Among the most celebrated, or, at least, among those that transmit to posterity traditions of the most extraordinary feats, is that of Milo of Croton, the work of Damoas, a countryman of the great athlete. One proof that Milo did not bear away the palm without deserving it, is that he himself carried the statue which commemorated his distinction upon his shoulders, and set it up in its place. And it was not only once that he was crowned, for six times did he win the palm at the Olympic games, and on the first of these occasions he was still very young. He was equally successful in the Pythian encounters. The people of Croton, where he was born (a town on the eastern coast of Calabria), were celebrated for their physical prowess. Milo did not belie the renown of his townsmen, and loved to give proofs of his prodigious strength. It was he who was said to have ran a mile with a four-year old ox upon his shoulders, afterwards killed the animal with a blow of his fist, and ate the carcase every inch in one day. It was he also who placed himself upright upon a quoit, which had been oiled to render it more slippery, and there stood so firmly that no shock could move him. No human power could open his fingers, when, leaning his elbow upon his side, he held out his hand closed except the thumb, which was left free. Sometimes in the same hand he would hold a pomegranate, and without crushing it grasp it with sufficient strength to baffie all attempts to force it from him. A woman whom he loved alone could make him slacken his grasp, and for this reason Ælian remarked that Milo's strength was only material, and did not render him proof against human weaknesses. But, did not Hercules himself, Milo's hero and model, lie at Omphale's feet and spin yarn with that lady's distaff? Not only did Milo take Hercules for his

great example, but he imitated his personal appearance, for on one occasion he marched against an army of Sybarites at the head of his countrymen, clothed in a lion's hide, and brandishing a club.

So great was his strength that he would sometimes bind a cord round his head, and, retaining his breath, break it by the swelling and pressure of the veins. On one occasion, when he happened to be in a house with a number of the disciples of Pythagoras, the ceiling threatened to fall in; but the athlete held up the column on which the roof rested, and saved the lives of the philosophers. It is not astonishing, then, that such a vigorous athlete did not find in the public games many antagonists desirous of measuring themselves with him, and that on one occasion he was declared the victor without a combat. But, at the moment when he was about to seize the crown, which the president of the games presented to him, his foot slipped and he fell. Some spectators noting this cried out that it was not right to crown him who had not had an adversary, and especially after a fall. "I have stumbled, it is true," answered Milo, "but to lose the prize I should have been knocked down."

Nevertheless, according to Ælian, Milo found a conqueror in the person of a mountaineer named Titormus, whom he encountered on the banks of the Evenus (modern Fidari), a river of Ætolia. This was, without doubt, at the time when his strength was beginning to fail, but that it was so he would not allow himself to believe, and his obstinacy proved fatal to him. Having found an oak upon the road, in the bark of which some one had sunk a number of coins, Milo attempted to enlarge the opening; but the strength of his youth had declined, and he failed.

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The segments closing, fastened his hands in the rift, and held the athlete prisoner; in this position he was assailed, and rent to pieces by wild beasts. At an ordinary meal Milo of Croton is said to have consumed twenty pounds of meat, as much bread, and fifteen pints of wine.

The feats of Polydamas of Thessalia, an athlete of prodigious strength and of colossal height, were not less extraordinary, and some incredible stories are told of him. It is said that, alone and without arms, he, like another Hercules, killed an enormous and enraged lion. When he held a chariot back with his one hand, the most powerful horses could not pull it from his grasp. One day he seized a bull by one of its hind feet, and the animal was able to escape only by leaving the hoof in the hands of the athlete. The King of Persia, Darius I., having heard the strange reports of his surprising strength, wished to see him, and opposed to him three of his guards, from the troop called the Immortals, who were considered the most skilled and the strongest of his army. Polydamas encountered the three, and killed them all. Like Milo, he perished through his own confidence in his muscular powers. While in a cavern with a number of companions, seeking shelter from the heat, all at once the arch opened up on several sides. The friends of Polydamas sought safety in flight; but he, without any fear, attempted with his hands to bear up the great mass of earth that fell in upon him, and was buried under it.

These athletes were so accustomed to victory that they were not in the habit of even counting their well-won wreaths. Such, for instance, was Chilo, of Patræ, in Achaia, in whose honour his countrymen raised a tomb, whose statue was carved by the celebrated Lysippus, and who flourished at Olympia in the time of Pausanias. Such

especially was Theagenes of Thasos (an island in the Ægean sea off the coast of Thrace), whose prize wreaths amounted in number-not to 10,000, as an oracle announced after his death-but to 1,200 or 1,400, according to Pausanias and Plutarch. A singular story is told of this athlete. After his death one of his rivals went every night -no doubt to gratify his hatred and show his contempt― and lashed the statue, which, accidentally falling, crushed the poor wretch to death under its mass. His son preferred a charge against the effigy, and the trial resulted in its being condemned by the Thasians to be thrown into the sea. But scarcely had this judgment been carried out than the inhabitants of Thasos were visited by a dreadful famine, and the Delphic oracle, on being consulted, gave, as usual, an answer with a double meaning, "The recall of the exiles will alone end your misfortunes." Acting on the letter and not the spirit of the suggestion, they experienced no alleviation of their distress, and the oracle, when again consulted, reminded them that they had not recalled Theagenes. But how was this to be done? Fortunately, some fishermen were able to get the statue into their nets, and brought it to land. It was conveyed with great pomp and ceremony to the spot where it formerly stood, divine honours were paid to it; and eventually Greeks and barbarians came to adore this image, which was reputed to have miraculous power, and employed it for cures for certain diseases.

The Roman emperor Caius Julius Verus Maximinus, by blood a Goth, and at one time a herdsman, deserves notice in any record of the great athletes of antiquity. During the games superintended by Septimius Severus, he entered the lists against the most formidable of his day, and knocked down six men without drawing breath. Maxi

min, who was upwards of eight feet in height, and who received the names of Hercules, and Milo of Croton, could squeeze to powder the hardest stone with his fingers, split up young trees with his hands, break the jaw or the leg of a horse with a kick. Such was his development that his wife's bracelet served him for a ring. He adopted a vegetable dietary, but, according to one authority, would sometimes, to recompense himself for his abstinence, eat forty and even sixty pounds of meat, and drink an amphora of wine in one day. The emperor Commodus had before this assumed by decree the name of Hercules, son of Jupiter, instead of that of son of Marcus Aurelius, and appeared in public covered with a lion's hide and bearing a I club in his hand. He afterwards took it into his head to abandon his chosen name, and adopt that of a famous gladiator who had just died. His pleasure then was to descend into the arena, and, laying aside the purple, which he dishonoured by his profligacy and extravagance, to fight naked before the people. His exploits in the ring are, however, not credible; and though the pedestal of his statue bore the inscription, "Commodus, conqueror of a thousand gladiators," it is to be feared that they were willing victims. Still, if the strength of the emperor was not always as great as it was made to appear, his agility, on the other hand, was incontestable, as we shall have occasion to show further on.