The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Olympic Games (Paperback)

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• This item: The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Olympic Games by Tony Perrottet

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• The Ancient Olympics: War Minus the Shooting by Nigel Spivey

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• The Ancient Olympic Games by Judith Swaddling

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The Ancient Olympic Games by Judith Swaddling 5.0 out of 5 stars (1)  £6.99

The Ancient Olympics: War Minus the Shooting by Nigel Spivey £7.19

Arete: Greek Sports from Ancient Sources by SG Miller £15.15

Ancient Greek Athletics by SG Miller £23.75

Napoleon's Privates: 2,500 Years of History Unzipped by Tony Perrottet 2.0 out of 5 stars (1)  £9.11

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Review
"A vivid evocation of the blood and guts, not to mention sheer guts, that marked the original Olympic Games more than two thousand years ago. Tony Perrottet tells the gripping story of a festival of physical attainment during which athletes risked and sometimes lost their lives. Today's champions have it easy." --Anthony Everitt, author of Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician
"This is the book to read if you want to know what it felt like to be a spectator or a contestant at the ancient Olympic Games. Perrottet brings the scene to life in all its pageantry and squalor, with its beautiful bodies, rotting meat, flies, and broiling heat. Then, as now, the Games brought out the best and the worst of human potential, and blood, sweat, tears, sex, and money were all part of the Olympic experience, along with religion, bribery and politics.
--Mary Lefkowitz, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Wellesley College and author of Greek Gods, Human Lives: What We Can Learn from Myths
"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: amessage etched into the wall of a stadium at Nemea reads, "Look up Moschos in Philippi - he's cute."
--"The New Yorker
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"Erudite, colorful and frequently hilarious, Perrottet's The Naked Olympics is a marvelous resource for athletes, spectators, and scholars alike. I will never watch the Olympic games in quite the same way again."
--Michael Curtis Ford, author of The Ten Thousand and The Last King
"I considered myself a pretty solid researcher on ancient Greece, till Tony Perrottet's The Naked Olympics blew me out of the water. I never knew (just two among hundreds of delicious factoids) that there was no separate event for discus and javelin -- they were part of the pentathlon -- or that the chariot race ran 24 laps and took fifteen hair-raising minutes. (Not to mention the distinction between various attendant types of groupies, courtesans, and pornai.) Mr. Perrottet's vivid cinematic prose not only delivers encyclopedic intelligence of the ancient games but spirits you back in time with such immediacy that you can smell the sweat and feel the hot Greek sun. If you're gonna be glued to the modern Athens Games like I will, you must read The Naked Olympics. No other book communicates with such authenticity' where it all came from, ' back in the days when you didn't need wardrobe malfunctions to get naked."
--Steven Pressfield, author of Gates of Fire, Tides of War, and Last of the Amazons
"The Naked Olympics presents the Greeks in all their glory, brutality, and vulgarity. It is a fascinating picture and popular history at its best."
--Norman Cantor, Professor Emeritus, New York University, and author of Antiquity: The Civilization of the Ancient World
" Fans of Tony Perrottet's Pagan Holiday (aka Route 66 AD) will kill to read his follow-up The Naked Olympics. A seasoned traveller, Perrottet follows all the highways and byways of ancient Olympic lore. He really makes you feel what it was like to be at the ancient Olympics, conjuring up the sights, sounds and smells (especially the smells) of the Games with a sure and vivid touch. The Naked Olympics would be just the thing to cover your nakedness as you watch the 2004 Athens Olympics or go to visit the ancient site of Olympia - figleaves need not apply."
--Paul Cartledge, Professor of Classics, Cambridge University, and author of The Spartans
"Short of building your own time machine, reading Tony Perrottet's The Naked Olympics will be the closest you'll come to experiencing the blood, sweat, glory, and greed that were the ancient Olympic Games. And if you do somehow happen upon a time machine, you'd still be wise to trust Tony Perrottet as your guide. Steeped in scholarship, leavened by humor, and lighted by the same flames of history and love of sport that illuminated the works of Homer, Lucian, Herodotus, Thucydides, Pausanias and Dio the Golden-Tongued, Perrottet's The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games is one of those rare books that you'll be citing for years to come."
--Dan Simmons, author of Ilium
"It was the Woodstock of antiquity: a five-day spectacle of heroic performance and after-hours debauchery dedicated to the Greek gods and held every fourth year at the rural religious sanctuary of Olympia. There were no team sports in the first Olympics, no torch marathon - that staple of the modern games was the brainchild of Adolf Hitler - andthere was certainly no spandex. The original Olympics, travel writer Tony Perrottet tells us in this fun, light-hearted primer on the Greek competition that began it all, competed buck naked. Except, that is, for a generous coating of olive oil. ('Boy rubbers' were on hand to massage the oil in.) Wrestling, sprinting, boxing and chariot racing were the center-ring events of the competition, which ran uninterrupted and largely unaltered for 1,200 years, beginning in 776 B.C. Released to coincide with this summer's Athens games, The Naked Olympics is an engaging history lesson on an event that has apparently always been as much about pomp and politics as it has about superhuman strength."
---National Geographic Adventure

