Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art.

The victorious athlete of the ancient Greek games was not merely a champion but a figure worthy of bronze and marble, and the monuments raised to him tell us as much about a whole culture as about any single race.

What it's about

This study examines the statues and memorials erected to celebrate winners at the great athletic festivals of ancient Greece, and the tradition of athletic art that grew up around them. It considers how victory was recorded and honoured, how sculptors represented the trained and idealised body, and what these commemorations reveal about the place of competition in Greek civic and religious life.

Themes

At its heart lies the ancient union of body and spirit, athletics and worship, that made the games a sacred as well as a sporting occasion. The book attends to questions of artistic convention and physical ideal, to the interplay between individual glory and communal pride, and to the ways a society chose to make its heroes permanent in stone and metal.

Why it still matters

Our own age has inherited the Olympic idea and much of the Greek fascination with the athletic form, yet the origins of that inheritance are easily forgotten. Returning to the victor monuments recovers the religious and artistic seriousness with which the Greeks regarded the trained body, and enriches how we look at classical sculpture and at the games that shaped it.

Who it's for

For students of classical art and archaeology, for those interested in the history of sport and the ancient Olympics, and for readers who enjoy seeing how a culture expresses its values through the objects it leaves behind.