The Ultimate Fighting of the Ancient World

Warriors of the ancient world invented the sport we know of as ultimate fighting. Twenty-five hundred years ago this kind of no-holds-barred contest was called the pankration—a word that translates as “all strengths.” And in the year 500 BC this brutal sport had already been around for centuries.

The pankration was a combination of boxing and wrestling and taught warriors all of the skills they needed to know to stay alive in the crush and chaos of a battle, when sometimes—their spears shattered and their shield walls broken—men had to rely on their hands and feet for survival despite their protective armor.

But pankrators were unarmed and wore no bronze. And they did not use padded gloves when they fought. This was a bloody bare-knuckles brawl with chokeholds, grappling, finger breaking, hair pulling and kicking. The most primal kind of fight. Face-to-face. Mano a mano. In many parts of Greece there were only two rules in pankration bouts: no biting and no eye gouging.

The brutal Spartans, however, tossed all rules aside in their matches, and one can imagine many a maimed Spartan pankrator missing an eye, an ear, or even the tip of a nose. (In martial Sparta, even women were allowed to compete in wrestling matches.) Bouts sometimes ended in death which counted as a victory for the fighter still standing.
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Some pankrators protected their teeth with a big gob of tree resin called mastik (from a Greek word meaning to chew—the root of the English “masticate”). The gold colored sap was the world’s first chewing gum. It kept a pankrator’s teeth from smashing together if he received an uppercut to the jaw, and served like a modern-day football player’s mouth guard.

To understand ancient Greek society it helps to have knowledge of the pankration and its importance in their world. The Greeks were lovers of democracy, art, science, philosophy, music and theater. But one of their favorite athletic events was arguably one of the most ferocious and barbaric contests ever invented.

My novel, Sons of Zeus, is the story of a young fighter-in-training who must use all of his skills learned in the pankration to defeat an invasion force bent on destroying everything he knows. It arrives in bookstores and online June 4^th, 2013.