The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-07-30
MONSTERS OF OTHER TINES
Seven and Eight FOOtCTS in Ancient
Armies.

non the day after the battle of Wag-
ram, Napolean the Great recciveda batch
of recruits that had just arrived from the
Rhine. and had a conversation with one
of their fiuglemen, gaunt Breton, whose
captain introduced him as the tallest
soldier in the French army Heavens"
laughed the emperor, "Im a mere baby
alongside of you" Yes, sire, that illus
trates the difference between a great
man and a large man" said the Breton.
The captains of antiquity might have
dissented from that view. There was a
time when the great men of the world
were eight-footers, who could smash an
enemy's skull at a single blow. and, like
the Australian blacksmith, de-
feat the doughtiest adversaries by super
Tor reach of arm.
On the battlefelds of the primitive
ages such abilities were too valuable to
be neglected, and it is by no means inn
possible that whole races of giants were
developed by the simple process of drown
ing understood infants and pampering
young bursters. Traditions recording the
existence of such Brobdingnags are indeed
found in the folklore of all nations, Chi
nese and Hindoo historians locating those
Rldib ldluS III IIG NCSt, tilt AIdUS III lilt
north dixie the sons of Anak in Northern
SYRIA, and classic authors abound with
illusions to the belief that the stoutest
living men were mere pigmies compared
with the champions of the past-the time
of Hercules and the hunter Orion.
Those myths appeared to have been re-
allied when the irOn-tisted barbarians of
the north crossed the Alps and defeated
the tactics of the Roman legions by sheer
Et1DarsiCFittr Of brutal Tho ~
counts of the early Roman writer's may
have been exaggerated, but the feats of
the splay-foOted invaders leave no doubt
of their Herculean proportions. Teuto-
bot, the leader of a horde that forced It's
way into the plains of Northern Italy,
could leap, in full armor, over nine horses
standing side by side, and in the heat of
the battle of Adrianople Gothic warrior
created a panic by impaling a Roman
centurion and holding him alOft on his
pike like wriggling rabbit.
The Emperor MaXimuS, the son of a
peasant who had distinguished himself
in a legion. composed chiefly Of able
bodied foreigners, rose to supreme com
mand by deeds of super-human power,
and on the death of Alexandria Severus
"a. D. $3.50 became a candidate for the
throne of the Caesars and was actually
elected, in the hope that his Titanic
strength would strike terror TO the souls
of the aggressive barbarians. The anec-
dotes of his athletic feats surpass all be-
lief, as when his biographers assure US
that he could twist off the head of an
Ordinary-sized man as a poultry vonder
would decapitate a chicken, and stop
chariot at full speed by hooking one of
his fingers into the loop of the check
reins.
His hight of nine feet and four inches
must have been too well known to be
much exaggerated by contemporary
writer's, and need not be doubted if we
credit the statement, forty pounds of
meat and eighteen bottles OF wine were
his ordinary allowance for a day" The
quality, rather than the Quantity of his
diet, may have had something to do with
spelling his temper, since big men, like
big horses, are generally good natured.
His numerous acts of ferocity so disguised
his subjects that his own soldiers assassi-
mated him in the camp of Aquileia, A. d.
$50, about twenty years after his corona
ton. The cOnspirators hesitated long
about the best means of executing their
design, but Gothic auxiliary himself a
fellow of more than ordinary size, at last
undertook the job and earned the prom
ised reward by entering the emperors
tent on the morning after a protracted
carouse and Draining the sleeping giant
with a battle-ax.
The courts of mail preserved in the ar
mories of Europe prove that men of seven
feet and seven feet six were nothing ex-
ceptional in the crusade period of the
middle ages, and as late as the middle of
the sixteenth century no royal household
was deemed complete without court
giant or two-a luxury for which some of
the princes of the House of Hapsburg ex-
pended as eXtravagant sums as the father
of Frederick the Great for the fuglemen
of the Potsdam grenadiers.
The same king who forced his children
TO eat moldy sauerkraut to save q few
dollars week gladly paid bounties of
So, 600 for recruits of an inch above seven
feet, and must have deeply regretted the
bygone ages, described in the Chronicle,
of the monkish historians, who explain
almost every defeat of the Christian ar
mics by the irresistible strength of the
pagan Goliath.
In 1913 the remains of a mastodon were
discovered near Pont darcy, in the val
ley of the Rhone, and a French surgeon
named Mazurier conceived the idea of
utilizing the skeleton for an international
sensation. He manufactured a stone slab
bearing the inscription "Teutobochus
Rex" and travelled from town to town
delivering lectures detailing the discoye-
ry of tomb thirty feet long by twelve
broad, and containing the panoply of an
old Teuton warrior king. The armor and
weapons, he said; were so oOrrOded with
rust that they fell TO pieces, but the gild-
ed brass crown (Which he exhibited was
still in a fair state of preservation, and
on the whole there could be no reasonable
doubt that the tomb was actually that Of
the famous leader Of the Teueon invad-
ers. Thousands fiocked to view the mar
velous relics. and the anatomist Rioan
wasted his time by calling attention TO
the fact that the bones exhibited by the
eloquent surgeon did not bear the slight
est resemblance to those of human being.
If DR.. Mezurier had made the length of
his tomb an even hundred his audiences
would have been all the larger. The
boundless credulity of those times is SUM-
GENTLY attested by the general credit |
given TO the chronicle of Godfrey of |
Monmouth who speaks of giants as every |
day phenomena, and mentions one partic- |
ular colossus who amused himself by |
kicking down the castles of God fearing |
princes, and who wore cloak composed |
entirely of a sort of haircloth, woven |
from the boards of slain kings Several |
prelates of the Church of England in
dorsed the researches of the learned his
torian in terms of unqualified assent and
with equally profound commentaries, of
which Henry Buckle in his History Of
Civilization gives many amusing samples.
After such precedents DR. Cotton Ma
ther could hope to confirm his reputation
for scientific conservatism when he an