Classics at the University of Maryland

Latin Day was suspended in 2007 because Tawes Auditorium was closed permanently, thus depriving us of our venue.  The cost of any future Latin Day would require an enormous commitment of financial resources from our departmental budget.   Regretfully, we do not anticipate a resumption of this event anytime soon. 

The Classics Department is planning a pedagogical workshop for Latin teachers in late spring 2009.  Further details will be posted on the website.

For information on the last Latin Day, held in November 2006, see below. 

Photo from Latin Day at the University of Maryland

GREEK ATHLETICS AND THE ROMANS

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Plans for Latin Day 2006 are well underway and we invite you and your students to join us on Tuesday, November 14th.
           
This year's program is entitled  GREEK  ATHLETICS  AND  THE  ROMANS. We are all familiar with gladiators and Roman chariot racing (Ben Hur!). Perhaps less well-known is the reception of Greek sports by the Romans. The Romans admired Greek culture, as we observe in their literature and art. Athletics too made inroads into Roman civilization despite the hostility of Roman authors, who have created the misapprehension that reek athletics remained alien to the Roman mentality. Yet contests like the Olympic Games, traditionally founded in 776 BC, flourished under the Roman emperors. The Romans even founded Greek-style games in the West, including Rome itself, and the large Roman baths were patterned after Greek gymnasia.
            For our Latin Day, we will revisit outstanding athletes--mythical, legendary, and historical--from ancient Greece and Rome. As one focal point we will employ this year 86 AD, when the Emperor Domitian held the first Capitoline Games (Capitolia or Agon Capitolinous), which were to become in prestige the equal of the great panhellenic contests of Greece (the Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian Games). In the spirit of competition, we will try to determine which of these athletes is most deserving to be called our Roman Idol.
            You can further help us celebrate the Capitoline Games by participating in three ways.
            Mascot Contest.  We are all familiar with athletic mascots like the San Diego Chicken. Since the 1972 Munich Games, the modern Olympics have also featured a mascot. We invite you to find an appropriate mascot for the first Capitoline Games in Rome (don't all cry "Wolf").
            Poster Contest.  Each of the Modern Olympics has had an official poster. We encourage you to employ your creativity and design a poster for the first Capitoline Games. The selected posters will be projected digitally on the screen at Latin Day as part of the program, and students from those schools will explain the appropriateness of the poster.
            Videos.  We will need five student-produced videos, no more than five (5) minutes in length, featuring a famous athlete from classical antiquity.

           
FOR GUIDELINES AND DEADLINES REGARDING THESE THREE MODES OF PARTICIPATION, PLEASE CONSULT THE ACCOMPANYING SHEET.
           
As in the past, the program will begin at 10:30 a.m. in the Tawes Theater on the College Park campus and will end between 11:45 and 12:00 noon.
            The cost of Latin Day 2006 will be $25 per student. Because we were not able to cover all our costs last year, we have to increase the fee. The price will include a T- Shirt for each registrant; we will also provide a free T-Shirt for each Latin teacher and for the principal/head of each school in attendance. This year, in keeping with our athletic theme and the 150th birthday of the University of Maryland, we will have a Timete Testudinem shirt featuring a classical turtle.
            As a cost-cutting measure, we have also decided not to make large printed posters, submitting instead the attached announcement with the picture of a Greek athlete.
            The deadline for registration is Tuesday, October 25th. To help us in our planning and to assist you in registering, we are encouraging you to submit your registration from earlier by allowing you to submit it (by fax to 301-314-9084 or by mail), initially without payment. A check to cover all fees should be sent by October 25th. Since space is limited, we urge you to register as soon as possible.
            I apologize for the lateness of this letter and for the fact that our website (http://www.classics.umd.edu/Latinday/index.html) has not been updated as quickly as we would have liked. Please understand that we have a new administrative staff person who stepped into the position only May 1st. We appreciate you patience and will endeavor to post Latin Day material and announcements on the website in the near future.
            If you have additional questions or suggestions, please feel free to call me at the university (301-405-2023) or to e-mail me at hughmlee45@hotmail.com. I hope that you and your student will join us on November 14 to crown our new Roman Idol. 

Hugh M. Lee
Chair and Professor of Classics
Latin Day Coordinator 2006

Hercules (Herkales) and the Nemean Lion

Hercules performed his Labors as well as many other great deeds. Since these were feats of physical strength, they resemble athletic accomplishments.

