Sports and Entertainment in the Ancient World

Introduction

The first detailed description of sport in the Western world is found in Book 23 of Homer’s Iliad (c. 800 b.c.e.; English translation, 1616). About two centuries later, drama began to develop in Athens and elsewhere in Greece, as the festivals honoring the god Dionysus became as much public entertainment as religious observance. During the next five hundred years, as Hellenistic ideas spread over the Mediterranean area, the Romans were deeply influenced by Greek concepts of sport and entertainment. Vergil (70-19 b.c.e.), in Book 5 of his Aeneid (c. 29-19 b.c.e.; English translation, 1553), reproduces the funerary games described in the Iliad. Roman playwrights used Greek models, adapting them to suit their own ethnic temperament.

Greek Olympics

In the Iliad, the hero Achilles honors the slain Patroclus, his dearest friend, with a lavish funeral. Athletic games are a part of the funeral celebration, and Achilles awards prizes to the winners. Chariot races, foot races, spear throwing, and wrestling matches are among the contests described. It is possible that games such as Homer describes date from the Mycenaean period because he is recounting events that supposedly preceded his own time by several centuries. However, he may have been projecting backward in time a portrait of Olympic Games with which he was familiar in his day. It is believed that Homer composed the Iliad in about 800 b.c.e., the beginning of the century in which information about the Olympic Games is officially recorded for the first time.

The chronographer Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260-c. 399 c.e.) recorded the winners of each Olympic festival from 776 b.c.e. until 217 c.e. However, the games may well have begun earlier than the former date. The four Panhellenic athletic competitions were the Olympic Games and the Nemean Games honoring Zeus, the Pythian Games honoring Apollo, and the Isthmian Games dedicated to Poseidon at Corinth. Of these, the Olympic Games were the most prestigious and were held once every four years at the first full moon following the summer solstice. The four-year period between Olympic festivals was known as an Olympiad. The various Greek city-states set aside their political disputes during the athletic competitions.

No barbarian (one whose native language was not Greek) was allowed to compete, and initially, only free men could compete. After 632 b.c.e., however, boys were accepted as competitors, and eventually, during the Roman period, the Greek language restriction was waived for the Romans themselves. The earliest Olympian events were foot races, wrestling, and throwing events. By the seventh century b.c.e., chariot racing was featured, and from 472 b.c.e. onward, the games were expanded to include horse racing (the prize was awarded to the horse’s owner, not its rider), the discus throw, the javelin throw, boxing, the pentathlon, and the pankration. Pentathlon, which means “five contests,” consisted of jumping, wrestling, the javelin, the discus, and running. The pankration was a “no-holds-barred” form of wrestling.

The athletic games, like the Greek drama that would develop somewhat later, were acts of worship as well as entertainment. The poet Pindar (c. 518-c. 438 b.c.e.) often emphasizes the religious or mythological aspects of the athlete’s striving in his works. So sacred was the area where the games took place that no slaves or women, excepting the local priestess of Demeter, were permitted to enter. Any transgressor was hurled to his or her death from the Typaeon Rock.

Athletes were required to train for a minimum of ten months before they competed. During the final thirty days before the festival, they resided in a special gymnasium at Olympia itself. There, under the supervision of the Hellenodicae, a board of ten men who also served as referees during the games, the athletes ran and threw the javelin or the discus. The victory prize was a wreath of olive leaves, but the competing city-states often supplemented the official prize with a monetary award. Ironically, considering the heavy emphasis placed upon the amateurism of the Olympian during most of the twentieth century, the winning athletes of ancient times often received awards that made them rich for life.

During the reign of Augustus (r. 27 b.c.e.-14 c.e.), the emperor wished to revive old Roman values that had waned during the years of civil war and disorder. In this effort, he recruited Vergil and other poets. In Vergil’s patriotic Aeneid, he imitates Homer by harkening back to the genesis of the Olympic Games. He has his Trojan hero, Aeneas, organize funeral games in honor of his father, Anchises, who had died in Sicily during the Trojans’ first visit there. Thus, the Greek and Roman traditions are merged. However, in 393 c.e., the Roman emperor Theodosius the Great, a Christian, terminated all athletic games in Greece, deeming them to be pagan practices.

Greek drama

In the sixth century b.c.e. or earlier, the Greeks established an annual festival to honor Dionysus (also known as Bacchus and Iacchos), god of fecundity, wine, and bounty. The City, or Great, Dionysia was celebrated in March and featured a chorus of fifty singers and dancers whose performance of the dithyramb, a wildly emotional tribute to Dionysus, was a key part of the religious rites. Eventually, to the cosmopolitan City Dionysia was added a second, domestic festival, the Lenaea (“wine press”), held in January. The site of each festival was a large outdoor theater built into a hillside. The spectators-worshipers would enter from above, ranging down the incline, with the priest of Dionysus and city dignitaries seated closest to the performers.

