It is a warm dark night in the great city of Rome. You are squeezed with your friends into the terraces of one of the most impressive buildings of the Roman empire, the Colosseum, lit by the flickering light of hundreds of torches, part of a crowd of thousands of city-dwellers eager and ready to be entertained. Everyone knows the emperor Domitian (ruled ad 81–96) always puts on a good show, but there is to be nothing ordinary about tonight’s bloody spectacle, for the emperor has laid on not only a performance of gladiators but this time female gladiators.1 As the women troop out, sword-arms clad in armour, shields at the ready, and bare-chested, a thrill runs through the massed ranks of the shouting crowd. Tonight would be a night to remember.

Olympias, born around 373 bc, was the daughter of Neoptolemus the king of Molossia, a rural, inland, and not-so-important place in Epirus in north-western Greece. The region lacked the old established city-state culture of other parts of Greece, but the oracle of Zeus at Dodona, by tradition the oldest oracle in Greece, did give it some cachet and ensured ongoing contact with the rest of the Hellenic world.1 The royal house, the Aeacids, claimed descent from the Greek hero Aeacus and from his more famous grandson Achilles – a family connection that Olympias’ son Alexander (the Great) certainly took seriously.2 Despite her origins on the periphery of the Greek world, Olympias occupied a central place in the history of the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean – and farther afield – in the second half of the fourth century bc because of her marriage to Philip II of Macedonia and her son Alexander the Great.

This chapter investigates why a competitor would want to become a member of one of the ecumenical synods. What could the associations do for them after they had paid the relatively high entrance fee? A major preoccupation of the synods was obtaining and safeguarding privileges for their members. There were three main types: privileges providing personal security, financial privileges and honorary privileges. A special category were the so-called opsonia, pensions granted to victors in a select category of games. Another aspect was the legal status of synod members. There are indications that synodic lobbying protected their members from the Roman infamia laws that targeted people performing in shows. The second section of this chapter focuses on the support offered by the synods during festivals. They ensured, for instance, that their members were well lodged and fed. This chapter argues that in securing privileges and offering local support, the synods relied on their extensive social networks, which reached out to local elites as well as to Roman administrators and the imperial court.

This chapter studies the decline and disappearance of the ecumenical synods in late antiquity. As agonistic festivals were the raison d’être of the ecumenical synods, their fate was intertwined with that of the agonistic network. The fourth century ad saw a gradual unravelling of the festival circuit, due to financial problems, socio-political changes in the Greek poleis and changing mentalities and habits. As a result, evidence on the ecumenical synods declines sharply from the late third century on. Important sources discussed here are a tetrarchic rescript on the privileges of competitors, issued in response to a request of the two synods, and a long and complex inscription from ad 313 that was erected in the xystic synod’s headquarters and dealt with a donation by a rich family. This chapter refutes the opinion of some earlier scholars who argue that the synods were absorbed by the circus factions. Rather, it appears that they remained tied to the world of traditional Greek agonistics and that they disbanded when the last of the important Greek agones ceased to be held, that is by the 420s ad at the latest.

In the first few hours of a new digging season in Athens, 14 June 1967, archaeologists started to excavate the area to the north of the Areopagus, the Hill of Ares, which lies to the northwest of the Acropolis.1 Just 15 cm down, Evelyn Lord Smithson wrote shortly afterwards in an article in the journal Hesperia, the earth began to reveal a new burial – the upper rims of several pots appearing through the dirt. As the archaeologists explored further, they uncovered the whole burial pit with a large belly-handled amphora some 71 cm in height with various other smaller items of pottery in it. The type of amphora indicated that the burial was that of a woman, designated AA 302, who had been cremated around 850 bc. She has become known to archaeologists as the ‘Rich Athenian Lady’.

Some of the best-known images from Bronze Age Greece are of Minoan women and goddesses portrayed on palace frescoes and on gold rings that often show religious scenes. The enigmatic Isopata gold ring, for example, shows a number of female figures in flounced skirts, with bare breasts, who appear to be dancing outside amongst the flowers – their arms gesticulating and bodies swaying.1 Other evidence certainly suggests the importance of dance for Minoan women – terracotta models from Palaikastro, for example, show women dancing in circles accompanied by a lyre player.2 These images conjure up a vivid picture of life on Crete, beliefs, and practices.

This chapter investigates the development of the ecumenical synods in the first century ad, first discussing the xystic synod of athletes and then the thymelic synod of artists. After giving an overview of earlier scholarly opinions on their development, this chapter discusses the evidence from a new perspective. It argues, for instance, that there had been only one athletic synod all along, rather than two athletic synods that eventually merged. As for the thymelic synod of artists, it is clear that it was already fully formed and functional in the first century ad, which opposes the interpretation of some scholars who date its definitive formation about a century later. All in all, the sources indicate that the synods gradually strengthened and expanded their role in the festival world throughout the first century ad and that this evolution gained momentum in the reign of Claudius (AD 41–54).

This chapter examines the organisational structure of the ecumenical synods. First, a new interpretation of their organisation is proposed. Whereas earlier scholars have argued for a (con)federal structure consisting of a leading group in Rome and quasi-independent local branches in the provinces, the sources indicate that the ecumenical synods were much more uniformly organised, with a central headquarters in Rome, local headquarters in certain cities and mobile delegations travelling along the agonistic circuits. Next comes an overview of synod officials and a discussion of the finances of the two associations. The chapter then proceeds to discuss the relationship between the synods and the emperor. Whereas several other scholars believe that the synods were a tool with which the emperor kept the agonistic world under control, it appears that the synods had more agency than was earlier assumed. Finally, this chapter analyses other agonistic associations in the Roman empire and their relationship with the ecumenical synods.

This book opens with some introductory notes on the two ecumenical synods, marking the discrepancy between their importance in the festival world of the Principate and the obscurity they have fallen into in present-day scholarship. This is mainly due to the extremely fragmentary source material on their history and organisation. The ecumenical synods are mainly known from inscriptions, often heavily damaged, and papyri from Egypt. These diverse sources present us with a complex and often contradictory view. The most important documents for this study are decrees drawn up by the synods, their correspondence with emperors and membership certificates. A great variety in names and titles further complicates our understanding of the synods. Nevertheless, there are a number of basic elements that recur in the documents promulgated by the synods themselves, which are discussed briefly. The final part of the introduction sets out the structure of the book as well as the basic principles that form the core of the argumentation.

Neaira was supposedly a prostitute who sold her body for sex; she was also, in our single source for her life, a courtesan, a concubine, or ‘that sort of woman’.1 These labels are pejorative ones, carrying the moral and social judgements of the male-authored ancient Greek sources – no prostitute from classical Greece has left us her own testimony. But we could also choose other terms for Neaira that would fit her at various points in her life: she was a child, a girl, a woman, a sex slave, a victim, a partner, a lover, an opportunist, a mother, and above all, perhaps, a survivor.2 Whilst all those labels we can apply may fit, she herself, her character and emotions, her aspirations and motivations remain elusive; some are given to us by a man, Apollodorus, who is using her story for his own ends – hardly a disinterested source. Even though we lack her own words and her physical remains, her story, shadowy as it is, is still worth exploring as a life as valuable as any other and therefore worthy of remembrance and sympathy.