Image Details

Erich Lessing

Preparing to fight, a boxer wraps his wrists with oxhide strips, in this red-figured amphora dating to the fifth century B.C.E. These so-called soft thongs, or himantes meilichai, were in use until the fourth century B.C.E., when they were replaced by the even more devastating sharp thongs (himas oxus), gloves of leather 1 to 2 inches thick.