Among the highest honours Greek poleis could bestow was sitêsis, the permanent right to dine at public expense.Footnote 1 The earliest epigraphic evidence for this reward is an honorary inscription from Cyzicus of the late sixth century,Footnote 2 and Xenophanes’ polemic against lavish honours for Olympic champions (West, IEG F 2) shows that sitêsis was widely established in the early fifth century. Both the inscription and the elegy mention sitêsis together with other honours, and this is also the case in the majority of other testimonies from different regions and epochs: sitêsis is usually connected to the right of occupying a seat of honour (prohedria), to the erection of an honorary statue, and sometimes also to the exemption from taxes (ateleia). In classical Athens, sitêsis took place in the Prytaneion, which was located southeast of the Acropolis, whereas the prytaneis and other magistrates ate in the Tholos.
The earliest epigraphic evidence for sitêsis in Athens is the so-called Prytaneion Decree, which contains regulations for several groups of recipients.Footnote 3 Unfortunately, the stone is broken on the left and bottom, which makes the reconstruction of the text a difficult task. This challenge was first taken up by Schöll in 1872 in a fundamental article, and since then numerous epigraphists have improved our understanding of the text, among others Hiller von Gaertringen, Morrissey, Thompson and, most recently, Lambert. Debates about the content of the decree have focussed on the Eleusinian cult officials, on the question of the exêgêtai and, in the last decade, on a connection between the decree and sitêsis for Cleon.
Far less attention has been paid to the two passages of the inscription that refer to victors of the Panhellenic agônes. The text has been satisfactorily supplemented in the relevant lines, but fundamental questions have hardly been raised, let alone clarified. The biggest problem is a curious duplication in the inscription, which has one paragraph concerning Panhellenic victors and another concerning Panhellenic victors in the hippic disciplines. Furthermore, the inscription refers to an older stele on which honours for Panhellenic victors must already have been recorded; this raises the questions to what extent the Prytaneion Decree modified or reaffirmed these regulations and what motives underlay this modification or reaffirmation.
The following remarks address these questions. After brief comments on the other groups of honorands and on the date of the inscription, a detailed analysis of the lines on Panhellenic victors will follow. The next section will turn from the inscription for a while and focus instead on literary sources, to show that there was a controversial debate in classical Athens about whether and to what extent public honours should be given to Panhellenic victors. Against this background, this article will attempt to explain the relevant passages of the Prytaneion Decree in their historical context.
CONTENT AND DATE
