Customer Reviews

The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(6)
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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!

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 book, as with Perrottet's other two books, never fails to both entertain and teach. If all history was as accessible as this, perhaps we would all be keener on history. In helping me learn the naked truths about the Olympics (yes the original athletes went in the buff), I'll certainly enjoy this summer's ones. A Great READ--well worth it!!! Funny and smart, light but learned.

I was surprised to learn that women could not compete at all in the ancient Olympics and that married women couldn't even attend as spectators. For some reason, unmarried girls were allowed in to the Stadium, to admire the bods of naked young men! There are lots of other fun facts in this book -- I wish there had been a bit more about the women's competitons in Sparta, but overall a great book for anyone into either sports or history this summer (and personally I think I'll be watching the Olympics on TV rather than braving Athens!) It's a fast, fun read.

Come and join the spectators at the Ancient Games. Put your bets on, pick up a rented lover, get very drunk and generally have a rip roaring time !

In this book you feel as though you are part of the (all too human) crowd that came from farflung outposts to the great gatherings. It's a delight to find an author who makes ancient history come alive and places the reader in the heart of the vulgar vibrant throng.

If you're like me you find the modern Olympics stultifyingly uninteresting, so all the more kudos to Tony Perrottet for writing a book that is brief, witty, and deceptively learned beneath its breezy exterior. Whether you have any interest in sports, ancient or modern, this book brings the past to life in a way that makes it seem at once as contemporary as our own lives and shockingly strange as well- a trick only the best popular history books manage to pull off. If you like this book, take a look at Perrottet's other book on ancient life, Pagan Holiday, which carries off the same succesful appproach with the ancient Romans.

How come the ancient Greeks had all the fun? Sports? Obviously they were there at the Olympics. But so much else too! Great banquets with sexy flute girls, philosophers like Plato pontificating in one corner, writers like Herodotus reading in the other. Wine, rich food, fire eaters and astrologers. They knew how to party in ancient Greece. Don't worry about watching the games this year in Athens, read this book instead.