upon their sides, and their shoulders rise, swelling red with blood. Ulysses cannot repel Ajax, nor Ajax overthrow Ulysses. Fearing lest this indecisive struggle would make the Greeks impatient, Ajax cries, 'Son of Laertes, lift me or let thyself be lifted by me, and let Jupiter decide the rest.' With these words he lifts Ulysses, who having now recourse to his extraordinary skill, kicks Ajax on the hamstring, and makes him bend the knee. Ajax falls upon his back, dragging with him his adversary. Ulysses now attempts to lift Ajax, but exhausts himself in vain attempts, and it is with difficulty he raises him from the earth. They fall for the second time, and roll from the one side to the other, covered with dust. They rise-they are about to recommence for the third fall, when Achilles intervenes, and drawing down their arms, It is enough!' he cries, 'do not waste your strength in these dangerous combats. Both are worthy of victory,' and he generously awards them equal prizes."

We observe, in the first place, from this description, that the wrestlers stripped off their clothes. Thus in the time of Homer wrestlers were not naked, at least around the loins, which they girded with a cincture, a scarf, or an apron. But, from the following, we perceive that this was a useless constraint, and was the occasion of a serious accident, of which the athlete Orsippus was the victim. While engaged in a contest his belt slipped down to his heels, and his feet were caught by it. The retention of this remnant of clothing was done away with at the beginning of the fifteenth Olympiad, at the risk of offending the modesty of the spectators. It must be remarked that men only were admitted to the Olympic games, and women prohibited by a very severe law; but such is the attraction they pos

sessed for the sex that is rather noted for curiosity, that women frequently attempted to pass into the games, habited like men, daring the punishment which threatened them, criminals of this sort being thrown from the summit of a cliff.

Homer's wrestlers, after preparation, began the struggle, pushing and pressing against each other with all their strength; but it is to be observed that they do not strike. The blows with the fists were reserved for another kind of exercise for pugilism, which will be considered in the next chapter. In wrestling, pro

perly so called, there was an
absolute prohibition against
striking an adversary, and the
rule was not peculiar to the
Homeric age, but was in
vogue during the centuries
that followed.
both kinds of wrestling-the
perpendicular, which was the
most ancient, and alone was

It applied to

Wrestlers. (From a painting on a jar in the collection of Prince de Canino.)

in use at the time of Homer; and the horizontal, in which both adversaries rolled upon the sand.

It may be objected that it is useless to attempt to regulate the attitudes of two combatants carried away by the ardour of the struggle. How is it possible to prevent two men, of whom the one is writhing in the clasp of the other, from threatening each other with the fist, and passing from the threat to the act? The wrestler, in spite of himself, became a pugilist, and the restrictions that were imposed on him went for nothing. This fact being well established, necessitated, without doubt, the invention of that other exercise which has been called the pankration. Unknown at the time

of Homer, the pancrace was only introduced at the public games during the thirty-third Olympiad. It was a most violent athletic exercise, which combined wrestling and pugilism, and in which it was permitted not only to push and drive an adversary with all one's force, but also to strike him with the closed fist.

Homer is so exact and conscientious a historian that

A Pancratic Engagement. (Bas-relief in the Clementine Museum.)

it is necessary to consider both what he says and what he omits to say. The personages whom he brings under

our notice in the passage we have already quoted, are not said to have rubbed their bodies with oil before coming to the combat. Therefore, it is to be presumed that this practice did not up to his time form one of the usages of the ancient wrestlers. And yet it is indispensable for imparting suppleness and elasticity to the muscles. The custom, introduced at a later period, became general, and no wrestler

neglected it, either in the gymnasium or in the public games. They did not content themselves with rubbing their bodies with oil, but they soaked them in mud. How great

was the astonishment of the Scythian, Anacharsis, whom Lucian the satirist introduced into the palæstra of the Athenians! He there saw beings with two legs like himself "who rolled in the mud, and wallowed there like hogs." Further on, in the uncovered part of the court, he perceived others in a ditch full of sand, for the bodies of the wrestlers, covered with an oily coat, would have slipped like those of eels, without offering any hold. The dust in which they rolled themselves mixing with the oil and the sweat formed moreover a kind of skin which protected the combatant from the effects of cold. As Lucian informs us, the wrestlers powdered and oiled each other, and when the combat was over they cleaned the dirt off each other's bodies, using for this purpose a strigilis, a sort of curry-comb, with which all the baths and gymnasiums were amply provided.

Greek art has transmitted to us some very curious and important works upon the subject under consideration— the wrestlers in action. The most celebrated group is that in the gallery at Florence. Who does not know it? What art student has not copied it at least once in his life? There is not a school of design, or a painter's or a sculptor's studio, but possesses a cast of it. Nevertheless, the two figures do not represent professional wrestlers. It is easy to discover this from the slimness and delicacy of their bodies; from their features, which bear no trace of fatigue or contortion; from their nervous frames, which show nothing of the abnormally developed muscles of the regular wrestler; and especially from their eyes, whose delicate contours are not cut or deformed by blows, as is always the case among

wrestlers and pancracists. With his usual sagacity, Winckelmann discovered the historic meaning of this group, that the figures are those of the children of Niobe, who were the victims of the anger of Apollo and Diana, and who at the moment when the god was preparing to strike them down with his arrows, entered on different athletic exercises, those of maturer ages engaging in horse-racing, those of tenderer years commencing to wrestle. This group, which is so remarkable for the fidelity to nature displayed in its anatomy, and which, in spite of the entwining of the limbs, presents nothing painful to the eye, but is on the contrary full of grace, harmony, and repose, was dug up from the same place as the other statues of the Niobeides. What still more enhances the value of the work in the eyes of artists is the fact that the hands, which in most ancient remains are wanting, are here entire.

All the statues of wrestlers that have come down to us have not this æsthetic value, but they serve as a means of making us comprehend the descriptions of the poets; and the historical poets, in particular, have written at great length upon a subject which provided them with striking images. In the Iliad we have the contest already described; in the "Eneid" that between Dares and Entellus; in the "Metamorphoses " of Ovid that between Hercules and Archelaus; in the "Pharsalia" of Lucan that between Hercules and Antæus ; in the “Thebais" of Statius that between Tydeus and Agyleus; finally, in the "History of Ethiopia" of Heliodorus, that between Theagenes and the ferocious African. We can see in these descriptions how the wrestlers displayed at once energy, cunning, and skill in overcoming their adversaries, each striving to overthrow the other-the one object to be achieved in upright wrestling.