Summary: Competition, Violence, And Culture By Michael Poliokoff

In Michael Poliokoff’s book Combat Sports in the Ancient World: Competition, Violence, and Culture, the author argues against the commonly held belief that the classical Greek agon, or athletic competition was primarily used a means of training soldiers and preparing them for battle. In making this argument, much of his evidence comes form the Homeric epics. While Poliokoff uses these sources to make an entirely valid argument about the function of the agon, he often presents these sources without the level of context and analysis that could have significantly strengthened his argument. Furthermore, Poliokoff occasionally make claims about the nature of sport in ancient Greece without providing sufficient evidence, leaving the reader to doubt

However, as with evidence form any historical source, modern scholars must be incredibly careful to interoperate and analyze them properly to avoid distorting their meaning. Poliokoff tends to overlook these challenges, leading him to take the evidence form the Homeric texts at face value. For example, he quotes a passage form the Odyssey in which Laodamas tells Odysseus that there is no greater glory than that which comes from one’s own hands and feet via sport(Poliokoff 105). Poliokoff asserts that this passage demonstrates the importance of sport to the ancient Greeks, however he makes no attempt to explain why his readers should believe that athletic competition was of great value to the Greeks of the Classical Period based on the testimony of a character in the Odyssey. There are many reasons that the classical Greeks might have a very different view of the agon to that which Laodamas expresses. Even if the reader is familiar enough with the odyssey to know who Laodamas is and what his motivation for making this statement might be, it is a stretch to assert that people living centuries later in a fundamentally different culture held similar beliefs about sport to a character in the Odyssey. While it is certainly difficult to doubt the fact that athletic competition was incredibly important to the Ancient Greeks, but there is much better evidence to support

For example, in explaining the importance of the Homeric texts to understanding the ancient Greeks, Poliokoff writes that it is no exaggeration to say that the Homeric texts are “the Bible of the Greeks” (Poliokoff 112). This comparison is true in so far as the Homeric texts formed the basis of ancient Greeks’ education and were fundamental to their culture. However, the Bible is taken by many people to be the direct word of god and, in some cases, to be literally true, which is certainly not the case for the Homeric texts. When using the Homeric texts in order to gain an insight into the Ancient Greeks it is important to remember that the Greeks of the Classical period are separated form the Myceneans of the Bronze Age by several centuries, during which time large amounts of Mycenean culture were lost. Therefore, it is difficult to say that the Classical Greek had the same values, ideologies, or practices as those seen in the Homeric texts. Thus, while modern scholars may find Homeric texts to be extremely enlightening but they should also take significant care to ensure that all of the necessary context is included. Treating the Homeric texts as a “Bible” of the ancient Greeks obscures this