employed. Every district in Greece had a style of its own, and these diversities of method helped to keep active an interest in wrestling and to preserve it from the disease of professionalism, so that even when other sports had been ruined the wrestling ring still remained a useful and a popular institution. It is this popularity in actual life that accounts for the frequency of descriptions of wrestling matches in Greek literature. Two of them at least are worth quoting; the first from the _Iliad_, Book XXIII, the contest between Ajax and Odysseus at the funeral games of Patroclus: He said; and straight uprose the giant form Of Ajax Telamon: with him uprose Ulysses, skilled in every crafty wile. Girt with the belt, within the ring they stood, And each, with stalwart grasp, laid hold on each; As stand two rafters of a lofty house, Each propping each, by skilful architect Designed the tempest’s fury to withstand. Creaked their backbones beneath the tug and strain Of those strong arms; their sweat poured down like rain; And bloody weals of livid purple hue Their sides and shoulders streaked, as sternly they For victory and the well-wrought tripod strove. Nor could Ulysses Ajax overthrow, Nor Ajax bring Ulysses to the ground, So stubbornly he stood; but when the Greeks Were weary of the long protracted strife, Thus to Ulysses mighty Ajax spoke: ‘Ulysses sage, Laertes’ godlike son, Or lift thou me, or I will thee uplift: The issue of our struggle rests with Jove.’ He said, and raised Ulysses from the ground; Nor he his ancient craft remembered not, But locked his leg around, and striking sharp Upon the hollow of the knee, the joint Gave way; the giant Ajax backwards fell, Ulysses on his breast; the people saw, And marvelled. Then in turn Ulysses strove Ajax to lift; a little way he moved, But failed to lift him fairly from the ground; Yet crooked his knee, that both together fell, And side by side, defiled with dust, they lay. (Homer: _Iliad_, XXIII, 820-851, Derby’s translation.) The second description is separated from Homer by some twelve centuries, but it is equally vigorous. In the tenth book of _The Æthiopian History_ of Heliodorus, the hero Theagenes, as his last trial before winning his beloved Chariclea, is matched against a stalwart Æthiopian, and in Underdowne’s quaint Elizabethan version the passage thus appears: