Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games [NOOK Book]

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Overview

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 ...
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Overview

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


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

The New Yorker
This lively account of the classical Olympics portrays them as “the Woodstock of antiquity,” and claims that the Games, while taken seriously, were also where Greeks gathered for a five-day debauch. A prostitute could earn a year’s wages in the course of the tournament, Thessalonian peddlers sold love potions made from horse’s sweat and minced lizard, and pentathletes competed to the accompaniment of flutes, perhaps the ancient equivalent of stadium rock. The festival offered beauty pageants and Homer-recitation contests, numerologists and fire-swallowers, and such culinary delicacies as roasted sow’s womb. Athletic events also fuelled a thriving pickup scene: a message etched into the wall of a stadium at Nemea reads, “Look up Moschos in Philippi—he’s cute.”
From The Critics
Perrottet has done his homework. The Naked Olympics is not a work of scholarship as commonly understood, studded with extensive footnoting, though it's well researched; his sources are as solid as sources come. It's also well written, which might not have been true of a more conventional study. It could have been much longer, but it didn't need to be. 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

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781588363824
  • Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
  • Publication date: 6/8/2004
  • Sold by: Random House
  • Format: eBook
  • Sales rank: 132,416
  • File size: 1 MB
  • Items ship to U.S, APO/FPO and U.S. Protectorate addresses.

Table of Contents

Map : the sanctuary of Olympia c. 150 B.C.
I For the love of Zeus 3
II The Greek sports craze 18
III Countdown 38
IV The Olympic boot camp 47
V Trials of the ancient sports fan 60
VI Scenes from the fringe 72
VII Let the games begin 80
VIII Blood on the tracks - the chariot race 92
IX The pentathlon 103
X To the victors, the feast 114
XI The sacred slaughter 124
XII No Philistines in the stadium 130
XIII To race with immortals 138
XIV Javelins into spears 149
XV The forgotten amazons 155
XVI Theater of pain - the contact sports 161
XVII Bring on the leeches ... 174
XVIII Last rites 179
App The Olympic program 193
Customer Reviews
Average Rating 4
( 7 )

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 31, 2005

    The coolest book ever!

    This book is recommended if you're interested in how the Olympic games began. It offers lots of details of how people and atheletes reacted to during the run of the games. It also gives a timeline of the games and a detailed timeline of how the games were performed in 5 days. In addition of good info, the illustrations are cool. I like it very much. Its easy to read, informative, and funny. Recommended.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 12, 2004

    wonderfully entertaining history

    This is a fascinating introduction to ancient Greek culture, not just sports (the first Olympics included much more than just athletics, so there is a wealth of information on religion, sex, boozing, sightseeing, art, literature -- and great cameos by sports fans like Plato, Sophocles, Herodotus...!) It really brought the whole event to life for me in a way that I hadn't expected -- and the illustrations are excellent, drawn from original vase paintings, to show the long jump, wrestling and something called the pankration, which was an all-in brawl where strangling was encouraged as a way of achieveing victory. A hugely entertaining read -- for anyone interested in the past.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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