Ancient Champions: Photion of Ephesos

The glory of a victory at Olympia tended to eclipse any record of the victor's other achievements as an athlete, especially the early accomplishments that set him on the path to winning this all-important festival. Literary sources uniformly concentrate on an athlete's success or lack of it in the Olympic games to the exclusion of anything else he may have achieved either earlier or later in the world of athletics. Pausanias is typical of most authors, although more open about his bias, when he stated that Olympia was the only site that, in terms of athletics, held any great interest for him (10.9.2). In contrast to the literary sources, the victory monuments from Olympia do occasionally mention the festivals an athlete had won before winning the Olympic games but only in a condensed and selective fashion.1 So, while we can sometimes see the amount of effort it took to win the Olympics, the steps and decisions an athlete made along the way are lost to us. For an understanding of the early careers of Olympic victors it is necessary to turn to inscriptions set up at sites other than Olympia. Most useful in this regard are inscriptions intended to honor an athlete for a victory in a local contest. These documents regularly included information about what an athlete had done earlier in his career that brought him to the point he could win this local festival. Alternately, an athlete's subsequent accomplishments sometimes were recorded as a way of pointing out that a city's festival had been able to attract competitors who later went on to became major athletes. Using these "snapshots" of the progress athletes had made part way through their careers it is possible to reconstruct some of steps they took on their way to becoming successful athletes. The excavations at Ephesos have uncovered many such "snapshots," and by analyzing the information contained in several of them I have been able to assemble three case studies concerning the early careers of athletes who eventually won the Olympics or who were good candidates for doing so. These case studies provide a unique insight into the issues athletes faced in terms of training and the decisions they needed to make in order to promote their careers. More than anything else these cases studies show that the road to Olympia was not an easy one and that good planning may have been nearly as important as sheer talent in becoming an Olympic victor.

A few initial comments about the nature of the athletic inscriptions from Ephesos would probably be helpful at this point. Nearly all of the material found at Ephesos involving athletes dates from the Roman Empire, and this factor presents one advantage for the study of Greek athletics. Unlike earlier inscriptions, athletic inscriptions of this period tend to provide very detailed accounts of an athlete's career and distinctions, including the age categories in which he competed, any grants of citizenship he had gained due to his victories, and a complete listing of all the victories he had won in sacred contests. The inscriptions from Ephesos offer a further advantage in that Ephesos occupied a position in the world of athletics midway between pre-eminent sites such as Olympia and relatively insignificant sites on the fringes of the Greek world.2 As a result, the festivals of Ephesos were sufficiently prominent to attract major competitors, as evidenced by the participation in Ephesian festivals by athletes from cities far removed from Ephesos, such as Athens, Corinth, Amastris in the Pontos, and especially Alexandria.3 The relative importance of Ephesian festivals can also be seen from the fact that athletes considered their victories at Ephesos to be worth listing, but only after the victories they had gained in the periodosgames or other long-established games like the Panathenaia.4 On the other hand, the level of competition was not so high that athletes from Ephesos and nearby cities were not able to win victories at Ephesos and thereby gain a start on their careers as athletes. These athletes, in fact, constitute the subject of this study.

The relatively late date of these inscriptions, however, raises the question whether the experience of athletes during the Roman Empire was in any way similar to that of earlier athletes. This immense and difficult question has not been fully addressed.5 The most that can done in the following discussion is to point out a few ways in which the lives of athletes from Ephesos were probably like those of athletes active in earlier periods. Yet any view on the subject must take into account the continuity provided by the Olympics and the other games of periodos in the lives of athletes, especially in terms of what athletes during any period in the history of Greek athletics hoped to accomplish and how they planned their careers to obtain these objectives. From the time the four great Panhellenic festivals were established or became prominent in fifth century B.C. until the fourth century A.D., the best athletes of the Greek world sought to establish their reputations by winning the same four festivals, in the same events, and using essentially the same rules and equipment as their predecessors.

Another factor to be taken into account is that the athletic inscriptions discussed here have often suffered damage, especially at the top. The resulting gaps in the first lines of many texts mean that we sometimes do not know or have to guess at an athlete's name, citizenship, or athletic specialty. In a few cases, we cannot even be certain if the individual was an athlete since, with the major exception of the Olympic games, many festivals included not just athletic contests but also competitions for actors and musicians. Where it appears to affect the argument I have tried to be clear about any gaps in the record but, ultimately, one needs to refer to the original text for the exact details. As well, in those cases where an athlete's name is missing, I have used the circumlocution "the athlete in no. x," where x stands for the number of the inscription in I.Eph. (Die Inschriften von Ephesos).

Particularly useful for understanding the early careers of future Olympic victors is an inscription found near the theater at Ephesos and currently in the British Museum (I. Eph. 1605). By itself the inscription is not particularly remarkable. It was set up about A.D. 170 and commemorates the victory in the local Ephesea by Photion, a boxer from Laodikea ad Lycum, a city relatively nearby Ephesos.6 As is typical of inscriptions of this type, it records Photion's victory at Ephesos and then includes a list of his other victories, mainly in nearby festivals. What makes this inscription exceedingly rare is that it represents one of the very few cases where we possess documentary evidence about the same athlete but at two very different stages in his career. It was Louis Robert who made the connection between this inscription and a papyrus certifying the privileges of a member of the athletic synod.7 The papyrus dates to A.D. 194 and at this point in his career Photion had become an official of the synod. He had also presumably retired from boxing since he would now be in his mid or late forties; the last victories mentioned in I.Eph. 1605 occurred when he was in his twenties. Of particular significance here is that in the papyrus Photion is styled Olympionikes, indicating that at some point after the Ephesian inscription was erected he had won the Olympic games at least once, if not more often. We can also deduce that he failed to win at least one of the games that made up the periodos. Otherwise, he would have held the title of periodonikes, as did some other athletes mentioned in this papyrus.

The papyrus does not tell us when Photion won the Olympics, but I.Eph. 1605 suggests that this crucial victory came not long after that inscription was erected. For convenience, here is a summary of Photion's accomplishments as recorded in I.Eph. 1605.


Victories in the category of young men, all in boxing:
Didymeia in Miletos, Ecumenical Deia Sebasta in Laodikea, Koina of Asia in Ephesos, Koina of Asia in Laodikea, Epinikia in Ephesos.



Victories in the category of men, all in boxing:
Traianeia Deiphileia in Pergamon, Ephesea (the victory that occasioned the inscription), Ecumenical Deia Sebasta in Laodikea, Eusebeia in Puteoli, Sebasta in Naples, Aspis in Argos, Artemeisia in Ephesos.

