How do the boxing scenes in The Iliad and Aeneid

Published Date: 13 Sep 2016

How do the boxing scenes in The Iliad and The Aeneid fit in with the ideal of the Classical Hero?

CONTENTS

Introduction

The Ideal of the Classical Hero in Ancient Greek and Roman Culture

Boxing in the Ancient World

Homer

Virgil

Plato

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

Ancient Greek and Roman literature was a vital tool in the construction of the ideal of the classical hero. Augmented by the classical architecture and sculpture, classical mythology and literature made sure that the fictional role of the hero became fixed during the pre-Christian and early Christian realms of the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas. In keeping with the dominant, male‑centric vision of ancient society, the hero was always a male, always athletic and always skilled in the arts of fighting and warfare. This basic cultural fact is as true of Homer as it is of Virgil. In fact, all of the great classical writers saw the edification of the literary hero as the latest in a long line of succession beginning with Achilles and continuing in a linear fashion up to the heroes created by the late Roman Republic. In this way, a certain symbiosis is detectable between Greek and Roman cultures with the Romans being seen to have adopted and adapted a great many of the Greek ideals pertaining to civilisation.

This obsession with creating the perfect fictional male hero necessarily had consequences for the real‑life political and military constitution of the ancient world with classical conquerors such as the Macedonian King Alexander the Great providing the political manifestation of the classical hero as idealised in The Iliad and The Aeneid. As with Alexander, separating the myth from the fact provides the historian with the greatest challenge when reading ancient literature (Worthington, 2004).

For the purpose of perspective, the following examination into the boxing scenes of a selection of landmark ancient literary works must adopt a chronological approach, tracing the work first of Homer before necessarily turning attention towards subsequent writers, including Virgil and Plato. Each book will be analysed in individual detail so as to form a synthesis as to the depiction of the classical hero in ancient culture, although the central focus will be on, first, The Iliad and, next, The Aeneid. A conclusion will be sought that attempts to highlight both the similarities and differences of the various accounts of boxing and heroism in ancient Greek and Roman society in relation to our own. First, however, a brief overview of the idealised hero in the ancient world must be ascertained in order to establish a conceptual framework for the remainder of the discussion.

The Ideal of the Classical Hero in Ancient Greek and Roman Culture

The ideal of the classical hero emerged in the archaic period that can be traced back to the tenth century BC. This is the point at which the emerging city states of the Mediterranean and the Aegean began to vie for supremacy in the region, which signalled the formation of large land based armies and military style cultures that whose ultimate success or failure was determined by warfare and conquest. It is at this time that we first begin to see the mass distribution of the kouros figurines in ancient Greece, which were male, military figures depicting the archetypal soldier/hero in the archaic period. The kouros were made as lean, muscular fighters, perfectly proportioned and balanced upon their rostra. They serve to show how, even before the advent of Homeric heroism, there was a tangible link between militant athleticism and the idealised conception of the ancient Greek hero. This remained true of the whole ancient period, from Homer to Plato to Virgil to Pindar.

After the advent of Homer’s poetry the link between the idealised male Greek body and the concept of the hero become further institutionalised in ancient Greek art, literature and culture. In place of the ubiquitous image of the kouros came the classical depictions of ancient heroism with the body in particular taking on a more divine form in the major Greek artistic expressionism of the Classical and Hellenistic periods. As a result, we begin to see artwork such as the bronze statue found in Rome dating from circa 150 BC that shows the bruised torso of the classical boxer with another similarly dated artefact highlighting in copper the blood dripping from the boxer’s battered face. This fusion of the scantily clad male form with the ideal of the classical hero is one that could not have prospered without there first being in place a certain kind of ancient Greek philosophy that revelled in the masculine depiction of the human form.

“Greek confidence in the body can be understood only in relation to their philosophy. It expresses above all their sense of human wholeness. Nothing which related to the whole man could be isolated or evaded; and this serious awareness of how much was implied in psychical beauty saved from the two evils of sensuality and aestheticism.” (Clark, 1985:21)

This visual idealisation of the ancient Greek hero was transferred to literature in both the Greek and Roman worlds where the more primitive notion of the hero being confined to purely military pursuits expanded so as to include athletic endeavours and sports. In essence, while the heroes of the archaic period were warriors, the heroes of the Roman Republic were sportsmen as well as conquerors although the essential attributes of both incarnations of the hero remained the same throughout both the Greek and Roman realms. As time went by, the hero had to be skilled in the arts of warfare, in dexterity as applied too athleticism and, increasingly, he must have been shown to display honour and virtue so that his moral conduct dovetailed his physical prowess. This was as true of Achilles as it was of the Roman Emperors of the Republic; a hero could not be lauded if he was not mentally as well as physically superior to all men.

It should be noted that there was a certain sense of arrogance that permeated both the ancient Greek and Roman conceptions of the hero in this athletic and virtuous context, which is very evident in the literature at this time. For instance, the ancient Greeks, like the Romans after them, saw all athletic pursuits as uniquely Hellenistic – physical endeavours that marked the ancient Greeks out as discernibly different and superior to their contemporaries. No other civilisation could have been skilled in the sports that enthralled the Greeks. This is a basic feature of any hegemonic, imperialistic culture that has achieved regional and political dominance over its neighbours. If one thinks of, for instance, the way in which the United States has monopolised its own sports by making, for example, baseball into a ‘world series’ even though it is not played outside of the North American geopolitical sphere of hegemonic influence, then we can see how sport becomes an essential part of the national character and of the maintenance of a hegemonic civilisation. This was an important feature of both the Greek and Roman worlds.

