Athletes as heroes and role models: an ancient model

Sport, Ethics and Philosophy ISSN: 1751-1321 (Print) 1751-133X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsep20 Athletes as heroes and role models: an ancient model Heather Reid To cite this article: Heather Reid (2017) Athletes as heroes and role models: an ancient model, Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 11:1, 40-51, DOI: 10.1080/17511321.2016.1261931 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17511321.2016.1261931 Published online: 02 Dec 2016. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 206 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rsep20 Download by: [Morningside College] Date: 27 March 2017, At: 13:34 Sport, EthicS and philoSophy, 2017 Vol. 11, no. 1, 40–51 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17511321.2016.1261931 Athletes as heroes and role models: an ancient model Heather Reid philosophy, Morningside college, Sioux city, USa ABSTRACT KEYWORDS A common argument for the social value of sport is that athletes serve as heroes who inspire people – especially young people – to strive for excellence. This argument has been questioned by sport philosophers at a variety of levels. Not only do athletes seem unsuited to be heroes or role models in the conventional sense, it is unclear more generally what the social and educational value of athletic excellence could be. In this essay, I construct an argument for the social and educational value of sport built upon the relationship between athletes, heroes, and the song culture that celebrated them in ancient Greece. On this model, athletes are neither heroes nor role models in the conventional sense. Rather, athletes, athletics, and the poets who extolled them were part of a cultural conspiracy to celebrate and inspire virtue (aretē) by connecting a community with its heroic past. Festivals such as the Olympic Games, but also local events such as funeral games, educated and uniied communities by cultivating an aesthetic appreciation for virtue and by inspiring youth to strive for it. Ancient athletes were not heroes, rather they re-enacted heroic struggles, thereby experiencing heroic virtues, and inspiring both artists and spectators to bond with the higher ideals implied by their shared belief in divine ancestry. In this way, athletes, athletics, and the media that celebrated them played important social and educational roles. Insofar as modern sport performs a similar service, its association with heroism and with moral education may ultimately be justiied. heroes; role models; moral education; ancient Greek athletics Every summer in the month of June, I make a pilgrimage with a group of fellow cyclists to the tiny hillside town of Castellania, Italy, to visit the tomb of the cycling legend Fausto Coppi. Coppi was known as the ‘Campionissimo’ for his amazing feats on the bicycle (including ive Giro d’Italia victories, two Tours de France, and a World Championship during the war-torn decades of the 1940s and ‘50s), and is also mourned for his tragic demise at the age of 40 after contracting malaria on a trip to Africa. Cyclists come from all over the world to visit the Coppi monument, many bringing gifts to express admiration and give thanks for inspiration, which are housed in a little museum attached to a church that was built on the site. The village itself is decorated with giant photographs and murals that show the champion in action and at leisure. The erstwhile mayor of the town, Fausto’s cousin Piero, welcomes us annually with wine and cookies, and locals sometimes take us inside their houses to show old pictures and tell tales from when they knew Fausto as children. Some would say that CONTACT heather reid reid@morningside.edu © 2016 informa UK limited, trading as taylor & Francis Group SPORT, ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY 41 Fausto Coppi is an athletic hero, others may put him up as a role model. For me he is neither, but one thing is for sure: I am always inspired by my visits to this shrine, and my legs always feel lighter as I climb up the hill that leads there. A common argument for the social value of sport is that athletes serve as heroes who inspire people – especially young people – to strive for excellence. This argument has been questioned by sport philosophers at a variety of levels. On the one hand, there are questions about whether athletes deserve such a role (i.e. Hyland 1990, 26–29). Unlike the soldiers, Samaritans, and emergency response personnel more conventionally referred to as heroes, athletes do not protect innocents, serve the needy, or save lives – much less risk their lives to achieve such goals. Furthermore, the values promoted by sporting heroes have been described as fascistoid (Tännsjö 1998), morally instrumental (Tamburrini 1998), or at least undesirable from the point of view of ethical consequentialism (Holowchak 2005). The phenomenon of apparently bad educational consequences, in addition, has raised the question of whether athletes have special