The text of the inscription is reproduced here in the latest reading by Lambert (AIO 1137):
[. . . . . . . . 15 . . . . . . .] ἐγραμ[μάτευε vac.]
[ἔδοχσεν τε̑ι βολε̑ι καὶ το̑ι δέμ]οι⋅ Ἐρεχθεὶς ἐπ[ρυτάνευε, .]-
[- - - - 7 - 9 - - - - ἐγραμμάτευε, - - 2 - 4 -]θιππος ἐπεστάτε, [. . .]ι̣κλε̑ς̣ [ε]-
[ἶπε⋅ ἐ̑ναι τὲν σίτεσιν τὲν] ἐμ πρυτα̣νείοι προ̑το̣ν μὲν τοῖ[ν]
5 [Ἀνάκοιν? . . . . . . 12 . . . . . . κ]ατὰ τὰ πά̣τρια⋅ ἔπειτα τοῖς [ℎ]αρμ̣-
[οδίο καὶ τοῖς Ἀριστογεί]τονος ℎ̣ὸ[ς] ἂ̣ν ἐ̑ι ἐγγύτατα̣ γένος,
[ἀεὶ ℎο πρεσβύτατος?, ἐ̑ναι κ]αὶ αὐτοῖσι τὲν σίτ̣[ε]σι̣[ν, κ]α̣[ὶ] ε[ἴ]
[. . . . . . . . . . . 21 . . . . . . . . . .]ν παρὰ Ἀθεναίον κατὰ τὰ̣ [λ]εγομ-
[ένα . . . . . . . . . 17 . . . . . . . .]ν ℎο Ἀπόλλον ἀνℎε̑λ[εν] ἐ[χ]σεγ̣ο̣με-
10 [νος . . . . . . . . . 18 . . . . . . . . .]ς σί̣τεσιν καὶ τὸ λ[οι]πὸν ℎὸ[ς] ἂν̣
[ἀνℎέλει, σίτεσιν ἐ̑ναι καὶ] α̣ὐτοῖσι κατὰ ταὐτά. κα[ὶ ℎοπόσ]-
[οι νενικέκασι Ὀλυμπίασι] ἒ Πυθο⟦ῖ ἒ ℎισθμοῖ⟧ ἒ Ν̣⟦εμέ⟧[αι ἒ νικ]-
[έσοσι τὸ λοιπόν, ἐ̑ναι αὐτ]ο̣ῖσι τὲν σίτεσιν ἐν πρυτανε[ίο]-
[ι καὶ τὰς ἄλλας δορειὰς? π]ρὸς τε̑ι σιτέσει κατὰ τὰ [ἐν τ]ε̑[ι σ]-
15 [τέλει γεγραμμένα τε̑ι ἐ]ν̣ τ̣ο̑ι πρυτανείο̣ι. ℎο[π]όσο̣[ι δὲ ℎάρ]-
[ματι τελείοι ἒ ℎίπποι κ]έλετι νενι[κ]έκασι Ὀ̣[λ]υμπ̣[ίασι ἒ Π]-
[υθοῖ ἒ ℎισθμοῖ ἒ Νεμέαι ἒ] νικέσοσι τὸ λοιπό[ν], ἐ̑να̣ι [καὶ αὐ]-
[τοῖσι σίτεσιν κατὰ τὰ ἐν τ]ε̑ι στέλε[ι] γεγραμ[μ]ένα̣ Ε̣[. . . 5 . .]
[. . . . . . . . . . . 22 . . . . . . . . . . .]ι̣ περὶ τὸ στρα̣τ̣[. . . . . . 11 . . . . .]
20 [. . . . . . . . . . . . 23 . . . . . . . . . . .] ΔΟ̣ΡΕ[.]ΑΝ̣Κ̣ [. . . . . . . 14 . . . . . . .]
[. . . . . . . . . . . . 24 . . . . . . . . . . . .]Ν̣Λ̣Ε[. . . . . . . . . 18 . . . . . . . . .]
Notwithstanding the lacunose state of the text, the structure of the decree is easy to understand. After the prescript we find different groups of honourees with specific regulations for each group. Some groups are easy to identify, while others raise difficult problems. It is obvious that the first group was named at the beginning of line 5, but there are different options on how to restore the text. Some scholars have considered cult officials of the Eleusinian mysteries, but this restoration ‘lässt sich mehr rathen als beweisen’, as already noted by Schöll.Footnote 4 This first group, and whoever belonged to it, is demarcated from the others by προ͂το̣ν μέν, indicating that they received their meals before the others.
The second group (lines 5–9) poses fewer problems. Karl Keil's restoration of the descendants of Harmodius and Aristogeiton has found general acceptance,Footnote 5 especially since sitêsis for this group is also attested in other sources.Footnote 6 The next passage (lines 9–11) refers to individuals chosen by Apollo, but the details remain obscure. A great debate has ensued over the question of whether the exêgêtai are meant here or not;Footnote 7 as alternatives, the descendants of the Delphian CleomantisFootnote 8 or manteis have been suggested.Footnote 9 The fourth and fifth groups include two different sets of Panhellenic victors, which will be discussed in detail below.
