Jocks Versus Nerds | Episode XCVII

We tend to think of the Athenians as philosophers, architects, and mathematicians. But their highest devotion was rather to sports and to music. These priorities are evident from their system of education, in which young Greek men were trained to compete in the Olympics as well as to sing and dance in the chorus. They were jocks. Think of the tragic playwright Aeschylus, who despite his literary accomplishments was remembered in his epitaph merely as a warrior at the Battle of Marathon. A man's man. So when Socrates and the sophists came around, the defenders of old-style musical and athletic education scoffed at the sickly, ugly, and weak men that philosophical and rhetorical training produced: in other words, a bunch of nerds. In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan discuss what the comic Athenian poet Aristophanes called ἡ ἀρχαία παιδεία, i.e. that old-time education of Athens.

Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149

NH episode on Homeric education: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/17406673-how-to-raise-an-achilles-episode-xci

Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780684827902

Aristophanes' Clouds: https://amzn.to/46GYaeK

Cato's De agri cultura: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Cato/De_Agricultura/A*.html

Pete Hegseth's and David Goodwin's Battle for the American Mind: https://amzn.to/4gHQEox

Jacob Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781617206047

New Humanists episode on Alcuin and Charlemagne: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/15992673-the-barren-contemplative-life-episode-lxxviii

Herodotus' Histories: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781400031146

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Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com