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For Instance, The Ancient Greeks, Like The Romans After Them, Saw All ...

For instance, the ancient Greeks, like the Romans after them, saw all athletic pursuits as uniquely Hellenistic physical endeavours that marked the ancient Greeks out as discernibly different and superior to their contemporaries. No other civilisation could have been skilled in the sports that enthralled the Greeks. This is a basic feature of any hegemonic, imperialistic culture that has achieved regional and political dominance over its neighbours. If one thinks of, for instance, the way in which the United States has monopolised its own sports by making, for example, baseball into a ‘world series' even though it is not played outside of the North American geopolitical sphere of hegemonic influence, then we can see how sport becomes an essential part of the national character and of the maintenance of a hegemonic civilisation. This was an important feature of both the Greek and Roman worlds.
There was therefore a sense of inherent arrogance attached to the idealisation of the hero and all of the arts that he was well versed in be it boxing, running or wrestling. In some ancient societies this emphasis upon sporting pursuits became the defining feature of that civilisation. The Spartans (who were said to have invented the sport of boxing as a direct result of their distaste for wearing traditional military helmets), for instance, separated their society along malefemale lines, taking the young boys away at the age of eight where they would be made to endure years of training in physical pursuits such as boxing and fighting. The cumulative result was two fold. On the one hand, the Spartans were arguably the most fearsome fighting culture of the ancient world with a reputation that spread from Athens to Persia in the sixth and fifth centuries BC (Kennell, 1995). On the other hand, the over-emphasis upon sport and competition resulted in an arrogant and isolated world view that was promulgated in Sparta whereby the Spartans were never willing to even enter into negotiations or compromise with competing city-states. This, ultimately, contributed to Sparta's downfall as the reliance upon heroism, valour and military pursuits came at the expense of instilling the requisite political skills needed to maintain parity in an increasingly sophisticated ancient world.
It can be seen that the ideal of the hero was somewhat fixed in the ancient world, for the most part completely unchallenged in any kind of cultural or societal sense. Indeed, the only major challenge to the idealised conception of the hero in ancient Greece and Rome came with the advent of the class system.


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