgeably about Sparta. Xenophon’s works include a short treatise, the Lakedaimonion Politeia (Constitution of the Spartans), that provides a reasonably good sense of Spartan sport in the first half of the fourth century and its relationship with the Spartan sociopolitical system. The information supplied by Xenophon can be usefully supplemented by the work of a number of authors who were active during the Classical period (including Aristophanes, Critias, Euripides, and Plato) and by inscriptions, found at Sparta and dating from the Classical period, that commemorate the achievements of individual athletes.
In discussing sport in Sparta, we will begin by exploring how a boy from a Spartiate family would have been introduced to sport and how he might have pursued it as he got older. Spartan boys entered training to be citizens and soldiers at age 7 and in some sense continued in it for the rest of their lives. They were divided into three age groups: paides (from about 7 to about 14 years of age), paidiskoi (ages 14 to 20), and hebontes (ages 20 to 30). During their time as paides, boys from Spartiate families studied in small groups with private tutors hired by their families. They learned sports from a tutor called a paidotribes (plural paidotribai). Most of the events in which Spartan boys trained and competed were the same as those that were popular in other ancient Greek communities.2 (On the specific sports played by Greeks, see Chapter 1.)
Dance was another significant element in the physical training given to Spartan boys. Dancing was a regular and important part of life in ancient Greece, and Greeks showed a particular fondness for dancing in groups. A group of dancers was called a chorus and could include males and females of all ages in various combinations and in various numbers up to about fifty. Choral performances typically included singing and were accompanied by music from a small harp (the lyre) or a flute. The dancers in a boys’ chorus were supervised by at least one adult, and one chorus member was usually selected as a lead dancer. Choral dances were performed both casually and more formally in connection with a wide variety of special occasions such as religious festivals. Spartiate boys regularly participated in choruses; the playwright Pratinas, writing about 500, characterized the Spartans as “eager for a chorus” (Fragment 4 Snell).3
One of the most important Spartan religious festivals, the Gymnopaidiai, featured competitive choral dancing. This festival commemorated Spartan military victories and seems to have been built around a multiday competition in which choruses of boys, youths, and men danced in the nude (the name of the festival means something like “nude dancing”). The festival was held in the heat of summer and was evidently an opportunity for Spartiates both to test their dancing skills against each other and to demonstrate their endurance in difficult conditions.4
A significant shift in a boy’s existence occurred when he reached puberty and moved from the paides to the next age group, the paidiskoi. Boys’ work with tutors seems to have ended at this point, and they began a tightly controlled apprenticeship that prepared them to be citizens and soldiers. Boys continued to play sports on a regular basis, but they now did so in a more overtly competitive way and were encouraged to put their strength, aggression, and leadership qualities on display. Indeed, Paul Cartledge has observed that “Spartan education at this second stage . . . resembled nothing so much as a paramilitary assault course” (2001: 86).
Once a boy became one of the hebontes his formal education was largely complete, but his involvement in sport did not diminish. Xenophon makes it clear that adult Spartiates were expected to exercise regularly:
Once Lycurgus5 realized that those who keep in training develop good skin, firm flesh, and good health from their food, whereas the lazy look bloated, ugly, and weak, he did not overlook this matter either. But although he saw that anyone who trained hard of his own free will appeared to give his body sufficient exercise, he ordered that in the gymnasion the oldest man present should take care of everything, so that they never exercised less than the food they consumed required.(Lak. Pol. 5.8–9)
When discussing the regulations of the Spartan army, Xenophon points out that all Spartiates “are ordered by law to take exercise while they are on campaign” and that they did so in the morning and evening prior to eating (Lak. Pol. 12.5–7).
Physical contests and trials were a major component of the Spartan educational system.6 At least some of those contests and trials were connected to transitions from one age group to the next. Paidiskoi who were about to become hebontes participated in a ritual in which they tried to steal cheese from an altar in the sanctuary of the goddess Artemis Orthia that was defended by hebontes with whips (Lak. Pol. 2.9).7 (See Map 9.1 for a plan of ancient Sparta.) Ball games of various sorts were played informally all over ancient Greece; the Spartans were exceptional in having a formally organized and highly competitive ball game. This game, called sphairomachia (battle ball), was played in teams and seems to have been something like a combination of football, rugby, and volleyball. Xenophon makes it clear that adult male Spartiates played this game with some regularity during the Classical period (Lak. Pol. 9.5). In later periods, and possibly during the Classical period as well, sphairomachia contests formed part of age-group transition ceremonies.8
Spartan boys also took part in a contest held annually on a small island in a place in Sparta called Platanistas (the plane-tree grove). Two teams crossed bridges onto opposite sides of the island and then tried to drive each other into the water. The travel writer Pausanias, who visited Sparta in the second century CE, states that “in fighting they strike, and kick, and bite, and gouge out each other’s eyes. Thus they fight man against man. But they also charge in serried masses, and push each other into the water” (3.14.10, trans. F. Frazer). All the sources that refer to this contest come from the Roman period. However, a vague reference in Plato’s Laws (633b) to training in Sparta that involved “battles against each other using the hands” has been read by some scholars as an allusion to what took place at Platanistas and may indicate that this contest was also held during the Classical period.9
Map 9.1 Plan of ancient Sparta.
