Eryx (king of Sicily)

Historical and cultural context

From the 6th century BC, Greek settlers in Sicily came into increasing contact with the island’s indigenous peoples, including the Elymians. The principal Elymian centres were Segesta and Eryx (modern Erice).^[1]

Greek writers describing Sicily name Eryx as the king of the Elymians. In some accounts, he is described as a son of Poseidon.^[2] In another account, preserved by Diodorus Siculus, Eryx is described as the son of Aphrodite and Butes (one of the Argonauts), and as king of a territory that included Himera and Segesta.^[3] In this tradition, he was regarded as an ancestor of the Elymians and as the eponymous founder of the city.^[4]

By the 5th century BC, a religious sanctuary on the summit of Mount Eryx (modern Monte Erice) was already a prominent centre of cult.^[5] In 415 BC, Athenian envoys sent to Segesta were taken to the sanctuary and shown temple treasures, including silver bowls, ladles and incense burners, in order to demonstrate the city’s wealth.^[6] Ancient writers reported that the temple’s altar was the "largest in existence".^[7]

The writers identified the goddess of Erice with Aphrodite, associating her with love and sexuality.^[8] The Roman counterpart of Aphrodite was Venus and their name for the sanctuary at Erice was the Temple of Venus Erycina.

Greek authors such as Diodorus Siculus associated the sanctuary with the king Eryx, crediting him with its foundation.^[5] Other classical authors differ in their accounts: in Virgil, Eryx is presented as a brother of Aeneas, while the foundation of the temple is instead attributed to Aeneas himself.^[4]

Combat and athletic contests

Eryx was recalled as a formidable Sicilian fighter. He was described as "fierce" and renowned for his strength.^[9] In an account preserved by John Tzetzes, he is said to have challenged participants at a festival in a Sicilian city to wrestling; when none accepted, he destroyed the city and killed its inhabitants.^[10] His reputation is also reflected in the gloves attributed to him, described as made from multiple layers of bull-hide and reinforced with lead and iron, giving them immense weight.^[9] The gloves have been identified as those used in ancient boxing, evidence emphasises the extreme violence of the sport.^[11]

Boxing originated in ancient Mesopotamia and spread across the Mediterranean through the Egyptian and Minoan cultures. It later became an organised sport in ancient Greece and was introduced to Sicily through Greek colonisation, where it was firmly established by the classical period.^[11]

Eryx appears in a story about Heracles, the great hero of Greek myth, who was returning to Greece with the cattle of Geryon as part of his labours.

Passing through Sicily, Heracles found that one of the animals had been taken into the herds of Eryx. When the king refused to return it, he challenged Heracles to a wrestling match, with the cattle as the stake.^[12] According to Diodorus, Eryx mocked the insignificance of Heracles’ stake, but Heracles warned him that, if defeated, he would forfeit his immortality.^[10]

In the Aeneid, Virgil places the wrestling match on the shore near Mount Eryx, while Varro describes the site as a small, barren plain known as the "plain of Eryx".^[10] Heracles forced Eryx to the ground three times, the customary condition for victory, before killing him in the contest.^[13] After his victory, Heracles entrusted the territory to the local inhabitants on the condition that they would hand it over to any of his descendants who might later come to claim it.^[13] He then recovered the animal and continued his journey.^[12]

The contest between Heracles and Eryx was depicted in a 17th-century drawing entitled Hercule et le roi Eryx, attributed to Nicolas Poussin or his workshop and now held in the Louvre’s Département des Arts graphiques. Executed in pen and brown ink with wash and white highlights, the work has been associated with preparatory designs for the decoration of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre. The drawing, which explicitly identifies Eryx, was formerly in the collection of Jacques-Édouard Gatteaux and entered the museum in 1873 as a donation.^[14][15]

An early 19th-century engraving of a black-figure vase depicting the combat between Eryx and Heracles is also preserved in the British Museum. It belongs to a group of engravings and tracings linked to Charles Robert Cockerell’s reconstruction of the Parthenon pediment and originates from a collection of works on paper produced by the architects Samuel Angell and William Harris during their Sicilian travels of 1822–1823.^[16]

In the Aeneid (Book 5), Entellus is described as using gloves that had previously belonged to his brother Eryx, said to be stained with blood. In this way, Eryx is associated with earlier traditions of boxing, and his equipment is depicted as emblematic of the sport’s brutality.^[11][9]

A Roman mosaic depicting this boxing scene was discovered in 1769 at a Gallo-Roman villa in Villelaure, France. It is now held in the J. Paul Getty Museum, having been acquired in 1971. It illustrates the funeral games of Aeneas, showing the bout between the Trojan boxer Dares and the aged Sicilian champion Entellus. In Virgil’s account, Entellus initially prepares to fight using heavy gloves that had belonged to Eryx.^[17][11][9]

Dares refuses to face such weapons, and Aeneas orders that lighter gloves be used. Even so, Entellus defeats his opponent, and subsequently demonstrates the destructive force of boxing gloves by killing a bull with a single blow. The mosaic reflects this episode, depicting the victorious Entellus alongside his defeated opponent and the sacrificial animal, and showing the caestus with reinforced knuckle elements characteristic of ancient boxing equipment.^[11][9]