Synopsis
Ancient Greece was full of wonders, but none quite compared to the Olympic Games - the most dazzling event in the pagan world. Held without a break for over 1200 years, it remains one of the greatest institutions of the civilised world, yet little is known about its history, beyond the mythical. Piecing together ancient eyewitness accounts, this history is a fascinating mix of the familiar and the wildly exotic, exploring the often harsh conditions the spectators endured, the bizarre events that were held, and even Plato's changing room "pick up" lines.

First Sentence
IN THE HILLS above Olympia, I awoke with a start before dawn, feeling bleary-eyed from the Greek wine I'd drunk with some rowdy archaeologists the night before. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover

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2 Reviews 5 star:  (2) 4 star:    (0) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 5.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   8 of 8 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars deliciously entertaining history, 12 Jul 2004 By  "constanttraveler" - See all my reviews This is a wonderful introduction to the ancient Greek sporting culture -- and because athletics was so central to the way of life, it makes a fascinating intro to the whole pagan world, with great sections on the religious and social aspects of the games (boozing, prostitution, literary readings, you name it!). The Olympics festival is taken day by day, from the point of view of spectators (who had to be physically fit just to get to Olympia, walking 210 miles, say from Athens!), the athletes (who were never amateurs -- they loved money!) and the organizers (who had it very easy compared to the modern counterparts -- the ancient games were held at the same site for nearly 1200 years!) The details are wonderful -- Plato was an avid wrestler and sports fan, for example, who went to the games incognito, and slept in a barracks with a bunch of snoring strangers (he became great friends with them, as it happens). It's a funny, erudite, entertaining read -- and the illustrations are excellent, drawn from ancient vase paintings. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   5.0 out of 5 stars The Olympics were more fun then, 6 Jan 2007 By  L O'connor (richmond, surrey United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    I have never been a sports fan, so I didn't know if I would care for Tony Perrottet's book on the ancient Greek Olympics. However, I found it quite enthralling. The book is packed with fascinating information and there isn't a dull passage in it. It is interesting to learn for instance that the games themselves were only part of the Olypmic experience, religious celebrations predominated, and enormous numbers of animals were sacrificed to the gods in the course of the event. The games were often bloody and violent, and men competed naked (this may or may not be an agreeable prospect to you). Married women were not allowed to attend the games, though they had their own seperate sporting festival in honour of the goddess Hera. Singel women could attend the games, and prostitutes abounded. altogether it was a far more colourful, varied, and violent spectacle than we are accustomed to today. this is the kind of book I love, packed with fascinating information that makes me go "Gosh, I never knew that" all the time. Well worth reading. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this) Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review › See all 2 customer reviews...		Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

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