In 86 CE the emperor Domitian initiated his Capitoline Games in the city of Rome. Just as the Olympics were held in honor of Olympian Zeus, the new games celebrated Capitoline Jupiter and, like the Olympics, they took place every four years. They subsequently gained a prestige equal to the Olympic, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean Games and continued to be held into the fourth century. Domitian himself presided at the Capitoline Games (Herodian 1.9.2–3), a role that later emperors replicated (Caldelli 1993: 108–12; Spawforth 2007: 383).
Unlike the Olympics, the program of Domitian’s new games was tripartite, consisting of gymnic, equestrian, and musical competitions (Suetonius Domitian 4.4). In the first category were the traditional events of Greek athletics: boxing, wrestling, pankration, the pentathlon, and four different footraces (stadion, diaulos, dolichos, hoplitodromos) (Caldelli 1993: 86–9).1 There was also, however, a competition involving females. According to Suetonius, “In the stadium there were races even between maidens” (Domitian 4.4, trans. J. Rolfe). By this date the Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean Games, as well as other festivals, included footraces for females (Lee 1988). Races for girls were never part of the Olympic program, although unmarried girls (parthenoi) raced in the stadium at Olympia every four years at games in honor of Hera (Pausanias 5.16.2–7; see Chapter 16 in this volume). Like the Olympics, the Capitoline Games also included several equestrian contests, but they diverged from the Olympics in that musical competitions were part of the program. There was, however, well-established precedent for holding musical competitions as part of festivals that featured gymnic and equestrian events; the most prominent example of such a festival was the Pythian Games held at Delphi in honor of Apollo. (On the Pythian Games at Delphi, see Chapter 11.)
To further enhance the grandeur of his games, Domitian constructed new facilities in the Campus Martius: a stadium for the athletic events and an adjoining music hall (odeum) for the musical events (see Map 25.1). The equestrian contests were held in the Circus Maximus. Domitian’s stadium, which seated approximately thirty thousand, was the only permanent venue constructed for Greek athletics in the western half of the Roman Empire. Instead of the rectangular shape and the grass seating of older stadia such as the one at Olympia, the new stadium followed more recent trends (see Chapter 38). It was built of stone in an elongated horseshoe shape familiar to us from the second-century CE stadia at Delphi and Athens. Domitian’s stadium does not survive, but its outline can be seen today in the shape of the Piazza Navona, and portions of the substructure can be viewed from outside the Piazza under the modern buildings at the curved end. Traces of the musical venue are also visible. A pillar survives in situ near the straight end of the stadium, and the curved façade of the odeum is preserved in that of the sixteenth-century Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne on Via Corso Emmanuele.2
These new venues enabled Domitian to leave his own monumental mark on the urban landscape. Construction on the Colosseum had commenced during the reign of his father Vespasian, and his brother, the emperor Titus, dedicated the building in 80 CE. In little more than half a decade, two major facilities for sport and spectacle were completed under the Flavian emperors. With the Circus Maximus and the Colosseum, Rome had already enjoyed unparalleled arenas for chariot racing and gladiatorial combats. The addition of Domitian’s stadium made Rome truly unrivalled as the capital of the world for athletic spectacles.
The Capitoline Games and the facilities built to accommodate them are a testament to the importance of Greek sport in Rome. The words “sport in Rome” usually conjure up images of chariot races in the Circus Maximus and bloody gladiatorial combats in the Colosseum, and there can be no doubt about the popularity of these events in Rome itself and in the Roman world as a whole. It is, however, also true that sport of the sort found from an early period in the Greek world continued to be widely practiced in the eastern half of the Roman Empire, which was heavily influenced by Greek culture. Moreover, Greek sport found a significant place in the city of Rome and achieved some degree of acceptance in the western half of the Roman Empire more generally.
The establishment of the Capitoline Games in 86 CE marked the culmination of a long journey. The philhellenic Romans had taken much longer to embrace Greek sport than they had other aspects of Hellenic culture. Centuries earlier, however, residents of Rome could observe Greek athletics on Italic soil in cities founded by Greeks in southern Italy and Sicily, including ancient Neapolis (modern Naples). (On sport in these Greek cities, see Chapter 12.) Furthermore, the Etruscans to the north of Rome manifested some fondness for Greek athletics to judge from frescoes like those in the sixth-century BCE Tomb of the Olympiad and objects found in tombs such as Attic vases depicting athletics and bronze figurines of athletes (see Chapter 26).