 

Also mentioned was the number, now lost, of his victories in talantiaioi and thematikoi games, games offering the victors only cash prizes, not wreaths.9 Photion may have found competing in these games to be helpful financially, as well as useful for honing his boxing skills. But thematikoi games lacked sufficient prestige to be listed by name.

Excluding his victories in thematikoi games, Photion's first five victories took place within the three or four years in which he competed in the age bracket for young men. This estimate is based on the assumption that the majority of these victories fell between his first win in the Deia Sebasta and his second win four years later in the same games. None of his first five wins were in festivals that ranked very high in terms of prestige. The Koina of Asia games were probably the most famous of the group but was not outstandingly so.10 At the other end of the scale, this inscription is the first source to mention his hometown games, the Deia Sebasta.11 To put Photion's early achievements in perspective, a runner honored in another Ephesian inscription of approximately the same date earned six or seven victories as a young man in festivals relatively close to Ephesos, although he had generally been a more successful athlete than Photion, having won the Olympics as a boy.12 Another Ephesian inscription, again of approximately the same date, honored a wrestler who had won six contests as a young man.13 Some were in festivals relatively near to Ephesos, but he also won the Nemean games in Argos and tied in the Olympic games while competing in the age category for young men. Therefore, in terms of the quantity of his early victories, if not the prestige of the festivals he had won, Photion's decision to branch out when he no longer was able to compete in young men's age bracket was fully justified.

His first step in the wider world of athletics was not a large one. Pergamon, the site of his first victory as a man, did not present a major journey, since it was about only twice the distance from Laodikea as Ephesos.14 The festival in that city also did not carry much prestige and, in fact, Photion is the first athlete to record a victory in the Deiphileia.15 It was only after this minor victory, plus two more victories on the local circuit, that Photion made the big decision to travel long distances to compete. He sailed first to Italy, where he gained two victories, of which the more important was his victory in the Sebasta. He then traveled to the Peloponnesus, where he won the Aspis in honor of Hera at Argos. The Aspis ranked in prestige slightly below the four games that made up the periodos and so with this victory Photion had entered the top ranks of the athletic world.16 If Photion followed the pattern shown by other athletes who won the Sebasta at Naples and the Aspis, he was within range of winning the Nemean and Isthmian games.17 This makes it entirely possible that his Olympic victory followed within a few years of the date when I.Eph. 1605 was erected. We, however, cannot discount that he may have had a temporary set back or two before reaching this goal. His progress as a top-ranked athlete was not entirely smooth, as shown by the fact that he never succeeded in winning all the games that made up the periodos. Moreover, at the point at which he was honored for his victory in the Ephesea, Photion was in his early twenties, and he was still young enough to have several tries at winning the Olympics before he retired.

Photion's career represents a reminder that for many, if not all athletes, the road to the Olympic games was composed of a series of small and carefully planned steps. In fact, the calculation and knowledge presupposed by Photion's choices is probably the most noteworthy feature of his record. In making decisions about where to compete and when it would be worthwhile to try his luck at festivals he had not attended before, Photion seems to have known when various festivals were held and how strong the competition was likely to be. How he came by this information, especially regarding festivals far removed from Ephesos, is not clear. One wonders if his trainer was a major source of advice about the greater world of athletics. Since the popularity of the Ephesian festivals made Ephesos a crossroads of the athletic world, he may also have picked up a significant amount of information from visiting athletes, along with a notion of how his skill as a boxer measured up to the competition he would face if he decided to compete in the major festivals of mainland Greece.

Other athletes besides Photion used the festivals in and near Ephesos to boost their careers. Included in this group are the two athletes mentioned above to show that Photion's early accomplishments were not particularly unusual in terms of the number festivals he had won before he decided to compete outside of Asia Minor. Another athlete who depended on the festivals near Ephesos for the majority of his victories was the runner whose career as a boy is recorded in I.Eph. 1130. He was active at exactly the same time as Photion, and they could even have met since he won the Ephesea four years after Photion (518th penteteris for the runner vs. 517th penteteris for Photion; the count was based on the number of four-year cycles after the legendary founding of Ephesos). This was not the only similarity between their careers. The runner won many of the same local festivals, including the Didymeia, the Ephesea, and the Koina of Asia. Moreover, the runner's biggest victory to date had been in the Sebasta at Naples, and it was Photion's victory in this festival that justified his decision to compete in the "major leagues." While we know nothing about this runner's later career, one wonders if he did not also follow Photion in winning the Olympics later in his career. If so, he would have been another good example of an athlete who relied on victories in local festivals early in his career to gain the experience required to compete later at the highest levels of the athletic world.

The Sebasta, the festival in Italy that figured so prominently in the careers of these two athletes, did not come into existence, as the name implies, until the reign of Augustus.18 Likewise, various Asia Minor festivals routinely mentioned in the inscriptions from Ephesos were unknown to athletes of the Classical and Hellenistic periods. For example, the Koina of Asia, a favorite festival of athletes active in Asia Minor during the Roman Empire and another festival that figured prominently in careers of Photion and the runner in no. 1130, did not come into existence until the time of Augustus.19 Over the next century or so the right to hold the Koina was extended to various cities in Asia, including Ephesos and Laodikea, the two sites where Photion won this festival. Certainly the creation of these new festivals made it possible for Photion and the runner in no. 1130 to amass a considerable number of victories at relatively early stage in their careers.20

This, however, does not mean that earlier athletes would have not understood and practiced the sort of careful career management exemplified by Photion, especially his deliberate pursuit of victories in relatively unimportant festivals as a way of increasing his record and experience. Rather, all that had happened was that these new festivals provided athletes like Photion with an opportunity that their predecessors from mainland Greece had enjoyed from a very early date. We do not tend to notice this aspect of the lives of early athletes because, unlike inscriptions set up during the Roman Empire, earlier athletic inscriptions virtually never provide a complete picture of an athlete's career. Yet, some of our earliest athletic inscriptions do provide glimpses of athletes who were not hesitant about either competing in or taking credit for winning festivals that ranked far below the Olympic games.21 Examples include the column set up in the Heraion at Argos by an athlete of the late archaic period who felt it proper to record his victories in nearby Tegea and Pellene (IAG 7) and the very verbose account of the chariot and running victories earned by a Spartan father and son active in the second half of the fifth century B.C. (IAG 16, cf. Moretti's judgment: "undoubtedly remarkable athletes, but only in proportion to the modest regional festivals in which they participated").

