Agón or Certamen? A Philosophical Analysis of the Greek-Roman Agonistic Paidéia and Its Influence on the Conception of Contemporary Sports

In ancient Rome, Greek agónes were never widespread. This is evidenced by the fact that the word agón never actually found a counterpart in the Latin language. Instead, the Romans used the term certamen, which does not have the same exact meaning as the Greek word it replaces. In Rome, certamina were mostly considered performances in which the athlete was nothing more than a performer-actor (or actress, because some authors talk about women who appeared in struggles and competitions fighting other women) and not an athlete in the strictest sense. Participants in certamen were often criminals and thugs (or prostitutes). They competed in the stadium during the day and were hired to carry out killings in some slum of the city at night. Using this historical background as a starting point, the purpose of this study is to identify the philosophical bases of the Roman “certamen system” and to compare them with those of the Greek “agonistic system”. The Latin word certamen relates to the idea of earning the approval of a crowd by prevailing in a fight against others who are considered as enemies (the concursus). From a philosophical point of view, the word certamen refers to conceptual, political, educational, and aesthetic categories completely different from those of the Greek agón. The concept “certamen” refers to an individualistic dimension – not communitarian – of aesthetic, visual, and communicational attributes which can also be found in contemporary sports. By using a philosophical hermeneutic approach, and by making a comparison between the Greco-Roman athletic paidéia and contemporary sport, we argue that, first, in the conceptual history of sports there has always been a tension between the two philosophical and ethical poles represented by agón and certamen. Second, we argue that this tension can also be found in the conception of contemporary sport. To conclude, we argue that by understanding the agón-certamen couple, one can arrive at a clearer and less reductive interpretation of both the main philosophical and cultural meanings of contemporary sports and the pedagogies by which, nowadays, sports are inspired.