Athletics and Literature in the Roman Empire

Examination of Greek athletics in the Roman Empire and how they were represented in the literature of the period.

Jason König (Author)

9780521070089, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 31 July 2008

420 pages, 12 b/w illus.
23 x 15 x 2.5 cm, 0.636 kg

'[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

From 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.

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.

Subject Areas: Classical Greek & Roman archaeology [HDDK], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], History of art: ancient & classical art,BCE to c 500 CE [ACG]