Cloanthus, too, fought some good battles; and from him the noble Roman family of the Cluentii boasted their descent. In “Æneid,” v. 122, he wins the rowing match.
Of Gyges’ match we merely learn that Turnus also slew him; and of Gyas, that he greatly distinguished himself by his prowess in the funeral games of Anchises in Sicily. As to the “pious” Æneas himself, another son of Venus, by Anchises, he was a fighting man all his days. First, in the Trojan war, where he engaged in combat with Diomed and with Achilles himself, and afterwards, on his various voyagings in Sicily, Africa, and Italy, where he fought for a wife and a kingdom, and won both by killing his rival Turnus, marrying Lavinia, and succeeding his father-in-law, Latinus. Despite his “piety” in carrying off his old father Anchises from the flames of Troy, and giving him such a grand funeral, Æneas seems to have been a filibustering sort of vagrant; and after getting rid of poor Turnus, not without suspicions of foul play, he was drowned in crossing a river in Etruria, which territory he had invaded on a marauding expedition. We cannot say much against him on the score of “cruelty and desertion” in the matter of Queen Dido, seeing that chronology proves that the Carthaginian Queen was not born until about three hundred years after the fall of Troy, and therefore the whole story is the pure fabrication of the Roman poets, Virgil and Ovid. This, however, is by the way, so we will proceed to give a short account of the implements used in ancient boxing.
These were the Cæstus, a formidable gauntlet composed of thongs of raw hide, with the woollen glove covering the hand with its vellus or fringe; and the Amphotides, a kind of helmet or defensive armour for the head. Four principal forms of the cæstus are known by extant representations. The first is the most tremendous, and was found in bronze at Herculaneum. The original hand is somewhat above the natural size, and appears to have been part of the statue of some armed gladiator. It is formed of several thicknesses of raw hide strongly fastened together, and cut into a circular form. These have holes to admit the four fingers, the thumb being closed on the outer edge to secure the hold, while the whole is bound by thongs round the wrist and forearm, with its inner side on the palm of the hand and its outer edge projecting in front of the knuckles. Our Yankee friends have a small imitation in their modern “knuckle-dusters.” A glove of thick worsted was worn beneath the gauntlet, ending in a fringe or bunch of wool, called vellus. Lactantius says: “Pentedactylos laneos sub cæstibus habent.” The figure given in the Abbé St. Non’s, “Voyage Pittoresque de Naples et de Sicile,” is here copied.
Fig. 1.—Cæstus.
The second form of cæstus, though less deadly at first aspect, is capable of administering the most fatal blows. This sort is represented in a bronze group, engraved in the first volume of the “Bronzi del Museo Kircheriano,” which represents the battle between Amycus and Pollux, already noticed.
Fig. 2.
This (or the fourth form of glove) would also seem to have been that offered by Entellus to Dares in the fifth book of the Æneid, though the “knobs of brass,” “blunt points of iron,” “plummets of lead,” and other superfluities of barbarity, are not visible. Virgil’s description of the cæstus being the best, we here quote it:—
“He (Entellus) threw