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Elite British education in the second half of the nineteenth century was often dominated by the Classics inside the classroom and a culture of manly athleticism outside. Given this combination, it was natural that, some scholars turned their attention to sport in the ancient world. By marrying accounts from ancient literature with the evidence emerging from new archaeological discoveries, figures such as Percy Gardner and E. Norman Gardiner were able to create detailed and compelling pictures of ancient sport which were accepted as definitive for much of the following century. The world they described was surprisingly familiar, as were the concerns they flagged up about contemporary sport based on the alleged pitfalls of antiquity. In recent decades their work has been extensively reassessed in terms of the accuracy of their analysis of original Greek and Roman sources and the claims they concerning the Hellenic roots of athletic amateurism. This paper analyses the environment and connections of British historians of ancient sport from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century to understand how their perceptions of the past were shaped by the concerns of their present, leading them to effectively 'write themselves' into their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Strength Coaching in America" by Jason Shurley, Jan Todd, and Terry Todd explores the historical, social, and scientific factors that led to the growth of strength coaching. The book traces the development of strength coaching from Ancient Greece to the present day, revealing that the modern obsession with the athlete's body and how to improve it is a relatively recent phenomenon. The authors discuss the pervasive belief in the 19th century that strength coaching could harm athletes' performance, which hindered the growth of strength training. However, pioneers like Joe Weider and Bob Hoffman promoted weight training and helped popularize it through magazines and publications. The book also highlights the establishment of the National Strength Coaches' Association in 1978, which provided accreditation and respectability to strength coaches. Overall, "Strength Coaching in America" sheds light on the history and significance of strength coaching in sports. [Extracted from the article]

Concerning the evolution of "mode of thought", the query about the "nature of sport" in contemporary China was made. It suggests the controversy between the "being" and "existence" of sport among 46 " the Chinese scholars, as well as the "trade-off" between analysis" and "existence mode of thought in contemporary philosophy of sport. The conclusions were drawn that the certain mode based on some specific philosophical theory presented to be the process evolving from "western logic" to "Chinese wisdom". The Correspondence Theory in classical era, Anglo American Analytical Philosophy, and European continental philosophy influenced the concept of competitiveness in ancient Greece and contemporary mode of thought in the philosophy of sport, showing the analysis modes of "Analytic-Pragmatic", "Sociology-History", and "Phenomenology-Existentialism". Along with the decline of explanatory power and appearance of dilemma of concept in western logic, Chinese philosophy of sport, with its theoretical resource from western philosophy, is already taking shape in a more inclusive and developing "sophie mode of thought, characteristic of agreement between knowledge and action", which promotes the reconsideration on the relationship between sport science and philosophy, as well as the establishment of new concept and theory system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay is about ancient Greek horse and chariot races. The architecture of Greek hippodromes was very rudimentary, but—at least at Olympia—the organizers put much effort in constructing a starting mechanism which was meant to guarantee all starters equal chances for winning. Concerning the prizes, symbolic prizes were common as well as valuable prizes. In ancient Greece, it was the owner of the horses who counted as the participant. The jockeys' and charioteers' strength and skill obviously had a strong impact on the outcome of the race, but they are very rarely mentioned in the ancient texts. Equestrian victors had two means of representation at their disposal: the erection of agonistic victor monuments or the commission of epinikia. It is equally true for both forms of representation that the way the victor was showcased was not up to the artistic license of the poets, but was controlled by the victors. Victory poetry was poetry on commission for which the victors reached deeply into their pockets. The poems dealt with important political implications. This is why epinikia and victory monuments constitute amazing pieces of evidence for the ancient historian, since they allow him to reconstruct the protagonist's view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the philosophy of sports as founded and practiced by classical Greek civilization and their implications for the philosophy of contemporary sports. Sports are presented as a part of the overall Greek desire for knowledge, which resulted in philosophers such as Aristotle exploring natural science as part of their work. The desire to learn from competition was the basis of Greek games and sports, not play, which philosopher Johan Huizinga has written is the true basis of sports. Contemporary sports philosophy is said to have ignored the social and educational roles played by sports to its own detriment.