There was therefore a sense of inherent arrogance attached to the idealisation of the hero and all of the arts that he was well versed in – be it boxing, running or wrestling. In some ancient societies this emphasis upon sporting pursuits became the defining feature of that civilisation. The Spartans (who were said to have invented the sport of boxing as a direct result of their distaste for wearing traditional military helmets), for instance, separated their society along male‑female lines, taking the young boys away at the age of eight where they would be made to endure years of training in physical pursuits such as boxing and fighting. The cumulative result was two fold. On the one hand, the Spartans were arguably the most fearsome fighting culture of the ancient world with a reputation that spread from Athens to Persia in the sixth and fifth centuries BC (Kennell, 1995). On the other hand, the over-emphasis upon sport and competition resulted in an arrogant and isolated world view that was promulgated in Sparta whereby the Spartans were never willing to even enter into negotiations or compromise with competing city-states. This, ultimately, contributed to Sparta’s downfall as the reliance upon heroism, valour and military pursuits came at the expense of instilling the requisite political skills needed to maintain parity in an increasingly sophisticated ancient world.

It can be seen that the ideal of the hero was somewhat fixed in the ancient world, for the most part completely unchallenged in any kind of cultural or societal sense. Indeed, the only major challenge to the idealised conception of the hero in ancient Greece and Rome came with the advent of the class system. The Classical Greeks were the first to incorporate a division between active and passive citizenship that the Romans turned into a much more rigid caste structure that prevented the vast majority of the population from holding office and from acquiring the skills of the state. This, in turn, had a major impact upon the kind of hero who was to emerge from the boxing arena or from the gladiatorial spectacles of Imperial Rome. To be a virtuous hero, one had to be from a cultured class. This necessarily impacted upon the writing of ancient Greek and Roman chroniclers who revelled in the brutality and barbarism of the fighting credentials of some of the lower classes. Thus, much of the literary description of boxing scenes in the ancient world is tinged with an inevitable hint of sycophantism and exaggeration of the true nature of the fighting taking place due to the inherent arrogance of the ruling classes, which was fuelled by their distaste and disgust of the lower classes. Consequently, and as ever with regards to ancient source material, caution must be the historian’s constant companion when appraising scenes of competition and boxing in ancient Greek and Roman texts.

Boxing in the Ancient World

Before commencing detailed analysis of the portrayal of boxing in The Iliad, mention must be made of the difference between the ancient conception of boxing and the way that it is understood in the modern world. While both pursuits have been labelled as ‘sports’, boxing in the ancient era was a much more vicious and, indeed, life threatening pastime. Boxers in the ancient world fought until one of the competitors was either knocked unconscious or was battered into such a state of submission as to be wholly unable to continue the fight at which point the contest would be brought to a close by a recognised adjudicator. Therefore, unlike in the modern day, there were no Queensbury rules to abide by, although both the ancient Greeks and the Romans preferred their boxing heroes to fight with their fists and to incorporate a great deal of aestheticism into their art. Thus, a boxer would not be considered to be heroic or iconic if he fought in what we would understand as a ‘dirty’ way. Fairness was adjudged to be as worthy a personal attribute as valour. This basic moral premise was first established by Homer where the dirty fighters (usually the Trojans) are soon despatched by the remorseless and unforgiving gods. Likewise, a boxer could not be considered to be a hero if there was not the omnipresent threat of death and destruction to contend with. Only by battling against fierce odds and an even fiercer fate should he lose could the ancient boxer lay claim to the title of ‘hero’. “As Pindar wrote, ‘prowess without hazard has no honour among men or among the hollow ships.’” (Poliakoff, 1995:113)

In addition, it is also important to note that boxing in the ancient world was closely allied to warfare, which is not true of the pugilistic sport as it is conceived of in the modern day. This is primarily because ancient societies were constructed upon and around the spectre of external war with competing neighbours as well as internal war between competing kinships and tribes all vying for political and military power. This fusion of militarism and culture continued to rise with the advent of the Roman Empire – a state conceived of almost solely via military conquest.

“The Greek world was a complex mosaic of communities, often at war with each other or outside powers. In Rome, the focus is on a single state. From the earliest days, war was at the heart of the life of the Roman people. They fought wars almost every year. Annual rituals marked the opening and closing of the campaigning season.” (Rich, 1993:1)

Moreover, unlike today, ancient warfare was conducted without the aid of industrial weaponry. Therefore, the skill of being able to defend oneself with one’s fists was considered to be a particularly attractive attribute in both ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Indeed, being a skilled and able boxer was considered to be an ample substitute for a perceived lack of skills relating specifically to warfare, such as ability with a sword or a spear. As Michael Poliakoff (1995:113) declares, “his [the soldier’s] compensation is his boxing prowess, so vital to his identity that a match with a fellow soldier elicits his most violent jealousy for honour and recognition.”

Thus, boxing became a substitute as well as an augmentation of warfare in the ancient world. In this way, generals were able to make sure that their soldiers were in a constant state of awareness for battle – to the extent that they were made to fight against one another during lulls in the war so as to maintain vigilance in the art of fighting. In this way, boxing was a non‑specific as well as a specific sporting endeavour that had usage in a variety of different ways. It was the ultimate expression of masculinity. Indeed, manhood could not be said to have existed without recourse to blood and combat sports such as boxing, wrestling or pankration (an ancient Greek mode of martial art that was first introduced to the Olympic Games in 646 BC).

None of this, of course, is to state that the practice of boxing remained uniform throughout the period between Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid. There is a discernible evolution of boxing techniques and practices that occurred during the transition from the Greek to the Roman stage. The most obvious difference occurred with the himantes – the pieces of cloth that were tied around the boxers’ knuckles and wrists before he commenced the bout. In the Homeric era, the himantes would have been made of ox hide (not pigskin, as it left wounds that were particularly painful and slow to heal). This, in turn, meant that boxing matches tended to last longer in the Homeric era as the ‘soft’ cloth that was placed around the boxer’s wrists and knuckles curtailed too many excessively damaging injuries as a result of blows landed during the fight itself. In the later Classical period of ancient Greece, a harder himas replaced the softer cloth with a leather ‘shield’ that was strapped across the boxer’s forearm. Thus, boxing became more brutal and more closely allied to the concept of the gladiator that would appear in ancient Rome. Indeed, it was the Romans who took the paradigm of combat sports to a new level by creating a new kind of boxing glove, the caestus, which was “commonly loaded with metal and glass fragments. A single punch could be lethal.” (Miller, 2004:54)

It can be seen that the ideal of the heroic boxing champion changed markedly from the sport’s first inception in the Olympic Games in 688 BC to the advent of the bloodthirsty Roman incarnation of ancient contact sports where blood was demanded by society at large. Clearly, therefore, there must have been a sizeable gap between the kind of mythical boxing relayed by writers such as Homer, Pindar, Virgil, Aristotle and Plato and the kind of boxing that was seen at the Olympic Games and at Greek and Roman boxing arenas in the ancient world. Consequently, we must be careful not to confuse the theoretical writings of classical authors with the pugilistic realities of competition sports in the classical epoch.