The rest of the stone is badly damaged: in the following lines only a few letters are legible. Because of the logic of the decree, other groups of people and/or some general regulations must have followed in the last part of the decree. Some scholars have taken the letters ΙΠΕΡΙΤΟΣΤΡΑ̣Τ̣ that are preserved in line 19 as an indication for the stratêgoi as a sixth group of recipients.Footnote 10 In connection with the honours for Cleon, which are ridiculed as a running gag in Aristophanes’ Knights of 424, far-reaching conclusions for the date and the function of the decree have been drawn from this restoration, especially in recent scholarship (see below). As an alternative, other scholars have restored the stratêgeion here; in this case, the passage in question would refer to the place where the stele was set up.Footnote 11
While most scholarly attention has been devoted to questions of detail, an overall interpretation of the inscription has rarely been attempted. It is beyond doubt that the decree awarded different groups of people with sitêsis, but its background and intention are highly controversial. Three different approaches have been presented, which could be labelled as the aristocratic, the democratic and the religious interpretations. The aristocratic one was advocated by Schmitt Pantel: in her view, the abolition of tyranny was remembered as an achievement of the aristocracy, which meant that the Athenians attributed Harmodius and Aristogeiton to the pre-democratic past of the polis. And as the cult of Eleusis and the seers of Apollo also referred to the past, sitêsis, as it is regulated in the Prytaneion Decree, should be understood as a traditional aristocratic form of honour, a kind of counterpart to the democratic misthos.Footnote 12 Rivolta, on the other hand, takes a diametrically opposite point of view, interpreting the Prytaneion Decree as a measure to adapt sitêsis to the ‘radical democracy’ of Cleon's time. Finally, Blok and van ‘t Wout proposed a religious interpretation of the inscription: in the crisis of the Archidamian War, the Athenians would have wanted to increase the security of Athens by honouring those persons who enjoyed divine support.Footnote 13
The last two interpretations are linked to a specific dating proposal, which leads to the question of chronology. For a long time, the communis opinio set the inscription in the decade before the Peloponnesian War.Footnote 14 In more recent publications, however, a date between 429 and 425 seems to gain the upper hand.Footnote 15 The range of proposals extends even further, but the high dating to 445–440 and the low dating to 423–421 have not been supported in recent times.Footnote 16 The four-stroke sigma, the old dative on -oisi and other palaeographic and grammatical features are compatible with any of these dating possibilities. Nor does the ‘handwriting’ give any precise clue: Tracy has assigned a total of nine extant inscriptions to the stonemason of the Prytaneion Decree, one of which is firmly dated to 424/3, while the others have been placed sometime between 435 and 409.Footnote 17 Similarly, the formal structure of the decree offers little clear evidence for precise dating. Blok and van ‘t Wout (183–5) see an argument for the 420s in the long prescript with all the standard elements except the Archon, but this feature does not rule out an earlier dating.
Historical clues are also ambiguous. The name of the proposer had seven letters, the last four of which are readable as -ikles, and it is no wonder that many scholars have seen Perikles at work, which would give us a terminus ante quem of 429.Footnote 18 But the attribution to Perikles is far from certain—with Antikles, Charikles and Archikles there are several possible alternatives.Footnote 19 Likewise, the general character of the decree does not give any information about its chronological position: according to Wade-Gery its content points to a time of peace, whilst according to Rivolta and to Blok and van ‘t Wout it points to a time of war.Footnote 20 And according to Jacoby and Mattingly the Assembly's decision is only understandable in a phase of good relations between Athens and Delphi; this led Jacoby to a date in the second half of the 440s, and Mattingly to the last years of the Archidamian War, that is, 423–421.Footnote 21 All these approaches, however, have a tendency to circular reasoning, in the sense that a certain interpretation supports the dating proposal and vice versa.
The more recent preference to place the inscription during the Archidamian War is based primarily on the restoration of the stratêgoi in line 19. Aristophanes’ Knights alludes several times to Cleon's sitêsis; the basis for this honour, the argument goes, was the Prytaneion Decree. Thus, the Lenaia of 424 is seen as terminus ante quem, and the mockery could be explained best if the decree had been passed only a short time before.Footnote 22 This suggestion presupposes a restoration that is by no means certain (see above), but it also encounters a further problem, which has not been identified in the scholarly debate so far. If the victorious stratêgoi formed the sixth group of honorands, they would differ fundamentally from the other five. For the other passages name groups that received sitêsis ‘automatically’ because of a certain affiliation or certain achievements: anyone who was an Olympic victor or the eldest of Harmodius’ descendants was invited to the meals at the Prytaneion; no decision by the Assembly or any other institution was needed. In the case of victorious generals, such an automatism is inconceivable: before the people rewarded a stratêgos, they had to discuss the importance of a battle and the contribution of the commander in question. Each award of sitêsis to a stratêgos, therefore, needed a separate popular decision, as the relevant cases show, and Demosthenes’ speech against Leptines provides clear evidence that, in the fourth century, generals were honoured by individual psêphismata, not by a general law.Footnote 23 This means that the Prytaneion Decree could only have opened up the possibility for honouring stratêgoi. However, it is hardly conceivable that such a self-empowerment of the Assembly was necessary, especially in the fifth century, when there was no formalized distinction between situational psêphismata and general nomoi. Rather, the Assembly could decide to honour a man if it wanted to and did not need previous authorization to do so.Footnote 24 Thus, adding stratêgoi in line 19 and drawing a connection to the Knights would require, first, an abrupt change of direction in the decree and, second, a provision that does not fit well within the constitutional framework of Athens in the fifth century. This is not entirely impossible, but it demands a great deal from the few letters that have survived.
