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WORK TITLE: Public spending and democracy in classical Athens
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BIRTHDATE: 1970
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NATIONALITY: Australian
https://hapi.uq.edu.au/profile/360/david-pritchard * http://uq.academia.edu/DavidPritchard
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1970.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Educator and writer. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, Charles Gordon Mackay lecturer in Greek, 2013; University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia, senior lecturer in School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics.
AWARDS:Research fellowships at Macquarie University, University of Copenhagen, and University of Sydney.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Age, Australian, Conversation, Courier-Mail, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung, Sydney Morning Herald, Kathimerini, Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia), Canberra Times, Advertiser, Neos Kosmos, and Online Opinion.
SIDELIGHTS
David M. Pritchard is a senior lecturer in the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at the University of Queensland. Previously he was the Charles Gordon Mackay Lecturer in Greek at the University of Edinburgh. He has held research fellowships at Sydney’s Macquarie University, the University of Copenhagen, and the University of Sydney. Pritchard has published several books on war, sports, and public spending in classical Athens. He has also written over forty book chapters and peer-reviewed articles and regularly speaks on radio and writes for newspapers around the world.
In 2010, Pritchard edited War, Democracy and Culture in Classical Athens, in which an international group of historians, archaeologists, classicists, and political scientists discuss the impact of democracy on war and vice versa. Drawing from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E., the writers explain how democracy made Athens more effective in war and how war supported democratic rule. After an uprising in 508 B.C.E. and the flowering of Athenian culture brought about by democracy, the Athenian military experienced a revolution that was responsible for raising the scale of Greek warfare. The book’s contributors show how government by the people was a major cause of Athenian military success.
Pritchard next wrote Sport, Democracy and War in Classical Athens, which considers correlations between Athens’s democratic politics, public commitment to sport, and constant warfare. Pritchard addresses the conundrum of Athenian democracy being open to all citizens, while participation in sport was open only to the elite. How did the equality of democracy stand alongside sport’s aristocratic claims to social and political superiority? As more Athenian men became soldiers, they saw value in endurance and fortitude, making them more sympathetic to athletes’ achievements. Nonelites valued sport, vast sums of money were spent on sport, sportsmen received large salaries, and the elite participants were shielded from the public criticism that was usually directed toward other elites in society.
Bryn Mawr Classical Review contributor Stephen Brunet noted that athletics was so deeply embedded in Greek culture that Athenians could not imagine a world without it. Brunet noted that the book “does not limit itself just to the history of Greek athletics but deals with the social and ideological processes of the Athenian democracy in a broad fashion.”
Pritchard’s 2015 title Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens is part of the “Ashley and Peter Larkin Series in Greek and Roman Culture.” The book corrects the long-held belief, started by Plutarch, that Athenians spent more on their festivals, theater, and even salary for state officials than on war funds. Using figures and budgeting procedures gathered from 420 to 330 B.C.E., Pritchard contends that, in the democracy, Athenian voters had full control over the state budget, choosing how much money to allocate to festivals and the armed forces. The latter received the biggest portion, proving that war and thus state security was an overriding priority.
Choice reviewer J.M. Williams commented: “While the author’s figures are necessarily only approximate, his meticulous accumulation of evidence and analysis is persuasive.” In fact, Pritchard explains how, in a community of warriors owing honor to their gods and heroes, investment in festivals and theater was a priority of cultural rationality. Writing on the Classicum Web site, Ben Brown said: “It is appropriate that [Pritchard] never presses too hard that Athenian spending on war is necessarily always an indicator of its priority over other areas of democratic life; rather it is a mix of factors—the importance of war-making to be sure, but also the huge cost of war relative to, say, pay for office or Panathenaic prizes.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, April, 2016, J.M. Williams, review of Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens, p. 1216.
Classicum, Volume 41, number 2, 2015, Ben Brown, review of Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens, p. 30.
ONLINE
Bryn Mawr Classical Review, http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/ (August 1, 2014), Stephen Brunet, review of Sport, Democracy and War in Classical Athens.
University of Queensland Web site, https://hapi.uq.edu.au/ (April 1, 2017), author profile.
