Pankration:
Martial Art of Classical Greece
By Paul McMichael Nurse, Ph.D.
Contrary to popular perception, fighting arts are
not exclusively an Asian phenomenon, but exist in
practically every culture and across all historical
time-frames. It is doubtful if any people, anywhere
on earth, ever lacked completely for some kind of
combative techniques with which to fight savage nature
or their sometimes-more savage fellowmen. Moreover,
beliefs and practices that Europeans and North Americans
associate with Asian combative systems often find
their counterparts in western fighting methods. The
kiai (shout) of the Japanese martial artist is similar
in purpose and scope to the war-cries of many non-Asian
peoples such as Africans, Amerindians, Celts, Greeks,
Romans and Slavs, while the concept of chí
or ki can be found readily in the Grecian belief in
pneuma (air, breath, spirit), an inner power which
burns brightly inside each human and, when properly
used, can aid them in attaining superior physical
results. Greek and Roman pugilists frequently broke
planks and stones to demonstrate their prowess, while
wrestlers sometimes stood on oiled shields and invited
challengers to push them off--an act reminiscent of
aikido and tai chi ch'uan adepts withstanding the
combined force of several men by concentrating on
their center of gravity.
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Greek
(525-500 B.C.)
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Greek
(Circa 520)
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Photos taken
with permission of the
New York Metropolitan Museum
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What is also not generally known is that there existed
in the ancient world an unarmed fighting art which
not only compares favorably with later Asian systems,
but as an event in the ancient Olympic Games was considered
the truest test of an athlete's combative ability.
This was the martial art known as pankration, a blend
of Hellenic wrestling, boxing, strangulation, kicking
and striking techniques, as well as joint locks. Indeed,
the only practices not allowed in pankration were
biting, gouging, or scratching -- all else were considered
legal acts during competition.
As a word, pankration comes from the adjective pankrates,
meaning "all encompassing" or "all
powers." Its earliest reference occurs in 648
B. C., when it made its debut in the 33rd ancient
Olympic Games, but its introduction into the Olympic
program denotes that it had to have become a systematized
art long before this date. In short order it became
the most popular event of every Greek athletic festival,
including the Olympics, usually climaxing the festival
following boxing and wrestling. A mark of its enormous
popularity came in 200 B. C., when a boys' division
was added to the Olympics.
Pankration matches were significantly rugged endeavors
-- serious injuries and even deaths were "occupational
hazards" of the pankratist and not considered
extraordinary events. Those wishing to train in pankration
did so at the palaestra (training hall), within a
special room set aside for the exclusive use of boxers
and pankratists known as the korykeion. This chamber
contained punching and kicking equipment known as
korykos; bags or balls filled with meal or fig seeds
and suspended from the ceiling at chest level. Similarly,
a sandbag was suspended approximately two feet off
the floor for kicking, although some trainees preferred
practicing their kicks against tree trunks. Records
indicate that some prankratists possessed the ability
to kick through war shields.
During practice sessions trainees were usually divided
into pairs, with techniques taught progressively.
The novice pankratist was first compelled to learn
basic techniques and combinations before he was allowed
to participate in "loose play;" i. e. free
sparring with other fighters. Although participants
wore protective equipment in sparring, such as padded
gloves known as spheres and earguards called amphotides,
full-contact was emphasized to bring practice matches
as near as possible to actual contest conditions.
Stamina and flexibility were stressed: stretching,
running, abdominal exercises, as well as a kind of
shadowboxing known as skiamachia made up the bulk
of conditioning. To toughen one's physique, trainees
would first strike a punching bag with their fists
and then allow the rebounding bag to hit them fill-impact
in the stomach, chest, or back.
Actual contests began by drawing lots from a silver
urn. Match winners continued to fight until the final
two-man bout -- thus the winner, as in old-style judo
contests, was always undefeated. Originally pankratists
fought in the characteristic Greek way of nude and
oiled. Later, rawhide thongs wrapping the hands and
forearms were used, and later still sheepskins were
attached to the thongs to allow fighters to wipe sweat,
blood, and sometimes tears from their eyes. When pankration
was transplanted to Rome, Italian fighters began wearing
loincloths to protect their genitals. Eventually they
came not only to be partially-clothed but armed as
well, wearing the pugilist's deadly caestus which
were studded gloves which could open a gash to the
bone.
