Reclaiming al-Andalus: Orientalist scholarship and Spanish nationalism, 1875–1919

“mediaeval writings” hinting that the games continued into the fifth century CE, the Theodosian ban notwithstanding, and to unspecified evidence for continued “priestly activity” (206) into the same century. A church appeared in the 420s. Under Roman rule a wall, perhaps as high as 16 feet, had been erected around the Altis (for security?). In the fifth or sixth century another wall incorporating two sides of the Temple of Zeus enclosed a smaller area of uncertain function. It reused material from so many earlier buildings that by then, at the latest, both games and pagan cult had probably ceased to function. By the early ninth century silt from the flooding of local rivers had buried the site. Barringer has done a superb job of sifting through the modern literature and adding her own insights so as to produce a fresh and comprehensive account of the site-history of Olympia, with modern controversies and debates highlighted and summarized. There is much here that will be new to others who, like me, thought they had a general familiarity with the site. There are copious illustrations including 30 pages of colour plates, as well as many black-and-white images. For the paperback edition which will surely follow, in Fig. 5.16 the second letter of the third word in the Ancient Greek should read eta not epsilon. In Plate 6b the inscription translates (literally) as “The Methanioi from the Lakedaimonioi”.