Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Pugil

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. 

PUGIL (πύκτης). A boxer; that is, one who fights with the fist (pugnus, πύξ). The act of boxing (pugilatio, pugilatus) dates from a remote antiquity, being practised by the Greeks and Etruscans in very early times, and continuing to be a popular exhibition at Rome during the republic and empire. (Liv. i. 35. Cic. Tusc. ii. 17. Suet. Aug. 45.) The attitudes, guards, and method of directing the blows exhibited in various works of art, indicate that the boxing of the ancients resembled in most respects the practice of our own countrymen, with one important exception, which must have rendered their conflicts cruelly severe — that of covering the lower part of the arm and fists with thongs of leather studded with knobs of metal (CAESTUS), as is shown by the annexed illustration (Pugil/1.1), from a well-known statue of the Villa Borghese.

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  Pugil/1.1