 

Even more informative as to the role that lesser festivals played in the life of early athletes is an inscription set up to honor Theogenes for his two victories in Olympics in early fifth century and for some of his other accomplishments.22 Included is the notice that during the twenty-two years in which he competed Theogenes amassed 1,300 victories. Henri W. Pleket has calculated that to obtain such a record Theogenes had to compete in two festivals a month, usually in two separate events, something no athlete of the Roman period probably came close to matching.23 Many of these victories must have come in small and relatively unimportant festivals. This is not entirely a conjecture since we, in fact, know that Theogenes competed in at least one relatively minor festival. Recorded along with his other victories is the notice that he won the dolichos at the Hekatomboia at Argos. Presumably he was planning on competing there in the boxing and pankration competitions, and he decided to see if he could win as a runner at a festival where the competition would not have been very stiff. Under normal circumstances—and here I am assuming that super-athletes like Theogenes would not have shown up for every event at every contest—these regional festivals would have offered the athletes from cities in mainland Greece a chance to gain experience, keep in practice, and build a record— basically the same things that the regional festivals of Asia Minor later on provided Photion and his contemporaries.

Trainers were an important part of athletic life at least as early as the time of Pindar and Bacchylides, both of whom attribute their patrons' success to the guidance of their trainers.24 A further testament to the importance of trainers to early athletes is that not only did these athletes travel long distances to compete in festivals such as the Olympics, they also thought it was worthwhile to bring their trainers with them. This is apparent from the famous story of Kallipateria who was the daughter of Diagoras of Rhodes and also the mother of the Olympic victor Peisirodoros.25 In the most common version of the story, she disguised herself as a trainer in order to see her son compete, and her plan would have only made sense if trainers were a regular part of an athlete's entourage.26 Trainers continued to be important in later periods, as is demonstrated by the actions of Kratinos who won the Olympics in 212 B.C.27 He thought that his trainer had played such an important role in his success that he asked the Eleans for permission to set up a statue of his trainer at Olympia in addition to his own. Evidence that trainers continued to be an important influence in the lives of later athletes comes from a Roman source, but one who was quite familiar with Greek athletics—Seneca.28 As an example of the control an individual should exercise over himself, Seneca cites the influence that Pyrrhus, the most famous trainer of his day, had on the athletes under his care (Dial. 4.14.3).

In the Roman period, inscriptions occasionally acknowledge the help athletes had received from the person responsible for their training.29 The most common terms in inscriptions for these individuals are ( characters I can see on my PC but can't seem to post here. I'll leave what pops up when I try to write the proper characters and when I figure out how I'll fix it, but until then what comes up is a placeholder like an X or Y) paidotribhV, alÎipthV, and ÎpistathV. I will refer to all of these with the term "coach," instead of the more standard one of "trainer," because "coach" includes both an individual who actually trained an athlete and someone who simply oversaw their training. In the cases considered below, it is sometimes unclear exactly which of these functions an individual played in an athlete's career. The term paidotribhV is used in only one inscription from Ephesos, a list of the victors in a competition that was held in the gymnasium and that was open only to boys training there (I.Eph. 1101). Of the inscriptions found at Ephesos that honor athletes for their victories outside the gymnasium, eleven specifically name the athlete's coach or coaches. Five of these employ the expression upo Îpistathn while upo alÎipthn occurs in four others. In two inscriptions—documents that will turn out to be important for understanding the careers of young athletes—both expressions are employed of different individuals (I.Eph. 1109, 1112). Coaches are also mentioned in other contexts. A decree discussed in the next section names a coach (ÎpistathV) who had made a request of the Ephesian boule for an athlete under his supervision (I.Eph. 2005). We have a report—the stone itself is lost—of an epitaph set up for the Corinthian coach (alÎipthV)

Gnaius Kornelios Epaphrodeitos by another Corinthian who might have been a relative (I.Eph. 2243). The question of how Kornelios happened to die in Ephesos is tantalizing. One wonders if he expired while attending an Ephesian festival with one of the athletes whose training he supervised. If so, he was not the only coach who came to Ephesos with one of his athletes. The Alexandrian runner honored in one of the inscriptions listed above (4113) was accompanied by his coach (alÎipthV) from Side when that runner came to Ephesos to compete in the local version of the Olympic games. All of these references, especially the last one, testify to the important role coaches played in the lives of successful athletes.

Yet, of the inscriptions listed above, the most important for understanding of the role that coaches played in the early careers of athletes is no. 1112. This inscription honors a native of Ephesos, Asklepiades, for his victory as a wrestler in one of the local festivals, the Mariana Isthmia during the second quarter of the third century A.D.30 At this early stage in his career Asklepiades was being coached by Aurelius Neikias who, as the inscription clearly indicates, was a citizen of Ephesos. Yet Asklepiades was not destined to remain a small-time athlete. The last lines of no. 1112 take care to note that after his victory in this local festival Asklepiades went on the win the Olympics and had hopes of winning the periodos.31 Also recorded is the fact that when he gained his major victories, his training was being supervised by Aurelius Leonidas. The inference is that he had changed coaches sometime after he won the Mariana Isthmia. Presumably his new coach, Leonidas, was not an Ephesian since, unlike Neikias, no mention is made of his citizenship.

 

This is not the only difference between Neikias and Leonidas. Neikias is termed an ÎpistathV while Leonidas is described as an alÎipthV. The same contrast occurs in no. 1109, which is heavily damaged but which clearly honored a competitor of some sort for winning the Mariana Isthmia at the same date as Asklepiades.32 While both ÎpistathV and alÎipthV were common terms for coaches, the use of two different terms in the same document implies a difference in the roles or status of the two individuals involved. I propose that Leonidas had been personally hired by Asklepiades to coach him, just as the Alexandrian runner in no. 4113 had hired a coach from Side. In contrast, Neikias had been appointed by the state to oversee the training of the boys and young men who practiced in the Ephesian gymnasia. It was in Neikias' official capacity that he had coached another victor in this same festival or the Mariana Pythia, a festival funded by the same individual (I.Eph. 1159). Certainly, as a civic appointment, it was helpful, if not an absolutely necessary, that Neikias was an Ephesian citizen. In contrast, as a private coach, Leonidas' citizenship was not an issue.

Outside of the inscriptions cited here, no other evidence has come to light from Ephesos that would confirm the existence at Ephesos of an epistates specifically connected with the city's gymnasia. But functionaries, who were termed epistatai and who were either in charge of a gymnasium or working in a gymnasium are documented for the nearby cities of Miletos, Samos, and Priene in the Hellenistic period.33 At sites further away from Ephesos, epistatai of the ephebes or epistatai of the paides are known at Messene and Rhodes, again from the Hellenistic period.34 Recently William S. Morison has argued that we may have a record of an epistates in charge of a public palaestra in Athens in the fourth century B.C.35 He also points out we have two literary references to epistatai of the gymnasia of Athens. This evidence, of course, derives from a much earlier date than most of the Ephesian references to epistatai, only one of which comes from the Hellenistic period. It does, however, indicate that we cannot automatically assume that an epistates was a privately hired coach. He could well be some sort of city employee or appointment.