In the present essay we examine whether and how sports affected the emergence of democracy as a political phenomenon in Classical Greece. To achieve this we introduce in a model the concept of macroculture as a complex of mutually supporting values, norms and beliefs in various areas of human activity, like athletics, war, politics, etc. Then, we proceed through a historical review on the history of sports in Ancient Greece and we investigate various aspects of how and under which terms athletics performed during classical Greece, predominantly, in ancient Athens. We found that the values that gradually emerged through sports during an extended period that goes back as far as the Bronze Age times, led to the development of an environment of mutually supporting norms and values such as equality and trust, that by being correlated and coordinated each other, led to the creation of new values and norms, as the theory of macroculture proposes. We also found that these new values were 'diffused' from athletics to the field of politics and played a key role to the emergence of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Panem at Circenses" was the policy applied by the Greek military junta between 1967 and 1973. The bread and circuses policy was a well-known recipe with its roots in the Roman era. It included sport displays, rewarding athletes, formal participation of "the Aprilians" (the members of Greek military junta) in sport games, along with the celebration of anniversaries of "The 21st of April 1967 Revolution" all over Greece, which included gymnastic exhibitions. It must be pointed out that the April 21 regime shared a number of similarities with Metaxas's regime of August 4. Because the "Aprilians" were advocates of Metaxas's "NO" response, they tried to imitate him and utilize cultural exhibitions, especially sports, as means of promoting the regime's propaganda to acquire a social face. Both regimes utilized mass celebrations based on traditions of ancient Greece, the Byzantine period and Greek-Orthodox culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an introduction to the August 2010 issue, highlighting its central focus on the sports of Greece and its socio-political history as well as previewing featured articles by Gonda Van Steen, Antonis Glytzouris, and Eleni Fournaraki.

This study investigates the evolution of the historiography of Greek sport from the foundation of the Greek state (1830) until 1982 and its links with Greek national history, which also took shape primarily during the nineteenth century. The gradual 'nationalisation' of sport as an element of Greek national character since antiquity corresponded to changes in perceptions of the national past reflected in historiography. The ancient Olympic Games, Byzantine contests and exercises, the competitions of the klephts and armatoloi (militia soldiers) during the Ottoman rule and the modern revival of the Olympic Games were all successively integrated in a national history of sport confirming national continuity and unity. However this particular genre of national historiography did not gain academic recognition until recently. The authors of histories of physical exercise and sport were amateurs or physical education instructors and could not ensure to their work the authority of a separate discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature about sport is a literary variety that finds its representative-expressive medium in the word, covering the practice of sports in all periods of history by means of epic, poetry and drama as well as their respective genres. Studies in the subject indicate the existence of a long tradition of literary works about sports. The following paper is the first one in a series of articles on the history of sports in literature. It focuses on the literary period extending from antiquity to Classical Greece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the role of athletic trainers in the sports and games of classical Greece. Citations from Greek literature and drama are used to establish that athletic training was an established craft in Greece, with most employed by the gymnasiums and schools which taught boys and young men skills in sports such as wrestling and javelin throwing. The athletic trainer in classical Greece provided both medical care to athletes and performed many of the functions of a modern coach. They operated within the educational systems of Greek cities and towns. Their social and economic status is discussed.

This essay discusses the intersections of sport (athletes, agonistic festivals) and Greek ethnicity, religion, politics and warfare in Herodotus' Histories. Herodotus makes occasional but significant use of sport to characterize peoples and individuals. Passages concerning Egypt (the Elean embassy), Lydia (Croesus) and Persia (Xerxes being told that Greeks compete at Olympia 'for arete, not material gain'), help define 'Greekness' or Hellenic culture. Herodotus also mentions several athletes but primarily because of their military or political activities. The study uses Herodotus on sport to contrast particularism and pan-Hellenism in the Persian War, especially concerning presentations of agonistic festivals (Olympics, Karneia, Hyakinthia) as excuses for delayed or inadequate involvement in defensive efforts in 490 and 480-79. Herodotus (8. 144) has Athens invoke cultural pan-Hellenism, but reactions to the Persian threat suggest more particularism than pan-Hellenism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The popular noations that the ancient Greek athlete was more 'well rounded' than ours is wholly false, nor was there every any Greek ideal to achieve or pursue both intellectual and bodily excellence. Earlier Greeks judged excellence in either category invaluable, but an increasiingly vocal minority of intellectuals, apparently jealous of the athletes' great rewards, denigrated athletes and bodily achievement. Mind, they said, was superior to body. By later antiquity, some authors even asserted that athletes were as stupid as animals, and their achievements no greater. Christianity welcomed the philosophers' depreciation of the body, and mediaeval ascetism carried it to the extremes that de Coubertin and others called "hatred of the flesh." The latter part of the paper explains how the rebirth of athletics dealt with these matters, and how false notions of the Greeks entered popular belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an epilogue to the August 2010 issue, reviewing its central focus on the sports of Greece and its socio-political history and offering conclusions.