Greek Athletics

by F. A. Wright

employed. Every district in Greece had a style of its own, and these diversities of method helped to keep active an interest in wrestling and to preserve it from the disease of professionalism, so that even when other sports had been ruined the wrestling ring still remained a useful and a popular institution.

It is this popularity in actual life that accounts for the frequency of descriptions of wrestling matches in Greek literature. Two of them at least are worth quoting; the first from the Iliad, Book XXIII, the contest between Ajax and Odysseus at the funeral games of Patroclus:

He said; and straight uprose the giant form
Of Ajax Telamon: with him uprose
Ulysses, skilled in every crafty wile.
Girt with the belt, within the ring they stood,
And each, with stalwart grasp, laid hold on each;
As stand two rafters of a lofty house,
Each propping each, by skilful architect
Designed the tempest’s fury to withstand.
Creaked their backbones beneath the tug and strain
Of those strong arms; their sweat poured down like rain;
And bloody weals of livid purple hue
Their sides and shoulders streaked, as sternly they
For victory and the well-wrought tripod strove.
Nor could Ulysses Ajax overthrow,
Nor Ajax bring Ulysses to the ground,
So stubbornly he stood; but when the Greeks
Were weary of the long protracted strife,
Thus to Ulysses mighty Ajax spoke:
‘Ulysses sage, Laertes’ godlike son,
Or lift thou me, or I will thee uplift:
The issue of our struggle rests with Jove.’
He said, and raised Ulysses from the ground;
Nor he his ancient craft remembered not,
But locked his leg around, and striking sharp
Upon the hollow of the knee, the joint
Gave way; the giant Ajax backwards fell,
Ulysses on his breast; the people saw,
And marvelled. Then in turn Ulysses strove
Ajax to lift; a little way he moved,
But failed to lift him fairly from the ground;
Yet crooked his knee, that both together fell,
And side by side, defiled with dust, they lay.
(Homer: Iliad, XXIII, 820-851,
Derby’s translation.)

The second description is separated from Homer by some twelve centuries, but it is equally vigorous. In the tenth book of The Æthiopian History of Heliodorus, the hero Theagenes, as his last trial before winning his beloved Chariclea, is matched against a stalwart Æthiopian, and in Underdowne’s quaint Elizabethan version the passage thus appears:

‘Then hee tooke dust, and cast it upon his armes and shoulders, and stretched foorth his hands, and tooke some footing, and bent his legges a little, and stouped lowe, at a word all partes of his body were ready, so that he stoode, and with great desire awayted for the advantage at the close. The Æthiopian seeing this laughed irefully, and triumphed scornefully upon him: and ranne suddenly upon him, and with his elbowe hit Theagenes in the necke, as sore as if he had stricken him with a leaver, and then drewe backe, and laughed againe at his owne foolish conceite. But Theagenes like a man alway from his cradle brought up in wrastling, and throughly instructed in Mercuries arte, thought it good to geve place at first, and take some triall of his adversaries strength, and not to withstand so rude a violence, but with arte to delude the same. Therefore he stouped lower, and made semblance as though he had beene very sorrowfull, and layde his other side to receive his other blowe. And when the Æthiopian came upon him againe, he made as though hee would have fallen flat upon his face; but as soon as the Æthiopian began to despise him, and was incouraged well, and came unadvisedly the third time, and lyfted up his arme againe to take holde of him, putting his right arme under his left side, by lifting up his hande he overthrew him in a heape, and casting himselfe under his arme pittes gryped his gorbelly with much a doo, and forced him with his heeles to fall on his knees, and then leapt on his backe, and clasping his feete about his privie parts made him stretch out his legges, wherewith he did stay up himselfe, and pulled his armes over his head behinde him, and laide his bellie flatte upon the earth.’

Boxing also, like wrestling, always retained its attractiveness, and in its ancient form offers some varieties from the modern mode. There were three stages in its history, depending largely upon the instruments of fighting used. Down to the beginning of the fourth century b.c. it was customary to wind soft strips of leather—meilichai—round the hands and arms, which served, like our light gloves, to protect the knuckles and so increased the power of attack, but did not in themselves add to the severity of the blow. Early in the fourth century the meilichai were superseded by gloves—sphairai—made of hard pieces of leather with projecting and cutting edges, real weapons of offence, like our knuckle-dusters. From these the Roman cæstus was developed, where the glove was weighted with pieces of iron and metal spikes placed in position over the knuckles.

In Greek boxing there was no ring and therefore little close fighting, there were no rounds and therefore the pace was slow, for rushing tactics marked the untrained man; lastly, there was no classification by weight; the heavier the man the greater his chance of success, so that a meat diet for boxers was almost compulsory, and boxing became practically the monopoly of the heavy-weights. As thongs or gloves were always used on the hands, wrestling was impossible, and in later times at least the defence was all-important. It seems fairly well established that body-hitting was not practised, and in the Hellenistic age a fight was usually decided by a knock-out blow on the jaw. But in the best period the Greek boxer used both his hands freely, was active on his feet, and had a considerable variety of attack. The introduction of heavy gloves vitiated the art, and boxers began to rely merely on their weight and defensive powers.

Of all these stages we have plentiful evidence both in art and literature, for boxing and its preliminaries are among the favourite subjects of vase painters, while in poetry, beside the account of the fight between Odysseus and the beggar Irus in the Odyssey and between Entellus and Dares in the Æneid, we have a really enthusiastic and expert description by Theocritus of the great struggle between Amycus and Polydeuces. The battle is as vividly described as the epic contest in the Dell between Lavengro and the Flaming Tinman, and the poet, by making it a fight between the old school of scientific activity and the new method of stolid strength, ingeniously enlists our sympathies from the first upon the side of skill against brute force.

‘Then Amycus came on furiously, making play with both hands; but Pollux smote him on the point of the chin as he charged, maddening him the more, and the giant confused the fighting, laying on with all his might, and going in with head down.... But the son of Zeus stepped now this side, now that, and hit him with both fists in turn, and checked his onslaught, for all his monstrous strength. Like a drunken man he reeled beneath the hero’s blows, and spat out the red blood, while all the princes shouted together, as they marked the ugly bruises about his mouth and jaws, and saw his eyes half closed by puffy flesh. Next Pollux began to tease him, feinting on every side, and at last, seeing that he was now quite bewildered, he got in a smashing blow just above the middle of the nose beneath the eyebrows, and laid the bone of his forehead bare. Stretched on his back the giant fell amid the flowers; but he rose again, and the fighting went on fiercely. They mauled each other hard, laying on with the weighted thongs; but the giant was always busy with his fists on the other’s chest and outside his neck, while Pollux, the invincible, kept on smashing his opponent’s face with cruel blows.’ (Theocritus: Idyll, XXII, 87-111.)