The best parallels, though, for the Ephesian inscriptions come from a city relatively nearby Ephesos, Thyateira. In all, six inscriptions from this site mention epistatai who were responsible (upo Îpistathn) for Thyateiran athletes when these athletes gained victories in local games (TAM 5.2 1008, 1011, 1013, 1017, 1026, 1030). These inscriptions date to approximately the same time as Neikias was epistates at Ephesos, and like Neikias, at least one of the epistatai mentioned in these inscriptions was a native of the city where he was an epistates (1030). More significantly, the close association between the position of epistates and the training of young men in gymnasium is revealed by no. 1008. The document was set up by the young men of the gymnasia of Thyateira and was intended to honor one of their own members for his victory in a contest that they themselves had put on, i.e., a contest that was presumably open only to members of the gymnasium.36 The last lines of the document record that all of this had taken place under the watch of the epistates Aurelius Attikos, which makes sense if Attikos had been appointed to oversee their training. Interestingly, Attikos appears again as an epistates in another document, an honorary decree set up by the city of Thyateira for a citizen who had won the local games in honor of Apollo Tyrimnaios (1011).37 I take it that Attikos was essentially doing what Neikias had done, making sure that the boys and young men in the gymnasium received appropriate training. When his charges were eventually ready to try their luck in a contest open to wider group than their compatriots from the gymnasium, they did so under his sponsorship.38 Because he and the other epistatai mentioned in the inscriptions from Thyateira and Ephesos were acting in the interest of the city, it made sense to mention their contributions when the city commemorated an athletic victory by one of the boys or young men for whom they had been responsible.

Neither the inscriptions from Thyateira nor those from Ephesos provide any clue as to whether the epistates actually trained the young men and boys under his control or simply made sure that the gymnasium was kept in good order and that those actually responsible for athletic training did their job. It is entirely possible that we should not even think of the epistates so much as coach but as an athletic director. I would submit, however, that one duty of the epistates was to accompany the athletes under his control to festivals in other cities. The need for someone to accompany young athletes on their travels is contemplated by the inscription from Miletos mentioned above, although in that case this responsibility was not given to the epistates but to the paidotribes.39 Yet, if the epistates at Ephesos and nearby cities had this responsibility, it would explain the why the epistates Trophimos was mentioned in two inscriptions from Ephesos honoring athletes from Tralles for their victories in Mariana Isthmia at the same time as Asklepiades (I.Eph. 1111, 1113). As the epistates for the nearby city of Tralles, Trophimos had been responsible for the training of these two athletes; therefore, it made perfect sense if he had traveled with them to Ephesos when they competed in what could have been their first major festival.

 

But what can we conclude about Asklepiades and the role coaching played in his career? The evidence of I.Eph. 1112 and related inscriptions show that when Asklepiades won the Mariana Isthmia he had received fairly generic training, essentially the training that the epistates provided for any boy or young man who practiced in the Ephesian gymnasia. Sometime after this victory Asklepiades decided that he had a chance at a career as an athlete and that to make any progress he needed a much more intensive and personal level of training than he had received in the past. So he chose Leonidas to be his coach. Possibly Leonidas saw Asklepiades compete and recruited him.40 That part of the process cannot now be recovered, nor can we reconstruct any of the financial aspects of their arrangment, such as whether the money Asklepiades earned from his early victories was a deciding factor in his being able to hire his own coach. Yet we can say that Asklepiades' decision to seek Leonidas' help was the right one, as witnessed by his victory in the Olympics. Asklepiades thereby became one of the few athletes who successfully made the move from the world of the gymnasium to the world of real athletics. This transition that we see Asklepiades making is something we assume that nearly all major Greek athletes had to make. But, to my knowledge, I.Eph. 1112 is the only source that reveals this rite of passage or hints at the role that coaching may have played in it.

As mentioned above, nearly all the athletes known from the inscriptions found at Ephesos were active during the Roman Empire, primarily during the second and third centuries A.D. An important exception is Athenodoros who was the subject of two decrees of the Ephesian boule and demos, I.Eph. 1415 and 2005. It is not clear in which order the decrees were passed, but the willingness in I.Eph. 2005 to provide Athenodorus with special help suggests that he already held the Ephesian citizenship granted him in I.Eph. 1415. In themselves grants of citizenship to athletes were not unusual. Photion was titled both an Laodikean and an Ephesian in I.Eph. 1605, with the later citizenship no doubt due to one of his victories in Ephesian festivals. As I.Eph. 1112 likewise makes clear, Asklepiades' success at Olympia and Athens gave him the right to claim to be an Elean and Athenian, in addition to his original citizenship at Ephesos. Yet, what is unusual about Athenodorus' case is that the Ephesians decided to grant him citizenship not based on his having won an Ephesian festival but on his victory in the Nemean games as a boy in an athletic event (the decree uses the terminology "winning with the body"). The reasons for this decision are made clear in I.Eph. 1415. At the time of his victory in the Nemean games, Athenodorus was a resident of Ephesos with equal rights. He, however, had greatly ingratiated himself with the Ephesians by having himself announced as an Ephesian when his victory was proclaimed at Nemea. In the decree his action is described as "he crowned the city." Due to his services to Ephesos the decree enjoined that Athenodorus be enrolled as a citizen, be announced in the agora like other victors, and be given the cash reward set down by law for such a victory. Unfortunately, the decree does not record how much money Athenodorus actually received.

Like I.Eph. 1415, the other inscription mentioning Athenodorus, I.Eph. 2005, also deals with a grant of Ephesian citizenship. Louis Robert, however, realized that the real subject of this decree was Athenodorus' future as an athlete.41 Specifically, the boule and demos had been asked to grant citizenship to the individuals who had helped or were going to help Athenodorus financially.42 The money was going to be used to pay for his training (askhsiV) and travel (Îgdhmia), the two expenses for which the decree indicated Athenodorus lacked sufficent funds. The proposal to grant Athenodorus this help in furthering his career was made by his coach Therippides. Therippides is described as an epistates and, as argued above, this term implies that Therripides held an official appointment in the Ephesian gymnasia. In this context, it would have make perfect sense for him to advise the Ephesians on the needs of athletes active in Ephesos.43 The reasons why the Ephesians granted Therippides' request mirror the reasons they agreed to the proposal to make Athenodorus a citizen. He had won the Nemean games as a boy, and he was expected to win other games and to crown the city in the future. Unfortunately, we do not know whether this expectation was ever realized, especially if Athenodorus eventually won the Olympic games, a victory that would have really crowned the city of Ephesos.