Finally, mention must briefly be made of the audience – the most important commodity in ancient combat sports in the ancient Greek and Roman periods. It should be noted that the spectator went to the Olympic Games and to gladiatorial contests to watch a dangerous fight take place where the stakes were high for both competitors and the audience alike. The spectators did not attend games to see boxers who did not conform to this sporting stereotype. Therefore, boxing became a microcosm of the militant ancient societies of Athens and Rome whereby the fighters were able to satisfy the spectators’ (as well as their own) bloodlust. This is a highly significant point and one that ought to be borne in mind throughout the remainder of the discussion at hand: boxing in the ancient world represented the heroic ideal of all of society, not just of the fighters and the men who wrote about those fighters for the sake of posterity. However, the writers whom we speak of herein were not privy to such masculine prowess. As a result, Classical authors including Pindar and Aristotle commented on boxing, wrestling and other combat sports with a decidedly envious eye that reflected the primacy of physical endeavour of mental aptitude in the ancient world.

Regardless of the bias and lack of manly insight of the majority of the primary source material, this prevailing cultural fact did not change during the transition from Roman to Greek regional hegemony in the last two centuries before the birth of Christ. Manliness was constantly associated with sports, combat, fighting and physical prowess; philosophy, politics and science remained the realms of the womanly wise. Heroism was a manifestation of these positive male character traits. With this essential historical background in mind, attention must now be turned to the depiction of boxing in The Iliad – the first point of reference for any literary study of ancient Greek culture and values.

Homer

The Iliad is a literary masterpiece that is dedicated to warfare and its consequences both for humans and gods alike. It is “a poem that lives and moves and has its being in war, in that world of organised violence in which a man justifies his existence most clearly by killing others.” (Knox, 1990: Introduction li) The Iliad consequently represents the most blatant mixture of militarism and heroism of any of the great literary works of the ancient period. Its depictions of boxing are located within this ode to war and act as a continuation of the fighting during periods when the Greeks and the Trojans have fought themselves to a stalemate. Boxing also provides Homer with the opportunity to lament the fate of the central heroes within the poem via the spectacle of funeral games. At heart, The Iliad is therefore a tragic poem, epitomised by the tragedy that befalls the two central protagonists of the struggle between the armies of Greece and Troy, namely the legendary Greek warrior/fighter Achilles and his Trojan adversary Hector (Redfield, 1993:99‑127).

The skill of the boxers and fighters that are detailed within The Iliad is in correlation to the characters’ favourable or unfavourable relationship with the gods. In this way Homer infuses boxers with only moderate skill with the kind of energy, rage and pugilistic prowess that would usually be reserved only for the heroes. Thus, physical power is something that is bestowed upon men by the whim of the gods as well as an art that can be honed, practised and fine‑tuned on the battlefield and beyond. This is best evidenced in Book Five of the poem when the goddess Pallas Athena bestows a violent rage upon Diomedes who then embarks upon an orgy of bloodshed and destruction. Likewise, it is Apollo throughout The Iliad who decides as and when to instil great combat powers in Greek and Trojan mortals. However, with specific regards to boxing, it is Book Twenty Three of The Iliad that provides the most illuminating insight into the uniquely Hellenistic view of the worth of boxing in ancient culture.

Book Twenty Three is set towards the end of the Trojan War when the Greeks and the Trojans had been fighting for many years. It takes place after the death of Hector at the hands of Achilles who is himself apoplectic at the death of his close friend (and, perhaps, lover) Patroclus. The Greeks are holding a procession of lavish funeral games for the departed Patroclus, which consists of the major athletic pursuits of the Homeric era. These sports are: boxing, horse racing, wrestling, spear throwing (javelin throwing as it is understood today), foot‑racing (running) and gladiatorial combat. The adjudicator of the funeral games in Achilles – the one mortal who can perform each task better than any rival; also the most unpredictable and contrary of all of the Homeric heroes. This is an important point with specific regards to the depiction of boxing as a heroic character trait within The Iliad. The funeral games are put together in such a sequence as to suggest that each forms a composite part of the warrior whole of Achilles – the ultimate sporting hero intermeshed with the ultimate war-mongering warrior. Boxing is therefore just one part of a complex tapestry of heroic character that is, in the final analysis, beyond the realms of any mortal man. Essentially, Achilles is so devastatingly effective a fighter because of his unpredictable nature and his semi‑divinity, not in spite of it. Thus, Homer’s vision of a hero is curiously both within and outside of the reach of mortal men.

The funeral games begin with Achilles’ lament over the loss of his friend. Gifts are exchanged; food and wine are consumed. Achilles gives out symbolic prizes to the assembled guests. To the legendary fighter and Antilochus’ father, Nestor, he gives a jar as a reminder of Patroclus’ valour and the honour he found in death. Achilles thus states to Nestor:

“Here, old friend – a trophy for you too! Lay it away as a treasure… let it remind you of the burial of Patroclus. Never again will you see him among the Argives. I give you this prize, a gift for giving’s sake, for now you will never fight with fists or wrestle, or enter the spear throw, or race on sprinting feet, the burden of old age already weigh you down.” (The Iliad, Book Twenty Three, 687‑694; pp.500‑501)

Here, the message being relayed is clearly that an inability to express oneself on a battlefield or within a combat sports context is tantamount to being dead. Nestor admits as much in his response to Achilles when he reminisces on his time as a renowned boxer. Therefore, there is an added equation of old age to ineptitude in the battle arena that clearly impacts upon Homeric society in a more profound way than is the case in the twenty first century. Old age meant becoming obsolete in military terms, which in turn telegraphed a sense of retirement above and beyond any resemblance of retirement as it is understood today. In this way, Nestor laments his metamorphosis from a champion into a spectator, dovetailing the earlier scene in Book Twenty Three when Antilochus and Menelaus almost come head-to-head at the start of the funeral games.

