OLYMPIC VICTOR MONUMENTS
AND
GREEK ATHLETIC ART

BY
WALTER WOODBURN HYDE

Published by the Carnegie Institution of Washington
Washington, 1921

CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON
Publication No. 268

PRESS OF GIBSON BROTHERS, INC.
WASHINGTON, D. C.

The purpose of the present work is to study what is known of one of the most important genres of Greek sculpture—the monuments erected at Olympia and elsewhere in the Greek world in honor of victorious athletes at the Olympic games. Since only meagre remnants of these monuments have survived, the work is in the main concerned with the attempt to reconstruct their various types and poses.

The source-material on which the attempt is based has been indicated fully in the text; it is of two kinds, literary and archæological. To the former belong the explanatory inscriptions on the bases of victor statues found at Olympia and elsewhere, many of which agree verbally with epigrams preserved in the Greek Anthologies; the incidental statements of various kinds and value found in the classical writers and their scholiasts; and, above all, the detailed works of the two imperial writers, the elder Pliny and Pausanias. Pliny’s account of the Greek artists, which is inserted into his Historia Naturalis as a digression (Books XXXIV-XXXVI)—being artificially joined to the history of mineralogy on the pretext of the materials used—is, despite its uncritical and often untrustworthy character, one of our chief mines of information about Greek sculptors and painters. The portions of Pausanias’ Description of Greece which deal with Elis and the monuments of Olympia (Books V-VI), although they also evince little real understanding of art, are of far more direct importance to our subject, since they include a descriptive catalogue, doubtless based upon personal observation, of the greater part of the athlete monuments set up in the Altis at Olympia, the reconstruction of which is the chief purpose of the present work.

To the archæological sources, on the other hand, belong, first and foremost, the remnants of victor statues in stone and metal which have long been garnered in modern museums or have come to light during the excavation of the Altis. To this small number I hope I have added at least one marble fragment found at Olympia, the head of a statue by Lysippos, the last great sculptor of Greece (Frontispiece and Fig. 69). To this second kind of sources belong also the statue bases just mentioned, on many of which the extant footmarks enable us to determine the poses of the statues themselves which once stood upon them. Furthermore, an intimate knowledge of Greek athletic sculpture in all its periods and phases is, of course, essential in treating a problem of this nature. Here, as in the study of Greek sculpture in general, where the destruction of original masterpieces, apart from the few well-known but splendid exceptions, has been complete, we are almost entirely dependent upon second-hand evidence furnished by the numerous existing antique copies and adaptations of lost originals executed in marble and bronze by more or less skilled workmen for the Roman market.

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Finally, not only are the innumerable statuettes and small bronzes surviving from antiquity of great value in any attempt to reconstruct the pose of a given athlete statue, but also the representations of various athlete figures on every sort of sculptured and painted work—vase-paintings, wall-paintings, reliefs, gems, coins, etc.

By using all such sources of information, it is possible to attain tolerable certainty in reconstructing the various types and poses of these lost monuments, and in identifying schools of athletic sculpture, masters, and even individual statues. But it must be stated at the outset that such identifications, from the very nature of the problem, are at best tentative in character. The attempt to see in Roman copies certain statues of athletes has often been made by archæologists. However probable such identifications may seem, we must not forget the simple fact that up to the present time not a single Roman copy has been conclusively proved to be that of an Olympic victor statue. Only as our knowledge of Greek sculpture is gradually extended by discoveries of additional works of art, and by future researches, will it be possible to attain an ever greater degree of probability. The further identification of these important monuments, as that of masterpieces of Greek sculpture generally, will thus remain one of the chief problems for the future archæologist. In the present book, where the body of material drawn upon is so immense and the scientific writings involved are so voluminous, manifestly the author can lay no claim to an exhaustive treatment. With due consciousness of the defects and shortcomings of the work, he can claim only to have made a small selection of such works of art as will best illustrate the various types of monuments under discussion.

The plan of the book is easily seen by a glance at the table of contents. After a preliminary chapter on the origin and development of Greek athletic games in general and on the custom of conferring athletic prizes on victors, the more specific subject of the work is introduced in Chapter II by brief discussions of the more general characteristics common to Olympic victor statues—their size, nudity, and hair-fashion, their portrait or non-portrait features, and the standard of beauty reached by some of them at least, as shown by the æsthetic judgments of certain ancient writers and by the fragmentary originals which have survived. The enumeration of these characteristics is followed by a brief account of the various canons of proportion assumed to have been used and taught by different schools of sculptors. The chapter ends with a more extended account of the little-known but important subject of the assimilation of this class of monuments to athlete types of gods and heroes.

In Chapters III and IV, which are the most important in developing the problem of reconstruction, a division has been made into two great statuary groups: those in which the victor was represented at rest, where the particular contest was indicated, if indicated at all, by veryv general motives or by particular athletic attributes; and those in which the victor was represented in movement, i. e., in the characteristic pose of the contest in which he won his victory.

Chapter V relates chiefly to the monuments of hippodrome victors, those in the various chariot-races and horse-races, and ends with a very brief notice of non-athlete victor dedications—those of musicians.

Chapter VI gives a stylistic analysis of what are conceived to be two original marble heads from lost victor statues, one of which is ascribed to Lysippos, the great bronze-founder and art-reformer of the fourth century B. C., while the other is regarded as an early Hellenistic work of eclectic tendencies. The publication of these marble heads and of the oldest-dated victor statue, which is also of marble and which is discussed in Chapter VII, reinforced by other evidence adduced in the latter chapter, overthrows the belief that all victor statues were uniformly made of bronze. The publication of the Olympia head also controverts the usual assumption of archæologists that Lysippos worked only in metal. The last chapter is concerned with a topographical study of the original positions in the Altis of the various athlete monuments discussed, and with a list of all the victor monuments known to have been erected outside Olympia in various cities of the ancient world. These last three chapters are based on papers which have already appeared in the American Journal of Archæology (Chapters VI, VII, and the first half of VIII) and in the Transactions of the American Philological Association (the last half of Chapter VIII). Permission to use them in the present book has been kindly granted to the author by Dr. James A. Paton, former editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Archæology, and by Professor Clarence P. Bill, the secretary of the American Philological Association.

Although it has been my aim throughout to present my own views in regard to the various works of art under discussion, I must, of course, acknowledge that the book is largely based upon the work and conclusions of preceding scholars who have treated various phases of the same subject. It would, however, be unnecessary and even impossible here to acknowledge all the works laid directly or indirectly under contribution in the composition of the book. Most of these have been recorded in the footnotes.

But I wish here to express, in a more general way, my indebtedness to the standard histories of Greek sculpture, by Brunn, Collignon, Gardiner, Lechat, Murray, Overbeck, Richardson, and others, which must form the foundation of the knowledge of any one who writes on any phase of the subject. Among these, two have been found especially valuable: Bulle’s Der schoene Mensch im Altertum, which is justly noted for its comprehensive views and sound judgments; and Furtwaengler’s Die Meisterwerke der griechischen Plastik, which, although it has been known to English readers in its enlarged edition by Miss Eugénie Sellers for over a quarter of a century, is still prized for its extensive firstvihand knowledge of the monuments and for its brilliant inductions, even if the latter at times are carried too far.

Perhaps my greatest debt has been to the excellent volume entitled Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals, by E. Norman Gardiner, M. A., a scholar whose practical knowledge of modern athletic sports and wide familiarity with the ancient source material, both literary and monumental, has well fitted him to deal afresh with the subject treated so learnedly over three quarters of a century ago in Krause’s Die Gymnastik und Agonistik der Hellenen. I have also constantly drawn upon Gardiner’s collection of vase-paintings which illustrate athletic scenes.

I should also note here several other works which have been of great assistance in writing this book, such as Juethner’s Ueber antike Turngeraethe and edition of Philostratos’ de Arte gymnastica, Reisch’s Griechische Weihgeschenke, Rouse’s Greek Votive Offerings, and Foerster’s Die Sieger in den Olympischen Spielen. The chronological list of victors in the latter compilation was, in large part, the foundation of my earlier work de olympionicarum Statuis.

I have also received most valuable help from the standard catalogues of modern museums, e. g., those by Amelung, Dickins, Helbig, Kabbadias, Lechat, Richter, de Ridder, Staïs, Svoronos, and especially the admirable ones of the classical collections in the British Museum. I regret that, owing to the recent war, some of the latest catalogues, those especially of the smaller foreign museums, have not been available.

For illustrative matter, I have made no effort to reproduce merely striking works of art, but have, for the most part, presented well-known works which readily illustrate the problems treated in the text. I have availed myself of collections of photographs kindly placed at my disposal by Professors Herbert E. Everett of the School of Fine Arts of the University of Pennsylvania, D. M. Robinson of the Johns Hopkins University, A. S. Cooley of the Moravian College at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Dr. Mary H. Swindler of Bryn Mawr College. The various collections of plates and the books and journals from which I have taken illustrations are duly noted in the List of Illustrations.

In addition, I wish to thank the following corporations and individuals for permission to reproduce plates and text-cuts from the works cited: the Council of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, of London, for the use of four plates appearing in the Journal of Hellenic Studies (Figs. 44, 54, 55, and 59); the Trustees of the British Museum in London for seven plates from Marbles and Bronzes in the British Museum (Pls. 7A, 17, 19; Figs. 14, 28, 31, and 35); Professor E. A. Gardiner and his publishers, Duckworth and Co., of London, for two plates from Six Greek Sculptors (Pl. 30; Fig. 71); Mr. H. R. Hall, of the British Museum, and his publisher, Philip Lee Warner, of London, for one from Aegean Archæology (Fig. 1); Professor Allan Marquand, of Princeton University, for one text-cut from the American Journal ofvii Archæology (Fig. 49), and Dr. J. M. Paton, former editor-in-chief, for three other text-cuts from the same journal (Figs. 70, 72, 79).

To the following I am also indebted for individual photographs: Dr. J. N. Svoronos, Director of the Numismatic Museum, Athens, Greece, for one of the oldest-dated statues of an Olympic victor (Fig. 79), which has already appeared in the American Journal of Archæology; Dr. A. Fairbanks, of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for those of the statue of a Charioteer(?) and of the fragmentary head of the Oil-pourer (Pl. 27; Fig. 23); Dr. Edward Robinson, of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, for those of the fine Kresilæan and Praxitelian heads (Pls. 15, 20), and of the bronze statuette of a diskobolos (Fig. 46); Prof. Alice Walton, of Wellesley College, for one of the Polykleitan athlete (Pl. 13); the Director of the Fogg Art Museum of Cambridge, Mass., for that of the so-called Meleager (Fig. 77); Dr. S. B. Luce, recently of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, for photographs of two vase-paintings showing athletic scenes (Figs. 50, 56), and Dr. Eleanor F. Rambo, formerly of the same Museum, for a copy of the Knossos wall-painting (Pl. 1).

A word might be added as to the spelling of Greek proper names. Since consistency in this matter seems unattainable, I have adopted the method outlined in the British School Annual (XV, 1908–09, p. 402), whereby the names of persons, places, buildings, festivals, etc., are transliterated from the Greek forms, except those which have become a part of the English language. But even here I have sometimes deviated from the practice of using familiar English forms.

In abbreviations of the names of journals (see pages XVI-XIX) I have largely conformed with the usage long recommended by the American Journal of Archæology.

For convenience in identifying the many works of art, discussed or mentioned in the text and foot-notes, I have constantly referred to well-known collections of plates, such as those of Brunn-Bruckmann, Bulle, Rayet, and von Mach. For further convenience, I have also in most cases referred to the outline drawings of statues in Reinach’s Répertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine, and in some cases to the older ones found in Clarac’s Musée de sculpture antique et moderne, and in Mueller and Wieseler’s Denkmaeler der alten Kunst.

In closing, I have the pleasant duty of thanking generally the many friends who have given me valuable suggestions and assistance, especially Professor Lane Cooper, of Cornell University, for reading the proof-sheets of the entire work, and Professor Alfred Emerson, now of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, my former teacher, for revising the list of Corrigenda.

Walter Woodburn Hyde.

University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, October, 1921.

viii-ix

xii

xiii

xvi

Other abbreviations will be readily understood.

Besides the following, there are a few other corrections which are so obvious that they scarcely need to be listed.

1

Plate 1 and Figures 1 and 2.

Before attempting to trace historically the development of monuments of victors in the gymnic and hippic contests at Olympia, and before attempting to reconstruct their different types, it will be useful to devote a preliminary chapter to the early history of Greek athletics and victor prizes in general.