The first evolution of the chorus produced a leader who, presumably, would take occasional solo turns during the performance. However, until a performer existed apart from the chorus to ask its members questions, to be questioned by them, and to perhaps challenge assertions made in their lyrics, no absolute dramatic form was possible. Sometime during the last one-third of the sixth century b.c.e., Thespis, an Athenian of whom little is known historically, is said to have invented this character, the first actor. Thus, the performances were changed from a pageant of song and dance into drama.

The traditional date for the appearance of tragedy as a part of the City Dionysia is 534 b.c.e., and tragedies appear to have been acted as a part of the festival every year thereafter. No comedy is mentioned as having been performed at the City Dionysia until 486 b.c.e. The dramas at the Lenaea were solely comic in 442 b.c.e., and although tragedy was added in 432 b.c.e., comedy continued to dominate.

The third, fourth, and fifth days of the City Dionysia were given over to tragic and comic contests. During the Peloponnesian War (431-404 b.c.e.), tragedies were performed in the mornings, comedies in the afternoons. At the Lenaea, the number of comedies was reduced to three for the duration of the Peloponnesian War. Before and after the war, however, five comic poets and two tragic poets regularly competed.

Greek and Roman tragedy

According to tradition, Thespis won the first dramatic prize awarded at a Dionysian festival in 534 b.c.e. Some classical scholars have speculated that this prize was a goat, a not insignificant award in ancient Greece. Further, the prize may have been appropriate because the etymology of the word “tragedy” can be traced to a word meaning “song of goats,” and Thespis’s performances were perhaps rather crude representations of the doings of satyrs, lustful, mischievous goat-men. Eventually, the winning dramatist received a monetary prize donated by a prominent Athenian. Each donor was chosen by the city government before the competition began.

The evolution of the tragic form was rapid. The first great Athenian tragedian, Aeschylus (525/524-456/455 b.c.e.), added a second actor and, in his later plays, seems to have reduced the size of the chorus to twelve. Seven of the ninety plays he produced have survived. Aeschylus was succeeded by Sophocles (c. 496-c. 406 b.c.e.), who, at age twenty-eight, competed successfully with him and won the first prize with his tragedy. In his long career, Sophocles wrote more than 123 plays. Twenty-four gained the first prize and none fell below second. Only seven of Sophocles’ plays have survived. He added a third actor to his dramatic scenes and fixed the number of the chorus at fifteen. The last great tragedian of the golden age of Athens was Euripides (c. 485-406 b.c.e.). He further expanded dramatic potential by adding a fourth actor. He was less popular than his predecessors—although far more of his ninety-two plays, eighteen, survive—because his frankness in criticizing Athenian conventions angered his audiences. He was awarded first prize only four times in his life.

In the competitions, each playwright produced three tragedies and a satyr play, a burlesque on a mythic theme. The three plays could form a trilogy, portraying successive stages of one extended action, or they could tell quite separate stories. Aeschylus appears to have favored the former method of organization, Sophocles the latter. The tragedies were composed as poetry, the meters of which were prescribed according to strict rules. The subject matter was limited to Greek history and mythology, but playwrights were allowed wide latitude in handling the material so as to develop the desired theme. The gods of the Greeks were willful, inconstant in their sympathies, frequently the source of disorder and strife. To the playwrights fell the lot of supplying a moral dimension to the worship of Dionysus and the other gods. As a result, during the fifth century b.c.e., the great Athenian tragedians dramatized the deepest and subtlest moral conflicts of humankind.

The audiences for these plays, including both men and women, were huge—the open-air theater of Dionysus in Athens could seat seventeen thousand spectators. Closest to the audience was the orchestra, a semicircular dancing place for the chorus. Immediately beyond the orchestra was the acting area behind which was the skene, a tall fa‡ade indicating the setting of the play. Still further to the rear was an altar where the priest of Dionysus performed some type of ritual. The actors, all male, wore elaborate costumes and large masks, reflecting the dominant emotion of the character. The kothornos (cothurnus), a high, thick-soled boot or buskin, was worn by each actor to make him appear taller to the audience, many of whom were very far away. The actors entered and exited through openings in the skene. Aristotle (384-322 b.c.e.) discusses the various conventions of tragedy in his De poetica (c. 335-323 b.c.e.; Poetics, 1705), which has survived only in part.