Spartiate boys and men who were talented and motivated athletes had a large number of opportunities to participate voluntarily in formally organized athletic competitions that had no connection to the Spartan educational system. The Karneia festival, one of the most important events in the Spartan religious calendar, included athletic contests from an early date (Kennell 1995: 64–6; Miller 2004: 146–9). We know about other, less prominent competitions held within the borders of the Spartan state primarily through dedications made by victors in athletic contests. Those dedications usually took the form of inscribed stone slabs that listed all of an athlete’s victories. One of the most informative of these dedications was erected at the sanctuary of Athena Chalkioikos in the center of Sparta sometime around 430. It commemorates the successes of a man named Damonon and his son Enymakratidas in no less than nine different athletic competitions held in and around Sparta. The very best Spartan athletes and horses went on to compete at the highest possible level, the Olympic Games.10
Success in athletics brought symbolic but substantial honors in Sparta. A few, extravagantly successful Spartan Olympic victors – Hipposthenes, Hetoimokles, Chionis (and possibly others) – literally became objects of worship (see Chapter 20). Less spectacular rewards awaited other Spartan athletes who triumphed at Olympia. Spartans, unlike many Greek communities, did not give their Olympic victors large cash bonuses, but rather the right to fight next to Sparta’s kings in battle. Victories in less high profile contests than the Olympics also brought Spartan athletes respect, and victorious athletes erected many monuments trumpeting their prowess in and around Sparta. A considerable fraction of these monuments take the form of inscribed stone slabs, the most well-known example of which is that set up by Damonon. Other, functionally similar pieces include bronze figurines of athletes, weights used in the long jump, a bronze discus, and a life-size relief sculpture of a discus thrower.11
Sparta, under the leadership of the Spartiates, was for centuries a paragon of political stability. From the middle of the seventh to the end of the third century, the Spartiates had a stranglehold on the governance of the Spartan state. During that period there were significant social, economic, and political strains in Sparta, but no revolutionary changes in the political system. This set Sparta apart from most other Greek communities, which tended to suffer from noteworthy political disturbances with some frequency.
The Spartiates in fact showed a remarkable ability to hold on to power in the face of significant external and internal challenges to their rule. Sparta had potent external enemies, and Spartiates were a small, deeply resented minority in their own state, much of the populace of which was disenfranchised or enslaved. Xenophon, in recounting a failed conspiracy against the Spartiates, reports that the conspiracy’s leader claimed that most of Sparta’s residents were unable “to conceal the fact that they would be glad to eat the Spartiates even raw” (Hellenika 3.3.6). To make matters worse, there were significant tensions among the Spartiates themselves. Notionally all Spartiates were equal; indeed they called each other homoioi (peers). However, there were in practice deep and lasting inequalities among Spartiates. Fiercely contested meritocratic competition was a key element in the Spartan sociopolitical system. Spartiates who distinguished themselves in athletic competitions, on the battlefield, and in their service to the state were rewarded with elevated social standing, something which was by no means always gracefully accepted by their less successful peers (see, for example, Xenophon Lak. Pol. 4.1–6). Moreover, the members of a small number of Spartiate families enjoyed special social and political privileges that were passed down from one generation to the next. The result was that Spartiates were riven by powerful and enduring resentments and divisions that could easily have torn them apart.
Yet the Spartiates held on to power for centuries and made Sparta into one of the most powerful states in the Greek world. One of the primary reasons that the Spartiates managed to remain on top of a steep and unstable sociopolitical pyramid was that they maintained a high degree of internal cohesion. That was significant because one of the more important causes of political disturbances in ancient Greece was conflict within the citizen body, something which Spartiates managed to avoid. Indeed, the Spartiates were sufficiently unified for over four centuries that they remained consistently capable of taking collective action to defend their interests as a group.
