There remain the two severest and most objectionable sports—boxing and the pankration. The former came first (Ol. 23), the other test of strength not being admitted till Ol. 33 (650 B. C.). But one special occasion is mentioned when a champion, who was competing in both, persuaded the judges to change the order, that he might not have to contend against a specially famous antagonist when already wounded and bruised. For boxing was, even from Homeric times, a very dangerous and bloody amusement, in which the vanquished were always severely punished. The Greeks were not content with naked fists, but always used a special apparatus, called _ἱμάντες_, which consisted at first of a weight carried in the hand, and fastened by thongs of hide round the hand and wrist. But this ancient cestus came to be called the gentle kind (_μειλίχαι_) when a later and more brutal invention introduced “sharp thongs on the wrist,” and probably increased the weight of the instrument. The successful boxer in the Iliad (Epeius) confesses that he is a bad warrior, though he is the acknowledged champion in his own line; but evidently this sport was not highly esteemed in epic days. In historical times it seems to have been more favored. There was no doubt a great deal of skill required for it, but I think the body of the evidence goes to prove that the Greeks did not box on sound principles, and that any prominent member of the P. R. with his naked fists would have easily settled any armed champion of Olympian fame. Here are my reasons: The principle of increasing the weight of the fist as much as possible is only to be explained by the habit of dealing swinging or downward strokes, and is incompatible with the true method of striking straight home quickly, and giving weight to the stroke by sending the whole body with it. In Vergil’s description a boxer is even described getting up on tip-toe to strike his adversary on the top of the head—a ridiculous manœuvre, which must make his instant ruin certain, if his opponent knew the first elements of the art. That this downward stroke was used appears also from the anecdote in Pausanias, where a father seeing his son, who was ploughing, drive in the share which had fallen out with strokes of his fist, without a hammer, immediately entered him for the boys’ boxing match at Olympia. The lad got roughly handled from want of skill, and seemed likely to lose, when the father called out: “Boy, give him the plough stroke!” and so encouraged him that he forthwith knocked his adversary out of time.