Milo of Croton
Encyclopedia
Milo of Croton was a 6th century BC wrestler
from the Magna Graecia
n city of Croton
in southern Italy who enjoyed a brilliant wrestling career and won many victories in the most important athletic festivals of ancient Greece
. In addition to his athletic victories, Milo is credited by the ancient commentator Diodorus Siculus
with leading his fellow citizens to military triumph over neighboring Sybaris in 510 BC.
Milo was said to be an associate of Pythagoras
. One story tells of the wrestler saving the philosopher's life when a roof was about to collapse upon him and another that Milo may have married the philosopher's daughter Myia
. Like other successful athletes of ancient Greece, Milo was the subject of fantastic tales of strength and power, some, perhaps, based upon misinterpretations of his statues. Among other tales, he was said to have carried a bull on his shoulders and to have burst a band about his brow by simply inflating the veins of his temples.
The date of Milo's death is unknown, but he reportedly was attempting to rend a tree asunder when his hands became trapped in the cleft of its trunk and a pack of wolves surprised and devoured him. Milo has been depicted in works of art by Pierre Puget, Étienne-Maurice Falconet and others. In literature, he has been referenced by Rabelais in Gargantua and Pantagruel
and by Shakespeare in Troilus and Cressida
.
(probably in 540 BC), and thereafter five men's wrestling titles between 536 and 520 BC. He also won seven crowns at the Pythian Games
at Delphi
(one as a boy), ten at the Isthmian Games
, and nine at the Nemean Games
. Milo was a five time Periodonikēs, a "grand slam" sort of title bestowed on the winner of all four festivals in the same cycle. Milo's career at the highest level of competition must have spanned 24 years.
Milo was defeated (or tied) in his attempt at a seventh Olympic title in 516 BC by a young wrestler from Croton who practiced the technique of akrocheirismos—literally, 'highhandedness' or wrestling at arm's length—and by doing so, avoided Milo's crushing embrace. Simple fatigue took its toll on Milo.
Milo's hometown had a reputation for producing excellent athletes. In the Olympiad of 576 BC, for example, the first seven finishers in the stade – a 200 yards (182.9 m) sprint – were all men of Croton. After Milo's career, Croton apparently produced no other athletes of renown.
About 510 BC, hostilities arose between Croton and nearby Sybaris when Telys, a Sybarite tyrant, banished the 500 wealthiest citizens of Sybaris after seizing their property. When the displaced Sybarites sought refuge at Croton and Telys demanded their return, an opportunity for the Crotoniates to destroy a powerful neighbor presented itself. In an account that appeared five hundred years after the event, Diodorus Siculus
wrote that the philosopher Pythagoras
, who spent much of his life at Croton, urged the Croton assembly to protect the banished citizens of Sybaris. When the decision to do so was made, the dispute between the two cities was aggravated, each took up arms, and Milo led the charge against Sybaris.
According to Diodorus:
Diodorus indicates Milo led the charge against the Sybarites wearing his Olympic crowns, draped in a lionskin and brandishing a club in a manner similar to the mythic hero Heracles
(see adjacent image).
, who lived at or near Croton for many years. Commentators may have confused the philosopher with an athletic trainer, Pythagoras of Samos, but it is also possible the trainer and the philosopher were the same person.
It was said Milo saved Pythagoras's life when a pillar collapsed in a banquet hall and he supported the roof until Pythagoras could reach safety. He may have married Myia
, a Pythagorean herself or possibly Pythagoras' daughter. Diogenes Laertius
says Pythagoras died in a fire in Milo's house, but Dicaearchus
says Pythagoras died in the temple of the Muses at Metapontum
of self-imposed starvation. Porphyry
says Milo's house at Croton was burned and the Pythagoreans within stoned.