moral responsibilities implied by their status as role models, whether that status is chosen or not (Jones 2011; Simon 2004, 211–215). The question has also been raised whether athletes’ status as role models justiies the legislation of moral behavior through, for example, bans on doping (Petersen 2010). Philosophers have also questioned exactly what role athletic heroes are expected to be modeling. If a role model is someone who sets an example of excellence in a role we also play, or plan one day to play, then great athletes may be role models for other professional athletes – but it makes little sense for them to be role models for children or even for athletic adults, who have an ininitesimal chance of occupying similar positions.1 At best, it is unrealistic to encourage children to believe that they will grow up to be sports stars. At worst, it is irresponsible because such dreams may encourage them to neglect opportunities to pursue much more realistic and socially beneicial roles. Athletic heroes are rarely admired for their studiousness and compassion; indeed they are overwhelmingly male and the ideal of masculinity they embody does not always mesh well with the world beyond sport.2 Not only do athletes seem unsuited to be heroes or role models in the conventional sense, it is unclear more generally what the social and educational value of athletic excellence could be. In this essay, I will construct an argument for the social and educational value of sport built upon the relationship between athletes, heroes, and the song culture that celebrated them in ancient Greece. On this model, athletes are neither heroes nor role models in the conventional sense. Rather, athletes, athletics, and the poets who extolled them were part of a cultural conspiracy to celebrate and inspire virtue (aretē) by connecting a community with its heroic past. Festivals such as the Olympic Games, but also local events such as funeral games, educated and uniied communities by cultivating an aesthetic appreciation for virtue and by inspiring youth to strive for it. Ancient athletes were not heroes, rather they re-enacted heroic struggles, thereby experiencing heroic virtues, and inspiring both artists and spectators to bond with the higher ideals implied by their shared belief in divine ancestry. In this way, athletes, athletics, and the media that celebrated them played important social and educational roles. Insofar as modern sport performs a similar service, its association with heroism and with moral education may ultimately be justiied. Heroes and athletes in ancient Greece Philosophers have observed that any moral understanding of sport must take account of its cultural context and even the extent to which sports form their own communities and 42 H. REID cultures.3 The virtue-ethical values arising from competitive social cultures have been particularly useful in this regard (McNamee, Jones, and Duda 2003, 27). A closer look at the heroic song-culture of ancient Greece provides an apt illustration of how athletics may function as moral education. Heroes, in this tradition, were human beings (of either sex) from the remote past who had superhuman abilities due to a genetic connection with the gods (Nagy 2013, 0§4). Elsewhere, I have argued that since heroes’ immortal ancestry was taken as an explanation for their athletic prowess, they provided an early link between athleticism and aretē (virtue, excellence) (Reid 2011, 11–21). It is likewise no surprise that prototypical Hellenic heroes such as Heracles (Latin: Hercules) and Achilles were renowned for their athletic ability, but it is important to note that these heroes were not made famous by their athletic feats. It is also important to recognize that these and all other Hellenic heroes are mortal; they die (usually gloriously) and are buried or cremated.4 Greek heroes have to be mortal because their heroism depends on struggle (agōn). The Greek heroes’ agōn derives from the very speciic cause of their being ‘unseasonal,’ displaced from their proper time and place by fate – something even the gods can’t control. Because they are out of synch with the divine plan, they sufer and struggle. But it is precisely through this sufering and struggle that their virtues are revealed. Heracles is the paradigm example. On the day he was due to be born to the mortal woman Alcmene, Zeus decreed – at his wife, Hera’s, behest – that a descendant of his born that day should become king of all the people around him. Zeus had Heracles in mind, but Hera delayed Heracles’ birth and sped up the birth of Eurystheus, also of Zeus’ line but not yet due to be born. Therefore, it was Eurystheus who became the king (and a perpetual thorn in Heracles’ side) against the will of Zeus because Hera made sure that Heracles’ birth was not ‘on time.’ This story is told in Iliad XIX 76-138 and it can’t help but remind us of the hard-luck backgrounds of so many modern sports heroes who grow up in adverse circumstances and overcome them through athleticism. The same passage also describes Zeus’ sorrow at seeing Heracles struggle with degrading labors because of this trick of Hera’s. It is sometimes viewed as ironic that Heracles’ name means ‘glory of Hera’ since she is the one who delayed his birth and caused most of his troubles. On the other hand, without her intervention, he would not have had the struggles, or more speciically the athla (labors) through which Heracles’ heroic aretē was revealed.5 In efect, Hera set up the challenging agōnes (struggles or contests) that ultimately made Heracles into a hero,6 and after his apotheosis she performs a ritual which mimics giving birth to him (Diodorus 4.39.2). Heracles, like all heroes, is made great though antagonism–often with a god. It is no coincidence that the Greek word for athletic contests is the same as the word for the heroes’ struggles (agōnes), nor is it by accident that the term athla is connected to athlete, the one who performs a feat or competes for a prize. It is also no coincidence that the inspirational power of modern sports heroes depends as much on their personal stories of sufering as it does on their pure athletic achievements. Heracles’ immortalization, as I said, was exceptional. Achilles, on the other hand, consciously chooses to die gloriously and be remembered rather than to grow old back at home in Phthia. Mother tells me, the immortal goddess Thetis with her glistening feet, that two fates bear me on to the day of death. SPORT, ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY 43 If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy, my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies. If I voyage back to the fatherland I love, my pride, my glory dies . . . true, but the life that’s left me will be long, the stroke of death will not come on me quickly. (Iliad Book 9) At the highest moment of his or her glory, the hero becomes indistinguishable from a god – but that moment passes, just like the moment of victory passes for athletes – and the hero eventually dies. Indeed, ancient cults were often centered on the hero’s sēma (tomb),7 where worshippers would sacriice animals, letting their blood run into the earth to activate the hero’s spirit, which ‘evokes the idea of a vitality that animates the universe’ (Nagy 2013, 0§43). To get in touch with the hero’s sprit was to get in touch with not only with one’s glorious ancestry and the virtues it represented, it was to tap into the energy of life itself. Could it be that modern sport’s social magnetism has something to do with its heroic context? It should be remembered that ancient Greek heroes, though athletic, were not primarily athletes, and ancient Greek athletes were not heroes. Still, there was a close connection between athletes and heroes that may shed light on the enduring link between athletics and heroism today. First, what ancient athletes did was to re-enact (mimēsthai) the struggles (agōnes) of ancient heroes as part of a religious ritual that allowed them to experience and display heroic virtues, or aretai. Second, these athletic contests brought the community together to celebrate their divine and heroic ancestry, and to bond emotionally with the athletes’ struggles in a way that produced the kind of catharsis which Aristotle and Plato identiied with learning. Third, the epinician poetry and art that celebrated the athletic victor re-connected him and his community with the heroic past, the epic poetry that recounted that past glory, and – more generally – with the divine. So athletes, athletics, and poetry combined to create a cultural esthetic that celebrated aretē and inspired youth to strive for it. It is a model that immortalizes neither heroes nor athletes, but rather, virtue itself. Let us look at the model in more detail. The educational function of ancient athletics The educational importance of athletics on the ancient Greek model derives from is function as mimēsis – imitation, or better, re-enactment – of heroic virtues. In the speciic context of athletic festivals such as the Olympic Games, we might say that athletes were performing religious rituals that re-enacted sacred mythological struggles (agōnes).8 Indeed, the military connotation of events such as the javelin throw and hoplitodromos links them not so much with contemporary military practice but rather with the earlier practices of the Trojan War as described in Homer’s epics. To say ancient athletes are reenacting myth, however, is not to say that they are performing imagined fairy-tales or allegories; in Homeric terms a myth is considered genuine and true (Nagy 2013, 1§8). Nor is it to say that athletes are reenacting the athletic games found in Iliad and Odyssey–remember that athletic feats within myth are rarely considered heroic.9 What ancient athletes do in the ritual of competition is re-enact the virtues (aretai) associated with mythological heroes as expressed through their labors (athla).10 This athletic mimēsis functions as experiential learning that leads to catharsis, a 44 H. REID clariication of our understanding of what such virtues are and