The title of this book is a bit of a provocation. To suggest that a single athlete active in the sixth century b.c.e. represents the ‘invention’ of modern sport seems at best daring and at worst irresponsible. Classical scholars are usually hesitant to draw comparisons between ancient and modern practices because the risks of anachronism and idealisation of the past are real. In the case of Milo of Croton, the problem is compounded by the paucity and lateness of evidence – much of which is linked with the notoriously unreliable tradition of Pythagorean and pseudo-Pythagorean literature. For all these reasons, I began R.’s book with a surfeit of scepticism, even though I am a philosopher used to making conceptual connections between ancient and modern athletics.
By the end, however, R. more or less convinced me that there was something revolutionary about Milo's career, and that certain enduring conceptions in sport (a word derived from the fifteenth-century French desporter) can reasonably be traced back to him. The main reasons for this are R.’s extensive use of sources both ancient and recent, from a variety of disciplines, in several languages. He also digs up several ancient references to Milo that have been overlooked by earlier researchers. Although the rule holds true that one cannot squeeze blood from a turnip, R.’s turnip of evidence on Milo is more robust than usual, and his creative, critical thinking manages to squeeze new and interesting insights from it.
The book is divided into nine chapters plus an introduction, conclusion, notes, bibliography, index of places and names, and a variety of charts and maps. The introduction, ‘Milon sans visage’, distinguishes the historical and the symbolic personages of the athlete and clarifies R.’s claim that Milo represents the invention of sport as a lifestyle distinct from traditional masculine occupations – a lifestyle that would survive the critiques of doctors, philosophers and politicians to emerge as an integral part of ancient Greek culture. Chapter 1, ‘Fragments Biographiques’, sorts through the bits of information we have on Milo's life, attempting to decipher the likely facts about his victories and the age at which he achieved them. Here R. emphasises the ‘rhythm’ of Milo's athletic career – the annual cycle of preparation and competition familiar to athletes everywhere, yet apparently unattested before the Crotonite's career. The chapter also treats Milo's post-athletic life, including his role in the Pythagorean community and his service as a priest of Hera.
Chapter 2, ‘Crotone bien couronnée’, analyses the city's extraordinary – though relatively short-lived – success in the Olympic Games, accounting for its attendant mythology and possible explanations. Chapter 3, ‘L'exploit et l'exercice’, opens with the observation that in the heroic age it was the hero's intrinsic social value that motivated him to compete athletically, but in the post-Milo agonistic age, it was victory in competition that conferred social value on the athlete. R. attributes this change, in part, to the emergence of the phalanx, which made soldiers replaceable and therefore comparable in athletic terms (p. 77). The cultural value of strength is also discussed with Milo serving as counterpoint to Xenophon's promotion of intellectual ability (pp. 79–80). It is observed that the athlete's strength resulted not from divine heritage, but rather daily training, what R. calls ‘raison sportive’, including the progressive resistance training aptly illustrated by the familiar story of Milo lifting a calf as it grew into a bull (p. 92).
Chapter 4, ‘L'athlète et le bouvier’, examines the humiliation of Milo by the cowherd Titormus, recounted in Aelian (VH 12.22), interpreting it as a contrast between the natural, practical strength of rural folk and the artificial, gymnasium strength of the urban athlete. It was by lifting a stone which Milo could not move that the cowherd upstaged the athlete, and R. reveals that stone-lifting functioned historically as a pre-athletic test of relative strength. He concludes that the Titormus story, once again, places Milo at the birth of organised sport.
Another characteristic of athletes, ancient and modern, is their unconventional eating habits. In one of many novel references, R. quotes the nineteenth-century author Alexander Dumas describing Milo in the Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine as a ‘terrible mangeur’ (p. 121). In fact, athletes are regularly identified as anakophagôn (following a restricted diet) in ancient literature. That Milo's reputation as such should follow him all the way into the nineteenth century is no doubt linked with the legend that he carried, slaughtered and ate a bull at Olympia – an act R. interprets as a kind of anti-sacrifice. Milo's association with the Pythagoreans, widely noted for their own dietary restrictions, is also part of the story, and R. offers a nuanced account of the motives for and nature of these restrictions. He even addresses the contrast between Pythagoras’ disdain for competition and glory and Milo's athletic lifestyle. In the end, Milo's dietary liminality is just another element of this invention of sport.
Chapter 6 looks at Milo's ‘two bodies’: a beautifully proportioned and harmonious reflection of an ideal psychê on the one hand, a symbol of pure physical strength in contraposition to mental ability on the other. Unfortunately, it is the latter idea that seems to endure in modern stereotypes about athletes. Chapter 7 places Milo's marriage to Pythagoras’ daughter Myia into this story of sport's invention, interpreting her nickname ‘Fly’, along with the story of her ability to easily take the pomegranate no one else could move from his hand, as evidence for even a bull-like athlete's vulnerability to the ‘weaker’ sex. Enduring myths about sex sapping athletes’ strength may have emerged from there.
I was least convinced by Chapter 8's linkage between sport and war based on Milo's military exploits – specifically the story of him leading Croton's army dressed as Heracles and wearing all his crowns. R. admits that the link between athletic and military training in ancient Greece is a subject of debate among scholars, and I would note that the sources he uses to argue for it are mostly late and aimed at a Roman audience sceptical about athletics' social value. More convincing is the interpretation of Milo's Heracles impersonation as the kind of epiphany elsewhere attested in ancient military history.
The final chapter examines the story that Milo was devoured by wild beasts after getting his arm stuck in a split tree trunk. R. places this story in the tradition of paradoxical deaths recounted to make moralising points. Most informative here is his careful analysis of slight variations in the story that reveal different motivations. Milo is betrayed by his own excessive strength or by his lack of intelligence or by his overconfidence. The athlete who devoured a bull is, in turn, devoured by beasts, reinforcing his association with a powerful diet so clearly that a twentieth-century ‘fortified tonic food’ is named after him. This last, relatively positive interpretation of Milo's story, cannot override the prevailing anti-intellectual interpretation of his death.
In the conclusion R. recounts his argument: Milo marks the emergence of the urban athlete, the citizen-warrior trained in the gymnasium who counterbalances the image of the philosopher. He becomes an athletic superstar who performs the whole season, for several years on end. His career, in short, resembles that of the modern professional athlete. He initiates an ‘athletic life’ of daily gymnastic training and dietary regime. And despite his appearance as Heracles, he represents a departure from the heroic paradigm – he is not a hero but rather a persistently human imitation of the hero. He is a symbol of bodily strength and health, derided by some intellectuals, but celebrated by the masses. In R.’s carefully researched and well-argued interpretation, Milo represents the invention of sport.
