Studies In The Terminology Of The Greek Combat Sports.

Abstract

This dissertation is a comprehensive study of eight of the most important groups of terms of boxing, wrestling, and pankration, altogether 58 words. It differentiates between what is voce propria a term of combative sport and what has a more general usage but often describes these sports. As much as possible, every attestation of these words from Homer through the 12'th Century is cited and studied. Difficult metaphorical usages, such as Pi. N. 4 and Aesch. 3.205-6 are examined in detail. The author demonstrates that myrmex is a general term for boxing thongs and seems to appear as early as Archilochos. The sphairai are shown to be practice gloves, and the difficult passage, Pl. Lg. 830, a reference to fighting with tipped weapons and not with lethal gloves. The fall in wrestling occurred when one wrestler was thrown to his back, stretched out prone, or tied up in a controlling hold. The theory that touching a knee to the ground constituted a fall is rejected. Ancient medical practice often differentiated motions of these sports for therapeutic purposes, e.g. alindesis, akrocheirismos, and care must be taken not to confuse medical and athletic definitions. In Greek literature, technical terms often function as metonomy, e.g. meson labanein becomes not a waistlock but position of advantage. Since the three combative sports formed a unit, the heavy events, and many athletes competed in more than one of these sports, there is naturally an overlap in their terminology. The appendices offer text, translation, and commentary of Ps. Luc. As. 8-10, AP 12.206, 222 (Strato), Pi. N. 4, Genesius 4.26, 4.40, Theophanes Continuatus 5.12, P Oxy. 3.466, and Galen 6.141 ff. In the first three appendices, metaphors of combative sport are seen in interaction with those of rhetoric or sexual congress, and the athletic terminology is generally accurate and meaningful, even in complex imagery. The sophisticated wrestling terms of Genesius show that he was not using a literary model but had first hand experience in 11'th C. Byzantium. P Oxy. 3.466 and Gal. 6.141 ff. are training routines and permit the reader to see that there was a standard and current technical vocabulary which allowed its meaningful use in other genres of literature.