purpose, do us the favor
to repeat them. And Timon replied: That the funeral solemnities of
Patroclus had this order I think every one hath heard; but the poet, all
along observing the same order, brings in Achilles speaking to Nestor
thus:

With this reward I Nestor freely grace,
Unfit for cuffing, wrestling, or the race.

And in his answer he makes the old man impertinently brag:--

I cuffing conquered Oinop's famous son,
With Anceus wrestled, and the garland won,
And outran Iphiclus.
("Iliad," xxiii. 620 and 634.)

And again he brings in Ulysses challenging the Phaeacians

To cuff, to wrestle, or to run the race;

and Alcinous answers:

Neither in cuffing nor in wrestling strong
But swift of foot are we.
("Odyssey" viii. 206 and 246.)

So that he doth not carelessly confound the order, and, according to
the present occasion, now place one sort first and now another; but he
follows the then custom and practice and is constant in the same. And
this was so as long as the ancient order was observed.

To this discourse of my brother's I subjoined, that I liked what he
said, but could not see the reason of this order. And some of the
company, thinking it unlikely that cuffing or wrestling should be a more
ancient exercise than racing, they desired me to search farther into the
matter; and thus I spake upon the sudden. All these exercises seem to me
to be representations of feats of arms and training therein; for after
all, a man armed at all points is brought in to show that that is the
end at which all these exercises and trainings end. And the privilege
granted to the conquerors, viz., as they rode into the city, to throw
down some part of the wall--hath this meaning; that walls are but a
small advantage to that city which hath men able to fight and overcome.
In Sparta those that were victors in any of the crowned games had an
honorable place in the army and were to fight near the king's person. Of
all other creatures a horse only can have a part in these games and win
the crown, for that alone is designed by nature to be trained to war,
and to prove assisting in a battle. If these things seem probable, let
us consider farther, that it is the first work of a fighter to strike
his enemy and ward the other's blows; the second, when they come up
close and lay hold of one another, to trip and overturn him; and
in this, they say, our countrymen being better wrestl