Sport Injuries in Ancient Literature
"Glory to Another, or He to Us"
P. Brain
M.A. (Natal) M.D.D.SC. (UCT) F.R.C.P.A.
Director. Natal Institute of Immunology
Reproduced by Sabinet Gateway under licence granted by the Publisher (dated 2012)
I
t is appropriate that an article on sport
injuries in ancient literature should
appear in an issue of this Journal devoted to
boxing because most of the injuriessustained in sport which are described in the
earliest literature of the Western world are
the result of this activity. This is not surprising, since in Homeric times the aim of boxing was to injure one's opponent seriously.
When Odysseus came home from the Trojan war in the disguise of a beggar, he was
challenged to box by a rival mendicant. I rus,
who landed his first blow on Odysseus'
shoulder This made Odysseus consider
whether with his first punch he should kill his
opponent outright, but he decided against
this since he did not wish to attract too much
attention at this early stage of his
homecoming; so he fetched him a right (or
perhaps left) hook to the side of the head
which broke a number of bones, at which
Irus was carried off and the spectators
laughed so much that they nearly died.
The Homeric hero—and Odysseus was
a hero, though I rus was not — had a code of
conduct, like the old-fashioned English
gentleman. His code, however, was not to
count the game above the prize; he played
the game, as he did everything else, for the
glory that winning would bring him. It was
the same with war. At the beginning of the
Iliad Achilles explains why he joined the expedition. It was not because of any quarrel
with the Trojan spearmen: they never did
him any harm, because their country and
his are so far apart. No, says Achilles, it was
to win glory for Agamemnon and Menelaus;
what he really means, of course, is to win
glory for himself. Achilles' mother was a
goddess, and she knew, and had told him,
that he had the choice of staying at Troy and
killing the Trojan champion, Hector, in
battle, an act that would earn him everlasting renown, or of returning to his home
and enjoying a long and prosperous life, but
without fame. But if he chose to stay and kill
Hector he would himself be killed very soon
afterwards: "for immediately after Hector's
your own fate stands ready." The Homeric
hero cared nothing for his personal safety;
he boxed, just as he made war, to increase
his personal glory, and fractured skulls and
jawbones were part of the fun.
When Achilles organised the games at
the funeral of Patroclus, he donated a mule
as the prize for the winner of the boxing, and
a two-handled cup for the loser. Immediately up sprang an expert boxer, Epeius, announcing that he was the greatest.
"Whoever is going to take me on" he said in
so many words, as he laid his hand on the
mule, "is going to get the two-handled cup.
for I shall ut terly mangle his flesh and smash
his bones. Let his friends and relations stick
around: they'll be needed to carry him
away.'' Euryalus, a god-like man, accepted
the challenge; they put on the thongs of oxhide that served as gloves, stepped into the
ring, and there was dreadful gnashing of
teeth and flowing of sweat from their limbs
as they smote one another But once again
the fight ended with a blow on the cheek,
which caused Euryalus' glorious limbs, as
the poet puts it, to collapse beneath him, at
which the greathearted Epeius lifted him
upright and his friends led him through the
crowd with his feet dragging and his head
hanging on one side, spitting out clots of
blood; they sat him down semi-conscious,
and themselves went to fetch the twohandled cup.
Virgil, who wrote seven hundred years
later but is imitating Homer, added some
further details to the contest, including a
description of a technical knockout.
Why was the ancient hero so little concerned about a few broken bones? I think
the answer is to be found in the ancient
medical literature. The books known as the
Epidemics in the Hippocratic corpus
describe many patients with what we now
recognise as bacterial and plasmodial infections, most of whom were young, and
died while the doctor made his notes. As
one Homeric hero says to another "Ah, my
friend, if once we were out of this battle we
could be ageless and deathless for ever,
neither would I fight in the front rank, nor
would I send you into the thick of it where
glory is to be won; but as it is, seeing that
myriad fates of death are ranged against us,
which no mortal man can flee from or
evade, let us go forward, whether we give
glory to another, or he to us." Today, when
the myriad fates of death have shrunk to a
few, is it possible that we are being too
careful?
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