David M Pritchard
3.5 | The University of Queensland, Australia, Classics and Ancient History, Faculty Member +5 | Ancient Greek History +25
Dr David M. Pritchard is Senior Lecturer in Greek History at the University of Queensland in Australia. He has won 10 research fellowships in Australia, Denmark, France, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. In 2015-16 Dr Pritchard was Research Fellow in L’Institut d’Études Avancées de l’Université de Strasbourg. In 2015 he was Research Fellow in Durham University’s Institute of Advanced Study. In 2014 he was Visiting Scholar in Greek History at Brown University. In 2013 Dr Pritchard was the Charles Gordon Mackay Lecturer in Greek at the University of Edinburgh. He has authored Sport, Democracy and War in Classical Athens (Cambridge University Press: 2013) and Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens (University of Texas Press: 2015), edited War, Democracy and Culture in Classical Athens (Cambridge University Press: 2010), and co-edited Sport and Festival in the Ancient Greek World (Classical Press of Wales: 2003). Dr Pritchard is currently finishing Athenian Democracy at War for Cambridge University Press. In addition to his books he has published over 45 book-chapters and peer-reviewed articles. Dr Pritchard regularly speaks on radio and writes for newspapers around the world. Opinion pieces of his have appeared in The Age, The Australian, The Conversation (France), The Courier-Mail, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Sydney Morning Herald, Kathimerini, The Herald Sun, The Canberra Times, The Advertiser, Neos Kosmos and Online Opinion.
Phone: +61 401 955 160 (mobile phone)
Address: School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
The University of Queensland
QLD 4072
AUSTRALIA
Dr David Pritchard
Senior Lecturer in Greek History, Deputy Director of Research and Research Training
+61 7 336 53338
d.pritchard@uq.edu.au
Room 515, Michie Building (9)
View researcher profile
Researcher biography
Dr David M. Pritchard is Senior Lecturer in Greek History at the University of Queensland in Australia. In 2015-16 he is Research Fellow in L'Institut d'Études Avancées de l'Université de Strasbourg (USIAS). Dr Pritchard has also won research fellowships at universities in Cincinnati, Copenhagen and Sydney. Earlier this year he was Research Fellow in Durham University's Institute of Advanced Study. In 2014 he was Visiting Scholar in Greek History at Brown University. In 2013 Dr Pritchard was the Charles Gordon Mackay Lecturer in Greek at the University of Edinburgh. He has authored Sport, Democracy and War in Classical Athens (Cambridge University Press: 2013) and Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens (University of Texas Press: 2015), edited War, Democracy and Culture in Classical Athens (Cambridge University Press: 2010), and co-edited Sport and Festival in the Ancient Greek World (Classical Press of Wales: 2003). At USIAS Dr Pritchard is completing for Cambridge University Press a cultural history of the armed forces of imperial Athens. In addition to his 4 books he has published more than 45 book chapters and peer-reviewed articles. Dr Pritchard is currently finishing for Cambridge University Press a monograph on the armed forces of democratic Athens.
Publications
Books (2)
Book Chapters (6)
Journal Articles (26)
Conference Papers (2)
Thesis (1)
Preprints (17)
Generic Documents (3)
Newspaper Articles (2)
Creative Works (2)
Books
Pritchard, David M. Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens. Austin, TX, United States: University of Texas Press, 2015.
Pritchard, David M. Sport, Democracy and War in Classical Athens. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2013. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139030519
Book Chapters
Pritchard, David M. (2015). Athens. In W. Martin Bloomer (Ed.), A Companion to Ancient Education (pp. 112-122) Chicester, United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons.
Pritchard, David (2010). The symbiosis between democracy and war: The case of ancient Athens. In David Pritchard (Ed.), War, democracy and culture in classical Athens (pp. 1-62) Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Pritchard, David (2010). Sport, war and democracy in classical Athens. In Zinon Papakonstantinou (Ed.), Sport in the cultures of the ancient world (pp. 64-97) Abingdon Oxon, U.K.: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Pritchard, David (2003). Athletics, education and participation in Classical Athens. In David Phillips and David Pritchard (Ed.), Sport and festival in the ancient Greek world (pp. 293-349) London: Classical Press of Wales.
Phillips, David J. and Pritchard, David (2003). Introduction. In Phillips, David J. and Pritchard, David (Ed.), Sport and Festival in the Ancient Greek World (pp. vii-xxxi) Swansea: Classical Press of Wales.