Herodotus
, who lived one hundred years after Milo's death, says the wrestler accepted a large sum of money from the distinguished physician Democedes
for the privilege of marrying Milo's daughter. If Herodotus is indeed correct then Milo was probably not a member of Croton's nobility for such an arrangement with a wage-earning physician would have been beneath the dignity of a Greek noble. Democedes was a native of Croton and enjoyed a successful career as a physician at Croton, Aegina, Athens, and Samos. He was captured by Darius in the defeat of the Samian tyrant Polycrates
and taken to the Persian capital of Susa
as a slave. There, he carefully tended both the king and queen and was eventually permitted to revisit Croton but under guard. He escaped his Persian guards and made his way to Croton where he married Milo's daughter. The physician sent a message regarding his marriage to Darius who was an admirer of the wrestler and can only have learned of him through Democedes during his slavery at Susa.
protagonists of Greek drama, the Greek athlete had a "larger than life" quality. At Olympia, for example, they were set apart from the general population for lengthy training periods and the observation of a complex series of prohibitions that included abstinence from intercourse. Once training was completed and the athletes were brought before their fellow citizens trim, fit, nude and shimmering with oil, they must have appeared semi-divine.
The reverential awe in which athletes were held in Greece led to exaggeration in the tales surrounding their lives. In Milo's case, Aristotle
began the myth-making process with reports likening Milo unto Heracles in his enormous appetite, and Athenaeus
continued the process with the story of Milo carrying a bull—a feat also associated with Heracles. It is Milo's sudden death which makes him most akin to the heroes: there is a hint of hubris
in his attempt to rend the tree asunder, and striking contrast between his glorious athletic achievements and his sudden ignoble death.
and Solinus both attribute Milo's invincibility in competition to the wrestler's consumption of alectoriae, the gizzard stones of roosters. Legends say he carried his own bronze statue to its place at Olympia, and once carried a four-year-old bull on his shoulders before slaughtering, roasting, and devouring it in one day. He was said to have achieved the feat of lifting the bull by starting in childhood, lifting and carrying a newborn calf and repeating the feat daily as it grew to maturity.
One report says the wrestler was able to hold a pomegranate without damaging it while challengers tried to pry his fingers from it, and another report says he could burst a band fastened around his brow by inhaling air and causing the temple veins to swell. He was said to maintain his footing on an oiled discus while others tried to push him from it. These feats have been attributed to misinterpretations of statues depicting Milo with his head bound in victor's ribbons, his hand holding the apple of victory, and his feet positioned on a round disc that would have been fitted into a pedestal or base.
While one report says Milo held his arm outstretched and challengers were unable to bend his fingers, another anecdote recorded by Claudius Aelianus
disputes Milo's reputation for enormous strength. Apparently, Milo challenged a peasant named Titormus
to a trial of strength. Titormus proclaimed he had little strength, but lifted a boulder to his shoulders, carried it several meters and dropped it. Milo was unable to lift it.
and Pausanias
, Milo was walking in a forest when he came upon a tree-trunk split with wedges. In what was probably intended as a display of strength, Milo inserted his hands into the cleft to rend the tree. The wedges fell from the cleft, and the tree closed upon his hands, trapping him. Unable to free himself, the wrestler was devoured by wolves. A modern historian has suggested it is more likely that Milo was traveling alone when attacked by wolves. Unable to escape, he was devoured and his remains found at the foot of a tree.
Milo's legendary strength and death have become the subjects of modern art and literature. His death was a popular subject in 18th century art. In many images of this period his killer is portrayed a lion rather than wolves. In Pierre Puget's Milo of Croton (1682), the work's themes are the loss of strength with age, and the ephemerality of glory as symbolized by an Olympic trophy lying in the dust.
Étienne-Maurice Falconet's marble Milo of Croton (1754) secured his admission to the Académie des beaux-arts
, but was later criticized for lack of nobility. The work clashed with the classical ideal requiring a dying hero to express stoic restraint.
Milo was the subject of a bronze by Alessandro Vittoria
circa 1590, and another bronze now standing in Holland Park
, London
by an unknown nineteenth century artist. His death is the subject of an eighteenth-century oil on canvas by Joseph-Benoît Suvée
and a work by the eighteenth century Irish painter James Barry
.