Only one satyr play has survived, but it is known that these short plays were bawdy farces, the exact opposite of the three tragedies that preceded them. Aeschylus was known for the exalted language, high-mindedness, and deep seriousness of his tragedies. So it is fascinating, even puzzling, that Aeschylus was acknowledged by his contemporaries to be the finest writer of satyr plays.

Seneca the Younger (c. 4 b.c.e.-65 c.e.), a Roman statesman, author, and Stoic philosopher, was also the leading tragedian of the Augustan age (the latter part of the first century b.c.e. and the early years of the first century c.e.). Seneca wrote nine tragedies adapting subjects used by the Greek playwrights. However, although the tone of Greek tragedy is elevated and restrained, Seneca’s tragedies are intense, violent melodramas full of rhetorical language. As a Stoic, Seneca believed that catastrophe results when passion destroys reason, and his tragedies dramatize this idea. His plays influenced tragic drama in Italy, France, and Elizabethan England more than did those of the great Greek tragedians. The emperor Nero forced Seneca to commit suicide because he believed the playwright had plotted against him.

Greek and Roman comedy

The greatest comic writer in the last half of the fifth century b.c.e. was Aristophanes (c. 450-c. 385 b.c.e.). Unlike the tragedians, the Greek comedians entered only one play in each contest and were not restricted in their subject matter. They could deal with contemporary affairs, and Aristophanes mercilessly ridiculed his fellow Athenians. Among his victims were the statesman Cleon of Athens, the philosopher Socrates (c. 470-399 b.c.e.), and the playwright Euripides. Cleon is portrayed as a demagogue, Socrates as a Sophist and a fraud, and Euripides as a misogynist. His plays are a combination of crude clowning, obscenity, sparkling wit, wonderful lyrical writing, masterful language, and originality. Aristophanes’ comedies were unlike any written before or after his day. They featured multiple choruses, outrageous—often lewd—costumes, and slapstick scenes. Forty or more plays are ascribed to Aristophanes. Eleven have survived, of which Lysistratē (411 b.c.e.; English translation, 1837) is the best known. It is the hilarious account of a sex strike by the women of Athens and Sparta designed to end the Peloponnesian War.

Aristophanes is the only writer of Old Comedy whose work has survived. The term was coined merely to distinguish it from the comedy that developed later (New Comedy). The later playwrights eschewed the violent attacks on living persons and wrote more of a comedy of situation. This New Comedy of the Greeks (such as the plays of Menander, c. 342-c. 292 b.c.e.) served as a model for the Latin comedies that eventually flourished in the Roman world. Plautus (c. 254-184 b.c.e.) and Terence (c. 190-159 b.c.e.) were the great Roman writers of comedy. They strove to attract the audience’s attention immediately, because at the festivals where their plays were staged, they competed with gladiatorial shows, rope dancing, and boxing matches. They adapted Greek plays but abandoned fantasy, politics, and the chorus as integral parts of the drama, concentrating instead upon the misadventures of stock characters.

Other Roman entertainments

During the Augustan age, great poets flourished in Rome. Writing during this general period were, in addition to Vergil, Catullus (c. 84-c. 54 b.c.e.), Horace (65-8 b.c.e.), Ovid (43 b.c.e.-17 c.e.), and somewhat later, Petronius Arbiter (d. c. 66 c.e.). Vergil and Horace were directly employed by the emperor to aid in his campaign of public relations. These poets were widely published and must also have read in public. In his writings, the satirist Horace records his amusement at how pompously or ill some poets read their works in the marketplace.

However, many Romans sought entertainments offering coarser pleasures than those afforded by tragic or comic drama and poetry recitations. Gladiators were trained warriors—usually prisoners of war, slaves, or criminals—who fought bloody battles to entertain the people of Rome. The first gladiator games were held in a cattle market in 364 b.c.e. at the funeral of an aristocrat. Gladiators used a variety of weapons: a stabbing sword about two feet long, a scimitar (a short, curved sword), or a trident (a three-pronged spear used with a net). Some freemen, and even women, fought for money and fame. One emperor, Lucius Aurelius Commodus, also fought in the arena. Perhaps the most famous of all gladiators was Spartacus (late second century-71 b.c.e.), a Thracian slave who led an unsuccessful rebellion of gladiators and slaves.

At the Colosseum, the great amphitheater at Rome, wild beasts fought in the morning, and the gladiators fought in the afternoon. Many Greek theaters were converted into gladiatorial arenas. Battles were usually fought to the death, but the spectators could spare the loser’s life by signaling mercy. The justification offered for these contests was that Roman citizens would be hardened to the demands of war by watching blood being shed in the arena. The emperor Honorius finally banned the battles about 404 c.e. Interestingly, in modern times, professional boxers, wrestlers, and football players in America have often been called “gladiators.”

