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In other words, the Romans would have loved modern day Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) such as the UFC and PRIDE. Many MMA pundits claim that its true roots go back to Pankration. In fact, the Japanese Pacrase Association derives its name from the Greek Pankration.
From what I've been able to find, Pankration came from the words "Pan" and "Kratos" meaning "all power." I haven't been able to find much about the specifics of it, though. If anyone knows any good books or websites that cover Pankration in detail, I'd appreciate it.
And John, I agree with your assumption that the Romans probably viewed the former generations of Greeks, such as Leonidas and the Spartans at Thermopolye, with respect; but viewed their "modern" Greeks with contempt as being unmasculine.
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Conal Moran
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i dont remember where... but i think that i read somewhere that pankration was the basis for almost all modern mixed martial arts. the explanation was that Alexander recruited mainly pankrationists, becaues of their brutal skill, and as he went east the style sort of dropped off among the natives and began to evolve in various ways.
and besides, UFC seems to me almost exactly what i picture pankration ot be. mius the shorts and gloves
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there is a small park in Olympia, with a statue of a Japanese chap who is held in high regard in Greece, perhaps with a link to this Japanese Pacrase Association ????? I can't remember if it was an archaological honor or something else....definately a cultural tie tho'!!
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Quote: Thoughts, knowledge, resources and links w ould be greatly appriciated.
Seeing that you're in the Legio XX area, we were just thinking out how to organize fencing, as opposed to just boffing each other, that could demonstrate how well different techniques and equipment might have worked. If you're interested let me know.
Richard Campbell
Legio XX - Alexandria, Virginia
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Quote:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Combat-Sports-An...80&sr=1-26
this is good one.
Thanks for the info! I found this on the U.S. Amazon site as well (saves me a bit in shipping costs).
I'm adding a section in my third "Soldier of Rome" book where Artorius takes up Pankration, so I want to make sure I get all my facts straight. I admit that my reasons for adding this are two-fold; firstly because a part in the book where I originally had him put a pila through a bad guy's head some of my friends said would be much more interesting if Artorius were to "Beat him to death, UFC style!" And the other reason is because I am a die-hard MMA fan and figure that the most ancient and masculine of all competition would fit neatly into my series. Thanks again for the link and information!
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Personally, I don't agree that Ancient Pankration and modern MMA have that much in common. Modern MMA comps have FAR TOO MANY RULES. Especially the UFC and Pride. What they do have in common is utilising both grappling and striking attacks.
Apparently only knock-out really mattered in Pankration, there was no "tap-out"...
A random, nearly off-topic thought... I'm pretty sure I remember seeing Bas Rutten promoting Pancrase a few years back, maybe 10 or so, as the rebirth of the old Pankration. In Black Belt Magazine, I think it was...
OK, back into it... I'd say you could more easily liken Pankration to a brawl outside a city pub, only with fans cheering and booing from arena bleachers. I'd even go as far as to say the same about street Boxing in Ancient Rome. I'd say there wouldn't be a place on the body you couldn't hit, and limbs would be popped and crunched very often...
And those Cestus... are actually called Caestus (from the Latin caedere, "to strike"...), and they're essentially leather thongs tied around the knuckles and down the hand to past the wrist. You can see some on the hands of the sculpture The Boxer of Quirinal in Rome. A Cestus, with no A, was a type of women's belt in Ancient Greece.
The hand wrappings were eventually modified to include iron plates, studs and... spikes. There was another variety of Caestus, known as Myrmex ("limb-piercer"). Two guesses as to how Myrmex were used in competition (which was participated in with no armour)... very brutal.
One original Greek version was called Sphairai, and these were thin leather strappings with cutting blades attached. I imagine these to be more like modern razor blades than actual knife edges.
As it is, I think I remember reading once (please don't quote this...) that Caestus boxing was banned in the first century BC, and boxing was banned all together somewhere towards the end of the fourth century AD.
I was looking to have a single right-handed Titanium-plate Punching Gauntlet made a while back, and somebody suggested I look into Caestus. The early ones were perhaps most simply described as leather versions of the bandages you wear under Boxing Gloves, but they certainly got nastier and nastier as time went on...
