Wrestling has been a favorite contest in all times.  Milo of Crotona was the prince of wrestlers.  He who threw his adversary three times conquered.  The wrestlers were naked, anointed, and covered with sand, that they might take firm hold.  Striking was not allowed.  Elegance was studied in the attack, as well as force.  There was a distinction between upright and prostrate wrestling.  In the former the one thrown was allowed to get up; in the latter the struggle was continued on the ground.  The vanquished held up his finger when he acknowledged himself beaten.

Boxing was a severer sport, and not much followed except by gentlemen of the “profession.”  It was practised with the clenched fists, either naked or armed with the deadly cestus.  The “science” of the game was to parry the blows of the antagonist, as it is in the “noble and manly” art of self-defence now.  The exercise was violent and dangerous, and the combatants often lost their lives, as they do at the present day.  The cestus, like our “brass-knuckle,” was a thong of hide, loaded with lead, and bound over the hand.  At first used to add weight to the blow, it was afterwards continued up the fore-arm, and formed also a weapon of defence.  Mr. Morrissey, or any other “shoulder-hitter,” would hardly need more than a few rounds to settle his opponent, if his sinewy arm were garnished with the cestus.

We read that the late contest for the “American belt,” though short, was unusually fierce, and afforded intense delight to the spectators,—­in proportion, probably, to its ferocity.  By all means let the “profession” take the cestus from the hands of the highwayman and adopt it themselves.  It would be one step nearer the glorious days of the gladiators, and would render their combats more bloody and more exciting.  Or, better still, let us revive the ancient mode of sparring called the klimax, where both parties “faced the music” without warding blows at all.  We scarcely think the ancients were up to “countering,” as it is understood now; but they fully appreciated the facetious practice of falling backwards to avoid a blow, and letting the adversary waste his strength on the air.  The deceased Mr. Sullivan would hardly recognize his favorite dodge under its classic name of hyptiasmos, or be aware that it was in use by his very respectable predecessor, Sostratus of Sicyon, who was noted for such tricks.

The pankration, again, was a mode of battle which the modern prize-ring is yet too magnanimous to adopt, and which excelled in brutality the so-called “getting one’s nob in chancery,”—­the most stirring episode of our pugilistic encounters.  The Greek custom alluded to was so named because it called all the powers of the fighter into action.  It was a union of boxing and wrestling.  It began by trying to get one’s antagonist into the unfavorable position of facing the sun.  Then the sport commenced with either wrestling or sparring.  As soon as one party was thrown or knocked down, the other kept him so until he had pommelled him into submission; and when he arose, at last, to receive the plaudits of the assembly, it was often from the corpse of his adversary.