Play as Metaphor

Véronique Dasen

doi:10.4000/14did

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Play as Metaphor

Ludic Images from Ancient Greece

Véronique Dasen

For two centuries, from the middle of the 6^th century to the end of the 4^th century BCE, hundreds of scenes of play were depicted on Attic and South Italian vases. They bring to life warriors, children, girls and boys enjoying a large variety of ludic activities-boardgames, ball games, hoop games, spinning tops and swings. This book explores how the experience of play can shed new light on the dynamics of Archaic and Classical Greek society, its norms, values and imagination. Vase-painters offer...

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Note de l’éditeur

This volume is published with the support of the European Research Council (ERC).

It results from the ERC Advanced Grant project

Locus Ludi: The Cultural Fabric of Play and Games in Classical Antiquity, based at the University of Fribourg and funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 741520).

Website: https://locusludi.ch and https://locusludi.hypotheses.org.

Éditeur : Presses universitaires de Liège

Lieu d’édition : Liège

Publication sur OpenEdition Books : 17 juillet 2025

ISBN numérique : 978-2-87562-458-1

DOI : 10.4000/14did

Collection : Jeu / Play / Spiel

Année d’édition : 2024

ISBN (Édition imprimée) : 978-2-87562-428-4

Nombre de pages : 436

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Enter the game

Part one. Heroic games

Introduction. Achilles and Ajax at play: Inventing a canonical image

Chapter I. “Exekias made me and painted me”

Chapter II. The Pente grammai

Chapter III. Agon and aristeia

Chapter IV. Tyche’s dice

Chapter V. Urban heroes

Chapter VI. Game or abacus?

Conclusion. Back to Palamedes

Part two. Gymnastic games

Introduction. Athletics and play

Chapter I. Ball games

Chapter II. Riding games

Chapter III. Spinning tops and twirling objects

Chapter IV. Ganymede’s hoop

Conclusion. Leaving toys behind

Part three. Games of love and chance

Introduction. Under the gaze of Eros and Aphrodite

Chapter I. Playing with balls, apples, and wool balls

Chapter II. Ephedrismos

Chapter III. Spinning tops and knucklebones

Chapter IV. Swings and seesaws

Chapter V. Drawing lots with one’s fingers

Conclusion. Paidia: Play is a woman

Part four. Childhood at play

Introduction. Playing, ‘acting like a child’

Chapter I. Festive childhood

Chapter II. Representing children at play

Chapter III. Playing at being grown up

Chapter IV. Playing with animals

Chapter V. Playing with rituals

Chapter VI. Imaginary children

Conclusion. A city united by playful children

Game over

Abbreviations

Bibliography

Illustrations

Indexes

For two centuries, from the middle of the 6^th century to the end of the 4^th century BCE, hundreds of scenes of play were depicted on Attic and South Italian vases. They bring to life warriors, children, girls and boys enjoying a large variety of ludic activities-boardgames, ball games, hoop games, spinning tops and swings. This book explores how the experience of play can shed new light on the dynamics of Archaic and Classical Greek society, its norms, values and imagination. Vase-painters offer us a different way of thinking about youth, love, life passages, competition, performance, with a particular relation to luck and risk.

This journey through ludic images begins in the Archaic period, with the depiction of two soldiers, heavily armed, relaxing in war, demonstrating their complicity, wisdom and strategic skills by playing a boardgame. It ends with children’s entertainment in a festive setting in the late 5^th and early 4^th centuries BCE. Throughout this period, vase-painters praise the physical beauty of young men training to be the best in the gymnasium and of girls competing or exercising their agency to propitiate the gods for a happy wedding.

This lavishly illustrated volume is based on the research carried out in the ERC Advanced Grant project Locus Ludi. The Cultural Fabric of Play and Games in Classical Antiquity, supported by the European Research Council.

Véronique Dasen

Véronique DASEN is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Fribourg (CH) and member of the AnHiMA Centre in Paris (UMR 8210). Her research focuses on the anthropology of images and material culture in the Greek and Roman worlds.

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