After acknowledging the insight gained via wisdom and old age, Antilochus says to the brother of Agamemnon: “well you know the whims of youth break all the rules.” (Book Twenty Three, 654; p.499) Thus, boxing is an essential part of the make‑up of heroes; without the opportunity to express oneself in such a way, life becomes, according to the Homeric code, essentially meaningless. Furthermore, one becomes a burden to the family and to the state.

Achilles uses the funeral games to stoke up old rivalries within the Greek camp. In this way, Euryalus boxes on behalf of the Achaeans while Epeus boxes on behalf of the Argives in the second of the great contests included in Book Twenty Three of The Iliad. This scene would be mimicked in Virgil’s Aeneid, although the context of having boxers fight from competing geopolitical orders is one that appears to be constant in the ancient world, in much the same way as our contemporary boxing bouts take place between fighters from different nationalities. In this way, the umpire introduces fighters on behalf of, for instance, Great Britain or the United States of America in the same way that Homer announces Euryalus as a boxer who represents the Achaeans.

The author next makes certain that the ritual of ‘belting­‑up’ and ‘squaring‑up’ to one’s opponent is accentuated in a way that resonates in today’s version of boxing where the prelude to the ‘big fight’ still attracts as much intrigue as the boxing match itself. Moreover, in ancient Greek terms, the ritual of squaring up to the opposition served to show the spectators which boxer was mentally stronger than the other. Like today, the boxers would look one another square in the eye before beginning the contest as if each is waiting for the other to flinch or to back down. This mirrors the pressure of the battlefield where the Greeks had to face the Trojans face‑to‑face in mortal combat; where one side’s weakness turned out to be the other side’s strength. In this way, boxing can be seen to be an integral part of the heroic composition of icons in Homer’s Iliad, mirroring the valour displayed over ten years during the siege of Troy. Moreover, the description of the boxing match itself evokes strong comparisons with the author’s vivid portrayal of the battle scenes between the Greeks and the Trojans, especially the prior fight between Achilles and Hector that proved so pivotal to the overall ending of the Trojan War. Homer thus states that:

“Both champions, belted tight, stepped into the ring, squared off at each other and let loose, trading jabs with their clenched fists then slugged it out – flurries of jolting punches, terrific grinding of jaws, sweat rivering, bodies glistening – suddenly Euryalus glanced for an opening, dropped his guard and Epeus hurled his smashing roundhouse hook to the head – a knockout blow!” (The Iliad, Book Twenty Three, 763‑769; p.503)

The specific heroic attributes ascribed to boxing are underscored with the contest that follows the boxing match during Patroclus’ funeral games. After the boxing match, Ajax and Odysseus embark upon a wrestling match. The way that the wrestling match is described by Homer tends to show that this was considered to be a slower combat sport; one that inflicted less physical damage upon the competitors due to the heavy‑set size of the fighters and the lethargic manner of the fight itself. Wrestling scenes are consequently handled in a much more languid literary style.

“And their back bones creaked as scuffling hands tugged for submission-holds and sweat streamed down their spines and clusters of raw welts broke out on ribs and shoulders slippery, red with blood, and still they grappled, harder, looking for victory; locked for that burnished tripod: Odysseus no more able to tripod bring to ground his man than Ajax could.” (The Iliad, Book Twenty Three, 795‑801; pp.503-504)

This essential heroic difference between boxing wrestling is further cemented via the identity of the competitors at Patroclus’ funeral games: both Ajax and Odysseus are known to be legendary fighters whose heyday is long behind them. Both are seasoned campaigners who are no longer thought of in terms of boxing; but instead in more jovial terms; hence, of wrestling. Once again, therefore, Homer makes the connection between boxing and virulent youth and between old age and an inability to box against younger, fitter opponents.

Mention at this point must be made of the essential homoeroticism prevalent in Greek games during the Homeric era. Not only did these celebratory games explicitly exclude women; they also made sure that the men competing in the games did so in a discernibly homoerotic manner by wrestling, boxing, jousting and – at the end of the day – enjoying copious amounts of wine and merriment.

“Banquets were strictly all-male affairs. Here we get a clear glimpse of that aspect of Greek society already alluded to – apropos education and pederasty: freeborn women were vigorously debarred from these social occasions, just as they were from any participation in political affairs.” (Flaceliere, 2002:173‑174)

One can only imagine what went on towards the end of these games, symposia and banquets although the practice of pederasty (the sexual and philosophical coupling of an adult male and a junior adolescent boy) which was highly popular at the time that Homer was writing ought to make us believe that the games the likes of which occur in Book Twenty Three of The Iliad were much more ‘masculine’ as we could ever comprehend today. Moreover, in The Iliad, Homer alludes to Patroclus playing the part of Achilles’ young, adolescent lover; thus, the entire funeral procession takes place under the broader umbrella of homoeroticism and homosexual love. This is a highly important point and one that directly impacts upon the construction of the idealised ancient Greek hero during the Homeric era. While boxing and other comparable combat sports were important composite parts of the heroic whole, the conception of the male hero during the Hellenistic period fluctuates wildly from our own, chiefly in a sexual way whereby the ancient Greeks saw no cultural taboo in men enjoying sexual relationships with other men. This was as true of the politicians operating on the Acropolis as it was of heroic warriors such as Achilles. Similarly, whereas boxing is today seen as one of the manliest expressions of sporting prowess, to the Greeks it was seen as this in addition to a uniquely Hellenistic type of male bonding.