 The episode of the Nemean Lion is famous because after defeating the lion, he takes its skin and makes it into his costume. However, the episode also offers an opportunity for (comic?) creativity. Wrestling was perhaps the most popular sport among the Greeks, and so it is no accident that many Greek heroes are great wrestlers. Hercules is no exception. On Greek vases he is often shown using wrestling holds or grips on the lion. Can the match thus be played like a championship heavyweight fight, with the training, pre-fight hype, the insults, the stare-down at the weigh-in, and then the fight itself? Can you perhaps borrow some ideas from the movie "Rocky"?

  Here are some other athletic connections. He defeats the Bull of Marathon, and perhaps you cold construe this like a rodeo feat (and bulldogging contests seem to have been practices in ancient Macedonia). He is a kind of great hunter, defeating not only the lion and the bull but also capturing a deer (the Cerynian Hind) and overcoming monsters like Cerberus and the Hydra. According to the 5th CBC poet Pindar, Olympian Ode 3, Hercules, while passing through Olympia, founded the Olympic Games. There are undoubtedly other athletic connections you can find in the abundant Hercules myths.

In summary, your video should make him a worthy candidate to be our Roman athletic idol.

Theagenes of Thasos

1100   Pausanias 6.11.2-9    ca.  A.D. 170

The next statue at Olympia is that of Theagenes the son of Timosthenes of Thasos.  The Thasians, however, say that Theagenes was not the son of Timosthenes, who was a priest of the Thasian Herakles, but of a phantom of Herakles, which disguised as Timosthenes, had intercourse with Theagenes' mother.  They say that when Theagenes was nine years old, as he was going home from school, the bronze statue of some god which stood in the agora caught his fancy, so he picked up the statue, put it on his shoulders, and carried it home.  The citizens were outraged by what he had done, but one of their respected elders convinced them not to kill the boy, but to order him to go home immediately and bring the statue back to the agora,  He did this and quickly became famous for his strength as his feat was shouted through the length and breadth of Greece.  I have already related the most famous of Theagenes' achievements at Olympia [no.109a.]  It was then for the first time in the records that the pankration was won akoniti; the victor was Dromeus of Mantineia.  At the next festival [476 B.C.], Theagenes won the pankration.  He also won three times at Delphi in pyx.  His nine victories at Nemea and ten at Ishmia were divided between the pyx and the pankration.  At phthia in Thessaly he ceased training for the pyx and the pankration, but concentrated upon winning fame among the Greeks for his running, and he defeated those who entered in the dolichos.  He won a total of 1,400 victories.  After he died, one of his enemies came every night to the statue of Theagenes in Thasos and flogged the bronze image as though he were whipping Theagenes himself.  The statue stopped this outrage by falling upon the man, but his sons prosecuted the statue for murder.  The Thasians threw the statue into the sea, following the precepts of Drako, who, when he wrote the homicide laws for the Athenians, imposed banishment even upon inanimate objects which fell and killed a man.  As time went by, however, famine beset the Thasians and they sent envoys to Delphi.  Apollo instructed them to recall their exiles.  They did so, but there was still no end to the famine.  They sent to the Pythia for a second time and said that, although they had followed the instructions, the wrath of the gods still was upon them.  The Pythia then responded to them:
           
You do not remember your great Theagenes.

The Thasians were then in a quandary, for they could not think how to retrieve the statue of Theagenes.  But fishermen, who had set out for fish, happened to catch the statue in their nets and brought it back to land.  The Thasians set the statue back up in its original position, and are now accustomed to sacrifice to Theagenes as to a god.  I know of many places, both among the Greeks and among the barbarians, where statues of Theagenes have been set up.  He is worshipped by the Natives as a healing power.

Philippides of Athens 

16  Herodotus 6.105-106    ca.  430 B.C.

Herodotus, who frequently relied upon the accounts of eyewitnesses, describes here a part of the preparations of the Athenians to meet the Persians on the plain of Marathon in 490 B.C. In particular, we are concerned with the courier sent to Sparta to appeal for help. It should be noted that we do not know his name for certain: he is called Philippides in some manuscripts, Philippides in others. It should also be noted that Herodotus appears not to have known of Philippides running back to Athens to announce the victory at Marathon.

