Ancient Greece's Strongest Man by L.J. Trafford

Sometime around about the year 220 CE a philosopher named Philostratus was getting annoyed with the days in which he was living. Now since I turned 50 last year I am fully onboard with nostalgic winging. What the hell happened to alcopops? I used to knock back the cranberry flavoured ones as a student back in the 90s when Brit Pop was at its peak and I had my whole life infront of me, as opposed to wondering where the hell all those years went. Philostratus’ wallows in nostalgia, however, were not for sweetly flavoured alcoholic beverages nor a music scene he understands, but rather for the athletes of times past. ‘The athletes of today are inferior to those of earlier times,’ he whines and adds with a snort of disgust (I’m imagining). ‘the majority of people are irritated even by lovers of the gymnasium.’

 

Two lovers of the gymnasium post exercise.
Credit: Two men using strigils. Gouache painting by S.W. Kelly 1937. Wellcome Collection.

Philostratus then lists the names of those great athletes that no one around him can remotely compare to, ‘Milo, Hipposthenes, Poulydamas and Promachus’ That he reels off these names without any further explanation or description of their victories or even which sports they competed in shows how famous these athletes were. Which is quite something when you find out Milo lived a cool 800 years before Philostratus is writing, as did Hipposthenes. Poulydamas & Promachus won their victories in the 5th century BCE, 600 years prior to Philostratus gym hating times.


Of the names Philostratus mentions the most famous was undoubtedly Milo or to give him his full name, sort of, Milon the Croton. Croton was a Greek settlement in Southern Italy and Milo the wrestler was their most famous son.In a career spanning decades Milo totted up six wins in six Olympic games.
Milo turned up to compete for a record breaking 7th Olympics, but he won by default because nobody else turned up to fight him. Nobody wanted to.


Legendary status is often distributed postmortem, with the likes of Philostratus looking back on times centuries before their birth and deciding that things and indeed people were just so much better back then. Milo of Croton however was a legend in his own lifetime and for far more than those Olympic victories, impressive as they were, he was a man who cultivated his legendary status.
We see this in an event that took place after the conclusion of the Olympic games at a spot known as The Altis. The Altis is a sacred area that contains several temples, including the Temple of Zeus whose statue of the God makes it into the seven wonders of the world list but it was also where statues of Olympic champions were erected. As a many times Olympic winner Milo naturally had a statue, but unlike the other athletes Milo carried his own bronze statue into the Altis for installation. Legendary behaviour in front of his adoring crowd.

Some of the remains of ancient Olympia. Credit Annatsach, Wikicomms.

However, Milo did not limit his amazing displays of strength to the adoring fans who’d come to watch him compete at the Olympic games or any of the other multitude of athletic competitions that were staged in Greece, he was quite happy to impress/show off outside of competitions.


There was the time he carried a bull, yes a fully grown bull, on his shoulders. This is not something you see every day, if ever in your lifetime. I’m not entirely convinced that anyone in ancient Greece saw it in their lifetime either, especially after consulting with farmers son, Mr LJ whose immediate reaction to my recounting of Milo’s feat was ‘that’s rubbish.’ Like everyone else who has ever worked with cattle Mr LJ has thrown himself over a fence to get out of the way of a fully grown bull. Although his main objection to the tale is that bulls are far too heavy to be carried by a human.


Milo of Croton is no human though, he is a legend and the story of the bull and the wrestler is not yet done. Not only did Milo carry the bull on his shoulders, he also killed the bull singlehandedly, butchered it personally and ate it whole in a single day. I put this to Mr LJ and his response was a single word ‘nonsense.’ You don’t need to know anything about farming or indeed the length of time it takes to butcher a whole bull to know this is, as Mr LJ rightly identifies ‘nonsense.’


Aside from the implausibility of having captured and carried a notoriously angry animal that weighs between 500 and 1000kg (78 and 150 stone in old money), a fully grown bull makes for around 340kg of edible meat. You don’t even have to do the maths, although I have, to know this is not just implausible but impossible. 340kg is 749lbs, now translate that into quarter pound burgers and work out how many minutes there are in a single day. Milo would have to be eating 2.14 quarter pound burgers a minute to eat a whole bull, and that’s if he started with the eating at sunrise, which we know he didn’t because he had to first capture and kill and butcher the bull. We don’t even need to go into what that quantity of meat would do to the human digestive system because the story is clearly nonsene.


But that is by the by, Milo of Croton was clearly such a specimen of manhood and had acquired such a legendary status that people were prepared to believe any tales told about him no matter if they were nonsense.

A big bull for reference.
Credit: A West Highland bull, Etching by H.Beckwith, ca 1840, after W..H Davies. Wellcome Collection.

I have an inkling that Milo might well be responsible for the exaggerated embellishments of what was probably a true tale involving some feat of strength and a bull. He certainly wasn’t shy of showing off his skills and we find other, more plausible stories about his legendary strength that revolve more realistically, if less dramatically around fruit.

‘It was said that such was his grip that nobody could take a piece of fruit out of his hand once he had hold of it,’ so says ancient Greek travel writer, Pausanias. In Pausanias’ account the fruit is a pomegranate, others say it was an apple. The type of fruit doesn’t matter because the trick is the same ‘when he gripped an apple, nobody could straighten his fingers,’ so says Pliny the Elder.
Which strongly suggests a public performance of some sort and a challenge set to be the first person to successfully retrieve the fruit from Milo’s grip.

Another one in Milo’s portfolio of impressive things was to burst a cord tied tight around his forehand by inhaling and expanding the veins in his head, which no man has any reason to do beside to show off that he can. Milo was a man who created his own legend and lived it to the full.


It is fitting that the manner of Milo’s death should be as legendary and show-offy as the manner of his life, he was never going to be a man who expired quietly after a short illness. His demise came about when he punched a tree in half, got his hands wedged in the split and was eaten alive by wolves.

After: Pordenone's painting of the subject in the David and Alfred Smart Museum, University of Chicago, or one of its many copies. Wellcome Collection

 
There’s a lesson in that tale somewhere about the worthlessness of great feats if there is no one to witness them, about abusing the powers the gods have given you and paying the price, or about how man is nothing compared to nature and that nature will always triumph. Grand themes like that. Although my takeaway is never ever to go wandering around any woodland where you could possibly encounter a wolf. But then I’m from Britain where the most dangerous animal you are ever likely to encounter in a wood is a slightly narked squirrel or a grumpy badger.

L.J, Trafford

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