Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World (Ancient Cultures)

The second edition of Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World updates Donald G. Kyle’s award-winning introduction to this topic, covering the Ancient Near East up to the late Roman Empire.

• Challenges traditional scholarship on sport and spectacle in the Ancient World and debunks claims that there were no sports before the ancient Greeks

• Explores the cultural exchange of Greek sport and Roman spectacle and how each culture responded to the other’s entertainment

• Features a new chapter on sport and spectacle during the Late Roman Empire, including Christian opposition to pagan games and the Roman response

• Covers topics including violence, professionalism in sport, class, gender and eroticism, and the relationship of spectacle to political structures

Donald G. Kyle is Professor, former Chair of History, and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is the author of Athletics in Ancient Athens (1987), Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (1998), Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World (Wiley-Blackwell 2007); and co-editor (with Paul Christesen) of A Companion to Sport and Spectacle in Greek and Roman Antiquity (Wiley-Blackwell 2014).