"Victory and Celebration: An Introduction to Greek Athletics explores how the poems, statues, and other objects used by athletic victors to commemorate their victories in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE gave value and meaning to these victories. These victories, whether in running, boxing, youth events or equestrian events, did not speak for themselves; their meanings were not obvious or natural but had to be produced and defended. This was the work of the victory memorials, in the story that they toldof the events and victors, the elements that they elevated in their accounts and the elements that they omitted, the events, figures, and values with which they associated athletics, and the broader idea of the world that they promoted. Victory and Celebration traces this process on three levels: the broader ideals-excellence, significance, beauty, and a more-than-mortal quality-that athletic victory was represented as exemplifying; the more specific political ideas that athletic victory was used to support, whether that good athletes made good leaders and that excellence was inherited, or particular visions of the victor's relationship to his city, to the idea of Greece, or to the use of wealth; and the ways in which the specific events were shaped and celebrated by the memorials, in particular, boxing, contests for youths, chariot and horse races, and the short-lived mule-cart race"--
Victory and Celebration traces how athletic success was transformed into broader social and political capital in ancient Greece--how being a good boxer, or having a fast son or good horses was made into something significant in society more broadly. It analyses the ways that the victory memorials--primarily the statues and victory odes produced for victors--gave winning athletes a wider importance beyond the stadium or hippodrome.
Victory and Celebration traces how athletic success was transformed into broader social and political capital in ancient Greece in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE--how being a good boxer or wrestler, or having a fast son or superior horses was made into something of significance beyond the stadium or hippodrome. Athletic success did not speak for itself. Its meanings had to be produced and defended, and this was the work of the victory memorials--the poems, statues, and other dedications produced to commemorate the athletic victories.
Through readings of these victory memorials, Victory and Celebration explores, first, how Greek athletics was intertwined with general ideas of excellence, beauty, and a closeness to gods and heroes, and second, how the memorials communicated more directly political visions of leadership, inherited ability, and the victor's place in their city and the wider world. Finally, the book examines how specific events, such as boxing, contests for youths, and chariot and horse races were shaped and made valuable, or kept valuable, by the memorials. The significance of athletic victory was not a given; by addressing what meanings were attributed to athletic success, and the often-innovative ways in which these meanings were made to seem true, Victory and Celebration emphasizes how much work had to be done to make that success count.
