Ancient Greek Athletics

Description

This work presents a collection of texts in translation on ancient athletics in Greek and Roman history, including a wide range of topics from the Olympics to ancient conceptions of health and wellness.

• The most comprehensive sourcebook to date on ancient Greek athletics, including previously untranslated texts, epigraphic material, and papyri
• Proposes complete textual sources with proper historical contextualization
• Offers a chronological arrangement of ancient sources grouped by genre

About the Author(s)

Charles H. Stocking, Associate Professor, Classical Studies, Western University, Ontario, and Susan A. Stephens, Sara Hart Kimball Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University

Charles H. Stocking is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Western University. His work focuses broadly on poetics, religion, and embodiment in antiquity and modernity, with publications including The Politics of Sacrifice in Early Greek Myth and Poetry (Cambridge 2017), The Cultural History of Sport in Antiquity (Bloomsbury 2021), along with numerous articles ranging from Homeric poetics to the advent of modern bodybuilding. Prior to becoming a professor of Classics, Charles Stocking was an NCAA Division 1 Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Athletics Department at UCLA, where he trained multiple collegiate and Olympic athletes.

Susan A. Stephens is Sara Hart Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics at Stanford University. Trained as a papyrologist, her work includes contributions to the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Yale Papyri in the Beineke Library (1985), and Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments, co-authored with Jack Winkler (Princeton, 1995). Subsequent scholarship has focused on the political and social context of early Alexandrian writers. Books include Seeing Double: Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2003), Callimachus: The Hymns (Oxford, 2015), and The Poets of Alexandria (Bloomsbury, 2018) as well as numerous articles on Callimachus, Theocritus, Apollonius, and Posidippus. Recent work has focused on the politics of Greek athletics in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

Table of Contents

TEXTS
1:The Archaic and Early Classical Period
Epic
Victory Odes
Elegy
Epigram
2:The Classical Period
History
Tragedy and Comedy
Hippocratic Corpus
Attic Oratory
Philosophy
3:The Hellenistic Period
4:The Roman Period
Inscriptions
5:Olympia
6:Delphi
7:Sparta
8:Athens
9:Other Significant Inscriptions
Papyri
Appendices
Appendix A: The Athlete in Greek Culture
Appendix B: Sites and Conduct of Festival Games
Appendix C: The Events

Reviews

"This is a hugely valuable book. With 26 full colour illustrations, an historical time frame (which could have been more compendious), a list of Pindaric victory odes, tables showing when 'important Greek athletic contests were established' and the circuit of the four crown games, as well as a good bibliography, an index of names and a general index, it more than earns its place in libraries of schools and universities." - David Stuttard, Classics for all

"Overall, there is a wealth of information included in this primary source book that will be well appreciated by future students and scholars." - David Gilman Romano, University of Arizona, Bryn Mawr Classical Review