Pugilistica: The History of British Boxing, Volume 1 (of 3): Containing Lives of the Most Celebrated Pugilists; Full Reports of Their Battles from Contemporary Newspapers, With Authentic Portraits, Personal Anecdotes, and Sketches of the Principal Patrons of the Prize Ring, Forming a Complete History of the Ring from Fig and Broughton, 1719-40, to the Last Championship Battle Between King and Heenan, in December 1863Miles, Henry Downes
History
Pugilistica: The History of British Boxing, Volume 1 (of 3): Containing Lives of the Most Celebrated Pugilists; Full Reports of Their Battles from Contemporary Newspapers, With Authentic Portraits, Personal Anecdotes, and Sketches of the Principal Patrons of the Prize Ring, Forming a Complete History of the Ring from Fig and Broughton, 1719-40, to the Last Championship Battle Between King and Heenan, in December 1863
Miles, Henry Downes
Boxing
And dragging his disabled legs along,
Nodding, his head hangs down his shoulders o’er;
His mouth and nostrils pour the clotted gore:
Wrapped round in mists he lies, and lost to thought—
His friends receive the bowl too dearly bought.”
So far the first report of a prize fight, which came off 1184 years
B.C., in the last year of the siege of Troy, anno mundi, 3530.
There was another EPEUS, son of Panopæus, who was a skilful carpenter,
and made the Greek mare, commonly but erroneously called the Trojan
horse,[4] in the womb of which the Argive warriors were introduced to
the ruin of beleaguered Troy, as related in the second book of the
“Æneid.”
EURYALUS will be known by name to newspaper readers of the present day
as having given name to the steam frigate in which our sailor Prince
Alfred took his earliest voyages to sea: to the scholar he is known as a
valiant Greek prince, who went to the Trojan war with eighty ships, at
least so says Homer, “Iliad,” b. ii.
“Next move to war the generous Argive train,
From high Trœzenè and Maseta’s plain;
And fair Ægina circled by the main,
Whom strong Tyrinthe’s lofty walls surround,
And Epidaure with viny harvest crowned,
And where fair Asinen and Hermion show
Their cliffs above and ample bay below.
These by the brave EURYALUS were led,
Great Sthenelus and greater Diomed.
But chief Tydides bore the sovereign sway;
In fourscore barks they plough their watery way.”
We may here note that Tydides (the family name of Diomed, as the son of
Tydeus) was Euryalus’s second in the mill with Epeus, wherein we have
just seen him so soundly thrashed by the big and bounceable Epeus. As
Virgil generally invents a “continuation” or counterpart of the Homeric
heroes for his “Æneid,” we find Euryalus made the hero of an episode,
and celebrated for his immortal friendship with Nisus: with him he had a
partnership in fighting, and they died together in a night encounter
with the troops of the Rutulians, whose camp they had plundered, but
were overtaken and slain. (Virg. Æneid, ix., 176.) We will now therefore
shift the scene from Greece, and come to Sicily and Italy, and the early
boxing matches there.
Æneas’ companions were a “school” of boxers, and met with the like in
Italy, among whom ENTELLUS, ERYX, and ANTÆUS (already mentioned), DARES,
CLOANTHUS, GYGES, GYAS, etc., may be numbered.
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