Pritchard, David M. (1998). Thetes, Hoplites, and the Athenian Imaginary. In T. W. Hillard, R. A, Kearsley, C. E. V. Nixon and A. M. Nobbs (Ed.), Ancient history in a modern university: Volume 1: The ancient Near East, Greece, and Rome (pp. 121-127) Sydney and Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing.
Journal Articles
Pritchard, David M. (2015) Democracy and war in ancient Athens and today. Greece and Rome, 62 2: 140-154. doi:10.1017/S0017383515000029
Pritchard, David M. (2015) Public finance and war in Ancient Greece. Greece and Rome, 62 1: 48-59. doi:10.1017/S0017383514000230
Pritchard, David M. (2015) The position of attic women in democratic Athens. Ancient History: resources for teachers, 41-44 2011-2014: 43-65.
Pritchard, David M. (2015) Deporte y democracia en la Atenas clásica. El Futuro Des Pasado, 6: 69-86. doi:10.14516/fdp.2015.006.001.002
Pritchard, David M. (2014) The position of Attic women in democratic Athens. Greece and Rome, 61 2: 174-193. doi:10.1017/S0017383514000072
Pritchard, David M. (2014) The Public Payment of Magistrates in Fourth-Century Athens. Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 54 1: 1-16.
Pritchard, David M. (2012) Athletics in satyric drama. Greece and Rome, 59 1: 1-16. doi:10.1017/S0017383511000210
Pritchard, David (2012) Aristophanes and de Ste. Croix: the value of old comedy as evidence for Athenian popular culture. Antichthon, 46 14-44.
Pritchard, D. M. (2012) Costing festivals and war: spending priorities of the Athenian democracy. Historia - Zeitschrift fur Alte Geschichte, 61 1: 18-65.
Pritchard, David M. (2012) Public honours for Panhellenic sporting victors in democratic Athens. Nikephoros, 25 209-220.
Pritchard, David (2010) The incongruous athletes of satyric drama. Classicum, 36 2: 11-22.
Pritchard, David (2010) Costing the armed forces of Athens during the Peloponnesian War. Ancient History: Resources for Teachers, 37 2: 125-135.
Pritchard, David (2010) The position of Attic women in democratic Athens. QHistory, 2010 16-29.
Pritchard, David (2009) Costing the Great Panathenaia in the early fourth century BC. Classicvm, XXXV 8-15.
Pritchard, David (2009) Sport, war and democracy in classical Athens. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 26 2: 212-245. doi:10.1080/09523360802513272
Pritchard, David (2008) Working papers, open access, and cyber-infrastructure in classical studies. Literary & Linguistic Computing, 23 2: 149-162. doi:10.1093/llc/fqn005
Pritchard, David M. (2007) How do democracy and war affect each other? The case study of ancient Athens. Polis, 24 2: 328-352.
Pritchard, David (2005) War and democracy in Ancient Athens : A preliminary report. Classicum, 31 1: 16-25.
Pritchard, David (2005) Kleisthenes and Athenian democracy: Vision from above or below. Polis: The Journal of the Society for Greek Political Thought, 22 1: 136-157.
Pritchard, David (2005) Athletics, war and democracy in Classical Athens. Teaching History, 39 4: 4-10.
Pritchard, David Morris (2004) A woman's place in classical Athens: An overview. Ancient history: resources for teachers, 34 170-191.
Pritchard, David (2004) Kleisthenes, participation, and the dithyrambic contests of late archaic and classical Athens. Phoenix, 58 3-4: 208-228. doi:10.2307/4135166
Pritchard, David (2003) Participation in the ‘Old Education’ of Classical Athens. Classicum, 29(XXIX.2) 9-21.
Pritchard, David Morris (2002) Tribal solidarity and participation in fifth-century Athens: A summary. Ancient History: Resources for teachers, 31 104-118.
David M. Pritchard (1998) ''The Fractured Imaginary': Popular Thinking on Military Matters in Fifth-Century Athens'. Ancient History: Resources for Teachers, 28 1: 38-61.
Pritchard, David M. (1994) From Hoplite Republic to Thetic Democracy: The Social Context of the Reforms of Ephialtes. Ancient History: Resources for teachers, 34 2: 111-139.
Conference Papers
Pritchard, David (2012). What was the point of Olympic victory?. In: A Conference on Olympic Athletes: Ancient and Modern. Program. A Conference on Olympic Athletes: Ancient and Modern, St. Lucia, QLD, Australia, (15-15). 6-8 July 2012.
