a field of sixteen athletes. Xanthos mentions the largest number—nine tournament rounds. If these tournament rounds were held in one competition, up to 512 contestants would participate in the tournament, which is difficult to believe for a single contest. Therefore, one can hypothesize that the nine rounds included those in which the athlete participated during regional qualification competitions that were held before the major games. Such preliminary contests were held prior to the major games to determine who would participate in the main event. This makes sense, as the 15–20 athletes competing in the major games could not have been the only available contestants. There is clear evidence of this from Plato, who refers to competitors in the Panhellenic Games, with opponents numbering in the thousands. Moreover, in the first century A.D., the Greco-Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria—who was himself probably a practitioner of pankration—makes a statement that could be an allusion to preliminary contests in which an athlete would participate and then collect his strength before coming forward fresh in the major competition. Techniques The athletes engaged in a pankration competition – i.e., the pankratiasts (sg. , pl. – employed a variety of techniques in order to strike their opponent as well as take him to the ground in order to use a submission technique. When the pankratiasts fought standing, the combat was called (, "upper Pankration"); and when they took the fight to the ground, that stage of pankration competition was called (, "lower Pankration"). Some of the techniques that would be applied in and , respectively, are known to us through depictions on ancient pottery and sculptures, as well as in descriptions in ancient literature. There were also strategies documented in ancient literature that were meant to be used to obtain an advantage over the competitor. Fighting stance The pankratiast faces his opponent with a nearly frontal stance—only slightly turned sideways. This is an intermediate directional positioning, between the wrestler's more frontal positioning and the boxer's more sideways stance and is consistent with the need to preserve both the option of using striking and protecting the center line of the body and the option of applying grappling techniques. Thus, the left side of the body is slightly forward of the right side of the body and the left hand is more forward than the right one. Both hands are held high so that the tips of the