In his seminal work, Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga argues persuasively that sport is a form of play. This view is widely accepted among sport philosophers today, as evidenced by the use of terms such as ‘nonserious,’ ‘autotelic,’ and ‘gratuitous’ to describe the subject of our study. At the same time this play-paradigm seems at odds with the modern world, which takes sports very seriously, puts them in the service of deliberate ends, and views them (or competition at least) as essential for human thriving. Indeed our modern use of sport seems to better resemble ancient Greece, where athletic contest (agōn) served specific political and educational goals. Huizinga claims that the ancient Hellenes simply became unaware of their contests’ autotelic character (5: 30–31); my own concern is that we moderns are becoming unaware of–or indifferent to–sport’s contemporary ends. 1 Insofar as we still value the social and educational potential of sport in the modern world, we can benefit from a study of its corresponding function in the ancient world. What my own study of these phenomena reveals is that sport’s social and educational benefits derive not from its playful character, but from its philosophical origins as a knowledge-seeking activity. Like philosophy, democracy, and other forms of competitive truth seeking that emerged in ancient Greece, athletic contests display the characteristics of authentic questioning, impartial testing, and public demonstration of results; features that endure in such modern practices as courtroom trials and scientific exper iments. Hellenic sport was born with these knowledge-seeking characteristics, not least because it was conceived in response to an emerging philosophical recognition of the fallibility of humanity and its traditional hierarchies. By setting up rational, impartial, and publicly observed selection methods, both athletics and philosophical inquiry managed to subvert worldly power and authority, thereby fostering agreement among diverse communities without suppressing individuality. Later sport and philosophy were adapted to the educational function of cultivating individual virtue (aretē) or, in modern parlance, moral character. As we continue to pursue social and educational goals through sport, it is important to understand how these functions were related in ancient times to sport’s philosophical characteristics. Indeed we may better put sport in the service of humanity today, by viewing it not merely as playful, but also as philosophical; as an expression of what Aristotle called the natural and universal human desire to learn and know (1: 980a).