The first examples of Greek athletic contests held in Rome remind us of American professional football teams playing in Europe or European soccer teams staging matches in the United States. They were onetime exhibitions that, in most cases, did not feature the complete athletic program of a festival like the Olympic Games but rather selected events, usually boxing and wrestling. Often they comprised part of a larger program that included Roman chariot racing, gladiatorial fights, and beast hunts. (On beast hunts, see Chapter 34.)
In 217 BCE, one Aulus Postumius appears to have staged Greek contests in Rome (Crowther 2004: 381–2). Dionysius of Halicarnassos writes that a procession from the Capitol through the Forum to the Circus Maximus included charioteers, followed by “contestants in both the light and the heavy games, their whole bodies naked except their loins” (7.72.1–3, 7.73.1–3). In the parlance of Greek sports, the light events were the footraces, long jump, discus, and javelin (the latter three typically held as part of the pentathlon), and the heavy events were boxing, wrestling, and pankration. Dionysius adds, “After the chariot-races were over, those who competed with their own bodies entered, that is, runners, boxers, and wrestlers.”3 These games of Postumius would thus not seem to have included the pentathlon. It is not clear if the program of equestrian events followed Greek or Roman models.
Livy tells us that more than forty years later, in 186 BCE, M. Fulvius Nobilior held games in Rome that included both Greek contests and a Roman-style beast hunt, or venatio: “Also a contest of athletes [athletarum] was then for the first time made a spectacle for the Romans and a hunt of lions and leopards was given” (39.22.1–2, trans. E Sage, slightly modified). The athletes were brought from Greece. Livy seems unaware of Postumius’s contests held in the previous century. Unfortunately, the text does not tell us the extent of the program.
In 167 BCE, the praetor Lucius Anicius put on an exhibition of music and boxing:
“In the circus he built a huge stage for imported Greek performers, first musicians and a chorus and later four boxers” (Polybius 30.22.2, 10–12 = Athenaeus 14.615; trans. by W. Paton).
Sulla, after completing victorious military campaigns in the eastern Mediterranean, staged in 80 BCE a celebration that seems to have included holding the Olympics in Rome instead of Olympia (Appian The Civil Wars 1.99; Eusebius Chronika ll. 342–4 Christesen and Martirosova Torlone 2006). (One event, the boys’ stadion, was held in Olympia.) This would be the first unequivocal example of a full-scale athletic festival being held in Rome.4
The decade of the 50s in the first century BCE witnessed three examples of Greek games in Rome. In 58 BCE M. Aemilus Scaurus held games (Valerius Maximus 2.4.7), though their scale is not known. When Pompey dedicated his new theater in the Campus Martius in 55 BCE, he held both musical contests and Greek competitions (agonos gymnikou) in that venue (Dio Cassius 39.38.1–2). With contests restricted to the new building, the only athletic events that could have been held would have been boxing, wrestling, and pankration. Horse races and beast hunts took place in the Circus Maximus as part of these games (Plutarch Pompey 52.4). Greek contests were mixed with Roman spectacles, as they had been in the games of M. Fulvius Nobilior. This pattern of a limited athletic program was to continue throughout the first century BCE. In 52 BCE Scribonius Curio also held contests in a theatrical venue. He constructed two theaters that could be either rotated to form an amphitheater or revolved 90 or 180 degrees (it is not known for certain which) so as to form two theaters, with the audiences sitting either side by side or back-to-back. According to Pliny (Natural History 36.24.120), Curio “furnished athletes” (athletas edidit), who must have been boxers and wrestlers. Even in its amphitheater configuration, this venue would have been too small for footraces or the javelin throw.
