The Dupuyer acantha. [volume] (Dupuyer, Mont.) 1894-1904, 1897-08-26

put freaks, particularly Dig freaks, Will
endure for ever; for, as Trinculo very
justly remarks of the public, when
they will not give a doit to relieve a
blind beggar, they will lay out ten to
see a dead Indian" That this is true,
says the London Standard, may be
seer by the way the public flocked to
see the recent Egyptian giant, by the
way they 1ocked to see his predecessor,
Wlnkelmeyer, and by the way they
nave, almost without exception, gone
IN crowds to see the latest giant out,
ever since a genius conceived the idea
OF exhibiting for filthy lucre abnorm-
ally developed specimens of the genus
homo. But giants existed long before
this profitable business was invented,
and the names of many of them have
teen handed down to posterity, simply
because they were OF huge proportions,
and combined with their abnormal de-
velopment a proportional amount of
strength. Thus, it is probable that, had
Goliath of Gath, whose height theo-
logians place at over ten feet, not been
the strongest as well as the biggest
warrior among the Philistines, we
should never have heard of him. The
same argument applies to Moab, king
OF the Amorites, and Og, king of Bas-
nan. Orestes, too, was eleven and a
half feet high, according to the Gre
clan legends. and he, together with
Ajax the Greater, had they not been
gifted with strength in proportion to
their bulk, would have been only or
binary soldiers of the Grecian army
before Troy.
When history begins, however-that
Is, when Rome began to reach it's high
est point of civilization in the time
Of Augustus, and learned men began to
write about the times they lived in. in
stead OF the times that went by long
before they were born-we get anthem
tic records of giants. In Augustus's
time, for instance, there were. accord
ing to the authority of valerius. two
giants In Rome who were over ten feet
high. Their names were Idusis and Sc
cundilla, and they were keepers of the
gates OF the gardens of Sallust. Then
again we have a record in Pliny of one
Polydamus, the son of Meas. who was
over nine feet nigh, and whose strength
rivalled that Of Hercules himself.
Polydamus used, in fact, to boast his
superiority to that Roman deity, and
perform his special tricks. For ex-
ample, he once slew a lion with a blow
of his fist, and scattered it's brains
about the arena. He could with his
hand stop the swiftest chariot dead.
and on one occasion seized a bull by
the hoo in order to carry it away, but
the animal struggled so violently that
the hoof was left in his hand. In the
end he was killed by the falling in of
a cave. When his companions noticed
that the roof was falling they left. but
Polydsmus was so vain about his
strength that he thought he could not
be killed. So he stayed and was finally
crushed to death.
The Emperor Vitellius sent to Dari-
us, by way of a present, a Jew named
! Eleazer, who was seven cubits high
that is, reckoning the cubit at eighteen
inches-ten feet six inches-and q
giant who is mentioned by the histor.
; ian Tacitus was over nine feet. His
: name was Corbulo, and he lived in
Nero's time, and was a more thar
= usually skillful general and soldier
besides being an enormously strons
man. An account of the ancient giant:
would be incomplete without mention
ing Maximinus, the imperial giant O.
) thu third nantJru Tho r,oct
l nary stories are told of this emperor O
Rome. His height was eight feet te1
9 inches; he could draw unaided a LOADED
: wagon which six oxen could not move
1 while his appetite was so great that hi
: usual rations for the day consisted O
, forty pounds of meat and a whole am
q phora of wine, besides bread and drie,
and fresh fruits.
3 Medieval giants are plentiful. but
strange to say, the records of them ar
. not so authentic as those of the time
!. of the emperors. Funnian, a Scottis
u giant, who flourished in 1927, seems [
Il be the most authentic of these, but a
he is put down as being we eleve
- feet high, the statement should not b
CTlIlClocu tOO ClOSely. OIlll more starr
!. ling, however, is the following, whic
is vouched for by a monastery full {
= monks: In 1909 some workmen, digs
y ing near Rouen came across a cave i
which were some human bones and
, copper plate, bearing the words: "Her
lies the remains Of the great an
mighty Chevalier Ricon de Vallemont.
;. The skull was large enough to hav
y. held a bushel of wheat and the shi
20 bone was over four feet long. 1t 9TH
bone) was preserved by the above-mer
- toned monks, and it is estimated thu
:, the height of the defunct knight mus
have exceeded eighteen feet. A strant
err though somewhat similar legen
a comes from Ireland, but in this cas-
20 the discoveries thought that the
RS would, to use an expression populs
twenty or thirty years ago, go eth
m whole hog or none.'' 1t happened
1908. Some men were digging in Ir'
land when they came across a brio
err tomb which contained a human skel,
III ton no less than 120 feet long.