The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games

More than just the Olympics, also a fast tour of Hellenic society. Perrottet is good not just on the details of the games but also on the role of the games in the Hellenic world.

Everything you wanted to know about the sex lives of the ancient Greeks but were afraid to ask... This is a wonderfully researched, very well written book about the classical Greek athletic culture, filled with snippets that will be great around dinner tables during the Olympics -- the naked pankration must have been quite dangerous for the naked males, while the erotic potential of the all-women wrestling matches at Sparta brought droves of Greeks from all around. I learned a huge amount about the pagan world -- certainly more than just sports (althought the Greeks would never have said 'just sports...' Anyone watching the modern 'Greco-Roman' wrestling, javelin, discus, etc etc will have their fill -- I just loved the stuff about food, wine, prostitution -- the women charged different rates depending on the sexual position, esp if it involved more physical effort on their part... go ancient heteras...!)

This is a wonderful book for the summer, a surprisingly exciting page-turner that anyone can take to the beach. As both a history lover and avid gym fan, I particularly enjoyed the chapters on 'ancient Greek gymnasium culture;' there is even information on the work-out techniques they used to use! (An early form of aerobics was popular, as many exercises were done to flute music...) The book is packed with wonderful anecdotes from the pagan festival, plucked from Pausanias, Herodotus, Plato, Sophocles and other top authors from the past. It's fun to know that the ancient Games were rowdy, drunken and filled with corruption and shady dealings -- although since they competed naked, athletes would have had trouble providing corporate sponsorships for the latest olive oil merchant. It's a wonderful way to digest excellently-researched history within an amusing (often hilarious) authorial style.

A friend asked me to help him find this book in a bookstore. He had heard about it on National Public Radio. The bookstore had 8 copies buried in the Greek history section. They would probably sell more of this book if they stocked it in their sports section, especially with the Olympics coming up in a few weeks.I didn't express any interest in the book during the search and I didn't skim through the book or read the back cover. Later I discovered that my friend bought several copies. I was surprised when he insisted on giving one to me, but I'm glad he did.It's a fast, fun, entertaining book. The author starts out with an overview of the subject. In the later chapters, he goes into more vivid detail about each of the games, the rules, the locations, the cultural events, the customs, the hardships, the prices, and the celebrations. He has details about the contestants, the trainers, the judges, the spectators, the local citizens, the royalty, and the gods.I especially liked all the stories about bribery and corruption and the Greek traditions of justice.Each chapter has interesting ink sketches to characterize the stories. (The image of Zeus on page 132 should be flipped horizontally to properly show Zeus holding the scepter in his right hand.)I annoyed my friend by finishing the book before he did (which is rare), and told him a lot of the storylines at our next dinner.Then I went back to the bookstore to buy some copies for some of my friends and the local library. The facts in this book are alive and more interesting than what you'll hear on TV this summer when the 2004 Olympic Games are broadcast.Tony Perrottet made many references to the Greek literature that he based his book on. It encourages me to reread these classics that I haven't picked up since high school and college and enjoy them again.Good work, Tony!

I heard the author interviewed on NPR radio recently, and was intrigued. This book is much more than just about the Olympics -- it recreates the whole pagan world, in all its strangeness and human detail (which makes sense, as sports was only one part of that great festival -- there were literary events, artistic events, and plenty of boozing -- maybe that explains why there's more about sex in the book than athletics!). It's ideal for anyone interested in ancient history -- the past really springs to life from its pages!