In literature, François Rabelais
compares Gargantua's strength to that of Milo's in Gargantua and Pantagruel
, and Shakespeare refers to "bull-bearing Milo" in Act 2 of Troilus and Cressida
. In Emily Brontë
's Wuthering Heights
, character Catherine Earnshaw
refers to the circumstances of Milo's demise when she says, "Who is to separate us, pray? They'll meet the fate of Milo!" In Johann Wyss' novel Swiss Family Robinson, the youngest son Franz is entrusted with a bull buffalo to raise, and from which gains comparison to Milo.
Greek wrestling
Greek wrestling, also known as Ancient Greek wrestling and Pále , was the most popular organized sport in Ancient Greece. A point was scored when one player touched the ground with his back,hip,shoulder,or tapped out due to a submission-hold or was forced out of the wrestling-area...
from the Magna Graecia
Magna Graecia
Magna Græcia is the name of the coastal areas of Southern Italy on the Tarentine Gulf that were extensively colonized by Greek settlers; particularly the Achaean colonies of Tarentum, Crotone, and Sybaris, but also, more loosely, the cities of Cumae and Neapolis to the north...
n city of Croton
Crotone
Crotone is a city and comune in Calabria, southern Italy, on the Ionian Sea. Founded circa 710 BC as the Achaean colony of Croton , it was known as Cotrone from the Middle Ages until 1928, when its name was changed to the current one. In 1994 it became the capital of the newly established...
in southern Italy who enjoyed a brilliant wrestling career and won many victories in the most important athletic festivals of ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
. In addition to his athletic victories, Milo is credited by the ancient commentator Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who flourished between 60 and 30 BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily . With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about Diodorus' life and doings beyond what is to be found in his own work, Bibliotheca...
with leading his fellow citizens to military triumph over neighboring Sybaris in 510 BC.
Milo was said to be an associate of Pythagoras
Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, so very little reliable information is known about him...
. One story tells of the wrestler saving the philosopher's life when a roof was about to collapse upon him and another that Milo may have married the philosopher's daughter Myia
Myia
Myia was a Pythagorean philosopher and, according to later tradition, one of the daughters of Theano and Pythagoras. She was married to Milo of Croton, the famous athlete. She was a choir leader as a girl, and as a woman, she was noted for her exemplary religious behaviour...
. Like other successful athletes of ancient Greece, Milo was the subject of fantastic tales of strength and power, some, perhaps, based upon misinterpretations of his statues. Among other tales, he was said to have carried a bull on his shoulders and to have burst a band about his brow by simply inflating the veins of his temples.
The date of Milo's death is unknown, but he reportedly was attempting to rend a tree asunder when his hands became trapped in the cleft of its trunk and a pack of wolves surprised and devoured him. Milo has been depicted in works of art by Pierre Puget, Étienne-Maurice Falconet and others. In literature, he has been referenced by Rabelais in Gargantua and Pantagruel
Gargantua and Pantagruel
The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel is a connected series of five novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais. It is the story of two giants, a father and his son and their adventures, written in an amusing, extravagant, satirical vein...
and by Shakespeare in Troilus and Cressida
Troilus and Cressida
Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1602. It was also described by Frederick S. Boas as one of Shakespeare's problem plays. The play ends on a very bleak note with the death of the noble Trojan Hector and destruction of the love between Troilus...
.
Athletic career
Milo was a six time Olympic victor. He won the boys' wrestlingGreek wrestling
Greek wrestling, also known as Ancient Greek wrestling and Pále , was the most popular organized sport in Ancient Greece. A point was scored when one player touched the ground with his back,hip,shoulder,or tapped out due to a submission-hold or was forced out of the wrestling-area...
(probably in 540 BC), and thereafter five men's wrestling titles between 536 and 520 BC. He also won seven crowns at the Pythian Games
Pythian Games
The Pythian Games were one of the four Panhellenic Games of Ancient Greece, a forerunner of the modern Olympic Games, held every four years at the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi....
at Delphi
Delphi
Delphi is both an archaeological site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis.In Greek mythology, Delphi was the site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, and a major site for the worship of the god...
