Play in Ancient Greece An Interview with Simon Goldhill Simon Goldhill is Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge where he is a fellow of King’s College; he is also the John Harvard Professor of the Humanities and Social Sciences at Cambridge. He is the director of the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) and a fellow of the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Best known to the public as a champion of the classics through interviews and lectures and in frequent appearances on television and radio, among scholars he is celebrated for his work on Greek tragedy. His Jerusalem: City of Longing won the Independent Publishers gold medal in History for 2009; his Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity: Art, Opera, Fiction, and the Proclamation of Modernity won the 2012 Robert Lowry Patten Award for the best book on Victorian literature; and his Sophocles and the Language of Tragedy won the Runciman Award in 2013 for the best book on a Greek topic, ancient or modern. His many other books include Foucault’s Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the His- tory of Sexuality; and Love, Sex, and Tragedy: How the Ancient World Shapes Our Lives. In this interview, Goldhill talks about play in ancient Greece—its importance in Greek theater and literature, philosophy and social wit, games and sports, jokes and sex, and love and family life. He both reflects upon how Greek sensibilities still flow through our contemporary hearts and considers how play helps distinguish between modern and ancient people. Key words: ancient play versus modern play; play in ancient Greece; theater as play; symposium as play; games and sport in ancient Greece; humor in ancient Greece; play in Greek literature; eroticism as play; violence in play American Journal of Play: How did you come to be attracted to the ancient world? Did your early play experiences lead you to an interest in ancient Greece? Simon Goldhill: I am the last of a generation to have had what could be called a Victorian education. Despite growing up in super-cool Hampstead in the 287 American Journal of Play, volume 9, number 3 © The Strong Contact Simon Goldhill at [email protected] 288 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PLAY • SPRING 2017 1960s and 1970s and going to a school that had active jazz and theater at a high level, my school still was structured intellectually around a classical ideal. I studied Latin from age nine and Greek from age ten, and we were streamed according to our ability in classics. Science was very much B stream only. Even when I did nothing else but misbehave and was threat- ened with expulsion, I loved Greek and studied it as if I were with an old friend. Greek has been with me since childhood. AJP: Which aspects of the ancient world do you find most attractive? Goldhill: I am first a philologist. I love language, how things are said, how stories get told, and seeing how language articulates the world. Second, I have become a cultural historian, first through an interest in the production of theater—how words and stories change the world. My most important work involved Greek tragedy and has moved now into the way tragedy has been read over the centuries. My scholarship ranges pretty widely to include nineteenth-century cultural and literary history, particularly dealing with the Bible and antiquity as competing models of understanding the past. I guess with two or three books in each area and articles and reviews, I could make up a tenure portfolio in Victorian studies and Jewish studies as well as the classics. But I am really a classicist—that is how I would most simply and most often describe myself. AJP: How do the literature and philosophy of ancient Greece continue to influ- ence us? Goldhill: I have written a book on this question, called Love, Sex, and Tragedy: How the Ancient World Shapes Our Lives. I am fascinated by the long-lasting influence of things Greek. This for me is not a question just of literary references, or architectural columns, or even the kind of myth still alive and kicking in Disney. Rather, for me, it is the way in which fundamental aspects of our being are constructed through inherited models of which we are largely unaware. So, of course, Greek homosexuality, as it is often called, is fundamental to understanding the fantasies, projections, and prac- tices of modernity, but equally important is the modern Western idea of a good body—still based on Greek ideals. Why do we not think that a lean, muscular, trained body is a sign of narcissism and wasted time in the gym? Platonic philosophy established the terms on which we understand the very construction of knowledge itself, and, for that matter, the complaints about and longings for democracy that dominate modern Western politics. We should not idealize the classical past, nor should we see ourselves in a Play in Ancient Greece 289 simple genealogy with it—but as Cicero said, if we fail to understand the role it continues to play in our most basic thinking, we are destined to live our lives as children. AJP: Did Greek adults take pleasure in watching children at play? If so, how do we know? Goldhill: There are pictures on pots of children playing and statues of children at play. One of the most charming literary portraits is of Eros—Cupid, as it were—playing dice and tricking his youthful chums. Ancient Greeks did not talk much about children playing, though, and you may have noticed that all my answers so far have assumed that play is a serious business for adults. AJP: Why should knowing about play and playfulness in classical Greece mat- ter today? Goldhill: Ancient playfulness can certainly help us understand something about modernity. It can do so ideologically—there was extensive discussion in antiquity about why play and playfulness are a crucial and integral part of the relaxation that makes life bearable. It can do so by contrast, which was why ancient plays—by which I mean dramas—were a crucial part of politics and the citizens’ education. Certainly modern governments could learn a great deal about the role of play in society. Play also helps us understand modernity by contrast. What are we to make of ancient Roman play—the gladiatorial games, for example? Thinking about such questions can provide a fascinating mirror for us. AJP: If there were such a thing as a dictionary of Greek and Roman play, what would some of the most important entries be? Goldhill: The basic language of play in Greek is from the root paid—which links children and playfulness—and is often used erotically, too: paizein (to play) and paidia (a game, a jest, a joke). Latin would include ludere (to play) and ludus (a game), which can add the sporting sense and the idea of deceptiveness. In Greek, play and playfulness (paizein) as a category can be broken down into a set of oppositions. The most common opposition falls between play (paidia)—or the laughable (geloion)—and the serious (spoudaion). This could include jokes, a playful character, or a humorous or ironic take on things. Leisure—its activities, principles, and purpose—is opposed to work and suffering. Drama and sport—serious activities—are set off as serious ritual time for civic activity though always also associ- ated with pleasure, fun, and relaxation. This too is opposed to the every- 290 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PLAY • SPRING 2017 day. Although theater, games, partying, and joking were on a continuum and easily linked in Greek thinking, an abstract notion of play was not an emphatic or comprehensive idea much in evidence. To act or speak “in play” or “in jest,” however, was frequent enough. AJP: Did play mean the same thing to Greeks across the whole of the Hellenic and Hellenistic periods? Do you see major changes taking place between the tenth century and the late first century BCE? Goldhill: Play changes institutionally a good deal in Greek democracy and then in the Hellenistic kingdoms, in that the role of theater, for example, was fundamentally different across cultures, and the opportunities for leisure activities changed. When Rome came along, it changed again. In all of this, play was not taken to refer to children much. So, one thing we learn by this process of answering questions is that despite the etymological roots of words for play in Greece, and despite evident examples of children playing, the interest and focus in social and cultural terms was on the importance of play for adults. AJP: Do the Greek synonyms for play translate easily into English? Goldhill: A perfect example of the ease of translation in a highly charged circum- stance is the last line of Daphnis and Chloe, a second-century CE novel, a very sexy and funny book. The hero and heroine get married after spending most of the novel trying and failing to have sex, a subject on which they are supremely innocent. Chloe learns on her marriage night that what had taken place before in the woods was just “play,” or “child’s play.” A very playful close. AJP: Can we confidently characterize play over the vast stretches of time and place in the ancient world? Goldhill: Greek culture spread over the Mediterranean. Greek was the language of the elite across the Roman Empire. As Greek culture spread, the theater and the symposium, two key sites of play in different forms, were taken as key and integral signs of Greek civilization.