Pritchard, David (2010). War, democracy and culture in Classical Athens. In: Neil O'Sullivan, ASCS 31 [2010] Proceedings: Refereed Papers from the 31st Conference of the Australasian Society for Classical Studies. ASCS 31 [2010], Perth, WA, Australia, (1-13). 2-5 February 2010.
Thesis
Pritchard, David M. (1999). The Fractured Imaginary: Popular Thinking on Citizen Soldiers and Warfare in Fifth Century Athens PhD Thesis, Department of Ancient History, Divison of Humanities, Macquarie University.
Preprints
David M. Pritchard (2016) "Sport and Democracy in Classical Athens" (in press), Antichthon 50..
David M. Pritchard (2016) 'Public Spending in Democratic Athens', Ancient History 46, 2016 (in press).
Pritchard, David M. (2015) "Democracy and War in Ancient Athens and Today", GREECE AND ROME 62.2.
Pritchard, David M. (2015) 'Public Finance and War in Ancient Greece', GREECE AND ROME 62.1.
Pritchard, David M. (2015) The cost of Athenian democracy.
Pritchard, David M. (2014) The position of Attic women in democratic Athens.
Pritchard, David M. (2013) The Democratic Support of Athletics in Classical Athens.
Pritchard, David M. (2012) "Public Honours for Panhellenic Sporting Victors in Democratic Athens".
Pritchard, David (2012) "Athletics in satyric drama", Greece and Rome 59.2.
Pritchard, David (2012) "Aristophanes and De Ste. Croix: The value of old comedy as evidence for Athenian popular culture".
Pritchard, David M. (2012) 'Athletic participation, training and adolescent education'.
Pritchard, David (2009) Costing Festivals and War: Spending Priorities of the Classical Athenian Democracy.
Pritchard, David M. (2009) Sport, War and Democracy in Classical Athens.
Pritchard, David M. (2008) Working Papers, Open Access, and Cyber-Infrastructure in Classical Studies.
Pritchard, David M. (2008) Athens.
Pritchard, David M. (2005) Kleisthenes and Athenian Democracy: Vision from Above or Below?.
Pritchard, David M. (2004) Kleisthenes, Participation, and the Dithyrambic Contests of Late Archaic and Classical Athens.
Generic Documents
Pritchard, David M. (2016) The Ancient Olympic Games: David M. Pritchard Interviewed by Kelly Higgins-Devine on ABC Local Radio Queensland (Australia). :Australian Broadcasting Commission.
Pritchard, David M. (2016) David M. Pritchard on Ancient Greek Direct Democracy and Today: Interviewed by Kelly Higgins-Devine on 612 ABC Brisbane Radio. :Australian Broadcasting Commission.
Pritchard, David (2010). The Inaugural Queensland Greek History Conference: The Cultural History of the Greeks: Conference Booklet with Program, Abstracts and Biographical Notes. Edited by David Pritchard.
Newspaper Articles
Pritchard, David (2013, March 01). Lessons from the Ancient Olympics. Kathimerini, p.2-2.
Pritchard, David (2013, February 27). What is the value of Olympic Gold?. Kathimerini, .
Creative Works
Pritchard, David M. (2008) War, democracy and popular culture in fifth-century Athens. St Lucia, QLD, Australia, UQ Cultural History Project.
Pritchard, David M. (2008) War minus the shooting: sport and democracy in classical Athens. St Lucia, QLD, Australia, UQ Cultural History Project.
