Athletes pervaded the visual culture of fifth century Athens, from expensive public dedications in sanctuaries and marketplaces to paintings on quotidian pottery vessels. Perhaps due to their ubiquitous nature, scholars have generally neglected to analyze these images in a way that unravels their multiple levels of meaning. Rather, scholars have read these images in a positivist light, seeing them as illustrations to complement written texts. While the visual representations of athletes can indeed supplement our knowledge of Greek athletics in general, the ancient viewers of these works naturally already had the prerequisite knowledge of Greek athletic practices.

In this paper I would like to examine what meaning athletic images might have had for their intended audience. In particular, I will consider images of athletes grooming themselves on red-figure symposium vessels of the fifth century B.C. These athletic scenes, when viewed on the vessels used during a symposium, could have a didactic meaning and prescribe normative behavior for the young men attending the symposium with their mentors. Cultural ideals for young men such as modesty, beauty, and even sexual abstinence during athletic training were discussed during symposia, and instructive poetry was sung to the young symposiasts during these gatherings. Athletic images in this symposium context also played a part in the socialization of young men.

Seeing young men at toilet with their bodies on display presents interesting problems of subjectivity and objectivity‹if these youths are displaying their bodies to a viewer, are they not objects of another¹s gaze? If so, how is the masculinity of the young athlete reconciled with their objectification? What purpose does such objectification serve the cultural mores of the citizens of the Athenian polis? I suggest that the viewing of athletes, and the fetishization of their images was central to not only the development of the young athlete, but to the ideal stability of the polis.

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