Greek Athletics as Roman Spectacle

The mosaics from Ostia and Rome

Bibliographic Data

ID9397791
AuthorsZahra Newby (corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume70
Pages177-203
Publication date2002-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePapers of the British School at Rome (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0068-2462 • E-ISSN: 2045-239X
PublisherOpen Book Publishers (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0068246200002142
OpenAlexW1996050721
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited19

With the release in the year 2000 of the film Gladiator , and the exhibition ‘Gladiators and Caesars’ in Hamburg and London, Roman spectacular entertainments, never out of the public eye for long, have returned once again to the limelight. Chief among these entertainments are gladiatorial games and chariot races, exerting a pull on the modern imagination through the famous re-enactments of them in popular films — such as Spartacus or the famous chariot race in Ben-Hur — as much as through our knowledge of their popularity in antiquity, often summed up in Juvenal's comment that the Roman plebs wanted only ‘panem et circenses’. Yet there was more to Roman spectacle than gladiators and chariots, popular as these were. The aim of this paper is to use the visual evidence from mosaics in Ostia and Rome to investigate the Roman reactions to another type of public spectacle, Greek athletic contests. These were held in Rome periodically from 186 BC, and gained a new momentum in AD 86 with Emperor Domitian's institution of a permanent four-yearly festival on Greek lines in honour of the Capitoline triad (Suetonius, Domitian 4)

Ancient Greece · Ancient Greek · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Chariot · Emperor · Honour · Literature · Political science · Popularity · Roman Empire · Spectacle · Classics · Historical and Literary Studies · History · Law · Linguistic and Cultural Studies