It is a truism that the origin of Greek athletics is not to be found in the recently discovered Aegean civilization of Crete, nor in the latest phase of the same culture on Mycenæan sites of the mainland of Greece. Their origin is not to be sought in the indigenous Mediterranean stock which produced that culture, but rather among the northern invaders of Greece, the fair-haired Achæans of the Homeric poems, and especially among the later Dorians in the Peloponnesus. It was to the physical vigor of these strangers rather than to the more artistic nature of the Mediterraneans that the later Greeks owed their interest in sports. As these invaders settled themselves most firmly in the Peloponnesus, Greek athletics may be said to be chiefly the product of South Greece. It was here that three of the four national festivals grew up—at Olympia, Nemea, and on the Corinthian Isthmus. It was in the schools of Argos and Sikyon that athletic sculpture flourished best and in later Greek history physical exercise was most fully developed among the Dorian Spartans.1

Centuries before the Achæan civilization of Greece had bloomed, there developed among the Minoans of Crete a passion for certain acrobatic performances and for gymnastics. These Cretans, though strongly influenced by Egypt and the East, did not borrow their love of sport from outside any more than did the later Achæans. On the walls of the tombs of Beni-Hasan on the Nile are pictured many athletic sports, including a series of several hundred wrestling groups,2 but these sports did not influence, so far as we know, Cretan athletics. At Knossos bull-grappling seems to have been the national sport, as we see from the frescoes on the palace walls. In the absence of the horse, which did not appear in early Aegean times in Crete, it is not difficult to understand the development of gymnastic sports with bulls. At Knossos a seal has been found which shows the rude drawing of a vessel with rowers seated under a canopy, superimposed on which is drawn the greater portion of a huge horse. In this design, dating from about 1600 B. C. and synchronizing with the earlier part of the eighteenth 2Egyptian dynasty, we doubtless see a graphic way of indicating the cargo, and consequently a contemporary record, it may be, of the first importation of horses from Libya into Crete.3

The Cretan bull seems to have been a much larger animal than the species found upon the island to-day.4 Bull-grappling at Knossos was the sport of female as well as male toreadors. A fragmentary rectangular fresco, dating from about 1500 B. C. (Pl. 1), was discovered there by Sir Arthur Evans in 1901 and is now in the Candia museum. It is executed with extraordinary spirit and shows a huge bull rushing forward with lowered head and tail straight out. A man is in the act of turning a somersault on its back, his legs in the air, his arms grasping the bull’s body and his head raised, looking back to the rear of the animal, where a cowgirl is standing, holding out her arms to catch his flying figure as soon as his feat is concluded. Another cowgirl, at the extreme left, seems to be suspended from the bull’s horns, which pass under her armpits, while she catches hold further up. However, she is not being tossed, but is taking position preliminary to leaping over the bull’s back. Both the man and the women wear striped boots and bracelets; the women are apparently distinguished by their white skin, short drawers, yellow sashes embroidered with red, and the red-and-blue diadems around their brows.[5] On the opposite wall a similar scene was pictured; among its stucco fragments was found the representation of the arm and shoulder of a woman grasping a bull by the horns. The fragmentary representation of another woman and man was also found.

A very similar scene has long been known from a fresco painting from Tiryns, now in Athens.6 A bull is represented galloping to the left, while a man7 clings to its horns with his right hand and is swept 3 along with one foot lightly touching the bull’s back and the other swung aloft. Most early writers interpreted this scene as a bull-hunt, the artist having drawn the hunter above the bull through ignorance of perspective. The execution is very inferior, three attempts of the bungling painter being visible in the painting of the tail and the front legs. Others saw in it the representation of an acrobat showing his dexterity by leaping upon the back of an animal in full career, recalling the description of such a trick in the Iliad, where Ajax is represented as rushing over the plain like a man who, while driving four horses, leaps from horse to horse.8 But this figure must take its place side by side with the one from Knossos just described as another bull-grappling scene. That such sports were not held in the open air, but in an enclosed courtyard, is shown by the seal from Praisos now in the Candia Museum, which depicts a man vaulting on the back of a gigantic ox within a paved enclosure.9 Doubtless the theatral areas discovered at Phaistos by the Italian Archæological Mission10 and at Knossos by Sir Arthur Evans in 190311 were not large enough for bull scenes and were used merely for ceremonial dancing and perhaps for the boxing matches to be described.12 Similar acrobats are doubtless to be recognized in the two beautiful ivory statuettes, only 11.5 inches in height, of so-called leapers, found by Dr. Evans at Knossos in 1901.13 These masterpieces of the late Minoan II period represent acrobats (one is probably a woman) darting through the air. “The life, the freedom, the élan of these figures is nothing short of marvellous,” writes Dr. Evans, who calls attention to the careful physical training shown in their slender legs and in the muscles, even the veins on the back of the hands and the finger-nails being plainly indicated as well as the details of the skinfolds at the joints. They doubtless formed a part of an ivory model of the bull-ring and are meant for miniature toreadors, who were hung in the air by fine gold wires14 over the backs of ivory bulls who stood on the solid ground. The heads of the figures are thrown backwards, a posture suitable for such vaulters, but not for leapers or divers. Minoan art culminated in these statuettes and in certain stucco figures in half relief found also at Knossos. Only a few fragments of these reliefs have survived, most of which were decorative or architectonic in character, though among them were also4 found human disjecta membra in high relief, such as the fragment of a left forearm holding a horn, and not a pointed vase, as Dr. Evans thought. Here the muscles are well indicated, though the veins are exaggerated.15 This fragment may well be a part of the same bull-grappling scenes as those in the frescoes, as also the life-like image of a bull, the details of whose head, mouth, eyes, and nostrils are full of expression, and whose muscles are perfectly indicated.

When compared with the monuments described, the similarity of details on the design of the Vapheio cups ornamented in repoussé, the “most splendid specimens known of the work of the Minoan goldsmith,”16 never again equalled until the Italian Renaissance, makes it more than possible that here again we have scenes of bull-grappling rather than of bull-hunting. On one cup is represented a quiet pastoral scene—a man tying the legs of a bull with a rope, while two other bulls stand near, amicably licking one another, and a third is quietly grazing. On the other, however, are represented scenes of a very different character. In the centre is a furious bull entangled in a net, which is fastened to a tree; to the left a figure, doubtless a woman, is holding on to a bull’s head, while a man has fallen on his head beside the animal, both man and woman being dressed in the Cretan fashion. A third bull rushes furiously by to the right. Most commentators have seen bull-hunting scenes on both these cups. Thus, on the first cup were represented three scenes in the drama of trapping a bull by means of a tame decoy cow; to the right the bull is starting to go to the rendezvous, while in the center the bull stands by the cow’s side and to the left he is finally trapped and tied.17 On the other cup the furious animal at the left was supposed to have thrown one hunter and to have caught another on its horns. But Mosso’s interpretation of this design seems to be the right one.18 The two persons struggling with the bull5 have no lasso and so can hardly be hunters; besides, if the bull had impaled a hunter with its horns, the hunter would have been represented with his head up and not down. The figure is, however, uninjured and holds on with its knee bent over one horn and its shoulder against the other; it is merely, therefore, intended for a woman acrobat. The net shown in the centre was never used for hunting wild bulls; more probably it was intended as an obstacle in racing. The fallen man has been standing on the netted bull, which, with the gymnast on its back, was expected to have leaped over the net, but has not succeeded; consequently, the acrobat has been tumbled over the bull’s head.

This ancient Cretan sport seems to have been similar to that known in Thessaly and elsewhere in historical days as τὰ ταυροκαθάψια.19 A survival of it still persists to our day in certain parts of Italy, as, e. g., in the province of Viterbo.20

Acrobatic feats of various sorts were attractive to the later Greeks from the time of Homer down. We have already mentioned one passage from the Iliad in which a driver of four horses leaps from horse to horse in motion. On the shield of Achilles tumblers appeared among the dancers on the dancing-place.21 Patroklos ironically remarks over the body of Kebriones, as the charioteer falls headlong like a diver from his chariot when hit by a missile, that there are tumblers also among the Trojans.22 In later centuries the Athenians evinced a great attraction to acrobatic feats. The story told of Hippokleides23 reveals that high-born Athenians did not disdain to practice them. They appear to have formed a sort of side-show attraction at the Panathenaic festival, as such scenes occur frequently on Attic vases. Thus on an early (imitation?) Panathenaic vase from Kameiros in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris,24 there is represented behind the driver a man standing on the back of a horse, armed with a helmet and two shields, while in front another appears to be balancing himself on a pole.

But such acrobatic scenes as those of Crete and later Greece can not properly be classed as athletic. They betoken more the love of excitement than of true sport. The only form of real athletics represented on Minoan monuments, one which was classed in later Greece as one of the national sports, was that of boxing, which seems to have been6 the favorite gymnastic contest of the Cretans, as it always was of the later Greeks. Boxing scenes appear on seals,25 on a steatite fragment of a pyxis found in 1901 at Knossos and, in conjunction with a bull-grappling Fig. 1.—So-called Boxer Vase, from Hagia Triada (Cast). Museum of Candia. scene, on the so-called Boxer Vase found by the Italians at Hagia Triada (Fig. 1). The vase is a cone-shaped rhyton of steatite, 18 inches high, originally overlaid with gold foil. It belongs to the best period of Cretan art, late Minoan I.26 This vase alone, if no other monumental evidence were at hand, would suffice to show the physical prowess and love of sport of the Minoans. Because of its scenes of boxing and bull-grappling Mosso calls it “the most complete monument that we have of gymnastic exercise in the Mediterranean civilization.”27 The later Greek tradition of the high degree of physical development attained by the Cretans is proved by this monument.28

The reliefs are arranged in four horizontal zones.29 One of these, the second from the top, represents a bull-grappling scene, showing two racing bulls, upon the head and horns of one of which a gymnast has vaulted (not being tossed and helpless, as most interpreters think).30 The other7 three represent boxers in all attitudes of the prize-ring, hitting, guarding, falling, and even kicking, as in the later Greek pankration. Some are victorious, the left arm being extended on guard and the right drawn back to strike; one (in the top zone) is ready to spring, just as Hector was ready to spring on Achilles;31 others are prostrate on the ground with their feet in the air. The violence of the action recalls the boast of Epeios in the famous match in the Iliad that he will break his adversary’s bones.32

The method of attack by the right arm and defense by the left is the same as that formerly used by English pugilists. In the topmost zone the combatants wear helmets with visors, cheek-pieces, and horse-hair plumes, and also shoes; in the third zone down the pugilists also wear helmets, though of a different pattern, while the bottom zone shows figures, perhaps youths, with bare heads. Some of the boxers appear to wear boxing-gloves. In the lowest zone we see the well-known feat of swinging the antagonist up by the legs and throwing him—if we may so conclude from the contorted position of the vanquished, whose legs are in the air.

A similar figure appears in relief on the fragment of a pyxis found at Knossos.33 A youth with clenched fists stands with left arm extended as if to ward off a blow, while his right arm is drawn back and rests on his hip; below we see the bent knee of a prostrate figure, evidently that of his vanquished opponent. The boxer has a wasp-like waist and wears a metal girdle. His left leg is well modeled, the muscles not being exaggerated.

We have evidence, therefore, that the love of sport existed in Crete as it has existed in all countries since. But the comparatively unathletic character of the Aegean culture is shown by the complete absence of athletic representations—apart from bull-grappling scenes—in the art of its last phase at Mycenæ and Tiryns on the mainland. This is an independent argument for the view that the civilization of the mainland was chiefly the product of the old Mediterranean stock, which was finally conquered by the invading Achæans, who are represented in Homer as skilled gymnasts. In Homer we are immediately conscious of being in another world, for here we are in an atmosphere of true athletics, which are fully developed and quite secular in character.34 They are, however, wholly spontaneous, for there are as yet neither meets nor organized training, neither stadia, gymnasia, nor palæstræ; for such an organization of athletics did not exist until the sixth century B. C. But Homer’s account of the funeral games of8 Patroklos is pervaded by a spirit of true athletics and has a perennial attraction for every lover of sport. Walter Leaf says of the chariot-race, which is the culminating feature of the description, that it is “a piece of narrative as truthful in its characters as it is dramatic and masterly in description.”35 Such a description could have been composed only by a poet who belonged to a people long acquainted with athletics and intensely interested in them. Nestor often speaks of a remoter past, when the gods and heroes contended. Odysseus says he could not have fought with Herakles nor Eurytos, heroes of the olden time, “who contended with the immortal gods.” The Homeric warrior was distinguished from the merchant by his knowledge of sport. Thus Euryalos of the Phaiakians says in no complimentary tone to Odysseus: “No truly, stranger, nor do I think thee at all like one that is skilled in games ... rather art thou such an one as comes and goes in a benched ship, a master of sailors that are merchantmen, one with a memory for his freight, or that hath charge of a cargo homeward bound, and of greedily gotten gains.”36 It is beside the point whether the chief passages in the poems which relate to sports are late in origin or not, even if they are later than 776 B. C., the traditional first Olympiad. In any case the later poet merely followed an older tradition. At the funeral games of Patroklos all the events are practical in character, the natural amusements of men chiefly interested in war. They are, however, not merely military, but are truly athletic. The oldest and most aristocratic of all the events described is the chariot-race—in which the war-chariot is used—the monopoly of the nobles then, as it was always later the sport of kings and the rich.37 Boxing and wrestling come next in importance, already occupying the position of preëminence which they hold in the poems of Pindar. The foot-race between Ajax, the son of Oileus, and Odysseus follows. Of the last four events, three—the single combat between Ajax and Diomedes, the throwing of the solos, and the contest in archery—are admitted to be late additions. The last event of all, the casting of the spear, may be earlier, but we know little about it, as the contest did not take place, Achilles yielding the first prize to Agamemnon. Most of these later events are described in a lifeless manner and have not the vim and compelling interest of the earlier ones. Indeed the contest in archery seems to be treated with a certain amount of ridicule, which shows the contempt of the great nobles for so plebeian a sport. The armed contest, though it is9 pictured in art certainly as early as the sixth century B. C.,38 never had a place in the later Greek games.39 Jumping, an important part of the later pentathlon, is mentioned but once in the poems, as a feature of the sports of the Phaiakians. But the later pentathlon, as Gardiner says, is certainly not suggested in Homer’s account, though many have assumed it,40 merely because Nestor mentions his former contests at Bouprasion in boxing, in running, in hurling the spear, and in the chariot-race.41 This, however, is not the combination of contests known much later as the pentathlon, in which the same contestants had to compete in the series of events—running, jumping, wrestling, diskos-throwing, and javelin-throwing.