what it means to act from them. Mimēsis is an educational tool recognized by both Plato and Aristotle. The latter clearly links it with the pleasure derived from learning in Poetics (1448b). Both philosophers, furthermore, understand education generally to be an intellectual movement from the particular toward the universal (Golden 1969, 147). Aristotle suggests that artistic representations deepen our understanding of universal aspects of human life. He says, ‘The reason why we enjoy seeing likenesses is that, as we look, we learn and infer what each is’ (Poetics 1448b). Plato worries that some artistic representations, such as a painting of a tree, are twice removed from the original form or ideal we seek to understand.11 Athletic mimēsis of heroic virtues would be endorsed by Plato, however, because such performances demand actual courage and self-control, thereby bringing us closer to the ideal form by giving us experiential understanding of it.12 Athletics, on this view, functions like a Socratic dialog by constructing an experience that results in catharsis, understood in this educational context as an intellectual clariication, especially of universals.13 Just as the dialog Euthyphro clariies our understanding of piety, the athletic mimēsis of Achilles may clarify our understanding of courage. Likewise, analogous to the way Plato’s dialogs bring Socratic values back to life, the ritual of athletics brings heroic virtues back to life so they can be experienced esthetically both by the athletes performing and by the spectators witnessing the performance. This idea of athletics as a ritual ordeal (athlos or agōn)14 is quite consistent with modern conceptions of sport as an artiicial challenge designed to evoke virtues or – in the resounding words of Bernard Suits (2005, 55), ‘a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.’ By creating challenges that demand such virtues as courage, self-control, respect, justice, and wisdom, we enable athletes and spectators alike to get a taste of what their ancestral heroes went through – not only the sufering, but also the sense of strength, achievement, and even joy that comes from great achievements. Although athletic activities lack the direct social beneit of traditional heroic labors, the virtues athletes cultivate and display in their performances can evoke those virtues and inspire others to strive for them. On this model, the athlete is not so much a role model as the (temporary) embodiment of a cultural ideal. Ritual, in fact, is designed to transform the people who perform it into something better – if only for a moment. Through the ritual of competition the athlete may morph temporarily into an ancient hero or even – like the hero himself does at the climax of achievement – into a god. At the end of the ritual, athletes morph back into their unheroic mortal selves – but both they and those who witnessed their feats are made a bit better by the esthetic experience of heroic virtue and the illuminating catharsis that accompanies it. It is worth noting, as well, that athletes’ displays of heroic virtue are ephemeral – as symbolized by the quickly wilting crown of vegetation that serves as their prize. It is the virtue itself that is undying and eternally praised, like the gods. Indeed the mimetic chain between athlete, hero and god may be compared to the magnetic chain that Plato describes in Ion as briely connecting audience, poet and muse (533de). The Greeks understood that heroes may resemble gods at the climax of their achievements, but they are by deinition mortal and imperfect and very often capable of downright immoral actions. Achilles not only drags Hector’s corpse on the ground, he expresses the most depraved desire to eat his enemy’s lesh. Such actions are not condoned by the narrative (Nagy 2013, 1§52), rather they acknowledge the fallibility of even heroic human beings and lead us to focus on their achievements, SPORT, ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY 45 or – as I have argued here – on the virtues evoked by those achievements in our celebration of them. The distinction between persons, performances, and virtues may shed light on our modern worries about bad behavior among athletic role models. In ancient Greek culture, it was among the most grave of sins to commit hubris, that is, to confuse an imperfect mortal with a perfect god. If we take great athletic performances to be evidence of perfectly virtuous personhood, allowing them to generate the expectation of consistent virtuous behavior on-ield and of, we commit a kind of hubris (and set ourselves up for almost guaranteed disappointment). Instead, what we should revere is the virtue itself, recognizing the performance as an ephemeral instantiation of it – a kind of epiphany, the brief appearance of something divine on earth. We may celebrate, be inspired by, and even ritually reenact athletic heroes’ moments of greatness, but we must acknowledge at the same time that athletes are imperfect mortals also capable of grave evils. The educational