Cestus

Roman boxing gloves unearthed by Vindolanda dig

Photo from Vindolanda Trust, refer to link above.

The image from the link, and reproduced above, is a double photo. In the background is an image of the statue of Kleitomachos [Eternally-glorious-fighter] who fought just over a hundred years before the statue was made at Rhegium, in Magna Grecia Italy. The statue shows competition gloves without metal inserts. Only some Roman spectacles included studded or spiked hand gear, and these were manifestly not used in sacred agons.

The two gloves in the foreground are fitted to manikin hands. The article erroneously states that these were both sparring gloves; they were not. These are not gloves but composite leather knuckle dusters, traditionally wound in seven layers of bulls hide. They were described as sharp because they bit like “ants” and were sometimes thus named. These became sharp from sweat salt and dried blood accumulation.

The underparts, clearly evidenced on the statue, are missing, as are the uppers, which were made of soft leather straps and wool, for blocking. Fighters were described as wetting their lips with the sweat accumulated by the woolen band halfway down the forearm. These composite fighting gauntlets required third parties to strap them on. The seven layers of bull’s hide stretched over the boxer’s knuckles—the same number of layers used in archaic shield construction—had both traditional and mythic significance and were known to cause fearsome wounds as described in Virgil’s Aenid, in which one boxer smashed in the skull of a prize bull with his leather-sheathed hand.

The idea of spiked gauntlets comes from late Roman frescoes depicting a type of pugilistic gladiator.

I have found some evidence of padded sparring gloves from the Hellenistic [literature] and Roman [reliefs of boxing-gloved Cherubs] Eras. They surely existed and were in wide use, based on the high skill level of the fighters as depicted in art and the defensive skill required by their competition gear.

The padded knuckle guard on the left would be for sparring and that in the right, with twisted leather inside, for competition, probably not in sacred agons in Roman Britain, but for training and competition among Hellenized Romans or soldiers stationed in Britain.

The sharp hand-straps or cesti, as depicted on the statue of Kleitomachos and described by Virgil [from which Roman boxing took its inspiration] would be reserved for sacred occasions, with expert handlers to affix these complex arrangements to the hand and forearm.

The following is supposition: The twisted leather within the smaller glove is an obvious crude attempt to inflect the same level of damage without the need for a lengthy gearing session, suggesting use in team competitions, or being kept on hand by a unit for member soldiers to quickly don for masculine occasions, alternately suggesting use by slaves for entertaining their masters or by Roman soldiers who might wish to imitate the heroes of legend in a type of competition from which the sacred art of boxing seems to have emerged in earlier antiquity, as a form of dueling likely to draw blood and unlikely to cause death.

(c) 2018 James LaFond