Homer augments his depiction of boxing in The Iliad with a similar scene which takes place in The Odyssey. However, rather than being a funeral games as was the case in The Iliad, The Phaeacian Games that constitutes Book Eight of The Odyssey is set to the context of a celebratory games where the indigenous Phaeacians invite Odysseus to take part as a guest in their games. At first, Odysseus is reluctant to engage in any sports on account of his arduous journey (as well as the aforementioned fact in The Iliad that Odysseus’ glory days are far behind him); but an insult from the re‑appearing Euryalus incites Odysseus not only to take part in the combat sports, but to emphatically win. Afterwards, Odysseus recounts his former fame as a boxer and a wrestler, once again underlining the Homeric association between boxing and manliness and fame. Odysseus declares to the gathered Phaeacian masses:

“Since you have thoroughly roused me, come out, if any of you fancy the idea and have the pluck, come out and take me on – at boxing, wrestling or even running, I don’t care which… for I am not a bad hand all round at any kind of manly sport.” (The Odyssey, 1976:127)

Thus, fame at grass roots, popular culture level in the Hellenistic Age could only come about through becoming skilled at athletic pursuits. This kind of fame is able to spread far and wide from the geographic nexus of the great sporting deeds in question. This is further cemented by the negative treatment of men who do not display such athletic prowess – men such as Paris whose distinct lack of manliness and overt cowardice can be seen to have triggered the devastation of the Trojan War in the first place. Homer accentuates this discrepancy between the manly pursuits of famous men and the feminine pursuits of non‑famous men in the response that he pens for the Phaeacian King to Odysseus’ claims of fighting and boxing prowess. Alcinous thus states:

“Though our boxing and wrestling are not beyond criticism, we can run fast and we are first‑rate seamen. But the things in which we take a perennial delight are the feast, the lyre, the dance, clean linen in plenty, a hot bath and our beds. So forward now my champion dancers and show us your steps, so that when he gets home our guest may be able to tell his friends how far we leave all other folk behind in seamanship, in speed of foot, in dancing and in song.” (The Odyssey, pp.128‑129)

In this way, it can be seen that Homer shows boxing and wrestling to be the two most important manly sports of the ancient world – constituting the front line of the drive to become a true hero. After boxing and wrestling comes rowing and running, which are deemed to be less heroic endeavours by Homer because of the absence of combat and physical competition. However, Homer reveals the true extent of the edification of the classical hero by making fun of the Phaeacians’ love of discernibly feminine pastimes such as singing, dancing and weaving. The humour is given added impetus by the way in which the Phaeacian King hopes that Odysseus will tell his Ithacan friends of the Phaeacian aptitude for these female pastimes. Fame, as has already been ascertained, was reserved only for those who could demonstrate their ability at boxing, wrestling and arts of warfare. To suggest that Odysseus would be willing to talk in glowing terms of a race who value baths and bed-time would have been interpreted as extremely sarcastic by the Hellenistic audiences listening to Homer’s poems.

Virgil

Although chronologically separated by eight centuries, Homer and Virgil found a common literary ground in their respective bodies of work. Writing at the time of the Roman Civil War, Virgil was keen to stress his connection to Homer and to the ancient Greeks’ most celebrated poems: The Iliad and The Odyssey. The similarities between the two cultures ran deep. The Italian society of the late Hellenistic period heralded in large part from the Athenian Empire with language, culture and customs being transported across the Hellespont to Italy so that ancient Greek culture was able to flourish long after the end of the zenith of Athenian power. This symbiosis between ancient Greek and Roman culture is never better illustrated than when one studies the literature of Homer and Virgil. Like Homer, Virgil uses the premise of the Trojan War as the catalyst for his story of the legendary founder of the City of Rome. This in turn enables Virgil to make deep seated comparisons with the Greeks and to create a world that was not altogether far removed from the world of Homeric heroism.

“The Romans found a way of tying themselves into the world of Greece and its history in the story of Aeneas, the Trojan hero who wandered the world after the sack of Troy before settling in central Italy to found the community into which Romulus and Remus were later to be born.” (Jones and Sidwell, 1997:5)

For the Romans, it was important to highlight the Hellenistic element prevalent in Roman culture precisely because the Romans had borrowed so much from the Greek social, cultural and political modes of life. Likewise in terms of masculinity and heroism, the Romans’ ideals of virtue were closely allied to the Greeks’ perceptions of heroism and valour. Heroes had to be placed in a life and death context and they had to show dexterity in the face of physical danger. For this reason, boxing maintained its status as a heroic sporting endeavour during the Roman age of hegemonic domination.

For Virgil, like Homer before him, boxing was a form of sporting art that was elevated over and above any other in terms of its physical daring and the sense of honour that was attached to its application. Thus, boxing and wrestling are separated from rowing and running; indeed, even more so in the Roman world than in the Greek world where there appears to be a definitive split between the two differing kinds of sports. Virgil accentuates this Homeric division of heroic pursuits by following Homer’s example of setting an important scene in the context of a funeral games with Aeneas playing the part of Achilles: the judge, jury and executioner of each and every sport in the games. Furthermore, the background to the central boxing match at the funeral games in The Aeneid follows the blueprint of The Iliad by having a boxer think twice about his chances of stepping into the fighting arena on account of old age and fading sporting glory. In this way, Virgil expounds upon Homer’s views of old age constituting the end of the life of the boxer and the warrior and, consequently, the end of his cultural worth as a hero or an icon.

In The Aeneid it is the turn of the Trojans to appear condescending when Trojan boxer Dares is not granted the competition his masculinity and masculine aggression desire. Entellus is the most likely candidate as Dares’ opposition but the doubt instilled by the passage of time makes him, like Odysseus before him, question how far old age has lessened his boxing skills.

