Ancient Greek Athletics

Charles H. Stocking is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Western University. His work focuses broadly on poetics, religion, and embodiment in antiquity and modernity, with publications including The Politics of Sacrifice in Early Greek Myth and Poetry (Cambridge 2017), The Cultural History of Sport in Antiquity (Bloomsbury 2021), along with numerous articles ranging from Homeric poetics to the advent of modern bodybuilding. Prior to becoming a professor of Classics, Charles Stocking was an NCAA Division 1 Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Athletics Department at UCLA, where he trained multiple collegiate and Olympic athletes. Susan A. Stephens is Sara Hart Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Classics at Stanford University. Trained as a papyrologist, her work includes contributions to the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Yale Papyri in the Beineke Library (1985), and Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments, co-authored with Jack Winkler (Princeton, 1995). Subsequent scholarship has focused on the political and social context of early Alexandrian writers. Books include Seeing Double: Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2003), Callimachus: The Hymns (Oxford, 2015), and The Poets of Alexandria (Bloomsbury, 2018) as well as numerous articles on Callimachus, Theocritus, Apollonius, and Posidippus. Recent work has focused on the politics of Greek athletics in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

This is a hugely valuable book. With 26 full colour illustrations, an historical time frame (which could have been more compendious), a list of Pindaric victory odes, tables showing when 'important Greek athletic contests were established' and the circuit of the four crown games, as well as a good bibliography, an index of names and a general index, it more than earns its place in libraries of schools and universities.

• TEXTS 1: The Archaic and Early Classical Period Epic Victory Odes Elegy Epigram 2: The Classical Period History Tragedy and Comedy Hippocratic Corpus Attic Oratory Philosophy 3: The Hellenistic Period 4: The Roman Period Inscriptions 5: Olympia 6: Delphi 7: Sparta 8: Athens 9: Other Significant Inscriptions Papyri Appendices Appendix A: The Athlete in Greek Culture Appendix B: Sites and Conduct of Festival Games Appendix C: The Events