Areas of research
Social and Cultural History of the Greco-Roman World
Pritchard, David M.: Public spending and democracy in classical Athens
J.M. Williams
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 53.8 (Apr. 2016): p1216.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
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Pritchard, David M. Public spending and democracy in classical Athens. Texas, 2015. 191 p bibl indexes afp ISBN 9780292772038 cloth, $50.00
53-3624
HJ217
CIP
Pritchard (Univ. of Queensland, Australia), author and editor of books on the relationship of Athenian democracy with sports and war, here "crunches the numbers" of Athens' public finances. In response to 19th-century classical scholar August Bockh's claims that Athenian democracy squandered revenues on festivals and pay for state officials and underfunded warfare, and those of more recent scholars that only Athens' imperial tribute made state pay possible, Pritchard carefully investigates the costs of Athenian festivals, wages for state officials, and war for the best attested decades of the 420s, the 370s, and the 330s BCE. He proves that Athens' internal revenues normally easily covered spending on festivals and government operations. The costs of war, however, vastly outweighed the regular peacetime expenses of the state. Because of the relative stability of Athens's fixed costs, Pritchard argues that voters in Athens's assembly understood the financial implications of their decisions and placed their highest priority on war. He also asserts that Athens' budgeting procedures were careful, and improved over time. While the author's figures are necessarily only approximate, his meticulous accumulation of evidence and analysis is persuasive. All scholars studying Athenian democracy should read this well-researched and well-argued book. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.--J. M. Williams, SUNY Geneseo
Classicum Vol. XLI.2 31 As P. points out in his conclusion (116), the echo of PlutarchÕs widely-cited claim, that the Athenians frittered away more on dramatic productions than on war (
de glor. Ath
. 349a), is an unfortunate diversion, since it cannot be taken seriously and yet dog-whistles to those (like the
Old Oligarch
, Critias and Plato in their day) who sneer at the supposedly inexpert and self-interested priorities of the average (poor) citizen. From this perspective the book tilts at contemporary unelected technocrats and economists who roll their eyes at the balance sheets of modern democratic governments. P. also recognizes that the debate has been troubled by the wider question of the nature of the AtheniansÕ fifth-century empire, in particular the relationship between the exaction of tribute and the spending priorities of the democracy. It is an important conclusion of this book that another widely-held assumption, hitherto poorly tested by examination of the evidence, that AthensÕ experiment with ÔradicalÕ democracy was funded at the alliesÕ expense, is unwarranted. I find P.Õs argument that the Athenians fully funded their democratic participation from internal revenue convincing, but with caveats: one might argue in turn that naval participation and pay were not dissociated from other more ÔpoliticalÕ democratic institutions, blurring the rather hard distinction made here between ÔwarÕ and ÔdemocracyÕ. I am thinking, for example, of the ease with which Themistokles can segue from equal disbursement of Laureion silver across the citizen body, to using the money to build a communal fleet; to archaic assemblies distribution of spoil and refitting war-gear were of a piece. What is different in the fifth century is the rise of the ÔstateÕ as surrogate for the individual citizenÕs personal spending. For the first half of the fifth century at least, I wonder whether an Athenian citizenÕs identity as warrior was so sharply distinguished from his identity as assemblyman or member of the
boule
. But for the period under this bookÕs consideration Ñ the Peloponnesian War to the middle of the fourth century Ñ I am prepared to accept that the rationalization of the boundaries of these practices was well under way. In fact, rationality is a sub-theme in this book, though it is perhaps not as declared as it might have been. In the concluding chapter an opportunity has been missed to make more of the important conclusions reached in the core of the book, because P. does more than just offer a quantitative assessment of Athenian public spending priorities. He provides a sharp demonstration of the ancient city's axis of rationality, which has frustrated Enlightenment thinking about Athenian democracy for the last two centuries. By this I mean that there is a Weberian point being made, especially in the concluding chapter that restates the centrality of war to the ideology of ancient city. The classical polis claimed sovereignty over all communally held goods by right of military participation, a direct continuation of a public ethos developing as early as the Homeric poems. As Weber insisted, political
Vol. XLI.2 Classicum 32 space followed from the circle of the
MŠnnerbund
, and continued to be dominated by its ideology of the glory, wealth and legitimacy that flowed from successful warfare. As such the Athenians considered war their top priority because their entire sense of self, political, economic and gender, was hardwired to the exercise of arms. Democracy at Athens is the rationalization of that logic, as Oswyn Murray once observed in a famous essay back in 1990. Viewed cursorily on their own and out of context, festivals, dramatic productions, jury pay or trierarchies all seem like the indulgences of a welfare-addicted
demos
