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The Pankration and Wrestling. III

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

E. Norman Gardiner
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Extract

The combination of boxing and wrestling known as the pankration was a development of the primitive rough and tumble. To get his opponent down and by throttling, pummelling, biting, kicking, to reduce him to submission is the natural instinct of the savage or the child. But this rough and tumble is not suitable for an athletic competition: it is too dangerous and too undisciplined. To the early Greeks, athletics were the recreation of a warrior class, they were not the serious business of life or even a profession, and in an age of real warfare the warrior's life was too valuable to be endangered for sport. Moreover, without some form of law athletic competitions are impossible, and in the growth of law the simpler precedes the more complex Hence it was only natural that particular forms of fighting, such as boxing and wrestling, should be systematized first, and so made suitable for competitions before any attempt was made to reduce to law the more complicated rough and tumble of which they both formed parts. Wrestling and boxing were known to Homer, but not the pankration, and Greek tradition was following the natural order of evolution in assigning the introduction at Olympia of wrestling to the 18th, of boxing to the 23rd, and of the pankration to the 33rd Olympiad.

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Type
Research Article
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The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 26 , November 1906, pp. 4 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1906

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References

1 Phil., Gym. 9Google Scholar.

2 Phil., Im. ii. 6Google Scholar; v. vol. xxv. of this Journal, p. 19, n. 27.

3 Loc. cit.

4 Vol. xxv. p. 272. Cp. also Phil., Im. i. 6. 12Google Scholar, a description of the sports of Erotes, , and Lucian, , Demon. 49Google Scholarκακομαχοῦντας καὶ παρὰ τὸν νόμον ἐναγώνιον δάκνοντας

5 Pindar, for example, speaks of the καματω δέων πλαγᾶν of the pankration (Nem. iii. 29); cp. Isthm. v. 60.

6 Cf. vol. xxv. p. 15, n. 3. The word ἀνα κλινοπάλη is used exclusively in an erotic sense, and there is no evidence for its use as a wrestling term.

7 v. J.H.S. vol. xxv. pp. 23, 268.

8 v. ib. pp. 26–29, 283–286, Figs. 19–23 where various illustrations of and references to legholds are collected.

9 Meisterschal. xvi. Other groups from the same vase are referred to, vol. xxv. p. 268, Fig. 5. There is no ground for Hartwig' suggestion that the scene represents ἀποπτερνίζειν a term which will be discussed below.

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19 Leg. 796, 834. Cf. Theocritus xxiv. 112, ἄ τ᾿ εἰς γαῖαν προπέσοντες παμμάχοι έξεύροντο σοφίσματα σύμφορα τέχνᾳ

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29 Im. ii. 21.

30 Heroic. 54, p. 678.

31 Anth. Pal. xi. 75, 76, 77, 78, 81.

32 Oneir. i. 64 τὸ δὲ παγκράτιον τὰ αὐτὰ τῇ πυγμῇ σημαίνει πλὴν βλάβης

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36 Eight of his odes are in honour of pankratiasts, and from them can be illustrated every feature of Pindar's athletic ideal — strength, beauty, training, skill, courage, and endurance, while over all preside the fairhaired graces ‘who give and grace victory.’

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40 Lexiphan. 5; De Salt. 10.

41 Nic. Eth. iii. 1. The v.l. θῖξαι βαυλόμενος adopted by Bywater for the usual δεῖξαι βουλόμενος would suit my argument still better.

42 Gym. 50.

43 Athen. xiv. Another word of similar meaning is χειρονομία So the statue of Glaucos represented him σκιαμαχοῦντος (Paus. vi. 10, 3), and Lucian describes an athlete practising as λακτίζοντα εἰς τὸν ἀέρα ἤ πὺξ κενὴν πληγήν τινα καταφίροντα ὡς τὸν ἀνταγωνιστὴν δῆθεν παίοντα (Hermotim. 33).

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61 Gen. xxvii. 36, xxv. 26.

62 lxxi. 7: ἀλλ᾿ εἴθ᾿ ὔπτιός τις αὐτῶν ἔπεσε συνεφείλκετο τὸν ἀντὶπαλον καὶ τοῖς ποσὶν ἐς τοὐπίσω ἀνερ᾿ῥίπτει ὤσπερ ἐς πάλῃ

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