Sources

ALTHOUGH THIS IS meant to be a lively, entertaining account, I have made every effort to ensure that my reconstruction of the ancient Olympics is historically accurate.

For original ancient texts—Pindar’s odes, Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana, the works of Aeschylus, Plato, Xenophon, Dio the Golden-Tongued, Herodotus et al.—I have generally referred to the standard Loeb texts published by Harvard University Press.

For Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, I have used Stanley Lombardo’s translations, released by Hackett Publishing Co. (I personally regard these as the finest and most readable versions in modern English—each of Lombardo’s lines captures the directness of Homer’s language and crackles with vitality.) For Pausanias’ Description of Greece, I use most often Sir James Frazer’s excellent text published in six volumes in the Victorian era (reprinted by Biblo and Tannen, 1965), as well as occasionally referring to Peter Levi’s more recent Penguin edition (1971). Lucian’s caustic satire Peregrinus is best translated by Lionel Casson; for his Anacharsis, I use the Loeb text and sections by Stephen G. Miller. For Philostratus’ work on gymnastics, I generally adapt an archaic edition by Thomas Woody. Many ancient inscriptions and fragments are referred to from Rachel Robinson’s 1955 work, Sources for the History of Greek Athletics, and the indispensable, more up-to-date volume edited by Stephen G. Miller, Arete: Greek Sports from Ancient Sources; Miller’s creative insights on the documents often brought them to unexpected life.

As with any work of historical synthesis, I owe a great debt to dozens, if not hundreds, of other historians. Any re-creation of specific ancient sports builds on the pioneering work of Norman Gardiner; his Athletics of the Ancient World (1930) is the basis for all subsequent studies on the subject. My chapter on classical-era Greek travel could not have been written without Lionel Casson’s seminal research in the field, especially his volume Travel in the Ancient World. I owe an even greater debt to James Davidson for his brilliant book Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens, which guided me through the more licentious side of Greek festivals (especially drinking habits, banquet behavior, homosexuality, and prostitution). I would also like to single out Thomas F. Scanlon’s work on women’s athletics in ancient Greece, and David C. Young’s writings on the myth of amateurism in the ancient Olympic Games.

A partial list of my secondary sources includes:

Birge, Darice E., Lynn H. Kryanak, and Stephen G. Miller, Excavations at Nemea. University of California Press, two volumes, 1999 and 2001.

Casson, Lionel, Travel in the Ancient World. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

Davidson, James, Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens. St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Finley, M. I., and H. W. Pleket, The Olympic Games: The First Thousand Years. Chatto and Windus, 1976.

Gardner, Norman E., Athletics of the Ancient World. Ares, 1930.

Golden, Mark, Sport and Society in Ancient Greece. Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Golden, Mark, Sport in the Ancient World from A to Z. London: Routledge, 2004.

Lee, Hugh M., Nikephoros Beihefti: The Program and Schedule of the Ancient Olympic Games. Weidmann, 2002.

Mandel, Richard D., The Nazi Olympics. New York, 1971.

Miller, Stephen G. (ed.), Arete: Greek Sports from Ancient Sources. University of California Press, 1991.

Raschke, W. J. (ed.), The Archaeology of the Olympics: The Olympics and Other Festivals in Antiquity. University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.

Robinson, Rachel Sargent (ed.), Sources for the History of Greek Athletics in English Translation. Cincinnati, 1955.

Romano, David Gilman, Athletics and Mathematics in Archaic Corinth: The Origins of the Greek Stadion. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1993.

Scanlon, Thomas, Eros and Greek Athletics. Oxford University Press, 2002.

Sinn, Ulrich, Olympia: Cult, Sport, and Ancient Festival. Princeton: Markus Weiner, 2000.

Swaddling, Judith, The Ancient Olympic Games. University of Texas Press, 1999.

Young, David C., The Olympic Myth of Greek Amateur Athletics. Chicago: Ares, 1985.