The spirit of contest in Ancient Greece.
Aien Aristeuein (Ever to Excel): During a battle between the Greeks and Trojans, Diomedes is impressed by the bravery of a mysterious young man and demands to know his identity. Glaucus replies: "Hippolocus begat me. I claim to be his son, and he sent me to Troy with strict instructions: Ever to excel, to do better than others, and to bring glory to your forebears, who indeed were very great ... This is my ancestry; this is the blood I am proud to inherit." (Iliad 6. 208)
Aien Aristeuein: The World of the Hawk
The Homeric heroic world, as it comes across in the Iliad and the Odyssey, is a predominantly aristocratic, warrior-culture whose mentality is largely governed by power in its naked, immediate form. 3 Aretē, a key word in understanding the Homeric hero's behavior, points to the ethical ideals of the aristoi (noblemen, aristocrats) -- significantly, the two words seem to have a common etymological root -- and it emphasizes the agonistic nature of their values. Although it is usually translated as "virtue" or "excellence," aretē in Homer can more accurately be rendered as "prowess in battle" and is geared toward those qualities that are most needed in a warlike society, such as physical strength, valor, endurance, and so on. Homeric aretē also has a second meaning, describing intellectual rather than physical abilities, but again in a competitive context: for example, Odysseus is praised as being aristos in counsel, that is, because of his ability to bring about, through skillful manipulation or cunning (mētis), his own party's success in war or peace. In the Homeric world, therefore, power presents itself as agon or competitive play. This means not only that contest has an important function in Homeric society, but also that the hero sees his relationship to other humans and to the divinities, as well as to existence at large, in terms of a universal game of power. Hippolochus' valedictory words to his son Glaukos, "Aien aristeuein kai hupeirochon emmenai allon" ("always be best and excel others," Il. 6.208), repeated by Nestor, who this time puts them in the mouth of Peleus as the latter sends his son Achilles off to the Trojan War (Il. 11.784), aptly express the Hellenic aristocratic ideal of life, based on play as contest. 4
Before examining the various forms of agonistic play in the Homeric epic, it would be useful to recall briefly the semantic history of words such as agōn and aethlos. In Homer, agōn designates "an assembly with games or contests," "the place where the games are held," and the "competitors or the potential competitors" themselves (any member of the assembly may join in the competition). 5 Some dictionaries list "place of assembly" as the original meaning of agōn and "assembly to witness games" as a secondary meaning. 6 A closer look at the Iliad and the Odyssey, however, shows that the agōn semantic group is almost always used in connection with games or contests. Out of the twenty-three lines where agōn appears in the Iliad, sixteen relate to the funeral games held in Patroclus' honor (book 23), whereas in the Odyssey all six lines where the word appears are in some way associated with games. 7 G. G. P. Autenrieth lists the Homeric meanings of agōn in the correct order: (1) assembly, especially to witness games; contest, games; (2) assemblage or place of assemblage of the ships; (3) place of combat, arena, including the space occupied by the spectators. 8 At the outset, therefore, the word agēn clearly holds a central position in the Hellenic vocabulary of play. In postHomeric times, agōn becomes increasingly abstract, designating only the game or the contest itself. It gradually transcends the sphere of athletic games, extending to such abstract contexts as law, politics, warfare, eros, rhetoric, history, philosophy, and literary criticism; even in these contexts, however, its connection with the notion of play remains firm.
In turn, Homeric aethlos (Att. athlos) specifically signifies "prize-contest," but it can also mean "combat in war" as well as "toil" and "hardship," such as Euristheus imposes on Heracles (Il. 8.363). Like agōn, athlos turns increasingly abstract and in the classical period the two terms become interchangeable: both of them can denote "athletic contest," such as the great Panhellenic festivals. 9 At the same time agōn undergoes an ethical polarization, acquiring negative meanings; like athlos, it can signify "hardship" or "toil," for example, in agōnia. This polarization appears approximately at the moment when, in certain Sophists and in Plato, paidia comes to denote not only "children's play" but also "play" in general. It is the moment when philosophy separates play from agōn, that is, from violent contest and power -- a separation that took place especially in the context of the Platonic theory of education (paideia) and that was adopted and perpetuated by subsequent classical scholarship. It can be concluded, then, that the semantic development of agōn and aethlos equally reflects the shift in emphasis from an archaic to a median mentality in Hellenic thought, where the aristocratic notion of contest undergoes a process of ethical polarization, acquiring an increasingly ambivalent emotional value.
In the Homeric epic, play as agōn governs the transactions among heroes, among gods, between men and gods, and between mortals and Moira. Heroes relate to other heroes in terms of a competitive game, the goal of which is to establish a relative hierarchy (primus inter pares) within the aristocratic group. This hierarchy, however, remains highly unstable. The hero ceaselessly worries about his order of rank in relation to his peers and about "what people will say," because success is labile by nature. He constantly has to prove his aretē in battle and in the assembly, constantly has to remain in the public eye. For instance, after his quarrel with Agamemnon, Achilles cannot afford to stay away from the battlefield for too long lest he should be forgotten, a fate worse than death for the Homeric hero. He has no moral scruples in enlisting the help of his mother, Thetis (even if this means bringing almost total disaster upon the Greek camp), in order to make sure that his comrades need his services. Moral scruples (in the modern sense, arising from the notion of ethical responsibility toward fellow humans at large) are irrelevant in a heroic society, where intentions count less than performance, and where performance is judged largely in terms of success and failure. 10 Achilles is less concerned with the common good than with his own timē (fame, reputation, but also sphere of influence), which depends only indirectly upon this common good. (Actually, the welfare of the Greek camp can only be, and should have been, Agamemnon's concern, being part of his timē as the commander-in-chief of the army.)
From, "God of Many Names: Play, Poetry, and Power in Hellenic Thought from Homer to Aristotle" Book by Mihai I. Spariosu; Duke University Press, 1991
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"The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."
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