the sign Gemini in our zodiac representing this pair of “pugs.” As one of the unsuccessful competitors with Pollux, we may here mention Amycus. He was a son of Neptune, by Melia, and was king of the Bebryces. When the Argonauts touched at his port, on their voyage to Colchis, he received them with much hospitality. Amycus was renowned for his skill with the cæstus, and he kept up a standing challenge to all strangers for a trial of skill. Pollux accepted his challenge; but we learn from Apollonius that Amycus did not fight fair, and tried by a trick to beat Pollux, whereupon that “out-and-outer” killed him, pour encourager les autres, we presume.[[2]] There were two other pugilists of the same name among the “school” taken by Æneas into Italy as we shall presently see.
Eryx, also, figures among the heaven-descended pugilists. He was the son of Venus, by Butes, a descendant of Amycus, and very skilful in the use of the cæstus. He, too, kept up a standing challenge to all comers, and so came to grief. For Hercules, who “barred neither weight, country, nor colour,” coming that way, took up the gauntlet, and knocked poor Eryx clean out of time; so they buried him on a hill where he had, like a pious son, built a beautiful temple in honour of his rather too easy mamma. It is but fair, however, in this instance, to state that there is another version of the parentage of Eryx, not quite so lofty, but, to our poor thinking, quite as creditable. It runs thus:—Butes, being on a Mediterranean voyage, touched at the three-cornered island of Sicily (Trinacria), and there, sailor fashion, was hooked by one Lycaste, a beautiful harlot, who was called by the islanders “Venus.” She was the mother of Eryx, and so he was called the son of Venus. (See Virgil, Æneid, b. v., l. 372.) However this may be, the temple of Eryx and the “Erycinian Venus” were most renowned, and Diodorus, the Sicilian, tells us that the Carthaginians revered Venus Erycina as much as the Sicilians themselves, identifying her with the Phœnician Astarte. So much for the genealogy of the fourth boxer.
Antæus here claims a place. We have had a couple from heaven (by Jupiter), and one from the sea (by Neptune), our next shall be from earth and ocean combined. Antæus, though principally renowned as a wrestler, is represented with the cæstus. He was the son of Terra, by Neptune; or, as the stud-book would put it, by Neptune out of Terra. He was certainly dreadfully given to “bounce,” for he threatened to erect a temple to his father with the skulls of his conquered antagonists; but he planned his house before he had procured the materials. The story runs, that whenever he kissed his “mother earth” she renewed his strength, from which we may fairly infer that he was an adept in the art of “getting down,” like many of our modern pugilists. Hercules, however, found out the dodge by which the artful Antæus got “second wind” and renewed strength. He accordingly put on “the squeeze,” and giving him a cross-lift, held him off the ground till he expired, which we take to have been foul play on the part of his Herculean godship.[[3]] There was another Antæus, a friend of Turnus, killed by Æneas in the Latin wars.
Of the Homeric boxers, Epeus and Euryalus are the most renowned. Epeus was king of the Epei, a people of the Peloponnesus; he was son of Endymion, and brother to Pæon and Æolus. As his papa was the paramour of the goddess of chastity, Diana, the family may be said to have moved in high society. The story of Endymion and the goddess of the moon has been a favourite with poets. Epeus was a “big one,” and, like others of Homer’s heroes, a bit of a bully.
In the twenty-third book of the Iliad we find the father of poetry places the games at the funeral of Patroclus in this order:—1, The chariot race; 2, the cæstus fight; 3, the wrestling; 4, the foot race. As it is with the second of these only that Epeus and Euryalus are concerned, we shall confine ourselves to the Homeric description.
“The prizes next are ordered to the field,
For the bold champions who the cæstus wield;
A stately mule, as yet by toil unbroke,
Of six years’ age, unconscious of the yoke,
Is to the circus led and firmly bound: