Behaviour of Spectators in Ancient Time

Nowadays, where the investigation of mass-phenomena plays an important role in different sciences and where the behaviour of spectators of sports events in particular is more and more an issue of sociological and other analyses, a thorough and precise monography about spectators in antiquity could be useful as a very broad, solid and important base for anthropologists, historians, sociologists and for all amateurs, who are interested in this topic. All former approaches of research in this area will be merged to a comprehensive description. Ancient documents will be analysed to faciliate the solution of historical-anthropological problems, to make clear differences and similarities in the behaviour of spectators in modern and ancient times. We are convinced that an exact commentary and the precise work on the ancient sources will bring some new aspects to this subject. It will be tried to examine sources that are not yet considered. Topics of this monography will be "spectators as a factor to influence politics, women as spectators, sports- tourism, phenomena of the mass" etc. A second part is composed of ancient sources. Texts will be given in Greek and Latin as well as in German translation including an exact commentary. The tempory and local frame is the greek and romain antiquity from the 8th century B.C. to the 7th century A.D.

The main results of the project are to be seen in an internet-archive of sources entitled "Spectatores. Sources of Spectators in Antiquity". This archive can be found in the internet (http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/spectatores) and is the very first resource to collect and to prepare all relevant sources on spectators and to make them easily accessible on a broad number of topics. Each source is linked to the modern scholarly literature; hence, users will have access to the latest state of the knowledge. Going beyond the original goal - which can still be seen in the official title of the project - the range of topics is not restricted to behaviour but includes all questions concerning spectators. The archive, while not yet able to present the entire number of relevant sources - not surprising given the wide range of the subject - already provides quite a huge amount of useful information. Altogether, 750 texts (in both the original language and in German translation) have been edited. the principal focus has been to produce translations which accurately reflect the original texts (a considerable number of already existing translations have been redone) and to provide an unerring search engine with a wide-ranging number of keywords (more than 60) and sub-keywords (ca. 1,000). The internet as a publication medium offers the chance of continual access and supplementation and provides free access for users from everywhere. Scholars will find easy access to a huge number of edited sources. Non-specialists will appreciate having a central resource of understandable evidence about spectators in antiquity. Further upgrading is possible such as the addition of other categories of ancient sources (archaeological evidence, images, inscriptions), articles concerning special questions, and an English version.