Milo of Croton
Milo or Milon of Croton (Template:Fl.) was a famous ancient Greek athlete from Croton, which is today in the Magna Graecia region of southern Italy.
Milo was a six-time winner at the Olympics, once for boys' wrestling in 540 BC at the 60th Olympics and later five times for wrestling at the 62nd to 66th Olympics. He continued competing long after what would have been considered a normal Olympic athlete's prime, and would have been over 40 years of age by the 67th Olympiad. He also attended many of the Pythian Games. His historicity is attested by many classical authors, among them Aristotle, Pausanias, Cicero, Herodotus, Vitruvius, Epictetus, and the author of the Suda, but there are many legendary stories surrounding him.
Diodorus Siculus wrote in his history that Milo was a follower of Pythagoras who commanded the Crotonian army which defeated the Sybarites in 511 BC, while wearing his Olympic wreaths and dressed like Heracles in a lion's skin and carrying a club:
Milo's death, said to have occurred by wolves or a lion whilst his fingers were trapped in a tree stump he was trying to help someone split, became a popular subject in art in late Italian Renaissance sculpture; it continued to around 1900 and allowed the sculptor to show his skill in a dramatic anatomical pose, being a more compact equivalent of the Roman Laocoön and His Sons.
Feats of strengthEdit
Ancient sources and legends report that Milo took great pleasure in showing off his strength. He had a number of feats he would perform, such as holding out his arm with his fingers outstretched and challenging people to attempt to bend his little finger, standing on a greased iron disk and challenging people to push him off it, and holding a pomegranate in one hand and challenging others to take it from him; nobody ever succeeded, and the fruit was never damaged despite him holding it very tightly.
In what would become his most famous feat of strength, Milo trained in the off-years by carrying a newborn calf on his back every day until the Olympics took place, by which time he would be carrying a four-year-old cow on his back; he then carried the adult cow the length of the stadium before killing, roasting, and eating it.
DeathEdit
Legend has it that Milo's penchant for showing off his strength was his eventual undoing. In 511 BC, he traveled the countryside and met a villager who was struggling to split a tree stump with a hammer and wedges. Milo excitedly asked the man if he could attempt to split the wood with his bare hands; the villager, honored by his offer, went off to get food while Milo worked. Milo immediately tried to pull the stump apart by inserting his fingers in the crack where the villager had driven the wedges, but as he pulled the stump open, the wedges fell out and trapped his fingers. Without the wedges to hold the crack open, Milo could not free his fingers from the stump, and instead opted to wait for the villager to return. The legend says that Milo, unable to defend himself, was then killed by wolves or a lion before the villager returned.<ref>Diodorus. The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian, 1814 (Original from the New York Public Library).</ref>
StatueEdit
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BibliographyEdit
ReferencesEdit
External linksEdit
- Web Gallery of Art Depictions of Milo of Croton by Vittoria, Puget, Falconet, and Suvée
Template:Ancient Olympic winners Template:Ancient Greece topics