AKA Milon
Ancient Greek wrestler from Croton (also Crotona, Kronton, or Kroton).
Milo’s birth date and year are not known – he first comes to light at the 60th Olympiad, in 540 BCE, where he won the boy’s wrestling championship. Eight years later, he came back, and from the 62nd Olympiad to the 66th he was the champion wrestler. Beside the Olympiad, he also participated in and won six Pythian games. He won a total of 32 wrestling championships.
Milo is best known for his immense strength and endurance, of which there are many tales. I cannot say how many are true and unexaggerated.
Tales of Strength and Dexterity:
- As a youth, Milo is said to have carried a newborn ox on his shoulders. Milo continued this exercise as both he and the ox grew, until he was finally carrying a full-grown ox. Milo is said to have carried an ox on his shoulders through the stadium at Olympia.
- Milo would clasp a pomegranate in his hand and challenge others try to take it away from him. Although he was holding it so tightly that no one could remove it, he never damaged the fruit.
- He would stand on a greased iron disk and challenge others to push him off. They couldn’t.
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He would tie a cord around his forehead, and break the cord using only his bulging forehead muscles.
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He would stand with his right arm at his side, his elbow against his side, and hold out his hand with thumb pointed upwards and fingers spread. No challenger could bend even his little finger.
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Milo was a follower of Pythagoras, and one day the roof of the hall where the Pythagoreans were meeting started to collapse. Milo supported the central pillar until the others had escaped, and then ran out himself, letting the building collapse behind him.
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Milo also spent a brief time as a warrior; when a neighboring town attacked Croton, he led the battle dressed like Hercules, and wearing his Olympic crowns. His team won, of course.
He was defeated for the first time at the 67th Olympic games (512 BCE), when he was over forty. The story is that Milo’s challenger didn’t even try to overpower him, but danced around, avoiding the older wrestler until Milo’s stamina gave out.
In the end, his strength was his downfall. Milo was (so the story goes,) walking in the forest one day when he came upon a tree of which the trunk had been split, but not felled, by a woodsman. Milo decided to try his strength by forcing the halves of the tree apart; he managed to force them apart just enough to get his hand (or perhaps both hands) trapped between the halves. When night fell, wild beasts devoured him.
It is no great thing to possess strength, whatever kind it is, but to use it as one should. For of what advantage to Milo of Kroton was his enormous strength of body?
--Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library