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Thus, Boxing Became More Brutal And More Closely Allied To The Concept Of The ...

Thus, boxing became more brutal and more closely allied to the concept of the gladiator that would appear in ancient Rome. Indeed, it was the Romans who took the paradigm of combat sports to a new level by creating a new kind of boxing glove, the caestus, which was commonly loaded with metal and glass fragments. A single punch could be lethal. (Miller, 2004:54)
It can be seen that the ideal of the heroic boxing champion changed markedly from the sport's first inception in the Olympic Games in 688 BC to the advent of the bloodthirsty Roman incarnation of ancient contact sports where blood was demanded by society at large. Clearly, therefore, there must have been a sizeable gap between the kind of mythical boxing relayed by writers such as Homer, Pindar, Virgil, Aristotle and Plato and the kind of boxing that was seen at the Olympic Games and at Greek and Roman boxing arenas in the ancient world. Consequently, we must be careful not to confuse the theoretical writings of classical authors with the pugilistic realities of competition sports in the classical epoch.
Finally, mention must briefly be made of the audience the most important commodity in ancient combat sports in the ancient Greek and Roman periods. It should be noted that the spectator went to the Olympic Games and to gladiatorial contests to watch a dangerous fight take place where the stakes were high for both competitors and the audience alike. The spectators did not attend games to see boxers who did not conform to this sporting stereotype. Therefore, boxing became a microcosm of the militant ancient societies of Athens and Rome whereby the fighters were able to satisfy the spectators' (as well as their own) bloodlust. This is a highly significant point and one that ought to be borne in mind throughout the remainder of the discussion at hand: boxing in the ancient world represented the heroic ideal of all of society, not just of the fighters and the men who wrote about those fighters for the sake of posterity. However, the writers whom we speak of herein were not privy to such masculine prowess. As a result, Classical authors including Pindar and Aristotle commented on boxing, wrestling and other combat sports with a decidedly envious eye that reflected the primacy of physical endeavour of mental aptitude in the ancient world.
Regardless of the bias and lack of manly insight of the majority of the primary source material, this prevailing cultural fact did not change during the transition from Roman to Greek regional hegemony in the last two centuries before the birth of Christ. Manliness was constantly associated with sports, combat, fighting and physical prowess; philosophy, politics and science remained the realms of the womanly wise. Heroism was a manifestation of these positive male character traits.


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