Monographs

​

 ▼ Downloadable PDF available ▼

​

Click on the icon to the left to download a full PDF copy of this book.

All downloads on this site are free of charge.

​

This monograph (published as Histos Supplement 10) offers a detailed study and fundamental reinterpretation of the Damonon stele (a thin slab of stone), the single most important extant inscription from ancient Sparta.

​

The Damonon stele records victories that two Lakedaimonians (the Spartans' name for themselves), Damonon and his son Enymakratidas, won in the late fifth century BCE in equestrian contests and footraces at nine different local festivals. The inscription on the stele is relatively lengthy and largely intact, and it has long been, and continues to be, a key source for the study of Lakedaimonian history. H. J. W. Tillyard, writing in the early years of the twentieth century, called the Damonon stele "one of the best known and oftenest discussed of early Lakonian inscriptions." Over a century later, the editors of one of the standard resources for the study of Greek epigraphy, the Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, referred to it as "the famous stele of Damonon."

Scholars have repeatedly turned their attention to the Damonon stele because it offers invaluable insight into multiple facets of Lakedaimonian society. Over the course of decades of research, a scholarly consensus has emerged on how to read the inscription on the Damonon stele. The inscription is commonly understood as cataloging dozens of victories won in the four-horse chariot race (the tethrippon) as well as other victories won in the horse-race (keles) and in footraces of various lengths. 

Careful study of the wording and structure of the inscription and relevant comparanda suggests  many of Damonon’s victories typically understood as having been won in the tethrippon were in fact won in the the kalpe, a contest for mares in which the rider dismounted and ran alongside his horse in the final part of the race. The kalpe was based directly on cavalry training exercises, and the horses that competed in this event were heavy-bodied cavalry horses rather than the light-bodied racehorses used in other hippic competitions. Three fragmentary terracotta votive plaques found in the excavations at the shrine of Agamemnon and Alexandra at Amyklai near Sparta provide strong support for the suggestion that many of the victories listed on the Damonon stele were won in the kalpe.

The re-interpretation of the Damonon stele proposed here has important ramifications, along multiple axes, for our understanding of ancient Lakedaimon. Our knowledge of the program at Lakedaimonian religious festivals is considerably enhanced, because it becomes clear that at least six such festivals included the kalpe. The inclusion of the kalpe in the Lakedaimonian festival circuit suggests that Spartans were eager to emphasize their military capacities and strength. That may well have been in part a response to Athenian successes at Sphacteria and Kythera, the resulting regular incursions into Lakedaimonian territory, and concomitant Spartan concerns about an appearance of weakness.

Most importantly, the new interpretation of the Damonon stele presented here offers a rare glimpse of the Lakedaimonian state at work. It reveals a Lakedaimon that is evolving rapidly in response to emergent military imperatives and Lakedaimonians who are ready, willing, and able to make swift, well-designed changes to the structure of religious festivals, and to manipulate gender expectations, in order to alter the structure of status competition and patterns of conspicuous consumption. Those changes, and the thought processes behind them, reveal a considerable level of complexity in Lakedaimonian thinking about their own social and political institutions and customs. That would not be surprising if manifested in Athens, but it contrasts sharply with the persistent picture of Lakedaimonians as unsophisticated and of Lakedaimon as a staid, conservative place with a static sociopolitical system. Indeed, the capacity of the Lakedaimonian state to make rapid, incremental changes that were in harmony with the overall structure of its sociopolitical system may well have been a key element in Lakedaimon’s unusual stability. Due to the nature of our sources, such changes are typically invisible to us, so the information that can be gleaned from the Damonon stele is of particular importance.

​

​

 ▼ Downloadable PDF available ▼

​

Click on the icon to the left to download the table of contents and first chapter of this book.

All downloads on this site are free of charge.

​

This book explores the relationship between sport and democratization. Drawing on sociological and historical methodologies, it provides a framework for understanding how sport affects the level of egalitarianism in the society in which it is played. I distinguish between horizontal sport, which embodies and fosters egalitarian relations, and vertical sport, which embodies and fosters hierarchical relations. I also make a differentiation between societies in which sport is played and watched on a mass scale and those in which it is an ancillary activity. Using ancient Greece and nineteenth-century Britain as case studies, I analyze how these variables interact and find that horizontal mass sport has the capacity to both promote and inhibit democratization at a societal level. I conclude that horizontal mass sport tends to reinforce and extend democratization.

 ▼ Downloadable PDF available ▼

​

Click on the icon to the left to download the table of contents and first chapter of this book.

All downloads on this site are free of charge.

​

This book is the first comprehensive examination of the lists of Olympic victors that were assiduously maintained by ancient Greeks for more than a 1,000 years. The origins, development, content, and structure of Olympic victor lists are explored and explained, and a number of important questions, such as the source and reliability of the year of 776 BCE for the first Olympics, are addressed.