The overview of the various arguments that have been put forward has demonstrated the obstacles for a precise dating of the Prytaneion Decree. All approaches to the 430s and 420s seem possible and plausible; the years after 425 should not be excluded either, because one could also see a different connection between the honour for Cleon and the Prytaneion Decree: possibly many Athenians felt the need to regulate sitêsis after they had seen Cleon awarded with it.Footnote 25 But this too is speculative; it is better to agree with Jameson's cautious statement ‘De tempore parum constat’.Footnote 26 Any interpretation that holds only on the assumption of one particular dating proposal and not with another is methodologically problematic. Rather, an interpretation that is compatible with different chronological approaches is to be preferred.
AGONISTIC VICTORS IN THE PRYTANEION DECREE
The two passages on agonistic victors have not played a relevant role in the aforementioned interpretations of the decree. In the religious interpretation of Blok and van ‘t Wout, athletics is reduced to its connection with religious ritual. Schmitt Pantel, on the other hand, stresses the parallels between athletics and war: Panhellenic festivals, the argument goes (Schmitt Pantel, 59), were the expression of competition between Greek poleis, without bloodshed, but sharing the symbolic structure of battle. This approach is broadly elaborated by Pritchard, who resolutely opposes a religious interpretation of athletic honours: the people of Athens, in his view, perceived athletes as a kind of soldiers, therefore they honoured the best of them as they honoured outstanding fighters.Footnote 27 These approaches correspond to the tendency among classical scholars to understand Greek athletics not in its own logic but merely as a sub-phenomenon of other fields of action, alternatively religion or war. Moreover, both positions have in common that they do not differentiate between the two passages on agonistic victors in the decree.
Back to the text: today, after 150 years of meticulous epigraphic research, there is a broad consensus about the restorations in the relevant section of the inscription. The gap in lines 12/13 was alternatively supplemented with τὸς γ|υμνικὸς ἀγο̑νας, but Morrissey raised striking objections to this restoration,Footnote 28 and the insertion of future victors fits better in terms of language and content. In line 14, καὶ ἄλλας ἰδίαι τιμάς has been suggested as an alternative to καὶ τὰς ἄλλας δορειάς,Footnote 29 which does not significantly affect the meaning of the provision. In this lacuna, there must have been a reference to other honours beside sitêsis, probably the prohedria, and possibly also a monetary reward.Footnote 30 In line 15, sitêsis cannot be inserted before the Prytaneion because of Thompson's argument that, with such an addition, the article in ἐν το̑ι πρυτανείοι would be contrary to Athenian custom.Footnote 31 In lines 15 and 16, some have restored two hippic disciplines, xynoris teleia and polike, but these were not included in the Olympic programme until respectively 408 and 264. Preuner's suggestion to restore the general formula for chariot and horse races (ℎάρματι τελείοι ἒ ℎίπποι κέλετι) is plausible and has found general acceptance.Footnote 32 The restoration of the four Panhellenic festivals in lines 16/17 goes back to Hiller von Gaertringen and is also no longer controversial, precisely because of the striking parallel with the first passage on agonistic victors.Footnote 33 Finally, Thompson (236) does not let the passage on Panhellenic victors end with γεγραμ[μ]ένα̣, but continues with περὶ το̑|ν γυμνικο̑ν ἀγόνον. Such a reference to gymnic disciplines would solve the problem of the duplication of the provisions (see below), but Thompson's restoration leads to a very unconventional grammatical structure, and the letter after γεγραμ[μ]ένα̣ is to be read as an epsilon.
