The next two events—the boxing and the wrestling matches—are described as ἀλεγεινός, “hard” or “distressful,” an epithet which, as before observed, seems rather a recommendation than otherwise. Indeed these two sports, which are always mentioned together, already held the position of pre-eminence which they held at the time of Pindar, and they formed the chief part of the Achaean chieftain’s athletic education. For boxing and wrestling are essentially exercises of skill. The child and the savage hit, kick, tear, scratch, bite, and from this primitive rough-and-tumble the Greek in later time developed the scientific pankration; it is only the civilised man who distinguishes boxing and wrestling, who uses the fist to strike and conducts a fight by rules. In Homer both wrestling and boxing are already arts, and though in their rougher form popular sports, the science of them seems to have been the monopoly of the chieftains, perhaps, like the Japanese jiu-jitsu, jealously handed down from father to son. The importance of the art of self-defence in those unsettled times is obvious from the many legends of robbers and bullies who challenged strangers to a bout of wrestling or boxing, till their career of murder was cut short by a Heracles, a Theseus, or a Polydeuces, in whose victories later art and story represented the triumph of science and Hellenism over brute force and barbarism. Such a victory Odysseus himself is said to have won in Lesbos over Philomeleides, whom he threw mightily, and all the Achaeans rejoiced.[9] In Homer, Polydeuces is already “the boxer,” and Odysseus “of many counsels” wins glory both as boxer and wrestler.