Sports and music in Ancient Greece

Maybe you think that sports are modern but they are actually as old as human beings, and so is music.

In Ancient Greece, people, teachers and students looked for perfection at all levels. That was what they called Areté. Since Sun was considered the main 'planet' in the Universe, Greek God Helios, the God of Sun had a lot of power and gave to his sons great skills at sports and music. For that reason, students had to study sports and music among other matters, in their way to Areté.

Mixing Areté and cult for their Gods, greek people took part in the Olympics, the biggest sports meeting in the whole world. Boxing, Pancracio (a sort of wrestling), pedestrian races, horse races, throwings were part of the Olympic program.

Not only sports, but also music was useful to reach Areté, because music powered students intelligence a lot. The sentence 'Mens sana in corpore sano' explains very well which was the way of thinking of the greeks.

Do you find interesting that way of thinking?