Herculean muscle! The classicizing rhetoric of bodybuilding

Abstract

Classicists may query any definition of a Greek ideal of physical culture that regards ancient athletics as a celebration of the human body pure and simple. They see Greek athletics rather as a social institution of the ancient city-state, which fully integrated the aesthetic ideal of the beautifully formed male physique (the kalos), with the moral and political ideal of the good male citizen (the agathos)} Yet, in another respect, Schwarzenegger is right. As a product of the nineteenth century, bodybuilding?the practice of putting highly defined musculature on public display?drew its initial context and much of its validation from the ancient world.

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