The Greek version of pankration, however, remained
an art, with skill held in higher esteem than mere
bloodlust. Pankratists usually began a match by sparring
with their fists or open hands, using short, hooking
blows to the head. These opening maneuvers were called
krocheirismos and every pankratist had his favorite
standing technique. One fighter from Sikyon was nicknamed
"Fingertips" because of his habit of breaking
his opponents' fingers at the start of a bout to gain
an advantage. Different city-states also had their
preferences. The Spartans, for instance, who practiced
pankration as part of their training but did not compete
in it (reckoning it was effected because it didn't
include everything), preferred hard foot sweeps to
bring an opponent to the ground, while the Eleans
were acknowledged masters of the stranglehold. Some
arm-twisting was done while standing but the norm
was punches and low, rising kicks to the stomach or
groin. Kicks above the stomach were never attempted
when standing, and kicks to the chest or head were
done only to a grounded competitor.
A particularly popular standing technique was called
chancery: a fighter grabbed the hair of his enemy,
pulling the head down while delivering an uppercut
to the throat or face with the free hand. Occasionally
while standing a competitor's foot or ankle was grasped
and the leg tilted upwards until the opponent tumbled
backwards to the ground. One Sicilian pankratist was
known as "Jumping Weight" due to his penchant
for throwing his enemies backwards manner while attempting
to twist their ankles out of their sockets. Shorter,
squatter fighters could sometimes prevent being thrown
backwards by balancing themselves on their heads and
hands and spinning out of harm's way.
Usually, sooner or later, the match ended up in the
dirt, where striking was less effective and grappling,
strangulation, and joint-locking took over. Strangulation
techniques appear to have been mostly of the "choke
holdî" or hadakakime (naked choke) of the
modern judoka variety, in which the forearm is used
across the opponent's windpipe or carotid artery to
force submission or unconsciousness. A favored technique
used both prone or standing was called the klimakismos
or "ladder trick," in which a competitor
leaped or otherwise worked his way onto his opponent's
back, encircling him with his legs and simultaneously
strangling him from behind while scissoring the abdomen
with the thighs -- an early example of double Jeopardy.
"Flying mares" and "stomach throws"
were also popular, especially as a hard blow or fall
could knock the wind out of one's opponent and leave
him momentarily defenseless.
Contest matches in pankration continued indefinitely
until one competitor signified defeat by tapping his
opponent on the shoulder, raising one hand, or --
this being the pankration -- being killed. Skill was
a definite must, but the lack of weight categories
naturally meant that the event was dominated by heavier
men, although more than one husky fighter found that
his superior strength was no match against a lighter
but better trained opponent. Rules were strictly enforced
by famously-impartial referees who carried rods or
switches which they used on competitors' backs and
shoulders at the slightest infraction. Even so, it
must be said that even these minimal standards were
often ignored in competition, since a mild beating
was considered preferable to defeat or even death
at the hands of a rival pankratist. One team was dubbed
"the lions" for consistently defying the
rules and biting their opponents.
It need hardly be said that a fighting art such as
pankration, as well as its Olympic fame, spawned a
number of stories. One famous tale concerns the champion
Arrichion of Phigaleia, who fought his last pankration
match in the 564 B. C. Olympic Games. During the bout
Arrichion's opponent tried the klimakismos, leaping
onto the champion's back and strangling him furiously
from behind at the same time as he wrapped his legs
around Arrichion's waist, locking his insteps behind
Arrichion's thighs and squeezing. In a last ditch
attempt to extricate himself, Arrichion hooked his
right leg behind his opponent's right foot and threw
them both backwards to the ground, breaking his adversary's
ankle in the process. As they tumbled backwards two
things happened at the same time: Arrichion died from
his opponent's strangulation while the other contestant,
screaming in pain as his ankle snapped, raised his
hand in defeat. After a brief conferral the judges
gave the laurels to the dead pankratist, and Arrichion
became Olympic champion once more -- this time posthumously.
Another Olympic champion, Polydamus of Scotussa,
was famous for his great strength. Legends abound
of his killing a lion with his bare hands or halting
a moving chariot by grabbing a wheel with one hand.
His most famous moment, however, came when he and
some companions were in a mountain cave and the roof
began to collapse. With his hands Polydamus held up
the falling roof until all his friends had crawled
to safety, at which point the mountain finally gave
way and caved in on the gallant pankratist.
