“Fresh as two young lions off on the mountain ridges,

twins reared by a lioness deep in the dark glades,

that ravage shepherds’ steadings, mauling the cattle…”

-Homer, Diomedes Fights the Gods

As near as I can tell Herakles was the Hellenic variant on Gilgamesh. At least three proto-historic figures went by this name. There was an Egyptian, a Cretan and a Theban version, with the later being the one the mythic deeds of the man-god where attributed to. All of these semi-mythic figures were associated with the Olympic agon in one way or the other, two of them as founders.

This points to the Cretan and Egyptian origin—or possible mere association—of such sacred contests. Hellenic speaking peoples had invaded Egypt and Judea 500 years before the Olympics were founded at about the time that the events that became the Iliad were unfolding in the Northern Aegean around Troy. When some sacred agons were founded in Hellas emissaries were sent to Egypt for the Pharaoh’s blessing and advice from the priesthoods as to officiating procedures.

In 648 the first pankration or “all-power-thing”, basically MMA, was held as part of the Olympic agon. The winner was Lygdamis [Twisting-subduer] a giant with double long feet. Three years later Kamirus put the final Hellenic stamp on the Epic of Gilgamesh with the reading of his Labors of Herakles.

Herakles means Hera’s-honor, indicating that the lecherous spawn of Zeus, philandering chief of the gods, from the loins of a mortal woman, had brought into question the honor of the mother of the gods. Herakles committed 12 acts—which are related most likely to the 12 months, and possibly the first 12 of the 14 Stations of the Cross in Catholicism—loosely based on, and an expansion of, the primal epic of the man-god. Herakles [later Hercules among the Romans] was a tragic figure who murdered his family and committed suicide and is often read as an allegory on hubris.

However, as the Hellenes believed in a hellish afterlife and had but one chance to make their mark on the world, Herakles, who challenged gods, titans and men, and imposed his will—however ephemerally—on the natural and metaphysical worlds, eventually achieving deification and a tolerable afterlife, was a huge inspiration to ambitious men. Alexander sacrificed to Herakles obsessively, striving to attain godhood through deeds.

The two archetypes of the pankratiast were the giant in Lygdamis’ mold, and the Herakles like figure such as Promachus [Frontline-fighter] of Pellene, a rival of Polydamas.

Polydamas was the son of Nikias of Skotussa in Thesally, the grassy northern plain of Hellas, where petty kings and tyrants held sway as often as oligarchic councils. Polydamas probably came of age [either turned 21 or was judged to be physically a man of majority age] in 406 B.C.

405 B.C.

Just as the vicious 30 year long Peloponnesian War ground to a hideous end the horse lords of Thessaly became important middle men between the Hellenic and Persian worlds. Spartan commanders and Hellenic mercenaries were now adventuring in Persia, taking sides in internal imperial power struggles, even as Persian money financed petty wars between Hellenic communities and leagues.

404 B.C.

Famous for wrestling bulls in the pastures of Thessaly, Polydamas was already engaged in an attempt to equal Herakles. He was also, like the various Dark Age chieftains by the same name, a son of an important man. He traveled to Elis in the Peloponnese [Red-face-island] named after a drunken king, to compete in the all-power-thing, defeating the field of challengers in this single-elimination lot draw event. His regular victim seems to have been Agias, the best all around athlete of the time, but no giant-beater. After the contest Polydamas showed off by holding back a team of [two] chariot horses.

403 B.C.

Darius, King of Kings [neither the one that had sent the invasion force that lost at Marathon or who later lost to Alexander], sent word to Thessaly—whose lords were in steady communication with the Persians through the Macedonian puppet court of Alexander’s grandfather—that he wished to see “the tallest man of The Mortal Age” fight in his presence.

402 B.C.

Polydamas traveled across the Hellespont, up from the sea into the Anatolian interior, down into the Syrian Plain, across the Euphrates river into Babylonia, and then up through the Taurus Mountains to the high lands of Persian, and onward to Susa, one of the four capitals of the Persian Kings.