value of athletic mimēsis comes from the emulation of virtues, not persons. The social role of athletics Modern sport philosophy often overlooks the educational value of sport for spectators and communities as opposed to individuals.15 On the ancient Greek model, the community is expected to be educated and made better as a whole by the athletic ritual. Part and parcel of the Greek idea of contest (agōn) derives etymologically from the formation syn-agein, which means to bring together or assemble. Ancient athletic festivals, whether local or Panhellenic, had the explicit purpose of bringing communities together. In fact, the ancient hero worship that eventually gave rise to Olympic-style festivals was characteristically local – a derivative of ancestor worship centered on a speciic location, most often the hero’s tomb.16 The idea was that the hero, after death, becomes olbios (blessed), and worshippers may too become blessed by making spiritual contact with that hero – contact that was often achieved by physically touching the earth that contained the hero’s corpse, or some other relic or sign of the hero (Nagy 2013, 11§2). In Odyssey (11.136-137), it is said that all the people who live in proximity to Odysseus’ buried corpse will be blessed. Homer’s description of the vicious battles for possession of a dead hero’s body can be explained by beliefs about the corpse’s spiritual power to evoke such goods as fertility and prosperity (Nagy 1990, 32). That athletic contests took place in sacred spaces and attempted to revive the spirits of ancestral heroes no doubt derives from these characteristics of hero worship. Even today, certain athletic ields and stadiums hold a kind of sacred aura – though it is usually based on the feats of earlier athletes rather than the presence of hero’s tomb. Such auras have a community-bonding efect, especially when the community is small and well-deined, as with a college campus, and when the history in question is especially long and venerable, as with historic stadiums like Wrigley Field in Chicago. A huge crowd gathered there to celebrate the Cubs’ recent World Series victory, even though the game itself took place in Cleveland. Just going to such stadiums is a way of airming one’s role in the community, and an awareness of the community’s history only heightens the experience. In some cases, sports teams are named to evoke a community’s ‘heroic’ past, for example, the San Francisco 49ers (named after the prospectors who came to the area during the Gold Rush of 1849), or Torino’s Juventus, named after an Imperial Roman youth organization. In other cases, the connection is more dynamic, as when New Zealand athletes reenact ancient Maori war 46 H. REID dances to intimidate opponents. Most often the spiritual presence evoked in modern sports is of past athletes, as when a statue of Jesse Owens is displayed near a running track, the names of deceased cyclists like Marco Pantani are painted on the mountain racecourses, or when teams wear throwback uniforms. Whatever the particular link with past ‘heroes,’ the efect is one of bonding over the virtues a community wishes to be identiied with. Likewise, what the audience of an athletic contest experiences when they witness an athlete’s peak performance is an epiphany, a momentary reappearance of the hero (or sometimes a god) in the natural world and the temporary collapsing of time and distance between an idealized heroic age and their contemporary age.17 I would go so far as to speculate that when an athlete, perhaps a runner in the Olympic Games, experienced a moment of greatness in the stadium, he, for a moment became Achilles in the eyes of his audience (Reid 2014, 8). Since history was generally viewed as a process of decline – a mentality symbolized by Hesiod’s sequencing of gold, silver, bronze, heroic and iron ages, and reprised in Socrates’ discussion of citizens’ souls in Republic18 – such a temporal collapse would have been just the kind of religious ecstasy the worshippers (and the athlete himself ) were seeking. As with the case of mimēsis, I would argue that this kind of heroic epiphany derives its value from the virtues the athlete brings back to life to be experienced esthetically in a way that leads to catharsis – again understood as spiritual and intellectual clariication characterized by the pleasure of learning. Catharsis, understood more traditionally as cleansing or puriication, was another social outcome of athletic rituals in ancient Greece. When athletes were seen to display Achilles’ ‘killer instinct,’ re-enacting his state of mind when dragging of Hector’s corpse, they might be interpreted as purifying that mythological corruption.19 Indeed it has been argued that athletic victors function as sacriicial victims, the purpose of which is to purify the community at large (Sansone 1988). It may be the case that the dangerous excesses of modern athletic heroes – their violence, rage, all-consuming passion – also help communities to acknowledge and mitigate the darker side of their history and