hausted by the length of the combat, would frequently reduce them to the
necessity of making a truce; upon which the battle was suspended by mutual
consent for some minutes, that were employed in recovering their fatigue,
and rubbing off the sweat in which they were bathed: after which they
renewed the fight, till one of them, by letting fall his arms through
weakness and faintness, explained that he could no longer support the pain
or fatigue, and desired quarter; which was confessing himself vanquished.

Boxing was one of the roughest and most dangerous of the gymnastic
combats; because, besides the danger of being crippled, the combatants ran
the hazard of their lives. They sometimes fell down dead, or dying upon
the sand; though that seldom happened, except the vanquished person
persisted too long in not acknowledging his defeat: yet it was common for
them to quit the fight with a countenance so disfigured, that it was not
easy to know them afterwards; carrying away with them the sad marks of
their vigorous resistance, such as bruises and contusions in the face, the
loss of an eye, their teeth knocked out, their jaws broken, or some more
considerable fracture.

We find in the poets, both Latin and Greek, several descriptions of this
kind of combat. In Homer, that of Epeus and Euryalus; in Theocritus, of
Pollux and Amycus; in Apollonius Rhodius, the same battle of Pollux and
Amycus; in Virgil, that of Dares and Entellus; and in Statius, and
Valerius Flaccus, of several other combatants.(129)

Of the Pancratium.

The Pancratium was so called from two Greek words,(130) which signify that
the whole force of the body was necessary for succeeding in it. It united
boxing and wrestling in the same fight, borrowing from one its manner of
struggling and flinging, and from the other, the art of dealing blows and
of avoiding them with success. In wrestling it was not permitted to strike
with the hand, nor in boxing to seize each other in the manner of the
wrestlers; but in the Pancratium, it was not only allowed to make use of
all the gripes and artifices of wrestling, but the hands and feet, and
even the teeth and nails, might be employed to conquer an antagonist.

This combat was the most rough and dangerous. A Pancratiast in the Olympic
games (called Arrichion, or Arrachion,) perceiving himself almost
suffocated by his adversary, who had got fast hold of him by the throat,
at the same time that he held him by the foot