Ancient Greek Athletics

Download or read book Ancient Greek Athletics written by Stephen Gaylord Miller and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting a survey of sports in ancient Greece, this work describes ancient sporting events and games. It considers the role of women and amateurs in ancient athletics, and explores the impact of these games on art, literature and politics.

Download or read book Ancient Greek Athletics written by Stephen G. Miller and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The earliest Olympic games began more than twenty-five-hundred years ago. What were they like, how were they organised, who participated? Were ancient sports a means of preparing youth for warfare? In this lavishly illustrated book, a world expert on ancient Greek athletics provides the first comprehensive introduction to the subject, vividly describing ancient sporting events and games and exploring their impact on art, literature, and politics. Using a wide array of ancient sources, written and visual, and including recent archaeological discoveries, Stephen Miller reconstructs ancient Greek athletic festivals and the details of specific athletic events. He also explores broader themes, including the role of women in ancient athletics, the place of amateurism, and the relationship between athletic events and social and political life. Published in the year the modern Olympic Games return to Athens, this book will be a source of information and enjoyment for anyone interested in the history of athletics and the origins of the world's most famous sporting event.

Download or read book Athletics in the Ancient World written by E. Norman Gardiner and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-06-11 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concise, convincing book emphasizes relationship between Greek and Roman athletics and religion, art, and education. Colorful descriptions of the pentathlon, foot-race, wrestling, boxing, ball playing, and more. 137 black-and-white illustrations.

Download or read book Contemporary Athletics & Ancient Greek Ideals written by Daniel A. Dombrowski and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-08-01 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite their influence in our culture, sports inspire dramatically less philosophical consideration than such ostensibly weightier topics as religion, politics, or science. Arguing that athletic playfulness coexists with serious underpinnings, and that both demand more substantive attention, Daniel Dombrowski harnesses the insights of ancient Greek thinkers to illuminate contemporary athletics. Dombrowski contends that the ideas of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus shed important light on issues—such as the pursuit of excellence, the concept of play, and the power of accepting physical limitations while also improving one’s body—that remain just as relevant in our sports-obsessed age as they were in ancient Greece. Bringing these concepts to bear on contemporary concerns, Dombrowski considers such questions as whether athletic competition can be a moral substitute for war, whether it necessarily constitutes war by other means, and whether it encourages fascist tendencies or ethical virtue. The first volume to philosophically explore twenty-first-century sport in the context of its ancient predecessor, Contemporary Athletics and Ancient Greek Ideals reveals that their relationship has great and previously untapped potential to inform our understanding of human nature.

Download or read book Ancient Greek Athletics written by Charles H. Stocking and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-08-25 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Arete written by Stephen G. Miller and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2004-06-07 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the informal games of Homer's time to the highly organized contests of the Roman world, Miller has compileda trove of ancient sources: Plutarch on boxing, Aristotle on the pentathlon, Philostratos on the buying and selling of victories, Vitruvius on literary competitions, and Xenophon on female body building. Arete offers readers an absorbing lesson in the culture of Greek athletics from the greatest of teachers, the ancients themselves, and demonstrates that the concepts of virtue, skill, pride, valor, and nobility embedded in the word arete are only part of the story from antiquity.

Download or read book The Athlete in the Ancient Greek World written by Reyes Bertolín Cebrián and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2020-07-02 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the world of sports, the most important component is the athlete. After all, without athletes there would be no sports. In ancient Greece, athletes were public figures, idolized and envied. This fascinating book draws on a broad range of ancient sources to explore the development of athletes in Greece from the archaic period to the Roman Empire. Whereas many previous books have focused on the origins of the Greek games themselves, or the events or locations where the games took place, this volume places a unique emphasis on the athletes themselves—and the fostering of their athleticism. Moving beyond stereotypes of larger-than-life heroes, Reyes Bertolín Cebrián examines the experiences of ordinary athletes, who practiced sports for educational, recreational, or professional purposes. According to Bertolín Cebrián, the majority of athletes in ancient times were young men and mostly single. Similar to today, most athletes practiced sport as part of their schooling. Yet during the fifth century B.C., a major shift in ancient Greek education took place, when the curriculum for training future leaders became more academic in orientation. As a result, argues Bertolín Cebrián, the practice of sport in the Hellenistic period lost its appeal to the intellectual elite, even as it remained popular with large sectors of the population. Thus, a gap emerged between the “higher” and “lower” cultures of sport. In looking at the implications of this development for athletes, whether high-performing or recreational, this erudite volume traverses such wide-ranging fields as history, literature, medicine, and sports psychology to recreate—in compelling detail—the life and lifestyle of the ancient Greek athlete.