Summary: Competition, Violence, And Culture By Michael Poliokoff

In Michael Poliokoff’s book Combat Sports in the Ancient World: Competition, Violence, and Culture, the author argues against the commonly held belief that the classical Greek agon, or athletic competition was primarily used a means of training soldiers and preparing them for battle. In making this argument, much of his evidence comes form the Homeric epics. While Poliokoff uses these sources to make an entirely valid argument about the function of the agon, he often presents these sources without the level of context and analysis that could have significantly strengthened his argument. Furthermore, Poliokoff occasionally make claims about the nature of sport in ancient Greece without providing sufficient evidence, leaving the reader to doubt

their validity and thus the validity of his argument as a whole.
The information provided by the Homeric texts can be vital to our understanding of the world of the ancient Greeks.

However, as with evidence form any historical source, modern scholars must be incredibly careful to interoperate and analyze them properly to avoid distorting their meaning. Poliokoff tends to overlook these challenges, leading him to take the evidence form the Homeric texts at face value. For example, he quotes a passage form the Odyssey in which Laodamas tells Odysseus that there is no greater glory than that which comes from one’s own hands and feet via sport(Poliokoff 105). Poliokoff asserts that this passage demonstrates the importance of sport to the ancient Greeks, however he makes no attempt to explain why his readers should believe that athletic competition was of great value to the Greeks of the Classical Period based on the testimony of a character in the Odyssey. There are many reasons that the classical Greeks might have a very different view of the agon to that which Laodamas expresses. Even if the reader is familiar enough with the odyssey to know who Laodamas is and what his motivation for making this statement might be, it is a stretch to assert that people living centuries later in a fundamentally different culture held similar beliefs about sport to a character in the Odyssey. While it is certainly difficult to doubt the fact that athletic competition was incredibly important to the Ancient Greeks, but there is much better evidence to support

this assertion than a quote from the Odyssey presented out of context.
Poliokoff also uses the Homeric texts to support his central thesis that warfare had been the primary means of achieving individual kleos in the Bronze age and had been replaced in this role by the agones in the Classical Period. This is a valid explanation for the importance of these competitions to the ancient greeks, but Poliokoff’s overreliance on Homeric evidence weakens it. In support of his claim, the author provides quotations from the Illiad and the Odyssey which describe warriors achieving kleos in battle and one inscribed epigram from the Classical Period, which discusses the glory of war going to the city of Athens rather than an individual (Poliokoff 112). While this may be evidence of a shift in warfare from a more individual to a collective act, it is difficult to make such a claim with confidence based upon such a limited number of sources, as it is entirely possible that other sources in the classical period discussed the military prowess of individuals. While it is reasonable to suggest that a less individualistic military in the Classical Period drove men to seek kleos through the agones, the argument would be better supported by discussing the emergence of hoplite warfare and the importance of stephanistic games in greater depth.
The quotation from Laodamas is not the only piece of evidence that Poliokoff takes from the Homeric texts, with similar problems accompany the other instances of their use.

For example, in explaining the importance of the Homeric texts to understanding the ancient Greeks, Poliokoff writes that it is no exaggeration to say that the Homeric texts are “the Bible of the Greeks” (Poliokoff 112). This comparison is true in so far as the Homeric texts formed the basis of ancient Greeks’ education and were fundamental to their culture. However, the Bible is taken by many people to be the direct word of god and, in some cases, to be literally true, which is certainly not the case for the Homeric texts. When using the Homeric texts in order to gain an insight into the Ancient Greeks it is important to remember that the Greeks of the Classical period are separated form the Myceneans of the Bronze Age by several centuries, during which time large amounts of Mycenean culture were lost. Therefore, it is difficult to say that the Classical Greek had the same values, ideologies, or practices as those seen in the Homeric texts. Thus, while modern scholars may find Homeric texts to be extremely enlightening but they should also take significant care to ensure that all of the necessary context is included. Treating the Homeric texts as a “Bible” of the ancient Greeks obscures this

nuance.
In a similar vain, Poliokoff makes some claims about the Greeks, especially in relation to other peoples, for which he provides little evidence. One such claim suggests that the agones practiced by the Greeks differ from those of the Egyptians because the Egyptian sports were extremely hierarchical, while the Greek games were open to men of any social class. In support of this claim, the author provides a few examples of men from the lower classes competing in the agones, which he describes as having a “mythological quality.” Furthermore, he suggests that the Greeks took steps to make it easier for the lower classes to compete, like subsidizing the athletes’ costs (Poliokoff 107). In reality, while it was theoretically possible for the lower classes to compete in an agon, the costs and barriers to entry would have almost always ensured that they were effectively excluded. Only the extremely had the luxury of the idle time required to achieve the proper physique and training for these events while the poor would be too concerned with basic survival to be able to put in the time required to become a serious competitor. Therefore, it is Perhaps unsurprising that stories about individuals form lower classes competing in the agones remain largely confined to mythology.
Throughout this work, Poliokoff makes the valid argument that in the Greek Classical Period the agon replace warfare as the primary means by which men could achieve kleos. However, this thesis is undermined by the over reliance on Homeric texts out of context an some claims about Greek sport which are not sufficiently supported.