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

Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Greece is available for pre ordering now.

  

The Ayrshire Vendetta by Margaret Skea

The Ayrshire Vendetta.

It is 440 years since the Massacre of Annock. Though not an unusual occurrence in the lawlessness of Scotland in the 16th century, that event, and particularly the extent and ferocity of the reprisals that followed, marked the beginning of a change in attitude towards blood feud. 

‘Blood feud was the custom of the times.’ So wrote William Robertson in Ayrshire. Its History (1908) 

Of course, feuding between Scottish clans wasn’t a new phenomenon, nor did it entirely end with the 16th century, and it certainly wasn’t confined to Ayrshire. There are many well-documented, long-standing feuds between families throughout Scotland, from the Scotts and Kers in the Borders, to the Campbells and MacDonalds in the west and the Gordons and Stewarts in the Highlands. However the Ayrshire Vendetta, as it became known, is a classic example; the Cunninghame and Montgomerie families later dubbed the ‘Montagues and Capulets’ of Ayrshire. 

All that remains of Eglinton castle – Primary residence of the Earl of Eglinton – head of  the Montgomerie family.

Nothing remains of Kilmaurs, the seat of the Cunninghame family.

Various factors contributed to a culture in which violence was considered the most appropriate manner of dealing with dispute. Foremost was the weakness of the Crown.  Of the seven Scottish monarchs of the 15th and 16th centuries, only one (James IV, aged 15 when he became king) was able to rule in his own right from accession. Of the others, three inherited the throne as infants (James V, Mary Queen of Scots and James VI) and two at less than ten (James II and III), while James I, aged twelve, was captured, still uncrowned, and detained in England for eighteen years.  As a result the years of successive minorities were characterized by a nobility jostling for precedence and for control of the monarchy, allied to a general acceptance of the rule of ‘might’ regardless of ‘right’.

On his accession in 1488 James IV set out to establish stable government at local level, appointing representatives in each district to dispense justice. A laudable aim, marred in Ayrshire by an error of judgement, when he passed control of the bailiwick of Cunninghame to Hugh, Lord Montgomerie, thus sparking the 150 + year feud. 

Although the original affront had been to the Cunninghames, the first blow in the feud was the sacking of Kerelaw - a Cunninghame tower situated in the midst of Montgomerie territory.  The years that followed were punctuated by repeated acts of brutality and murder on both sides, separated by periods of temporary quiet. 

In 1505 Cunninghame of Craigens was attacked and wounded by the Master of Montgomerie; and in 1507 the Cunninghames retaliated, attacking the newly created Montgomerie Earl of Eglinton, with lives lost on both sides. 

Meanwhile the issue of the bailiwick became the subject of arbritation, the decision in favour of Eglinton in 1509 failing to satisfy the Earl of Glencairn, head of the Cunninghames. 

However, as is so often the case when a country is threatened by an external enemy, private grievances are set aside. So it was in the years before Flodden, clans uniting in the face of the English threat. The Scottish losses, whether one accepts the lower estimate of 5,000 or the higher one of 10,000, decimated the nobility and left the country once again with an infant king. 

                           Site of Flodden Battlefield – very atmospheric even today. 

It is interesting to note that though both Eglinton and Glencairn were on the same side in the unsuccessful conspiracy to depose the Duke of Albany, Regent for James V, it failed to diminish the ill-feeling between the two families.  Just four years later, in 1517, hostilities flared again with the wounding of John, Master of Montgomerie and the killing of his followers. Though Albany extracted an agreement from both factions to lay aside their quarrels, it served only to delay revenge, Cunninghame of Auchenharvie and of Waterston becoming the next victims.  

These tit-for-tat murders led to one of the most significant episodes in the vendetta, when in 1528 a large force of Cunninghames rode through Montgomerie territory, causing wholesale destruction: decimating crops, stealing and killing stock and burning the dwellings, leaving the tenantry penniless and homeless. The raids culminated in the burning of Eglinton castle itself, destroying all the contents, including tapestries, furniture, paintings, armaments and most important of all, family records going back as far as the Norman Conquest, as well as their Charter to the Montgomerie lands. This time the Montgomerie earl, perhaps tired of violence, or feeling his increasing age, accepted a cash settlement as compensation, and for a period of almost sixty years there are no records of atrocities, though whether as a result of external pressures or a genuine attempt at peace is hard to gauge.  

The external pressures were certainly significant - war with England, the Scottish defeat at Solway Moss and the subsequent death of James V; resulting in the accession of 6-day old Mary and a new cycle of government by regency. Then came the ‘Rough wooing’ as Henry VIII tried to force a betrothal between his son Edward and Mary; the English incursion into southern Scotland; and two battles: Ancrum Moor, where the Scots were victorious, and Pinkie Cleugh where the honours went to England, precipitating the smuggling of the young Queen Mary to safety in France. 

     

But it seems that old enmities are hard to stifle and when the country was once again secure, with James VI on the throne and hopeful of inheriting the English crown, the feud erupted once more, with the massacre at Annock in 1586. Most sources agree on the main facts: a small group of Montgomeries stopped at Langshaw on route to the court at Stirling; the Cunninghames, having been alerted to their presence, lying in wait at the Ford to ambush them. Though the numbers killed appear to have been small, the aftermath was brutal and wide-ranging. As Robertson put it: 

‘All the country ran to arms, either on one side or the other, so that for some time there was a scene of bloodshed and of murder in the West that had never been known before.’ 

One person’s fate seems particularly poignant: Lady Margaret of Langshaw, a Cunninghame by birth, but married to a Montgomerie, was held responsible for the ambush and forced to remain in hiding for many years - a heavy price to pay for a family name.

James VI, determined to outlaw blood feud, brought forward laws restricting the carrying of firearms, and commanded opposing lords to process hand in hand up the High Street in Edinburgh as a symbol of the new, peaceful order. It wasn’t quite the end of the Ayrshire Vendetta, however, for in 1606, while Parliament was in session, a battle between the followers of the families was waged on the streets of Perth, lasting for three hours. 

But in contrast to Shakespeare’s ‘Montagues’ and ‘Capulets’, 

the marriage of William, 9th Earl of Glencairn to Margaret Montgomerie, daughter of the 6th Earl of Eglinton, did finally seal the peace in 1661.

And in an interesting postscript the Lord Lyon recognized a new chief for Clan Cunninghame in 2013. 

His name? Sir John Christopher Foggo Montgomery Cunninghame.

Margaret Skea is the award-winning author of three books focusing on this long-running feud, which together comprise the Munro saga:  Turn of the Tide, (Historical Fiction Winner in the Harper Collins People’s Novelist competition and Beryl Bainbridge Best First Time author Award), A House Divided (Long-listed for the Historical Novel Society New Novel Award) and By Sword and Storm. 

They tell the story of a fictional family trapped in the middle of the conflict, with all the challenges and difficulties it poses for their relationships and their safety; along with the pressure it places on conscience and integrity.

For details of these and Margaret’s other books visit www.margaretskea.com 

Ebooks can be found at https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Margaret-Skea/author/