(one as a boy), ten at the Isthmian Games
Isthmian Games
The Isthmian Games or Isthmia were one of the Panhellenic Games of Ancient Greece, and were named after the isthmus of Corinth, where they were held...
, and nine at the Nemean Games
Nemean Games
The Nemean Games were one of the four Panhellenic Games of Ancient Greece, and were held at Nemea every two years ....
. Milo was a five time Periodonikēs, a "grand slam" sort of title bestowed on the winner of all four festivals in the same cycle. Milo's career at the highest level of competition must have spanned 24 years.
Milo was defeated (or tied) in his attempt at a seventh Olympic title in 516 BC by a young wrestler from Croton who practiced the technique of akrocheirismos—literally, 'highhandedness' or wrestling at arm's length—and by doing so, avoided Milo's crushing embrace. Simple fatigue took its toll on Milo.
Milo's hometown had a reputation for producing excellent athletes. In the Olympiad of 576 BC, for example, the first seven finishers in the stade – a 200 yards (182.9 m) sprint – were all men of Croton. After Milo's career, Croton apparently produced no other athletes of renown.
Military experience
Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who flourished between 60 and 30 BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily . With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about Diodorus' life and doings beyond what is to be found in his own work, Bibliotheca...
wrote that the philosopher Pythagoras
Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, so very little reliable information is known about him...
, who spent much of his life at Croton, urged the Croton assembly to protect the banished citizens of Sybaris. When the decision to do so was made, the dispute between the two cities was aggravated, each took up arms, and Milo led the charge against Sybaris.
According to Diodorus:
"One hundred thousand men of Croton were stationed with three hundred thousand Sybarite troops ranged against them. Milo the athlete led them and through his tremendous physical strength first turned the troops lined up against him."
Diodorus indicates Milo led the charge against the Sybarites wearing his Olympic crowns, draped in a lionskin and brandishing a club in a manner similar to the mythic hero Heracles
Heracles
Heracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...
(see adjacent image).
Personal life
Ancient commentators mention an association between Milo and the philosopher PythagorasPythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, so very little reliable information is known about him...
, who lived at or near Croton for many years. Commentators may have confused the philosopher with an athletic trainer, Pythagoras of Samos, but it is also possible the trainer and the philosopher were the same person.
It was said Milo saved Pythagoras's life when a pillar collapsed in a banquet hall and he supported the roof until Pythagoras could reach safety. He may have married Myia
Myia
Myia was a Pythagorean philosopher and, according to later tradition, one of the daughters of Theano and Pythagoras. She was married to Milo of Croton, the famous athlete. She was a choir leader as a girl, and as a woman, she was noted for her exemplary religious behaviour...
, a Pythagorean herself or possibly Pythagoras' daughter. Diogenes Laertius
Diogenes Laertius
Diogenes Laertius was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of the principal surviving sources for the history of Greek philosophy.-Life:Nothing is definitively known about his life...
says Pythagoras died in a fire in Milo's house, but Dicaearchus
Dicaearchus
Dicaearchus of Messana was a Greek philosopher, cartographer, geographer, mathematician and author. Dicaearchus was Aristotle's student in the Lyceum. Very little of his work remains extant. He wrote on the history and geography of Greece, of which his most important work was his Life of Greece...
says Pythagoras died in the temple of the Muses at Metapontum
Metapontum
Metapontum, Metapontium or Metapontion , was an important city of Magna Graecia, situated on the gulf of Tarentum, between the river Bradanus and the Casuentus . It was distant about 20 km from Heraclea and 40 from Tarentum...
of self-imposed starvation. Porphyry
Porphyry (philosopher)
Porphyry of Tyre , Porphyrios, AD 234–c. 305) was a Neoplatonic philosopher who was born in Tyre. He edited and published the Enneads, the only collection of the work of his teacher Plotinus. He also wrote many works himself on a wide variety of topics...
says Milo's house at Croton was burned and the Pythagoreans within stoned.
Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
, who lived one hundred years after Milo's death, says the wrestler accepted a large sum of money from the distinguished physician Democedes
Democedes
Democedes of Croton, described in The Histories of Herodotus as "the most skillful physician of his time".-Democedes's Background:Democedes was a Greek physician and a part of the court of Darius I. He was born in Croton, in southern Italy. His father was Calliphon, a priest as part of Asclepius....
for the privilege of marrying Milo's daughter. If Herodotus is indeed correct then Milo was probably not a member of Croton's nobility for such an arrangement with a wage-earning physician would have been beneath the dignity of a Greek noble. Democedes was a native of Croton and enjoyed a successful career as a physician at Croton, Aegina, Athens, and Samos. He was captured by Darius in the defeat of the Samian tyrant Polycrates
Polycrates
Polycrates , son of Aeaces, was the tyrant of Samos from c. 538 BC to 522 BC.He took power during a festival of Hera with his brothers Pantagnotus and Syloson, but soon had Pantagnotus killed and exiled Syloson to take full control for himself. He then allied with Amasis II, pharaoh of Egypt, as...
and taken to the Persian capital of Susa
Susa
Susa was an ancient city of the Elamite, Persian and Parthian empires of Iran. It is located in the lower Zagros Mountains about east of the Tigris River, between the Karkheh and Dez Rivers....
as a slave. There, he carefully tended both the king and queen and was eventually permitted to revisit Croton but under guard. He escaped his Persian guards and made his way to Croton where he married Milo's daughter. The physician sent a message regarding his marriage to Darius who was an admirer of the wrestler and can only have learned of him through Democedes during his slavery at Susa.
Place of champions in Greek culture
Like the tragicTragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
protagonists of Greek drama, the Greek athlete had a "larger than life" quality. At Olympia, for example, they were set apart from the general population for lengthy training periods and the observation of a complex series of prohibitions that included abstinence from intercourse. Once training was completed and the athletes were brought before their fellow citizens trim, fit, nude and shimmering with oil, they must have appeared semi-divine.
The reverential awe in which athletes were held in Greece led to exaggeration in the tales surrounding their lives. In Milo's case, Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
began the myth-making process with reports likening Milo unto Heracles in his enormous appetite, and Athenaeus
Athenaeus
Athenaeus , of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD...
continued the process with the story of Milo carrying a bull—a feat also associated with Heracles. It is Milo's sudden death which makes him most akin to the heroes: there is a hint of hubris
Hubris
Hubris , also hybris, means extreme haughtiness, pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power....
in his attempt to rend the tree asunder, and striking contrast between his glorious athletic achievements and his sudden ignoble death.
Feats of strength
Anecdotes about Milo's almost superhuman strength and lifestyle abound. His daily diet allegedly consisted of 20 lb of meat, 20 lb of bread, and eighteen pints of wine. Pliny the ElderPliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
and Solinus both attribute Milo's invincibility in competition to the wrestler's consumption of alectoriae, the gizzard stones of roosters. Legends say he carried his own bronze statue to its place at Olympia, and once carried a four-year-old bull on his shoulders before slaughtering, roasting, and devouring it in one day. He was said to have achieved the feat of lifting the bull by starting in childhood, lifting and carrying a newborn calf and repeating the feat daily as it grew to maturity.
One report says the wrestler was able to hold a pomegranate without damaging it while challengers tried to pry his fingers from it, and another report says he could burst a band fastened around his brow by inhaling air and causing the temple veins to swell. He was said to maintain his footing on an oiled discus while others tried to push him from it. These feats have been attributed to misinterpretations of statues depicting Milo with his head bound in victor's ribbons, his hand holding the apple of victory, and his feet positioned on a round disc that would have been fitted into a pedestal or base.
While one report says Milo held his arm outstretched and challengers were unable to bend his fingers, another anecdote recorded by Claudius Aelianus
Claudius Aelianus
Claudius Aelianus , often seen as just Aelian, born at Praeneste, was a Roman author and teacher of rhetoric who flourished under Septimius Severus and probably outlived Elagabalus, who died in 222...
disputes Milo's reputation for enormous strength. Apparently, Milo challenged a peasant named Titormus
Titormus
Titormus was a legendary shepherd of Aetolia, famous in Antiquity for his victory over Milo of Croton, who was in turn the most successful wrestler of Ancient Olympics...
to a trial of strength. Titormus proclaimed he had little strength, but lifted a boulder to his shoulders, carried it several meters and dropped it. Milo was unable to lift it.