A third anecdote has to do with a fighter named Dioxippus,
Olympic champion by default in 336 B. C. when no other
pankratist dared meet him. Alexander the Great became
Dioxippus' friend and sponsor, but the pankratist
soon quarreled with a warrior named Coragus and the
two were forced to meet in a duel to settle their
differences. Coragus wore a full complement of Battle-armor
and bore javelin, lance, and sword, while Dioxippus
appeared pankration-style, nude and wearing a sheen
of olive oil, and carrying nothing but a club. Coragus
first hurled his javelin, which Dioxippus easily dodged,
and then Alexander's warrior rushed his enemy with
his spear. A blow from Dioxippus' club shattered the
other's spear, whereupon Coragus tried to draw his
sword from its scabbard, only to have Dioxippus grab
the Macedonian's sword-arm with his left hand while
with his right he threw Coragus off-balance and footswept
him to the ground. The heavily-armored Coragus fell
to the earth, helpless in his battle-dress, at which
point Dioxippus completed his victory by placing his
foot on his antagonist's neck. Unfortunately, this
marvelous example of pankration's effectiveness as
a combative system had a bad end. Alexander was so
angry at the thought that Dioxippus had defeated one
of his own warriors that he had the champion fighter
framed for theft and forced to commit suicide as punishment.
We have seen how the Romans modified pankration for
their own games, and how it eventually degenerated
to little more than a bloody spectacle. Even in Greece,
however, the art suffered. During the poet Pindar's
time (522?-443 B.C.) sparring was emphasized, but
by the philosopher Plato's era (427?-347 B.C.) it
had descended to nearly-immediate ground fighting,
where grappling became all-important and there was
little to differentiate pankration from a rougher
form of wrestling. For this reason Plato, himself
an Olympic wrestler, thought little of pankration
as military training, since it did not teach men to
keep on their feet.
Even so, there is little doubt that hoplites (Greek
infantry) used pankration as part of their training,
and that with their invading armies it spread far
and wide. When Alexander the Great invaded India in
326 B. C. his soldiers took pankration with them,
practicing the art in large collapsible tents with
their other athletic endeavors. Some researchers have
speculated that this diaspora of pankration techniques
on the Subcontinent influenced Indian combative arts
such as vajramusti ("the adamant fist"),
laying the framework for the later diffusion of fighting
techniques from India into China and Okinawa. This
theory, however, does not take into account the historical
reality of the spontaneous rise of indigenous combative
forms in a majority of cultures, as well as the expatiation
of fighting techniques across many centuries and from
many nations, so the concept that pankration is the
linear "ancestor" of Asian combative systems
must remain little more than conjecture.
However, pankration cannot be described as a "lost"
martial art, with its methods confined to references
in historical writings and artistic representations
of the system. Rather, its techniques continued to
be handed down through the ages from one Greek generation
to the next, kept alive in Greek communities both
in Greece -- particularly in Athens and Delphi --
and abroad. It never entirely died out, and a limited
form of the classical art continues to be practiced
today, with trainees attired in light clothing and
even some body armor, and groin strikes joining the
ranks of forbidden techniques such as gouging and
biting. Thus it may be said that the pankration practiced
today is a diluted form of the classical entity, rather
than an art handed down unchanged from its inception.
The most famous pankratist of modern times is James
Arvanitis, a Greek-American who was taught pankration
as a child. Since that time he has reformulated the
system, incorporating aspects of other combative arts
into a highly- eclectic cognate form he has named
mu tau, from the Greek acronym for "martial truth."
Although clearly based on pankration, the inclusion
of techniques from other systems, as well as the use
of protective equipment such as gloves, makes mu tau
a personalized combative system developed by Arvanitis
from the roots of pankration, rather than a modern
form of the classical art.
That being said, pankration's historical importance
as a combative art cannot be overemphasized. While
most of its techniques can be found in other unarmed
martial forms, pankration was perhaps the first fighting
system to incorporate a wide-ranging array of techniques
within its syllabus: wrestling throws and pins, strangulation
methods, strikes and kicks, as well as joint-locks.
Bridging the gap between striking and grappling, and
with few limits to its repertoire, pankration was
recognized in ancient Greece as the ultimate unarmed
combative system -- the ancient world's foremost fighting
art.
Let
Us Know Your Comments & Opinions On This Article
About The Author
Paul McMichael Nurse has a Ph.D. in History from
the University of Toronto and a researcher and writer
on judo and other martial arts. His articles have
appeared in Kick Illustrated and Black Belt Magazine.
He is also a member of the International Hoplology
Society (the academic study of combative systems)
and has been a student of judo, he says, "sporadically,"
since 1969.
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