Comparing the Olympic Games of the Past to the Present: A Website Review

The two websites offered, The Penn Museum and PBS, both offer unalike perspectives on how to present information on the Greek Olympics and the Roman Empire. They also act differently as companions to the text, Traditions and Encounters by Bentley and Ziegler. Both of the websites however were interesting. I will elaborate on each websites content, helpfulness, reliability, graphics, and design below.

The Penn Museum site on the Olympic Games in Greece presents a well-organized home page that entices the viewer in. It compares, in the first few sentences you see, the similarities between the ancient Olympics and today’s Olympics. As a reader, I am already enticed to learn more because of the comparisons made, it feels relatable and relevant to me. It is organized into five sections, the games, the athletes, the women, the politics, and the commercialism. Bentley and Ziegler present information on the Olympic Games very differently. The information is a small paragraph within the books chapter on Greece; it does not go into any real detail but rather offers an idea of what the Olympic Games were. The paragraph simply states that the Olympics started in 776 BCE as a part of the PanHellenic festivals; it gives a short list of some events, and says that winners were heroes and it happened every four years. In contrast, the website has many details and small interesting tidbits of information that make the viewer want to read more. The first section, the games, focuses on where the games took place and some common misconceptions about the Olympics in regards to the marathon, nudity, and the Olympic flame. The next section, the athletes, discusses the athletes and amateur vs. professionals and prizes, and rewards. I learned that in anc...

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...l it is useless really without more information (like a textbook). I like having all three to compare to each other but ultimately decided the Penn Museum site was the better of the two sites offered. It offered more information than the Bentley and Ziegler book, which made it more interesting to learn from and to read.

Works Cited

Bentley, Jerry H., and Herbert F. Ziegler. Traditions & Encounters: a Global Perspective on the past. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2008. Print.

PBS. "The Roman Empire: in the First Century. The Roman Empire | PBS." PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. PBS, 2006. Web. 21 Mar. 2011. .

The Penn Museum. "The Real Story of the Ancient Olympic Games | Introduction." Penn Museum - Penn Museum. Penn Museum. Web. 21 Mar. 2011. .