Athletics; Gymnastics; and Agon in Plato,

Author

Coleen P. Zoller ; Reid; Heather L. ; Mark Ralkowski

Year

2020

Publisher

Parnassos Press � Fonte Aretusa

Language

English

Pages

ISBN

978-1-94249-536-9

Link

Last Update

25-Mar-2026

Keywords

Philosophy ; History ; Classical Studies ; Language & Literature ; Cultural Studies

Description

Staring back from the modern academy to the world of Classical Antiquity, it is easy to forget that the ancient Academy was a gymnasium and that Plato was an athlete—a wrestler serious enough to compete at the Isthmian Games—before he became a philosopher. The athletic settings, techniques and terminology that pepper his work are routinely overlooked, lost in translation, or written off as cultural commonplaces with little or no philosophical relevance.¹ To be sure, agōn was characteristic of ancient Greek culture in general,² but there is something special about Plato’s relationship with athletics, gymnastics, and agōn that deserves...