So far the first report of a prize fight, which came off 1184 years B.C., in the last year of the siege of Troy, anno mundi, 3530.
There was another EPEUS, son of Panopæus, who was a skilful carpenter, and made the Greek mare, commonly but erroneously called the Trojan horse,[4] in the womb of which the Argive warriors were introduced to the ruin of beleaguered Troy, as related in the second book of the “Æneid.”
EURYALUS will be known by name to newspaper readers of the present day as having given name to the steam frigate in which our sailor Prince Alfred took his earliest voyages to sea: to the scholar he is known as a valiant Greek prince, who went to the Trojan war with eighty ships, at least so says Homer, “Iliad,” b. ii.
“Next move to war the generous Argive train, From high Trœzenè and Maseta’s plain; And fair Ægina circled by the main, Whom strong Tyrinthe’s lofty walls surround, And Epidaure with viny harvest crowned, And where fair Asinen and Hermion show Their cliffs above and ample bay below. These by the brave EURYALUS were led, Great Sthenelus and greater Diomed. But chief Tydides bore the sovereign sway; In fourscore barks they plough their watery way.”
We may here note that Tydides (the family name of Diomed, as the son of Tydeus) was Euryalus’s second in the mill with Epeus, wherein we have just seen him so soundly thrashed by the big and bounceable Epeus. As Virgil generally invents a “continuation” or counterpart of the Homeric heroes for his “Æneid,” we find Euryalus made the hero of an episode, and celebrated for his immortal friendship with Nisus: with him he had a partnership in fighting, and they died together in a night encounter with the troops of the Rutulians, whose camp they had plundered, but were overtaken and slain. (Virg. Æneid, ix., 176.) We will now therefore shift the scene from Greece, and come to Sicily and Italy, and the early boxing matches there.
Æneas’ companions were a “school” of boxers, and met with the like in Italy, among whom ENTELLUS, ERYX, and ANTÆUS (already mentioned), DARES, CLOANTHUS, GYGES, GYAS, etc., may be numbered.
ENTELLUS, the intimate of Eryx, and who conquered Dares at the funeral games of Anchises (father of Æneas) in Sicily, deserves first mention. He was even then an “old ’un,” but, unlike most who have “trusted a battle to a waning age,” comes off gloriously in the encounter; which, as we shall presently see, under Dares, gives an occasion for the second ring report of antiquity, as well as a minute description of the cæstus itself. The lines from the fifth book of the “Æneid” need no preface. After the rowing match (with galleys), in which Cloanthus (see _post_) is the victor, Æneas thus addresses his assembled companions:—