character. I have argued that gladiatorial contests, which put fearsome foreigners under the command of the emperor, helped ancient Rome deal with its increasing ethnic diversity (Reid 2006). I also applied this argument to college football in America today, observing that the virtues collectively valued by university communities are displayed by student-athletes who often come from radically diferent socioeconomic backgrounds than the spectators cheering them on (Reid 2008). Athletic ritual, however, helps communities to reairm valued virtues even as they struggle with their historical and actual failure to live up to those virtues. Athletics helps communities to reach beyond social barriers and choose heroes based on virtue. The cultural role of media Athletes’ function as role models always depends ultimately on media that interpret and communicate their character and achievements, helping us to absorb them into a larger cultural paradigm. The ancient Greek connection between athletes and heroes cannot be imagined without poetry – both the epic poetry that describes the feats of the heroes and the epinician poetry that assimilates the victorious athlete into that heroic paradigm. The epic poets Homer and Hesiod are identiied by Herodotus (2.53.1-3) as the foundation of civilization. But without the actions of the heroes, the epic poets would have had nothing to sing about, and without the songs of the poets, athletes would have nothing to re-enact. SPORT, ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY 47 Athletic and poetic performance should be seen as complementary – a kind of relay in which one inspires the other. There is a passage in Iliad where Achilles sings ‘of the glories of men’ accompanying himself on the lyre, while Patroclus waits to do his turn. Not only does the scene suggest a relay performance between Achilles and Patroclus, it depicts Achilles singing about glory inside the poem that sings about his glory. This illustrates how the hero’s actions are gloriied and immortalized not simply in their performance, but by becoming part of a larger cultural song that will continue to be sung long after they have died. Likewise, what an athlete achieves through the limited and contrived struggles of sport derives its social value from being absorbed into a larger cultural narrative about the meaningful struggles of life. Again, it is not the hero himself who becomes immortal through song, rather it is heroic virtue that is perpetuated poetically. Kleos is glory, or a song that celebrates glory, but a more general deinition is rumor, report, news (Liddell and Scott, 1940). In the context of Greek poetry, kleos is what poets hear from the muses who have seen and can remember everything (Nagy 2013, 2§15). But they don’t sing about everything and it is only because Achilles chooses to die an untimely and glorious death that the muses sing a lament for him, which the poet hears and transcribes so that the story may live to be retold. It is through the performance of the song, like the performance of the athlete, that the hero’s virtues are brought back to life and thereby perpetuated. In Iliad (23.326-331), we see that Nestor’s storytelling about a chariot race links the contest taking place at Troy with the heroic past, and links Patroclus, in whose honor the games are held, with the heroes of the past (again, within the larger poem that will secure for him his kleos). Although we think of ancient games as being dedicated to gods, most, including the Olympic Games, were originally dedicated to heroes as a way of keeping the virtues alive.20 In modern sports, we not only keep the feats of past sports heroes alive by replaying videos of their achievements, we also embrace such traditions as retiring their numbers and naming events or awards after them. The awards in particular, fulill the function of celebrating the virtues associated with an athletic hero and perpetuating them by regularly recognizing contemporary athletes who display the same virtues. Some examples are the Cy Young award in baseball, the Butkus award in American football, the Marco Pantani Memorial in Cycling, and the Terry Fox award in Olympic sports, which was created speciically to award the virtues of ‘courage, humanitarianism, service and compassion’ (Terry Fox Humanitarian Award Program 2015). In some cases, including that of Fox and Pantani, the award is partly inspired by the hero’s untimely death. In others, it demands virtuous conduct beyond sports performance – as with the frequent criterion of community service, or the Butkus foundation’s opposition to steroid use (The Butkus Foundationc 2016). In all cases, such awards attempt to locate and celebrate the continued manifestation of the hero’s virtues. Usually they do so in a way that is more focused than sports results and statistics, using committees of experts to make the relevant selections. The cultural celebration of athletes does not make athletes themselves immortal, rather it is their virtue, as constructed and retold by the community, which