. What P. shows us are the integral links between all the areas carefully monitored by energetic democratic financial oversight, links which direct us toward the ideological imperatives of Athenian self-representation as brave and god-fearing citizens, collectively responsible for their own destiny. Thus it is appropriate that P. never presses too hard that Athenian spending on war is necessarily always an indicator of its priority
over
other areas of democratic life; rather it is a mix of factors - the importance of war-making to be sure, but also the huge cost of war relative to, say, pay for office or Panathenaic prizes. In the end P.Õs findings illustrate the fact that the Athenians did not separate these three areas as we naturally do: the city was a community of warriors owing honours to their gods and founding heroes who reinvested their Ôcommon-wealthÕ in the institutions that reproduced this identity. By using spending as a measure of priority, and by emphasizing the high level of direct citizen participation decision-making about public spending, P. has been able to show that, empire or not, the Athenians collected and spent money with a very sophisticated degree of political and cultural Ñ but not economic Ñ rationality. The elephant in the room with this book is modern democracy, especially in the wake of the sovereign debt crises of recent times. Perhaps at least two points could have been emphasized in conclusion without too much controversy. Firstly, war and democracy, as P. has often said before, are very comfortable bedfellows, much to the distaste of contemporary liberal democratic ideology. The magnitude of the military budgets of large democracies, like the U.K. or U.S.A., could be compared to AthensÕ spending; why does this disturb us but not Athenians (or Romans for that matter)? Secondly, public spending provides a gauge of a given polityÕs collective vision of itself. What ought we to be spending our public revenues on? One contemporary discourse maintains by recourse to economic rationality that wasteful and ÔuselessÕ spending be identified and stopped, that savings are always a good thing, and that there must always be a productive capital return on every dollar spent. In our recent history we can recall the bitter debates surrounding one of the most famous acts of useless public spending, the Sydney Opera House, whose budget blew out by over 1400% and to many contemporary observers was an outrageous waste of taxpayers' money.
Classicum Vol. XLI.2 33 The example is not meant to suggest that we realize now what we did not then, that it is a beautiful building, which is now a wonder of the civilized world. Rather, its construction was not at all wasteful when regarded from a different axis of rationality, that is, when it is seen historically as a risk taken by an adolescent nation to demonstrate its democratic identity and maturity under the shadow of the cultural prestige of colonial mother country and old Europe. The gamble was successful not because the Sydney Opera House has since proved itself, but simply because it did, against all economic rationality, get built in the end. It survives as a testament to an event: a democratic act to use public funds to underwrite our ideal self-definition. In that sense, the timeliness of this book lies in demonstrating that the broader rationality of public spending lies in affirming the self-aware vision a political community has of itself. That many later writers thought the Athenian spending priorities were prodigal and indulgent does not prove the Athenians could not manage their treasury. It merely showed that those writers disapproved of democracyÕs priorities. Indeed the
Old Oligarch
, a canny observer of democratic Athens if ever there was one, noted that they managed it only too well. And for 200 years they did. P. is to be thanked for providing the empirical data to show why. Ben Brown, University of New South Wales
Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2014.08.36
David M. Pritchard, Sport, Democracy and War in Classical Athens. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. xii, 251. ISBN 9781107007338. $103.00.
Reviewed by Stephen Brunet, University of New Hampshire (Stephen.Brunet@unh.edu)
Preview
In Sport, Democracy and War in Classical Athens David Pritchard asks why Athens, a city in which one would expect egalitarianism to reign supreme, tolerated and even encouraged athletics, an activity that had long been associated with the elites of Greek cities and with aristocratic claims to social and political superiority. Central to Pritchard’s explanation is the proposition that athletes were viewed as possessing the same type of endurance and willingness to undertake risks that Athenian citizens were required to demonstrate in war. As a consequence, the perceived value of athletics overrode any potential opposition to this particular element of the aristocratic lifestyle and the Athenian state saw nothing wrong in expending its resources on athletic contests in which most Athenians never had a hope of competing due to their lack of training. In pursuing this one explanation for the Athenian acceptance of athletics, Pritchard may have overlooked other factors that were at work here, notably the fact that athletics was so deeply embedded in Greek culture that many Athenians would never have been able to envisage a world without it. Yet his study, touching as it does on such diverse subjects as the extent to which most Athenians had access to education and the tendency among Athenians to conceive of land and naval warfare using similar language, does not limit itself just to the history of Greek athletics but deals with the social and ideological processes of the Athenian democracy in a broad fashion.