The epigraphic analysis results in the following text; for better clarity, the passages are juxtaposed and those words that appear in only one of them are highlighted:
And those who [have been victorious at the Olympic Games] or the Pythian Games or the Isthmian Games or the Nemean [Games or will be victorious in future, for] them let there be sitêsis in the Prytaneion and [the other grants?] beside sitêsis, in accordance with [what is written on the stele in] the Prytaneion.
Those who have been victorious [with a horse-drawn chariot or with] a riding horse at the Olympic Games [or the Pythian Games or the Isthmian Games or the Nemean Games or] will be victorious in future, also [for them let there be sitêsis in accordance with] what is written on the stele. (translation according to AIO 1137)
The minor differences between the two passages are not difficult to explain. At the beginning of the second passage, δέ establishes a connection to the previous passage, as does καί in line 17. The reference to the repository of the stele is not repeated in the second passage because it would have been redundant. Thus, the significant remaining differences are the mention of the hippic disciplines in the second passage and the (restored!) reference to additional honours in the first. Since the attempts to insert a specification of the disciplines in the first passage have failed, only plausibility arguments can help to reconstruct which winners are meant here, and to explain why the first group was awarded with additional honours, whereas the second was not. These issues were controversially discussed in the 1970s: first, Thompson suggested that hippic victors were named separately because for them the reception of sitêsis was a novelty of the decree, but Morrissey raised striking objections to this view. According to his proposal, the hippic victories were regulated in a separate clause because there had been a controversial discussion in Athens about their value. Against this, Thompson again objected that the hippic victories were more highly valued and awarded with honours that were not attributed for successes in other disciplines.Footnote 34 Since then, no new positions or arguments have been added.
First, it seems unlikely that the decree referred to the musical competitions. They were not part of the Olympic programme, so they cannot be meant exclusively in the first section. And it is improbable that they were even included in this group, for the simple reason that, while there are numerous testimonies for sitêsis given to gymnic and hippic victors in classical Athens, we have none for musical victors.Footnote 35 If the first passage included hippic victors, we would have to find an explanation why they were treated separately in the following paragraph. Such a duplication would only make sense if the hippic victors received greater honours than those mentioned in the first passage, but it seems to be the other way around. Therefore, the most plausible possibility remains to limit the first passage to gymnic victors alone. What remains is the question of why the Athenians did not specify this in the text. Perhaps they considered it sufficient to name the second group, namely the hippic victors, in the most precise way, so that for the first passage no more determination was considered necessary. We should also have in mind that a stele already existed on which the groups might have been defined with greater clarity. On all accounts, the references to the existing stele that are included in both passages are of the utmost importance, because they clearly prove the existence of previous regulations for honouring agonistic victors, and the inscriptions with these regulations were kept in the Prytaneion itself.
On this basis two questions emerge. Did the Prytaneion Decree simply reaffirm existing regulations or did it modify them? And why did the Athenians consider it necessary to reaffirm or modify the existing regulations for agonistic champions? In order to find a solution, we have to move our attention to the literary record. sitêsis for victorious Athenian athletes is attested in numerous texts, the difference being that these mostly name only Olympic victors, while the inscription mentions the winners of all four Panhellenic competitions. This should not surprise us: the decree must be more precise in content, while the literary texts may use the most important competition pars pro toto.
