What do you think?
Rate this book
The Victor's Crown: Greek & Roman Sport from Homer to Byzantium
What is Sport and why do we love it? These two questions drive David Potter's analysis of the western tradition of competitive athletics from eighth century BC to the sixth century AD. The story of ancient sport offers a paradigm for the tale of sport in our own time. Incorporating the latest research, The Victor's Crown opens with an analysis of the way competitive sport emerged in Greece during the eighth century BC, and then how the great festival cycle of Classical Greece came into being during the sixth century BC. Special attention is paid to the experience of spectators and athletes, especially in the violent sports of boxing, wrestling and pancration. We meet the great athletes of the past and discover what it was that made them so great. The rise of the Roman Empire transformed the sporting world by popularizing new forms of entertainment (chiefly a specialized form of chariot racing, gladiatorial combat and beast hunts). Potter shows us what it was like to be a fan and a competitor, and how to fight like a gladiator. The Victor's Crown looks at the physiology of conditioning, ancient training techniques and the role of sport in education. The Roman government promoted and organized sport as a central feature of the Roman Empire, as sports provided common cultural currency to the diverse inhabitants of this vast empire. The Victor's Crown is not just a history of ancient sport, but also an examination of role sport has played throughout history.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2011
9 people are currently reading
97 people want to read
About the author
David Stone Potter
20 books32 followersDavid Potter is the author of Constantine the Emperor and The Victor’s Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium. He is the Francis W. Kelsey Collegiate Professor of Greek and Roman History and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 14, 2021
actually began reading this book back in 2016 or 2017, getting about 40 pages in before abandoning it as i often do with the 100 or so "in progress" books on my "currently reading" shelf. my old colleague don kyle (author of several books on sport and spectacle in greece, specifically, as opposed to the "entire greco-roman world," as potter attempts to survey here) noted that the book significantly oversimplifies various points and gets things wrong about greece, particularly with homer, but such is the nature of summaries). potter writes well for an academic, befitting someone attempting a summary or synthesis, but there are parts that drag despite his best efforts -- such is life.
that said, the book more or less accomplishes "what it says on the tin." records related to greek sports in particular are slim, and left to interpretation where they do exist, but the comparably more extensive roman materials, particularly the imperial roman materials, are navigated more comfortably and carefully by potter, a specialist in that area. by the time potter has moved into materials related to winning at the olympics, training, and turning pro in greece, the book picks up its pace considerably (and it isn't lengthy, a mere 320 pages despite its comprehensive title).
the coverage of roman sports is obviously much fuller, with potter drawing on imperial decrees, writings from galen + plinys old and young + philostratus (author of on athletics), and more surviving tombstones, inscriptions, and works of popular art, and thus his conclusions about the shifts in the roman period are much sharper:
1) athletic games (pancration, boxing, wrestling, footracing) trumped gladiatorial games in the greek east until the late roman period (and gladiatorial combat/beast hunts didn't "destroy" the empire or indicate its "decadence)
2) circus clubs/chariot racing lingered longest, into the 12th century in byzantium, because of the way the factions were organized
3) christianity's growth may have changed some sporting practices, but they didn't "end" sport and spectacle; declining revenues did
4) sport in rome mattered far more than sport in greece, insofar as it gave the mob a voice in politics (benefactors needed to pony up to ensure they were satisfied) and led to sports management on a level not seen until the 20th century ce. athletes could also rack up city prizes from winning various games - with calendars sanctioned by the emperor himself - that drove their earnings to levels not seen until the modern period.
5) even in greece, the olympics was no place for amateurs - the competitors were all trained by pros - but it was a place for higher-status males.
6) the role of women in roman sports, both as participants (gladiators, etc.) and spectators, was far more significant than it was in greece, where it was very much a male politico-sexual space.
fascinating stuff. if you dig into the bibliography, you'll see that much of this material is extracted from very little: some decrees, laws, inscriptions, fragments of letters and poems, etc. there are also only a half-dozen or so academics, don kyle and potter included, but also the excellent n.b. crowther, who have done genuinely significant work in this field given that everyone is working with the same limited corpus.
that said, the book more or less accomplishes "what it says on the tin." records related to greek sports in particular are slim, and left to interpretation where they do exist, but the comparably more extensive roman materials, particularly the imperial roman materials, are navigated more comfortably and carefully by potter, a specialist in that area. by the time potter has moved into materials related to winning at the olympics, training, and turning pro in greece, the book picks up its pace considerably (and it isn't lengthy, a mere 320 pages despite its comprehensive title).
the coverage of roman sports is obviously much fuller, with potter drawing on imperial decrees, writings from galen + plinys old and young + philostratus (author of on athletics), and more surviving tombstones, inscriptions, and works of popular art, and thus his conclusions about the shifts in the roman period are much sharper:
1) athletic games (pancration, boxing, wrestling, footracing) trumped gladiatorial games in the greek east until the late roman period (and gladiatorial combat/beast hunts didn't "destroy" the empire or indicate its "decadence)
2) circus clubs/chariot racing lingered longest, into the 12th century in byzantium, because of the way the factions were organized
3) christianity's growth may have changed some sporting practices, but they didn't "end" sport and spectacle; declining revenues did
4) sport in rome mattered far more than sport in greece, insofar as it gave the mob a voice in politics (benefactors needed to pony up to ensure they were satisfied) and led to sports management on a level not seen until the 20th century ce. athletes could also rack up city prizes from winning various games - with calendars sanctioned by the emperor himself - that drove their earnings to levels not seen until the modern period.
5) even in greece, the olympics was no place for amateurs - the competitors were all trained by pros - but it was a place for higher-status males.
6) the role of women in roman sports, both as participants (gladiators, etc.) and spectators, was far more significant than it was in greece, where it was very much a male politico-sexual space.
fascinating stuff. if you dig into the bibliography, you'll see that much of this material is extracted from very little: some decrees, laws, inscriptions, fragments of letters and poems, etc. there are also only a half-dozen or so academics, don kyle and potter included, but also the excellent n.b. crowther, who have done genuinely significant work in this field given that everyone is working with the same limited corpus.
January 24, 2021
Given the topic this book should have been a lot more interesting. I love anything to do with ancient games/events and was really looking forward to this book. It's very boring though and tends to drill way down into individual details. There are plenty of other books on this subject, so not even worth finishing this one.
April 11, 2014
This provided information about sports across the ancient world evenly, and it had great literary evidence. However, it was lacking archaeological evidence and discussion. There was a little, but I would have liked to have read more about it.
December 19, 2018
It’s amazing that such a potentially fascinating subject should be covered in such a dull manner. Read about 100 pages, skimmed more, could not finish.
January 30, 2023
Interesting topic, dull book
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews