After 108 years the Olympic Games returned to its home for its second time in the Mediterranean for a record breaking Olympiad. More than 10 000 athletes competed for the ultimate in sport acknowledgement. In the ancient Olympic Games, it was a purely celebratory affair to pay homage to the god, Z...

In his introductory remarks to William Baker's essay on the early "Organized Greek Games" of the classical era, one of the editors of The Western Experience, Steven Golden, writes that sports are not merely a kind of sideshow to a nation or a society but a mainstream component of that soci...