In these games described in the Iliad we see an example of the origin of the later athletic festivals in the cult of the dead. Homer knows only of funeral games42 and there is no trace in the poems of the later athletic meetings held in honor of a god.43 However, the association of the later games with religious festivals held at stated times can be traced to the games with which the funeral of the Homeric chief was celebrated. The oldest example of periodic funeral games in Greece of which we have knowledge were those held in Arkadia in honor of the dead Azan, the father of Kleitor and son of Arkas, at which prizes were offered at least for horse-racing.44

Though the origin of the four national religious festivals in Greece—at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, and on the Isthmus—is buried in a mass of conflicting legend, certain writers agree in saying that all of them were founded on funeral games, though they were later dedicated to10 gods.45 Thus the Isthmian were instituted in honor of the dead Melikertes,46 the Nemean in honor of Opheltes or Archemoros,47 the Pythian in honor of the slain Python,48 the Olympian in honor of the hero Pelops.49 To both Pindar and Bacchylides the Olympian games were associated with the tomb of Pelops; Pausanias, on the other hand, records that the ancient Elean writers ascribed their origin to the Idæan Herakles of Crete.50 It was a common tradition that Herakles founded the games, some writers saying that it was the Cretan, others that it was the Greek hero, the son of Zeus and Alkmena.51

Despite the variation in legends relative to the institution of the four national games, we should not doubt the universal tradition that all were funerary in origin. The tradition is confirmed by many lines of argument: by the survival of funeral customs in their later rituals, by the later custom of instituting funeral games in honor of dead warriors both in antiquity and in modern times, and by the testimony of early athletic art in Greece.52 We shall now briefly consider these arguments.

11

As an example of the survival of funeral customs in later ritual, Pausanias says that the annual officers at Olympia, even in his day, sacrificed a black ram to Pelops.53 The fact that a black victim was offered over a trench instead of on an altar proves that Pelops was still worshipped as a hero and not as a god. The scholiast on Pindar, Ol., I, 146, says that all Peloponnesian lads each year lashed themselves on the grave of Pelops until the blood ran down their backs as a libation to the hero. Furthermore, all the contestants at Olympia sacrificed first to Pelops and then to Zeus.54

Funeral games were held in honor of departed warriors and eminent men all over the Greek world and at all periods, from the legendary games of Patroklos and Pelias and others to those celebrated at Thessalonika in Valerian’s time.55 Thus Miltiades was honored by games on the Thracian Chersonesus,56 Leonidas and Pausanias at Sparta,57 Brasidas at Amphipolis,58 Timoleon at Syracuse,59 and Mausolos at Halikarnassos.60 Alexander instituted games in honor of the dead Hephaistion61 and the conqueror himself was honored in a similar way.62 The Eleutheria were celebrated at Platæa at stated times in honor of the soldiers who fell there against the Medes in 479 B. C.,63 and in the Academy a festival was held under the direction of the polemarch in honor of the Athenian soldiers who had died for their country and were buried in the Kerameikos.64 Funeral games were also common in Italy. We find athletic scenes decorating Etruscan tombs—including boxing, wrestling, horse-racing, and chariot-racing.65 The Romans borrowed their funeral games from Etruria as well as their gladiatorial shows, which were doubtless also funerary in origin.66 Frazer cites examples of the custom of instituting games in honor of dead warriors among many modern peoples, Circassians, Chewsurs of the Caucasus,12 Siamese, Kirghiz, in India, and among the North American Indian tribes. Gardiner notes the Irish fairs in honor of a departed chief, which existed from pagan days down to the last century.67

The testimony of early Greek athletic art also points to the same funerary origin of the games. The funeral games of Pelias and those held by Akastos in honor of his father were depicted respectively on the two most famous monuments of early Greek decorative art, on the chest of Kypselos dedicated in the Heraion at Olympia and on the throne of Apollo at Amyklai in Lakonia, the latter being the work of the Ionian sculptor Bathykles. Though both these works are lost, the description of one of them at least, that of the chest, by Pausanias,68 is so detailed and precise that the scenes represented upon it have been paralleled figure for figure on early Ionian (especially Chalkidian) and Corinthian vases, contemporary or later, and on Corinthian and Argive decorative bronze reliefs. Many attempts have been made, therefore, to restore the chest, and as more monuments become known, which throw light on the composition and types, these attempts are constantly growing in certainty, even though conjecture may continue to enter in.69

The figures were wrought in relief, partly in ivory and gold and partly in the cedar wood itself, deployed on its surface in a series of bands, such as we commonly see on early vases. This use of gold and ivory is the first example in Greek art of the custom employed by Pheidias and other sculptors of the great age of Greek sculpture. We have already noted its use in the ivory acrobats from Crete, which were made, perhaps, a thousand years before the chest.70 Out of the thirty-three scenes depicted on its surface all but two or three were mythological, and among these were scenes from the funeral games of Pelias, including a two-horse chariot-race (P., §9), a boxing and wrestling13 match (§10), a foot-race, quoit-throwing, and a victor represented as being crowned (§10), and prize tripods (§11).

The most valuable parallel to some of the scenes described by Pausanias is found on the Amphiaraos vase in Berlin,71 dating from the sixth century B. C., on which the wrestling match and chariot-race correspond surprisingly well with the descriptions of Pausanias, despite certain differences in detail. Another archaic vase depicts a two-horse chariot-race and the parting of Amphiaraos and Eriphyle.72 The scenes on this latter vase appear to have been copied from those on the chest, and it is possible that the scenes on the Berlin vase had the same origin.

Funeral games are commonly pictured on early vases. Thus on a proto-Attic amphora, discovered by the British School of Athens in excavating the Gymnasion of Kynosarges, there are groups of wrestlers and chariot-racers. The wrestling bout here, however, seems to be to the death, as the victor has his adversary by the throat with both hands. It may be a mythological scene, perhaps representing the bout between Herakles and Antaios. A still earlier representation of funeral games is shown by a Dipylon geometric vase from the Akropolis now in Copenhagen, dating back possibly to the eighth century B. C.73 On one side two nude men, who have grasped each other by the arms, are ready to stab one another with swords. This may represent, however, as Gardiner suggests, only a mimic contest. On the other side are two boxers standing between groups of warriors and dancers. A similar scene in repoussé appears on a Cypriote silver vase from Etruria now in the Uffizi in Florence.74 We should also, in this connection, note again the reliefs representing funeral games, which appear on the sixth-century sarcophagus from Klazomenai already mentioned.75 Here is represented a combat of armed men; amid chariots stand groups of men armed with helmets, shields, and spears, while flute-players stand between them; at either end is a pillar with a prize vase upon it; against one leans a naked man with a staff, doubtless intended to represent the spirit of the deceased in whose honor the games are being held.

Games in honor of the dead tended to become periodic. The tomb of the honored warriors became a rallying-point for neighboring people,14 who would convene to see the games. While some of these games were destined never to transcend local importance, others developed into the Panhellenic festivals. As the worship of ancestors became metamorphosed into that of heroes, the games became part of hero cults, which antedated those of the Olympian gods. But as the gods gradually superseded the heroes in the popular religion, they usurped the sanctuaries and the games held there, which had long been a part of the earlier worship. We are not here concerned, however, with the difficult question of the origin of funeral games. They may have taken the place of earlier human sacrifices, which would explain the armed fight at the games of Patroklos and its appearance on archaic vases and sarcophagi; or they may have commemorated early contests of succession, which would explain many mythical contests like the chariot-race between Pelops and Oinomaos for Hippodameia, or the wrestling match between Zeus and Kronos. In any case such games would never have attained the importance which they did attain in Greece, if it had not been for the athletic spirit and love of competition so characteristic of the Hellenic race. Whatever their origin, therefore, there is little doubt that out of them developed the great games of historic Greece. The constant relationship between Greek religion and Greek athletics can be explained in no other way.76

By the beginning of the sixth century B. C. the athletic spirit displayed in the Homeric poems had given rise to the four national festivals—at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, and on the Isthmus. On these four, many lesser games were modeled.77 The origin of all these, as we have already remarked, is lost in a mass of legend. The myths of the origin of Olympia are particularly conflicting. We are practically certain, however, that Olympia as a sanctuary preceded the advent of the Achæans into the Peloponnesus, and that the foundation of the games preceded the coming of the Dorians, but was probably later than that of the Achæans. The importance of the games dates from the time after the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus, when the warring peoples finally became pacified.78 For centuries Olympia was over15shadowed by Delphi and the Ionian festival on Delos. The importance of the latter festival in the eighth and seventh centuries B. C. is shown by the Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo. Only by the beginning of the seventh century had Olympia begun to gain its prestige. The pre-Dorian Pisatai, in whose territory the sanctuary was situated, probably controlled it early. The Dorian allies, the Eleans, whom legend had King Oxylos lead into the Peloponnesus from Aitolia,79 tried to wrest this control from the Pisatai, who, however, aided by religious reverence for the sanctuary, were able to maintain their rights. On account of the conflict the games languished, until finally a truce was made by the two factions and the games were re-established under their common management. This work was ascribed to Iphitos and Kleosthenes, kings respectively of Elis and Pisa, and to Lykourgos of Sparta.80 The dual control was not successful, as the jealous Pisatai constantly tried to regain their old honor; but the Eleans, supported by the Spartans, prevailed and finally, after the Persian wars, destroyed Pisa and the other revolting cities of Triphylia and henceforth remained in sole control. The restoration of the games under Iphitos and his colleagues took place in 776 B. C., from which date the festival was celebrated every fourth year, until it was finally abolished by the Roman emperor Theodosius at the end of the fourth century A. D. In 776 Koroibos of Elis won the foot-race and this was the first dated Olympiad in the Olympian register,81 and from it, as Pausanias says,82 the unbroken tradition of the Olympiads began. This history of Olympia is very different from the orthodox mythical story told by Pausanias and Strabo and based on the “ancient writings of the Eleans.”83 According to it the games were originally instituted by the Eleans under Oxylos and refounded by Iphitos, his descendant, together with Lykourgos, still under the management of the Eleans. In Ol. 8 the Pisatans invoked the aid of the Argive king Pheidon and dispossessed16 the Eleans, but they lost the control of Olympia in the next Olympiad. In Ol. 28 Elis, during a war with Dyme, allowed the Pisatans to celebrate the games. Six Olympiads later the king of Pisa came to Olympia with an army and took charge. The story leaves the Pisatans in control from about Olympiads 30 to 51, but some time between Ols. 48 and 52 the Eleans defeated Pisa and destroyed it, and henceforth controlled the games. Such a story was manifestly a contrivance by the later priests of Elis to justify their control of the games through a prior claim. It is contradicted by all the evidence.84 The antiquity of Olympia is known to us from the results of excavations and from its religious history. The latest excavations on the site have disclosed the remains of six prehistoric buildings with apsidal endings, below the geometric stratum, upon the site of what used to be considered the remnants of the great altar of Zeus.85 Such an inference is borne out by many primitive features in the religious history of the sanctuary. The altar of Kronos on the hill to the north of the Altis was earlier than that of Zeus; an earth altar antedated that of Zeus, while a survival of the earlier worship of the powers of the underworld is seen in the custom, lasting through later centuries, of allowing only one woman, the priestess of Demeter Chamyne, to witness the games. We also know that the worship of the Pelasgian Hera antedated that of the Hellenic Zeus; her temple, the Heraion, is the most ancient of which the foundations still stand, a temple built of stone, wood, and sun-dried bricks, whose origin is to be referred to the tenth, if not to the eleventh, century B. C.86 We have already remarked that the worship of the hero Pelops preceded that of the god Zeus.87 All such indications attest the high antiquity of Olympia. That it is not mentioned in Homer, while Delphi and Dodona are, only proves that in the poet’s time it was still merely a local shrine. Not until the beginning of the sixth century B. C. did it attain the distinction, which it retained ever afterwards, of being the foremost national festival of Hellas.88

The periodical celebration of the three other national festivals was not dated—except in legend—before the early years of the sixth century B. C., though local festivals must have existed also on these sites long before.89 The old music festival at Delphi, which finally was17 held every eight years,90 was changed in 586 B. C., in consequence of the Sacred War,91 into a Panhellenic festival celebrated thereafter every four years (pentaëteris). It was under the presidency of the Amphiktyonic League, which introduced athletic and equestrian events copied from those at Olympia92 and replaced the older money prizes with the simple bay wreath. About the same time the Nemean and Isthmian games were instituted. The local games at Nemea, said to have been founded by Adrastos in honor of a child, were reorganized some time before 573 B. C., the first Nemead.93 Thereafter they were celebrated every two years, in the second and fourth of the corresponding Olympiads.94 They were administered in honor of Zeus by the small town of Kleonai under Argive influence. The games were transferred to Argos some time between 460 B. C. and the close of the third century B. C. Centuries later, Hadrian revived the prestige of the games at Argos. The games held on the Isthmus also originated as an old local festival, which was revived in 586 or 582 B. C. We are not sure whether they were refounded in Poseidon’s honor by Periandros or after the death of Psammetichos in commemoration of the ending of the tyranny at Corinth. The geographical location of Corinth, the meeting-place of East and West, involved it in many wars, and therefore the Isthmian games never attained the prestige of the other national festivals; they were held every two years in the spring of the second and fourth years of the corresponding Olympiads and were administered by Corinth.95