Athenodorus was not alone in his need for financial help with the expenses any boy faced when he had decided to pursue a career as an athlete. As Robert realized when reconstructing Athenodorus' situation, I.Eph. 1416, which happened to be inscribed on the same block as I.Eph. 1415, repeats much of the language of I.Eph. 2005 and can be restored accordingly. Notably, Timonax, the athlete in question, had won the Isthmian and Nemean games as boy, and on this ground he was expected to win other festivals and again crown the city. In this case the proposal for financial help was made by the athlete's father, not his coach. The details of the proposal are lost, but it is likely that Timonax' father asked for and received financial help similar to what Athenodorus received. Again the inscriptions from Ephesos provide a rare look at the financial position of an athlete at an early stage in his career.

While Robert was very much concerned with explicating the sense of I.Eph. 2005 and 1416, he did not explore their import for our understanding of the wider world of athletics, in particular for the question of how financial considerations may have affected the careers of athletes. On this issue scholars have assumed widely differing positions. One extreme is represented by David Young's theory that, if an athlete lacked the funds to devote himself to athletics full time, all he needed to do was win a minor local festival.44 On Young's view, the money from his first victory would have been sufficient for him to get his career started, with subsequent victories paying his way. Moreover, in his opinion access to public gymnasia and the ephebic training paid for by most cities put this first and all-important victory within the reach of poor athletes. At the other extreme, Henri W. Pleket believes that specialized training would overwhelm any advantage that innate talent may have given a poor athlete.45 More important, arguing based in part on I.Eph. 2005 and in part on the prizes won by victors in the Panathenaia, he asserted that the rewards athletes received from victories in major festivals were not sufficient for an individual to pursue a career as an athlete.

The picture revealed by the Ephesian decrees, however, is much more complex than either of these positions will admit. First, we need to take into account that we have not just one, which might be considered a fluke, but two athletes in nearly identical situations. As boys they had won the most important games in the Greek world next to the Olympic and Pythian games, but their families lacked the financial resources for them to continue on with their careers. The existence of Timonax and Athenodorus show, more than any evidence we possess, that the athletes who won major Panhellenic festivals did not always come from wealthy families. This does not imply that they were from poor families. Their families had been able to assemble the funds required to send them to Isthmia and Nemea— no small expense. What their families were not in the position to do was to continue to pay for their travel and training. To use a categorization employed by Artemidorus, Timonax and Athenodorus would be classed as metrios, i.e., halfway between the rich and poor.46 Interestingly, it was this financial class that Artemidorus most closely associated with athletes in interpreting a dream of a woman giving birth to an eagle (2.20.26). According to Artemidorus, the woman's son would have the good fortune of becoming an athlete if he was of the metrios financial class. If he were rich or poor then his good fortune would take another form. But Athenodorus and Timonax were neither rich nor poor and so, at least if we take our lead from Artemidorus, a career as an athlete was a good choice for them and their families

Another thing we can learn from the experience of these two athletes is that Young and Pleket were both right, in their own way, about the role that free access to gymnasia and, alternately, expensive specialized training could play in an athlete's career. Athenodorus was able to win the Nemean games using what he had learned in the Ephesian gymnasia under the supervision of his state-supported coach Therippides. Presumably the same was true for Timonax whose family seems to have been unable to pay for any expensive coaching. So, as Young asserted, an athlete could obtain a victory, even in a major festival, without access to specialized and expensive coaching. In Pleket's defense, though, this was as far as their native talents and the training available to all Ephesian boys would take them. The two decrees clearly acknowledge that further success was only possible if they obtained expensive training, something that was beyond their financial reach even using the rewards the city had granted them for their past victories. Yet, the Ephesians clearly believed that these two athletes had a chance to bring honor to the city and that supporting them financially was a good investment. The underlying assumption is that well-off athletes did not have an overwhelming advantage over their less well-off compatriots; a little financial help would level the playing field.

 

Finally, it is important to remember that Timonax and Athenodorus were not contemporaries of Photion or the many other athletes of the Roman Empire known from the inscriptions found at Ephesos. Louis Robert assigned I.Eph. 1416 (the decree mentioning Timonax) and hence I.Eph. 1415 (the decree awarding financial help to Athenodorus inscribed on the same block) to the late fourth or early third century B.C.47 It may be unwarranted to retroject Timonax' and Athenodorus' experiences back two hundred years earlier and assert on this basis alone that in the Archaic and Classical period athletes were able to become successful athletes without substantial wealth. On the other hand, we can say that mechanisms to ensure the entry of less well-off athletes into the world of athletics, however haphazard these procedures may have been, were not just a phenomenon of the Roman Empire but were in existence not long after the Classical period.

When inscriptions like the ones discussed here are dissected and put under a microscope they provide a picture of life as it appeared to athletes, if not on a day-to-day, at least on a monthly basis. No doubt, the long-term goal of these athletes was to win the Olympics and festivals of that caliber. But over the short term, an athlete, his family, and sometimes even his native city were presented with a whole range of choices and decisions. Was he good enough to compete outside the realm of the gymnasium? Did he have what it took to compete in more important festivals than the games held in his own city, or if he had already some success at the local and regional level, was he ready for the top-ranked games of the Greek world? Thought had to be given to securing a trainer, paying for training, and ensuring that he arrived at the next festival on time and in shape to compete. Unfortunately, the case studies presented here do not tell us much about the grounds on which these decisions were made. But they do show us the type of decisions that had to be made if an athlete was going succeed. Given the nearly constant management required to make any sort of progress on a career as an athlete—and here we should remember that we virtually never hear about the many who must have fallen by the wayside—it is surprising that so many boys and young men throughout the Greek world were attracted to a career in athletics.