The first chapter introduces three premises that underlie Pritchard’s subsequent analyses. One is that modern research about the connection between athletics and war, notably the much repeated, but now disproven, theory that athletics sublimates the aggressiveness that leads to war, are not helpful in understanding the role of athletics in Athenian society. A second is that historians like Thucydides and philosophers like Plato, being hostile to democracy, are not particularly useful sources for his purposes since they are not likely to reflect common conceptions about athletes and athletics. Instead he bases his analysis nearly exclusively on the evidence of legal speeches, comedies, tragedies, and satyr plays on the grounds that the authors of these works needed to be in tune with the preconceptions of most Athenians if they were going to win over their audiences. Yet Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle all had a strong interest in athletics and it would have been interesting if Pritchard had considered to what degree their views of athletics matched that of the average Athenian and whether there would have been any debate about the value of the skills demonstrated by successful competitors. The last premise has the greatest influence on his analysis in that he divides Athenian society according to a schema that the Athenians themselves tended to use, namely that a small portion of the Athenian populace could be classified as “the rich,” with the remainder of the population simply being a categorized as “the poor.” In his view, the rich, which he estimates at about 5% of the population, were the only ones with the leisure and money to pursue athletics and thus only a small part of the Athenian citizen body would have had any direct experience of athletics.
Pritchard realizes that this position is diametrically opposed to the views of Nick Fisher and Paul Christesen, both of whom are proponents of the view that many Athenians participated in athletics, at least when young.1 Having debated this issue with them in the past, he devotes Chapter 2 to reiterating his reasons for believing that athletic training was restricted to a very small percentage of Athenians.2 He takes as his starting point Donald Kyle’s finding that all the Athenian athletes from the Classical period for whom we have records derived from elite families.3 To show why this was so, Pritchard undertakes an assessment of Athenian educational practice, and he concludes that the poor were never in the position to pay for any sort of athletic training and this disability barred them from becoming successful athletes. In this regard, Pritchard’s division between rich and poor maybe overly rigid since there may have been many Athenians who, while not in the position to pursue the level of training required to be successful competitors, did have some firsthand exposure to athletics. This would explain, as Pritchard later demonstrates (p. 105-7, 119-120), why Athenians were so familiar with the finer points and terminology of different sports. Many of them had done just enough wrestling, for example, that they understood the mechanics and tactics involved. Moreover, admitting that many Athenians had some limited experience with wrestling or throwing the javelin would actually help Pritchard’s overall argument. Many Athenians would still have seen athletics as an elite activity, which could only be practiced seriously by those with leisure and wealth, but their own more limited contact would have helped them recognize that what it took to be a successful athlete mirrored the demands placed on anyone in a battlefield situation. The point here is that regardless of which side one takes in the debate regarding the social status of Athenian athletes, the majority of Pritchard’s conclusions are likely to still hold true.
Chapter 3 explores Athenian attitudes to the subsidies that Athens awarded athletes who won a PanHellenic festival along with the willingness of the Athenian populace to devote massive resources to the Panathenaia and other local festivals. He rightly finds that tragedy and legal speeches paint a very positive picture of athletic festivals and the individuals who had the talent, training, and tenacity to win against the best athletes of the Greek world. His attempt to claim that comedy was equally positive about athletics does not seem as persuasive. In particular, I would argue the position expressed by the Stronger Argument in the Clouds is more ambiguous than he asserts (p. 116). The validity of the Stronger Argument’s claim about the moral value of athletics is undercut by the fact that he is not really interested in athletics because it promotes martial valor and sophrosyne. Rather, he is in favor it because it allows him to ogle good-looking boys (961-83). Yet Pritchard is right that athletics does not come in for the sort of massive criticism that one would expect if Athenians truly viewed athletes and the honors they were granted with a large degree of suspicion.
Logically, satyr plays should have been treated along with other forms of drama, but athletics is such a common element in these plays that a full assessment of the references to athletics in the surviving fragments takes up all of chapter 4. Pritchard finds that satyrs are depicted attempting athletics with the same ineptitude they exhibit when they foolishly take on other tasks for which they are not suited. In the case of athletics, they lack a willingness to endure toil and the dangers of competition. The implication is that the audience thought that athletes were to be admired for undertaking the sort of risks and labor that the satyrs eschewed. When the villains in these plays are athletes, they misuse athletics in ways that violate the audience’s view of athletics as a virtuous activity, for example, by challenging visitors to deadly contests. The rant that Euripides puts in Autolycus’ mouth is treated in a similar light. Autolycus’ complaint that an athlete’s skills are useless to his city in wartime can be traced back to Xenophanes, and according to an argument presented in the previous chapter, diatribes on the uselessness of athletes never resonated with the Athenians because they were couched in sophistical terms. Having Autolycus repeat such attacks would have increased the sense that he did not follow the norms of society. On Pritchard’s view, scholars have been wrong to assume that Autolycus’ denunciation of athletics would have been taken seriously by nearly all Athenians.