Besides the four national games, many Greek cities had purely local ones, some of which originated in prehistoric days in honor of hero cults, while others were founded at historical dates. Athens was particularly favored in having many such local festivals. The most important of these were the Panathenaic games in honor of Athena, which developed from earlier annual Athenaia or Panathenaia. The festival was remodeled, or perhaps founded, just before Peisistratos seized the tyranny (561–560 B. C.), possibly by Solon, who died 560–559 B. C. The name certainly points to the unity of Athens promoted by18 Solon, if not to the earlier unification of the village communities of Attika ascribed to Theseus. In any case, under Peisistratos it became something more than a local festival, as the recitation of Homer became a feature of it. Following the games at Delphi and Olympia, the Great Panathenaia were held every four years (the third year of each Olympiad) in the month of Hekatombaion (July), while the more ancient annual festival continued yearly under the name of the Little Panathenaia. There were musical, literary, and athletic contests. The central feature of the festival was the procession which ascended from the lower city to the Parthenon on the Akropolis to offer the goddess a robe woven by noble Athenian maidens and matrons.96 This procession is known to us in detail from the great Parthenon frieze. The Theseia exemplify a festival whose origin can be definitely dated. Kimon, the son of the hero of Marathon, in 469 B. C., discovered the supposed bones of the national hero Theseus on the island of Skyros. The Delphic oracle counseled the Athenians to place them in an honorable resting-place. Perhaps there was a legend that the hero was buried on Skyros; in any case a grave was found there which contained the corpse of a warrior of great size, and this was brought back to Athens as the actual remains of Theseus. Thereafter an annual festival was celebrated by the Athenian epheboi, comprising military contests and athletic events—stade, dolichos, and diaulos running races, wrestling, boxing, pankration, hoplite running, etc. It began on the sixth of Pyanepsion (October), and was followed by the Epitaphia, a funeral festival in honor of national heroes and youths who had fallen fighting for Athens.97 Athletic games were held at the Herakleia in honor of Herakles at Marathon in the month of Metageitnion, and had attained great popularity by the time of Pindar.98 The Eleusinia, in honor of Demeter, took place annually in Athens in the month of Boëdromion, when horse-races and musical and other contests were held. This Attic festival claimed a greater antiquity even than Olympia. The great national festivals encouraged these smaller local ones, so that they attracted competitors from the whole Greek world.

The prizes which were offered at the early games in Greece were uniformly articles of value. Their value, however, was regarded not so much in the light of rewards to the victors as proofs of the generous19 spirit of the holders of the games, who thereby celebrated the dead in whose honor the contest was held. In Homer’s account of the funeral games of Patroklos, each contestant, whether victorious or not, received a prize. In one case a prize was given where the contest was not held. In the chariot-race five prizes were offered: for the winner a slave girl and a tripod; for the second best a six-year-old mare in foal; for the third a cauldron; for the fourth two talents of gold; and for the last a two-handled cup.99 For the wrestling match the winner received a tripod worth twelve oxen, while the vanquished received a skilled slave woman worth four oxen.100 For the boxing match a mule was the first prize and a two-handled cup the second.101 For the foot-race a silver bowl of Sidonian make, an ox, and half a talent of gold were the prizes.102

Hesiod records his winning a tripod for a victory gained in singing at the games of Amphidamas at Chalkis.103 Tripods were the commonest prizes at all early games and it was not till later that they became connected especially with Apollo’s worship. They were presented for all sorts of contests, for chariot-racing,104 horse-racing,105 the foot-race,106 boxing,107 and wrestling.108 They were presented at various games in honor of different gods and heroes: e. g., those in honor of Apollo at the Triopia109 and Panionia of Mykale;110 of Dionysos at Athens and Rhodes;111 of Herakles at the Herakleia of Thebes and elsewhere;112 of Pelias;113 of Patroklos.114 They were kept in temples dedicated to various gods: e. g., in those of Apollo at Delphi, at Amyklai,115 and on Delos,116 at the Ptoian sanctuary117 and in the Ismenion at Thebes;118 in the temples of Zeus at Olympia and Dodona;119 of Herakles at Thebes;120 at the Hierothesion in Messene,121 etc. Later, because it served the Pythian priestess, the tripod became a part of the Apolline cult and the special attribute of that god.122 Gold and silver vessels and articles of bronze were everywhere used as prizes. In early days bronze was very valuable. Pindar proves20 this for games held in Achaia and Arkadia;123 and it continued to be used in later times, as, e. g., at the Panathenaia, where a hydria of bronze was a prize in the torch-race.124 At the lesser games all sorts of articles were offered, merely for their value. Thus a shield was offered at the Argive Heraia,125 a bowl at the games in honor of Aiakos on Aegina,126 silver cups at the Marathonian Herakleia127 and at the Sikyonian Pythia,128 a cloak at Pellene,129 apparently a cuirass at Argos,130 and jars of oil from sacred trees at the Panathenaia.131 A kettle is mentioned in the Anthology;132 an inscribed cauldron from Cumae, which was a prize at the games there in honor of Onomastos, is in the British Museum,133 while measures of barley and corn were prizes at the Eleusinia.134 While presents of value continued to be given at the local games,135 a simple wreath of leaves gradually came to be the prize offered the victor at the great national festivals. Pausanias136 says that this was composed of wild olive (κότινος) at Olympia, of laurel (δάφνη) at Delphi, of pine (πίτυς) at the Isthmus, and of celery (σέλινον) at Nemea. Phlegon says that the olive wreath was first used by Iphitos in Ol. 7 ( = 752 B. C.), when it was given to the Messenian runner Daïkles,137 and that for the preceding Olympiads there was no crown.138 Probably before that date tripods and other articles of value were the prizes at Olympia, as we know they were elsewhere. Pausanias says that the wild olive came from the land of the Hyperboreans.139 Pindar calls it merely olive (ἐλαία), and not wild olive.140 The Athenian tradition was that the olive which Herakles planted at Olympia was a shoot of a sacred tree which grew on the banks of the Ilissos in Attica.141 Phlegon also says that the first crown came from Attika. In later days the Olympic wreaths were cut from the “Olive of the Faircrown”;142 its branches were cut with a golden sickle by a boy whose parents must be living;143 it grew at Olympia in a21 spot near the so-called Pantheion,144 which was probably a grove behind the temple of Zeus.145 The laurel prize at the Pythian games replaced the older articles of value or money in 582 B. C.146 It came from Tempe and was plucked by a boy whose parents must be living.147 The wreath is seen on late Delphian coins of the imperial age.148 Lucian also states that apples were given as prizes at Delphi.149 Wild celery was the prize at the Isthmus in the time of Pindar.150 It was dried or withered to differentiate it from the fresh celery used at Nemea.151 Later writers say that the wreath was of the leaves of the pine,152 which was the tree sacred to Poseidon. Probably pine leaves composed the older wreath, a practice certainly revived again in later Roman imperial days;153 for while on coins of Augustus and Nero celery is represented, those of Antoninus Pius and Lucius Verus show pine.154 A row of pine trees lined the approach to Poseidon’s sanctuary.155 The prize at Nemea was celery and not parsley, as many wrongly interpret the wreath appearing on Selinuntian coins.156 Pausanias also states that at most Greek games a palm wreath was placed in the victor’s right hand.157 The palm as a symbol of victory occurs first toward the end of the fifth century B. C.158

Just as soldiers on returning from successful campaigns might dedicate their spoils of victory, victors in athletic contests might consecrate to the gods their prizes. In the Homeric poems we have no certain evidence of such a custom. A Delphic tripod was ascribed to Diomedes and possibly this was a prize won at the funeral games in honor of Patroklos.159 The first literary example of such a dedication of which we are certain is the prize tripod dedicated to the Helikonian Muses by22 Hesiod.160 Frequently such dedications were tripods; thus a Pythian tripod was dedicated to Herakles at Thebes by the Arkadian musician Echembrotos in 586 B. C.;161 a tripod was dedicated in the sixth century B. C. or perhaps earlier at Athens for some acrobatic or juggling trick;162 a victorious boxer dedicated one at Thebes.163 It became customary by the fifth century B. C. for victors at the Triopia to offer prize tripods to Apollo.164 Tripods or fragments of them have been found at Olympia165 and elsewhere. Many other objects were also offered.166 Sometimes a victor would dedicate the object by which he won his victory instead of his prize, just as a soldier might dedicate his arms instead of his spoils of war. Certain types of victors, e. g., those especially in running, the race in armor, singing, etc., would be excluded from making such dedications owing to the nature of the contest. Pausanias167 tells us, for instance, that twenty-five bronze shields were kept in the temple of Zeus at Olympia for the use of hoplite runners, which shows that these runners did not use all at least of their own armor. In some cases diskoi were lent to pentathletes. Pausanias168 says that three quoits were kept in the treasury of the Sikyonians at Olympia for use in the pentathlon. There are, however, as we shall see, instances of quoits being dedicated by victors. The pentathlete might consecrate either his diskos, javelin, or jumping-weights.169 Perhaps the huge red-sandstone block of the sixth century B. C., weighing 315 pounds and inscribed with the name and feat of Bybon, may have been such an ex voto,170 since Pausanias says the contestants at Olympia originally used stones for quoits.171 A stone, weighing 480 kilograms (about 1,056 pounds), was found on Thera, inscribed “Eumastos raised me from the ground.”172 Poplios (Publius) Asklepiades, who won the pentathlon at Olympia in the third century A. D.,173 dedicated a bronze diskos to Zeus, showing the old custom was kept up till late. Many bronze diskoi have been found in the excavations of the Altis.174 We have instances of the dedication of jumping-weights (ἁλτῆρες).175 Examples of dedicated strigils have been found at Olympia.176 Torches were dedicated at Athens.177 Actors dedicated their masks,178 while23 some of the ivory lyres and plectra conserved in the Parthenon were probably offerings of musical victors at the Panathenaic games.179 Equestrian victors dedicated their chariots, or models of them, and their horses. These models might be large or small. We have notices of large chariot-groups at Olympia of Kleosthenes,180 Gelo,181 and Hiero of Syracuse;182 of small ones of Euagoras,183 Glaukon,184 Kyniska,185 and Polypeithes.186 A large number of miniature models of chariots and horses in bronze and terra cotta have been found at Olympia,187 some of which have no wheels. Many very thin foil wheels have also been found.188 Furtwaengler189 believes that these wheels are conventional reductions of whole chariots. Some of them are cast190 and they are generally four-spoked, but two mule-car wheels are five-spoked.191 These various models are so common and of so little value, however, that they may have had nothing to do with chariot-races.192

Many great artists, e. g., Kalamis,193 Euphranor,194 and Lysippos,195 are known to have made chariot-groups and it is reasonable to assume that some of these were votive in character. Besides dedications of chariot victors, we find at Olympia also those of horse-racers. These were similarly both large and small, with and without jockeys. Thus jockeys on horseback by Kalamis stood on either side of Hiero’s chariot.196 Krokon of Eretria, who won the horse-race at the end of the sixth century B. C.,197 dedicated a small bronze horse at Olympia.198 The monument of the sons of Pheidolas of Corinth,199 representing a horse on the top of a column, must have been small. Pausanias, in mentioning the two statues24 of the Spartan chariot victor Lykinos by Myron,200 says that one of the horses which the victor brought to Olympia was not allowed to enter the foal-race, and therefore was entered in the horse-race. This story was probably told Pausanias by the Olympia guides and may have arisen from the smallness of one of the horses in the monument.201 The sculptors Kalamis,202 Kanachos,203 and Hegias204 are known to have made groups representing horse-victors, and Pliny derives the whole genre of equestrian monuments from the Greeks.205 Great numbers of small figures of horses and riders have been excavated at Olympia206 and elsewhere.207 Equestrian groups of various kinds were also known outside Olympia. Thus Arkesilas IV of Kyrene offered a chariot model at Delphi for a victory in 466 B. C;208 the base found on the Akropolis of Athens and inscribed with the name Onatas probably upheld such a group;209 the equestrian statue of Isokrates on the Akropolis was also probably a dedication for a victory in horse-racing.210

Not only did equestrian contests and the pentathlon give the victor an opportunity to represent the means by which he gained his prize, but any victorious athlete could set up a statue of himself in his own honor, which might either represent him in the characteristic attitude of his contest (perhaps with its distinguishing attributes) or might be a simple monument showing neither action nor attribute. This brings us to the main subject of the present work—the discussion of the different types of victor statues at Olympia.