Stephen Brunet - Olympic Hopefuls from Ephesos - Journal of Sports History

 

Sources and Notes:


Most abbreviations follow those used in L'Année Philologique, Oxford Latin Dictionary, Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon. For epigraphical works I have used the list in Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum. For convenience I have tried to cite inscriptions according to Luigi Moretti, Iscrizioni agonistiche greche (Rome: A. Signorelli, 1953) = IAG, with reference to revised editions of the inscriptions included there as needed. 1See, e.g., IvO 232 and SEG 22 350 with Luigi Moretti, "Nuovo supplemento al catalogo degli Olympionikai," Miscellanea greca e romana 12 (1987): 85. While IvO 232 does not honor an athlete but a trumpeter (from Ephesos as it turns out), it provides a good example of the difficulty a condensed synopsis presents for reconstructing the path an athlete's career assumed, especially at the early stages. The inscription indicates the number of times he won seven different games, including the Olympics, with his other victories summarized under the heading "the remaining sacred and crown games." We are not told at what age he won these various contests or where he gained his first major victory. Frustrating in this regard is the mention that he twice won the Koina of Asia, a festival held in his native city of Ephesos and in other nearby cities. Was this the victory that convinced him he had a career as a trumpeter? 2For a brief overview of the attraction Ephesian festivals had for athletes and artists, see Helmut Engelmann, "Zur Agonistik in Ephesos," Stadion 24 (1998): 101-108. He also provides some good examples of what can be learned about athletics from the extensive epigraphic evidence from Ephesos, although none of his examples concern the topics discussed here. 3I.Eph. 1114: Athenian runner; 1116: Corinthian pankratiast; 1117: Amastrian boxer; 1121: Alexandrian runner. Alexandrians, who may have been athletes but who could have been actors, are mentioned in 1154 (the inscription is too fragmentary to tell anything more than he had the multiple citizenship typical of an athlete or actor), 1617 (also fragmentary), and 3005 (he held the title of hieronikes, which was used by both athletes and actors). The Alexandrian in no. 3005 may have been a resident in Ephesos. He was not subject to taxes and he, along with his son, had paid for part of the entranceway to the tetragonal agora. If he had been an athlete, Ephesos would have made an excellent base of operations. 4Good examples include IAG 67, 77, 84 (the honorand of IAG 84 is also mentioned in I.Eph. 1125 and possibly 1160 and 1612, but none of the Ephesian inscriptions list his victories). 5The subject of athletics during the Roman Empire has until recently been largely ignored because of the belief that sports suffered a decline as professionals displaced amateurs. Fundamental in changing this view has been Henri W. Pleket, "Zur Soziologie des antiken Sports," Mededelingen van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome 36 (1974): 57-87, reprinted with additions in Nikephoros 14 (2001): 157-212. Pleket showed that aristocrats continued to compete in games and that the aristocratic values associated with athletics earlier were maintained throughout the Roman period. Also see Donald Kyle, "The First 100 Olympiads: Decline or Democratization?" Nikephoros 10 (1997): 53-75. For an assessment of recent work on athletics in the Roman period, including his own overview of the status of athletics after the Romans took control of Greece, see Thomas F. Scanlon, Eros and Greek Athletics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), chap. 2. 6Louis Robert, "Études d'épigraphie grecque," Revue de philologie, de littérature et d'histoire anciennes 56 (1930): 40-41, dated Photion's victory in the Ephesea to c.170 based on three criteria. The Didymeia and Deia do not carry the additional name of Commodeia in the inscription and must date before A.D. 180. The Epineikia celebrated the victory of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus over the Parthians in A.D. 165-166. The Eusebeia were established under Antonius Pius. 7Ibid., 39, suspected that the editors of Pap. Lon. 3.1178.84 (now Peter Frisch, Zehn agonistische Papyri [Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986], 6.84) had misread Photion's patronymic and the same athlete was mentioned in both documents. His conjecture about the papyrus has since been confirmed by Frisch. The papyrus can be securely dated to 194 based on the mention of Septimius Severus' second consulship (ll. 47-48). 8I take the Ephesea mentioned in l. 10 to be the victory commemorated in first lines of the inscription, i.e., Photion had not gained two victories in the Ephesea at this point in his career. This implies that several years had passed between the time he won the Ephesea and the time the inscription was erected. His return to compete in the Artemeisia, the last victory listed, may have provided the occasion for the inscription. 9On the creation of games offering victors cash prizes and games established by private individuals, see Henri W. Pleket, "Mass-sport and Local Infrastructure in the Greek Cities of Roman Asia Minor," Stadion 24 (1998): 156-167; Onno van Nijf, "Athletics, Festivals, and Greek Identity in the Roman East," Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 45 (1999): 176-200; and Onno van Nijf, "Local Heroes: Athletics, Festivals, and Elite Self-fashioning in the Roman East," in Being Greek under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire, ed. Simon Goldhill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 306-334. The Mariana Isthmia and Pythia at Ephesos discussed below were set up by Marius Septimius Marion, presumably from his own funds since he listed as agonothete in perpetuity in some inscriptions, e.g., I.Eph. 1107. While a few of the thematikoi/themis (prize) games discussed by Pleket were named after gods, none of those games are termed Pythian or Isthmian games. The fact that Marion's games carry these titles implies that they qualified as sacred games, albeit at a very low-ranking among such games. 10On the Koina of Asia, see below. 11For the evidence for the Deia, see IAG 73 (this inscription); Herbert Karl, Numismatische Beiträge zum Festwesen der Kleinasiatischen und Nordgriechischen Städte im 2./3. Jahrhundert (Doctoral dissertation, Univ. des Saarlandes, 1975), 33 (to be used with caution). As Moretti noted in his discussion of IAG 73, this festival is mentioned in two other inscriptions from Ephesos, I.Eph. 1132, 1615, as well as in other sources. As the inscription honoring Photion makes clear, the Deia had been upgraded in status, becoming a festival in honor of the Emperor and having received the title Ecumenical. On this title, see Karl, Numismatische, 89-93. The change in the status of several festivals was indicated in IAG 84 with the notation "now sacred." 12I.Eph. 1132. The exact count of his victories as a young man is uncertain because the inscription fails to record whether his second victory in the Traianeia was as a young man or a man. His Olympic victory as a boy recorded in this inscription is dated in Olympionikai 905 to A.D. 205. 13I.Eph. 1615. The inscription does not make clear in what age category he tied at the Olympic games (his first appearance at Olympia). Olympionikai 899, 901, dates his Olympic victory as man (his second appearance) after A. D. 201. 14It is entirely possible that he stayed in Ephesos after the Epinikia, reducing his travel time by half. Ephesos would have made a better base of operations than his native city. 15See

 