“‘I am not afraid’, replied Entellus. ‘I have still my pride and my love of honour. But old age is slowing me down. The blood is cold and sluggish. My strength is gone and my body is worn out. But if I were what I once was, if I had the youth that makes that puppy so full of himself, prancing around there, I would not have needed the reward of a pretty bullock to bring me to my feet. I am not interested in prizes.’” (The Aeneid, Book Five, 395‑400; pp.100‑101)

This last line underscores another important point with regards to boxers and athletic heroes in the ancient world. Above all, famous boxers and heroic fighters were not motivated by prizes, luxury or the accumulation of wealth. Honour and fame for these men was intended to come after death – preferably in a glorious fight or battle. This is an important point as it is one that provides the Classical author with the opportunity to telegraph the differences between mortal and immortal men. Ultimately, mortal men fight for prizes and power while immortal men (not solely in a mythical or religious sense) of fame and sporting glory box and compete for honour and virtue. This kind of ideology, in turn, almost always ensures the support of the gods so that a pattern becomes apparent whereby the boxer who is fighting for the prize almost always loses the contest, often losing out to an opponent who is older, less physically able but – crucially – intellectually wiser and able to understand that it is morals as much as muscles that wins combat sporting contests in the Classical world. This societal character trait remains evident in twenty first century culture where the hero of Hollywood cinema (the contemporary equivalent of Classical Greek culture in terms of its unchallenged hegemonic cultural capital) depicts its heroes as the character (be it male or female) chooses honour, love and virtuosity over fame, fortune and power. Even the cult of the celebrity dead is starkly evident in the modern era, evoking the memory of Achilles who decided to choose his fate and to die in Troy so as to be remembered as an immortal warrior for all time.

Thus, Entellus enters the boxing arena with the winds of Homeric legend whistling in his ear. His fate is assured; the audience must only wait to discover the means of his impending victory. The boxing match itself is recounted in a style very similar to Homer in The Iliad. In this way, the two boxers become representatives of their peoples. This, in turn, impacts upon the fame of the victor who can be said to have won a great victory not only for himself but also for his country.

As expected, the boxing match begins with the two fighters adopting a cautious approach so that each man is paying due deference to his opponents’ strengths. Entellus is cautious with regards to Dares’ youth. Likewise Dares is aware of the superior physical size of his opponent and does not lunge into any unnecessary early manoeuvres. Virgil describes the formative part of the fight:

“Blow upon blow they threw at each other and missed. Blow upon blow drummed on the hollow rib cage, boomed on the chest and showered round the head and ears, and the cheekbones rattled with the weight of the punches. Entellus, being the heavier man, held firm in his stance, keeping watchful eyes on his opponent and swaying away from the bombardment. For Dares it was like attacking some massive high-built city or besieging a mountain fortress.” (The Aeneid, Book Five, 433‑441; p.102)

Entellus is the first to make his move, although the heavy blow he plans to land upon Dares misses his target and the big man ends up landing on the ground. However, rather than let this humiliate or dishearten him, Entellus uses the fall as his inspiration to launch a second, much more ferocious assault against his opponent. This telegraphs an important point with regards to the construction of the classical hero in The Aeneid (and The Iliad): the hero uses adversity to galvanise his fighting skills, which is in opposition to the anti‑hero who uses adversity as a means of backing away from the fight or as a catalyst to allow his emotions to cloud his better pugilistic judgement. Thus, after he falls, Entellus pegs Dares back with a series of crushing blows, which are again recounted by the poet Virgil:

“The hero Entellus did not slow down or lose heart because of a fall. He returned to the fray with his ferocity renewed and anger rousing him to new heights of violence. His strength was kindled by shame at his fall and pride in his prowess, and in a white heat of fury he drove Dares before him all over the arena, hammering him with rights and lefts and allowing him no rest or respite. Like hailstones from a dark cloud rattling down on roofs, Entellus battered Dares with a shower of blows from both hands and sent him spinning.” (The Aeneid, Book Five, 453‑461; p.102)

In the end, Father Aeneas stops the fight before Dares is killed. The victory is consequently Entellus’ and, as far as the audience was concerned, to all heroes like him: older, wiser and more likely to incur the favourable opinion of the gods. This chapter in the tale of The Aeneid can also be seen as another important building block in the edification of the legend of Troy and that, even in the aftermath of the Trojan War, legendary warriors and heroes continued to face one another, even as far away as Italy – the home of the new Mediterranean Empire.

Yet while the power of Virgil’s epic poetry is easily visible for modern historians and literature enthusiasts, there is less certainty with regards to the influence of his work during his own lifetime and immediately afterwards during Imperial Rome. First and foremost, there is a great deal of conjecture concerning literacy levels in ancient Rome, which would clearly impact upon the cultural value of his poetry to his own people. This, in turn, would necessarily impact upon Virgil’s literary construction of the classical hero, as evidenced in the exploits of Entellus and the protagonist Aeneas himself. Thus, in spite of the graffiti that adorned Roman walls quoting Virgil in the years after his death, his message may never have been fully transmitted to the Roman populace.

“The Virgil graffiti are not all evidence of bookishness or a deeply literate society. Many of them come from the opening lines of a book or a poem and able inscribers were commissioned to write them elegantly.” (Fox, 2005:553)

This is not to state that the cultural value of The Aeneid was significantly lessened due to the Roman people’s inability to read the text for themselves. Rather, this is merely to state that the depiction of boxing in Virgil’s poetry may be much more stylised and mythical than was actually the case in the Roman era. The same was not necessarily true of Homer who was able to reach a much greater audience on account of the oral tradition of the ancient Greeks who passed on the exploits of The Iliad and The Odyssey via word of mouth. Both, ultimately, are expressions of the Greek and Roman ideals of the heroic boxer within the critical context of the whim of the gods. In the final analysis, therefore, no boxer could ever be considered to be a hero in the truest sense if he could not command the respect and assistance of the immortal as well as the mortal realm.

