Games and Festivals in Classical Antiquity

The Greek and Roman year were divided into festivals and games even more than our year is today. Politics and competition went together and the spectacle and even danger of games and sports spiced up the lives of Greek and Roman citizens. This volume presents fourteen papers, half of which originated at a conference held in Edinburgh in 2000, which examine the archaeological, material and documentary evidence for ancient sports and festivals, making comparison between Greek and Roman habits and placing the events in their political and religious setting. Subjects include: Minoan bull sports; the evidence of dance imagery; Pindar; chariot racing and politics in 5th-century Athens and Sophocles' Electra; competitive Greek games; Dionysiac festivals in Aristophanes' Acharnians; cock fighting and dicing in classical Athens; the festival of Artemis Leukophyrene; Roman games and Greek origins in Dionysius of Halicarnassus; epic and real games in Statius and Virgil; Roman naumachiae or naval battles in artifical basins; Dionysiac scenes on Oinophoroi vessels from Sagalassos; Christianising the celebrations of death in Late Antiquity; the portraits of champions in Palazzo Te.