Ancient creek athletics as a field of study does not suffer from overpopulation. Those who might be most interested in the subject may not have the necessary training to handle the primary evidence, and those who have it may not want to spend time on what seems a nonacademic area. Aristotle researched the history of athletics, but many modern classical scholars have shunned it. Plato spends long discussions on the place of athletics in education and society, yet modern books on such topics as ancient Greek history and Athenian democracy can be completely silent about athletics. This blind eye, however, means that the field has been fallow and is now fertile for research. The wealth of ancient written and visual sources that tell us about athletics has never been fully exploited, and that has turned out to be a challenge and a joy to people like me.
A happy development is that during the past three decades many scholars have emerged whose research into various aspects of Greek athletics has enriched our knowledge dramatically. Albanidis, Aupert, Bernardini, Bouvrie, Crowther, Decker, Ebert, Gebhard, Glass, Golden, Kefalidou, Kennell, Kyle, Larmour, Lee, McDonnell, Moretti, Morison, Neils, Pleket, Poliakoff, Raschke, Reed, Rieger, Romano, Sansome, Scanlon, Serwint, Siewert, Sinn, Spathari, Swaddling, Yalouris, Young, Ulf, Valavanis, Vanhove, Wacker, Weiler, and Welch, among others, have produced significant contributions on athletics, and most of them are still doing so.
Equally happy, but more personal, was the suggestion in 1975 from the chair of my department at the University of California at Berkeley that I devise and implement an undergraduate course on ancient athletics. The impetus for the suggestion came, at least in part, from my experience in excavating the ancient stadium at Nemea; it was felt that my firsthand knowledge of evidence that was just coming out of the ground would inspire the students. That assessment has proven to be correct. To the constant cross-fertilization and stimulus among the scholars just mentioned was added the curiosity and enthusiasm of the undergraduate students which has provided me with both a prod and a check.
A recurring problem in the classroom, however, was the lack of a text that could serve as a framework for the material, especially since I believe that students need to confront the primary evidence — to know what we know and how we know it, and to learn how to deal with fragmentary and contradictory data. My first response to this need was a collection of translations of ancient written sources which became
Arete: Greek Sports from Ancient Sources (1979). As my knowledge has grown and I have found more and more material, the collection has grown as well; it is now forthcoming in a third, much-expanded edition (2004). The evidence from that book can be helpful to readers of this one as well, and I have therefore appended cross-references to these translations (marked A followed by the selection number) to my references to ancient sources.
Equally important is the visual evidence that survives. That evidence has been made available in part through the World Wide Web, where we have created a site for students {Http:llsocrates. berkeley. edul-clstSoj). But this material, helpful as it is, does not take the place of a handbook, and the wish to bring such a book to every interested reader, including those outside the formal boundaries of the university classroom, has driven me to write the work you are now reading. The choice of illustrations has not always been easy, and a part of me would like to present a photograph of every single vase painting of athletes and every single statue base of an athlete so that the full set of evidence would be readily available. Such a project, aside from economic realities, would relieve me of the need to make choices but would be a denial of my responsibility to present the most significant works so as to save the general reader from wading through redundancies. Although every illustration presented here shows a detail that is distinctive and necessary for an understanding of the subject, there are still a great many pictures. I feel particularly fortunate that Yale University Press, alone of all the presses with which I had contact, agreed to undertake the publication of a book that would involve hundreds of illustrations, many of them in color. The support of my editors, Larisa Heimert, and of my manuscript editor, Susan Laity, in this production was critical.
Many other people have lent assistance in various ways. Chief among them is Frank Cope of the Nemea Archives at the University of California. I thank him. Others who have given important help and advice are Jenny Bouyia, Joan Mertens, Paul Royster, Athena Trakadas, and Christiane Tytgat. The anonymous reader for the Press saved me from several errors and forced me to strengthen some arguments: I am grateful for that. Bob Mechikoff read large parts of the manuscript, and Effie Miller read the whole. I especially thank her for the needed encouraging word, and for the questions that revealed problems in my exposition. Indexing was aided by Gloria Bath, Jini Kim, and Clarice Major. I also thank John Camp and John MacAloon for their encouragement, and the International Olympic Akademy and its president and rector, Nikos Filaretos and Costas Georgiades, for a chance to revive. The University of California has provided crucial support and library facilities, as has the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. For their inspiration, I thank the hundreds of students and the private donors who support the Nemea Excavations. Their faith in me over the years is humbling.
World History
