Note 4 — INTRODUCTION. BOXING AND BOXERS AMONG THE ANCIENTS.
Reading edition
The inquiring reader will find the sex of “the Trojan horse” settled in some humorous scholia to Pope’s “Dunciad,” book i., line 212, quizzically attributed to Richard Bentley, the famous critic, under the alias of Martinus Scriblerus. And at this present time of writing we may note that the axe-wielding ex-premier, the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, in his great speech on introducing the Reform Bill (March 19, 1866), borrowed a metaphor from this ancient fable with eloquent propriety—
“Scandit fatalis machina muros
Fœta armis.”