The anicent Greeks at Adelphia considered the original Olympics a 'civilized mode of war without the shooting.' The aim was winning at any cost (like American politics today), as the losers were called and looked down on as failures in disgrace. He dwells on boy athletes and shows a marble statue of the naked David minus one arm and a hand.
Why did the early Greek athletes compete naked? Did it have something to do with sex or did they have perfect bodies? Why did the Romans change the games in Olympia and make it more civilized? There the Greeks raised their sporting prowess to heroic status.
The historian, Bettany Hughes, wrote that this book shows "a number of hand-picked historical characters (which) bring us face to face with ... the ruthless business of winning the games." Nigel Spivey includes a photo of the naked wrestlers in marble. This is an erotic book. The poster for the 1912 Stockholm Olympics shows a naked combatant.
There is a drawing of the Olympic Zeus in the original Parthenon, a huge six-story-tall fixture similar to the modern Athena statuary in the Nashville, Tennessee, Parthenon. He has written many books among which are PANORAMA OF THE CLASSICAL WORLD and UNDERSTANDING GREEK SCULPTURE.
