ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author looks at how the athletic body came to articulate normative or deviant masculinities, especially in connection with prevailing notions of civic values and service. He also looks in more detail at two case studies: representations of the athletic body in epinician poetry and literature from Classical Athens and discourses of civic service and bodily culture in athletic honorary decrees of the Hellenistic and Imperial periods. The author conveys something of the physical beauty culture that must have existed in gymnasia and other training facilities across the Greek world. The conspicuous display of, largely idealized, athletic bodies in statuary accompanied with honorary inscriptions magnified, on the visual and discursive level, the athletic body and put it center stage in the cityscape of Greek communities. The elaborately crafted narrative of Polemaios’s life and achievements combined elements of Polemaios’ athletic and civic pursuits that were subjected to the public gaze and communal judgment of his community.