Death
The ancient Greeks typically attributed remarkable deaths to famous persons in keeping with their characters. The date of Milo's death is unknown, but according to StraboStrabo
Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...
and Pausanias
Pausanias (geographer)
Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece , a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsthand observations, and is a crucial link between classical...
, Milo was walking in a forest when he came upon a tree-trunk split with wedges. In what was probably intended as a display of strength, Milo inserted his hands into the cleft to rend the tree. The wedges fell from the cleft, and the tree closed upon his hands, trapping him. Unable to free himself, the wrestler was devoured by wolves. A modern historian has suggested it is more likely that Milo was traveling alone when attacked by wolves. Unable to escape, he was devoured and his remains found at the foot of a tree.
Modern art and literature
Étienne-Maurice Falconet's marble Milo of Croton (1754) secured his admission to the Académie des beaux-arts
Académie des beaux-arts
The Académie des Beaux-Arts is a French learned society. It is one of the five academies of the Institut de France.It was created in 1795 as the merger of the:* Académie de peinture et de sculpture...
, but was later criticized for lack of nobility. The work clashed with the classical ideal requiring a dying hero to express stoic restraint.
Milo was the subject of a bronze by Alessandro Vittoria
Alessandro Vittoria
Alessandro Vittoria was an Italian Mannerist sculptor of the Venetian school, "one of the main representatives of the Venetian classical style" and rivalling Giambologna as the foremost sculptors of the late 16th century in Italy....
circa 1590, and another bronze now standing in Holland Park
Holland Park
Holland Park is a district and a public park in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in west central London, England.Holland Park has a reputation as an affluent and fashionable area, known for attractive large Victorian townhouses, and high-class shopping and restaurants...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
by an unknown nineteenth century artist. His death is the subject of an eighteenth-century oil on canvas by Joseph-Benoît Suvée
Joseph-Benoît Suvée
Joseph-Benoît Suvée was a Flemish painter strongly influenced by French neo-classicism.He was born in Bruges. Initially a pupil of Matthias de Visch, he came to France aged 19 and became a pupil of Jean-Jacques Bachelier. In 1771, he won the Prix de Rome...
and a work by the eighteenth century Irish painter James Barry
James Barry (painter)
James Barry , Irish painter, best remembered for his six part series of paintings entitled The Progress of Human Culture in the Great Room of the Royal Society of Arts...
.
In literature, François Rabelais
François Rabelais
François Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...
compares Gargantua's strength to that of Milo's in Gargantua and Pantagruel
Gargantua and Pantagruel
The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel is a connected series of five novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais. It is the story of two giants, a father and his son and their adventures, written in an amusing, extravagant, satirical vein...
, and Shakespeare refers to "bull-bearing Milo" in Act 2 of Troilus and Cressida
Troilus and Cressida
Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1602. It was also described by Frederick S. Boas as one of Shakespeare's problem plays. The play ends on a very bleak note with the death of the noble Trojan Hector and destruction of the love between Troilus...
. In Emily Brontë
Emily Brontë
Emily Jane Brontë 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother...
's Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Brontë published in 1847. It was her only novel and written between December 1845 and July 1846. It remained unpublished until July 1847 and was not printed until December after the success of her sister Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre...
, character Catherine Earnshaw
Catherine Earnshaw
Catherine Earnshaw, known as Catherine Linton after her marriage, is the main female protagonist of Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights....
refers to the circumstances of Milo's demise when she says, "Who is to separate us, pray? They'll meet the fate of Milo!" In Johann Wyss' novel Swiss Family Robinson, the youngest son Franz is entrusted with a bull buffalo to raise, and from which gains comparison to Milo.
External links
- Web Gallery of Art Depictions of Milo of Croton by Vittoria, Puget, Falconet, and Suvée