Roman hand-to-hand

[A_Volpe]

I recently did a school program and got a fantastic question, but didn't know the answer.

Did Roman Legionaries train in hand-to-hand, non-weapon fighting?

I'd imagine boxing and wrestling (although not part of standard training? more for sport?), but is there evidence for something more specific of a martial art?

[Caius Fabius]

Young Roman citizens were expected to take part in the various games of the city. At Herculaneum, they had a swimming pool and a wrestling field, as well as other sports areas. (This is according to the little recording you can rent that tells the young men were getting ready for a stone throwing contest as Vesuvius erupted. (They left neatly stacked stones as if they were getting ready for a contest.)) The sports were for free persons.

Probably the poorer Roman citizens didn't have as much access to the sports because they were already working, but the legions are made up of only citizens, so most legionaries would know how to wrestle. In both Pompeii and Herculaneum, they mentioned each bath house had an area for wrestling and other sports by the bathers.

Roman Legions put up a bathhouse soon after setting up a permanent fort (or maybe even before, depending on which theories you read, and some of these bath houses had the same layout as civilian ones. So perhaps the legionaries continued their childhood sport of wrestling into the military.

Lots of historical fiction had been written about this, but I haven't found actual first person accounts, although there is a lot of material I have yet to study.

Maybe someone can come up with a definite answer, instead of my poor conjecture.

[M. Demetrius]

instead of my poor conjecture

I thought that was pretty good conjecture, based on solid knowledge of Roman culture.

I don't think Kungus Fu had been quite invented yet, but it's realistic to expect grown men who were soldiers to be able to fight with whatever was at hand, rocks, clubs, kicks to the, er, you know...biting, eye gouging, pinching, wrist twisting, just like no holds barred brawls today. Actually, they may have been rougher than most today, because odds are the soldier could get away with more.

[Magnus]

Well, they certainly had knowledge of the basic body mechanics required for what we'd consider martial training.

[Palaemon]

Wrestilng, boxing and pankration, I would think.

[Caius Fabius]

see also:
[url:2g1kizun]http://www.historical-pankration.com[/url]
Pankration.

[M. Demetrius]

One thing is for sure, even a small child knows how to make a fist and hit somebody trying to take a toy or something. Nobody has to teach them. So, whether it's called "boxing" or not, a fist to the jaw is about as instinctive an action as humans have, except maybe the eyeblink.

My credentials? Well, I've raised 5 kids, and discouraged sibling squabbling to limited avail.

[Carlton Bach]

M.B. Poliakoff published a study of martial arts in antiquity that may be interesting in this context. I've read it quite a while ago and don't recall him saying anything specific about soldiers, but he outlines the gym scene very well.

Juvenal writes of late-night encounters with Praetorians featuring hognailed boots used in combat against hapless civilians. Given the weight of metal on your usual caligae, I could see that being very effective and painful.

Generally, Roman soldiers must havew been proficient in hurting people in a variety of ways, and given the status of combat sports I would not be surprised if they trained in some aspects thereof. That said, IIRC Apuleius features an encounter between a soldier and a peasant in Greece in which the former tried to appropriate the latter's donkey. It ends with the soldier getting a sound thrashing. OK, perhaps just wishful thinking (there's plenty of evidence Roman soldiers could be execrable bullies), but itr can't have been completely outside the realms of the credible. Nobody today would write a throwaway sketch about a construction worker breating up a Green Beret.

Hope that helps a bit.

[A_Volpe]

Thanks so far for the replies, looking forward to seeing more feedback.

I'm certain that wrestling and general beating-the-snot-out-of-each-other was pretty common among Romans, but if anyone comes across evidence of it being part of Legionary [combat] training, that'd be awesome, that's what I'm looking to find out about.

I agree with Magnus, I'm certain there is a general knowledge of body mechanics and in this case how to take advantage of it, too bad we don't yet have a lead as to *what* more specifically.

I agree too Pankration may be a possibility, or an unknown/obscure form of it.

But if it's like most things Roman, where we know hardly anything, well, it'll be another one of those unanswered questions for the time being

Either way, you don't want to mess with a Roman soldier, armed or not. That is for sure!

[Tarbicus]

The Lusitanian soldiers, at least, practiced boxing.

They also hold contests, for light-armed and heavy-armed soldiers and cavalry, in boxing, in running, in skirmishing, and in fighting by squads.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Ro...o/3C*.html
Strabo, Geography
p75 Book III Chapter 3

A definitely unintended example of a soldier charging into battle with little choice but to use fisticuffs:

Gaius Cassius misrepresented his own, when he said to a soldier whom he saw hurrying into battle without his sword, "Shew yourself a handy man with your fists, comrade."

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Ro...a/6C*.html
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria
p489 Book VI Chapter 3

And an interesting passage from Plutarch on Greek attitudes to athletics and military men:

For from his very boyhood he was fond of a soldier's life, and readily learned the lessons which were useful for this, such as those in heavy-armed fighting and horsemanship. He was also thought to be a good wrestler, but when some of his friends and directors urged him to take up athletics, he asked them if athletics would not be injurious to his military training. 3 They told him (and it was the truth) that the habit of body and mode of life for athlete and soldier were totally different, and particularly that their diet and training were not the same, since the one required much sleep, continuous surfeit of food, and fixed periods of activity and repose, in order to preserve or improve their condition, which the slightest influence or the least departure from routine is apt to change for the worse; whereas the soldier ought to be conversant with all sorts of irregularity and all sorts of inequality, and above all should accustom himself to endure lack of food easily, 4 and as easily lack of sleep. On hearing this, Philopoemen not only shunned athletics himself and derided them, but also in later times as a commander banished from the army all forms of them, with every possible mark of reproach and dishonour, on the ground that they rendered useless for the inevitable struggle of battle men who would otherwise be most serviceable.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Ro...emen*.html
Plutarch, The Parallel Lives
p263 The Life of Philopoemen

[P. Clodius Secundus]

The Lusitanian soldiers, at least, practiced boxing.

They also hold contests, for light-armed and heavy-armed soldiers and cavalry, in boxing, in running, in skirmishing, and in fighting by squads.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Ro...o/3C*.html
Strabo, Geography
p75 Book III Chapter 3

A definitely unintended example of a soldier charging into battle with little choice but to use fisticuffs:

Gaius Cassius misrepresented his own, when he said to a soldier whom he saw hurrying into battle without his sword, "Shew yourself a handy man with your fists, comrade."

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Ro...a/6C*.html
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria
p489 Book VI Chapter 3

And an interesting passage from Plutarch on Greek attitudes to athletics and military men:

For from his very boyhood he was fond of a soldier's life, and readily learned the lessons which were useful for this, such as those in heavy-armed fighting and horsemanship. He was also thought to be a good wrestler, but when some of his friends and directors urged him to take up athletics, he asked them if athletics would not be injurious to his military training. 3 They told him (and it was the truth) that the habit of body and mode of life for athlete and soldier were totally different, and particularly that their diet and training were not the same, since the one required much sleep, continuous surfeit of food, and fixed periods of activity and repose, in order to preserve or improve their condition, which the slightest influence or the least departure from routine is apt to change for the worse; whereas the soldier ought to be conversant with all sorts of irregularity and all sorts of inequality, and above all should accustom himself to endure lack of food easily, 4 and as easily lack of sleep. On hearing this, Philopoemen not only shunned athletics himself and derided them, but also in later times as a commander banished from the army all forms of them, with every possible mark of reproach and dishonour, on the ground that they rendered useless for the inevitable struggle of battle men who would otherwise be most serviceable.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Ro...emen*.html
Plutarch, The Parallel Lives
p263 The Life of Philopoemen

I can vouch for the last part. I remember when command ordered us to stop playing football between the barracks after three broken bones in two days. I've played countless games of volleyball that more resembled rugby. Hell, I've seen GIs turn "rainy day hallway aerobics" led by one of the Officer's wives into a melee. They came up with more military physical challenges to better channel our agression.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

My credentials? Well, I've raised 5 kids, and discouraged sibling squabbling to limited avail.

What d'ya mean....no cattle prod? hock:

[M. Demetrius]

What d'ya mean....no cattle prod?

Can't talk about things like that, so long as one of them still lives in the house...the Child Protection Praetorians would descend on the place like flies on, well, you know. And I'd be dragged off to be flayed by their examiners.

Maybe not quite that bad, but in the US, it's getting near impossible to discipline children without getting into a court case sponsored by the State. Somehow, these same people decry the descent into chaos and anarchy of the youth...but don't allow correction other than "reasoning with them". Try reasoning with a selfish kid as to why (s)he should share the toys and goodies. Useless, vain exercise in loquatics. Eventually, you just have to take the stuff away and redistribute it, which is to say, you have to become the Emperor. Sigh.

Once, though, I took my two daughters (who argued and scuffled continually, nearly) and put them out on the front porch and told them "Settle this outside and give the rest of us some peace." I wouldn't let them in until they were docile and more or less friendly. That worked for a few days respite.

Overall, though, things worked out fairly well eventually. Sorry to shift totally off topic.

*Click* back to Roman hand to hand training.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Sorry for the bad humour Dave.

It would seem that the Romans, like the Greeks, were always involved in some sort of martial training during their lives.
The Athenians had a fashion of sending their sons off to be trained in the Spartan way, for a period of time, and it would have been similar in other hoplite societies....I would imagine as the Roman army became more professional, the training was formalised....?