The reasons for the Spartiates’ cohesion have been the subject of much discussion. Ancient Greeks tended to believe that that cohesion was the almost inevitable result of a shared education and lifestyle by means of which Spartiates were “trained . . . to have neither the wish nor the ability to live for themselves; but like bees they were to make themselves always integral parts of the whole community” (Plutarch Lycurgus 25.3, trans. B. Perrin). Modern scholars have typically focused instead on institutions, activities, and practices such as religious rites, dining groups, homoeroticism, and habits of dressing and speaking. These are seen as important factors in strengthening relationships between Spartiates and in weakening familial ties that might otherwise have diluted Spartiates’ loyalties to each other (see Cartledge 2001: 91–105; David 1992, 1999; Flower 2009; Powell 2001: 225–31). Another factor of particular importance was the Spartiates’ habit of regularly playing sports and dancing together.
In order to understand how sport and dancing shaped the Spartiates’ relationships with each other, it is helpful to make use of concepts and theories borrowed from sociology, specifically those concepts and theories that speak to the origins of social order. (Social order can be defined as the manner in which a society is organized and the social norms, values, and related institutions and practices required to maintain that organization.) There are three basic sources of social order: socialization, coercion, and consensus. Teaching children social norms virtually from birth, that is, socialization, goes a long way toward making those norms second nature to the point where people adhere to them literally without thinking about it. Coercion can range from the brutal to the subtle. It can take the form of pressure, threats, intimidation, or outright force, or it can be a gradual indoctrination in the habit of obeying rules and authority figures. Consensus occurs when the members of a society come to broad agreement about norms they will voluntarily obey. Two of the more important ways of building consensus are large gatherings and clearly defined ideals. Bringing together as many of a group’s members as possible helps individuals develop a sense of themselves as part of a unified entity with shared norms. That in turn offers strong encouragement for individuals to prioritize the pursuit of those norms. Clearly defined ideals, even if they are not always lived up to, offer shared reference points that channel individuals’ behavior in specific directions.
Socialization, coercion, and consensus acting together create a situation in which the individuals in a group achieve a relatively high degree of cohesiveness both because they share a set of norms and values that shape their behavior and because they are coerced into adhering to those norms and values. This holds true for societies as a whole, and for smaller groups, such as the Spartiates.
Regularly playing sports and dancing in choruses helped produce a cohesive citizen body in Sparta because they (1) socialized young Spartiates, (2) imposed disciplined behavior via coercion, and (3) helped create consensus. In addition, the specific norms and values Spartiates shared and were coerced into adhering to promoted unity. Those norms and values privileged physical prowess and toughness, service to the Spartan state as a soldier and citizen, and a collectivist ethos according to which individuals were expected to cooperate eagerly with other Spartiates in the interests of the good of the group as a whole.
Sport and choral dancing socialized Spartiates in a variety of different ways. These activities taught what were for Spartiates norms of great importance by regularly putting them into highly competitive environments that required the subordination of the individual to the group and the demonstration of physical prowess and toughness. This was not lost on Xenophon, who wrote, “Seeing that the choruses most worth hearing and the sports contests most worth watching were those in which the competitive spirit among the participants was most intense, Lycurgus thought that if he could bring the hebontes together in competitions that tested excellence, they too would attain the highest degree of manly excellence thereby” (Lak. Pol. 4.2).
Furthermore, Spartiates were unusual compared to other ancient Greek communities in regularly playing a competitive team sport, the rough-and-tumble ball game sphairomachia. Sports played competitively in teams almost inevitably teach the importance of subordinating individual interests to those of the group. The same ethos was also taught by means of choral dancing, which entailed all the members of a chorus moving together in perfect unity. Moreover, the songs that Spartiates sang while dancing were overtly intended to inculcate specific norms and values. Claude Calame observes that “by reciting the poems composed by their masters the poets, the chorus-members learn and internalize a series of myths and rules of behavior represented by the material taught” (1997: 231).12 A passage from one of Sparta’s most beloved poets, Tyrtaeus, gives a sense of the kind of songs Spartans favored: “It is noble for a man who is good and brave to perish among the front ranks, fighting for his fatherland . . . Let us then eagerly fight for this land and let us die for the sake of our children, never sparing others. So, young men, stand by each other and fight. Do not begin shameful flight nor give way to fear” (Fragment 10, ll. 1–16 West, trans. P. Christesen). Spartan males spent hundreds of hours dancing in choruses while singing songs like this one, with predictable effects.