IAG 73 (this inscription but, as Moretti realized, the festival is also mentioned in I.Eph. 1132, 4114). On this festival, also see Peter Herrmann, "Eine Kaiserurkunde der Zeit Marc Aurels aus Milet," Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Istanbuler Mitteilungen 25 (1975): 157. 16On the Aspis, earlier called the Heraia, see Luigi Moretti, "Dagli Heraia all' Aspis di Argo," Miscellanea greca e romana 16 (1991): 179-189. Slightly misleading is the comment by Pleket, "Mass-sport and Local Infrastructure," n. 15 (following SEG 41 1750) "a victory in the Argive Heraia rated pretty low in the hierarchy of periodos-games, because a material prize (bronze shield) was awarded to the victor." The Aspis/Heraia certainly did not rank with the Nemean or Isthmian games or, after their introduction, the Aktia and Kapetolia. Yet it was still in the top eight or nine games in the Greek world and it holds a prominent position in lists of a successful athlete's victories. So, in IAG 59 a runner takes pride in being first of Milesians to win the stade race in the Aspis. Among the inscriptions in IAG that list a competitor's victories roughly by importance of the festival, the Aspis ranks with or just after festivals such as Nemean, Aktian, Panathenaic and Kapetolian games: 77, 81, 84, 87, 90 (n.b. not all of these are for athletes). I have left IAG 88 out of this list since the ordering is odd with, for example, the Kapetolia placed at the end. Similar evaluations of the importance of the Aspis can be found in Milet 1.3 371 and I.Smyrna 659 (not an athlete but a kitharoidos). It also seems odd that, if the awarding of a material prize lowered the status of the festival, the festival should have been renamed the Aspis ("Shield") instead of keeping its old name, the Heraia. 17For an athlete who followed nearly the same career path, see I.Eph. 1611 (he had victories in many of the same contests at Photion, but then he moved up a level to win the Isthmian and Nemean games). On the other hand, IAG 76 shows that, even with wins in the festivals like the Sebasta and the Aspis, Photion's success was not assured. Abas, the athlete honored in this decree, had a very similar career to Photion, winning the Eusebeia, the Sebasta, the Aspis, and numerous games in and around Ephesos. Yet, he never went any further than this and never won any games of the periodos. The Olympeia in IAG 76 l. 14 cannot have been the Olympic games in Pisa since the games are listed according to their importance. Abas must have won the Olympeia held in Athens or one of the cities of Asia Minor. For a list of such cities, see Andrew Farrington, "Olympic Victors and the Popularity of the Olympic Games in the Imperial Period," Tyche 12 (1997): 32-34, appendix. 18On these games, see Russel M. Geer, "The Greek Games at Naples," Transactions of the American Philological Association 66 (1935): 208-221. 19The forerunner of the Koina was probably the festival held in Augustus' honor in Pergamon in 29 B.C. (Dio Cassius 51.20.9). The first mention of the Koina ("the Sebasta Romaia established by the Koinon of Asia") occurs in IAG 59, which Moretti dated to c. A.D. 20. On the difficult issue of which cities held the Koinon and when they received the right to hold the festival, see Luigi Moretti, "Koina Asias," Rivista di filologia e d'istruzione classica, n.s. 32 (1954): 276-289. Also see Peter Herz, "Addenda agonistica I: Koina Asias in Sardeis," Epigraphica Anatolica 30 (1998): 133-136; and idem, "Gedanken zu den Spielen der Provinz Asia in Kyzikos," Nikephoros 11 (1998): 171-182. 20No complete list of athletic festivals created or upgraded to sacred status during the Roman period exists. Wolfgang Leschhorn, "Die Verbreitung von Agonen in den östlichen Provinzen des Römischen Reiches," Stadion 24 (1998): 31-57, estimated that the total of new or revamped festivals reached as high as 500. The areas most affected by the change were those that had not been powerhouses in the world of athletics in the past, including Ephesos and even more the cities on the fringes of the Greek world. The resulting shift in the origin of Olympic victors from mainland Greece to Asia Minor and the Greek East has been documented by Farrington, "Olympic Victors," esp. 18-19. 21For more examples of athletes of the archaic period whose records included victories in some less than stellar festivals, see Henri W. Pleket, "Games, Prizes, Athletes and Ideology: Some Aspects of the History of Sport in the Greco-Roman World," Stadion 1 (1975): 55-58. 22On Theogenes, see Olympionikai 201, 215 with Jean Pouilloux, "Théogénès de Thasos . . . quarante ans après," Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 118 (1994): 199-206; and Olivier Masson, "À propos de Théagénès, athlète et héros thasien," Revue des études grecques 107 (1994): 694-697. 23Pleket, "Games, Prizes, Athletes and Ideology," 81, originally calculated that Theogenes averaged a victory once a week. He later revised this to twenty-five victories a year on the premise that Theogenes probably won the pankration and boxing at nearly all the festivals he attended, with the result that the total number of festivals in which he must have competed was closer to 550. On his recalculation, see Pleket, "Mass-sport and Local Infrastructure," 154n13, where he also rightly rejects the proposition of Wolfgang Decker, Sport in der griechischen Antike: vom minoischen Wettkampf bis zu den Olympischen Spielen (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1995), 134-136, that 1,300 represents the total number of rounds Theogenes fought. 24For a general overview of training and the terminology for trainers, mainly based on literary sources but with some reference to the epigraphic and papyrological evidence, see Julius Jüthner, Die athletischen Leibesülbungen der Griechen I: Geschischte der Leibesübungen, ed. Friedrich Brein (Vienna: Hermann Böhlaus, 1965), 161-197. Pindar's practice was to mention trainers only in the odes in honor of boys; see Mark Golden, Sport and Society in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 83-84 with the literature cited there. 25On Kallipateira (in some versions she is named Pherenike or Aristopateira), see Olympionikai 356. 26The stories of Glaucus (see Olympionikai 134) and Arrachion (see Olympionikai 102) also testify to presence of trainers at Olympia when their pupils were competing. 27Olympionikai 541. 28On Seneca's interest in Greek athletics, see Pierre Cagniart, "Seneca's Attitude towards Sports and Athletics," Ancient History Bulletin 14 (2000): 162-170. 29A pentathlete's coach is mentioned in IAG 61, along with voice coaches

