Milon of Crotona

A life become legendary

Milon became legendary because of its extraordinary force. One tells of him astonishing things:

it held a grenade in its hand, and, by the only application of its fingers, without crushing nor to press this fruit, it held it so that anybody could not tear off it to him;
it put the foot on a lubricated oil metal disc, and consequently very slipping; however, some effort which one made, it was not possible to shake it, nor to make him release foot;
it girded the head with a cord, as a ribbon; then it retained its breathing: in this violent state, blood going to the face swelled the veins so much of them to him, that the cord broke;
it held the right-hand man behind the back, the opened hand, the raised inch, the joined fingers, and then no man had not been able to separate to him the little finger from with the others.

What one says of his voracity is almost incredible: twenty meat pounds, as much bread and fifteen pint of wine were hardly enough to satisfy it. One day, having traversed all the length of the stage, bearing on its shoulders a four year old bull, it struck it of a punch, and ate it entire in the course of the day.

It once on occasion to make a correct usage of its forces. One day that he listened to the lessons of Pythagore, the ceiling of the room where the audience was assembled threatening to crumble, he only supported it, gave him the listeners time to withdraw itself and was run away after them. The confidence which it had in its forces finishes by him being fatal.

The death of Milon

Having found in its way an ancient oak shot down and between opened by some wood corners that one had inserted there with force, he undertook to complete to split it with his hands; but under the effort which it made the corners were released, the two parts of the tree met, its hands were taken as in a vice: it could not withdraw them, and, incompetent to defend oneself, it was devoured by the wolves.

In a table carried out about 1535 by Pordenone ( Milon devoured by the lion , University off Chicago), the artist replaced the wolves by African deer. This artistic imagination is found, one century and half later, in the famous group of marble of Pierre Puget preserved at Louvre: Milon of Crotona (1682).

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