Greek Athletics in the Roman World

Download or read book Greek Athletics in the Roman World written by Zahra Newby and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2005-10-07 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The enduring importance of Greek athletic training and competition during the period of the Roman Empire has been a neglected subject in past scholarship on the ancient world. This book examines the impact that Greek athletics had on the Roman world, approaching it through the plentiful surviving visual evidence, viewed against textual and epigraphic sources. It shows that the traditional picture of Roman hostility has been much exaggerated. Instead Greek athletics came to exercise a profound influence upon Roman spectacle and bathing culture. In the Greek east of the empire too, athletics continued to thrive, providing Greek cities with a crucial means of asserting their cultural identity while also accommodating Roman imperial power.