 

of two non-athletes (IAG 70, 90). Some years after the publication of IAG, Luigi Moretti, in "Serapion di Alessandria, velocista," Epigraphica 49 (1987): 75n14, proposed that IAG 67 should be restored so that the last lines mention a coach. His reading is accepted in I.Napoli 50. He also proposed a similar restoration for SEG 34 176. In addition to these examples, abundant epigraphical evidence of the Roman period for coaches has been collected by Louis Robert, Études anatoliennes: recherches sur les inscriptions grecques de l'Asie Mineure (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1937), 139n1; idem, "Sur des inscriptions d'Éphèse: fêtes, athlètes, empereurs, épigrammes," Revue de philologie, de littérature et d'histoire anciennes 93 (1967): 30-31; and idem, "Un citoyen de Téos à Bouthrôtos d'Épire," Comptes rendus de l'Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (1974): 520-529. A few other examples include IG 5.1 491, 569; SEG 11 633 (two coaches for eight individuals; these individuals could have been young men who had trained in the gymnasium under these coaches), IGBulg 3 891, TAM 5.2 1022. 30The date is based on the proconsul mentioned in l. 13; on this proconsul, see Werner Eck, "Miscellanea consularia," Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 25 (1977): 231-233. 31I agree with the editors of I.Eph. that ll. 15-16 means "the Olympics, which is judged the leading festival of periodos." In other words, Asklepiades was claiming that he had won the Olympics, and he was on his way to winning the rest of the games that made up the periodos. In BE 1977 419 Jeanne and Louis Robert had taken the phrase to mean that he had been admitted to compete in the Olympics but had not won. 32The same proconsul is mentioned in this inscription as in no. 1112. 33Milet 1.3 145 l. 73 (the elected [cf. l. 38-39] epistatai of the paides went with them on the procession to Didyma; the individual named in l. 57 functioned as a substitute epistates for the paidotribes when the paidotribes took a pupil to compete in an athletic festival); MDAI(A) 44 (1919), pp. 25-29, no. 13 l. 24 = SEG 1 366 (epistates elected according to law to take over the duties of the gymnasiarch); I.Priene 112.73 (an epistates in the gymnasium; possibly in charge of literary education for the ephebes, but the need to qualify his role suggests that there may also have been an athletic epistates). 34Petros Themelis, "Anaskaphe Messenes," Praktika tes in Athenais Archaiologikes Hetaireias (1997): 99-100 = SEG 47 391 (epistates of the ephebes honored by ephebes); Vassa Kontorini, "MEROS DEUTERO: OI EPIGRAFES," L'Antiquité classique 58 (1989): 157-77 = SEG 39 771-776 (epistatai of the paides recorded on dedications of herms etc. in the gymnasium). 35William S. Morison, "An Honorary Deme Decree and the Administration of a Palaistra in Kephissia," Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 131 (2000): 93-98. No letters remain to support his restoration and, as Morison allows, the gap could be filled differently. His argument would have been stronger if he had cited some parallels from other cities. 36The festival honored the victory of Severus Alexander. In TAM 949 this same group of young men honored the man who helped finance their festival. 37On these games, which were put on by the city but underwritten totally by the agonothete, see Louis Robert, "Inscriptions de Thyatire," Hellenica 6 (1948): 72-79. 38On the gymnasium as the training ground for future success in the wider world of athletics, see Henri W. Pleket, "The Infrastructure of Sport in the Cities of the Greek World," Scienze dell'antichità 10 (2000): 632-634. 39Golden, Sport and Society in Ancient Greece, 108, shows that the issue of the travel by boys to festivals far removed from their hometown goes back to the time of Pindar. 40Philostratus (Gym. 28) envisages that the coach was the one who decided to take on the athlete as his pupil, not the other way around. 41Robert, "Sur des inscriptions d'Éphèse," 28-32. 42It matters little here whether the city of Ephesos was paying these two individuals for their support by making them citizens (Robert's view), or whether they had given Athenodoros financial support without knowing that they would be rewarded, although they later did received Ephesian citizenship, which is the view of Gerhard Thür, "Review of Wankel, Die Inschriften von Ephesos, Teil II-VII/2," Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte 99 (1982): 382. 43While not a citizen of Ephesos, Athenodorus had equal rights in the city and hence access to the same training and gymnasia as Ephesian citizens. 44David Young, The Olympic Myth of Greek Amateur Athletics (Chicago: Ares Publishers, 1984), 158-160. Scholars have taken various positions on the question of how likely it was for poor athletes to compete successfully in major festivals. For example, Stephen G. Miller, "Naked Democracy," in Polis and Politics: Studies in Ancient Greek History, eds. Pernille Flensted-Jensen, Thomas Nielsen, and Lene Rubinstein (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2000), 277-296, generally favors Young's view. Golden, Sport and Society in Ancient Greece, esp.143-144, tends to go in the other direction. 45Henri W. Pleket, "The Participants in the Ancient Olympic Games: Social Background and Mentality," in Proceedings of an International Symposium on the Olympic Games, ed. William Coulson and Helmut Kyrieleis (Athens: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Athen, 1992), 151. 46I am inclined to follow the view of Pleket, "Zur Soziologie des antiken Sports," 75-76, that by metrios Artemidorus meant artisans, teachers, and individuals of the same general financial position. Hans Langenfeld, "Artemidors Traumbuch als sporthistorische Quelle," Stadion 17 (1991): 12-13, views the metrios group as including the leading citizens of moderate-sized cities. I, however, believe that Artemidorus would probably place these leading citizens in his third category, the rich. The rich man was the one, like the leading citizens of these cities, who might expect to gain wide rule, if he turned out to be as lucky as Artemidorus foretold. In other respects, my reading of Athenodorus' family situation runs counter to that of Pleket, "Zur Soziologie des antiken Sports," 69. He takes Therippides to be a private trainer on the grounds that Athenodorus would not have had financial problems if the state were paying for Therippides' services. Yet the issue here is that the sort of training provided in the Ephesian gymnasia under Therippides' direction might be enough to allow a boy to start out on a career as an athlete. Longterm success, though, depended on obtaining the services of a top-ranked trainer, something beyond the financial reach of the family of Athenodorus or, for that matter, the family of Timonax. 47On the date, see Robert, "Sur des inscriptions d'Éphèse," 15-16.

 

Heavyweight Champions from Ancient to Present


This took a while to edit. Like anything else that had to be transcribed I assume there's plenty I missed or messed up. Let me know what you catch. I think I caught when the PC changed characters on me and I'll fix that once I wrangle the proper language pack

The numbers and abbreviations as you read do correspond with the notes and sources at the end. I made the notes and source tiny to save y'all scrolling time over the block. Obviously I did little work to the source and notes, just spelling corrections. If for some reason y'all want that bigger and formatted I'll work on it.


I had the BK-Meta linked but given the ancients used wraps I didn't want to confuse anyone.

 

Lol!

You should have seen the original file bubba, it wasn't pretty. I did my best to keep the formatting how it was in the Journal but when you're hit with just a block of unending text it's hard to stay focused on what you're doing. By the time I hit the sources portion I was thinking my **** that's a ton of sources, which is great to look at for more information of course so I posted it but it just sources so I didn't feel the need to format it.

If I didn't make the source block tiny font it'd be about as long as the actual report Mister Brunet wrote.