Plato

Plato offers a different viewpoint to both Homer and Virgil, primarily because Plato was interested in writing a non‑fictional account as to the organisation of political, social and cultural life in Athens as opposed to a fictional account of mythical warriors, heroes and anti‑heroes. This does not mean that Plato was any less interested in exploring the cultural ideal of the classical hero; rather, it is merely to state that he and philosophers like him wrote from a unique vantage point that enabled them to look into the world of the hero without having direct access to it themselves. This harks back to the point made in a previous chapter whereby ancient philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato were, as a result of the Greek and Roman obsession with manliness and heroism, made to look impotent in the face of such overt displays of virtue and valour.

“Wisdom is necessarily impotent. Unable to rule and lacking authority, the philosopher has to watch manly men be manly and while criticising their excesses, he tolerates and even endorses their often misguided forwardness. Like a woman, he serves as a measure of manliness, appreciative of its capacities and aware of its limitations. As judge of manliness he transcends it but does not try to replace it. He can offer advice to manly rulers but not with confidence that it will be listened to.” (Mansfield, 2006:210)

As a result, Plato’s observations of boxing come from the standpoint of the curious bystander; not from the standpoint of the poet looking to trigger a cult hero worship for a long dead boxer and/or warrior. This necessarily affects his interpretation of boxing, most notably with regards to the discernible lack of mysticism that Plato attaches to boxing. His most vivid musings on boxing come in his landmark political book, The Republic, which was intent on highlighting the heroism of the political animal in the same way that Homer and Virgil were intent upon underscoring the heroism of the warrior and the city founder respectively.

Plato also differs from Homer and Virgil due to the way in which he separates the ‘science’ of boxing from the arts of military warfare. Thus, for Plato, a good boxer did not necessarily equate to a good soldier. Indeed, the two were not as closely connected as his contemporaries would have believed with boxing constituting a sport and warfare constituting a tactical application of logic on the battlefield. The author expands upon these views during Book Four of the Republic where Plato uses his conversations with Socrates as a means to expressing his views on the cultural worth of boxing. All of Plato’s conversations in Book Four take place within the broader context of his thesis upon the role of the Athenian State. This clearly impacts upon his views of boxing where Plato displays the requisite arrogance of the hegemonic superior city‑state in ancient times. As such, he sees Athenian boxers as by far the most accomplished in the world (of which he knew), which forms the backdrop to the following account:

“And yet rich men probably have a greater superiority in the science of boxing than they have in military qualities… then we may assume that our athletes will be able to fight with two or three times their own number… and suppose that, before engaging our city sent an embassy to one or two of the cities, telling them what is the truth: silver and gold we neither have nor are permitted to have, but you may; do you therefore come and help us in war, of and take the spoils of the other city. Who, on hearing these words, would choose to fight against lean wiry dogs, rather than, with the dogs on their side, against fat and tender sheep?” (The Republic, Book Four, quoted in, The Internet Classics Archive; http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.5.iv.html)

Here we can clearly see the condescending attitude of the Athenians in the Hellenistic age – a people who thought themselves above and beyond the likes of the barbarians. Not only does Plato betray his arrogant views concerning the superiority of the Athenians, he also shows how he believes rich, educated men to be better skilled at boxing than at military pursuits, which he clearly sees as the domain of the poor, uneducated man. Furthermore, it can be seen that Plato diverges from Homer and Virgil by the way in which he sees boxing as a science as opposed to an art or a tool of war. This science revolves upon the economic use of vital resources such as strength and energy. Only through the vigilant application of these resources can the boxer become a winner. This separation between the scientific approach of the philosopher Plato and the artistic approach of the poets Homer and Virgil goes much deeper than a difference of writing styles. This separation goes to the very heart of the ancient Greek and early Roman views on religion and, specifically, the part played by the gods in the creation of heroes and villains; winners and losers. For instance, where Homer sees Apollo and Pallas Athena as the reasons behind a boxer’s ultimate success or failure in the arena, Plato sees the same success as a product of the economic application of bodily resources. This represents a much more subjective view of society and constitutes the beginnings of the study of the science of sport, a subject which only become increasingly significant once again in the twentieth century when physical ‘education’ became an integral central part of the national curriculum. Plato can consequently be seen to be ahead of his time when it comes to the interpretation of boxing as an individual field of intellectual as well as physical endeavour. As ever, Plato cannot envisage any endeavour as existing outside of the realms of political or social sciences. Pugilism, for him, is consequently an area that can be studied and, in turn, this study can be translated into an improvement in results and performance. In this way, Plato moves outside of the rigid confines of a world that is dominated by the whim of the gods to embrace a point of view that is dominated by human reasoning and the ability to separate fate from religious fervour. Thus, the boxing scenes in The Republic are, in the final analysis, discernibly more modern than the boxing scenes in The Iliad or The Aeneid because of the absence of a spiritual belief system that appears decidedly anachronistic to contemporary audiences.

Conclusion

“Our modern culture is filled with sports heroes who have achieved superstar status through talent and accomplishment on the athletic field. Athletes could also be considered heroes in antiquity, but not because of their athletic accomplishments. By ancient standards, the hero was the offspring of humans or of a god and a human who achieved quasi-divine status. Most important, the ancient hero had to be dead, at which point a cult hero would arrive. The hero could then use his intimate connection with the underworld to provide a point of contact for his worshipers, who needed it for, among other things, cursing enemies.” (Miller, 2004:160)

It has been shown that the ancient ideal of the hero was vastly different to our own understanding of the hero in the contemporary era. In the twenty first century the term hero is over-used. It is deployed to describe men and women who have achieved celebrity status regarding any number of activities – from entertainment to popular culture to sports. In the ancient world, the term hero was not used with anything like the frequency with which it is today. A hero was a cultural icon in the truest sense of the world – one who had transgressed the realms of mortality to embrace the realms of immortality, becoming in the process a semi‑divine cult hero. He had to have faced seemingly insurmountable odds in order to have achieved his greatest victories and he also needed to be a hero from a bygone era in order to be placed within the text of both Homer and Virgil. In this way, the kind of hero that dominates ancient Greek and Latin literature was the kind of hero who became a benchmark for Athenian and Roman culture.