Of all the national games of Hellas, our knowledge of Olympia is fullest, both because of the detailed account of its monuments by Pausanias, who visited Elis in 173 or 174 A. D., and because of the systematic excavation of the Altis by the German government in the seventies of the last century. We shall not be concerned, except incidentally, with monuments set up at the other national games, which are known to us in no such degree as those of Olympia. The interest of Pausanias in Delphi was almost entirely of a religious nature, and the lesser renown of both Nemea and the Isthmus caused him to treat their topography and monuments in a most summary manner. Though the Pythia as a festival were second only to the Olympia, as an athletic meet25 they scarcely equalled the Nemea or the Isthmia. From the earliest days music was the chief competition at Delphi; the oldest and most important event in the musical programme there all through Greek history was the Hymn to Apollo, sung with the accompaniment of the lyre, in which was celebrated the victory of the god over the Python. By 582 B. C. singing to the flute (αὐλῳδία) was also added, but was almost immediately discontinued. In the same year a flute solo was also inaugurated.211 In 558 B. C. lyre-playing was introduced. Under the Roman Empire poetic and dramatic competitions were prominent, but the date of their introduction is not known. Pliny mentions contests in painting.212 After music the equestrian contests were the most important, even rivalling those of Olympia. By 586 B. C., as we have seen, athletic events were inaugurated. The athletic importance of the games on the Isthmus was inferior to that of Olympia and its religious character to that of Delphi, though these games were the most frequented of all the great national ones, because of the accessibility of the place and its nearness to Corinth.213 The inferiority of the athletics here may be judged by the fact that Solon assigned only 100 drachmæ to an Isthmian victor, while 500 were given to one from Olympia.214 We have little knowledge of these games through the great period of Greek history, only a reference here and there to a victor.215 We know much more of them under the Romans, when the prosperity of Corinth was revived; at that time, however, there was little true interest in athletics. Corinth then spent great sums in procuring wild animals for the arena.216 Excavations have added little to our knowledge of these games.217 The interest at Nemea in athletics was second only to that of Olympia.218 While music was the most important feature at Delphi, and the Isthmian games were attended chiefly for the attractions of the neighboring Corinth, there was nothing but the games themselves to attract people to the retired valley of Nemea. Athletic contests were the only feature here until late times and great attention was paid to those of boys.219 The records of the victors at these games are very scanty.220

26

At all these three games victor monuments were set up, though in no such profusion as at Olympia.

Of those set up at Delphi, Pausanias shows his disdain by these words: “As to the athletes and musical competitors who have attracted no notice from the majority of mankind, I hold them hardly worthy of attention; and the athletes who have made themselves a name have already been set forth by me in my account of Elis.”221 He mentions the statue of only one victor, that of Phaÿllos, who won at Delphi twice in the pentathlon and once in running. A score or more of inscriptions in honor of these men whom Pausanias treats so contemptuously have been recovered. Some of them record offerings dedicated for victories, though most of them record decrees passed by the Delphians, who voted the victors not only wreaths of laurel, but seats of honor at the games and other privileges.222 Victor statues seem to have stood outside the sacred precinct at Delphi and not within it, as at Olympia, since Pausanias mentions the sanctuary after mentioning the statue of Phaÿllos.223 Other Greek and Roman writers give us stray hints of these statues. Thus, Pliny mentions a statue at Delphi of a pancratiastes by Pythagoras of Rhegion224 and says that Myron made Delphicos pentathlos, pancratiastas.225 A scholion on Pindar226 mentions the helmeted statue of the hoplite runner Telisikrates as standing in the precinct. Justin, in speaking of the Gallic invasion of Delphi, mentions statuasque cum quadrigis, quarum ingens copia procul visebatur, thus referring to large chariot-groups, which would be very sightly on the slope of the precinct.227 An idea of the beauty of such groups may be gathered from the remnant of one, the bronze Charioteer discovered by the French excavators, which is one of the most important archaic sculptures from antiquity (Fig. 66).228

We know from the words of Pausanias229 that victor statues also stood on the Isthmus, and we should assume the same for Nemea, though in both places they must have been few in number. At the various local games it was customary for victors to erect statues of themselves. Thus we know of such dedications at the Bœotian games in Thebes,230 at the Didymaion,231 and at the Lykaia in Arkadia.232 Many such victor statues decorated different localities of Athens. Thus, on the27 Akropolis, we know of the statues of the hoplite runner Epicharinos,233 of the pancratiast Hermolykos,234 of a helmeted man by the sculptor Kleoitas,235 of a παῖς κελητίζων representing Isokrates;236 in the Prytaneion, of the statue of the pancratiast Autolykos.237 Lykourgos, the rhetor, mentions victor statues in the agora of Athens.238 Some of these Athenian statues may have been those of Olympic victors;239 and of victors certainly Olympic we know of the statues of Kallias the pancratiast,240 of the charioteer Hermokrates,241 and of the bronze mares of Kimon.242 Of the statues of Nemean victors at Athens we know of that of Hegestratos, victor in an unknown contest.243 Of Isthmian victors there we know of that of the pancratiast Diophanes,244 and of other examples.245 We have inscriptional record of the statues at Athens of a boy victor at the Panathenaia and the Thargelia in chariot-racing,246 of a victor at the Pythia, Isthmia, Nemea, and the Panathenaia,247 of one at the Nemea and Herakleia at Thebes,248 of one at the Eleusinia,249 of one at the Panathenaia and Dionysia,250 and of others at several games.251

The erection of a statue in the Altis at Olympia was an honor which the Elean officers in charge of the games252 gave to victors to glorify their victory.253 Pliny, in a well-known passage of the Historia Naturalis,254 says it was customary for all victors to set up statues, while Pausanias255 says not all athletes did this, for “some of those who specially distinguished themselves in the games ... have had no statues.” This apparent contradiction in the statements of the two writers is to be explained, as Dittenberger256 and others have pointed out, on the ground that Pliny states the general privilege extended to the victor, while Pausanias states its practical working out, since the setting up of a statue was an undertaking which would be limited by the early death, poverty, or some other disability of the victorious athlete. The cost of making, transporting, and setting up a statue was considerable, and very often a victor must have been too poor to do it. In such a case he would often be contented to set up merely a statuette or small 28 figure in bronze or marble. Several such bronze figures have been unearthed at Olympia,257 one of which we reproduce in Fig. 2, and we have many examples found outside the Altis: e. g., a group of wrestlers,258 Fig. 2.—Bronze Statuette of a Victor, from Olympia. Museum of Olympia. a boxer,259 and the arm of a quoit-thrower260 from the Athenian Akropolis, an archaic girl runner from Dodona,261 an archaic statuette from Delphi with a loin-cloth,262 a bronze quoit-thrower dedicated in the Kabeirion,263 the Tuebingen bronze hoplite runner264 (Fig. 42), and the statuette of a παῖς κέλης from Dodona.265 We should also mention the great number of statuettes of diskos-throwers in modern museums.266 Boy victors especially would use the less expensive marble for such statuettes and we have the remnants of many such found in the excavations of the Altis.267 Pausanias mentions several monuments which were less than life-size, e. g., a horse among the offerings of Phormis, which he says was “much inferior in size and shape to all other statues of horses in the Altis,”268 and the equestrian monuments already discussed. Even reliefs and paintings, in some cases, were offered in lieu of larger monuments, not only for reasons of economy, but also because they gave a better representation of the contest. This custom was common at the29 lesser games, especially at the Panathenaia.269 Pausanias mentions painted iconic reliefs vowed by girl runners at the games in honor of Hera at Olympia.270 On an Attic vase in Munich a victor is represented as holding an iconic votive pinax in his hands.271 Pausanias speaks of a painting by Timainetos at Athens, which represented a boy carrying hydriæ,272 and one of a wrestler by the same artist in the Pinakotheke on the Akropolis. Pliny mentions paintings, the works of great masters, representing victors: thus the currentes quadrigae by the elder Aristeides of Thebes,273 a victor certamine gymnico palmam tenens by Eupompos,274 an athlete by Zeuxis,275 the victor Aratos with a trophy by Leontiskos,276 an athlete by Protogenes,277 two hoplite runners by Parrhasios,278 a luctator tubicenque by Antidotos and a warrior by the same artist, in Athens,279 which represented a man fighting with a shield, and a man anointing himself, the work of the painter Theoros.280

Apparently the Hellanodikai allowed but one statue for each victory. Aischines the Elean had two victories and two statues.281 Dikon of Kaulonia and Syracuse had three victories and three statues.282 The Spartan Lykinos had two victories and two statues by Myron, but we have already said that the second statue was probably that of his charioteer, the two forming part of an equestrian group.283 Kapros of Elis won two victories and had as many statues.284 On the other hand Troilos of Elis, who won in two events, had only one statue.285 Similarly Arkesilaos of Sparta had two victories in the chariot-race and only one statue.286 Xenombrotos of Cos, who appears to have won once only, had, however, two monuments, one mentioned by Pausanias and the other known to us from the recovered inscription.287 But this last case seems to be the only known exception.

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When the victor was unable to set up his monument, whether because of youth, poverty, early death, or other reason, sometimes the privilege was utilized by a relative, a friend, or by his native city. In any case it was a private affair with which the Elean officials had no concern. We have examples, consequently, of the statue being set up by the son,288 father (especially in recovered inscriptions after the time of Augustus),289 mother,290 and brother;291 also several examples of statues reared in honor of athletes by fellow citizens.292 There are cases in which the trainer set up the statue.293 Frequently the native city performed the duty, dedicating the statue either at Olympia or in the victor’s city. Thus Oibotas, who won the stade-race in Ol. 6 ( = 756 B. C.), had a statue at Olympia which was erected by the Achæan state out of deference to a command of the Delphian oracle in Ol. 80 ( = 460 B. C.).294 The statue of Agenor, by Polykleitos the Younger, a boy wrestler from Thebes, was dedicated by the confederacy of Phokis, because his father was a public friend of the nation.295 The boy runner Herodotos of Klazomenai had a statue erected by his native town at Olympia because he was the first victor from there.296 Philinos of Kos had a statue set up by the people of Kos at Olympia “because of glory won,” for he was victor five times in running at Olympia, four at Delphi, four at Nemea, and eleven at the Isthmus.297 Hermesianax of Kolophon had a statue at Olympia erected by his city.298 The pancratiast31 Promachos of Pellene had two statues erected to him by his fellow citizens, one at Olympia, the other in Pellene.299 We know of three state dedications of statues at Olympia from inscriptions, those of Aristophon of Athens,300 of Epitherses of Erythrai,301 and of Polyxenos by the people of Zakynthos.302 Lichas of Sparta, at a date when the Spartans were excluded from the games, entered his chariot in the name of the Theban people, and Pausanias says that his victory was so entered on the Elean register.303 We learn from the OxyrhynchusPapyri that the public horse of the Argives won at Olympia in Ol. 75 ( = 480 B. C.) and the public chariot in Ol. 77 ( = 472 B. C.).304 In these latter two cases the public was directly interested, and had there been monuments erected to commemorate the victories they would naturally have been set up by the state.

It has been wrongly assumed that monuments of boy victors were dedicated in the name of their parents or relatives.305 On the contrary, we have examples dating back to the fifth century B. C. of boys setting up statues at Olympia. Thus the inscription from the base of the statue of Tellon, who won in the boys’ boxing match in Ol. 77 ( = 472 B. C.), states that he dedicated his own statue.306 Pausanias says that the Eleans allowed the boy wrestler Kratinos from Aigeira to erect a statue of his trainer.307 Of course the boy might need assistance in the undertaking, but this again was no concern of the Elean officials, who granted the privilege to the victor and not to his relatives. Usually the statue of a victor was erected soon after the victory. We have some examples of the statue being erected immediately after the victory, especially in the case of men victors. Thus Pausanias says that the victor Eubotas of Kyrene, in consequence of a Libyan oracle foretelling his victory in the foot-race, had his statue made before coming to Olympia and erected it “the very day on which he was proclaimed victor.”308 The famous Milo of Kroton spectacularly carried his statue into the Altis on his back before he entered the contest.309 There are32 also examples of statues being erected long after the victory, sometimes centuries later. We have already mentioned that a statue was erected to Oibotas in Ol. 80, though his victory was won in Ol. 6. Chionis, who won in running races in Ols. 28–31 ( = 668–656 B. C.) had a statue by Myron erected to his memory Ol. 77 or 78 ( = 472 or 468 B. C.).310 Cheilon of Patrai, twice victor in wrestling between Ols. (?) 103 and 115 ( = 368 and 320 B. C.), had his statue set up after his death.311 Polydamas of Skotoussa won his victory in the pankration in Ol. 93 ( = 408 B. C.), but his statue by Lysippos could not have been erected until many years later.312 Glaukos, who won the boys’ boxing-match in Ol. 65 ( = 520 B. C.), had a statue by the Aeginetan sculptor Glaukias much later.313 In the case of boy victors, the time between boyhood and coming of age was often so short that in many cases we may assume that the statue was set up some time after the victory.314

