Greek Women and Athletics

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Greek Women and Athletics
Female Recreation Women as Entertainment Women
as Athletic Benefactors Women as Athletic
Prizes Women as Spectators? Women as
Participants/Athletes
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Female Recreation
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Athenian Attitude toward Women

• To a woman not to show more weakness than is
  natural to her sex is a great glory, and not to
  be talked about for good or for evil among men.
• From Pericles Funeral Oration in Thucydides
  History. II.VI.

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Red-figure amphora by Andokides Painter, c. 520
B.C. Paris. Louvre
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Women as Entertainment for Men
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Women as Athletic Benefactors

• Goddesses as Sponsors
• Wealthy Women as Supporters of Athletics

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Goddesses and Sports
Artemis at Brauron in Attica
Hera at Olympia
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Tatia

• CIG XVII, 3953c from Asia Minor (Turkey)
• The council and the people and the senate honored
  Tatia, who was the daughter of Glykon, who was
  the son of Glykon, who twice received the honor
  of wearing a crown. He was the director of the
  gymnasium and a priest of Herakles and head of
  the council. They thought Tatia worthy of this
  honor because she was a faithful wife, was
  directress of the gymnasium, and was honorable in
  all aspects of her life.

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Tata

• CIG 2820
• The council and the people and the senate honored
  with highest honors Tata, daughter of Diodoros,
  who was himself the true son of Diodoros, who was
  born the son of Leon. She was the virtuous
  priestess of Hera all her life, mother of her
  city, who became the wife and remained the wife
  of Attalos, son of the Pyptheos who received the
  honor of wearing the crown. She herself came from
  a leading family, one that was illustrious. When
  she was priestess of the emperor Augustus for the
  second time, she twice supplied flasks of oil for
  the baths in great abundance and great expense,
  even through most of the night.

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Women as Athletic Prizes
WAR PRIZES In Funeral Games of Patroklos (See
Arete 1) SUITOR CONTESTS Chariot Race of
Pelops Running Race of Atalanta Wrestling Match
of Peleus and Thetis
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Chariot Race of Pelops Detail from an Athenian
red-figure clay vase, about 410 BC. Arezzo, Museo
Nazionale Archeologico 1460
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Guido Reni. Atalanta and Hippomenes. c. 1612Oil
on canvas, 206 x 297 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid
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Peleus and Thetis
Volute Krater, 4th cent. B.C. Villa Guilia, Roma
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Women as Spectators

• Priestess of Demeter (Arete 97/150)

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Story of Kallipateira (Arete 111/170 96/149)
On Diagoras of Rhodes, see also Arete 248 (Pindar
Olympian 7).
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Women as Athletes

• in Myth (Atalanta and Thetis)
• in Reality (Kyniska et al.)

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Atalanta as Wrestler
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Atalanta as Runner
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Thetis as Wrestler

• Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preussischer
  Kulturbesitz, Berlin, 106, Detail of interior
  (tondo), ca. 500, Signed by Peithinos, inv. no. F
  2279

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On Kyniska see Arete 98a-c)
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Women Athletes at Delphi

• See Arete 106/162
• Tryphosa and Hedea, daughters of Hermiesianax

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Dorian or Spartan Women Known as phainomerides
or thigh showers Euripides stereotypical
image of Spartan women Arete 154 Plutarch, Life
of Lycurgus (see next two slides)
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These public processions of the maidens, and
their appearing naked in their exercises and
dancings, were incitements to marriage, operating
upon the young with the rigour and certainty, as
Plato says, of love, if not of mathematics. But
besides all this, to promote it yet more
effectually, those who continued bachelors were
in a degree disfranchised by law for they were
excluded from the sight those public processions
in which the young men and maidens danced naked,
and, in winter-time, the officers compelled them
to march naked themselves round the marketplace,
singing as they went a certain song to their own
disgrace, that they justly suffered this
punishment for disobeying the laws. Moreover,
they were denied that respect and observance
which the younger men paid their elders and no
man, for example, found fault with what was said
to Dercyllidas, though so eminent a commander
upon whose approach one day, a young man, instead
of rising, retained his seat, remarking, "No
child of yours will make room for me."
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Phainomerides thigh shower. Used pejoratively
of women of loose morals.
Athenian Idealization of Spartan Woman Platos
Laws Arete 105
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Image from a Corinthian Aryballos from the Apollo
Temple in Corinth, first quarter of the sixth
century BC. Text includes the names of Polyterpos
and Pyrrhias Bibasis, a Spartan dance, "The dance
consisted in springing rapidly from the ground,
and striking the feet behind...The number of
successful strokes was counted, and the most
skilful received prizes. We are told by a verse
which has been preserved by Pollux (iv.102), that
a Laconian girl had danced the bibasis a thousand
times, which was more than had ever been done
before " William Smith , A Dictionary of Greek
and Roman Antiquities, John Murray, London, 1875.
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ARISTOPHANES
Lysistrata Good day, Lampito, dear friend from
Lacedaemon. How well and handsome you look! what
a rosy complexion! and how strong you seem why,
you could strangle a bull surely! Lampito Yes,
indeed, I really think I could. 'Tis because I do
gymnastics and practise the kick dance. Calonicé
And what superb bosoms!
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Religious Festivals for Women

• Heraia at Olympia (Arete 158)
• Brauron in Attica

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The Heraia
ARETE 103/158
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Heraia(Arete 103/158)

• Celebrated every four years
• Footrace only
• Three age-groups
• Shortened track (158 m)
• Run by Sixteen Women

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