The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games by Tony Perrottet, Lesley Thelander (Illustrator), Lesley Thelander (Illustrator)

From the Publisher

What was it like to attend the ancient Olympic Games?

With the summer Olympics’ return to Athens, Tony Perrottet delves into the ancient world and lets the Greek Games begin again. The acclaimed author of Pagan Holiday brings attitude, erudition, and humor to the fascinating story of the original Olympic festival, tracking the event day by day to re-create the experience in all its compelling spectacle.

Using firsthand reports and little-known sources—including an actual Handbook for a Sports Coach used by the Greeks—The Naked Olympics creates a vivid picture of an extravaganza performed before as many as forty thousand people, featuring contests as timeless as the javelin throw and as exotic as the chariot race.

Peeling away the layers of myth, Perrottet lays bare the ancient sporting experience—including the round-the-clock bacchanal inside the tents of the Olympic Village, the all-male nude workouts under the statue of Eros, and history’s first corruption scandals involving athletes. Featuring sometimes scandalous cameos by sports enthusiasts Plato, Socrates, and Herodotus, The Naked Olympics offers essential insight into today’s Games and an unforgettable guide to the world’s first and most influential athletic festival.

"Just in time for the modern Olympic games to return to Greece this summer for the first time in more than a century, Tony Perrottet offers up a diverting primer on the Olympics of the ancient kind….Well researched; his sources are as solid as sources come. It's also well writen….Perhaps no book of the season will show us so briefly andentertainingly just how complete is our inheritance from the Greeks, vulgarity and all."
--The Washington Post

The Washington Post - Tracy Lee Simmons

Perrottet has done his homework. The Naked Olympics is not a work of scholarship as commonly understood, studded with extensive footnoting, though it's well researched; his sources are as solid as sources come. It's also well written, which might not have been true of a more conventional study. It could have been much longer, but it didn't need to be. Perhaps no book of the season will show us so briefly and entertainingly just how complete is our inheritance from the Greeks, vulgarity and all.

The New Yorker

This lively account of the classical Olympics portrays them as “the Woodstock of antiquity,” and claims that the Games, while taken seriously, were also where Greeks gathered for a five-day debauch. A prostitute could earn a year’s wages in the course of the tournament, Thessalonian peddlers sold love potions made from horse’s sweat and minced lizard, and pentathletes competed to the accompaniment of flutes, perhaps the ancient equivalent of stadium rock. The festival offered beauty pageants and Homer-recitation contests, numerologists and fire-swallowers, and such culinary delicacies as roasted sow’s womb. Athletic events also fuelled a thriving pickup scene: a message etched into the wall of a stadium at Nemea reads, “Look up Moschos in Philippi—he’s cute.”

Publishers Weekly

Combining a wealth of vivid details with a knack for narrative pacing and subtle humor, Perrottet (Pagan Holiday) renders a striking portrayal of the Greek Olympics and their role in the ancient world. While our modern games certainly pay homage to the Greek festival that was held uninterrupted for more than 1,200 years, the book's title refers to the most pronounced difference between the two: Ancient athletes competed in the nude, adorned only with olive oil. While Perrottet also outlines events ranging from the merciless chariot races to the pankration a sort of early predecessor of ultimate fighting in which strangulation was seen as the surest means of attaining victory he also puts the games in their heavy religious context and gives readers a strong sense of what they were like from a spectator's point of view. That they were cramped, hot and dizzyingly unsanitary apparently did little to dissuade throngs of people from the often treacherous journey to Olympia to catch glimpses of their heroes. And their experiences provided by Perrottet are what separate this book from staid history. His goal, he writes at the outset, is "to create the ancient games in their sprawling, human entirety," so readers are treated not only to a thorough picture of the games' proceedings but also to glimpses of the shameless bacchanalia, numerous (and often lascivious) entertainments and even corruption that accompanied them. It's an entertaining, edifying account that puts a human face on one of humanity's most remarkable spectacles. Agent, Elizabeth Sheinkman. (June) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Neither the title nor the subtitle does justice to Perrottet's (Pagan Holiday) engaging work. This lay reader's guide to the ancient games at Olympia presents events as they were scheduled, moving from the athletes' required preparations to the closing ceremonies and the spectators' trip home. Within this framework, he also describes the buildings, the sponsors, and what it was like for the fans in attendance. Employing numerous sources (poorly referenced, alas), Perrottet describes the 1000 years of games, how the Mediterranean world viewed the contests and the participants, and what that might say about the concomitant cultures. The illustrations reveal an idea of the importance the games played in Greek and Roman art, and Perrottet gives generous literary references, from the games' Homeric foundations to the beautiful poems written about the athletes over the centuries. One comes away with an understanding of the role played by the games in the various cultures before Christians decided the contests celebrated the wrong gods and shut them down. Recommended for all public libraries. Clay Williams, Hunter Coll., New York Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A trip back 2,500 years to the original Olympic Games: though lacking sponsorship from mighty auto manufacturers, they still reveal many congruencies with current Olympic practices. The rowdy road from the city-states of antiquity to Olympia for its quadrennial sporting competitions was traveled at least 293 times over 1,200 years. Spectacular showbiz at its nascent best, the games were well organized and profitable. The Olympic field of dreams was carefully prepared. Even when war raged on the peninsula, all belligerents observed a general military truce in Olympia. Spectators came in vast numbers. It was classical-age Woodstock, with ongoing amusements. Boozing and prostitution were open and notorious, junk food was hawked, and a great time was had at the traditional summer games. The five-day program began with opening ceremonies and hack literary declamations followed by the chariot race and the pentathlon (discus and javelin throw, long jump, running and wrestling). Then came foot races, more wrestling, boxing, free-for-all fighting, and, just for laughs, running in full body armor before the closing ceremonies and final hangovers. Contestants were customarily clad in nothing but olive oil, thus ensuring that no women snuck in to compete. Judges, expected to be above reproach, were sometimes reproached. The Olympia emergency room ministered to contestants full time, while coaches trained their compliant athletes with special exercises and fad diets. Some old traditions are recent inventions: there was no marathon back then, and the Olympic torch relay, we find, was created by the Nazis for the 1936 Berlin games. Travel-writer Perrottet's (Route 66 A.D., 2002, etc.) account of theancient competition, using sources from Pindar and Plato to Herodotus and Homer, as well as other ur-sportswriters, makes lively and entertaining reading. A timely re-creation and recreation: wonderful history for sports fans, great sportswriting for classicists, and fun for all. (30 illustrations, not seen)

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