Pugilism
the practice of boxing or fighting with the fists. It formed one of the earliest of the athletic games of the Greeks; and we find the Greek poets describing their heroes and gods as excelling in the pugne. Boxing for men was introduced in the Olympic games in the 23d Olympiad, and for boys in the 37th Olympiad. With the exception of a girdle about the loins, the ancient pugilist loughm fought nude. There was one feature, however, which bore no analogy to the pugilism of modern days; this consisted in the use of cæstus, a weapon formed of thongs or bands of raw ox-hide tied round the hands, and frequently as high as the elbows, of the boxers. Even in its simplest and most primitive forms, it was a fearful weapon enough; but when "improvements" crept in, in the shape of knobs of lead or iron, and, still later, PULITZER when it assumed the form of a disk of bronze, it came to be a murderous piece of mechanism, fraught with despair and death to the less skillful fighter. As the head was exposed to great danger through the use of the cæstus, ampho tides, or armor for the head, by which the temporal bones, arteries, and ears were protected, were invented; altogether, they were not unlike helmets. Both ancient Greeks and Romans used the right arm chiefly in attacking, the left being reserved as a protection for the head and upper portions of the body.
Like all the other athletic games of the Greeks, boxing was regulated by certain rules; the principal of these was that the pugilist was bound to continue to fight till wounds, fatigue, or despair compelled him to desist. It was not till the reign of George I. that pugilism came to be in a manner appropriated by the English. In the United States, as in England, the art has been brought down to the present day through a succession of pugilistic champions.