This would have been a journey of months made on foot, as the horses of the time could not have carried him. He was an inlander and his family had no maritime connections like the Athenians. His escort would have rode horses small by our standards. Where we moderns think of travel overland mostly in terms of distance, the ancient Hellenes reckoned travel as much according to the elevation gained and lost as one travelled up from, and then down to, the sea.

Polydamas’ head was large and rounded at the top with thick layered—rather than kinky—hair. His face is long and fairly narrow. One is reminded more of a Norse figure, a Semmy Shilt [the K-I kickboxer and MMA fighter from Holland] than the pottery images of Athenians boxing with afros.

The Great King Darius did not require Hellenic athletes to bow to him as was normally required of his subjects—including lesser kings—and foreign ambassadors. Polydamas either accompanied the ambassador from his community or was the ambassador. Many pankration and pentathlon champions acted as ambassadors to Persia. Wrestling was—and remains—a passion of Persian men and the Hellenes took advantage of this in their diplomacy. Polydamas would not be the only victor of a sacred Hellenic agon to travel to the Persian Court and fight in a secular affair.

Darius matched Polydamas against his three best fighting men from among his 10,000 man royal bodyguard, which the Hellenes called ‘Immortals’ because their numbers were kept constant through replacements. Persians were strangers to boxing, and practiced a style of jacket wrestling similar to modern Mongolian wrestling, essentially an ancient form of judo that focused on throwing with a jacket. As a Hellenic athlete Polydamas fought naked and smeared with olive oil, which may well have raised an eyebrow or two at the Persian court, and would have made the jacket wrestlers’ day a nightmare

It is not known if he fought all three opponents at the same time or in order. He did kill them, with the manner of their death unknown.

401 B.C.

Polydamas returned to Hellas and discovered that a knucklehead named Promachus, who Agias had stopped at Delphi and the Isthmus, would be attempting to win the Olympic crown. Obsessed with emulating Herakles the only agon he was interested in was the Olympic crown that Herakles supposedly one at the first prehistoric Olympic contest.

400 B.C.

Whether it was Promachus or Polydamas who stopped Agias is not known. Promachus famously defeated the giant Polydamas through greater stamina, acquired through avoiding sex with his beautiful and insistent young girlfriend. He listened to his trainer about avoiding pre-fight sex and frustrated Polydamas’ ambition.

394 B.C.

Having won numerous agonal crowns, splitting bouts with old Agias, when his small town of Pellene went to war with the major city of Corinth, Promachus earned his name. Placed in the front rank, probably on the right, he broke through the enemy line, turned left and mowed down a bunch of twerps, causing the Corinthian formation to fall apart.

390s-370s B.C.

In his mania to equal Herakles Polydamas turned away from sports and wandered Hellas looking for monsters to slay. He managed to beat the piss out of one of the last remaining European lions. With a lion skin trophy unblemished by weapons to equal the story of Herakles strangling the Nemean Lion, he claimed to have strangled it. But I’m betting on a big-ass club laying the cat out before the animal was strangled.

It is not known what else Polydamas did during this period. However, all other pankration champions between 411 and 360 served as diplomats and war leaders.

373 B.C.

A major earthquake struck central Hellas, cutting off the hallucinatory gas from the oracle at Delphi and wrecking city walls in various cities around Thessaly. The following events may have been precipitated by refugee situations and the wrecking of some key cities and sanctuaries [where treasuries were held]in central Greece.

371 B.C.

This was a year of political upheaval across the Hellenic world, with the Spartan king and his personal bodyguard slaughtered to a man by the Thebans. Jason, the petty Tyrant of Pherae in Thessaly, and supposed ally of Skotussa, treacherously annihilated that entire community while Polydamas and a band of fighting men were off on some agreed upon errand. Jason, while organizing an invasion of Persia [Alexander was a late comer to this gambit.] was petitioned by a gym administrator for permission to punish some young gym rats who had worked him over. Jason decreed 10 rod strokes and a 300 drachma fine for each of the athletes.

