| Summary: | "In his preface, Professor Harris points to the following groups of people, among others, who would be interested in a book on Greek athletics: those who know much about ancient Greece but nothing about its athletics, and those who know a great deal about modern athletics but nothing about ancient Greece. In treating this subject, Professor Harris is fully mindful of the interest of the general reader as well as that of the scholar, and avoids an excessively technical approach while nevertheless making use of relevant literary comment and history. His translations and notes offer some new interpretations of passages in Greek and Roman literature in which references to athletics occur, and which he believes have been imperfectly understood in the past. By covering such a wide range of sources as literature, history, archaeology and memoirs, Professor Harris is able to bring to life Greek athletes in training, the situation of runners at the stating gate, and the excitement of boxers in action. Besides providing valuable coverage on the nature of athletic events, he gives us particulars on Greek standards of performance, an area in which there is deficiency of information. Though concurring with the general point of view that through regular exercise the Greeks left an impression of a people who enjoyed a better balance of life than the members of any subsequent civilization, Professor Harris does not romanticize the Greek. He points out in fact that spectators of sporting events of antiquity were no less excitable than modern crowds and that Greek athletes were susceptible to much of the unpleasantness of professionalism. Here, as an example, he refers to boxer Melancomas, who to avoid injury and the risk of his future, had developed such ability that he was reported to be able to skip about an opponent for two days without a blow being landed on either side. Despite these excesses noted in the ancient Greek world, and certainly familiar enough to us today, Professor Harris is cognizant of the condition of sport as an element of society, and demonstrates the relationship of physical well-being and intellectual and cultural achievement in Greek society. Greek boys studying geometry with the help of figures drawn on the sand on which they had just been wrestling, were perhaps receiving an integrated understanding of a quality of life, which is not easily matched in the world today." -- Provided by publisher
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