Modern athletics, particularly the Olympics, exhibit an ambivalence on the question of professionalism in sport. The desire for amateurism — competition for its own sake — runs smack into economic realities: athletes must eat, and they also have to find a way to pay for their training. Antiquity is frequently invoked to justify one position or the other, but how well do ancient athletic practices really support either advocates of professionalism or those of amateurism?
It will be obvious from the previous chapter that by the Roman period athletes were professional in every sense of the word. Athletes competing in the Italic, Roman, Augustan, IsOlympic Games and Festival at Naples had to appear a month before the festival but each received a daily obsonion (food allowance) during the training period as well as a place to sleep. A century later the obsonion had become a pension for victorious athletes at the so-called eiselastic games. These games entitled the victorious athlete to a grand procession when he returned home, and a section of the town wall was torn down for him to pass through—the eiselasis, an ancient equivalent to being given the key to the city. Pliny the Younger, serving as imperial representative in northern Asia Minor, debated some of the problems created by this professionalism in an exchange of correspondence with the emperor Trajan in a. d. hi. Pliny was having bureaucratic difficulties about the payment of the obsonia:
Sir, the athletes are constantly complaining that they ought to receive the obsonia you established for the eiselastic games from the day they are crowned. They maintain that what counts is not when they were led triumphantly into their native city but when they actually won the contest for which they get the obsonia. Since 1 have to countersign the obsonia payments with the notation “eiselastic account,” it is my strong inclination that only the date when they make their eiselasis should be considered.
The athletes are also asking for the obsonia for victories in the games you designated eiselastic even when their victories at those games came before your designation. They maintain that this is only reasonable since the obsonia have been stopped for their victories at games which have been dropped from the eiselastic list even though their victories at those games came while the games were still on the list. I seriously question whether such retroactive awards should be given, and I therefore beg you to instruct me on the intention of your benefactions.
Trajan’s response could have been foretold:
I do not think that anything is owed the victor in an eiselastic contest until he has made the eiselasis in his own city. No retroactive obsonia are owed the athletes who won victories at the games I have been pleased to place on the eiselastic list if the victories antedate the games becoming eiselastic. It is no argument that they no longer receive the obsonia for their victories in games I have removed from the eiselastic list. Although the status of those contests was changed, I did not demand that they refund what they had already received.
One wonders at the nerve of the athletes in daring to haggle with the emperor, but even more important is the fact that the coffers of the empire were expected to provide pensions for victors at a number of stephanitic—the crown as opposed to money (chrematitic) — games. These athletes were professionals, and they depended upon athletics for their livelihood. To be sure, a successful athlete would become financially secure if he won enough eiselastic victories, for his multiple obsonia would be the equivalent of several meals a day and what he did not spend on food could go to rent, clothes, and other needs. Further, there were jobs open to athletes after their competitive careers had ended. Markos Aurelios Asklepiades, for example, in about A. D. 200, became director of the Imperial Baths and president of his union (xystarches for life of the Sympas Xystos; IG XIV.1102; A 213). But these success stories were the exception. Galen, writing about twenty years earlier, offers a very different picture, one that probably was more accurate about the conditions, if not the abilities, of the average athlete:
All natural blessings are either mental or physical, and there is no other category of blessing. Now it is abundantly clear to everyone that athletes have never even dreamed of mental blessings. To begin with, they are so deficient in reasoning powers that they do not even know whether they have a brain. Always gorging themselves on flesh and blood, they keep
Their brains soaked in so much filth that they are unable to think accurately and are as mindless as dumb animals.
Perhaps it will be claimed that athletes achieve some of the physical blessings. Will they claim the most important blessing of all —health? You will find no one in a more treacherous physical condition____Ath
Letes overexert every day at their exercises, and they force feed themselves, frequently extending their meals until midnight.
Their sleep is also immoderate. When normal people have ended their work and are hungry, athletes are just getting up from their naps. In fact, their lives are like those of pigs, except that pigs do not overexert or force feed themselves____
Furthermore, the extreme conditioning of athletes is treacherous and variable, for there is no room for improvement and it cannot remain constant, so the only direction they can go is downhill. Thus their bodies are in good shape while they are competing, but as soon as they retire from competition degeneration sets in. Some soon die, some live longer but do not reach old age.
Since we have now considered the greatest physical blessing — health — let us go on to the physical blessings which remain. With respect to beauty it is clear that natural beauty is not improved a bit for athletes; many athletes with well-proportioned limbs are made exceedingly fat by the trainers, who take them and stuff them with blood and flesh. Indeed, the faces of some are battered and ugly, especially of those who have practiced the pankration or the pyx. When their legs are finally broken or twisted permanently out of shape or their eyes gouged out, I imagine that the beauty resulting from their way of life can most clearly be seen! While they are healthy this is the beauty they have the good fortune to possess, but when they retire the rest of their bodies go to pot and their already twisted limbs are the cause of real deformities.
