On Thursday, October 16th 2025, Professor Jaimie Gunderson's class, Athletics of the Ancient World, hosted and competed in a mock Olympics. The Catheopolis Games (named by the students) was the culmination of their learning about Greek athletic festivals and events. Over the course of the first 8 weeks of the semester, they planned, organized, and eventually recreated a (modified) Greek athletic festival, modeled on Panhellenic festivals like the Olympic Games as well as local Greek athletic festivals like the Panathenaia. Every member of the class chose a role to embody (administrator, judge, athlete, priestess, choral singer, artist, poet, engineer, herald, city-delegation leader). Each student had to do research on their role and make a plan for how they would carry out that role during the games (e.g., athletes had to learn the proper form for participating in athletic specific athletic events; engineers made the technologies of the games like a hysplex system [starting mechanism for footraces], crowns of olive wreaths; poets had to learn the forms of victory odes by classic poets like Pindar and Bacchylides in order to write their own; etc.). The games had 4 events: short footrace (stadion); a double length foot race (diaulos); javelin; and discus. All victors were crowned at the end.
This activity helped students to explore ancient culture and athletics by embodying and experiencing a "real" athletic festival. The aim, partially, was to demonstrate the religious underpinnings of ancient athletics, so we had a procession that led to the "altar of Zeus" (the priestesses crafted a "statue"); we poured out libations and sacrificed a "boar" (threw a teddy bear into fake flames). The athletes and city-delegation leaders all brought votive offerings from the deities of their cities (Argos, Corinth, and Thebes) to Zeus. More than these actions, students took ownership over learning one role in extraordinary depth and then connected their role with the other roles of the games, coordinating as a whole. This allowed them to see (and experience firsthand) the complexity of ancient athletic festivals and all the social and political aspects involved.
