A Perspective of the History of Women’s Sport in Ancient Greece
Betty Spears
Journal of Sport History: Vol. 11, No. 2 (1984)
Abstract
Two or three decades comprise a brief moment in history. However, within such a moment, from the 1950’s to the 1980’s, women’s sport expanded at an astonishing rate. In 1964 women participated in six sports in the summer Olympic Games and in 1984 will enter events in sixteen sports. An important new event is a women’s marathon. In the United States neither intercollegiate championships nor athletic scholarships for women existed in 1966. In 1981 four national organizations offered intercollegiate tournaments or championships for women and over 800 colleges and universities provided women with athletic scholarships. Women professional golfers and tennis stars command a following unheard of twenty years ago. Women’s sport today plays a viable and visible role in Olympic, collegiate, professional, and recreational sport. A carefully thought out perspective on the history of women’s sport is needed to explain such an expansion.
Such a perspective requires that each period in sport history be studied to examine the evidence and suggest the relationship of women’s sport to society and to men’s sport. The first step is to investigate the period to which the beginnings of organized sport in Western society are usually ascribed, the time of the ancient Olympic Games and other athletic festivals. While Harris thoughtfully analyzed women’s sport in ancient Greece, he did not intend to propose a perspective to study women’s sport in later periods. Laemmer’s more recent work treats the subject topically. Like Harris, he did not plan to offer a historical perspective on women’s sport as a basis for further study.
This investigation examines literary, archaeological, and epigraphical evidence in four historical periods in order to draw as accurate a picture as possible of women’s sport in ancient Greece. The four periods are: the Archaic Period (c.800 B.C.-c.500 B.C.); the Classical Period (c.500 B.C.-c.323 B.C.); the Hellenistic Period (c.323 B.C.-c. 146 B.C.); and the Roman Period (c. 146 B.C.-c.400 A.D.). The intent is to examine and analyze the available evidence in each period. The transmission of ancient literature often reflects chance, not design, and arguments from silence are tricky, but this chronological arrangement of evidence will give the reader an exposure to the often deafening silence about women’s sport in antiquity and the implications of that silence. Where it seems necessary, corroborating tales or facts from a later era are introduced briefly in the logical historical period, but presented in detail in the period in which the evidence can be documented.
Betty Spears
Journal of Sport History: Vol. 11, No. 2 (1984)
Abstract
Two or three decades comprise a brief moment in history. However, within such a moment, from the 1950’s to the 1980’s, women’s sport expanded at an astonishing rate. In 1964 women participated in six sports in the summer Olympic Games and in 1984 will enter events in sixteen sports. An important new event is a women’s marathon. In the United States neither intercollegiate championships nor athletic scholarships for women existed in 1966. In 1981 four national organizations offered intercollegiate tournaments or championships for women and over 800 colleges and universities provided women with athletic scholarships. Women professional golfers and tennis stars command a following unheard of twenty years ago. Women’s sport today plays a viable and visible role in Olympic, collegiate, professional, and recreational sport. A carefully thought out perspective on the history of women’s sport is needed to explain such an expansion.
Such a perspective requires that each period in sport history be studied to examine the evidence and suggest the relationship of women’s sport to society and to men’s sport. The first step is to investigate the period to which the beginnings of organized sport in Western society are usually ascribed, the time of the ancient Olympic Games and other athletic festivals. While Harris thoughtfully analyzed women’s sport in ancient Greece, he did not intend to propose a perspective to study women’s sport in later periods. Laemmer’s more recent work treats the subject topically. Like Harris, he did not plan to offer a historical perspective on women’s sport as a basis for further study.
This investigation examines literary, archaeological, and epigraphical evidence in four historical periods in order to draw as accurate a picture as possible of women’s sport in ancient Greece. The four periods are: the Archaic Period (c.800 B.C.-c.500 B.C.); the Classical Period (c.500 B.C.-c.323 B.C.); the Hellenistic Period (c.323 B.C.-c. 146 B.C.); and the Roman Period (c. 146 B.C.-c.400 A.D.). The intent is to examine and analyze the available evidence in each period. The transmission of ancient literature often reflects chance, not design, and arguments from silence are tricky, but this chronological arrangement of evidence will give the reader an exposure to the often deafening silence about women’s sport in antiquity and the implications of that silence. Where it seems necessary, corroborating tales or facts from a later era are introduced briefly in the logical historical period, but presented in detail in the period in which the evidence can be documented.
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