Following his victory over Pompey, Julius Caesar held triumphal games in 46 BCE that included stage plays, gladiatorial combats, chariot races in the Circus, a mock naval battle in an artificial lake in the Campus Martius, and Greek sports (Suetonius Julius Caesar 39.1). For the Greek games he built a temporary stadium in the Campus Martius, so he seems to have put on a full athletic program. While Caesar’s Greek games resembled those of Sulla, they were somewhat obscured amid the other spectacular extravaganzas of his triumphal games. According to Cicero (Letters to Atticus 15.4.5), Brutus, the future assassin of Caesar, held Greek games in 44 BCE, but we know nothing about the program.
Augustus was much more active than his predecessors in promoting Greek games. In 31 BCE, he defeated Mark Antony at Actium in Epiros in Greece. In celebration of his victory he founded the Actia there in 29 BCE, an isolympic festival, that is, one modeled on the Olympics.5 The Actia was held in Augustus’s new city of Nikopolis, which was built near the battlefield. On Italian soil more than three decades later in 2 CE, another athletic festival, the isolympic Sebasta, was founded in Naples to honor Augustus (Crowther 2004: 93–8; Geer 1935).
What about in Rome itself? In the Res Gestae (22), Augustus proclaims that he had held three sets of Greek games in the city, none of them permanent like the Actia in Nikopolis and the Sebasta in Naples. The first were the Actian Games of 28 BCE, which included Greek athletics: “On the present occasion, moreover, a gymnastic contest was held, a wooden stadium having been constructed in the Campus Martius” (Dio Cassius 53.1.5; cf. Suetonius Augustus 43.2). The use of a stadium implies a full athletic program. The Augustalia of 19 BCE seems to have been the second (Dio Cassius 54.10, 34; see Crowther 2004: 385). The third may have been games held in 12 BCE to celebrate his appointment as Pontifex Maximus, during which a pair of boxers performed (Suetonius Augustus 44.3; Res Gestae 10). According to Suetonius (Augustus 44.2–3), Augustus barred women from attending these Greek contests, though they were allowed to view gladiatorial combats. The obvious reason seems to have been the complete nudity of the athletes, whereas gladiators wore at least some kind of covering around their loins (Crowther 2004: 375–9).
We may only speculate as to why neither a philhellene like Augustus nor his immediate successors established permanent Greek games in Rome. Caligula held games in 38 and 39 CE (Dio Cassius 59.9.6–7, 59.13.9). Of the former we have no details except that he held a gymnic competition; for the latter we are told that “athletes competed in the pankration in many different places at the same time.” The emperor Claudius held games in 44 CE in which Greek athletics were employed as entertainment between the horse races: “For between the different races, bears were slain, athletes competed, and boys summoned from Asia performed the Pyrrhic dance” (Dio Cassius 60.23.5).
The last Julio-Claudian emperor, Nero, was the first to establish a quadrennial Greek athletic festival in Rome (Suetonius Nero 12.3–4). Called the Neroneia, it was first celebrated in 60 CE and consisted of gymnic, equestrian, and musical events. Nero also dedicated a bath and gymnasium at this time. The tripartite program was, as we have seen, imitated by Domitian for the Capitoline Games. The Neroneia was held a second time in 65 CE (Tacitus Annals 16.2). This festival was discontinued after Nero’s death. Thus, Domitian, when inaugurating his Capitoline Games, not only resumed a long tradition of Greek athletics in Rome, but also gave them the permanent status which Nero had attempted to confer.
Other Greek athletic festivals were established in Rome during the later Empire. Elagabalus founded the Antoninia Pythia in 219 or 220 CE; Severus Alexander, the Agon Herculeus, perhaps in 228 (Scriptores Historiae Augustae Severus Alexander 35.4); Gordian III, the Agon Minervae, in c.242; and Aurelian, the Agon Solis, in 274 (Robert 2010: 125–31, 139–40; Caldelli 1993: 46–52; Newby 2005: 36–7). The first two may have been held only once.
Thus, under the sponsorship of prominent Romans including the emperor, Greek athletics indisputably found a place in Rome next to chariot racing and gladiatorial contests, initially as exhibitions, but later as a key part of permanent festivals.
