How to Compete: An Ancient Guide to the Virtues of Sports

$18.95 at The Getty Museum.

An energetic new translation of the ancient Greek satirist Lucian’s humorous and enlightening dialogue on the pros—and cons—of athletics, fitness, and competition Sports and philosophy went hand in hand for the ancient Greeks and Romans, and philosophical conversation was a recognized part of gym life throughout Greco-Roman antiquity. Athens’s Lyceum was a gym—and reportedly a hangout of that philosophical gym rat Socrates—before it became the site of Aristotle’s school. Fittingly, that gym is the setting of…