A Brief Essay on Sport and Greek Unity in the Late Archaic and Early Classical Period

Abstract

This essay argues that athletics contributed significantly to whatever unity there was in the Greek world in the late archaic and early classical period. It does so by considering the significance of the so-called Panhellenic sanctuaries as one of the few contexts in which the collective appellation ‘the Greeks’ was appropriate and by emphasizing that what the four great sanctuaries of the periodos had in common was athletic competitions of great prestige. The crowds which assembled for the contests at the Panhellenic sanctuaries were discursively constructed as ‘the Greeks’ by contemporary sources. The athletic centrality of the four Panhellenic sanctuaries was a reflection of the fact that the festivals here were the ones that the athletes of the leisured elites valued most highly. By the classical period the agon gymnikos on the model of the Olympics had, by peer polity interaction, become a Panhellenic phenomenon and this allowed athletes to travel from festival to festival and compete in their chosen speciality.