But perhaps they will claim none of the blessings I have mentioned so far but will say that they have strength —indeed, that they are the strongest of men. But in the name of the gods, what kind of strength is this, and what is it good for? Can they do agricultural work such as digging or harvesting or plowing? Perhaps their strength is good for warfare? Euripides will answer that, for he said, “Do men fight battles with diskoi in their hands?” Are they strong in the face of cold and heat? Are they rivals of Herakles so that they too, summer and winter, go barefoot, clad in a skin, and camp out under the heavens? In all these respects they are weaker than newborn babies.
I think that it has become abundantly clear that the practice of athlet-
Ics has no utility in the real business of life. You would further learn that there is nothing worth mention in such practice if I tell you the myth some talented man put into words. It goes like this: if Zeus decided that all the animals should live in harmony and partnership, and the herald invited to Olympia not only men but also animals to compete in the stadium, I think that no man would be crowned. In the dolichos the horse will be the best, the stadion will belong to the hare, and the gazelle will be first in the diaulos. Wretched men, nimble experts, none of you would be counted in the footraces. Nor would any of you descendants of Herakles be stronger than the elephant or the lion. I think that the bull would be crowned in the pyx and the donkey would, if he decided to enter, win the kicking crown. And so it shall be written in the pankration: “In the 21st Olympiad which was won by Brayer.”
This myth shows quite nicely that athletic strength does not reside in human training. And yet, if athletes cannot be better than animals in strength, what other blessing do they share in?
Perhaps someone will say that they have a blessing in the pleasure of their bodies. But how can they derive any pleasure from their bodies if during their athletic years they are in constant pain and suffering, not only because of their exercises but also because of their forced feedings?
And when they reach the age of retirement, their bodies are essentially if not completely crippled.
Are athletes perhaps to be worshiped like kings because they have large incomes? Yet they are all in debt, not only during the time they are competing but also after retirement. You will not find a single athlete who
Is wealthier than any business agent of a rich man____Finally, athletes
Have big incomes while they are actively competing, but when they retire money quickly becomes a problem for them and they soon run through their funds until they have less than they started with before their careers.
Does any one loan them money without property for security? [Exhorta-tionfor Medicine 9 -14: A 215]
When did this situation begin? We have noted the presence of athletes as entertainers in Alexander’s army, and it is surely relevant that a new architectural form develops for festival competitions at about the same time. This was a stadium that had earthen embankments for spectators, a vaulted underground entrance tunnel, and a locker room. We have seen it at Olympia, Nemea, Epidauros, and Athens, all within the period from about 340 to 320. We cannot be certain of the purpose of the new form, but we can see clearly its effects. Athletes and spectators were divided into two distinct groups, and we see therein the first physical evidence for the athlete as entertainer, complete with (un)dressing room, where his costume of nudity was put on.
Once it started being possible to make a living in athletics, a whole sector of ancient society started trying to do so, including the gymnastai (trainers), who increasingly acted as agents for their proteges. We see this as early as 257 B. C., in a letter from a schoolmaster named Hierokles to the protector (Zenon) of a boy named Pyrrhos, who is attending boarding school in Alexandria (PZenon 59060; A 207). Hierokles is acknowledging his instructions to train the boy as an athlete only if he shows promise, and relates that the gymnastes thinks the boy is a potential winner. Hierokles explains that he is therefore going ahead with Pyrrhos's athletic training, adding, “I have every hope that he will win a crown for you.”
The letter clearly shows the profit motive that underlies athletic training, but it does not describe the whole role of the gymnastes, nor does it indicate the potential for corruption. We see that later, in a report by Philostratos of a bribe that seems to have occurred in his own day (ca. a. d. 230) but that probably reflects a situation that had been developing for centuries:
A luxurious lifestyle... led to illegal practices among the athletes for the sake of money. I refer to the selling and buying of victories. I suppose that some surrender their chance at fame because of destitution, but others buy a victory which involves no effort for the luxury it promises. There are laws against temple robbers who mutilate or destroy a silver or gold dedication to the gods, but the crown of Apollo or of Poseidon, for which even the gods once competed, athletes are free to buy and sell. Only the olive at Elis remains inviolate, in accordance with its ancient glory. Let me give one of many possible examples that will illustrate what happens at the other games.
