The Boxer at Rest, or the Boxer of Quirinal, is an ancient Greek bronze cast in the 4th century BCE. It was discovered carefully buried along with another bronze in Quirinal Hill, one of the Seven Hills of Rome. When and why the Boxer was buried is unknown, but it was surely tucked into the hillside near its former location at Baths of Constantine to preserve or protect, likely from some impending calamity. Its discoverer said the following of its unearthing:
“I have witnessed, in my long career in the active field of archaeology, many discoveries; I have experienced surprise after surprise; I have sometimes and most unexpectedly met with real masterpieces; but I have never felt such an extraordinary impression as the one created by the sight of this magnificent specimen of a semi-barbaric athlete, coming slowly out of the ground, as if awakening from a long repose after his gallant fights.”
–Rodolpho Lanciani, 1885
Words like this do not come from patient editing. They emerge fully formed, like Athena bursting forth in all her glory form the forehead of Zeus; an experience of the transcendental made manifest.
I have long loved this statue above all others of the Greeks. I remember the drama of the extant Winged Victory of Samothrace when I visited the Louvre, with its brilliant unfurled wings and flowing chiton, somehow frozen in marble yet forever sailing headlong into the winds of time. It is undeniably provocative. The spirit of human optimism it evinces is so resonant and universal that one almost feels as though they must have contributed a tiny strike to the block. The Discobolus—contemporary with the Boxer—is a perfection of the athletic ideal and the will to action. Although the original bronze is lost to time, should his famous avatar one day shatter its translucent Purian facade and hurl the discus into the air it would be only a minor miracle—perhaps nothing more than a realization of un-restrainable potential.
Unlike these two dynamic icons, the Boxer, of all subjects, offers a moment of repose and reflection. In fact, his character is more akin to the idealized feminine elegance and beauty of the Venus de Milo, perhaps even a counterpart. While the Venus offers tacit insight to the deepest nature of the female creature, the Boxer in his silence attests to the elemental state of conflict and resolution that is the mantle borne by man.
In fact, it is precisely the condition of the Boxer’s statue juxtaposed against its subject matter that makes it so powerful. He is depicted seated, and based on the condition of his face and blood on his hand wraps has just participated in a bout. Nothing betrays the outcome. His head is inclined as if addressing an invisible fellow sportsman, but his expression and posture is that of subdued commiserating with a close friend. His eyes and smile are as mysterious—perhaps more so—than the Mona Lisa’s. Exhausted. Indefatigable, and yet at peace.
There is great irony to be found in him. The power of Winged Victory and the beautiful fragility of Venus are trammelled by grievous injuries to their head, body and arms, but the Boxer remains a pristine example of a battered man. Even the well-preserved Discobulos marble is a Roman phantom of the original that has been swept away from human memory by god knows what to god knows where. But of all his intrigues, it is the Boxer’s hands which are most special. They are beautiful, delicate, and perhaps even could have shamed the lost limbs of Venus herself. If anything, his fingertips are weathered only by the centuries of passers-by gently touching them for luck or consolation. Again, the one element that should be most brutalized is the height of his beauty. What is to be learned from him?
He is seated as a philosopher in contemplation, and only the slight hunching of his powerful shoulders suggests he may be a bit weary. Equally ambiguous is the outcome of his match. If defeated, he appears to bear it with peace. If victorious his happiness is tempered by the outcome of the other man. He is neither happy nor sad, elated or gutted—he simply is, crystalized in a moment between an act of great violence and the return to the simplicity of home and plow.
This is the mythological and philosophical paradigm of a people who embraced the Homeric heroism of the Iliad and Odyssey. In Book 4 of the Iliad, Homer writes of the onset of the initial collision of Trojan and Achean forces:
“King agamemnon’s hour. You would not find him asleep, not cringing a moment, hanging back from the struggle—he pressed for battle now where men win glory.”
But glory is a boon of the gods, not a prize to be won. The breach must be entered through courage in the face of the unknown, and left covered in the blood and dirt of victory or guided by the hand of Hermes. The gods often influence conflicts in the Iliad, but there is a sense of futility in the poem. Aeneas, founder of Rome, is mortally wounded but borne off by Aphrodite and healed. Athena deflects an arrow meant for Menelaus that would have certainly killed him, but in doing so instigates the series of brutal conflicts that would culminate with the death of Hector, the eventual destruction of Troy, and the futile loss of so many unknown spirits whose corpses form the pedestal of heroes.
In many ways, the Iliad is a woeful acknowledgement of the nihilism of heavenly capriciousness that permeates humanity’s struggle. The endless, often indifferent descriptions of great men being struck down conveys an old man's memory of the futility and waste that is war. The Poet writes:
“Now Amarinceus’ son Diores—fate shackled Diores fast and a jagged frock struck him against his right shin, beside the ankle. Pirous son of Imbrasus winged it hard and true, the Thracian chief who had sailed across from Aenus...the ruthless rock striking the bones and tendons crushed them to pulp—he landed flat on his back, slamming the dust, both arms flung out to his comrades, gasping out his life. Pirous who heaved the rock came rushing in and speared him up to the navel—his guts uncoiled, spilling loose on the ground and the dark came swirling down across his eyes.”
Immediately thereafter Pirous himself is speared to death. The chapter concludes:
“And now no man who waded into that work could scorn it any longer, anyone still not speared or stabbed by tearing bronze who whirled into the hearts of all that slaughter—not even if great Athena led him by the hand, flicking away the weapons hailing down against him. That day ranks of Trojans, ranks of Achaean fighters sprawled there side-by-side, facedown in the dust.”
This is the value of the test, the value of participation in the brutality of sport. Many fall, few remain to tell the tales of victory. In this way, the Boxer reminds us that peace and the invigorated renewal of appreciation for the good is bought at a non-negotiable price. Where the Iliad terminates in death, the Odyssey recounts the joyful return to life. The halls of Nestor’s and Menelaus’ palaces are once again filled with wife, child, music and light. Indeed, for all of the Odyssey’s well-known tales of the terrors of Charybdis and Scylla, in reality these are minor points. The Odyssey is an eternal epic of absence and return; a son searching for a father and a father searching for his son and wife. It is first and foremost a reminder that the ordeal of pain and tragedy in the Iliad is the price of the greatest affirmations of love and the human spirit.
Today, the Boxer sits as he always has, head turned away from the throngs of people passing by, attending to his state of holy communion with that which makes us most human. It is as if he somehow recognizes that what he is whispering can’t be explained to us anyhow. His nature is one of embodiment, not of projection. He is not one of us. As Socrates speaks of the daemon of love in his Symposium, so too is the Boxer a daemon. He is the lost poem bridging the Iliad and Odyssey; the moment when the inevitability of death gives way to the possibility of life.