North America and Mesoamerica

For centuries before Europeans established a presence in North America, Native Americans played many games and pursued many recreational activities that happened to be much like those of peoples elsewhere. Children mimicked the behavior of adults, playing with dolls, miniature figures, and miniature implements. Almost all adults played games. The women played as much as the men, but played different games separately. Most games probably had some religious significance in earliest times, though this significance was often lost as the years passed. Some tribes used games as a means of training warriors and winning honors.

Children played tag. The child who was “it” might pretend to be a fierce beast, such as a jaguar. They also played with tops and swings. They amused themselves with cat’s cradle, wherein a symbolic string figure was constructed on the player’s fingers. Both youths and adults played games with balls made of hide or fiber. In almost all these games, the players were not permitted to touch the ball with their hands. In the eastern region of North America, a kind of racket ball was popular and developed into the game of lacrosse. A favorite in the North American Midwest was chunkey, a sort of bowling employing a stone disk rather than a ball. Hoop-and-pole was played throughout most of the Americas. In this game, participants threw spears or sticks at a hoop rolling along the ground. Shinny, or shinty, a kind of field hockey usually played by women only, was common in North America. In snow snake, each player attempted to slide a smooth stick farthest along a course of snow or ice. Also, competitions in foot racing, wrestling, and archery were staple entertainments of the ancient Native Americans. Various guessing games and games of chance were long popular.

In Mesoamerica, games were played with rubber balls. The Mesoamerican ball game called tlatchtli was like an incredibly difficult variety of basketball. It was played on a rectangular court, and the object was to bounce a large, hard rubber ball through a stone hoop high on the court wall. Players could use all parts of their bodies except their hands. Scoring was so difficult that when either team scored the game was over. In Mesoamerica, these games were seen as rituals of such cosmic significance that the captain of the losing team was sometimes sacrificed to the gods.

Africa and Egypt

Scholars studying “sport” in ancient African societies are faced with two daunting difficulties. First, there is a critical lack of information about what is to be termed play, games, and sport. Second, it is unclear whether African sport is a transformation of institutions and patterns of action existing in ancient horticultural and hunter-gatherer societies or is a comparatively modern invention. Were games, music, and dance recreational, or did they serve some societal function for which this descriptive term is inappropriate? For example, wrestling was a traditional sport in ancient Egypt and became common elsewhere in Africa at some unknown time. However, whereas Olympic wrestling was clearly a “sport,” the context and purposes of Nuba wrestling (establishing the dominance of one tribe or village over another) were so different that it cannot automatically be included in the same classification.

In Egypt, on the other hand, there are many excellent sources of information about sports from very ancient times. Some of this information exists in the form of visual representations—on temple and tomb walls, stelae (upright stone slabs or pillars used as monuments or grave markers), sculptures, and miniatures—and in written accounts also found in inscriptions on temple and tomb walls and stelae, or preserved on papyri and ostraka. Good records exist from the earliest period (c. 2950 b.c.e.) right up through the time of Roman rule (30 b.c.e.-385 c.e.).

Egyptians, both royalty and private persons, participated in a variety of documented sports: running, target archery, driving chariots and training horses, jumping, wrestling, stick fighting, boxing, swimming, rowing, fishermen’s (or boat) jousting, ball games, acrobatics (originating as a part of the dance), and hunting (big game for the pharaoh, mostly birds for others). A variety of nonathletic games, such as board games and children’s games, are also recorded.

A tradition strongly associated with Egyptian sport was that of the athletic king. The pharaoh was idealized as a warrior because in the minds of his subjects, nothing less than the order of the world rested upon his shoulders. His subjects endowed him with overwhelming physical strength, and he was, in truth, constantly training for potential military engagements. In the ancient world, the martial and the athletic skills were the same, so, naturally, the greatest warrior became logically the greatest athlete. This aspect of ancient Egyptian sport parallels ancient Greek sport. As noted above, in Book 23 of the Iliad, Homer’s heroic warriors during the funerary games show themselves to be superb athletes as well.

East Asia

In antiquity, games in which two teams, or sides, attempted to kick, push, or in some way propel a ball in opposite directions toward the opponents’ goal existed in China and Japan. The ball varied in shape from round to oval. As early as 206 b.c.e., a football game was being played in China, and by 500 c.e., round footballs stuffed with hair were being used. By the seventh century c.e., a football game was being played in Japan.