HONOURS FOR AGONISTIC VICTORS IN CLASSICAL ATHENS
In archaic and classical Greece, the value of agonistic victories for the polis was a controversial issue. On the one hand, we often find statements that athletic champions brought great benefit for the community as the splendour of their agonistic victories also radiated to the polis. There was good reason for the common formula that ‘the victor crowned his polis’, and in recompense the citizens should praise and honour their best athletes. This idea finds its most elaborate expression in the epinician odes of Pindar and Bacchylides. Furthermore, Domingo Gygax, in his study about the emergence of euergetism, has demonstrated that athletes were the first of the citizens to be awarded by the polis with lavish honours, precisely because their victories were seen as achievements for the polis.Footnote 36 On the other hand, we find abrasive criticism denying any benefit of athletics for the polis, most eloquently formulated by Tyrtaios and Xenophanes. While the former (West, IEG F 12) listed athletic prowess as one of many ‘Homeric’ qualities not worthy of praise, Xenophanes (West, IEG F 2) explicitly attacked the practice of honouring agonistic victors. After listing all the rewards, Xenophanes succinctly states that ‘the strength of men and horses’ does not solve the problems of the polis; therefore, wise men like himself, instead of Olympic champions, should rather be held in high honour. Such private statements did not have any noteworthy consequences; on the contrary, Xenophanes’ catalogue of honours demonstrates just how highly esteemed athletic victors were among the citizens.
Opposing statements on the value of athletic success can also be found for democratic Athens,Footnote 37 and it is only here that the mass of sources is sufficient to reveal nuances. This is especially true for the differentiation between gymnic and hippic disciplines, which is relevant for understanding the Prytaneion Decree. What should be noted first is that the sharpest anti-athletic polemic of classical Athens is directed against the gymnic athletes. In a fragment from the satyr play Autolycus, which is quoted by Athenaeus in the same paragraph as Xenophanes’ elegy, Euripides caricatures the athletes as a completely useless bunch:Footnote 38 gluttony, military uselessness, exaggerated pride with simultaneous inability to deal with aging or other problems—what Euripides presents here is the arsenal that will continue to characterize anti-athletic statements in the centuries to come.Footnote 39 The athletes, useless as they are in battle or in their household, should not be recipients of honours. It remains unclear to what extent these verses, which are close in time to the Prytaneion Decree,Footnote 40 reflect the poet's own opinion, especially since it cannot be determined which stage character is speaking here.Footnote 41 Kyle (130) is probably right when he sees ‘conventional farce … rather than heartfelt criticism’ at work, but what matters more is how many Athenians shared the critical attitude presented by the poet. David Pritchard wipes the verses off the table, declaring that none of the theatregoers shared such a view on athletes and that Euripides used the verses only to paint Autolycus as a negative, unsympathetic figure.Footnote 42 Such an assertion has no basis and ignores the other testimonies from the same period that are less radical in their criticism of athletes but comparable in thrust. Euripides’ contemporary Achaeus, for example, also caricatured the excessive food intake of athletes.Footnote 43 And the ‘Old Oligarch’ complained that the Athenians discredited those who practised athletics in the gymnasia;Footnote 44 here, of course, the argument is not solely about the victors of Panhellenic competitions but about athletic training in general. In view of these contemporaneous sources, it can be assumed that, whatever Euripides’ personal opinion of athletes was,Footnote 45 the opinion he was processing in his Autolycus was circulating in Athens.
Critical remarks about gymnic athletes are also found in the fourth century. Timocles comicus refers to sitêsis when comparing athletes with parasitoi. Footnote 46 Athletes do not contribute anything, but nevertheless get the meal in the Prytaneion—here again the topos of gluttonous athletes is addressed. Part of the comic ridicule is reducing sitêsis to the intake of food, while the honour aspect—so central to Greek sport—is left out. This passage is not isolated: numerous fourth-century comedies bear agonistic titles and, although little is known about their content, we may assume they included mockery of athletes.Footnote 47 Moreover, Lycurgus praises the Athenians for setting up statues in the Agora for generals and tyrannicides; these people, the statesman explains, deserved such an honour much more than the athletes whose statues could be seen in other poleis.Footnote 48 Finally, Isocrates, when criticizing the honours for agonistic victors, referred expressis verbis to the gymnic disciplines; according to the rhetor, a strong and fast body was an ephemeral phenomenon, while scientific achievements were enduring and therefore to be preferred (Isoc. Ep. 8.5.).
