ABSTRACT
Plato’s comment (Rep. 403e-404a) on the training of guardians, the elite class of warriors and philosophers who rule his ideal state, helped to inspire philosophical and Christian tradition with the metaphor of the spiritual athlete. This athlete’s ‘greatest contest’ is for the integrity of the soul, and he or she must be always in training, askêsis, for the fight against the onslaughts of desire. The training is both for soul and for body, but it is the training of the body that has pre-empted the name of asceticism.
