Classics Day VI was able to be carried out this year due to generous grants, awards, and donations such as a Watkins Award from ACL; an Ancient Worlds, Modern Communities grant from Society for Classical Studies; a Bridge Initiative Grant from the Classical Assocaiation of the Middle West and South Committee for the Promotion of Latin and Greek; and donations for the event given in memory of longtime Monmouth Classics professor and Galesburg High School Latin teacher Ginny Hellenga. Past years’ support, which has allowed us to buy many of the materials that we use year after year, has come as well from ACL, SCS, and CAMWS, and also from the Illinois Classical Conference, Midwest Bank of Western Illinois, Security Savings Bank, from Monmouth College, and from donors to the event through a highlighted giving opportunity at Monmouth College in 2018.
Those interested in looking more into how I have carried out Classics Days, and/or how I teach students to carry out ancient athletic events physically, can look at several publications and other resources I have put together, and even learn hands-on Classics techniques directly in the summer of 2024. I lay out the original development of Classics Day at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and many of the events that others and I assembled for it over its first four years, in Simmons (2018). Instructions on how to carry out ancient Olympic events, with video illustration, can be found in two webinars I created for the REDI resource page: Simmons (2023a and 2023b). A print explanation of how to carry out the ancient Olympic pentathlon, with illustrative pictures and abundant primary source citation, will be available in Classical Outlook in late June: Simmons (forthcoming). I will also be doing a workshop at the 2024 Summer Institute in Tucson on physically carrying out the ancient Olympics, titled “Ancient Olympics Now: Hands-On Olympic Events to Capitalize on the 2024 Olympics in Classes and Outreach Activities,” and Nathalie Roy (Glasgow Middle School, Baton Rouge, LA) and I will be offering an NEH Summer Institute in summer 2024 at Monmouth College (Monmouth, IL) called “The Ancient Olympics and Daily Life in Ancient Olympia: A Hands-On History,” for which applications are possible through March 5, 2024, at this link.