Bringing Women into the Agonistic Sphere:Sport, Women and Festivals in the Greek World under Rome

This article is intended as a tribute to Emily Hemelrijk, who has done much to bring Roman women out of the domestic and into the public sphere. Combining Emily’s interest in women’s history with my own interest in sport and festivals, I discuss here the role that women played in the world of ancient sport and festivals. I present the evidence for the participation of women in athletic events to show that in the early Roman period women were entering the agonistic sphere in larger numbers than before. The visibility that this afforded was, however, not a sign of emancipation from the domestic sphere, but rather connected to social and political changes of the early imperial period firmly anchored in the traditional setting of family prestige

Festivals and Benefactors

Of all types of Greek benefaction, agonistic festivals – that is, festivals that revolved around athletic, dramatic or cultural contests – may have been the most central to the phenomenon of civic euergetism in the Greek cities of the Hellenistic and Roman period. Core questions of the chapter are: What was the significance of the fact that public festivals were paid and organised by private benefactors? Why did benefactors do this? And what was it that cities stood to gain? The main argument is that agonistic festivals were not simply an object of euergetism but also a medium through which euergetism evolved. They not only were an opportunity for elite benefactors (and athletes) to increase their prestige but were primarily mass events where benefactors and their communities were jointly involved in representing the central social, cultural and political values of the time

Local festivals

The chapter will draw attention to the importance of some 500 known Greek agonistic festivals for local identity politics and for the networking of cities in the first three centuries ce. The chapter will establish the role of such festivals as ‘civic rituals’. They will be studied against a diachronic and comparative background focusing on the role of public ritual and ceremony as a feature of political culture in the pre-modern world. The study relies on documentary sources to shed light on issues such as organization, planning and financing. Finally the religious dimensions will be explored, both in the context of traditional civic cult, but also with special attention for their link with the imperial cult

Reinventing 'The Invention of Tradition'? Indigenous Pasts and the Roman Present

Thirty years ago Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger introduced The invention of tradition as a concept to explain the creation and rise of certain traditions in times of profound cultural change. Taking stock of current theoretical understandings and focusing on the Roman world, this volume explores the concept of 'inventing traditions' as a means to understand processes of continuity, change and cultural innovation. The notion has been highly influential among studies concerned with the Greek and Roman eastern Mediterranean. Elsewhere in the Roman world and traditions other than Greek, however, have been neglected. This volume aims to evaluate critically the usefulness of the idea of 'inventing traditions' for the successor culture that was Rome. It focuses on the western part of the Roman Empire, which has been virtually ignored by such studies, and on non-Greek traditions. Why, in the Roman present, were some (indigenous) traditions forgotten while others invented or maintained? Using the past for reasons of legitimation in a highly volatile present is a cultural strategy that (also) characterises our present-day, globalized world. Can 'inventing traditions' be regarded as a common human characteristic occurring throughout world history