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Quote:i dont remember where... but i think that i read somewhere that pankration was the basis for almost all modern mixed martial arts. the explanation was that Alexander recruited mainly pankrationists, because of their brutal skill, and as he went east the style sort of dropped off among the natives and began to evolve in various ways.
Most established Middle Eastern and South Asian martial arts have roots earlier than Alexander. Kalaripayattu, the martial art from India that inspired the creation of Shaolin Chuan Fa, and therefore most Asian Martial Arts, was credited to Sage Parasurama 600-700 years before Alexander was born.
But... Varzesh-e Pahlavani, the Persian traditional martial art, is credited to the Parthian Empire, which was 132 BC to 226 AD, and therefore after Alexander, may well have been partially influenced by Alexander's troops. Although you don't see much similarity to Pankration once you've seen a demonstration of Varzesh-e Pahlavani... :lol: Look it up, you'll see what I mean...
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Quote:Personally, I don't agree that Ancient Pankration and modern MMA have that much in common. Modern MMA comps have FAR TOO MANY RULES. Especially the UFC and Pride. What they do have in common is utilising both grappling and striking attacks.
Apparently only knock-out really mattered in Pankration, there was no "tap-out"...
A random, nearly off-topic thought... I'm pretty sure I remember seeing Bas Rutten promoting Pancrase a few years back, maybe 10 or so, as the rebirth of the old Pankration. In Black Belt Magazine, I think it was...
OK, back into it... I'd say you could more easily liken Pankration to a brawl outside a city pub, only with fans cheering and booing from arena bleachers. I'd even go as far as to say the same about street Boxing in Ancient Rome. I'd say there wouldn't be a place on the body you couldn't hit, and limbs would be popped and crunched very often...
And those Cestus... are actually called Caestus (from the Latin caedere, "to strike"...), and they're essentially leather thongs tied around the knuckles and down the hand to past the wrist. You can see some on the hands of the sculpture The Boxer of Quirinal in Rome. A Cestus, with no A, was a type of women's belt in Ancient Greece.
The hand wrappings were eventually modified to include iron plates, studs and... spikes. There was another variety of Caestus, known as Myrmex ("limb-piercer"). Two guesses as to how Myrmex were used in competition (which was participated in with no armour)... very brutal.
One original Greek version was called Sphairai, and these were thin leather strappings with cutting blades attached. I imagine these to be more like modern razor blades than actual knife edges.
As it is, I think I remember reading once (please don't quote this...) that Caestus boxing was banned in the first century BC, and boxing was banned all together somewhere towards the end of the fourth century AD.
I was looking to have a single right-handed Titanium-plate Punching Gauntlet made a while back, and somebody suggested I look into Caestus. The early ones were perhaps most simply described as leather versions of the bandages you wear under Boxing Gloves, but they certainly got nastier and nastier as time went on...
Can you let me have your sources on the highlighted bits please?
Conal Moran
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I'll give you some online, to save time. I don't know how you feel about Wikipedia, but this stuff is all there, for starters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pankration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caestus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_Boxing
I will have to stand corrected... There does appear to be a form of "tap out" where one raises a finger to submit.
http://www.utexas.edu/courses/cc304c3/B ... oxing.html
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Pugilism
http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=WHKv ... 78Ig&hl=en
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g ... _n19124932
http://www.answers.com/topic/boxing-1
http://antiqueclippings.blogspot.com/20 ... fight.html
I looked online for a source for caedere meaning "to strike", but found the majority of online translations and dictionaries list caedere as "slaughter, killing, carnage". I will have to dig out a book and get back to you on that.
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Hi
I dont set a great deal of store in Wiki but dont dismiss out of hand :?
I belive that Caestus relates more closely to "belt" or "wrapping" than to "strike" ... we need a Latin expert to settle that one.
As to Myrmex meaning limb piercer, I am not convinced. I believe that this is more related to earlier thong wrappings such as sharp thongs which would bite like an ant. Myrmex is old speak for ant I believe but the ant could have been named due to its limb piercing bite? However I believe that the thongs were named after the ant due to its stinging effect rather than any actual piercing capability.
