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ABSTRACT
The contradictions and ambiguities in, admiration for, and potential benefits derived from cheating in modern athletics have numerous parallels in ancient Greek culture. Because both ancient and modern competitive sports share common structures and behavioral patterns that enable cheating, viewing attitudes of the ancients provides a useful lens through which to assess our own ambivalent responses to rule-breaking today. This paper traces the growth of ancient sports and the financial and personal rewards that motivated many athletes to game the system. Numerous examples of athletes and the parents of athletes who sought success at all costs indicate that ancient sports cheating was not so distant from cheating in modern sports.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The origin of this meme is unknown.
2. In January 2020, the League levied a fine of five million dollars, the suspension of manager and assistant manager for a year (later fired by the Astros) and loss of first- and second-round draft picks for two years. But many believe that stripping them of the title would have been the proper penalty.
3. Some even claim that steroid use ‘saved’ baseball. See, e.g., next note.
4. José Canseco’s Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big (2015).
5. As former 49er and Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana put it, when asked about Tom Brady’s behavior, ‘if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.’ Montana then listed a number of ways in which his own team had attempted to gain the advantage by skirting the rules. https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/joe-montana-on-patriots-if-you-aint-cheating-you-aint-trying/.
6. The official date given was 776 BCE, see Christesen (Citation2007, 146–57).
7. Iliad 23. 257–897.
8. These were the quadrennial Pythian and biennial Isthmian and Nemean games; together with the Olympic they were designated ‘crown’ games because they gave only wreaths of leaves woven from the trees specific to each sanctuary as prizes: wild olive at Olympia; laurel at Delphi; pine at the Isthmia; and wild celery at Nemea.
9. E.g., see Diodorus Siculus 13.82.7 on Exainetus of Acragas’ elaborate victory parade (30 BCE).
10. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, bk. 1.55. Solon is said to have reduced the going rate for an Olympic victory to 500 drachmas. Whether a one-time payment or an annual subsidy is not stated, though to judge from other known payments, the latter is more likely. For comparison, a century later the daily pay for an Athenian juryman was 1–2 obols per day (there are 6 obols to the drachma). See Loomis (Citation1998, 232–39).
11. It was the owner of the team who won the crown; see e.g., Herodotus 6.103 on the Athenian Cimon, who was in exile, but sold his Olympic victory to the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus, in exchange for being allowed to return to the city.
12. Lucian, Assembly of the Gods §12 on the curative qualities of the statues of Polydamas and Theagenes at Olympia.
13. See Golden (Citation2004, 72) for references. The closest parallel today might be the habit of tennis players throwing their sweat bands or sweat-soaked shirts into the stands after a match.
14. See van Nijf (Citation2000) and for festival networks, van Nijf and Williamson (Citation2016).
15. This is already clear from the victory poems of Pindar, written in the early fifth-century BCE.
16. See, e.g, how coaches motived athletes in Philostratus’ Gymnasticus 21–24.
17. Iliad 23.382–97.
18. Sophocles, Electra 504–15; Pausanias 8.14.10–12; Apollodorus, epitome 2.3–10.
19. Pausanias 5.13.1–4, 7.
20. Thucydides, bk. 1.6; Plato, Republic, bk. 5.452 c.
21. Pausanias 1.44.1, who quotes the later inscription.
22. Pausanias 5.21.4; 5.21.5–22.1 lists further miscreants.
23. Ps.-Lucian, Nero §8: ‘How do his competitors yield to him [Nero]? For they must have enough skill to gratify him [i.e., make him think he won fairly].’ ‘By the technique of those wrestlers who fake the fall [hypopalaiontes].’
24. Gymnasticus § 45.
25. In this period 3,000 drachmas would have been more than a year’s wages of an average legionary’s pay.
26. Herodotus 2.160.
27. Pausanias 5.21.5.
28. Pausanias 5.21.8.
29. See, e.g., Golden (Citation1998, 37).
30. Pausanias 5.21.14.
31. The ‘boys’ were early adolescent, the ‘unbearded’ late adolescent.
32. For the prohibition against finger-breaking, see SEG 48.541 (between 525–500 BCE). Both eye-gouging and finger-bending share a kinship with holding or pass interference in football. It regularly occurs, but if the referees do not call it, it did not happen (though instant replay may show us that it did).
33. Pausanias 6.4.2–3.
34. Pausanias 5.21.16.
35. P. Oxy. 79.5209 and see the discussion, pp. 163–65.
36. This was probably about the final match of the boys’ wrestling at the 138th Great Antinoeia at Antinoopolis in Egypt, See P. Oxy 79, p. 163.
37. See, e.g., the discussions of Gardiner (Citation1930, 99–106) and Miller (Citation2004, 207–15).