Athletics and Literature in the Roman Empire
Athletics and Literature in the Roman Empire
£47.00
GBPFrom the first to third century AD Greek athletics flourished as never before. This book offers exciting readings of those developments. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, it sheds light on practices of athletic competition and athletic education in the Roman Empire. In addition it examines some of the ways in which athletic activity was represented within different texts and contexts. Most importantly, the book shows how discussion and representation of athletics could become entangled with many other areas of cultural debate, and used as a vehicle for many different varieties of authorial self-presentation and cultural self-scrutiny. It also argues for complex connections between different areas of athletic representation, particularly between literary and epigraphical texts. It offers re-interpretations of a number of major authors, especially Lucian, Dio Chrysostom, Pausanias, Silius Italicus, Galen and Philostratus.
- Sets out neglected evidence for athletic festivals and competitions in the Roman Empire
- Offers major new readings on a wide range of Greek and Roman authors
- Explores athletics in the context of a broader cultural debate
Reviews & endorsements
Review of the hardback: '… an illuminating and well-written guide to a period of great interest and importance for the understanding of the history of athletics.' Journal of Classics Teaching
Review of the hardback: 'This book is the fruit of an immense amount of reading, lucidly though lengthily laid out, with generous signposting and an exemplary absence of jargon. Alongside the work of van Nijf and Zahra Newby, this book restores athletic endeavour to its rightful position in the study of Greek culture under the Roman Empire. It will be essential for anyone dealing with athletics as presented in Greek prose writing. More generally, it will be of great value to anyone interested in discourse about the Greek past in this period.' The Journal of Roman Studies
'… a very involving and thought-provoking work that makes excellent use of literary and non-literary evidence. It highlights an area of the ancient world that is very rich in good quality evidence but that has received less consideration than is warranted.' Classics Ireland
'[König's] book delivers even more than it promises in the title. It is not only about athletics and literature but about identities, ideals [and] (self-)representations in the Roman Empire approached with a careful and insightful analysis of the ancient sources on athletics.' Arctos
Product details
July 2008Paperback
9780521070089
420 pages
230 × 150 × 25 mm
0.636kg
12 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Lucian and Anacharsis: gymnasion education in the Greek city
- 3. Models for virtue: Dio's Melankomas and the athletic body
- 4. Pausanias and Olympic panhellenism
- 5. Silius Italicus and the athletics of Rome
- 6. Athletes and doctors: Galen's agonistic medicine
- 7. Philostratus' Gymnasticus and the rhetoric of the athletic body
- Conclusion.