Sphiairai ... I cant find anything in my sources which indicates that blades were used or even metal incerts. I think this was a type of sharp thong, which used hard leather designed to cut. This appears to be the type on the famous seated boxer, with the Romans adding metal, spike & protrusions in their Ceastus later on.
I will list a few helpfull books when I have time.
Conal Moran
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I don't like Wikipedia much either. Nearly all of their Ancient China articles are downright wrong. It's always the first to come up on search engines, though... You can always count on it for that...
Good man, Conal. Looking forward to those books... A most fascinating subject, especially with the current popularity of the "almost similar to pankration" modern MMA competitions.
I do remember reading somewhere, though, that Myrmex was an additional piece that you fastened to your Caestus and that it was a big ol' spike-like apparatus for the creation of puncture wounds. When I find that reading I will list it here.
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"I do remember reading somewhere, though, that Myrmex was an additional piece that you fastened to your Caestus and that it was a big ol' spike-like apparatus for the creation of puncture wounds. When I find that reading I will list it here."
That would be great.
Below a few books, which are subject specific;
Sports and games in the ancient world ; Vera Olivola
# ISBN-10: 085613273X
# ISBN-13: 978-0856132735
Combat Sports in the Ancient World: Competition, Violence and Culture;
Michael B Poliakoff
# ISBN-10: 0300037686
# ISBN-13: 978-0300037685
The Roman Games: Historical Sources in Translation; Alison Futrell
# ISBN-10: 1405115696
# ISBN-13: 978-1405115698
Conal Moran
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If I remember correctly, in the early days wrestling was an aristocratic amateur sport suitable for highborn Greeks. Boxing was less so, and pancration was practiced almost exclusively by professional athletes. In the same way, modern boxing in America is traditionally the poor man's way out of the ghetto.
Pecunia non olet
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Quote:Personally, I don't agree that Ancient Pankration and modern MMA have that much in common. Modern MMA comps have FAR TOO MANY RULES. Especially the UFC and Pride. What they do have in common is utilising both grappling and striking attacks.
Apparently only knock-out really mattered in Pankration, there was no "tap-out"...
A random, nearly off-topic thought... I'm pretty sure I remember seeing Bas Rutten promoting Pancrase a few years back, maybe 10 or so, as the rebirth of the old Pankration. In Black Belt Magazine, I think it was...
OK, back into it... I'd say you could more easily liken Pankration to a brawl outside a city pub, only with fans cheering and booing from arena bleachers. I'd even go as far as to say the same about street Boxing in Ancient Rome. I'd say there wouldn't be a place on the body you couldn't hit, and limbs would be popped and crunched very often...
And those Cestus... are actually called Caestus (from the Latin caedere, "to strike"...), and they're essentially leather thongs tied around the knuckles and down the hand to past the wrist. You can see some on the hands of the sculpture The Boxer of Quirinal in Rome. A Cestus, with no A, was a type of women's belt in Ancient Greece.
The hand wrappings were eventually modified to include iron plates, studs and... spikes. There was another variety of Caestus, known as Myrmex ("limb-piercer"). Two guesses as to how Myrmex were used in competition (which was participated in with no armour)... very brutal.
One original Greek version was called Sphairai, and these were thin leather strappings with cutting blades attached. I imagine these to be more like modern razor blades than actual knife edges.
As it is, I think I remember reading once (please don't quote this...) that Caestus boxing was banned in the first century BC, and boxing was banned all together somewhere towards the end of the fourth century AD.
I was looking to have a single right-handed Titanium-plate Punching Gauntlet made a while back, and somebody suggested I look into Caestus. The early ones were perhaps most simply described as leather versions of the bandages you wear under Boxing Gloves, but they certainly got nastier and nastier as time went on...
Well, certain rules encourages the fighters to hit harder, like MMA gloves for example, you can actually hit much harder with them.
No rules means nothing really, i think this tournament ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo7QP-FLvmg ) is the closest of Pankration, this was forbidden becouse was to violent.
I think more rules encourage fighters to do a better show.
Sorry for the off-topic.
Bernardo A. P.
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