Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World [Paperback]

The second edition of Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World updates Donald G. Kyle’s award-winning introduction to this topic, covering the Ancient Near East up to the late Roman Empire.

• Challenges traditional scholarship on sport and spectacle in the Ancient World and debunks claims that there were no sports before the ancient Greeks

• Explores the cultural exchange of Greek sport and Roman spectacle and how each culture responded to the other’s entertainment

• Features a new chapter on sport and spectacle during the Late Roman Empire, including Christian opposition to pagan games and the Roman response

• Covers topics including violence, professionalism in sport, class, gender and eroticism, and the relationship of spectacle to political structures

Preface and Acknowledgments ix

List of Figures xii

List of Maps xv

List of Tables xvi

Introduction: Ancient Sport History 1

Why Sport History? 4

Word Games: Conceptualizing Sport and Spectacle 7

Challenges: Evidence, Chronology, and Modernism 9

Sports and Spectacles as Cultural Performances 14

Greece and Rome: Positive and Negative Classicism 15

Sports as Spectacle, Spectacles as Sport 16

1 Origins and Essences: Early Sport and Spectacle 22

Mesopotamian Combat Sports and Running 24

Egypt: Hunting and Sporting Pharaohs 26

Royal Hunts as a Near Eastern Tradition 32

States and Sports, Empires and Spectacles 33

2 Late Bronze Age Minoans, Hittites, and Mycenaeans 37

Minoan Performances: lÖ