Ever wondered whether you’d have a better chance at winning an Olympic gold if you could fling words rather than a javelin? Or maybe you could beat down your opponents with comedic wit? If so, you may have been a strong contender at the Poetry Olympics, held in Rome around 1700.

Some 200 years before the modern revival of the Olympics as we now know it, a group of poets met in a garden in Rome to revive the ancient games in their own way. Their Giuochi Olimpici (“Olympic games” in Italian) was based not on speed or strength, but on one’s ability to string together a poem or win a debate.

The first of these new games was held in 1693 and they ran semi-regularly into the mid-18th century. The group met outdoors in places including the Farnese Gardens, a lofty site on the Palatine Hill in Rome overlooking the ruins of the Ancient Forum.

They was a mix of (mostly male) poets, writers, lawyers, clergymen, nobles, artists and musicians. All were members of the Arcadian Academy, a group named for the region of ancient Greece – Arcadia – that was regarded as the “home of poetry” in Early Modern Europe.

In 1504, the writer Jacopo Sannazaro had published a poem called Arcadia that presented an ideal vision of a world in which shepherds lived in harmony with nature.

This idea took hold of writers and artists, who came to view such an idyllic landscape as a necessity for poetic invention. They........

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