A Visitor's Guide to the Ancient Olympics

Author: Neil Faulkner
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300160291
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

Book Description
The essential handbook for the 21st-century citizen seeking a lively guided tour of the ancient Greek Olympics. Travel back to the heyday of the city-state and classical Greek civilization. Enter this distant, alien, but still familiar culture and discover what the Greeks did and didn’t do during five thrilling days in August, 388 B.C. In the Olympic Stadium there were no stands, no shade—and no women allowed. Visitors sat on a grassy bank in the searing heat of midsummer to watch naked athletes compete in footraces, the pentathlon, horse and chariot races, and three combat sports—wrestling, boxing, and pankration, everyone's favorite competition, with virtually no rules and considerable blood and pain. This colorfully illustrated volume offers a complete tour of the Olympic site exactly as athletes and spectators found it. The book evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of the crowded encampment; introduces the various attendees (from champions and charlatans to aristocrats and prostitutes); and explains the numerous exotic religious rituals. Uniquely detailed and precise, this guide offers an unparalleled opportunity to travel in time, back to the excitement of ancient Olympia. “Splendidly captures the excitement, the razzmatazz, the intensity, glamour and squalor of the ancient Olympics. Packed with anecdotes and intriguing facts, the careful scholarship behind this wonderful little book is presented with gusto.”—Philip Matyszak, author of Ancient Athens on Five Drachmas a Day “Ultimately the ancient Olympics were more of an epic frat party full of booze and sex than a prestigious sporting competition, and Faulkner paints that picture well.”—Moira E. McLaughlin, The Washington Post

Your Travel Guide to Ancient Greece

Author: Nancy Day
Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books
ISBN: 9780822530763
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 104

Book Description
Takes readers on a journey back in time in order to experience life in ancient Greece, describing clothing, accommodations, foods, local customs, transportation, a few notable personalities, and more.

Adventures in Ancient Greece

Author: Linda Bailey
Publisher: Kids Can Press Ltd
ISBN: 9781550745368
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 52

Book Description
An exciting blend of fact and fiction and comic-book style illustrations make learning about Ancient Greece fun in this book in the Good Times Travel Agency series.

Ancient Greece

Author: Anna Claybourne
Publisher: Capstone Classroom
ISBN: 9781410927330
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 68

Book Description
A description of ancient Greece written in the form of a travel guide, providing facts about the civilization, and including tips on travel, food, shelter, attractions, shopping, and health and safety.

The Ancient Olympic Games

Author: Judith Swaddling
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 84

Book Description
For over one thousand years between 776 B.C. and A.D. 395, princes, statesmen, and famous athletes gathered every four years at Olympia in western Greece to compete for the olive crowns of the ancient Olympic Games. Judith Swaddling traces the mythological and religious origins of the games and describes the events, religious ceremony, and celebrations that were an essential part of the Olympic festival. The book also features a large, detailed model of the site of ancient Olympia, where, alongside religious and civic buildings, there grew an elaborate sports complex with a stadium for 40,000 spectators, indoor and outdoor training facilities, hot and cold baths, a swimming pool, and a race course. This fascinating description of Ancient Olympia and the Games is superbly illustrated with vases, sculpture and other works of art, views of the site and photographs of the unique model.

Your Travel Guide to Ancient Israel

Author: Josepha Sherman
Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books
ISBN: 9780822530725
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 90

Book Description
Takes readers on a journey back in time in order to experience life in Israel at the time of King Solomon, describing clothing, accommodations, foods, local customs, transportation, a few notable personalities, and more.

The Naked Olympics

Author: Tony Perrottet
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 081296991X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
What was it like to attend the ancient Olympic Games? With the summer Olympics’ return to Athens, Tony Perrottet delves into the ancient world and lets the Greek Games begin again. The acclaimed author of Pagan Holiday brings attitude, erudition, and humor to the fascinating story of the original Olympic festival, tracking the event day by day to re-create the experience in all its compelling spectacle. Using firsthand reports and little-known sources—including an actual Handbook for a Sports Coach used by the Greeks—The Naked Olympics creates a vivid picture of an extravaganza performed before as many as forty thousand people, featuring contests as timeless as the javelin throw and as exotic as the chariot race. Peeling away the layers of myth, Perrottet lays bare the ancient sporting experience—including the round-the-clock bacchanal inside the tents of the Olympic Village, the all-male nude workouts under the statue of Eros, and history’s first corruption scandals involving athletes. Featuring sometimes scandalous cameos by sports enthusiasts Plato, Socrates, and Herodotus, The Naked Olympics offers essential insight into today’s Games and an unforgettable guide to the world’s first and most influential athletic festival. "Just in time for the modern Olympic games to return to Greece this summer for the first time in more than a century, Tony Perrottet offers up a diverting primer on the Olympics of the ancient kind….Well researched; his sources are as solid as sources come. It's also well writen….Perhaps no book of the season will show us so briefly and entertainingly just how complete is our inheritance from the Greeks, vulgarity and all." --The Washington Post

A Visitors Guide to Ancient Greece

Author: Lesley Sims
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781474903332
Category : Greece
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Travel back in time with this humorous guide crammed with information and advice for the adventurous time-tourist. Arranged thematically, with topics including 'Things to see and do', 'Trips out of Athens' and 'Top tips for tourists'. Also features quotations from notable Greeks, a glossary of famous people in Ancient Greece and a timeline.

Your Travel Guide to the Ancient Mayan Civilization

Author: Nancy Day
Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books
ISBN: 9780822530770
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 102

Book Description
Takes readers on a journey back in time in order to experience life during the Maya civilization, describing clothing, accommodations, foods, local customs, transportation, a few notable personalities, and more.

The Ancient Olympics

Author: Nigel Spivey
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191655414
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
The word 'athletics' is derived from the Greek verb 'to struggle for a prize'. After reading this book, no one will see the Olympics as a graceful display of Greek beauty again, but as war by other means. Nigel Spivey paints a portrait of the Greek Olympics as they really were - fierce contests between bitter rivals, in which victors won kudos and rewards, and losers faced scorn and even assault. Victory was almost worth dying for, and a number of athletes did just that. Many more resorted to cheating and bribery. Contested always bitterly and often bloodily, the ancient Olympics were not an idealistic celebration of unity, but a clash of military powers in an arena not far removed from the battlefield.