Book 6
14.1
Pherias of Aegina, whose statue stands by the side of Aristophon the Athenian, at the seventy-eighth Festival was considered very young, and, being judged to be as yet unfit to wrestle, was debarred from the contest. Out at the next Festival he was admitted to the boys' wrestling-match and won it. What happened to this Pherias was different, in fact the exact opposite of what happened at Olympia to Nicasylus of Rhodes.
14.2
Being eighteen years of age he was not allowed by the Eleans to compete in the boys' wrestling-match, but won the men's match and was proclaimed victor. He was afterwards proclaimed victor at Nemea also and at the Isthmus. But when he was twenty years old he met his death before he returned home to Rhodes. The feat of the Rhodian wrestler at Olympia was in my opinion surpassed by Artemidorus of Tralles. He failed in the boys' pancratium at Olympia, the reason of his failure being his extreme youth.
14.3
When, however, the time arrived for the contest held by the Ionians of Smyrna, his strength had so increased that he beat in the pancratium on the same day those who had competed with him at Olympia, after the boys the beardless youths as they are called, and thirdly the pick of the men. His match with the beardless youths was the outcome, they say, of a trainer's encouragement; he fought the men because of the insult of a man pancratiast. Artemidorus won an Olympic victory among the men at the two hundred and twelfth Festival68 B.C..