Since the victor was deemed the representative of the state, he often received a more substantial reward than a statue erected at the cost of his fellow citizens. The herald, in proclaiming his victory, proclaimed also the name of his town, which thus shared in his success. At Athens it was customary for a victor at the great games to receive a reward of money. To encourage an interest in athletics there, Solon established money prizes for victorious athletes. We have already said that 100 drachmæ were given to a victor at the Isthmus, while 500 were allotted to one at Olympia. Solon further ordained that victors should eat at the Prytaneion at the public expense.315 Probably other Greek states followed the Athenian custom. We know from an33 inscription that the Panathenaic victors in the stade-race received 50 amphoræ of oil, the pancratiast 40, and others 30.316 Later, in Rome, victors had special privileges granted them, including maintenance at the public expense, a privilege which Mæcenas advised the emperor Augustus to limit to victors at Olympia, Delphi, and Rome.317 Augustus in other ways enlarged the privileges of athletes.318 When we consider the intimate connection between religion and athletics and the Panhellenic fame of a victor at the great games, we can easily understand the indignation of the native town when its athletes did anything dishonorable. Sometimes a victor was bribed to appear as the citizen of some other state. Thus Astylos of Kroton, who won in running races in Ols. 73–76 ( = 488–476 B. C.), had himself proclaimed in his last two contests a Syracusan to please King Hiero. The citizens of his native town burned his house and pulled down his statue, which had been placed there in the temple of Hera.319 The Cretan Sotades, who won the long running race in Ol. 99 ( = 384 B. C.), was bribed at the next Olympiad by the city of Ephesos to proclaim himself an Ephesian, and was in consequence exiled.320 Dikon, a victor in running races at the beginning of the fourth century B. C., proclaimed himself first a citizen of Kaulonia, but later, “for a sum of money,” entered the men’s contest as a Syracusan.321 Sometimes such attempts at bribery proved unsuccessful. Thus the father of the boy boxer Antipatros of Miletos, who won in Ol. 98 ( = 388 B. C.), accepted a bribe from some Syracusans, who were bringing an offering to Olympia from Dionysios, to let the boy be proclaimed a Syracusan. But the boy himself refused the bribe and had inscribed on his statue by the younger Polykleitos that he was a Milesian, the first Ionian to dedicate a statue at Olympia.322 The Spartan chariot victor Lichas has already been mentioned as having entered his chariot in the name of Thebes. The reason was that at the time the Spartans were excluded from entering the games at Olympia. He won, and in his excitement tied a ribbon on his charioteer with his own hands, thereby showing that the horses belonged to him and not to Thebes. For this infraction of the rules he, though an aged man, was punished by the umpires by scourging.323 A more disgraceful act was selling out, of which we have two examples at Olympia. The Thessalian Eupolos bribed his three adversaries in boxing to let him win. All four were fined and from the money six bronze statues of Zeus, known as Zanes, were erected at the entrance to the stadion, inscribed with elegiac verses which warned future athletes against repeating such34 attempts.324 More than fifty years later Kallippos, a pentathlete of Athens, bribed his opponents and, being detected, all were fined and from the money, finally collected from the recalcitrant Athenians through the influence of the oracle at Delphi, six more Zanes were erected.325 Straton (or Stratonikos), of Alexandria, won in wrestling and the pankration on the same day in Ol. 178 ( = 68 B. C.). In the wrestling match he had two adversaries, Eudelos and Philostratos of Rhodes. The latter had bribed Eudelos to sell out and, being detected, had to pay a fine. Out of this money another Zan was set up and still another at the cost of the Rhodians.326 In Ol. 192 ( = 12 B. C.) and in Ol. 226 ( = 125 A. D.), we hear of fines for such corruption out of which additional Zanes were erected.327 In Ol. 201 ( = 25 A. D.) Sarapion, a pancratiast from Alexandria, became so afraid of his antagonist that he fled the day before the contest and was fined—the only case recorded of an athlete being fined for cowardice at Olympia.328 In Ol. 218 ( = 93 A. D.) another Alexandrine, named Apollonios, was fined for arriving too late for the games at Olympia. His excuse of being detained by winds was found to be false, and it was discovered that he had been making money on the games in Ionia.329

Cases of bribery were known at other games. A third-century B. C. inscription from Epidauros records how three athletes were fined one thousand staters each διὰ τὸ φθείρειν τοὺς ἀγῶνας.330 The venality of Isthmian victors is shown by the account of a competitor who promised a rival three thousand drachmæ to let him win and then, on winning on his merits, refused to pay, though the defeated contestant swore on the altar of Poseidon that he had been promised the amount.331 The emperor Nero, in order to win in singing at the Isthmus, had to resort to force. A certain Epeirote singer refused to withdraw unless he received ten talents. Nero, to save himself from defeat, sent a band of men who pummelled his antagonist so that he could not sing.332

Often the home-coming of a victor at one of the national games was the occasion for a public celebration. Sometimes the whole city turned out to meet the hero.333 The victory was recorded on pillars, and poets composed songs in its honor which were sung by choruses of girls and boys. Sometimes a statue was set up in the agora or on the Akropolis.35 In the cities of Magna Græcia and Sicily such adulation of Olympic victors became at times very extravagant. Thus Exainetos of Akragas, who won the stade-race in Ols. 91 and 92 ( = 416–412 B. C.), was brought into the city in a four-horse chariot drawn by his fellow-citizens, and was escorted by 300 men in two-horse chariots drawn by white horses.334 It is also in the West that we first hear of victors being worshipped as heroes or gods, though the custom soon took root in Greece. It was but natural to account for the great strength of famous athletes by assigning to them divine origin and by worshipping them after death.335 Philippos of Kroton, who won in an unknown contest about Ol. 65 ( = 520 B. C.), had a heroön erected in his honor by the people of Egesta in Sicily on account of his beauty, in which he surpassed all his contemporaries, and he was worshipped after his death as a hero.336 The famous boxer Euthymos of Lokroi Epizephyrioi, who won in Ols. 74, 76, 77 ( = 484, 476, 472 B. C.), was worshipped even before his death and was looked upon as the son of no earthly father, but of the river-god Kaikinos.337 Fabulous feats were ascribed to him, e. g., the expulsion of the Black Spirit from Temessa.338 During and after his lifetime sacrifices were offered in his honor.339 The equally famed boxer and pancratiast Theagenes of Thasos, the opponent of Euthymos, who won in Ols. 75 and 76 ( = 480 and 476 B. C.), was heroized after his death.340 The Thasians maintained that his father was Herakles.341 The boxer Kleomedes of Astypalaia, who won in Ol. 71 ( = 496 B. C.), was honored as a hero after death.342 Having killed Ikkos, his opponent, he became crazed with grief. Pausanias recounts his curious death.343 The worship of such athletes was supposed to bestow physical strength on their adorers and consequently statues were erected to them in many places and were thought to be able to cure illnesses.344 The life of a successful36 athlete was looked upon as especially happy. In Aristophanes’ Plutus, Hermes deserts the gods and serves Plutus “the presider over contests,” thinking no service more profitable to the god of wealth than holding contests in music and athletics.345 Plato thought an Olympic victor’s life was the most blessed of all from a material point of view.346 In the myth of Er the soul of Atalanta chooses the body of an athlete, on seeing “the great rewards bestowed on an athlete.”347 The great Rhodian pancratiast Dorieus, who won in Ols. 87, 88, 89 ( = 432–424 B. C.), was taken prisoner by Athens during the Peloponnesian war, but was freed because of his exploits at Olympia.348 The honor in which a victor was held may also be judged by the story of the Spartan ephor Cheilon, who died of joy while embracing his victorious son Damagetos.349 To quote from Ernest Gardner: “The extraordinary, almost superhuman honours paid to the victors at the great national contests made them a theme for the sculptor hardly less noble than gods and heroes, and more adapted for the display of his skill, as trained by the observation of those exercises which led to the victory.”350 Some of the greatest artists were employed, and great poets from Simonides of Keos down, including such names as Bacchylides and Pindar, were employed in singing their praises. Although it must be confessed that the majority of the artists of victor statues at Olympia are little known or wholly unknown masters, Pausanias mentions among them such renowned names as Hagelaïdas, Pythagoras, Kalamis, Myron, Polykleitos, Lysippos, and possibly Pheidias. Certain other great names, however, are absent from his lists, e. g., Euphranor, Kresilas, Praxiteles, and Skopas. Such extravagant reverence of Olympic and other victors as we have outlined met, of course, with violent protests all through Greek history, just as the excessive popularity of athletics has in our time. The philosopher Xenophanes of Kolophon, who died 480 B. C., was scandalized at the offering of divine honors to athletes.351 While he denounced the popularity of athletics, Euripides later denounced the professionalism which had begun to creep in after the middle of the fifth century B. C.352 Plato, though a strong advocate of practical physical training for war, was opposed to the vain spirit of competition in the athletics of his day. He complained that professional athletes paid excessive attention to diet, slept their lives away, and were in danger of becoming brutalized.353 The last attack on professional athletics in point of time was made in the second century A. D. by Galen, in his37 Exhortation to the Arts.354 In this essay the eminent physician contended that the athlete was a benefit neither to himself nor to the state. When we study the brutal portraits of prize-fighters on the contemporary mosaics of the Baths of Caracalla at Rome, we can see to what depths the old athletic ideal had sunk, and the justness of his rebuke.355

That chariot and hippic monuments were votive in character can scarcely be doubted. Pausanias distinguishes between gymnic victors and equestrian ones.356 All authorities agree that equestrian monuments were different in origin and character from those of other victors.357 Gardiner believes that if the Olympic games developed out of a single event, it was not the stade-race, but the chariot-race or heavy-armed-race. He shows that the custom of making the stade runner eponymous for the Olympiad is not earlier than the third century B. C., and did not arise from the importance of that event, but from the accident of its coming first on the program and first on the list of victors.358 Equestrian monuments were dedicated at Olympia all through antiquity, from the sixth century B. C. to the second A. D. The oldest was that of the Spartan Euagoras already mentioned, who won in the chariot-race three times in Ols. (?) 58–60 ( = 548–540 B. C.).359 The latest dated example is that of L. Minicius Natalis of Rome, who won in Ol. 227 ( = 129 A. D.).360 Some of the inscriptions pertaining to equestrian groups are in verse,361 while others are in prose.362 Most of them have the usual dedicatory word ἀνέθηκε,363 or the formula Διὶ Ὀλυμπίῳ,364 while others have the word ἔστησε365 and a few have no dedicatory word at all.366

The question arises, then, whether ordinary victor monuments in the Altis were votive in the sense that these equestrian ones were, or merely honors granted to the victors. The crown of wild olive was merely a temporary reward suiting the occasion of the victory. The privilege of setting up a statue was granted in order to perpetuate the fame of that occasion. In a well-known passage Pausanias38 makes a sweeping generalization about monuments at Athens and Olympia.367 He says that all objects on the Akropolis—including statues—were ἀναθήματα or votive offerings, while some of those at Olympia were dedicated to the god, but that the statues of athletes were mere prizes of victory. In another passage368 also, in distinguishing the various sorts of monuments at Olympia, he expressly says that the statues of athletes were not devoted to Zeus, but were marks of honor (ἐν ἄθλου λόγῳ) bestowed on the victors. These statements of the Periegete have given rise to a good deal of fruitless discussion. Furtwaengler follows Pausanias in saying that the right of setting up statues was ein wesentlicher Theil des Siegespreises.369 That such erections at Olympia were considered as high honors is implied by the wording of many of the inscriptions which have been recovered from the bases of the statues. Thus on that of the boxer Euthymos are the words εἰκόνα δ’ ἔστησεν τήνδε βροτοῖς ἐσορᾶν.370 Furtwaengler, therefore, has promulgated the theory that the victor statues at Olympia were in no sense votive, though they were considered to be the property of the god in whose grove they stood. He cites the fact that the inscribed bases of such monuments down to the first century B. C., with the exception of a few metrical epigrams, make no mention of dedications, and that in these exceptions the word ἀνέθηκε was added for metrical reasons,371 while during the same centuries regular votive offerings (ἀναθῆματα) invariably have the word ἀνέθηκε.372 One inscription, that from the base of the statue of Euthymos of Lokroi, is both metrical and in prose;373 but it seems to have been changed later in two places, the second line originally ending in a pentameter, and the third line, with ἀνέθηκε, being added afterwards.374 Also the prose inscription375 referred by Roehl to the39 statue of the wrestler Milo is rejected by Dittenberger. The oldest prose inscription which makes a votive offering out of a victor statue at Olympia is that of Thaliarchos, who won his second victory in boxing some time between 40 and 30 B. C.376 Then follow certain prose inscriptions of imperial times.377 Dittenberger concludes that for four hundred years there is no case of such a dedication.378 From the evidence of the inscriptions from statue bases, therefore, it is clear that the distinction made by Pausanias between honor and victor statues did not hold good in his day, since the words ἀνάθημα and ἀνέθηκε were then used on victor monuments at Olympia, as the inscriptions of the imperial age just cited show, but that it did hold good for centuries before the Roman period. Pausanias must have based his statement, therefore, not on observation, but on the words of some earlier writer.379 Furtwaengler’s reasoning has been followed pretty generally by archæologists.380 While some, however, leave the question in doubt,381 others are opposed to the idea that these statues were not votive. Thus R. Schoell believes that the victor monuments were as truly ἀναθήματα as the olive crowns.382 Reisch, who has discussed the question at length,383 believes, in opposition to the earlier view of Furtwaengler, that everything within the Altis must always ipso facto have been regarded as dedications to the god. This would explain the frequent omission of the name of the god, which would be superfluous, the victor being content with inscribing his own name and the contest in which he was victorious. Even the name of the contest does not always appear.384 Reisch explains the omission of the formula ἀνέθηκε in earlier inscriptions on the ground of epigrammatic brevity.385

The truth must lie somewhere between the extremes represented by the views of Furtwaengler and Reisch. Some athlete statues may have been votive, while others were not. Thus Rouse argues386 that origi40nally all victor statues at Olympia were as truly votive as equestrian groups, and as truly as those athlete statues continued to be, which were dedicated in the victors’ native towns. Those inscribed with ἀνέθηκε at Olympia must have been votive, for we should take the dedicator at his word, instead of believing the formula to be added merely to make the verse scan.387 There is no reason why an athlete should not dedicate a statue of himself, representing himself as forever standing in the presence of the god, as well as a diskos or jumping-weights; for it was customary to make votive offerings representative of the events, and this could be done best by presenting the athlete in a statue which showed the characteristic attitude or the appropriate attributes. Rouse furthermore believes that a change was slowly wrought in the course of centuries, by which the original votive offering became a means of self-glorification. Equestrian victors owed their victories not to themselves, but to their horses, cars, drivers, and jockeys; in such cases the group was a thing apart from the owner. Only seldom did such victors dedicate statues of themselves alone. Even when the victor added a statue of himself to the group, still it was the chariot and not the statue which was emphasized.388 On the other hand the ordinary gymnic victor relied on himself—on his strength, endurance, courage, and other qualities; and in representing the contest the victor himself had to be represented. Consequently, by the fifth century B. C., if not earlier, the statues of athletes had become memorials of personal glory.