The adherence of Spartiates to expected norms and values was further reinforced by sport and choral dancing because these activities subtly coerced them into the habit of obeying rules and authority figures. In the past thirty years, thanks in no small part to the work of the French scholars Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, social scientists have become much more aware of the extent to which societies are held together by means of subtle forms of coercion. Foucault called this type of coercion “discipline” and labeled its operation as the “micro-physics of power.” He described individuals who have been taught discipline as “the obedient subject, the individual subjected to habits, rules, orders, an authority that is continually exercised around him and upon him, and which he must allow to function automatically in him” (1977: 128–9).
Bourdieu worked along the same lines as Foucault, and his scholarship can be more easily applied to the study of sport. Foucault saw discipline as something that was imposed on a person’s mind largely through the functioning of institutions such as schools and prisons. Bourdieu, on the other hand, took the position that discipline could be taught by means of bodily training. He argued that rule-governed physical activity was “a way of obtaining from the body a form of consent that the mind could refuse” and that “bodily discipline is the instrument par excellence of all forms of ‘domestication’” (1988: 161). Perhaps the most obvious example is teaching soldiers to march in precise formation. It is critical that on the battlefield the soldiers in an infantry unit think and function as a member of a group and obey orders promptly, even at the cost of endangering their own lives. These habits must, however, be learned before soldiers enter battle. From Bourdieu’s perspective this is where marching comes in. Drilling a soldier in marching in formation compels him or her to function not as an individual but as part of a group and to comply immediately with commands. Hundreds of hours of marching in formation makes certain ways of thinking and acting second nature and thereby inculcates habits that are vital on the battlefield.13
Spartiates were subtly coerced into obedience by means of physical discipline imposed through choral dancing and sport. The members of a chorus were habituated into obeying authority figures in the form of one or more chorus leaders. More importantly, precise movement as part of a closely coordinated chorus had much the same effect as habitual marching does on modern-day soldiers: it compelled Spartiates to subordinate themselves to a larger unit. This subject attracted Xenophon’s attention, in a fictitious dialogue between a man and his wife, the Oeconomicus. The husband urges his wife to run the household in a highly organized fashion:
My dear, there is nothing so convenient or so good for human beings as order. Thus, a chorus is a combination of human beings; but when the members of it do as they choose, it becomes mere confusion, and there is no pleasure in watching it; but when they act and chant in an orderly fashion, then those same men at once seem worth seeing and worth hearing. Again, my dear, an army in disorder is a confused mass, an easy prey to enemies, a disgusting sight to friends and utterly useless . . . But an army in orderly array is a noble sight to friends, and an unwelcome spectacle to the enemy. What friend would not rejoice as he watches a strong body of troopers marching in order, would not admire cavalry riding in squadrons? And what enemy would not fear troopers, horsemen, light-armed, archers, slingers disposed in serried ranks and following their officers in orderly fashion? Nay, even on the march where order is kept, though they number tens of thousands, all move steadily forward as one man; for the line behind is continually filling up the gap. (8.3–7, trans. E. Marchant)
It is not coincidental that Xenophon draws a direct link between an orderly chorus and an orderly army.
Playing sports required that Spartiates learn and obey rules that were enforced by authority figures through corporal punishment and thereby inculcated a habit of obedience. Paidotribai taught Spartan boys formal rules for sports as part of their education. That was in part a matter of socialization, but it also involved a considerable degree of coercion because infractions were met with immediate punishment in the form of flogging. Both boys and men participating in formally organized athletic competitions were flogged or fined for rule violations. It was not unusual for boys to experience corporal punishment, but free adult male citizens in Greek communities were normally immune from that sort of treatment. Flogging was in fact typically a punishment reserved for slaves (Crowther 2004: 141–60). Its use against free men who broke the rules in athletic competitions highlights the strong coercive element in sport.
Sport and choral dancing thus helped produce a Spartan citizen body that was unusually cohesive because these activities inculcated norms that prioritized the interests of the group over those of the individual, taught Spartiates to think and act as members of a collectivity, and helped made them readily obedient to rules and authority figures.
