User:Senior citizen smith/Creugas and Damoxenos
boxing bout at the Nemean Games between Creugas of Epidamnus (north-west Greece) and Damoxenos of Syracuse. Thought to have taken place c. 400 BC. Ancient Greek boxing (pyx)
Pausanias, Description of Greece written around AD 170. The story is not found elsewhere.[1]
...evening drew near as they were boxing, and they agreed within the hearing of witnesses, that each should in turn allow the other to deal him a blow. At that time boxers did not yet wear a sharp thong on the wrist of each hand, but still boxed with the soft gloves, binding them in the hollow of the hand, so that their fingers might be left bare. These soft gloves were thin thongs of raw ox-hide plaited together after an ancient manner.
On the occasion to which I refer Creugas aimed his blow at the head of Damoxenus, and the latter bade Creugas lift up his arm. On his doing so, Damoxenus with straight fingers struck his opponent under the ribs; and what with the sharpness of his nails and the force of the blow he drove his hand into the other's inside, caught his bowels, and tore them as he pulled them out.
Creugas expired on the spot, and the Argives expelled Damoxenus for breaking his agreement by dealing his opponent many blows instead of one. They gave the victory to the dead Creugas, and had a statue of him made in Argos. It still stood in my time in the sanctuary of Lycian Apollo.
- Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.40.3-5 c. AD 170
"The issue seems not to have been safety, or even the risk of death; the story of D and K reinforces respect for the rule of law understood democratically as an agreemnet amongst peers."[2]
Antonio Canova inspired by Pausanias' story statues of the two boxers.
Sources
[edit]- Pausanias. Pausanias Description of Greece Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918.
- Heather L. Reid (2014). Athletics and Philosophy in the Ancient World: Contests of Virtue. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-317-98495-5.
- "Classical Pugilists Creugas and Damoxenos by Canova". Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums.
Arrhichion of Phigaleia "expired at the very moment when his opponent acknowledged himself beaten." [Gardiner: 438]450 and Miller, p. 59