lives on. What ancient poetry – or in our case, the media – does is to merge the athlete and his or her deeds into a heroic paradigm that is the real object of celebration and the real source of inspiration. So, Homer’s poems about Achilles and Odysseus are not so much biographies as celebrations of heroic virtues. This dynamic is especially clear in the victory odes of Pindar, Bacchylides, and others. These poems usually begin with a myth about gods and heroes like 48 H. REID Heracles, they then associate the athletic victor, his family, and often his community with the noble and heroic traits those gods and heroes possessed. The esthetic efect in the end is not so much to celebrate a particular individual, but rather to absorb that individual into the larger paradigm of aretē being celebrated by the culture through the means of epic poetry, athletic festivals, and victory odes. As I have argued elsewhere (Reid 2012) about ancient Greek athletic art, these images are not so much portraits of individual persons as they are depictions of cultural ideals associated with athletic victory. In a similar way, the modern media’s construction (and sometimes destruction) of athletic ‘heroes’ is often an efort to place them in (or displace them from) a cultural ideal. In 2016, a new ilm emerged about the African-American athlete Jesse Owens who competed at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and has often been interpreted as a symbol of athletic virtue triumphing over racial bigotry. The ilm successfully absorbs Owens into a cultural paradigm of black excellence, which has a very diferent meaning in the Obama era than it did in the 1930s. Back then, Owens was the star of what was supposed to be a pro-Fascist documentary on the Games directed by Leni Riefenstahl. Later, his image was used to undermine Fascist ideals, and in 1984 his status as an ‘Uncle Tom’ was explored in a television miniseries (Tillet 2016). All of these accounts, whatever their particular ends, celebrated Owens’ athletic virtues and tried to show their political importance. Modern media productions, just like ancient epinician poetry, have their own speciic goals. But even the practice of idealistically celebrating athletic ‘heroes’ may have social value if it inspires others to strive for the virtues the athlete symbolizes. Jesse Owens, according to this view, is modeling not a role but rather enduring virtues that our culture continues to value. Conclusion There is a reason that Plato combined gymnastikē and mousikē (athletic and poetic education) in the Republic (410bc). Ancient Greek song culture made efective use of athletic role models precisely because it allowed the real life experiences of athletes and spectators to be fused with the larger than life characters and values of epic poetry. When a normal athlete re-enacts the deed of a hero he does not become the hero, rather he (or she) re-presents the hero’s action – or, more speciically, the hero’s virtues as celebrated in poetry – within the realm of the here and now to be esthetically experienced by the community. The aesthetic angle is important from an educational point of view. We might say that athletics teaches us what it ‘feels like’ to struggle like the heroes did, and may even inspire us to achieve challenging goals beyond sport. In tandem with literature and other media, athletics can teach us about virtue through experience in a way that other media cannot do alone. This is true even for spectators who may bond emotionally with athletes and teams in a way that leads to a positive catharsis. Athletes on this model may be heroic, educational, and inspirational without needing to be actual heroes or even role models in that we can tap into their energy and re-enact their struggles without needing or wanting to re-enact the speciics of their circumstances. In Philostratus’ famed essay On Heroes, the beauty of a thriving garden indicated the presence of the hero’s spirit. Let us cultivate modern sport to be a garden of virtue, populated by individual plants which may grow and wither, but which taken as a whole shall thrive and prosper eternally. SPORT, ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY 49 Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Feezell (2005) argues that famous athletes should be regarded as lusory objects, that is, examples of athletic achievement we would like to obtain, rather than moral exemplars, which would make them models of general morality. As Fleming et al. (2005, 65) showed, the main characteristics of athletes admired by youth were technical competence, physical characteristics and temperament, speciically those instrumentally important to the success in the game. Moral or non-instrumental characteristics were rarely cited. MacIntyre (1981) forwarded a theory of ethical ‘practice communities,’ much applied within the philosophy of sport. Though Heracles eventually does become a god, his heroism derives from the part of his life when he was mortal. It is even argued that the exclusion of females from the