Spartiates achieved consensus in no small part because of widespread participation in and spectatorship of sport and choral dancing. There are three relevant considerations. First, events such as the Gymnopaidiai and the Karneia attracted large crowds of Sparta’s residents and helped them develop a sense of a shared, communal identity. The act of coming together in the same place and time gave people the feeling of belonging to a single group. In addition, contests in sport and dance put on display and offered rewards for demonstrating qualities that were privileged in Sparta, including the ability to perform effectively as a member of a group. The sport sociologist John Hargreaves has observed that sporting events “can . . . constitute regular public occasions for discourse on some of the basic themes of social life – success and failure, good and bad behavior, ambition and achievement, discipline and effort and so on” (1986: 12).
Second, playing sports and dancing together from an early age and on an almost daily basis promoted consensus by forging a bond among Spartiates. The ball game sphairomachia and competitive choral dancing, which were both in effect team sports, were particularly significant in building camaraderie.
Third, the habit of playing sports in the nude heightened the bonding and thus the consensus-building effects of sport. Public nudity was rare in ancient Greece. Some form of undressing took place as part of using public baths, but even then Greeks preferred to use individual tubs rather than the large communal pools favored by Romans. The one major, early exception to the general rule that Greeks preferred to remain clothed when in public was that boys and girls going through coming-of-age rites sometimes went nude. When Spartiates stripped for exercise they were doing something that was associated with religious rituals but that was not otherwise part of everyday life. A Spartiate exercising in the nude was, therefore, doing something that was quite unusual and that gave him a vaguely sacred aura while differentiating him from other members of Spartan society. That, in turn, helped promote the sense of belonging to a specific, special group. (For further discussion, see Chapter 13, which includes an excursus on athletic nudity.)
To sum up, there is good reason to think that there was a causal connection between the deep dedication Spartiates showed to playing sports and dancing together and the unusual stability of the Spartan state. Sport and dancing helped produce a cohesive citizen body because they socialized young Spartiates, imposed disciplined behavior via coercion, and helped create consensus. They also inculcated norms and values that promoted unity by emphasizing service to the state, physical toughness, and subordinating individual interests to those of the group.
To be a Spartiate was to be an athlete and a dancer. Sport and choral dancing were two of the basic activities around which the lives of Spartiates of all ages were constructed and which helped bind them together as a group. This is apparent in the way Spartiates spent their time, and also in the way Spartiates who failed in their duties were treated. Xenophon notes that:
Lycurgus made it clear that happiness was the reward of the brave, misery the reward of cowards. For whenever someone proves a coward in other cities, he has only the bad reputation of being a coward, but the coward goes to the same public places as the brave and takes his seat and joins in physical exercise, as he likes. But in Sparta everyone would be ashamed to accept a coward as a messmate or as an opponent in a wrestling match. Frequently such a man is not picked when they select teams for ball games, and in choruses he is relegated to the most ignominious positions. (Lak. Pol. 9.3–5)
A Spartiate who was a coward had violated an essential norm. This violation was punished by exclusion from the community of Spartiates and that exclusion took the form of being left out of communal dining, wrestling, and ball games and being put in the least honorable spots in choruses. The use of sport and choral dancing to punish cowards shows just how important these activities were to the identity of Spartiates.
ABBREVIATIONS
Lak. Pol. = Lakedaimonion Politeia
NOTES
1 All dates are BCE unless otherwise indicated.
2 Spartiates seem to have generally avoided competing in two events, boxing and pankration, for reasons that are not entirely clear (see the discussion in Christesen forthcoming; Crowther 2004: 115–19; Hodkinson 1999: 157–60).
3 Spartans also did at least some individual dancing, some of it competitive. One dance in particular, bibasis, was strongly associated with Sparta. It involved jumping up and touching the buttocks with the heels (Aristophanes Lysistrata 81–2; Pollux 4.102).
4 The sources on the Gymnopaidiai present numerous interpretive difficulties (see Ducat 2006: 265–74; Pettersson 1992: 42–56; and Richer 2005).
5 Many ancient writers, including Xenophon, subscribed to the almost certainly erroneous belief that the entire Spartan sociopolitical system was constructed at an early date by a lawgiver named Lycurgus and remained largely unchanged for centuries thereafter. All translations from Xenophon’s Lakedaimonion Politeia are taken from Lipka 2002, in some cases with small changes to make the sense of the original Greek more obvious.
6 The origins of these contests and trials have been the subject of much debate. Some scholars have seen them as remnants of primeval coming-of-age rites, others as consciously created parts of the Spartan educational system. See Ducat 2006: 179–222.