If Domitian’s stadium was the first and only permanent facility in the western half of the Roman Empire for Greek athletics, where were earlier Greek contests held in Rome? As noted above, events like boxing and wrestling did not need a large space, and a theater would have sufficed, whereas the running and throwing events and the discus and javelin would have required a larger field. Greek stadia measured approximately 200 meters long. Thus, for the Greek running events, a long enough venue was a prerequisite. This could be a flat, open field in which temporary seats could be set up; such a field would also obviously suffice for boxing and wrestling. It has been suggested that the location in the Campus Martius used in the Greek games sponsored by Julius Caesar and Augustus was the same as the site used later by Domitian for his stadium (Lee 2000: 222–4; Crowther 2004: 385; Coarelli 1997: 20). For his Neroneia, Nero used a building called the Saepta or Saepta Julia, which was also located in the Campus Martius. It was rectangular in shape and measured 310 by 120 meters on the exterior and 286 by 94 meters on the interior (Richardson 1992: 340–1). It was thus more than large enough for the stadium events of a Greek athletic festival. Augustus, Caligula, and Claudius had used this structure previously for gladiatorial contests. Why did Nero not use the site employed by Caesar and Augustus, which was adjacent to his baths? Perhaps Nero had used this location for a wooden amphitheater constructed for gladiatorial games held in 57 CE (Suetonius Nero 12.1; Coarelli 1997: 20).6
Finally, as we have seen in the examples of the Greek games of Postumius, Anicius, and Claudius, the Circus Maximus in its various incarnations was available for Greek athletics. The valley between the Aventine and Palatine hills measures a half-mile in length. After the renovation by Julius Caesar, the hippodrome measured 621 meters long (Richardson 1992: 85). The side of the track adjoining the Palatine hill was in all likelihood employed for Greek games, with the track marked out by white lines (Humphrey 1986: 84–91 and fig. 36). Statues of Greek athletes appear to have been a part of the decoration of the Circus Maximus. A fourth-century CE mosaic from Piazza Armerina depicts statues of two runners and perhaps a boxer above the starting gates and two discus throwers on the spina (the central divider of the track; Lee 2000: 230; Humphrey 1986: 226 and figs. 66, 112–14).7 Another mosaic, perhaps also from the fourth century, shows two runners, a pair of boxers or wrestlers, and two discus throwers on the spina (Humphrey 1986: 235–8 and fig. 119). Why sculptures of Greek athletes in the Circus Maximus? The obvious implication is that Greek athletics were held there.
Indeed, the use of the Circus Maximus for Greek athletics helps us to understand where, in the absence of permanent stadia, Greek athletics were held in the West (see Chapter 38). Hippodromes existed in many cities throughout the western Mediterranean and could readily serve as athletics venues. Such a practice may also give some hint of the relative popularity of Greek athletics in the western half of the Roman Empire, where there was interest but not enough to commit the capital and land for a permanent stadium. Again, in modern sport we find some parallels. American football is played in rugby or soccer stadia in Europe and soccer matches are often held in American football stadia in the United States.
A commemorative coin of 244 CE suggests that the venue for gymnic and equestrian contests of the Agon Minervae of 242 CE, as well as the gladiatorial combats, was the Circus Maximus (Mancioli 1987: 26 and fig. 11; Stevenson, Smith, and Madden 1889: 203). In the upper half of the coin the Circus Maximus is identifiable by the obelisk in the spina and the three-pronged metae at each end. To the left of the obelisk we observe a two-horse chariot, while to the right can be seen a four-horse chariot. In the upper right, a Nike, goddess of victory, bestows a wreath upon a charioteer who bears a palm branch and stands in a six-horse chariot. On the lower register are placed 10 figures portrayed in much larger scale than those in the upper. At the left and right are pairs of gladiators in combat. Between the gladiators are three pairs of athletes in the Greek heavy events: from left to right, boxers, pankratiasts, and wrestlers (Lee 2000: 231–2).8
Further confirmation of the importance of Greek athletics in Rome can be seen in the building of a clubhouse (curia athletarum) by the synodos, the international guild of athletes (on which, see Caldelli 1992 and, in the present volume, Chapter 6). The synodos constructed this clubhouse in the second century CE in the Baths of Trajan, which was then the newest and largest of the great imperial baths (thermae) in the city. As with the sponsoring of Greek games, the decision to build the clubhouse was made at the highest levels. In 134 CE the guild requested from the emperor permission and support to erect this building, and Hadrian replied in the affirmative (Inscriptiones Graecae XIV 1054b). The donation did not actually occur, however, until 143 CE, under Hadrian’s successor, Antoninus Pius: “I have ordered that a plot be handed over to you where you may keep your trophies and records in the area of the baths which were erected by my deified grandfather Trajan just where you congregate for the Capitoline Games” (Inscriptiones Graecae XIV 1055b; Yegül 1992: 175–7; see Miller 2004: 170–1 for an English translation). Both Hadrian and Antoninus addressed themselves to M. Ulpius Domesticus, formerly a highly successful pankratiast, who was chief priest of the guild and the baths.