A statue was not the only memorial erected in honor of an Olympic victor, though it was by far the commonest. We have already mentioned the bronze inscribed diskos dedicated by the pentathlete P. Asklepiades in the third century A. D.389 A green stone leaping-weight inscribed with the name Κῳδίας appears to have been dedicated by a victor.390 In two cases stelæ were set up in honor of victors.391 A41 curious dedication was a bronze chapel, which the Sikyonian tyrant Myron dedicated to Apollo at Olympia.392 In later days it became part of the treasury of the Sikyonians.393 Outside Olympia various monuments commemorating Olympic victors were set up. These will be discussed in Chapter VIII.

At Olympia, as elsewhere in Greece, statues were set up to men honoris causa. Such statues would be dedicated by admirers, either individuals or states. They were in no sense intended to honor the god, though at Olympia they might be classed as ἀναθήματα, just as victor statues, merely because they were erected in the sacred precinct. They were granted to individuals not as a privilege, as victor statues were, but as free gifts. Dio Chrysostom gives the difference between victor statues—which he classes as ἀναθήματα—and such honor statues in these words: ταῦτα (i. e., victor statues) γάρ ἐστιν ἀναθήματα· αἱ δ’ εἰκόνες τιμαί· κἀκεῖνα (victor statues) δέδοται τοῖς θεοῖς, ταῦτα δὲ (honor statues) τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς ἀνδράσιν οἵπερ εἰσὶν ἔγγιστα αὐτῶν.394 Pliny records that the Athenians inaugurated the custom of a state setting up statues in honor of men at the public expense with the statues of the tyrannicides Harmodios and Aristogeiton by the sculptor Antenor, which were erected in 509 B. C., the year in which the tyrants were expelled.395 He adds that a “refined ambition” led to a universal adoption of the custom and that statues began to adorn public places everywhere and later on even private houses. The custom grew apace in the later history of Greece. Demetrios of Phaleron is said to have had over three hundred statues erected in his honor during his short régime of about a year in Athens. The Diadochoi and the Roman emperors enthusiastically took over the custom. Pliny gives several Roman examples of it.396

At Olympia Pausanias mentions honorary statues erected to thirty-five men for various reasons.397 To several of these men more than one statue was erected.398 The greater number of these statues were erected to kings and princes, to those of Sparta,399 Athens,400 Epeiros,401 Sicily,40242 Macedonia, and Alexander’s Empire.403 One was erected in honor of the philosopher Aristotle,404 one in honor of the rhetorician Gorgias of Leontini,405 one in honor of a hunter,406 another in honor of a flute-player,407 and many others in honor of public and private men. These statues were set up for various reasons. Archidamas III of Sparta had his statues erected to his memory because he was the only Spartan king who died abroad and did not receive a formal burial. Kylon had a statue erected by the Aitolians because he freed the Eleans from the tyranny of Aristotimos.408 Pythes of Abdera was thus honored by his soldiers because of his military prowess.409 Philonides of Crete was, as we learn from the recovered inscription on his statue base, the courier of Alexander the Great.410 Pythokritos was honored for his flute-playing, though he does not appear to have been a victor.411 The Palaians of Kephallenia honored Timoptolis of Elis,412 and the Aitolians honored the Elean Olaidas413 for unknown reasons. At least seven, if not eight, of those thus honored with statues were Eleans. Some of the men who had honor statues were also victors at Olympia, a fact which would appear on the inscribed base. Thus Aratos, the son of Kleinias of Sikyon, the statesman, had a statue erected to him by the Corinthians. This was doubtless an honor statue, though Pausanias also says he was a chariot-victor.414 On the other hand, the statue erected in honor of the pentathlete Stomios was probably a victor monument, though Pausanias says that its inscription records that he was an Elean cavalry general who challenged the enemy to a duel, in which he was slain.415 In some cases it is hard to decide whether the statue is honorary or victor in character. In the course of time honor statues multiplied, while those of athletes decreased. The recovered inscriptions on the latter decrease steadily in the fourth and third centuries B. C., revive again in the second and first, and decrease in the first Christian century. They cease almost entirely after the middle of the second century A. D.

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Plates 2–7 and Figures 3–8.

Only a few insignificant remnants of the forest of victor statues which once stood in the Altis at Olympia were unearthed by the German excavators. Most of these statues already in antiquity had been carried off to Italy,416 while those which escaped the spoliation of the Roman masters of Greece were destroyed at the hands of the invading hordes of barbarians in the early Dark Ages. Consequently only here and there in modern museums can isolated fragments of these originals be discovered, which have accidentally survived the ravages of time and man.

In the almost complete absence of originals, therefore, we depend for our knowledge of them on a variety of sources. In attempting to reconstruct them we have two main sources of information to aid us, the literary and the archæological. To the former belong the many inscriptions found on the statue bases recovered at Olympia, which contain the name and native city of the victor, the athletic contest in which his victory was won, and frequently some account of his former athletic history; epigrams preserved in the Greek anthologies and elsewhere, some of which agree with those inscribed on the statue bases; more or less definite statements of scholiasts and the classical writers in general, especially the detailed account of the monuments of Olympia contained in the fifth and sixth books of the Ἑλλάδος περιήγησις of Pausanias, who visited the Altis during the reign of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus,417 and also the somewhat systematic treatment of Greek sculptors and their works in the elder Pliny’s chapters on the History of Art.418 To the latter source belong the remnants of statues in bronze and marble found at Olympia, as well as the recovered bases, on many of which the extant footmarks enable us to recover the pose of the44 statues which formerly stood upon them. Finally, in reconstructing these athlete statues, an intimate knowledge of Greek sculpture in all its phases and periods is essential. Here, as in the general study of Greek sculpture, where the destruction of originals has been almost complete, we are largely dependent on Roman copies which were executed by more or less skilled workmen, chiefly for wealthy Roman patrons of art who wished to use them to decorate the public buildings, baths, palaces, and villas of Rome and other Italian cities. A careful study of these copies has evolved a series of groups, which have been assigned with more or less probability to this or that artist.419 Representations of the various poses of the athlete statues of Olympia and elsewhere are found also on every sort of sculptured and painted works—reliefs, vases, coins, gems—which are, therefore, valuable in any attempt to reconstruct the attitude of a given statue.

Taking into account all these sources of knowledge, it has been possible to reach tolerable certainty in reconstructing the main types of these victor monuments, and in identifying schools, masters, and individual works. This identification of athlete statues, especially those belonging to the fifth and fourth centuries B. C., among the countless Roman works which people modern museums, has already been achieved in many cases by archælogical investigations. The work of many masters of the archaic period and of the most important bronze sculptors of the great period of Greek art has been illustrated by such ascriptions; especially that of Myron, who represented figures in rhythmic action full of life and vigor; of the elder Polykleitos, who was a master in representing standing figures at rest fashioned according to a mathematical system of proportions; of Lysippos, who introduced a new canon of proportions in opposition to that of his predecessor Polykleitos, and who inaugurated the naturalistic tendency in Greek art, which was destined to he carried to such unbecoming lengths in succeeding centuries. The further identification of such statues, as our knowledge of the tendencies and traditions of the schools of Greek sculpture and our sources of information about athletic art become more and more extended, will be one of the most important tasks of the archæologist in the future.

Before discussing the appearance of individual types of these monuments, we shall consider certain general characteristics common to all of them. Long ago K. O. Mueller420 summed up the common features of victor statues in these words: Kurzgelocktes Haar, tuechtige Glieder, eine kraeftige Ausbildung der Gestalt und verhaeltnissmaessig kleine Koepfe characterisiren die ganze Gattung von Figuren; die zerschlagenen Ohren und die hervorgetriebenen Muskeln insbesondere die Faustkaempfer45 und Pankratiasten. Though in the main this excellent summary still holds good, we are now in a position to correct it in part and to add other equally characteristic features to it. We shall briefly discuss, therefore, in the light of recent investigations, certain of the characteristics common to this genre of sculpture—the material and size of these statues, their nudity and fashion of wearing the hair, their twofold division into iconic and aniconic, their proportions, and, lastly, the assimilation of their appearance to well-known types of hero or god.

In another section421 we show that the overwhelming majority of the statues in the Altis were of bronze, though other materials, stone and wood, were also used in some cases. As to the size of these statues, no hard and fast rule seems to have been followed, but we may assume from the evidence at hand that they were in general life-size.422 Lucian would have us believe that the Hellanodikai did not allow victors to set up statues larger than life.423 We know, however, that there were exceptions to such a rule. In all probability the statue of Polydamas of Skotoussa by Lysippos, which Pausanias says stood on a high pedestal, was larger than life-size, if we may conjecture from its elevated position and the probable source of Pausanias’ remark that he “was the tallest of men, if we except the so-called heroes and the mortal race which preceded the heroes.”424 The traces of footprints on the recovered pedestal of the statue of the Athenian pancratiast Kallias by the sculptor Mikon show that the statue was larger than life-size.425 The footprints on the base of the statue of the Rhodian boxer Eukles by the Argive Naukydes are about 33 cm. long, and so the statue was slightly over life-size.426 We know the actual size of at least two of these Olympic statues. The scholiast on Pindar, Ol. VII, Argum., on the basis of a fragment from Aristotle’s lost work on the Olympic victors and one from the little-known writer Apollas Ponticus,427 says that the statue of the Rhodian boxer Diagoras was 4 cubits and 5 fingers 46tall,428 i. e., about 6 feet 4.5 inches, somewhat over life-size.429 From the same scholiast we learn that the statue of the son of Diagoras, the pancratiast Damagetos, was 4 cubits high, or less than that of the father by 5 fingers, and consequently just under 6 feet.430 The footprints on the base of the statue of the boxer Aristion by the elder Polykleitos are 29 cm. long, and so the statue was just life-size.431 There are several examples of such life-size statues,432 while others are slightly below life-size.433 The Polykleitan statue of a boxer in Kassel is under life-size.434 The marble head of a statue found at Olympia, which we ascribe to Philandridas, the Akarnanian pancratiast, by Lysippos, (Frontispiece and Fig. 69) is also under life-size,435 as is also that of the pancratiast Agias found at Delphi (Pl. 27 and Fig. 68). These two are in harmony with Pliny’s statement that Lysippos made the heads of his statues relatively small.436 Perhaps this statement of Pliny was the basis of the opinion of Mueller recorded above that “comparatively small heads” characterize the whole genre of victor statues. We have in the preceding chapter mentioned the marble fragments of the statues of boy victors, two-fifths to two-thirds life-size, found at Olympia.437 The two marble helmeted heads of the archaic period found there, which we shall later ascribe to hoplite victors (Fig. 30), are exactly life-size.438 Of the bronze fragments recovered at Olympia,439 the head of a boxer of the fourth century B. C. (Fig. 61, A and B) is life-size,440 while the extraordinarily beautifully sculptured right arm ascribed to a boy victor by Furtwaengler441 is a little under life-size.

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Most of the victor statues at Olympia were nude.442 In the early period all athletes wore the loin-cloth. Cretan frescoes show it was the custom in the early Mediterranean world. The athletes of Homer girded themselves on entering the games of Patroklos,443 and the girdle appears in the earliest athletic scenes on vases.444 Throughout the historic period, however, the Greeks entered their contests in complete nudity, and this nudity naturally was carried over into athletic sculpture. Pliny’s445 statement, Graeca res nihil velare, is, therefore, correct, despite another of Philostratos to the effect that at Delphi, at the Isthmus, and everywhere except at Olympia, the athlete wore the coarse mantle.446 The beginning of the change from wearing the loin-cloth to complete nudity was ascribed to an accident. The Megarian runner Orsippos in the 15th Ol. ( = 720 B. C.) dropped his loin-cloth while running, either accidentally or because it impeded him.447 The story was commemorated by an epigram, perhaps by Simonides, which was inscribed on his tomb at Megara.448 A copy of this epigram in the Megarian dialect, executed in late Roman or Byzantine times, when the original had become illegible, was discovered at Megara in 1769 and shows that its original was the source of Pausanias’ remarks.449 Philostratos says that athletes contended nude at Olympia, either because of the summer heat or a mishap which befell the woman Pherenike of Rhodes. She accompanied her son, the boy boxer Peisirhodos,48 to Olympia disguised as a trainer, and in her joy at his victory she leaped over the barrier and disclosed her sex.450 The practice does not appear to have become universal with all athletes in all the competitions at Olympia until some time after Orsippos’ day, since Thukydides says the abandonment of the girdle took place shortly before his time and that in his day it was still retained by certain foreigners, notably Asiatics, in boxing and wrestling matches.451 The change is not illustrated in sculpture. The earliest victor statues, i. e., those of the “Apollo” type, are all nude. The nudity of this type shows an essential difference between Greek and foreigner and also between the later Greek and his rude ancestor. Plato gives the use of the loin-cloth as an example of convention, by which what seems peculiar to one generation becomes usual to another.452 We see the change, however, in vase-paintings. The loin-cloth is common on seventh-century vases, but is gradually left off in later ones.

