More than fame and glory. Honours and benefits given by Greek poleis to victorious athletes

古代体育胜利者不仅从比赛组织者那里获得了奖品，而且还得到了家乡的丰厚回报：有各种各样的象征性荣誉和物质福利，其中最突出的是荣誉座位(前额)、在普里塔内昂免费用餐(Sitesis)、每月养老金和免税(Ateleia)。对获胜运动员的这种奖励在古代就已经得到了证明，它们在古典和希腊化时期被法律正规化，并一直存在到四元制时代。这一现象从未被全面研究过，该项目旨在填补这一空白，它涵盖了对运动胜利者的整个公民奖励时期(约公元前500年-约公元300年)。这个话题的重要性是显而易见的：它位于城邦和体育的交汇处，这两个古希腊文化的关键元素在几个世纪里经历了深刻的变化，但仍然很重要。有了体育奖励，关于如何奖励表现最好的公民的公共话语--这是希腊城邦研究中的一个重要话题--可以在长期的历史背景下观察到，变化可以在历史背景下进行分析。因为决定运动员奖励的不只是城邦，外部参与者也有他们的利益：比赛的组织者，比赛的排名取决于胜利者的家乡给予的奖励；希腊化的国王对体育运动感兴趣，将其作为合法化的来源；罗马帝国的行政当局用法律规范奖励；运动员协会为其成员的特权而战。因此，该项目不仅是对体育史的贡献，也是对希腊城邦各种联系的研究的贡献。第一步是收集证据；除了文学和碑文来源外，还特别注意纸莎草纸。在第二步中，将把来源中证明的荣誉和福利纳入一项计划，以便使单一城邦或地区的总体发展和特殊结构可见。在此基础上，将对这一现象进行全面和详细的分析。核心问题是：哪些波兰人，在哪些历史条件下，愿意为运动员提供哪些荣誉和好处，以及构建经济和象征性资源转移的话语是什么？众多变量是该项目复杂性的原因，但也是该项目具有学术潜力的原因。

Ancient athletic victors did not only receive a prize from the organizers of the contest, but were also richly rewarded by their hometowns: There was a large variety of symbolic honours and material benefits, of which seats of honour (prohedria), free meals in the prytaneion (sitesis), monthly pensions and exemption from taxes (ateleia) are the most prominent. Such rewards for victorious athletes are attested already in the Archaic period, they were legally formalized in the Classical and Hellenistic periods and existed till the age of the tetrarchy.This phenomenon has never been studied in its entirety, and the project is intended to fill this gap, it covers the whole period of civic rewards for athletic victors (ca. 500 BC – ca. 300 AD). The importance of the topic is obvious: It is situated at the intersection of the polis and athletics, two crucial elements of ancient Greek culture that underwent deep transformations during the centuries but nevertheless remained important. With the athletic rewards, the public discourse of how top-performing citizens should be awarded – an important topic in studies on the Greek polis – is observable in the longue durée, and changes can be analyzed in the historical context. For it was not the polis alone that decided about the rewards for athletes, external players also had their interests: the organizers of the contest, for the ranking of the contests depended of the rewards the victors were given by their hometowns; the Hellenistic kings who were interested in athletics as a source of legitimation; the administration of the Roman Empire that regulated the rewards with laws; the athletes’ association that fought for the privileges of its members. The project is thus intended not only as a contribution to the history of sport, but as a contribution to the research on the Greek polis in its various connections. The first step is collecting the evidence; besides literary and epigraphic sources special attention is given to the papyri. In a second step the honours and benefits attested in the sources will be integrated into a scheme in order to make visible general developments and peculiar structures in single poleis or regions. On this basis an analysis of the phenomenon will follow, both in its entirety and in its many details. The central question is the following: Which poleis, and in which historical circumstances, were willing to render which honours and benefits to the athletes, and what were the discourses that structured the transfer of economic and symbolic ressources? The multitude of the variables is the reason for the complexity, but also for the scholarly potential of the project.