Boxing was one of the roughest and most dangerous of the gymnastic combats; because, besides the danger of being crippled, the combatants ran the hazard of their lives. They sometimes fell down dead, or dying upon the sand; though that seldom happened, except the vanquished person persisted too long in not acknowledging his defeat: yet it was common for them to quit the fight with a countenance so disfigured, that it was not easy to know them afterwards; carrying away with them the sad marks of their vigorous resistance, such as bruises and contusions in the face, the loss of an eye, their teeth knocked out, their jaws broken, or some more considerable fracture. We find in the poets, both Latin and Greek, several descriptions of this kind of combat. In Homer, that of Epeus and Euryalus; in Theocritus, of Pollux and Amycus; in Apollonius Rhodius, the same battle of Pollux and Amycus; in Virgil, that of Dares and Entellus; and in Statius, and Valerius Flaccus, of several other combatants.(129) Of the Pancratium. The Pancratium was so called from two Greek words,(130) which signify that the whole force of the body was necessary for succeeding in it. It united boxing and wrestling in the same fight, borrowing from one its manner of struggling and flinging, and from the other, the art of dealing blows and of avoiding them with success. In wrestling it was not permitted to strike with the hand, nor in boxing to seize each other in the manner of the wrestlers; but in the Pancratium, it was not only allowed to make use of all the gripes and artifices of wrestling, but the hands and feet, and even the teeth and nails, might be employed to conquer an antagonist. This combat was the most rough and dangerous. A Pancratiast in the Olympic games (called Arrichion, or Arrachion,) perceiving himself almost suffocated by his adversary, who had got fast hold of him by the throat, at the same time that he held him by the foot, broke one of his enemy’s toes, the extreme anguish of which obliged him to ask quarter at the very instant that Arrichion himself expired. The Agonothetæ crowned Arrichion, though dead, and proclaimed him victor. Philostratus has left us a very lively description of a painting, which represented this combat. Of the Discus, or Quoit. The Discus was a kind of quoit of a round form, made sometimes of wood, but more frequently of stone, lead, or other metal; as iron or brass. Those who used this exercise were called Discoboli, that is, flingers of the Discus. The epithet κατωμάδιος, which signifies “borne upon the shoulders,” given to this instrument by Homer, sufficiently shows, that it was of too great a weight to be carried from place to place in the hands only, and that the shoulders were necessary for the support of such a burden for any length of time.