TEST OF VALOR

The test of valor is that of Nicias a young athlete who lived during the flowering of Athens, about to go into training for the Olympic games. In a rivalry with a fellow pentathlon contender, and to avenge his crippled father, Nicias secretly contracts to fight the mauler Ajax, the brutal pancratium champion of long standing who has slain many of his victims. Nicias wins the pentathlon and subdues Ajax. His story is well supplied with facts of athletic ancient Greece but a trite patterning of events makes it hard to distinguish from the welter of formula tales. Hack Olympic.