Wrestling

         Wrestling, or pale, is the oldest and most widely distributed of all sports.  To the Greeks, wrestling was a form of art and science. This sport stems from ancient warfare, when a wounded solider needed to be carried to safety. Wrestling took place on sandy ground that was carefully dug out, called the skamma. The conditions of ancient wrestling may be summed up as follows: if a wrestler fell on any part of the body, hip, back, or shoulder, it was a fair fall. If both wrestlers fell together, nothing was counted. Three clean throws secured a victory.   Tripping was allowed. Leg-holds were rarely used, they are thought to have been prohibited.          

        It was the last of the five events. The event was practiced either standing or ground wrestling. There was no set starting position, but they presumably started apart.  There was a type of ring around the competitors. Before the competition, each competitor oiled themselves with olive oil from a flask that each athlete carried. After the event, each competitor would scrape the oil and dust off of himself with a strigil. The winner was determined by the number of falls, probably three out of five. There were no time limits, but delaying tactics as well as fouls were punished by a whipping from the judges. The practice areas, composed of sand and mud, were referred to in wrestler's slang as the keroma, literally translated as beeswax.

This is a pot painting that shows a wrestling event.	This is a relief depicting a competition between two wrestlers.