and the little gazebo-like structure reminds me of what the Roman author Pausanias said about Spartan boys and their Fight Space:

On the road which leads northwards from Sparta stands a sanctuary built for Achilles by Prax, his great-grandson, which is closed to the general public;

but the boys who are required to fight in a near-by plane-tree grove enter and sacrifice to him beforehand.

~ Pausanias, Periegesis Hellados III, via Graves, The Greek Myths, 164.p.

So boys and Men will create, whenever possible, a Fight Space for themselves; and endow that space with a ritual and sacred quality.

That's what the Pond was -- a Sacred Fight Space.

Sacred to Males and Sacred to Male-ness.

Like the palestra -- which of course always contained a herm -- a phallic god and a godly phallus.

Now, NW went to a Catholic school, which was adamantly opposed to Fights -- not to mention Phalluses.

But even though the nuns, who of course represented the anti-thesis of Masculinity and Male Aggressive Power, did all they could to prevent the Fights, they went forward anyway.

They had to, because they spoke to a Male need -- and Rite -- and Right:

The Right to Fight.

In a properly organized Warrior society, like Sparta's, the Fight Space -- indeed the Fight Spaces -- which included the palestra and the grove entered via the Hero-on or Shrine to Achilles -- would have been created by the first Male settlers and then handed down Man-to-Man from generation to generation.

In our time, Fight Spaces like the Pond, in which males could naturally express their natural aggression in one-on-one, skin-on-skin, Fights -- are under constant attack.

The result, as NW points out, are outbursts of gun violence.

It's like those forests in California where, year after year, the undergrowth is allowed to build up; while fire is suppressed -- year after year after year.

The result is that instead of having many little fires, which are necessary to the ecology of many areas of California, and which actually promote healthy growth in the forests --

there are instead huge conflagrations, which destroy both the natural environment, and, not infrequently, human lives.

So: the Fighting at the Pond was ritualized, controlled, and disciplined.

It filled a Male need.

It allowed Men to express their Natural Male Aggression and their Natural Male Attraction -- while preventing the build-up of male aggressive energies which, left unexpressed, can threaten both the individual and the group.

Like NW says:

Fighting is Man;

Man is Good;

Fighting is Good.

Yet in our modern era, most people disparage Fighting -- in any form.

In the 300 message thread, I noted that classicist W. G. Forrest, in his 1968 History of Sparta, spoke sarcastically of the way the Spartans divided the boys in the Agoge into two teams, who, Plutarch tells us, "fell to fighting each other whenever they met."

Forrest was very dismissive of that team rivalry, which was instituted to encourage bravery.

Yet Fighting, as Forrest certainly knows, was for the ancients a core element of a classical education -- an education designed to produce Virtus -- Valour -- in a Man.

Forrest knows that.

He knows that the palestra -- and its nude Fights -- was core to the way boys learned to be Men -- of culture.

That's right -- culture.

What the Greeks called "Paideia."

That's not news now and it wasn't news in 1968.

Forrest just doesn't want to acknowledge it.

Why?

Because the Fighting was skin-on-skin.

And not just skin-on-skin but nude.

nudam incessare pugnam

incite to nude fight

It's a Latin phrase written by a Roman poet -- but it reflects a Greek -- and Roman -- reality.

Nude, Man2Man, all-in Fighting.

Forrest doesn't like that.

Because it expresses not just aggression but attraction too.

Phallus and Fighting.

Forrest doesn't want to think about that.

Most people don't want to think about it.

Fortunately for us, NW does.

Thank you NW.

You're a true and visionary Warrior.

Bill Weintraub

December 25, 2007

© All material Copyright 2007 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.

Naked Wrestler

MxxAxxNxxFxxIxxGxxHxxT

TAKE YOU ON AT THE POND

12-25-07

I remember too, when I was in the elementary school, that there were two boys in the 7th-8th grade having a serious exchange of fists on the playground.

A nun was supervising the playground that day. Sister Mary-Something tried to do the "right thing" and she got in between the two boys to separate them, to separate them from their ritual.

The dummy got inadvertently clocked in the side of the face by one of the boys; a 13-year-old can hit pretty hard. The dummy went strait down. The boys got in deep trouble and probably got the lovey-dubby talk from the nuns.

They settled it later at the Pond.

NW

PS

Bill, I also liked how you explained the Need and Normal Behavior of boys to create their own fight space and how they/we created our own rules for the ritual of manfighting. Looking back on it , it really WAS instinctive. No one told us to set up this fight space (The Pond). No one told us what the rules were. We fought there and never thought of bringing weapons like knives or guns. It was all just normal behavior and we didn't realize it--all in the face of a female faculty who tried to tell us it was all wrong...

Nature always finds a way.

NW

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