370 B.C.

Polydamas and his companions were hiding out in a grotto drinking wine and singing songs as Jason’s men hunted them down. An aftershock from the 373 quake caused the cave to begin collapsing. Polydamas was crushed trying to hold up the mouth of the cave while his men escaped. His friends in Thessaly thought him a hero for trying to hold back the mountainside, while philosophers ridiculed him.

While Jason was presiding over the Pythian agon at the badly damaged sacred precinct of Delphi prior to receiving the oracle’s blessing for his invasion of Persia, the young men who he had authorized the gym manger Taxillus to beat and fine, killed him.

335 B.C.

The sculpture Lysippus was commissioned by the sons of Agias of Thessaly, who lost to Polydamas and fought Promachus many times, to sculpt life sized statues of Agias and Polydamas in the Altis, the sacred precinct of Olympic champions at Elis. With his community wiped out by Jason, the scourge of Thessaly, the only people left to record his exploits and honor him were the sons of his chief rival. An etching of him slaying a lion was made at the base of his statue. The complete figure of Agias remains in the form of a Roman copy as does the head of Polydamas.

The age of athletes and heroes was clearly past, and the age of tyrants was upon the land. But men still remembered. With the venerable house cat of the gods now extinct in Europe, Alexander, after the battle of Issus and before his deification in Egypt, entered a walled hunting preserve in Syria to try his hand at lion-slaying, this being the traditional rite of passage for a Persian king, one of which he was hunting across his realm. Alexander was injured, and might have been killed if not for some timely assistance. He was the last King outside of Africa to fight a lion, which had been the ultimate measure of a man since long before the advent of kings or the rise of the cities they ruled.

“Benaiah son of Jehoiada, from Kebzeel, was a hero of many exploits. It was he who slew the two champions of Moab, and once went down into a pit and killed a lion on a snowy day…”

-Second Book of Samuel, 21, 22, 23

The earliest writers knew the lion by its habits and admired its predatory qualities.

No feat won greater adulation than slaying a lion in single combat.

No quality was revered more than the stubborn courage of this beast that men had hunted to extinction wherever they built their cities.

No reward was greater than the lion’s share, for it was unthinkable, in a tribal society, that one man would ever take all.

For nearly a thousand years, English, a language that did not emerge until long after lions had disappeared from its homeland, has included the term lionhearted. And now, ironically, as the remaining handful of lions are hunted down in their last African homeland, for a man to behave in any way like the men who first challenged this apex predator for primacy is at best politically incorrect. Most fitting of all, as we come nearer to a world without lions, is that the idea of the lion’s share has been replaced in equal parts by the ideologies that either promote the notion of equal shares for weak and strong, or the ‘shrewdest takes all’ form of global capitalism.

“But never would he repay his loving parents now

for the gift of rearing—his life cut short soon,

brought down by the spear of lionhearted Ajax.”

“…give Atrides the lion’s share of all our plunder.”

“Aeneas straddled the body—

Proud in his fighting power like some lion—”

“…massed like a pride of lions tearing flesh…”

“Both seized their lances, wrenched them from the shields

and went for each other now like lions rending flesh…”

The following and similar passages appear throughout the epic roughly as often as the occurrence of lion references.

“First they fought with heart-devouring hatred,

Then they parted, bound by pacts of friendship.”

Overall, lion references are less frequent but more prominent than references to the other four-legged predator evoked by The Poet; the dog. Interestingly, as the voice of the narrator most often evokes the lion, it is the voice of the warriors that most often evoke the dog. In the following passage we find the two together, as the warrior Sarpedon employs them as metaphors for courage and cowardice in his taunting of Hector:

“But where are they now? I look. I can’t find one.

They cringe and cower like hounds circling a lion.”

In a sense, Homer’s epic can be read as the passing of an age of men as metaphoric ‘lions of war’ to the age of men as ‘dogs of war.’ That is the essence of the interplay between Achilles and Agamemnon that is at the heart of the poem. This interplay of the two oldest animal spirit metaphors to inspire the warrior, in the form of his most famed animal rival and his first animal friend, will be explored conclusively in Dogs of War.