Why locate the clubhouse in the Baths of Trajan? Going to the baths was a quintessential Roman activity that served hygienic, social, and recreational purposes. After the first century CE large public bath complexes in Rome typically included exercise grounds as well as lecture halls and libraries. Some form of stadium also became a regular feature of Roman thermae, including the third-century CE Baths of Caracalla (Nielsen 1993: vol. 1: 53–5, 163–7; Richardson 1992: 83). It is, therefore, not surprising that the athletes for the Capitoline Games frequented the Baths of Trajan and that the clubhouse was located there. Reinforcing the connection between baths and athletics are representations of athletes, the most notable example being the two large hemispherical mosaics that were located near the exercise areas in the Baths of Caracalla and that realistically depict athletes, officials, and trainers (Newby 2005: 67–76, figs. 3.10–11; Insalaco 1989). In nearby Ostia, from the baths near the Porta Marina and the Baths of Neptune, there are depictions of athletic competitions (Newby 2005: 49–55, figs. 3.2–3).
In the Greek world there existed a continuum between those who worked out in local gymnasia and the star athletes who won in the great Panhellenic games. The best of the former, by proving their mettle through local contests, could aspire to compete in Panhellenic festivals. Do the establishment of the Capitoline Games and the presence of athletes in the baths indicate that the Romans had finally come to fully adopt Greek athletics? The answer is negative. No Roman victor is listed in the surviving evidence for the athletic contests of the Capitoline Games, although a few are found for the equestrian and musical events (Caldelli 1993: 90, 123–63). Greek gymnastic education never became a cultural institution practiced widely by the male populace of Rome, and a native Roman who pursued an athletic career was a rarity.
Yet it is important to recognize that there was a significant degree of familiarity with Greek sport as exercise. Horace (Odes 1.8.11–12, 3.12.8–9) describes the Campus Martius as a place where the discus, javelin, running, and boxing were practiced, and it was there that both Agrippa and Nero built their baths. It is revealing that Quintilian, in his voluminous Institutes of Oratory, an instructional work on oratory, employs numerous figures of speech and references that assume his readers were familiar with Greek sports (Grodde 1997). Romans as individuals could indulge their fondness for Greek sport. Particularly notable examples of Romans with a special attachment to Greek sport include Scipio Africanus (Plutarch Cato Maior 3.7; Livy 29.19.11), the emperor Alexander Severus (Scriptores Historiae Augustae Severus Alexander 27, 35.4), and the aristocratic ladies shown on the fourth-century CE “Bikini mosaic” from Piazza Armerina in Sicily (Carandini, Ricci, and de Vos 1982: vol. 1: 150–6, figs. 73–5, 77 and vol. 2: pl. 17; Lee 1984). In the public baths one could exercise as little or as much as one wanted. The decorations, whether the realistic depictions of athletes on mosaics or the idealized athletic bodies shown in sculpture, could serve as a connection or inspiration both to those who worked out or to those who were merely fans. Did Romans exercise in the nude? While nude bathing became acceptable, the evidence for exercise is not clear-cut (Hallett 2005: 78–83).