It is important to note that the two major heroes of The Iliad and The Aeneid – Achilles and Aeneas – do not feature as boxers in the poems of Homer and Virgil. Rather, the boxing scenes serve to augment the heroic depictions of battle and honour to show how the more mortal characters in the books are able to mimic the heroism of the central protagonists within a competition based context. In this way, the boxers in The Iliad and The Aeneid become more humanised and are thus better positioned to impact upon the ancient audiences who would have listened to Homer and Virgil.

However, in spite of the obvious differences between the ancient idealisation of the hero and our contemporary views of celebrity, the boxing depictions relayed to posterity by both Homer and Virgil show essential similarities between the ancient Greek and Roman cultures and our own modern post industrial society. The Iliad and The Aeneid underscore that then, as now, men were brought up to behave and to interact in a certain, socially acceptable way that paid homage to masculinity and virility at the expense of less desirable attributes such as sensitivity and other comparable ‘feminine’ pursuits. Thus, in Homer and Virgil, we see the cultural trappings of maleness that have been constant in western society from the Homeric age through to the dawn of the twenty first century.

“Often men carry an unrecognised sense of guilt for the ways we learnt to forsake our own emotions and desires to win the love and respect of parents and teachers. So… so we often learnt to compromise what we knew about ourselves to win the love and approval of parents. We learnt to be ‘good boys’ through adapting to what others expected of us, rather than being able to stand up for what we needed for ourselves.” (Seidler, 1997:26)

As for the sport of boxing, The Iliad and The Aeneid show how deep rooted the fascination with organised fist fighting is. It is only very recently that boxing has been sidelined by more commercially appealing consumer friendly games such as football. For the best part of three millennia boxing has been the most heroic of sports throughout the western world, especially in North America and Europe where the status of national boxing champion has been accompanied with a large degree of cultural kudos. Moreover, the ideal of the international boxing champion has served to make certain boxers immortal legends in their own lifetime, especially in the ‘heavyweight’ category that pits the biggest, strongest boxers in the world against one another in a crushing, gargantuan bout. Men such as Mohammed Ali, George Foreman and Joe Louis are as well known and celebrated as any other international sports star; due entirely to their boxing prowess. Indeed, there can be few arguments against the assertion that Ali is one of the most iconic figures in modern history, transcending the status of sportsman and showman to become a voice of an entire people.

“Without question, there has been no greater star in the history of sport than Muhammad Ali… Once he became a political figure, both by design and by accident, his fame outstripped that not just of any other fighter, but any other athlete. Ali’s celebrity stretched far beyond the boundaries of his game. He was for the better part of his career, and for some years after, the most famous human being on the planet.” (Brunt, 2002:3)

This level of fame appears to be quite compatible with the hero status lavished upon the boxers in The Iliad and The Aeneid. Moreover, Ali’s fame is constructed upon so much more than his undoubted sporting ability. Like Virgil’s Entellus, Ali’s legend was triggered by the hardships that he had to face outside of the ring and, crucially, he achieved his highest level of heroic fame after the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ when he was seen as a thirty five year old has-been who was bound to lose against the younger, fitter George Foreman. Thus, just like Entellus, Ali’s victory against the odds was seen as a victory for endeavour over substance as well as for the wisdom of old age and experience against youthful petulance and arrogance.

Therefore, in the final analysis, it would be fair to conclude that the classical idealisation of the hero as promulgated in the boxing scenes of The Iliad and The Aeneid do not differ wildly from our own vision of heroism in a sporting context. Clearly, there are remarkable differences, especially with regards to the integral part played by the gods in the ultimate success or failure of any given boxer in the ancient world. However, this can simply be read as the intervention of fate in determining who wins or loses a sports match, which remains a key part of the mysticism and unpredictability that surrounds boxing in the contemporary era. In this way, boxing becomes wholly divorced from all other sports, elevated as Plato would have seen it to a science or as Virgil and Homer interpreted it as a form of art. In all cases, though, boxing can be seen to be a vital part of the edification of the cultural hero, embodying the concept of masculinity and courage in the face of mortal danger.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brunt, S. (2002) Facing Ali: The Opposition Weighs In London: Sidgwick & Jackson

Clark, K. (1985) The Nude London: Penguin

Flaceliere, R. (2002) Daily Life in Greece at the Time of Pericles London: Phoenix

Fox, R.L. (2005) The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian London: Allen Lane

Homer (Translated by Robert Fagles) (Introduction by Bernard Knox) (1990) The Iliad London: The Folio Society

Homer (Translated by E.V. Rieu) (1976) The Odyssey London and New York: Penguin Classics

Jones, P.V. and Sidwell, K.C. (1997) The World of Rome: An Introduction to Roman Culture Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Kennell, N.M. (1995) The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press

Mansfield, H.C. (2006) Manliness New Haven and London: Yale University Press

Miller, S.G. (2004) Ancient Greek Athletics New Haven and London: Yale University Press

Poliakoff, M.B. (1995) Combat Sports in the Ancient World: Competition, Violence and Culture New Haven: Yale University Press

Redfield, J.M. (1993) Nature and Culture in The Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector Durham, NC: Duke University Press

Seidler, V.J. (1997) Man Enough: Embodying Masculinities London: SAGE

Rich, J. and Shipley, G. (Eds.) (1993) War and Society in the Roman World London: Routledge

Virgil (Translation and Introduction by David West) (1991) The Aeneid London: Penguin Classics

Worthington, I. (2004) Alexander the Great: Man and God London: Longman

Selected Articles

Rich, J. (1993) Introduction, in, Rich, J. and Shipley, G. (Eds.) War and Society in the Roman World London: Routledge

Websites

Plato, The Republic, Book Four, quoted in, The Internet Classics Archive; http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.5.iv.html)