Prologue: Sport in the Cultures of the Ancient World

Sport was practised in the Greco-Roman world at least since the second millennium BC. Ancient cultures employed sport in a variety of social contexts. Sport served as an element of ceremonial performance, as a foundation for physical education, and as the dramatic focus of popular spectacles from the local to the imperial level. In recent years, the continuous re-assessment of old and new evidence in conjunction with the development of new methodological perspectives have created the need for a fresh examination of central aspects of ancient sport in a single volume. This book fills that gap in ancient sport scholarship.

Bloomsbury , 2021

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This book examines the relationship between athletics and philosophy in ancient Greece and Rome with special emphasis on changing ideas about the connection between athleticism and virtue. Its aim is to enable a foundational understanding of ancient sport and philosophy that makes a sincere dialogue with modern practices both possible and fruitful. The book begins by observing that the link between athleticism and virtue is older than sport, reaching back to the athletic feats of kings and pharaohs in early Egypt and Mesopotamia. It then traces the role of athletics and the Olympic Games in transforming of the idea of aristocracy as something acquired by birth to something that can be trained. The idea of training virtue through the techniques and practice of athletics is examined in relation to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Then Roman spectacles such as chariot racing and gladiator games are studied in light of the philosophy of Lucretius, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius. The concluding chapter connects the book’s ancient observations with contemporary sports issues such as the use of athletes as role models, the relationship between money and corruption, the relative worth of participation and spectatorship, and the role of females in sport. The author argues that there is a strong link between sport and philosophy in the ancient world, calling them offspring of common parents: concern about virtue and the spirit of free enquiry. In order to preserve this connection between enquiry, virtue, and sport, she concludes, we must understand its ancient origins.

Nikephoros 29, 2023

After a break since it last appeared in Nikephoros 27 (2014), the Annual Bibliography of Sport in Antiquity will, starting from this issue, be continued.

The Ancient History Bulletin, 2015