To be sure, prominent Roman writers such as Cicero (Tusculan Disputations 4.70), Pliny the Younger (Letters 4.22.3, 7), Seneca (Letters from a Stoic 89.18–19), and Tacitus (Annals 14.20) criticize Greek sport, finding it effete, useless, or immoral, with pederasty, which was closely linked to gymnasia, especially criticized. The vehement negative reaction, however, may well be a sign of a growing acceptance of Greek sport, whether as spectacle or exercise. The Roman critics of Greek athletics may have been protesting too much. Rome modeled itself on the great urban centers of the East, and a major athletic festival like the Capitoline Games, along with a full suite of venues for sport, would have been marks of the city’s sophistication. (For further discussion of Roman critiques of Greek sport, see Chapter 41.)
Greek sports found a place in Rome alongside chariot racing and gladiatorial combats, culminating in Domitian’s establishment of the Capitoline Games and the construction of a permanent stadium for them in the Campus Martius. Similarly, Greek athletic festivals in the East were held under imperial auspices. Support for athletic festivals in the capital and throughout the Empire cannot be separated from political and cultural policy (Spawforth 2007: 378–80). Rome’s importance as a center for Greek sports found further confirmation with the establishment, again with imperial consent, of an athletic clubhouse in the Baths of Trajan for the international guild of athletes. The Roman baths could also provide a suitable space for any who wished to pursue a Hellenic form of exercise.
Rome’s rise to prominence as a center for Greek sports should also be seen in relation to the entire history of Greek athletics. It has been claimed that the golden age of Greek athletics occurred in the early centuries of the Olympics, followed by a centuries-long decline, which continued into the Roman era (see Kyle 1997). However, Pausanias’s description of Olympia, which is corroborated by the archaeological evidence, shows the sanctuary to be at its largest and most impressive extent in the second century CE. At no other time were Greek athletics as widespread. The Olympics had become “ecumenical” (Scanlon 2002: 37–64). Consequently, one could well argue that the golden age of Greek athletics actually occurred, with Roman encouragement and endorsement, during the second century CE. The establishment of the Capitoline Games in the preceding century was an important element in this process. Even without the wholesale adoption of Greek gymnastic education, the capital of the world was a major player in the golden age of Greek athletics.
NOTES
1 These events were called “gymnic” (literally in Greek gymnikoi agones) because, unlike the equestrian events, they were performed in the nude. On the events in Greek athletic competitions such as the Olympics, see Chapter 1 in this volume.
2 On Domitian’s stadium and odeum, see Lee 2000: 229–30 and Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae 4. 341–4. The definitive work on the stadium is Colini 1943.
3 All translations from the work of Dionysius of Halicarnassos and of Dio Cassius found in this essay are taken from the relevant volumes in the Loeb Classical Library, which were translated by E. Cary. In some cases, Cary’s translations have been slightly modified to make the original sense of the text clearer.
4 Matthews 1979: 241, challenging the belief that the games Sulla held in Rome were a transplanted Olympics, states, “What Sulla does seem to have done is to have a held a rival competition which proved a strong counterattraction for the athletes.” Newby 2005: 26, n. 27, concurs with Matthews.
5 For further discussion of the term “isolympic,” see Chapter 6.
6 Richardson 1992: 10–11 suggests that Nero’s amphitheater was instead part of the complex of his baths, though this seems incongruous with the functions of a bath.
7 On the architecture of the Circus Maximus, see Chapter 33.
8 Mancioli 1987: 26, presumably reading from right to left, identifies the athletes as wrestlers, boxers, and runners. Stevenson, Smith, and Madden 1889: 203 identify them as wrestlers, jumpers, and boxers.
REFERENCES
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Caldelli, M. 1992. “Curia athletarum, iera xystike synodos e organizzazione delle terme a Roma.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 93: 75–87.
Caldelli, M. 1993. L’Agon Capitolinus: Storia e protagonisti dall’istituzione domizianea al IV secolo. Rome.
Carandini, A., A. Ricci, and M. de Vos. 1982. Filosofiana: The Villa of Piazza Armerina: The Image of a Roman Aristocrat at the Time of Constantine. Translated by M. C. Keith. 2 vols. Palermo.
Christesen, P. and Z. Martirosova Torlone. 2006. “The Olympic Victor List of Eusebius: Background, Text, and Translation.” Traditio 61: 31–93.
