When compared with the monuments described, the similarity of details on the design of the Vapheio cups ornamented in repoussé, the “most splendid specimens known of the work of the Minoan goldsmith,”[16] never again equalled until the Italian Renaissance, makes it more than possible that here again we have scenes of bull-grappling rather than of bull-hunting. On one cup is represented a quiet pastoral scene—a man tying the legs of a bull with a rope, while two other bulls stand near, amicably licking one another, and a third is quietly grazing. On the other, however, are represented scenes of a very different character. In the centre is a furious bull entangled in a net, which is fastened to a tree; to the left a figure, doubtless a woman, is holding on to a bull’s head, while a man has fallen on his head beside the animal, both man and woman being dressed in the Cretan fashion. A third bull rushes furiously by to the right. Most commentators have seen bull-hunting scenes on both these cups. Thus, on the first cup were represented three scenes in the drama of trapping a bull by means of a tame decoy cow; to the right the bull is starting to go to the rendezvous, while in the center the bull stands by the cow’s side and to the left he is finally trapped and tied.[17] On the other cup the furious animal at the left was supposed to have thrown one hunter and to have caught another on its horns. But Mosso’s interpretation of this design seems to be the right one.[18] The two persons struggling with the bull have no lasso and so can hardly be hunters; besides, if the bull had impaled a hunter with its horns, the hunter would have been represented with his head up and not down. The figure is, however, uninjured and holds on with its knee bent over one horn and its shoulder against the other; it is merely, therefore, intended for a woman acrobat. The net shown in the centre was never used for hunting wild bulls; more probably it was intended as an obstacle in racing. The fallen man has been standing on the netted bull, which, with the gymnast on its back, was expected to have leaped over the net, but has not succeeded; consequently, the acrobat has been tumbled over the bull’s head.
This ancient Cretan sport seems to have been similar to that known in Thessaly and elsewhere in historical days as τὰ ταυροκαθάψια.[19] A survival of it still persists to our day in certain parts of Italy, as, e. g., in the province of Viterbo.[20]
Acrobatic feats of various sorts were attractive to the later Greeks from the time of Homer down. We have already mentioned one passage from the Iliad in which a driver of four horses leaps from horse to horse in motion. On the shield of Achilles tumblers appeared among the dancers on the dancing-place.[21] Patroklos ironically remarks over the body of Kebriones, as the charioteer falls headlong like a diver from his chariot when hit by a missile, that there are tumblers also among the Trojans.[22] In later centuries the Athenians evinced a great attraction to acrobatic feats. The story told of Hippokleides[23] reveals that high-born Athenians did not disdain to practice them. They appear to have formed a sort of side-show attraction at the Panathenaic festival, as such scenes occur frequently on Attic vases. Thus on an early (imitation?) Panathenaic vase from Kameiros in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris,[24] there is represented behind the driver a man standing on the back of a horse, armed with a helmet and two shields, while in front another appears to be balancing himself on a pole.
But such acrobatic scenes as those of Crete and later Greece can not properly be classed as athletic. They betoken more the love of excitement than of true sport. The only form of real athletics represented on Minoan monuments, one which was classed in later Greece as one of the national sports, was that of boxing, which seems to have been the favorite gymnastic contest of the Cretans, as it always was of the later Greeks. Boxing scenes appear on seals,[25] on a steatite fragment of a pyxis found in 1901 at Knossos and, in conjunction with a bull-grappling
Fig. 1.—So-called Boxer Vase, from Hagia Triada (Cast). Museum of Candia. scene, on the so-called Boxer Vase found by the Italians at Hagia Triada (Fig. [1]). The vase is a cone-shaped rhyton of steatite, 18 inches high, originally overlaid with gold foil. It belongs to the best period of Cretan art, late Minoan I.[26] This vase alone, if no other monumental evidence were at hand, would suffice to show the physical prowess and love of sport of the Minoans. Because of its scenes of boxing and bull-grappling Mosso calls it “the most complete monument that we have of gymnastic exercise in the Mediterranean civilization.”[27] The later Greek tradition of the high degree of physical development attained by the Cretans is proved by this monument.[28]
The reliefs are arranged in four horizontal zones.[29] One of these, the second from the top, represents a bull-grappling scene, showing two racing bulls, upon the head and horns of one of which a gymnast has vaulted (not being tossed and helpless, as most interpreters think).[30] The other three represent boxers in all attitudes of the prize-ring, hitting, guarding, falling, and even kicking, as in the later Greek pankration. Some are victorious, the left arm being extended on guard and the right drawn back to strike; one (in the top zone) is ready to spring, just as Hector was ready to spring on Achilles;[31] others are prostrate on the ground with their feet in the air. The violence of the action recalls the boast of Epeios in the famous match in the Iliad that he will break his adversary’s bones.[32]
The method of attack by the right arm and defense by the left is the same as that formerly used by English pugilists. In the topmost zone the combatants wear helmets with visors, cheek-pieces, and horse-hair plumes, and also shoes; in the third zone down the pugilists also wear helmets, though of a different pattern, while the bottom zone shows figures, perhaps youths, with bare heads. Some of the boxers appear to wear boxing-gloves. In the lowest zone we see the well-known feat of swinging the antagonist up by the legs and throwing him—if we may so conclude from the contorted position of the vanquished, whose legs are in the air.
A similar figure appears in relief on the fragment of a pyxis found at Knossos.[33] A youth with clenched fists stands with left arm extended as if to ward off a blow, while his right arm is drawn back and rests on his hip; below we see the bent knee of a prostrate figure, evidently that of his vanquished opponent. The boxer has a wasp-like waist and wears a metal girdle. His left leg is well modeled, the muscles not being exaggerated.