Social life in Greece was mainly a man’s business: dinner parties and literary circles were, a few exceptions notwithstanding, all-male affairs, just as clubs and all sorts of collective entertainment were predominantly the preserve of men. Of the social life of the vast majority of the people hardly anything is known. We are, paradoxically, comparatively well informed about some very exceptional societies such as Sparta. But there are parallels between the various cultures: in broad outlines, the social life of all or most male members of a given community or of just its elite was based on the pleasures of collective hunting, collective and competitive sports or play, collectively staging a plundering raid outside the territory of one’s community, and, finally, eating, drinking, and singing—or listening to songs—together. There was in these forms of collective entertainment, moreover, a clear distinction between the highly developed states of Asia and Egypt on the one hand and the cultures of Europe on the other. In the former, hunting was in practice a privilege of the kings and the elites, while raiding and plundering by the common people was subject to severe limitations as well: in fact, the kings reserved these pleasures for themselves too. Of communal meals, outside the sphere of religion, we hear very little in these states, except again among the elites and at the royal courts. Several forms of sport and play were undoubtedly indulged in by most people, but our knowledge of these entertainments is very limited. In contrast, among European peoples, and certainly in the more “primitive” parts of Europe, all these forms of entertainment were open to all free men of the community, that is, all those who could afford some weapons. This was, among the Iberians, the Celts, and the ancestors of the Germanic peoples, a world of male clubs and warrior bands, often but not always led by more “aristocratic” leaders, who fought, hunted, and feasted together. In essence, this was the background of the situation in Greece as well.
Greek sagas and the epics of Homer show us the heroes in small bands on the hunt, in warlike or adventurous enterprises, or feasting together around the hearth of the basileus.
Antiquity: Greeks andRomans in Context, First Edition. Frederick G. Naerebout and HenkW. Singor. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2014 byJohn Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Further, they are seen practicing all sorts of sports, such as athletics, wrestling, boxing, and disk throwing. Sporting competitions were often held on the occasion of some hero’s cremation, in which case they can be considered as being held in honor of the dead man, but they were staged on other occasions as well. In Homer, it looks as if only aristocrats participated, but in reality, in the Dark Age other men too must have taken part in such games, in hunts and in raids, albeit more incidentally, whereas these activities must have been the normal pastime for aristocrats. In Sparta, such a life remained even in later times the norm for all free members of society—but that exceptional society considered itself an aristocracy with respect to the mass of subjugated helots who had to perform all the labor. In Sparta, social life was based on the sussitia: the messes or clubs of the Peers, who ate together and who formed the smallest units in the army. Here, sports were clearly part of the collective upbringing of the young and therefore a matter involving the state. Elsewhere in Archaic Greece, however, sports and communal meals were primarily the domain of the aristocracies. In the territories of densely populated poleis, hunting became
Figure 15 Outside of an Athenian cup with a gumnasion scene (early 5th c. BC). The painter Douris decorated and signed this Athenian red-figure kulix, a cup for drinking wine, in early 5th-century Athens. It now is in the Antikenmuseum in Basle. What we see on the outside of the cup is a typical gumnasion scene, with three young men practicing the long jump, part of the pentathlon. They move to the rhythm of a tune played on the aulos, an oboe-like instrument. On the left, there is another man carrying a forked stick, which identifies him as the trainer. All three jumpers carry weights in their hands. These so-called halteres, made of stone or bronze, and weighing about 2.5 kg each, were used to increase the impetus of the jump and thus extend its length. How the jump was performed is not exactly known, and despite the fact that we have a jumper in full flight, his technique cannot be deduced from this image. The gumnasion is an important institution of the polis, as was the sumposion, where this cup was to be used. The gumnasion as an ideal is what the painter has tried to express; he certainly did not aim for a realistic depiction of a sports event. Photo: Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig/A. Voegelin
Less important, while private raiding and plundering more or less vanished when warfare had become more and more a community affair.
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