Coarelli, F. 1997. Il Campo Marzio: Dalle origini alla fine della repubblica. Rome.
Colini, A. 1943. Stadium Domitiani. Rome.
Crowther, N. 2004. Athletika: Studies on the Olympic Games and Greek Athletics. Hildesheim.
Dickison, S. and J. Hallett, eds. 2000. Rome and Her Monuments. Wauconda, IL.
Gardiner, E. N. 1910. Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals. London.
Gardiner, E. N. 1930. Athletics of the Ancient World. Oxford.
Geer, R. M. 1935. “The Greek Games at Naples.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 66: 208–21.
Grodde, O. 1997. Sport bei Quintilian. Hildesheim.
Hallett, C. 2005. The Roman Nude: Heroic Portrait Statuary 200 b.c.–a.d. 300. Oxford.
Hornblower, S. and C. Morgan, eds. 2007. Pindar’s Poetry, Patrons, and Festivals: From Archaic Greece to the Roman Empire. Oxford.
Humphrey, J. H. 1986. Roman Circuses: Arenas for Chariot Racing. Berkeley.
Insalaco, A. 1989. “I mosaici degli atleti delle Terme di Caracalla: Una nuova indagine.” Archeologia Classica 41: 293–327.
König, J. 2005. Athletics and Literature in the Roman Empire. Cambridge.
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Kyle, D. 1990. “E. Norman Gardiner and the Decline of Greek Sport.” In D. Kyle and G. Stark, eds., 7–44.
Kyle, D. 1997. “The First Hundred Olympiads: A Process of Decline or Democratization?” Nikephoros 10: 53–75.
Kyle, D. 2007. Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World. Malden, MA.
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Lee, H. 1984. “Athletics and the Bikini Girls from Piazza Armerina.” Stadion 10: 45–76.
Lee, H. 1988. “SIG 3, 802: Did Women Compete against Men in Greek Athletic Festivals?” Nikephoros 1: 103–17.
Lee, H. 2000. “Venues for Greek Athletics in Rome.” In S. Dickison and J. Hallett, eds., 215–40.
Mähl, E. 1974. Gymnastik und Athletik im Denken der Römer. Amsterdam.
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Matthews, V. 1979. “Sulla and the Games of the 175th Olympiad (80 B.C.).” Stadion 5: 239–43.
Miller, S. 2004. Arete: Greek Sports from Ancient Sources. 3rd ed. Berkeley.
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GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
Newby 2005, especially pp. 21–87, provides an excellent starting point for the study of Greek sports in Rome. Her earlier article (2002), a preliminary study to her book, is also useful. Benario 1983, Crowther 2004: 375–419, and Lee 2000 offer insights on various aspects of Greek sports in Rome. König 2005 is an important study of the portrayal of sport in Greek and Roman literature written during the Imperial period.
The outstanding work on the Capitoline Games is Caldelli’s monograph (1993), which, however, is written in Italian, as is Colini’s work on the stadium of Domitian (1943). Thuillier 1996, written in French, surveys all sports, including Greek, in ancient Rome, but his valuable work contains no footnotes (although the German version published in the same year does). Robert’s excellent article (2010) on the Antoninia Pythia and the Agon Minervae, originally published in French in 1970, has now been translated into English. Mähl 1974 examines in German the views of Roman writers on Greek athletics. More abbreviated recent discussion can be found in Hallett 2005: 61–78, who emphasizes Roman hostility to Greek sports, and Newby 2005: 38–44, who, on the contrary, makes the case for degrees of acceptance.
Along with the idea that Romans were hostile to Greek athletics has been the opinion that Greek sports in the Roman period had undergone a decline and become decadent. Gardiner 1930, a work through which many have come to learn about Greek athletics, makes the classic statement of this position, alleging that professionalism had corrupted athletics as early as the fourth century BCE (1930: 46–52; cf. Gardiner 1910: 165–92). For counterarguments to Gardiner see Kyle 1990 and 1997. For an overview of sport in Classical antiquity without Gardiner’s preconceptions of decline, see Kyle 2007.