03-31-2007, 06:21 PM
I don't know of any evidence that death was a common result of pankration bouts, even at Olympic level. What does seem to have been common, as a finisher, is breaking the opponent's fingers.
I can't recall, either, any evidence that the Spartans were consistent winners of pankration. There's a story ( or two!) of a famous Olympic pankration champion who finally died because he put his hands in a split tree-trunk and the wedges sprang out, trapping his hands and him, so that he starved to death where he was. He was not a Spartan. I've got a feeling that the one about Spartans not competing on the grounds that it was an unnecessary peace-time risk of a soldier's life, was raised in the same stable as this.
Speaking of stables, it is a peculiarity of horse-racing that centuries of careful breeding have not produced a champion race of horses. The greats are often born out of the direct line of "bloods". As they said of Phar Lapp, he wasn't bred, he was a freak (I still won't soon forgive his murderers, mind!). Similarly, the Spartans, despite their total dedication to the creation of fighters, were never able to produce a race that was consistently physically superior to the other Greeks, and, therefore, we do not find the lists of champions stuffed with the names of Spartans. It is actually possible to mythologise the Spartans and over-rate them. [Prepares for sky to fall on head, Zeus to hurl thunderbolts, Spartans fans to hurl e-mails, etc. etc.]
One famous Pankratiast was called Archimedes, I think, (but much too early to be the mathematician and inventor of that name). He wasn't a Spartan, either.
There is a forum for those interested in Pankration:- do a Search on Google.
I can't recall, either, any evidence that the Spartans were consistent winners of pankration. There's a story ( or two!) of a famous Olympic pankration champion who finally died because he put his hands in a split tree-trunk and the wedges sprang out, trapping his hands and him, so that he starved to death where he was. He was not a Spartan. I've got a feeling that the one about Spartans not competing on the grounds that it was an unnecessary peace-time risk of a soldier's life, was raised in the same stable as this.
Speaking of stables, it is a peculiarity of horse-racing that centuries of careful breeding have not produced a champion race of horses. The greats are often born out of the direct line of "bloods". As they said of Phar Lapp, he wasn't bred, he was a freak (I still won't soon forgive his murderers, mind!). Similarly, the Spartans, despite their total dedication to the creation of fighters, were never able to produce a race that was consistently physically superior to the other Greeks, and, therefore, we do not find the lists of champions stuffed with the names of Spartans. It is actually possible to mythologise the Spartans and over-rate them. [Prepares for sky to fall on head, Zeus to hurl thunderbolts, Spartans fans to hurl e-mails, etc. etc.]
One famous Pankratiast was called Archimedes, I think, (but much too early to be the mathematician and inventor of that name). He wasn't a Spartan, either.
There is a forum for those interested in Pankration:- do a Search on Google.
