INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC ACADEMY 7th JOINT - IOA

trial in Athens and instead went to Athens’ great enemy Sparta, who
gladly made use of his services during his stay.
Tensions, however, came not only from individualistic ambition
but also through the ways that a community acknowledged its
Olympic victor. Leukas has already dealt with this issue in his paper,
but I would reiterate that in extreme cases the state’s perceived failure
to do honour to its Olympic victors, both alive and dead, could carry
serious consequences and required significant undertakings by the
community, such as the establishment of hero-cult. Of course there
were less drastic, and for us more realistic, alternatives. A former
Olympic victor might simply leave his home community and live
elsewhere, and there is even the odd case where an athlete gifted his
victory, much lie Cimon of Athens did, but to another community, for
political purposes.
Having said this, however, the polis did find ways to moderate the
victor and to integrate the great man within the state. Alcibiades’
victory reflected well on Athens. Indeed all victors bought glory to
their city-state. The importance of an Olympic victory to the state
ensured that a partnership was formed between an Olympic victor and
his city-state. This new level of relationship was based on a flow of
respective kudos in what one scholar has labelled “an economy of
kudos.”
For the victor, the flow of kudos began during the Games when,
for example, his name, his city, and his event were announced before
the assembled crowd and he received his olive crown. The victor
could of course erect a statue at Olympia in the Altis to forever testify
to his achievement. His home community, however, was expected to
continue this flow of kudos. At home, an Olympic victor could
perhaps expect to see his statue erected in a public space, as such
reminders guaranteed the continuance of a victor’s kleos, his spoken
fame. Later traditions held that it was customary for a community to
throw down part of its walls for the victor’s entry into his home-city.
At Athens, a victorious athlete could expect to be dined at public
expense every day in the prytaneion in the city marketplace, the
agora. Cities could also provide cash rewards in recognition of an
Olympic victory, as Plutarch’s anachronistic attribution of such a
measure to Solon, for example, indicates.
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