Course Schedule

CLAS 240 – Ancient Athletics

This course investigates athletics, sport, and spectacle in ancient Greece and Rome. From the birth of the ancient Olympics in the early days of archaic Greece, to the blood in the arena of the Roman gladiatorial games, this course looks at the ways in which ancient athletics articulate with the societies and cultures of the Classical world.

Through this exploration of ancient Greek sport and ancient Roman spectacle, this course builds connections across the humanities, social sciences, and arts. Students analyze how ancient athletics, and the evidence for it, can be studied from various perspectives, each providing their own strengths, weaknesses, and unique insights. Students use a humanist lens to conduct close readings to look at the roll of sport within Classical literature; they employ social scientific model building to construct economic models for the Panhellenic games; and they leverage an artistic perspective to consider the messages sent by portrayals of athletes on Panathenaic vases and in Greco-Roman Sculpture.

Upon completing "Ancient Athletics", students will not only have a better understanding of sport and spectacle in ancient Greece and Rome, they will have a deeper understanding of the different perspectives used to approach ancient history and the skills to evaluate and synthesize diverse types of evidence.