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And what obstacles complicated its introduction? Gymnasia and the practice of athletic training spread throughout Egypt starting in the third century bce, even though they did not receive the sort of royal patronage that led to the foundation of athletic contests in Alexandria from an early date. Remijsen argues that the internal political structures of the Ptolemaic Kingdom inhibited the spread of athletic contests outside of Alexandria and that it was only in the third century ce, after a reorganization of what was then a Roman province, that many Egyptian communities founded competitions.

7). When Leon appealed to the Olympic Council (an Eleian governmental body), the biased judges were fined but Eupolemos’s win stood. 4–5). Thereafter, no Eleian could both judge and compete in an equestrian event. ) At Olympia there were only individual, first-place victors, and they received only a wreath of olive leaves from the judges and bunches of foliage and fillets (wool ribbons) from admiring spectators. For each winner there were far more losers, and there was little dignity in defeat.

He then looks at the relationship between educational practices and sport. Although privately funded education was more informal earlier, by the fourth century bce Athens institutionalized cadet training in the ephebeia, and versions of ephebic training – a marker of status and ethnicity – spread widely throughout the Hellenistic world (and later the Greek East of the Roman Empire). Andrew Lear’s Chapter 15 investigates the erotic dimensions of Greek sport. He uses both textual and visual evidence to explore the homoerotic, typically pederastic, relationships that were closely associated with athletic facilities.