MARKO KRALYEVICH  , Servian

hero, was a son of the Servian king or prince, Vukashin (d . 1371) . Chagrined at not himself becoming king after his father's death, he headed a revolt against the new ruler of the Servians . Later he passed into the service of the sultan of Turkey, and was killed in battle about 1394 . Marko, however, is more celebrated in legend than in history . He is regarded as the personification of the Servian race, and stories of strength and wonder have gathered round his name . He is supposed to have lived for 300 years, to have ridden a horse 15o years old, and to have used his enormous physical strength against oppressors, especially against the Turks . He is a great figure in Servian poetry, and his deeds are also told in the epic poems of the Rumanians and the Bulgarians . One tradition relates how he retired from the world owing to the advent of firearms, which, he held, made strength and valour of no account in battle . Goethe regards Marko as the counter-part of Hercules and of the Persian Rustem . The Servian poems about him were published in 1878; a German translation by Gruber (Marko, der Konigssohn) appeared at Vienna in 1883 .