The Naked Olympics by Tony Perrottet

I downloaded this quite a while ago, waiting for the start of our current summer Olympic Games which started last week in Tokyo.

Frankly I was shocked with how little I knew of the ancient games.  Perrottet draws you in with detailed accounts of the games from several perspectives, including that of the athletes, the spectators, and those who ran and officiated the games (from the nearby city of Elis).

The games are quite well documented, given that they ran for more than 1,000 years and were attended by tens of thousands of fans every four years, so Perrottet had much material to pull from.  Apparently Strabo and Pausanias both wrote extensively about their visits to Olympia and the Olympic Games.

The Olympics have many traditions that continue through to this day (fame and wealth for the victors) and many that perished with the demise of the ancient games (the religious aspect of the festival, which originally superseded the athletic aspect).

Of the many surprises I learned that the renowned Olympic torch relay of the modern games did not exist in the ancient games.  It was invented by the Nazi regime when hosting the 1936 games in Berlin, one of that regime's attempts to link itself with the ancient Greeks.

Nazis aside, this book added wonderful color to my knowledge of the ancient world.  And I've added Olympia to the top of our priority list for the next trip to Greece.