A boy won the pale at Isthmia by promising to pay $66,000 to his opponent. When they went into the gymnasion the next day, the loser demanded his money, but the winner said that he owed nothing since the other had tried after all to win. Since their differences were not resolved, they had recourse to an oath and went into the sanctuary at Isthmia. The loser then swore in public that he had sold Poseidon’s contest and that they had agreed upon a price of $66,000. Moreover, he stated this in a clear voice with no trace of embarrassment. The fact that this was announced in front of witnesses may make it more truthful, but it also makes it all the more sacrilegious and infamous; he swore such an oath at Isthmia before the eyes of Greece. What disgrace might not be happening at the games in Ionia and Asia?
I do not absolve the gymnastai of blame for this corruption. They came to do their training with pockets full of money, which they loan to the athletes at interest rates higher than businessmen who hazard sea trade have to pay. They care nothing for the reputation of the athletes; rather, they give advice about the sale or purchase of a victory. They are constantly on the lookout for their own gain, either by making loans to those who are buying a victory or by cutting off the training of those who are selling. I call these gymnastai peddlers, for they put their own interests first and peddle the arete of their athletes. [On Gymnastics 45: A 214]
With descriptions like these of corruption in the Roman period, a corruption whose roots lay in the Hellenistic, many admirers of Greek athletics have laid the blame on money. Money, they assert, breeds professional athletes, which breeds corruption; only through strict amateurism can the true value of sport be realized. This has led, in turn, to the belief that the athletics of ancient Greece, at least before the time of Alexander the Great, were amateur competitions. Is this true? Were the athletes of the sixth and fifth centuries b. c.—Arrhichion, Milo, Theagenes, Kleomedes, Euthymos, Poly-damas—amateurs? To answer that, we must first define amateur and professional
These two words are frequently perceived as antitheses; an amateur is the opposite of a professional, and vice versa. The amateur is one who is not compensated with money; the professional is. But these are not really accurate definitions of either word, and we must turn to the words’ linguistic roots to understand their meaning. First, both terms derive from Latin, not Greek, words. There is no ancient Greek equivalent for the word amateur, although idiotes can sometimes be translated that way. But idiotes refers to a private person as opposed to a public official and has no connotation that comes close to the idea of someone who is not paid. Amateur is the French derivative of the Latin amator which comes, as every student of Latin I knows, from amo: an amator, “amateur,” is a lover, a person who does something out of love. It has nothing to do with money: one can do something for love and still get paid for it. There are, and always have been, fortunate people who spend their lives doing a job they enjoy, for which they receive a salary.
Professional on the other hand, comes from the Latin professio, a public declaration or acknowledgment. Professio also gives us professor, and it comes ultimately from the verb profiteor, “to declare publicly” —and it has nothing to do with profit, as most professors can attest. Again, there is no monetary implication in the term professional and it is not the antithesis of amateur. One can perform a task out of love on a professional level. The confusion arises in part from our word prq/it, which derives from the Latin prof do, “to make progress” or “to gain an advantage,” hence to “profit” monetarily, socially, politically, or in some other way.
If we recognize that amateur and professional as applied to athletics at least, are modern concepts and that the Greeks had no equivalents for them, we can see that the presence of money in athletics was not in itself a problem. Money was not the reason for the change in emphasis we see beginning at about the time of Alexander. After all, we have seen that money was part of ancient athletics from the beginning. The Homeric games of Patrokles offered prizes of real cash value, and the chrematitic games were by definition games with hefty monetary rewards.
Theagenes of Thasos, discussed in Chapter 9, clearly shows the kind of money a successful athlete could earn in the first half of the fifth century B. c. Pausanias (6.11.2 - 9; A 167a) tells us that Theagenes won a total of 1,400 victories, and he lists 24 of these as occurring in the stephanitic games. Thus, his remaining 1,376 victories must have been in various chrematitic games. We don’t know the cash value of each of those victories, but, as noted in Chapter 7, a Panathenaic victory in the pyx and the pankra-tion (Theagenes’ favored events) was probably worth at least $25,000. This means that Theagenes won something in the neighborhood of $44,400,000 during his career. There was big money to be made in athletics even in the earlier, “amateur” days.
Neither can we cling to the stephanitic games as exemplars of sport for sport’s sake. By the fifth century athletic competitions had become extremely important. Hence we learn that a long-distance runner, Dromeus of Stymphalos, who won twice at Olympia (484 and 480) and Delphi, three times at Isthmia, and five times at Nemea, invented a new diet to improve his performance (Pausanias 6.7.10; A 217). Whereas athletes earlier made cheese the basic element, Dromeus substituted meat, and his success launched the tradition of athletes gorging on meat. At the end of the century a paidotribes (trainer) named Herodikos was said to have used a combination of physical exercise and diet to prolong his life beyond the point of usefulness (Plato, Republic 4o6a-b; A 218). Specialized diets and training for athletes suggests rewards beyond those of glory.