7 This rite evolved significantly over the course of time, and by the Roman period had become a bloody spectator sport (see Ducat 2006: 249–60 and Kennell 1995: 126–9). Spartan males throughout Sparta’s history seem to have exercised regularly at a place called the dromos (“the racecourse”), which the travel writer Pausanias visited and described in the second century CE (3.14.6). This was a large, open area that in Pausanias’s time held two separate gymnasia. At least some formally organized races held during the Classical period may have taken place in a street leading out of Sparta’s agora (marketplace). Other sites, including the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia and Sparta’s theater, were used for special sports events, particularly those linked to transitions from one age group to the next. On the location of the dromos in Sparta, see Sanders 2009.
8 The players in sphairomachia were called sphaireis. The evidence for ball playing in ancient Greece is discussed in Crowther 2004: 351–73; Harris 1972: 75–111; and O’Sullivan 2012. On ball games in Sparta, see also Kennell 1995: 38–43, 59–63, 110–11, 131.
9 On the Platanistas contests, see Ducat 2006: xv, 27, 57, 208–9 and Kennell 1995: 25, 45, 55–9, 111, 138. Boys’ contests centering on dancing and singing, with prizes of iron sickles for the winners, were held in Sparta in the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia during the Classical period. Most of our information about these contests comes from the Roman period, and very little is known about what they might have looked like earlier. See Kennell 1995: 28–9, 49–69, 115–42.
10 See Hodkinson 2000: 303–7 for a translation and discussion of the Damonon inscription. Spartan athletes were a dominating presence at Olympia in the seventh and sixth centuries and Spartan horses won with great frequency at Olympia in the fifth century. In other periods, Spartans were notably less successful. For discussion of the reasons why, see Christesen forthcoming. During the Classical period Spartans do not seem to have competed regularly in gymnic contests outside of Sparta other than the Olympics; they did, however, compete in hippic contests outside of Sparta, including those held as part of the Panathenaic Games in Athens.
11 On the rewards for athletic success and means of commemoration of athletic victories at Sparta, see Hodkinson 1999: 152–7 and 165–76.
12 In this quote Calame is discussing choruses of Spartan girls, but his observation holds true for male choruses as well.
13 On this subject, the field manual issued by the United States Army under the title Drill and Ceremony is particularly informative (Department of the Army 2003).
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Pettersson, M. 1992. Cults of Apollo at Sparta: The Hyakinthia, the Gymnopaidiai and the Karneia. Stockholm.
Powell, A. 2001. Athens and Sparta: Constructing Greek Political and Social History from 478 bc. 2nd ed. London.
O’Sullivan, L. 2012. "Playing Ball in Greek Antiquity." Greece and Rome 59: 17–33.
Powell, A, ed. Forthcoming. A Companion to Sparta. Malden, MA.
Richer, N. 2005. “Les Gymnopédies de Sparte.” Ktema 30: 237–64.
Sanders, G. 2009. “Platanistas, the Course and Carneus: Their Places in the Topography of Sparta.” In W. G. Cavanagh, C. Gallou, and M. Georgiadis, eds., 195–203.
Scanlon, T. 2002. Eros and Greek Athletics. Oxford.
Too, Y. L., ed. 2001. Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity. Leiden.
Wrong, D. 1994. The Problem of Order. New York.
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
For a good, highly accessible introduction to Spartan history, see either Cartledge 2002b or Kennell 2010. For more scholarly accounts, see Cartledge 2002a; Cartledge and Spawforth 2002; and the articles in Powell (forthcoming). For an introduction to, English translation of, and commentary on Xenophon’s Lakedaimonion Politeia, see Lipka 2002. Detailed treatments of the basic facts about sport in ancient Sparta can be found in Christesen (forthcoming). On the sociopolitical aspects of Spartan sport, see Christesen 2012. Stephen Hodkinson has written seminal pieces on athletic competition in Sparta (other than horse racing, (1999)) and on horse racing in Sparta (2000: 303–33). The Spartan educational system, which included a great deal of sports activity, is ably treated in Ducat 2006 and Kennell 1995. The initiatory aspects of Spartan sport are highlighted in Scanlon 2002: 121–37. There is at present no single, thorough, up-to-date treatment in English of dance in ancient Greece. The relationship between dance and education is discussed in Griffith 2001. A more wide-ranging examination of dance in ancient Greece can be found in a series of books in French by Marie-Hélène Delavaud-Roux (1993, 1994, 1995). An excellent brief introduction to past and current thinking about the bases of social order can be found in Cohen 1968: 18–33. For a more up-to-date and scholarly work on the same subject, see Wrong 1994. For a collection of important pieces of scholarship on social order, see Hechter and Horne 2009.