What is "caestus"

Usage examples of "caestus".

The Lacedaemonians forbid their young men to contend in the pancratium, or with the caestus, in which games the defeated party has to acknowledge himself beaten.

In the exercises the men practised with many wrappings of wadding and cotton wound round the caestus, answering the purpose of the modern boxing glove.

I will try the experiment some day, and put up one of the Britons against Asthor the Gaul, hands against the caestus, and see what comes of it.

Had I had but a caestus I could have beaten its skull in, but without that I saw that the only plan was to noose its limbs.

Then there is the caestus, but the Romans do not care for that, though, to my mind, it is the finest of all the exercises.

Yes, for men like you Britons that would do, for a straight blow from any one of you would well nigh break in the bones of the face of an ordinary man, and, as you say, you could strike much more quickly without the weight on your hands, but with smaller men a contest might last for hours without the caestus, and the spectators would get tired of it.