The public awards for hippic victors also did not go unchallenged. Most famous is the passage at the end of Plato's Apology (36d–37a), when Socrates is considering what penalty for him would be appropriate: he himself, Socrates emphasizes, deserved sitêsis much more than hippic Olympic champions did, and he also needed it more—what echoes here is the material aspect of the free meals in the Prytaneion. The ostraca against Megacles, with allusions to his hippotrophia,Footnote 49 testify that victories with horses were by no means a source of enthusiasm among all Athenians, and Pindar, in his seventh Pythian (486), saw in the resulting envy one reason for Megacles’ ostracism. In Aristophanes’ Clouds of 423, equestrian sport is derided as an expensive aristocratic luxury;Footnote 50 here, however, it is less a matter of lacking benefit to the polis than of individual harm to those who overburden themselves financially with this ‘hobby’. And finally, Alcibiades’ offensive handling of his Olympic victory with the quadriga demonstrates that a hippic success could be presented as an achievement for the polis. In this respect, Athenian opinions differed—in the fifth century, it was a double-edged sword to claim political leadership with reference to hippic victories.Footnote 51
All the critical statements about gymnic and hippic victories contrast with ample evidence of a more positive evaluation of agonistic success. In a pseudo-Demosthenic speech the speaker recalls his grandfather, who ‘crowned the polis’ with his Olympic victory in the boys’ stadium race and was rightly held in honour for it ([Dem.] 58.66). This remark was obviously meant to engage the judges for the athlete and also for his grandson; it is used here as proof of being a good citizen. Another example for a positive perception of athletes is reported by Pausanias: when an Olympic victor could not afford the expenses to set up a victory statue in the Altis, the Athenians did so from the polis treasury (Paus. 6.13.11). And when in 332 the Athenian pentathlete Callippus faced accusations of bribery in Olympia, the polis showed solidarity with its athlete, sent Hypereides to Olympia to speak on Callippus’ behalf, and boycotted the Olympic Games for a time (Paus. 5.21.5–7).
It is a striking fact that the Platonic Socrates explicitly refers to equestrian sports and enumerates their disciplines in more detail than would have been necessary. On the one hand, this is due to the social status of the owners of noble racehorses, who were all very wealthy people, while athletes who did not belong to the social elite could compete in the gymnic disciplines, at least since the late fifth century.Footnote 52 But one can furthermore infer from the passage that hippic victories were considered particularly useless in the sense of the polis. This is also indicated by other sources of this time, for example the pseudo-Andocidean speech On Alcibiades:
he was rewarded with free entertainment in the Prytaneum; and not content with that, he is for ever taking credit for his victory, as though he had not so much brought Athens into disgrace as won her a garland of honour.Footnote 53
The honour of sitêsis Alcibiades had received, therefore, appeared completely unjustified in view of the great damage he had brought upon the polis. In the following paragraph Callias is mentioned for comparison:
In fact, it will be a public disgrace, if you show tolerance towards a man who has achieved his success only with the help of your money, when in ostracizing Callias, son of Didymias, who won victories at all the great games by his personal prowess, you took no account whatsoever of his achievement, although it was by his own efforts that he brought glory to Athens.Footnote 54
Callias was an outstanding pankratiast: he triumphed at Olympia, twice at the Pythia, five times at the Isthmia and four times at the Nemea, and furthermore at least once at the Panathenaea. This record makes him the most successful fifth-century Athenian in the agonistic field and the only pre-Hellenistic periodonikês from Athens. Victory monuments of Callias are attested on the Athenian Acropolis and in Olympia.Footnote 55 Moreover, his family was famous for its wealth and renown, and he obviously also possessed political weight, otherwise it becomes hard to explain why he was ostracized. In terms both of his socio-political status and of his agonistic successes, he is the closest parallel to Alcibiades. But he had, it is said here, won his victories with his body (τῷ σώματι), that is, by training hard and accepting blows and injuries. This made his victories, according to the speaker, superior to the hippic triumphs of Alcibiades. A key term in this context is ponos/ponoi, which is used here and in many other sources to denote the toils an athlete, and especially a boxer or pankratiast, had to undergo before he could achieve a glorious victory.Footnote 56 If we take into account Euripides’ epinician ode on the occasion of Alcibiades’ Olympic victory, in which the poet praises the victor for having triumphed ἀπονητί, that is, ‘effortlessly’, the contrast fashioned by Ps.-Andocides becomes even sharper. The hippic victory of Alcibiades, according to the rhetor's logic, was no achievement of his own at all, but the gymnic successes of Callias were. The latter should therefore be honoured by the polis and, if even Callias had been ostracized by the citizens, this fate should befall Alcibiades all the more.
