Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals

by E. Norman Gardiner

Fig. 147. Panathenaic amphora. Louvre, F. 278.

Fig. 148. Panathenaic amphora, in British Museum, B. 612. Fourth century.

The view stated in the last paragraph is at variance with that put forward by Professor Mahaffy and supported with some modification by Mr. Frost. These writers maintain that the straight hit from the shoulder was practically unknown to the Greek boxer. They argue partly from the description of the fights in Theocritus and Vergil, which will be discussed later; but their main argument is that the wounds received in Greek boxing were chiefly on the side of the head and on the ear, and that the Greek boxer was known throughout all Greek history as “a man with the crushed ear.” The latter statement is absolutely erroneous. The earliest reference to the crushed ear is in Plato, who uses the term to describe those who aped Spartan manners and practised fighting like the Spartans.[^[723]] Now it is well known that scientific boxing was unknown at Sparta: fighting there was in plenty with bare fists and no regulations; but science in boxing and also in wrestling was despised by the Spartans. Moreover, it seems that the crushed ear was quite as much the sign of the pankratiast or even of the wrestler;[^[724]] it appears to have been very similar to the swollen ear which is so common among Rugby football players. When we come to consider the literary evidence we shall find that the crushed ear plays but little part; eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, chin, come in for far more punishment than the ears, and the vase paintings agree with the literary evidence. Bleeding at the nose, cuts on the cheek, blows on the chin are freely depicted; but I do not know a single vase which represents the crushed ear. So far as the crushed ear is concerned, the charge against the Greek boxer of neglecting straight hitting breaks down completely.

Nor does it seem to me at all easy to substantiate the statement also made that the Greeks had no knowledge of foot-work, and that having taken up their position they stood practically still. Naturally the vases throw little light on such a point; but they do prove undoubtedly that the Greeks understood how to give force to a blow by lunging, and inasmuch as the lunge is always with the left foot, it seems probable that they understood the importance of not changing feet. Further, in all the descriptions of fights the value of quick foot-work is clearly recognised. This appears even in late writers like Statius.[^[725]] His victor Alcidamas defeats his heavier opponent Capaneus by his greater activity. Capaneus drives him round the ring but Alcidamas “avoids a thousand deaths which flit around his temples by quick movement and by the help of his feet.” When we find the value of foot-work recognised in a writer like Statius, whose ideas of boxing are vitiated by the brutalities of the Roman caestus, we are surely justified in assuming that the Greeks of a better period were at least equally skilful. Still more convincing is the evidence of Philostratus. “I do not approve,” he says, “of men with big calves in any branch of athletics, and especially in boxing. They are slow in advancing, and easily caught by an opponent’s advance.”[^[726]] Philostratus, it will be remembered, though writing in the time of the Empire, aims at reviving the practice of the old Greek athletes, and much of his material is derived from earlier treatises on athletics. In describing the ideal boxer he lays particular stress on activity and suppleness. So Bacchylides describes the youthful Argeius of Ceos,[^[727]] a victor in the boys’ boxing at the Isthmia, as “stout of hand, with the spirit of a lion and light of foot.”

Such appear to be the general characteristics of the Greek boxer as depicted on the vases. He used both hands freely, was active on his feet, and had a considerable variety of attack. His style resembled the freer style of American boxing which has recently become popular rather than the somewhat conventional almost one-handed style which so long prevailed in England. From later literature we learn that he was an adept at dodging, “ducking,” and “slipping.” The defect of his style appears to me to be the stiff, high guard with the left hand, which is best explained on the supposition that he hit only at the head. This guard is stiffer, and the arm straighter on the red-figured vases than on the earlier black-figured vases, and this is still more the case on the Panathenaic vases of the fourth century (Figs. [135], [148]). The use of the left hand for guarding cramped the attack and encouraged the use of downward chopping blows, of which there are some traces on the vases. This is probably the reason why the forearm was protected by leather thongs. The introduction of the hard, cutting rims round the hand at the close of the fifth century rendered the style of fighting still more artificial, and necessitated still further protection for the forearm. How difficult it must have been to get within the guard of a big boxer with a long reach armed with these weapons will be realised from the figure on the Panathenaic vase in Fig. [135]. Thus a thoroughly vicious style of boxing sprang up which accentuated the natural advantages of the heavy-weight boxer. Instead of relying on activity and skill he relied more and more on his stiff defence. He even practised holding up his arm for long periods in order to weary his opponent, and the absurdity of his style reaches its climax in the highly rhetorical tales of Dion Chrysostom. Describing Melancomas, the favourite of the emperor Titus, he says that he could keep up his guard for two whole days and so forced his opponents to yield not merely before he had been struck himself but even before he had struck them.[^[728]] The story is sufficiently remarkable; but, nothing daunted, Eusebius succeeds in improving upon it and asserts that Melancomas by these tactics “killed all his opponents,” an illustration of the growth of sporting stories which may well make us sceptical of the evidence of late commentators. Dion, however, is writing of a man who was his own contemporary, and, making allowance for rhetorical exaggeration, we may therefore safely accept his evidence as to the style of boxing in vogue at his time. Such a defence explains the employment of those slogging, downward blows which figure so largely in the descriptions of late Greek and Latin poets. In these descriptions we can trace the decay of Greek boxing; but the faults which were developed in Hellenistic and Roman times should not be ascribed to the boxers of the fifth century. The changes in the boxing thongs altered the whole character of the boxing.

Incomparably the best description of a fight which we possess is that between Amycus and Polydeuces in the 22nd Idyll of Theocritus. It illustrates the changes in Greek boxing; for it is a fight between a boxer of the old heroic school who relies on science and activity, and the coarse braggart prize-fighter with whom the poet was perhaps familiar in Alexandria. We see the bully sitting in the sunshine beside the spring, the muscles on his brawny arms standing out like rounded rocks, just as they do in the Farnese Heracles. His ears are bruised and crushed from many a fight. There he sits sulkily guarding the spring, and when Polydeuces approaches and with courtly grace craves hospitality he challenges him to battle. The boxing thongs are all ready to hand, not soft thongs but hard (στερεοῖς). “Then,” says the poet, “they made their hands strong with cords of ox-hide, and wound long thongs about their arms.” Here we have the σφαῖραι depicted on the Ficoroni cista in a picture of this very fight. A keen struggle ensued for position—which should have the sun’s rays on his back—and the more active Polydeuces naturally outwitted his clumsy opponent. Writers on athletics are wont to dwell on this incident as typical of boxing at Olympia, and to expatiate on the glare of the sun in the eyes, forgetful of the fact that at midday, the hour at which it seems boxing took place, the rays of the summer sun at Olympia must be too nearly vertical to make much difference. Amycus, exasperated at the advantage gained, made a wild rush at Polydeuces, attacking with both hands, but was promptly stopped by a blow on the chin. Again, he rushed in head down, and for a time the Greeks were afraid that he would crush Polydeuces by sheer weight in the narrow space; but each time Polydeuces stopped his rushes with blows right and left on mouth and jaws, till his eyes were swollen and he could hardly see, and finally knocked him down with a blow on the bridge of the nose. He managed, however, to pick himself up and the fight began again; but his blows were short and wild, falling without effect on the chest, or outside the neck, while Polydeuces kept smashing his face with cruel blows. At last in desperation he seized Polydeuces’ left hand with his left and tried to knock him out with a swinging right-hander, “driving a huge fist up from his right haunch.” It is an admirable description of a knock-out blow, but he was too slow; the very act of seizing his opponent’s hand, an obvious illegality, spoilt his effort. Polydeuces slipped his head aside and with his right struck him on the temple “putting his shoulder into the blow,” and he followed up this advantage by a left-hander on the mouth, “so that his teeth rattled.” After this he continued to punish his face with quickly repeated blows “till Amycus sank fainting on the ground, and begged for mercy.”

In this masterly description Theocritus shows an intimate knowledge of boxing. It is a fight between science and brute strength. Amycus has the advantage of height and weight, but he has no science and blunders hopelessly. He rushes in head down, hits wildly with both hands, neglects his guard, and finally commits a glaring breach of the rules of boxing by seizing his opponent’s hand. Polydeuces acts on the defensive, husbanding his strength by allowing the bully to exhaust himself, while he avoids his rushes by dodging, or ducking, or stops them by well-aimed blows on the face. Did he stop his rushes by swinging hits only, or by straight hitting from the shoulder? The description appears to me conclusive proof that even in the third century some of the Greeks understood the art of hitting straight. I do not dwell on the evidence of the words ἐμέεμπεσεν ὠμῷ, though I confess that the only interpretation which is to me intelligible, is the ordinary one “he put his shoulder into the blow.” It is rather the whole character of the fight which implies straight hitting. Polydeuces is the smaller man, and time after time he stops the other’s rushes with blows which fall on chin, mouth, nose, eyes, forehead, in fact everywhere except on the ears or side of the heads, the parts which should have suffered most according to the argument of those who maintain that the Greeks did not hit from the shoulder. As for the faults of Amycus, Theocritus is quite aware that he is no trained boxer, and it is hardly fair to judge the Greek boxer by him.

The account of this same fight in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius[^[729]] is somewhat similar, and though infinitely inferior as a whole presents certain details of interest. The himantes are carefully described; they are manufactured by Amycus himself; “rough and dry with hard ridges round them” like the gloves worn by the boxer of the Terme. Amycus makes the fighting; Polydeuces retreats and dodges his rushes, but at last he stands his ground and a fight ensues so fast and furious that both men, utterly exhausted, pause and separate by mutual consent. After a moment they spring at one another again, and Amycus, rising on tiptoe to his full height, aims a swinging downward blow at Polydeuces “like one that slays an ox.” Polydeuces slips aside, and, before his opponent has time to recover his balance or his guard, steps past him and deals him a swinging blow above the ear which not only knocks him out but kills him. The conclusion of the fight is an obvious imitation of Homer. But the poet has introduced a feature of his own which finds no place in Homer, when he describes Amycus as rising on tiptoe. The detail is copied by Vergil who probably knew no better. But Apollonius has more knowlege of athletics; it is the action not of a boxer but of “one that slays an ox.” And yet, in spite of this, we find it stated by modern writers, on the authority of these two poets, that the boxer habitually rose on tiptoe to increase the weight of his blow! If we would learn the principles of Greek boxing it must be from the practice not of Amycus but of Polydeuces.

The boxing match between Entellus and Dares in the fifth Aeneid need not detain us long. Its character is obvious from the first in the description of the caestus. Entellus throws into the ring the caestus of the hero Eryx; they are made of seven ox-hides stiff with iron and lead, and still stained with blood and brains, and at their sight Dares and all the host tremble. “What!” cries Entellus, “do these frighten you? What if you had seen the weapons of Hercules?” Finally by the advice of Anchises these murderous weapons are rejected, but the point of interest in this scene is that the poet’s Roman ideas have led him to reverse the whole history of boxing. In reality the heavy caestus had developed slowly from the simple leather thongs. But to the Roman murder and bloodshed were the essence of a fight. And therefore as the heroes of the past excelled in physique the men of the present, they must have excelled them also in the bloodiness of their fights and the murderous brutality of their weapons. The fight itself is in accordance with this beginning.