It's worth noting that the anatomic accuracy of classical statues like Laocoon, the Farnese Hercules, etc. indicates that there were at least some men walking around in antiquity with an amount of muscle mass that could only be developed by deliberate hypertrophy training of the whole body, as opposed to just getting muscle as a side effect of specific athletic training. It seems like these people were doing something quite similar to modern bodybuilding, goal-wise.
Milo of Croton is often cited as the earliest recorded examples of a progressive resistance training program: "He would train in the off years by carrying a newborn calf on his back every day until the Olympics took place. By the time the events were to take place, he was carrying a four-year-old cow on his back. He carried the full-grown cow the length of the stadium, then proceeded to kill, roast, and eat it."
Full grown cow gemini says 1,400lbs. World squat record 1,311.8. Panathenaic Stadium, Athens was 850 feet long, further than a single squat. Either we've gotten weaker, or cows have gotten bigger.
Cows and other animals have been intentionally bred to become bigger.
If you look at medieval illustrations of shepherds and farmers [0], one thing that strikes you is just how small all the animals are. Even in relation to the medieval humans who were significantly shorter than us.
It had its advantages - for example, a leaner, smaller animal can walk long distances and won't get stuck in swampy ground. But it doesn't give you a lot of anything - hide, meat, milk... Nowadays, we have huge animals, which nevertheless have to be transported by trucks. No longer capable of walking 50 miles from the lowland to the mountains to graze.
In ancient times, such as during the period of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, full-grown cows were significantly smaller than modern cattle. Based on archaeological evidence (bones and remains), historians and archaeozoologists estimate the following sizes:
• Height: Approximately 100–120 cm (3.3–4 feet) at the shoulder.
• Weight: Between 200–400 kg (440–880 lbs), depending on the breed, sex, and regional conditions.
For comparison:
• Modern cattle like Holsteins (dairy cows) stand around 140–150 cm at the shoulder and weigh 700–900 kg.
• Some smaller modern breeds, like Dexter cattle, resemble ancient cattle in stature, with a height of 90–120 cm and weight of 300–450 kg.
Factors Influencing Smaller Size in Ancient Cattle
1. Nutritional Limitations: Grazing conditions were less controlled, and fodder quality was inconsistent.
2. Genetics: Ancient cattle were not selectively bred for size like modern cattle.
3. Purpose: Cattle were primarily used for labor (draught animals) and small-scale milk production, rather than for meat.
Ancient cattle were functional animals suited to the agricultural practices and available resources of their time, so their size reflected these limitations.
Please don't post LLM output as comments here. It is helpful for commenters to apply at least a modicum of effort to ensuring that the factual statements they make are correct rather than just authoritatively phrased bullshit.
Of course, plenty of us are capable of producing authoritatively phrased bullshit without any artificial aids! But we should try to minimize that phenomenon rather than maximizing it.
Cows have gotten a lot bigger. That specific legend about Milo may be embellished, but his existence as an exceptional athlete is attested by multiple authors.
The point is really: Classical Greek athletes were doing a lot of recognizable strength training. "Halteres" are basically stone dumbbells (in Spanish the derived word "halterofilia" is the modern name for Olympic weightlifting).
You have other examples like Bybon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bybon) where we have an inscribed rock with a handle carved into it explicitly to use as a weightlifting feat.
This was definitely part of the culture and people knew what trained athletes looked like.
If you miss Chuck Norris jokes and want to know the Ancient Grecian equivalent, I highly suggest reading more quotes about Milo of Croton.
The dude won six Olympic wrestling events in a row. The seventh Olympics, he came in second. A twenty-eight year rein in one of the most practiced sports in the ancient world.
It's also worth noting that the anatomic accuracy of the art of Tom of Finland, depicting men with penises in an anatomically accurate position, indicates that there were men with enormous bulging dicks in the early 1960s, enormous bulging dicks of a size and heft typically unequalled by the average man today. Could he have imagined a penis larger than he had ever actually seen? Impossible, of course. The human brain is incapable of bringing to mind anything that it has not seen actually put in its eyes' field of vision.
A large penis looks the same as a small penis, only larger. Hypertrophied muscles do not look like bigger versions of normal muscles; they have a significantly different shape. A muscular person with normal-to-high body fat also looks very different than a muscular person with low body fat (look at heavyweight or superheavyweight powerlifters compared to bodybuilders). Classical sculptures of Greek heroes display high muscle mass and very low body fat.
Indeed, all humans must have been as big as Michaelangelo's David: 17 feet tall, since anyone who acquires the skill of accurate detailed sculpting automatically loses their ability to do anything but a 1:1 scale. :p
Are you kidding? Even if you're a very skilled sculptor, you don't get an extremely accurate sculpture of a human body without a living reference in front of you. A muscular person doesn't look like a non-muscular person with various regions puffed up
Well, my response was slightly tongue in cheek. I was just struck by the implied theory that because works of art depict something, that automatically means that thing actually existed.
Regarding your specific example, I'd actually say that "a non-muscular person with various regions puffed up" is a fairly good description of what a muscular person looks like! And, further, I would be fairly confident that an ancient Greek sculptor, having observed numerous models, would be able to ramp the dials up to 12, producing a figure with a degree of outlandish magnificence never actually quite seen in real life, while still appearing anatomically accurate enough not to look weird.
As to how buff the Greeks really were, I admit we'd need a time machine.
I can imagine big dicks all I want, if I've never seen one, it's hard to sculpt it accurately. Indeed, me sculpting a perfectly accurate huge dick, veins and all, almost certainly means I've seen at least one.