The last three chapters lay out Pritchard’s explanation for why athletics met with such acceptance from the Athenians with the key being, in his view, that success as an athlete was conceived by the Athenians as requiring the same qualities as success as a warrior. To prove that war and athletics were closely related in the minds of Athenians, he rehearses the ways in which they were conceived as similar, notably as contests that involved great labor and great risk. Equally important, he notes that recent research suggests that hoplites did not fight in as tight a formation as commonly thought. This observation tends to counter the tendency on the part of many sports historians to disassociate athletics and warfare on the grounds that being an athlete was an individual enterprise in ancient Greece, while hoplite warfare was by nature closer to team sports. From the point of view of the individual on the battle field, however, self-reliance and personal effort might have seemed to have been of greater importance than team work.
Pritchard then undertakes a review of the changes in the military situation in Athens during the Classical period to solve a potential puzzle. One might think that as involvement in government was extended to a wider and wider group and even the poor came to have political power, there would have been a reaction against athletics for its connections with the elite. Yet this did not happen because of a related development. At the same time as Athens became more egalitarian politically, a wider group of Athenians came to be involved in military defense, first as hoplites and then as sailors. More and more Athenians would have come to realize on a personal level the values of endurance and fortitude; this made them not less, but actually more sympathetic to what athletes did to achieve their success. His final remarks consist of a short note on the ephebeia, indicating his belief that it had the potential to change the world of athletics since for the first time it gave the poor access to athletic training. However, this potential was never realized and athletics remained, as he argues it had been earlier, an activity open exclusively to the elite.
Saying that “the Athenian dēmos simply abhorred public criticism of athletics” (p. 156) probably goes beyond what the evidence will support. A more reasonable conclusion from the sources analyzed by Pritchard is that the Athenians regarded athletes and athletic contests in a very favorable light, far more favorable than we might suspect for an activity that was very closely associated with the aristocracy. He is also right to trace this positive assessment to the Athenian perception that athletics and warfare were similar activities with similar requirements for success. I am less certain whether Pritchard has discovered the only reason that the Athenians were so inclined to support athletics. In particular, from the time the Panathenaia was established, all Athenian citizens had the opportunity to participate in one of the most important athletic festivals in the Greek world, admittedly not usually as competitors but as spectators and participants in feasts and other festivities. Athletics would have been so much a part of the culture that speech writers and dramatists would have found it a natural source of positive examples and their audiences would likewise have had trouble conceiving of a world without athletics. In Pritchard’s favor, though, his study has caused me to rethink how I will approach with my students the various critics of Greek athletics and what the Greeks thought about athletics as a social institution.
Notes:
1. N. Fisher, “Gymnasia and the Democratic Values of Leisure,” in P. Cartledge, P. Millett, and S. von Reden (eds.), Kosmos: Essays in Order, Conflict, and Community in Classical Athens, Cambridge (1998); “The Culture of Competition,” in K. Raaflaub and H. van Wees (eds.), A Companion to Archaic Greece, Malden, MA 2009. P. Christesen, “The Transformation of Athletics in Sixth-Century Greece,” in G. Schaus and S. Wenn (eds.), Onward to the Olympics, Waterloo, Ont. 2007. Unfortunately, Pritchard was not able to address the arguments in N. Fisher, “Competitive Delights: The Social Effects of the Expanded Programme of Events in Post-Kleisthenic Athens, in N. Fisher and H. van Wees (eds.), Competition in the Ancient World, Swansea (2011), or P. Christesen, Sport and Democracy in the Ancient and Modern Worlds, Cambridge (2012).
2. Pritchard’s line of argumentation here follows very closely that taken in “Athletics, Education, and Participation in Classical Athens,” in D. Phillips and D. Pritchard (eds.), Sport and Festival in the Ancient Greek World, Swansea (2003).
3. D. G. Kyle, Athletics in Ancient Athens, 2nd ed. Leiden (1993).
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