Ancient Greece and the Athletic Spirit

3 Credits

From the time of the poems of Homer to the end of the Roman Empire, exercise of the body and physical competition played an essential role in ancient Greece. Athletics was regarded as both a sphere of excellence and a form of exciting entertainment. Students will travel around Greece and study firsthand the sites, monuments, and objects that defined the ancient experience of athletics, with the aim of understanding its principal forms, the spirit and values that guided it, and its interrelationship with other aspects of society and culture.