Like people in other ancient cultures, the Chinese enjoyed board games. Mah Jongg, still played in the modern era, was invented in China. It features four players using 136 or 144 pieces marked in suits and called tiles. A player wins by building combinations or sets through drawing, discarding, and exchanging tiles. Some suggest that chess also originated in Asia and spread westward to Persia during the 500’s c.e. The game eventually spread to Arabia and Spain, then throughout Europe. Chinese checkers, a game played with marbles on a board, developed from another game called halma. Interestingly, Chinese checkers did not come from China.

The martial arts originated in East Asia. They are various systems of self-defense (some peculiar to China, some to Japan, and still others to Korea) that were, and still are, also engaged in as sports. Kung fu is a Chinese system of self-defense that emphasizes circular rather than linear movements. Karate, a Japanese martial art, is characterized chiefly by chopping blows delivered with the side of the open hand. Judo, from ju (soft) and do (art), a Japanese sport similar to wrestling, was once called jujitsu. It was practiced by the samurai, the military class in ancient Japan. The athlete attempts to get his opponent off balance so that he can throw, trip, choke, or hold him. Judo developed as a complex system of skills intended to produce both physical and mental fitness.

India

The Rigveda (also known as Ṛgveda, c. 1500-1000 b.c.e.; English translation, 1896-1897) is the earliest Indian literary source. It was produced by the Aryans, a people who ranged from Eastern Europe to Central Asia before invading India circa 2000 b.c.e. The Aryans delighted in gambling, as shown by the dice found in the remains of the Indus cities and in the “Gamester’s Lament,” one of the few predominantly secular poems in the Rigveda. In the Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra (dates vary, third century b.c.e.-third century c.e.; Treatise on the Good, 1961), kings are often referred to as gambling with their courtiers, as well as hunting, a recreation in which only the kings and nobles could participate. The plot of the Mahābhārata (400 b.c.e.-400 c.e., present form by c. 400 c.e.; The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, 1887-1896), one of the two great Indian epic poems, hinges around a great gambling tournament.

Dice were also used in board games similar to modern children’s games. By the early centuries of the common era, a game played on a board of sixty-four squares (aṣṭapāda) had become a game of some complexity called caturaṅga. Indian scholars accept it as the forerunner of chess. These scholars believe it was learned by the Persians in the sixth century c.e. and by the Arabs who later conquered the Persians. Along the way, the use of dice to determine the moves was given up, probably by the Persians. The crusaders learned the game from the Muslims and took it back to Europe with them. By the late Middle Ages, it had almost attained its modern form as chess.

In general, ancient India did not put much stress on athletics. Organized outdoor games were common only among children and young women, who are sometimes referred to as playing ball. Chariot racing is mentioned as early as the Rigveda. Ancient documents refer often to boxing and wrestling but generally as the province of low-caste professional pugilists, who performed as entertainment for an audience. A kind of hockey was also played. Classical sources mention gladiatorial displays at the court of Chandragupta Maurya, who reigned c. 321 to 297 b.c.e. Polo, for which India has become famous, was not introduced from Central Asia until the Middle Ages. However, archery contests were a much-loved amusement of the warrior class. Vivid descriptions of such contests occur in both the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa (English translation, 1870-1889), the other great Indian epic poem.

Europe

Games played with a ball appeared in England and throughout Europe at an early date. The game of harpastum, brought from Greece to Rome by the second century b.c.e., may have been introduced into England by Roman legions during the Roman occupation (43-410 c.e.). The game began with a ball being tossed in the air between the two teams. Each team then attempted to push it beyond the opponents’ goal line. One report suggested that the Irish were kicking a stuffed ball even before the Roman occupation. In later centuries, Shrove Tuesday became a traditional day for playing football in England and Scotland. At Chester, the game commemorated the day in 217 c.e. when a powerful flying wedge drove the Romans out. At Kingston-on-Thames, a game similarly celebrated the driving out of the Danes during the 700’s c.e.

In early medieval Europe (c. 400-c. 900 c.e.), mob games, called melees, or mellays, originated. The game was played with a ball that was usually an inflated animal bladder. As many as one hundred players from two competing towns or parishes would start at a midpoint, using their localities’ limits as goals. They then attempted to advance the ball by kicking or carrying it, while punching their opponents along the way.

Wrestling and archery were popular sports during the period of Roman rule and the centuries immediately following. In fact, it was not until the fourteenth century c.e. that the melees were finally banned in England by royal decree, and it was because King Richard II felt they interfered with archery practice. Other European monarchs issued similar decrees into the next century, but so popular was the rowdy sport that these proscriptions had little effect.

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