Pankration
Pankration, the Original Martial Art.
This article was originally published in Varangian Voice, no. 11 (June 1988). This version has been somewhat revised.
For many years I have promoted the idea that there is no need for us to look to alien cultures in search of a martial arts tradition, and that the armed combat that we practice has the merit to stand beside any in the world. Now I rejoice to be able to tell you that we need not even look far afield for an unarmed martial art, we have one in our own classical culture. That art is Pankration.
It is well known that the Olympic Games included boxing and wrestling, but pankration was something different. It was an all in combat style, which has been compared to Jiu-jitsu.1 It used not only the punches and blocks of boxing, and the grips, locks and throws of wrestling, but also many techniques and tactics that were considered too dangerous to be permitted in sporting forms of boxing and wrestling. As well as these, pankration allowed kicks, elbow and knee strikes and strangle holds. Not surprisingly pankration was considered to be the most dangerous of all the contests at the Games. It was a true fighting art, and it was not uncommon for pankratiasts to be killed. One of its detractors painted a vivid picture of (presumably ex-) pankratiasts as cripples, hobbling about on maimed limbs, with faces disfigured from the punishment they had received. The picture below shows very dramatically how serious bouts could be!
Pankration used all the techniques that we have tended to think of as typical of Oriental martial arts. How familiar are the postures of the fighters depicted here?2 Another technique that distinguished it from wrestling and boxing was the use of the tactical fall. An highly favoured technique was that throw, so familiar from Judo, in which one fighter grips his foe and rolls backward on the ground, throwing his opponent by planting a foot in his stomach.
Another technique which became famous enough to be referred to in many sources was the ’heel trick“. This involved grasping the opponents heel or ankle and throwing him, pinning him while retaining the hold, then using the hold to twist his ankle until he yielded. Stomach kicks were popular, and the depiction above shows a vicious knee to the groin. The two things which were specifically banned in pankration, were biting and eye gouging. Olympic referees are always depicted as bearing long leafless boughs as their emblem of office, but it is a clear commentary on how serious pankration bouts often became, that depictions show referees beating refractory competitors with them!
The question is whether the sorts of techniques used in pankration could have survived into the Middle Ages, and whether they may have been assimilated into combined techniques with weapons. The answer is perhaps, but probably not in a widespread or systematic manner. The earlier Romans did carry on the tradition of the Greek games and pankration is often mentioned as part of this. Later Romans, however, suppressed them as sports. One of the last surviving events, the Games held at Antioch, were ended in 520. I suppose that such a glorification of the flesh as these games represented, was just too Pagan for the pious folk of a now Christianised empire.
Plato rejected pankration as not being able to contribute to military training because it did not teach a man how to stay on his feet, referring to the practice of tactical falls mentioned above. In contrast to that, there is the story of Andreas, a physical training instructor who was with a Roman army in 530 as coach and masseur to one of Belisarios‘ officers. He was the only one willing to face a Persian champion. When they were both knocked from their horses, his sporting experience allowed him to regain his feet more quickly and kill his opponent. His background was said to be wrestling. The same skills may be inferred from pankration, however the techniques which set pankration apart from wrestling — kicks, punches, elbow strikes and so on — are more likely to harm the attacker than an opponent wearing any sort of protective gear, and are harder to coordinate with ancient or medieval military equipment. Hence, while wrestling has an unbroken history, it is unlikely that pankration long survived the demise of the ancient games.
The evidence now available paints a clear picture of the ancient Roman and medieval western worlds having diverse and sophisticated martial arts. As those did not become bound up in religion or hide-bound by tradition as in the East, they were constantly evolving, some being invented and re-invented and some falling into disuse, especially with the spread of industrial gun-powder warfare. Yet there remain traces enough for us to explore the martial arts of the West and rediscover them today.
Notes
1. E. Norman Gardiner, Athletics... p.212.2. The kicking man is a Gallo-Roman bronze statuette, found at Autun. Louvre, inv. no. 1067. Gardiner fig. 195. The knee to the groin is from a relief in the Lateran, Rome, 2nd or 3rd century CE.
Bibliography.
Gardiner, E. Norman. Athletics of the Ancient World Oxford, 1930, 1955.Harris, H.A. Sport in Greece and Rome London, 1972.
Kyle, Donald G. Athletics in Ancient Athens Leiden, 1987.