Before leaving for Manhattan and while they were still in Athens, the generals sent a message to Sparta, one Philippides, an Athenian who was also a hemerodromos who was used to doing thr this sort of thing. According to him, as he reported to the Athenians later, Pan appeared to him on Mt. Parthenion above Tegra. Pan called out his name and ordered Philippides ask the Athenians why they paid no honors to hi, even though he was well-intentioned toward them and has been helpful to them many times in the past and would be so again in the future. The Athenians believed that this story was true and, when their affairs were settled once more, they established a shrine of Pan at the foot of the Akropolis, and they have appeased him from the time of his message with annual sacrifices and a torch-race. This Philippides, who had been sent by the generals when he said that Pan appeared to him, arrived in Sparta on the day after he left Athens.

18  Lucian, A slip of the tongue in greeting 3  ca. A.D. 170 

Lucian is discussing the uses and meanings of the word chairein, literally "to rejoice" (but closer to our "be happy"), which was used, and still is today in Greece, in the singular chaire and the plural or formal chairete, as a form of greetings. Lucian here also recognizes in use for farewells and final greetings, and we here have the earliest reference, perhaps 660 years after the event, to a run by Philippides to Athens to announce the victory at Marathon.

It is said that the hemerodromos Philippides first used the word in this context when, announcing the victory after Marathon, he said to the magistrates back in Athens "Be happy! We have won!" and having said that he died, so that his announcement and that "Be happy!" died together.

98c  Plutarch, Agesilaos 20.1   ca. A.D. 100

When Agesilaos noted that some of the citizens of Sparta thought that they were important because they were breeding horses, he pressured his sister Kyniska to enter a chariot in the Olympic games [in 396 B.C.?]; he wanted to show the Greeks that an equestrian victory was the result of wealth and expenditure, not in any way the result of arête. 

Kyniska of Sparta

98a  Pausanias 3.8.1   ca. A.D. 170

The Spartan King Archidamos had a daughter whose name was Kyniska. She was extremely ambitious to enter the competition at Olympia, and was the first woman to breed horses and the first woman to win an Olympic victory. Other women, especially Lakedaimonian women, won Olympic victories after Kyniska, but none is so famous as she.

98b  IvO 160     396 B.C.?

A fragmentary circular statue base of black marble found at Olympia has the following inscriptions:

(on top): Kings of Sparta were my fathers and brothers. Kyniska, victorious at the chariot race with her swift-footed horses, erected this status. I assert that I am the only woman in all Greece who won this crown.

(on front): Apellas son of Kallikles, made it.

98c  Plutarch, Agesilaos 20.1    ca.  A.D. 100

When Agesilaos noted that some of the citizens of Sparta thought that they were important because they were breeding horses, he pressured his sister Kyniska to enter a chariot in the Olympic games [in 396 B.C.?]; he wanted to show the Greeks that an equestrian victory was the result of wealth and expenditure, not in any way the result of arête. 

Milo of Croton

107a   Pausanias 6.14.5-8   ca.  A.D. 170

Dameas of Kroton made the statute of Mile, son of Diotimos, also of Kroton. Milo won six victories in the pale at Olympia, including one in the boys' category [536 B.C.]. at Delphi he won six times in the men's category and once in the boys'  he came to Olympia to wrestle for the seventh time [in 512 B.C.], but he cold not best his felloe citizen. Timastheos, who was younger than he and who refused to come to close quarters with him. It is also said that Milo carried his own statue into the Altis, and there are stories about him concerning the pomegranate and the diskos. There were other things which he did to show off. He would tie a cord around his forehead as if it were a ribbon or a crown. He would then hold his breath until the veins in his head were filled with blood and beak the cord by the strength of those veins. Another story is that he would let his right arm hand down along his side to the elbow, but turn his forearm out at right angles with the thumb up and the fingers in a row stretched out straight so that the little finger was the lowest, and no one could force the little finger away from the other fingers. They say that he was killed by wild beasts. In the land of Kroton he happened upon a dried-up tree trunk into which wedges had been placed to split it. Milo, in his vanity, struck his hands into the trunk, the wedges slipped, and Milo was caught in the trunk until wolves discovered him.    

107B  Athenaeus, The Gastronomers 10.412F   ca.  A.D. 228

Milo of Kroton used to eat twenty pounds of meat and twenty pounds of bread and wash it down with eight quarts of wine. At Olympia he hosted a four-year-old bull on his shoulders and carried it around the stadium, and then butchered it and ate it all alone in one day.

For additional information, please use the links below:

Please note the three forms are in PDF; download Adobe Acrobat Reader to open these files.