Search Results: Pankration

Pankration is an ancient martial art which mixes wrestling and boxing. The sport can be traced as far back as the second millennium BCE in the territory of ancient Greece. Its name derives from the ancient Greek words pan (all) and kratos...

The ancient Olympic Games were a sporting event held every four years at the sacred site of Olympia, in the western Peloponnese, in honour of Zeus, the supreme god of the Greek religion. The games, held from 776 BCE to 393 CE, involved participants...

In the ancient Greek world, the word stadium or stadion referred to a measurement of distance, a foot-race, and the place where the race was held and observed by spectators. The Great Games Greek sporting events were closely connected...

Ancient Olympia was an ancient Greek sanctuary site dedicated to the worship of Zeus located in the western Peloponnese. The Pan-Hellenic Olympic Games were held at the site in honour of Zeus every four years from 776 BCE to 393 CE. Olympia...

Pherenike (l. c. 388 BCE, also known as Kallipateira) was an athlete from Rhodes who, because she was a woman, could not compete in the Olympic Games and, as a married woman, was not allowed to even watch them. Defying these rules and risking...

In this collection of resources, we examine some of the sports that thrilled ancient and medieval audiences from the fast and furious chariot races of the Circus Maximus to the colour and pageantry of medieval jousts. We look at the hockey...

A votive marble offering in the style of Lysippos from the Daochos Monument at Delphi; over-life-size at 2m tall; Late Classical; c.336- 332 BCE. Agias was the grandfather of Daochos II, who dedicated the monument, and a highly successful...

The bronze Boxer of Quirinal, also known as the Terme Boxer, is a Hellenistic Greek sculpture dated around 330 BCE of a sitting boxer with Caestus, a type of leather hand-wrap, in the collection of the National Museum of Rome. It is one of...

A bronze statue of a pankratiast (2nd century BCE). The leather thongs wrapped around the fist, worn by later exponents of this viiolent mix of wrestling and boixing, can be clearly seen. (Olympia Archaeological Museum, Olympia)

A Greek athlete wearing the ribbon of victory (diadoumenos). 1st century BCE copy of a 5th century BCE original by Polykleitos, Delos. (National Archaeological Museum, Athens)