Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Pancratium

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

PANCRAT'IUM (παγκράτιον). An athletic contest of Grecian origin, which also became popular at Rome, after the time of Caligula. It combined both wrestling and boxing with the naked fists, but not with the caestus; the combatants being allowed to make use of any means for worsting an opponent, by blows, throwing, kicking, or tripping, and to continue the contest on the ground, even when both had fallen, and until one of them was killed, or acknowledged himself to be vanquished. They fought naked, had their bodies sprinkled with fine sand (haphe), and their hair drawn up backwards from the roots, and tied in a tuft on the occiput (cirrus in vertice), to prevent an antagonist from seizing hold by it; most of which particulars are exemplified by the illustration (Pancratium/1.1), representing a pair of Greek pancratiastae, from a bas-relief in the Vatican. Both figures have their hair tied up in the manner described; the one on the left also uses his fist as a boxer, whilst the right-hand one attempts to trip up his adversary by hooking his leg forward and pushing the body back, as still practised by our wrestlers. Prop. iii. 14. 8. Quint. ii. 8. 13. Aristot. Rhet. i. 5. 14.

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  Pancratium/1.1