Martial History Team

Did Socrates really say "I swear it upon Zeus, an outstanding runner cannot be the equal of an average wrestler"? TL;DR: The image says it all. For the research, and what Socrates and others really said about wrestlers and runners, read on! Introduction Recently I debunked a quote falsely attributed to a Japanese thinker and warrior , so I thought it was time to do the same for a Greek thinker and warrior -- Socrates. First, some background. Socrates was a Greek philosopher who lived from approximately 470 BC to 399 BC. He did not write anything on his own, or at least nothing he wrote survives to this day. Everything we know about him comes from his students and biographers. Chief among these are students Plato and Xenophon, and biographers Plutarch (46 AD to about 119 AD) and Diogenes Laërtius (third century AD) and Plutarch.  To see if Socrates said anything like the quote attributed above, I queried many sources online, and then I reviewed the following works. Each initia...

US Grant at Cold Harbor, May 1864; Photo by Mathew Brady, colorized by @madsmadsen.ch from Battlefield Trust collection,  https://www.instagram.com/p/BymcJKIBYvn/ Introduction Today, 27 April 2020, is the 198th birthday of Ulysses S. Grant, born Hiram Ulysses Grant, 18th president of the United States and commanding general of Union forces in the US Civil War. To celebrate his birthday, I will take a look at one of the myths surrounding Grant, his so-called "wrestling career." Grant is sometimes listed as one of the "Presidential wrestlers," alongside Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and others. As we will see in this post, Grant there is no evidence that Grant was a wrestler, at least against other men, but there is evidence he was a family man and a patient fighter. Grant as Wrestler, Online If one visits the National Wrestling Hall of Fame web site , one finds the following: "Lincoln certainly did not achieve any national fame as a wrestl...

Screen capture from YouTube, "Knee Wrestling, It's a thing" - Part 1 - Not fun, but necessary I've been reading the Kindle version of  Pietro Monte's Collectanea . As stated in the book description, "Monte, a courtier, soldier and scholar who won the respect of men like Leonardo da Vinci and Baldesar Castiglione, wrote the work in Spanish in the late 1400s, and later produced an expanded Latin translation. The Latin version, published in Milan in 1509, forms the basis of this translation." I bought the book because Monte devotes a good amount of attention to wrestling. He writes: "In discussing physical exercises I put wrestling before the rest... No other skill -- neither throwing, nor acrobatics, nor play of arms, nor equitation [horse riding?] -- teaches us to temper and control our bodies like wrestling, and always to know how to respond where necessity arises." (Collectanea, Kindle Edition, loc. 2849) Later in the book, Monte surp...

Plate LIII, British Manly Exercises by Donald Walker, 1835, wrestling chapter Today I found a great resource for researching martial arts treatises. It's called the  Schola Artis Gladii et Armorum Treatise database  and it's hosted by a martial arts school in Hungary. They offer over 3,000 entries contributed by users, many of which have working links to source material.  One of the best aspects of the site is the ability to select search parameters. For example, when I searched for English, grappling and wrestling, groundfighting, jiu-jitsu, and wrestling in armour, the search yielded 79 hits. It's important to verify the search results. For example, the results of my query yielded the following first result: Title: Cottonian MS Titus A. XXV Alternative title: The strokes if ij hand swerde Year: around 1457 Language: English Secondary language: Latin Located in: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München <-- Click the name for more information. ...

I've been looking at wrestling in Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) and found some great work on Fabian von Auerswald's "Ringer kunst: funf und Achtzig Stücke (The Art of Wrestling: Eighty Five Techniques)." First, there is an English translation available if your 16th century German isn't up to par, courtesy of James Klock . Second, Tim Hall, David Rowe and Bill Grandy, instructors at the Virginia Academy of Fencing, Historical Swordsmanship Division, wrote an article and filmed multiple videos showing techniques from Auerswald's text. Third, I created a YouTube playlist with all the videos, for easy access. This is a great combination of translation, interpretation, and practice for an important work of martial arts history.