In Athens at this same time the reward that awaited the returning Athenian athlete who had been victorious at any of the four stephanitic games was a free meal at state expense in the prytaneion (town hall) each day for the rest of his life (IG P 131; A 221). This lifelong extension of the victory banquet given at the Prytaneion in Olympia showed the financial underpinning to athletic competition, and multiple winners won multiple dinners. Here is the basis for the obsonia of the Roman period that was regulated by the emperor. The triumphal eiselasis was an important honor, but the free meals were an enduring economic benefit.
Awards for returning victors may date as far back as the early sixth century. At that time the Athenian lawgiver Solon reportedly established cash prizes for Athenian athletes who won at Olympia and Isthmia (Plutarch, Solon 23.3; A 223). The difference in the amount of the awards (an Olympic victor received five times more than someone who won at Isthmia) and the lateness of the source (about six hundred years after Solon’s death) have made scholars dubious about whether these prizes really existed at this early date. But it is at exactly such an early date that a bronze tablet was inscribed at Sybaris in Magna Graecia (SEG 35.1053; A 220). From it we learn that Kleom-
Brotos the son of Dexilaos has dedicated a tenth of his victory at Olympia to Athena. This can hardly apply to the olive wreath that was the only tangible thing he would have won at Olympia, and it strongly suggests that his hometown of Sybaris rewarded him with something more substantial than vegetable matter. In gratitude, Kleombro-tos had shared a tenth of that reward with the goddess.
In the second half of the sixth century we hear of Demokedes of Kroton, a medical man and trainer, who worked for two years at Aigina (Herodotus 3.129-133; A 216). In his second year he received a salary equivalent to $132,000. The next year he was hired away to Athens for the equivalent of $220,000, and the following year Samos snagged him for $264,000. After capture by the Persians and various other adventures, including saving the life of King Darius by means of his medical knowledge, Demokedes, now even wealthier, returned to Kroton and married the daughter of the renowned athlete Milo. Since marriages usually took place between families of more or less equal socioeconomic status, Demokedes’ marriage implies that Milo also counted among the wealthy, although it does not prove that Milo’s wealth derived from his athletic triumphs.
Money, then, including both direct and indirect economic benefits to athletes, played a key part in the athletic world from early days. If getting paid for a good performance on the track is our criterion for determining the “professional” status of an athlete, we would be forced to conclude that all ancient athletes were professional from the beginning of organized athletics. If, however, we define a professional as a man who pursues one activity as the sole source of his income, and is trained in that activity to the exclusion of all others, then the changes that occurred in the time of Alexander the Great do herald the advent of athletic professionalism.
The reason for the change is not difficult to see. With the conquests of Alexander, masses of wealth came into the Greek world, encouraging specialization in a number of occupations, including athletics, which developed athletic entertainers to meet the growing demand for entertainment. The spread of stephanitic games after Alexander’s death shows that Hellenistic society could support athletic entertainment and that athletes could reasonably hope to make a living from it. The issue is not the presence of money, but the amount of money present. Greater economic benefits and greater opportunities to reap such benefits were the causes of abuses that arose from exploitation by trainers and parents willing to gamble the future of the young athlete for their own security.
At the same time, people in Hellenistic and Roman society were willing to trade the enjoyment of entertainment by professional athletes during their prime for the burden of supporting athletes who were crippled and in poor health for the remainder of their short lives. But the athletes themselves clearly bought into the promises and ignored the dangers. Some indeed became champions, gaining financial security for themselves, their parents, and their trainers. But for every winner there were dozens of athletes lost along the way. We catch only glimpses of them, in the grafitti on the stadium entrance tunnel at Nemea and the occasional accounts like the story of Marcus, a hopUtodwmos who was “mistaken by the custodians for one of the statues that line the track when they locked up for the night. The next day they opened the stadium and found that Marcus had finished the last lap” (Anthologia Gmeca 11.85; A175).
In Greek athletics there was one winner but many losers. If the losers trained in athletics alone, what was left to them? Hence Galen, in his advice about the kind of profession to enter, warns against useless or evil career choices. He is “suspicious only of the pursuit of athletics, which might trick some youth into thinking that it is an art because it promises strength of body and reputation among the masses and a grant of money each day from the public treasury.” Galen’s final advice is still sound; “If any of you wants to prepare to make money safely and honestly, you must train for a profession which can be continued throughout life” {Exhortation for Medicine 9 - i4l A 215).
World History
