Beast Shows, Executions and Lotteries: Fun Days Out in Ancient Rome

August 11, 2023

As a predominantly elite pastime, sport in the Greek world had necessarily been entwined with politics to a certain extent. Kings and aristocrats had directly competed against each other on the sports field and, as the great Panhellenic festivals grew in stature, city states had used games as a means of projecting power and influence. … More Beast Shows, Executions and Lotteries: Fun Days Out in Ancient Rome

John Pentland Mahaffy: ‘The extravagant and contradictory legend’

March 28, 2023

John Pentland Mahaffy was described as a contradictory and often extravagant legend by William Stanford and Robert McDowell in their 1971 biography. Mahaffy’s remarkable life certainly was contradictory, at times extravagant and often controversial and we cannot hope to do him justice in a mere 20 minutes. He was a polymath, a professor of ancient … More John Pentland Mahaffy: ‘The extravagant and contradictory legend’

Horses and Hooligans: Chariot Racing in the Roman Empire

March 26, 2021

When we think of Roman sport today, chances are that the first image that springs to mind is the Colosseum. Largely intact, and standing in the centre of Rome its iconic image tends to focus our attention on the gruesome and gory events that took place there, sometimes to the exclusion of what was going … More Horses and Hooligans: Chariot Racing in the Roman Empire

‘We never throw the disk or the dart’: British Historians of Ancient Sport and Their Strange Aversion to the Discus

April 2, 2020

Of all the events in the modern Olympic track and field programme nothing invokes the ancient games like the discus. The image of the ancient discus thrower, or discobolus, has become synonymous with the Olympics, having frequently appeared on the official artwork prepared to promote Olympiads since the games were revived in the nineteenth-century. The … More ‘We never throw the disk or the dart’: British Historians of Ancient Sport and Their Strange Aversion to the Discus

What’s Gerard Butler’s Favourite Football Team? Spartans!!

October 4, 2019

Gerard Butler is a high-profile fan of Celtic F.C. but I like to think that if he were asked who his favourite team from the lower reaches of Scottish football are, he would bark “Spartans!!” in reply. Outside of Scotland, few people have heard of Spartans F.C. a side which began life in the 1950s … More What’s Gerard Butler’s Favourite Football Team? Spartans!!