Tomb frescoes from Paestum (4th century BC) show paired fighters with helmets, spears and shields, in a propitiatory funeral blood rite that anticipates gladiator games. Roman gladiators engaged in dual combat in a sport-like setting, evolving out of Etruscan ritual. Homer's Iliad includes some of the earliest descriptions of combat with shield, sword and spear, usually between two heroes who pick one another for a duel. The first historical evidence from archaeology of a fencing contest was found on the wall of a temple within Egypt built at a time dated to approximately 1190 B.C. Fighting with shield and sword developed in the Bronze Age bladed weapons such as the khopesh appeared in the Middle Bronze Age and the proper sword in the Late Bronze Age. The origins of armed combat are prehistoric, beginning with club, spear, axe, and knife. The first known English use of fence in reference to Renaissance swordsmanship is in William Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, (act i, scene 1), "with playing at sword and dagger with a master of fence,", and later, (act 2, scene 3) "Alas sir, I cannot fence" the term "fencer" is used in Much Ado About Nothing, "blunt as the fencer's foils, which hit, but hurt not." This specialized usage replaced the generic fight ( Old English feohtan, cognate with the German fechten, which remains the standard term for "fencing" in Modern German). The first attestation of Middle English fens "defence" dates to the 14th century the derived meaning "to surround with a fence" dates to c. The verb to fence derived from the noun fence, originally meaning "the act of defending", etymologically derived from Old French defens " defence", ultimately from the Latin. It is derived from the latinate defence (while conversely, the Romance term for fencing, scherma, escrima are derived from the Germanic (Old Frankish) *skrim "to shield, cover, defend"). The English term fencing, in the sense of "the action or art of using the sword scientifically" ( OED), dates to the late 16th century, when it denoted systems designed for the Renaissance rapier.
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