ancient Olympic Games derives their link to Heracles’ cult and its repudiation of women based on the conlict with Hera (Mouratidis 1984). The labors are extreme and the aretē needed to perform them is extreme (they include things like diverting rivers and killing lions with his bare hands). Nagy’s (2013) second characteristic of heroes, likewise, is that they are extreme. Sometimes they are extreme in the positive sense of being superior at something, but they can also be extreme in the negative sense. Heracles is said to have murdered his own wife and children. In Euripides’ tragedy, Heracles, this horrible act comes near the beginning of the play and it is through his labors that the hero expiates his sin. There is broad cultural evidence suggesting that hero worship in ancient Greece was not created out of stories like that of the Iliad and Odyssey, but was in fact independent of them. The stories, on the other hand, were based on the religious practices, though not always directly (Nagy 2013, 0§12). Nagy (2013, 0§13) says we should think of Greek religious practices as an interaction between myth and ritual. He deines ritual as ‘doing things and saying things in a way that is considered sacred’ and myth as ‘saying things in a way that is also considered sacred.’ According to Diodorus (4.14.1–2), one of the labors of Heracles was to found the Olympic Games, and to win every event in their irst edition. This is only one of several myths about the founding of the Olympic Games, but as Nagy points out, it is a handy illustration of the perceived link between a hero’s labors and an athlete’s contests. As Nagy (2013, 1§41) explains, ‘From the standpoint of ancient Greek concepts of the hero, the hero’s labor and the athlete’s competition is the “same thing.”’ This metaphysical critique of mimesis occurs in Book 10 of the Republic, the educational discussion is found in Books 2 and 3. Dramatic mimesis, by contrasts, asks me to inauthentically display the lawed character and emotions of personages like Oedipus. Plato thought mimēsis of vicious actions and emotions to be harmful, but athletic mimēsis is not only authentic, it is positive. For the full argument see Reid (Forthcoming). For a full argument of this interpretation of catharsis, see Golden (1969). According to Nagy (2013, 8b§3), to endure such sufering, as an athlete, is to re-enact a prototypical ordeal of a hero. A more accurate way of understanding athletic contests in their archaic Greek historical contexts is to keep in mind the meanings of the ancient Greek words athlos (epic aethlos) ‘ordeal, contest’ and athlon (epic aethlon) ‘prize won in the course of participating in an athlos’ and athlētēs ‘athlete, one who participates in an athlos.’ To restate the concept of athletics in ancient Greek terms: an athlos was the ritual ‘ordeal’ or ‘contest’ of an athlete engaging in athletic contests that were taking place in the historical present, but it was also the mythological ‘ordeal’ or ‘contest’ of a hero engaging in life-and-death contests that took place once upon a time in the heroic past; moreover, the ritual ‘ordeals’ or ‘contests’ of the historical present were viewed as re-enactments of the mythical ‘ordeals’ or ‘contests’ of the heroic past. An exception to this rule is Mumford (2012), who discusses the moral potential of spectatorship at length. Much work on the topic of spectatorship emphasizes its degrading nature, i.e. Lasch 50 H. REID 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. (1977) and Morgan (2006, 26). McNamee (2008), however, compares sports to medieval morality plays, and McFee (2004, chapter 8), describes sport as a moral laboratory in which virtues and vices may be tested. The tomb of a cult hero could be used as the actual turning point of a chariot race: in the historical period, starting with the adoption of chariot racing in the athletic program of the Olympics (this adoption has been dated at around 680 BCE), the turning point of chariot races could be conceptualized as the tomb of a hero, whose restless spirit was capable of ‘spooking’ the horses at the most dangerous moment of the chariot race, the left turn around the turning point. According to Nagy 2013 (5§38), ‘An epiphany is a vision that is felt to be real, not unreal. It is the appearance of something divine, something that is understood to be absolutely real.’ The Republic passage is 415a-d. Hesiod’s myth of the ‘Five Generations of Humankind’ is in Works and Days (V.106-201). The myth tells of our decline from a Golden age when gods and humans intermingled and were near-equals, through silver and bronze ages (yes, that’s where the modern Olympic medals come from) to the heroic age of Achilles and Odysseus, and inally to the Iron Age occupied by Hesiod himself. This general view of moral and physical decline (which contrasts starkly with our contemporary idea of history as constant progress), created a moral urgency to reconnect through virtue with the nobler generations of the past. 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