Paul Christesen

Athletics and Social Order in Sparta in the Classical Period

This article seeks to situate the athletic activities of Spartiates and their unmarried daughters during the Classical period in their broader societal context by using theoretical perspectives taken from sociology in general and the sociology of sport in particular to explore how those activities contributed to the maintenance of social order in Sparta. Social order is here taken to denote a system of interlocking societal institutions, practices, and norms that is relatively stable over time. Athletics was a powerful mechanism that helped to generate consensus and to socialize and coerce individuals. It thus induced compliance with behavioral norms on the part of both females and males and thereby contributed meaningfully to the maintenance of social order in Sparta. Athletics inculcated conformity to norms that called for females to be compliant, beautiful objects of male desire. Athletics had an equally profound effect on Spartan males because it inculcated compliance with norms that valorized subordination of the individual to the group, playing the part of the soldier, and meritocratic status competition. Athletics may well have also to some degree empowered both Spartan females and males, but its liberatory dimensions can easily be unduly amplified. There is an ever-present dialectic in athletics, between its ability to reinforce norms that underpin the prevailing social order and its ability to foster individual autonomy. In the case of Sparta, the balance in that dialectic always inclined very much toward the former.

Whence 776? The Origin of the Date for the First Olympiad

This essay explores the origin of the date of 776 bc for the first Olympiad. That date was established by Hippias of Elis c.400 bc when he compiled the first complete list of Olympic victors. Contrary to what one might expect, Hippias did not arrive at the date of 776 on the basis of written records pertaining to the Olympics or to Olympic victors. Instead, he calculated the date of the first Olympiad by associating that Olympiad with a famous Spartan lawgiver named Lycurgus, who was a member of one of the Spartan royal families and who was believed to have helped organize the Olympic Games. Hippias used a list of Spartan kings to determine the number of generations between his own time and that of Lycurgus. He then assigned a fixed number of years to each generation and ended up with a date for Lycurgus and hence the first Olympiad. The inaccuracies inherent in this approach mean that the date of 776 for the first Olympiad is at best an approximation. The excavators at Olympia have suggested a date closer to 700.

Dreams of Democracy, or the Reasons for Hoosiers’ Enduring Appeal

Abstract Hoosiers has a special, undeniable appeal. This film tells the fictional story of a basketball team from a small high school in Indiana that defeats a team from a much bigger school to win the state championship. When it was shown to test audiences, Hoosiers scored the highest preview rating in the history of Orion Pictures. A poll conducted by USA Today in 1998 named Hoosiers the best sports movie of all time, and it topped ESPN.com’s list of the ‘25 Best Sports Films: 1979-2004’. In 2001, it was selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as a motion picture that is notably ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’. The source of Hoosiers’ special appeal has, however, remained somewhat mysterious. This article seeks to show that Hoosiers has inspired unusually intense devotion because it artfully dramatizes concerns about authoritarianism that are deeply embedded not just in American sports, but in American society as a whole, and because it elegantly presents an emotionally satisfying resolution for those concerns (albeit one that works solely within the bounds of a fictional film).