The Heroic Athlete in Ancient Greece Author(s): David J. Lunt Source: Journal of Sport History, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Fall 2009), pp. 375-392 Published by: University of Illinois Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26405220 Accessed: 01-03-2020 10:25 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms University of Illinois Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Sport History This content downloaded from 94.66.56.215 on Sun, 01 Mar 2020 10:25:30 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Heroic Athlete in Ancient Greece David T. Lunt4 Departments of History and Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies The Pennsylvania State University In ancient Greece, powerful and successful athletes sought after and displayed might and arete (excellence) in the hope ofattaining a final component of di vinity—immortality. These athletes looked to the heroes of Greek myth as mod els for their own quests for glory and immortality. The most attractive heroic model for a powerful athlete was Herakles. Milo of Croton, a famed wrestler from antiquity, styled himself after Herakles and imitated him in battle. In addition, three athletes from the fifth century B. C„ Theagenes, Euthymos, and Kleomedes, made the transition, in Greek minds, from athlete to hero. The power, might, andixexz of their athletic victories provided the justification for their subsequent heroization. The stories of these athletes shed light on how historical athletes sought to imitate their mythic predecessors and how ancient Greeks were willing to bestow heroic honors, such as religious cults, on powerful victorious athletes. THE ANCIENT BIOGRAPHER PLUTARCH WROTE that three characteristics distinguished divinity, and those who sought it—power or might, excellence {arete), and immortality.' In ancient Greece, those who sought divinity, especially successful athletes, strove to display 'Correspondence to [email protected]. A shorter version of this paper won the North American Society for Sport History Graduate Student Essay Award in 2008. The author would like to thank Mark Dyreson, Bettina Kratzmüller, Donald Kyle, Mark Munn and the JSH editorial team for their critical suggestions and thoughtful assistance. Fall2009 375 This content downloaded from 94.66.56.215 on Sun, 01 Mar 2020 10:25:30 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Journal of Sport History might and arete in the hope of attaining the final component of divinity—immortality. By means of their athletic prowess and victories, athletes sought and displayed arete, a complicated Greek word that referred to virtue, excellence, and general superiority. While complete equality with the awesome gods of Olympus was beyond their reach, ancient Greek athletes looked to the race of the mythic heroes as models for their own quests for glory and immortality. Around 700 B.C., during Greece's Archaic Period, the poet Hesiod, in recounting the various ages of existence, described an age of heroes or "demi-gods," where a "divine race of heroic men" had fought great wars and earned a blessed afterlife.2 Plutarch, in his Life ofThesesus, speculated that Theseus' era had produced a race of beings that far surpassed normal human athletic abilities such as bodily strength and swiftness of foot.3 Some of the members of this race of heroes demonstrated such a degree of might and virtue through their exploits, adventures, and achievements that they somehow achieved a measure of immortality, meriting the establishment of religious cults after their deaths and continu ing to exert some type of influence on earth. To the ancient Greeks, the mythic heroes, such as Theseus, Herakles ("Hercules" in the Latinized form), Pelops, and Achilles really lived and died. As noted myth scholar Paul Veyne explained, the mythic heroes were human beings who possessed supernatural and superhuman traits. There was no room for the ancient Greeks to doubt the reality of the lives of the great mythic heroes since human beings still existed and perhaps had always existed.4 Thus, by imitating the lives and adventures of these mythic heroes, successful and powerful athletes in ancient Greece could aspire to achieve a like measure of heroic honors after death. Modern scholarship has fueled a considerable amount of debate concerning the na ture of these ancient Greek athlete-heroes. Pausanias and Plutarch, two of the principal ancient sources for these fifth-century B.C. athletes, wrote much later, in the second cen tury A.D. While these writers' chronological distance does not disqualify them as reliable sources, it is a task for the modern scholar to determine how soon after the athlete's death the ancient Greeks instituted heroic honors. In addition, mythic tropes and folkloric themes pepper the stories associated with these athletes, making it difficult to assess which components of these stories are historical and which are mythic. Finally, some scholars have conjectured that the athletic nature of these figures was not the primary reason for their heroization. Despite these debates and difficulties, the stories ol these mortal athletes-turned-he roes provide valuable information for understanding the importance of athletic achieve ment in ancient Greece. In 1968, the American scholar Joseph Fontenrose compiled a series of athlete-hero stories from ancient Greece and boiled them down to their essential elements, focusing especially on the mythic similarities among them. By examining the common themes and elements in these accounts, Fontenrose arrives at a type or model for the ancient Greek athletic hero. Fontenrose identifies fourteen themes in the various versions of common athlete-hero stories and, with considerable effort, links them to one another and to the general Greek mythic tradition. While Fontenrose's compilation rep resented an important step in collecting and analyzing these stories of historical athletes turned-heroes, his numerous connections to mythic tropes belied an assumption that the legends of folklore posthumously "attached" themselves to the historical athletes.5 This 376 Volume 36, Number 3 This content downloaded from 94.66.56.215 on Sun, 01 Mar 2020 10:25:30 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Lunt: The Heroic Athlete in Ancient Greece assumption, however, did not allow for the possibility that the historical athletes had con sciously attempted to imitate the actions and adventures of the mythic heroes in order to claim a similar heroic status. If this were the case, the athletes themselves would be, to some extent, responsible for the parallels between their lives and those of the heroes. In addition, as classicist Leslie Kurke notes, Fontenrose proposes no explanation for why these athletes assumed or received heroic honors.6 In a 1979 publication, François Bohringer revisits the issue of the hero-athlete, and seeks to explain why certain victorious athletes achieved heroic cult and others did not. Bohringer appropriately notes that many of these mortals-turned-heroes were important military and political figures in their communities independently of their athletic suc cesses, and that ancient Greek communities honored these important citizens as heroes in order to obscure periods of political or social weakness and division.7 Nevertheless, Bohringers explanation for why some athletes received heroic honors and others (appar ently) did not is too simplistic. He contends that those who received no heroic cult lived in cities that experienced no duress during or shortly after the athlete's lifetime.8 Although he hints that some athletes may have expressly identified themselves with heroic figures in leading their cities, and that cultic honors seem to have been instituted quite early for some athletes, Bohringer focuses on the role of the cities in exalting individual athletes in order to smooth over collective weaknesses and crises.9 While Bohringer's conclusions might have explained why some athletes received posthumous heroic honors and others did not, they do not address whether the athletes actively sought to participate in this process; nor does he account for the athlete who imitated the heroes, but never received posthumous honors.10 Recently, Oxford classicist Bruno Currie has examined how ancient literary sources situated many of these heroized athletes in the fifth century B.C., and the archaeological evidence, although slightly later in date, nevertheless indicates cult activity for some ath lete-heroes in the fourth century B.C. This relative proximity between the institutions of cult to their lifetimes implies that these athletes understood heroization to be a possibility, and that their athletic successes might provide an avenue to heroization." Just as athletic prowess was an important component of heroic identity in ancient Greece, so too was heroic action an important prerequisite for an athlete who sought heroic immortality. From all these treatments, there emerges a type of rough blueprint whereby a successful athlete might achieve heroic recognition. This process, established by the stories of the mythic heroes and neatly encapsulated by Plutarch's observation concerning divinity and its seekers, requires victory in contests—athletic and otherwise—and the public com memoration of these victories. These victories must demonstrate exceptional arete and prowess in order for the athlete to lay any claim to the immortality afforded by heroic honors. Kurke has argued that victory, especially prominent victory in a major festival or contest, brought kudos to the victor. This word, often translated as "praise" or "renown," carried additional meaning for the ancient Greeks.