Description of Greece

​Pherias of Aegina—for he is dedicated beside Aristophon the Athenian—in the seventy-eighth Olympiad seemed to be extremely young, and being judged not yet fit to wrestle, he was excluded from the contest; but in the next Olympiad—for he was then admitted into the boys’ class—he won the wrestling. But Nicasylus of Rhodes had a fortune in Olympia that was different and in no way similar to this Pherias.

​For having reached his eighteenth year, he was prevented by the Eleans from wrestling in the boys’ class, but he was proclaimed in the men’s class, and indeed he won; and later he was also proclaimed victor at Nemea and the Isthmus. But when he was twenty years old, fate overtook him before he could return home to Rhodes. However, the bold attempt of this Rodian wrestler at Olympia was, in my opinion, surpassed by Artemidorus, a Trallian by birth. For it happened that Artemidorus missed an Olympic victory when competing in the boys’ pancratium, and the cause of his failure was his being too young;

​but when the time came for the contest which the Smyrnaeans of the Ionians hold, his strength had so greatly increased that on the same day he overcame in the pancratium his former opponents from Olympia, and those in the class of boys called “beardless,” and thirdly the very best of the men. They say that his contest against the beardless boys arose from the encouragement of a trainer, and that against the men from the insult of a male pancratiast. Artemidorus carried off an Olympic victory in the men’s class in the two hundred and twelfth Olympiad.

​Beside the statue of Nicasylus is a small bronze horse, which Crocon of Eretria dedicated after winning a crown with a race-horse; and near the horse is Telestas of Messene, who won in the boys’ boxing; Telestas is the work of Silanion.

​Milon, the son of Diotimus, was made by Dameas, who was also from Croton. Milon had six victories in wrestling at Olympia, one of them being in the boys’ class, and at Pytho six in the men’s class and one there in the boys’. He also came to Olympia to wrestle a seventh time; but he was not able to overcome Timasitheus, who was his fellow-citizen and young in age, and who, moreover, refused to come to close quarters.

​It is also said that Milon himself carried his own statue into the Altis, and stories are told of him about the pomegranate and the quoit. He would hold a pomegranate so that no one could force it from him, yet he did not crush it by his pressure; and standing on an oiled quoit, he made a mockery of those who rushed at him and tried to push him off the quoit. He also exhibited other feats of this kind.

​He would bind a cord round his forehead just as if he were putting on a ribbon or a crown; then, holding his breath inside his lips and filling the veins in his head with blood, he would break the cord by the strength of his veins. It is also said that he would let the part of his right hand from the shoulder to the elbow hang down close to his side, and stretch out the part from the elbow straight, with the thumb turned upwards and the rest lying over one another in a row; so no one could move even his little finger, which was the lowest of all, by any force.