Attic red-figure skyphos (wine cup), attributed to the Penelope Painter and dated between 440-430 BC from Chiusi in Tuscany, was donated by the local authorities to Mr. Arthur Evans in 1890. It is now part of the Ashmolean Museum's collection of antiquities in Oxford.
The scene depicts a wrestling match between two young athletes, with Victory, the goddess Nike, seated on a tall stele to the right, observing the competition in a submissive posture, possibly due to the prolonged duration of the match. Without a set time limit or scoring system, and adding olive oil to the skin to make the athletes slippery, the matches could last a long time. Reaching three knockdowns to secure victory must have been particularly exhausting, even for the spectators.
The wrestlers began the match in the guard position, known as the systasis, derived from the Greek word meaning "to stand together." After crossing their upper limbs and entwining them—called in Greek periplekein—they began to press their heads together and grip each other's bodies. As the Greek poet Nonnus of Panopolis describes in his Dionysiaca: "Both athletes begin by clasping each other's wrists with both hands, and quickly changing the grips on the same wrists, dragging each other across the sandy surface, their fingers locked in the grip of the hand. One man hooks himself around the body of the other, who with one hand rests on one side of his opponent's body, both dragging and being dragged; their hands tie them together. They bend their necks and push with their heads, pressing with their foreheads and leaning, neither side succeeding in forcing the other to the ground. Sweat falls from their foreheads, fatigue sets in, and the throws commence."