CONCLUSIONS
Let us now return to the Prytaneion Decree. This decree cannot be understood from an agonistic perspective alone. But since the honours for the descendants of the tyrannicides are quite easy to understand and the other groups cannot be clearly determined, it is appropriate to take the honours for agonistic victors as a starting point, or at least we should not exclude them from an interpretation. In the inscription, the two groups of athletes are the only ones for which reference is made to existing written regulations. And they differ from the others in yet another respect: victors were not awarded sitêsis on the basis of a specific affiliation but on the basis of a one-time event taking place far outside the borders of Attica. If we distinguish between recipients ex officio and recipients who got sitêsis by decree ex beneficio,Footnote 57 the agonistic victors do not belong to either category: they did not exercise any office, nor did they receive the honour by ad hominem decisions of the Assembly. And we have recognized one further difference, as there was a controversial discussion whether it was justified to award them with sitêsis.
As is well known, the Athenians of the fifth century were not very generous with public honours for individual citizens. This reluctance to honour individuals led to a certain tension over how to deal with agonistic victors. Because of the paramount importance of athletics in Greek culture, the opinion was widespread that those who won at Olympia or in other major Panhellenic competitions were outstanding men and deserved glory and honour. This estimation applied both to the gymnic and to the hippic disciplines. Visible expressions of this honour were the public garlanding with flowers and leaves (phyllobolia), the performance of epinician odes, or the victor statues at the competition site and in the home polis.Footnote 58 It was a Panhellenic phenomenon that extended to the entire Greek world regardless of the political organization of each polis.
Owing to the radical concept of political equality in democratic Athens and to the reluctance to elevate individuals too much, the challenge arose of how to deal with citizens who were successful on the agonistic field. Unlike other poleis, the Athenians did not erect statues of athletes in the Agora,Footnote 59 but there was a monumental presence of victors in the public space. Both the preserved bases and the literary record attest numerous agonistic dedications on the Acropolis, and not only for the Archaic period but also for the Classical period.Footnote 60 Of particular interest are the monuments of Callias’ family, who, in addition to the aforementioned pankratiast, also had Olympic champions in hippic disciplines in their ranks, both in the sixth and in the fifth centuries.Footnote 61 Their victory monuments on the Acropolis highlight the family's prominent position and were undoubtedly to be understood as a demonstration of aristocratic status.Footnote 62 This family is also involved in a story told at the beginning of Xenophon's Symposium: when a particularly beautiful boy named Autolycus won the pankration at the Panathenaea of 422, his admirer Callias (III) took him first to the hippodrome to watch the horse and chariot races, and then to his home in the Piraeus for a banquet—a private contribution of a meal in recompense of an athletic victory. Later, a statue of Autolycus was erected in the Prytaneion, the very building where sitêsis took place.Footnote 63
Thus, the Athenians did not prevent gymnic or hippic victors from having their successes remembered by monuments. What they did, however, was to set rules for the honours the winners were to receive from the polis. In his fundamental work on Athenian athletics, Kyle (32–55 and passim) has described a development from aristocratic competition to ‘civic athletics’ that began as early as the Peisistratids. Kyle focusses on the founding of festivals, particularly the Panathenaea. Another facet of ‘civic athletics’, I propose, is the regulation of honours. This process, too, began in the Archaic period with a Solonian law, which, however, remains unclear in its specific provisions and general purpose.Footnote 64 With the Prytaneion Decree, and earlier with the predecessor stele, the Athenians established fixed rules for sitêsis; by doing so they did not replace the monuments erected by the victors, but added a polis-related reward. Thus, they created equality at this level, while the expense of epinician odes or dedications was limited by the financial resources of each victor. And by bestowing higher honours on gymnic successes than on hippic ones—if the interpretation presented above regarding the two groups is correct—they cast certain reservations into an institutional form, reservations about equestrian sport as an activity of the wealthy. In this sense, the Prytaneion Decree forms a testimony to the complex relationship between sport and democracy in classical Athens.
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