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[1] Pherias of Aegina, whose statue stands by the side of Aristophon the Athenian, at the seventy-eighth Festival was considered very young, and, being judged to be as yet unfit to wrestle, was debarred from the contest. Out at the next Festival, he was admitted to the boys’ wrestling match and won it. What happened to this Pherias was different, in fact the exact opposite of what happened at Olympia to Nicasylus of Rhodes.
[2] Being eighteen years of age, he was not allowed by the Eleians to compete in the boys’ wrestling match, but won the men’s match and was proclaimed victor. He was afterwards proclaimed victor at Nemeā also and at the Isthmus. But when he was twenty years old, he met his death before he returned home to Rhodes. The feat of the Rhodian wrestler at Olympia was in my opinion surpassed by Artemidoros of Tralles. He failed in the boys’ pankration at Olympia, the reason of his failure being his extreme youth.
[3] When, however, the time arrived for the contest held by the Ionians of Smyrna, his strength had so increased that he beat in the pankration on the same day those who had competed with him at Olympia, after the boys the beardless youths as they are called, and thirdly the pick of the men. His match with the beardless youths was the outcome, they say, of a trainer’s encouragement; he fought the men because of the insult of a man who was a competitor at the pankration. Artemidoros won an Olympic victory among the men at the two hundred and twelfth Festival.
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[4] Next to the statue of Nicasylus is a small bronze horse, which Crocon of Eretria dedicated when he won a garland with a race-horse. Near the horse is Telestas of Messene, who won the boys’ boxing match. The artist who represented Telestas was Silanion.
[5] The statue of Milo, the son of Diotīmos, was made by Dameas, also a native of Kroton. Milo won six victories for wrestling at Olympia, one of them among the boys; at Pythō, he won six among the men and one among the boys. He came to Olympia to wrestle for the seventh time, but did not succeed in mastering Timasitheus, a fellow citizen who was also a young man, and who refused, moreover, to come to close quarters with him.
[6] It is further stated that Milo carried his own statue into the Altis. His feats with the pomegranate and the discus are also remembered by tradition. He would grasp a pomegranate so firmly that nobody could wrest it from him by force, and yet he did not damage it by pressure. He would stand upon a greased discus, and make fools of those who charged him and tried to push him from the discus. He used to perform also the following exhibition feats.
[7] He would tie a cord around his forehead as though it were a ribbon or a garland. Holding his breath and filling with blood the veins on his head, he would break the cord by the strength of these veins. It is said that he would let down by his side his right arm from the shoulder to the elbow, and stretch out straight the arm below the elbow, turning the thumb upwards, while the other fingers lay in a row. In this position, then, the little finger was lowest, but nobody could bend it back by pressure.
[8] They say that he was killed by wild beasts. The story has it that he came across in the land of Kroton a tree-trunk that was drying up; wedges were inserted to keep the trunk apart. Milo in his pride thrust his hands into the trunk, the wedges slipped, and Milo was held fast by the trunk until the wolves—beasts that roves in vast packs in the land of Kroton—made him their prey.
[9] Such was the fate that overtook Milo. Pyrrhos, the son of Aiakidēs, who was king on the Thesprotian mainland and performed many remarkable deeds, as I have related in my account of the Athenians,
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had his statue dedicated by Thrasyboulos of Elis. Beside Pyrrhos is a little man holding an
aulos [‘double-reed’], carved in relief upon a slab. This man won Pythian victories next after Sacadas of Argos.
[10] For Sacadas won in the Games introduced by the Amphiktyones before a garland was awarded for success, and after this victory two others for which garlands were given, but at the next six Pythian Festivals Pythokritos of Sikyon was victor, being the only
aulos player so to distinguish himself. It is also clear that at the Olympic Festival, he fluted six times for the pentathlon. For these reasons, the slab at Olympia was erected in honor of Pythokritos, with the inscription on it:
“This is the monument of the
aulos player Pythokritos, the son of Kallinikos.”
[11] The Aetolian League dedicated a statue of Kylon, who delivered the Eleians from the tyranny of Aristotīmos. The statue of Gorgos, the son of Eukletos, a Messenian who won a victory in the pentathlon, was made by the Boeotian Theron; that of Damaretos, another Messenian, who won the boys’ boxing match, was made by the Athenian Silanion. Anauchidas, the son of Philys, an Eleian, won a garland in the boys’ wrestling match and afterwards in the match for men. Who made his statue is not known, but Ageladas of Argos made the statue of Anochus of Tarentum, the son of Adamatas, who won victories in the short and double foot race.
[12] A boy seated on a horse and a man standing by the horse the inscription declares to be Xenombrotos of Meropian Kos, who was proclaimed victor in the horse race, and Xenodikos, who was announced a winner in the boys’ boxing match. The statue of the latter is by Pantias, that of the former is by Philotīmos the Aeginetan. The two statues of Pythes, the son of Andromakhos, a native of Abdera, were made by Lysippos, and were dedicated by his soldiers. Pythes seems to have been a captain of mercenaries or some sort of distinguished soldier.
[13] There are statues of winners of the boys’ race, namely, Meneptolemos of Apollonia on the Ionian Gulf and Philo of Corcyra; also Hieronymos of Andros, who defeated in the pentathlon at Olympia Tisamenus of Elis, who afterwards served as soothsayer in the Greek army that fought against Mardonios and the Persians at Plataea. By the side of this Hieronymos is a statue of a boy wrestler, also of Andros, Prokles, the son of Lycastidas. The sculptor who made the statue of Lycastidas was named Stomios, while Somis made the statue of Prokles. Aeschines of Elis won two victories in the pentathlon, and his statues are also two in number.
Description of Greece. Pausanias. ed. W. H. S. Jones, ed. H. A. Ormerod, ed. Gregory Nagy. . .