QUESTION V.

Why, in Reckoning Up Different Kinds of Exercises, Homer Puts Cuffing First, Wrestling Next, and Racing Last.

LYSIMACHUS, CRATES, TIMON, PLUTARCH.

This discourse being ended, and Philinus hummed, Lysimachus began again, What sort of exercise then shall we imagine to be first? Racing, as at the Olympian games? For here in the Pythian, as every exercise comes on, all the contenders are brought in, the boy wrestlers first, then the men, and the same method is observed when the cuffers and fencers are to exercise; but there the boys perform all first, and then the men. But, says Timon interposing, pray consider whether Homer hath not determined this matter; for in his poems cuffing is always put in the first place, wrestling next, and racing last. At this Menecrates the Thessalian surprised cried out, Good God, what things we skip over! But, pray sir, if you remember any of his verses to that purpose, do us the favor to repeat them. And Timon replied: That the funeral solemnities of Patroclus had this order I think every one hath heard; but the poet, all along observing the same order, brings in Achilles speaking to Nestor thus:

With this reward I Nestor freely grace, Unfit for cuffing, wrestling, or the race.

And in his answer he makes the old man impertinently brag:-

I cuffing conquered Oinop's famous son, With Anceus wrestled, and the garland won, And outran Iphiclus. ("Iliad," xxiii. 620 and 634.)

And again he brings in Ulysses challenging the Phaeacians

To cuff, to wrestle, or to run the race;

and Alcinous answers:

Neither in cuffing nor in wrestling strong But swift of foot are we. ("Odyssey" viii. 206 and 246.)

So that he doth not carelessly confound the order, and, according to the present occasion, now place one sort first and now another; but he follows the then custom and practice and is constant in the same. And this was so as long as the ancient order was observed.

To this discourse of my brother's I subjoined, that I liked what he said, but could not see the reason of this order. And some of the company, thinking it unlikely that cuffing or wrestling should be a more ancient exercise than racing, they desired me to search farther into the matter; and thus I spake upon the sudden. All these exercises seem to me to be representations of feats of arms and training therein; for after all, a man armed at all points is brought in to show that that is the end at which all these exercises and trainings end. And the privilege granted to the conquerors, viz., as they rode into the city, to throw down some part of the wall - hath this meaning; that walls are but a small advantage to that city which hath men able to fight and overcome. In Sparta those that were victors in any of the crowned games had an honorable place in the army and were to fight near the king's person. Of all other creatures a horse only can have a part in these games and win the crown, for that alone is designed by nature to be trained to war, and to prove assisting in a battle. If these things seem probable, let us consider farther, that it is the first work of a fighter to strike his enemy and ward the other's blows; the second, when they come up close and lay hold of one another, to trip and overturn him; and in this, they say, our countrymen being better wrestlers very much distressed the Spartans at the battle of Leuctra. And Aeschylus describes a warrior thus -

One stout, and skilled to wrestle in his arms;

and Sophocles somewhere says of the Trojans -

They rid the horse, they could the bow command And wrestle with a rattling shield in hand.

But it is the third and last, either when conquered to fly, when conquerors to pursue. And therefore it is likely that cuffing is set first, wrestling next, and racing last; for the first bears the resemblance of charging or warding the blows; the second, of close fighting and repelling; the third, of flying a victorious, or pursuing a routed enemy.