There were exceptions to the rule of nudity. Statues of charioteers were usually partly or wholly dressed in the long chiton, a custom explained in various ways.453 The Delphi bronze Charioteer (Fig. 66) is a good example of a draped one. Another auriga almost nude is shown on a decadrachm of Akragas in the British Museum, dating from the end of the fifth century B. C.454 There are also several examples of nude charioteers.455 The Olympic runners and athletes generally were also bareheaded and barefoot. The only exceptions were the hoplite-runners, who wore helmets, and possibly charioteers, who wore sandals.456 Statues of women victors also were draped.49 Though Ionian women could witness games,457 and Spartan girls took part in athletic contests with boys,458 women were rigorously excluded from crossing the Alpheios during the festival at Olympia.459 They were allowed, however, to enter horses for the chariot-race and, if victorious, to set up monuments.460 Only one woman was allowed to witness the games, the priestess of the old earth cult of Demeter Chamyne, who could sit at the altar in the stadion during the contests.461 Pausanias notes but one exception of a woman infringing the rule of admission, Pherenike, the mother of the Rhodian victor Peisirhodos already mentioned. She was pardoned because her father, brothers, and son were victors, but the umpires passed a law that thereafter even trainers should be nude.462 While excluded from the games proper, women had their own festival at Olympia in honor of Hera, which was known as the Heraia. These games occurred every four years463 and included a foot-race between virgins, in which the course was one-sixth less than the stadion. The victress received an olive crown and also a share of the cow sacrificed to Hera, and was allowed to set up a painted picture of herself in the Heraion.464 It has been generally assumed that the statue of a girl runner in the Galleria dei Candelabri of the Vatican represents one of these victresses (Plate 2),465 since Pausanias says they ran with their hair50 down and wore a tunic which reached to just above the knees, leaving the right shoulder bare to the breast. That the statue represents a girl runner seems certain,466 but that it can be referred to one of the Olympic girl victresses is doubtful. The description of Pausanias fits it in many respects, except that the chiton of the statue is too short, and he does not mention the girdle just below the bosom. Furthermore, he does not mention statues of girl victresses, but only pictures. Nothing can be argued from the palm-branch on the tree-stump, except that the Roman copyist thought it the statue of a victress. It does not necessarily refer to a victress at Olympia, for Pausanias elsewhere says that the palm-branch was given at many contests.467 The statue represents a young girl leaning forward awaiting the signal to start,468 but it is impossible to say to what games we should refer it. There were girls’ contests in and out of Greece—such as at the Dionysia in Sparta469 and in her colony Kyrene.470 Such games were also held in the stadion of Domitian at Rome.471 In fact the Palatine estate of the Barberini, from whom the Vatican acquired the statue, embraced the area of the old stadion of Domitian on the Palatine. It is probably of Doric workmanship, as it certainly represents a Dorian victress, though not necessarily by a Peloponnesian sculptor.472

The assumption long held that short hair was always characteristic of the athlete is incorrect.473 It is controverted equally by literary evidence and by the monuments. The Homeric Greek took pride in 51his long hair,474 and doubtless the contestants at the games of Patroklos in the Iliad had long hair. Long hair was worn by some Athenians throughout Athenian history. From the end of the fifth century B. C., long hair was regarded as a mark of effeminacy475 and was regularly worn only by the knights.476 Short hair was worn as a sign of mourning in Athens from early days down.477 Only the slaves regularly wore very short hair in the fifth century B. C.478 The change to short hair in Athens was certainly due to the influence of the palæstra and to athletics in general.479 We see just the opposite custom in vogue in Sparta. There, according to the code of Lykourgos,480 men were compelled to wear long hair and children short hair. Thus the heroes of Leonidas entered the battle of Thermopylæ after combing their long locks.481 After the Persian wars only children and men with laconizing or aristocratic sympathies482 wore their hair long at Athens. When boys arrived at the age of ἔφηβοι, they had their hair cut at the feast of the οἰνιστήρια483 and dedicated it to a god.484 Soon after the Persian war period, athletes wore their hair short. Before that time, the wearing of long hair had already been discarded for obvious reasons in wrestling.485 Similarly, in boxing and the pankration long hair was in the way, and was therefore early braided into two long plaits which were wound around the head in a peculiar way and tied into a knot at the top, the so-called Attic κρωβύλος, the oftenest mentioned manner of dressing the hair in Greek literature.486 The oldest notice52 of this style of wearing the hair is found in a fragment of Asios.487 Herakleides Ponticus488 says it was used up to the time of the Persian wars. The locus classicus is in Thukydides, who says it was worn in his day by old people only.489 Earlier young men wore it,490 but it went out of fashion between 470 and 460 B. C. In this connection we should mention that the professional athlete under the Roman Empire wore his hair uncut and tied up in an unsightly topknot known as the cirrus.491

The monumental evidence bears out the literary. Thus, on old Corinthian clay tablets freemen are represented with long hair, while slaves have short hair.492 Hydrias from Caere (Cerveteri) and paintings from Klazomenai show that the Ionians wore their hair short for the first time in the sixth century B. C., the custom not becoming general until the fifth. Older Spartan monuments represent the hair long.493 Attic vases show long hair on men until the second half of the sixth century B. C., when the black-figured vase masters began to represent them with short hair, a custom becoming general in the first half of the fifth. In statuary the Diskobolos of Myron (Pls. 21, 26, and Figs. 34, 35) has short hair, and most statues of athletes before it have long hair, while most after it have short. Before the time of the Diskobolos, b.-f. and early r.-f. vase-painters often represented athletes with braided hair in the fashion of the warriors on the Aegina pediments. When short hair began to be used on athlete statues, these older braids were often replaced by victor bands.494 We may roughly summarize by saying that statues before the date of the Diskobolos which do not have long hair are probably those of athletes and not of gods, and, in any case, if they have braids bound up in the fashion of the κρωβύλος, they are almost always statues of athletes.495 As for short hair on representations of gods, Furtwaengler has shown that it appears only after the middle of the fifth century B. C.496 Prior to that date the hair of divinities fell over the neck and shoulders in curls, as in the statue of the Olympian Zeus by Pheidias. By the time of Perikles, however, short curly hair reached only to the nape of the neck on statues of Zeus,53 and this style frequently appears on figures of the god on Attic vases of that period. Dionysos has short hair for the first time on the Parthenon frieze.497 Furtwaengler has shown that Pheidias did not invent the short bound-up hair for goddess types, as we see it in the Lemnian Athena, but that he borrowed it from works already in existence.498 Though the style was unknown in the archaic period, it appears on helmeted heads of Athena of the early fifth century B. C. showing Peloponnesian style—on coins, statuettes, reliefs, etc. It appears in Attic art exclusively on bareheaded types of Athena of the period just prior to that of the Lemnia.

Bulle499 has gone carefully into the technique of the hair by different Greek artists. In archaic times this was “ein, man darf sagen, unmoegliches Problem.” The primitive means at the disposal of the early artist made it impossible to render the hair naturally and hence it was conventionalized. Two styles arose in archaic times, which endured with modifications all through Greek art. The one was the pictorial (malerisch), where only the general appearance of the hair was represented, the merest necessary plastic form being added.500 Painting here helped the shortcomings of the sculptor to some extent. The second style was the plastic (plastisch), where individual locks were attempted. The plastic use of light and shade made the use of color now less necessary. Such examples as the Korai of the Akropolis Museum and the Rampin head in the Louvre show the difficulty which the early artist encountered in representing hair plastically. In the Rampin head501 we see examples of three sorts of plastic hair treatment: the pearl-string (Perlschnuerre) on the neck, grained hair (Koerner) in the beard, and snail-volutes (geperlte Schnecken) on the forehead. None of the three seems to belong integrally to the head, but each appears to have been pasted on. The pearl-string fashion was first used in the soft poros stone and was only later successfully transferred to marble. During the severe style of Greek sculpture, both fashions, pictorial and plastic, were used, as we see them in the pediment groups from the temple of Zeus at Olympia. In the period of Pheidias the plastic treatment was used almost exclusively, as we see in the Lemnian Athena. In the next century impressionism came in, though the plastic treatment still continued, for we see it in the bronze work of Lysippos and the marble work of Praxiteles. The old pictorial treatment was revived again in the later Hellenistic age.

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In a well-known passage Pliny says that “the ancients did not make any statue of individuals unless they deserved immortality by some distinction, originally by a victory at some sacred games, especially those of Olympia, where it was the custom to dedicate statues of all those who had conquered, and portrait statues if they had conquered three times. These are called iconic.”502 Many solutions of this passage have been offered. Older commentators, as Hirt and Visconti,503 interpreted Pliny’s word iconicas as life-size statues. Scherer, however, easily refuted this idea and showed that the adjective εἰκονικός, though ambiguous in its meaning, had nothing to do with size, but referred rather to an individual as opposed to a typical sense in relation to statuary. In his explanation he referred to the words of Lessing in the Laokoön: es ist das Ideal eines gewissen Menschen, nicht das Ideal eines Menschen ueberhaupt.504 Nowadays all scholars agree that Pliny’s word refers to portrait statues.505 However, Pliny’s dictum about the right of setting up portrait statues is certainly open to doubt.506 It can not have been true of monuments erected before the fourth century B. C., when portrait statues were rare. Portraiture was a form of realism and was a product of the later period of Greek art—especially after the time of Lysippos. In the fourth century B. C. we find one well-attested exception to Pliny’s rule. The discovered inscription from the base of a monument erected to the horse-racer Xenombrotos of Cos,507 reads (fifth line): τοῖ[ος], ὁποῖο[ν] ὁ[ρ]ᾷς Ξεινόμβροτο[ς]. These words indubitably point to a portrait statue. However,55 neither the recovered epigram nor Pausanias indicates anything about this victor being a τρισολυμπιονίκης, and consequently he appears not to have merited a portrait statue.508 Pliny’s statement can be explained in many ways: it may be apocryphal, or different usages may have fitted different periods; or the rule may have held good only for gymnic victors and not for equestrian ones, which, being strictly votive in character, may not have been restricted to its operation.509

Pausanias mentions the monuments of several victors at Olympia who were entitled to portrait statues on the strength of Pliny’s rule, though we have no indication that they were so honored. Thus he mentions the statues of Dikon,510 Sostratos,511 Philinos,512 and Gorgos.513 The early fifth-century boxer Euthymos514 also won three victories, but at a time before we should expect a portrait statue. The Periegete also mentions several victors who won three or more times, though he does not say that they had any statues, portrait or otherwise.515 Percy Gardner516 has shown how erroneous is the prevailing view that the Greeks neglected portraiture in their art and left it for the Romans to develop. He shows that Greek artists of the third and second centuries B. C. left a great many portraits of the highest artistic value and that portraits of Romans before the time of Augustus, and the best Roman examples during the Empire, were made by Greek sculptors. The56 number of Greek portraits in our museums, especially in Rome, is very great.517 From archaic times down to the middle of the fifth century B. C. we should not expect portraiture. In the earlier period, therefore, it is difficult to distinguish between statues of gods and those of men. In the great period of Greek art, from the time of Perikles on to that of Alexander, the general tendency of Greek sculpture was so ideal that portraits, when they existed, seem impersonal. The later copyists of portraits also idealized them. Thus Pliny, in speaking of Kresilas’ portrait of Perikles, says that this artist nobiles viros nobiliores fecit—in other words, that he idealized them.518 The portraits of Alexander were especially idealized. In the first half of the fourth century we first hear of realistic portraiture. Thus Demetrios, who flourished 380–360 B. C.,519 made a “very beautiful” statue of a Corinthian general named Pelichos, which Lucian520 says had a fat belly, bald head, hair floating in the wind, and prominent veins, “like the man himself.”521 Except for the hair this description by the satirist seems to have been correct. At the end of the fourth century B. C. anatomical detail began to be shown in sculpture. Largely under the influence of Lysippos, the personality of victors began to be emphasized in figure and face in a very realistic way. We can distinguish between such portraits of victors before and after the time of Lysippos.522 Pliny523 says that Lysistratos, the brother of Lysippos, was the first to obtain portraits by making a plaster mould on the features and so to render likenesses exactly, as “previous artists had only tried to make them as beautiful as possible.” In any case, by the time of Lysippos realistic portraiture began to be emphasized. We see it at Olympia in the57 later bronze pancratiast’s head found there (Fig. 61, A and B), and in a still more revolting style in the Seated Boxer of the Museo delle Terme (Pl. 16, and Fig. 27).

The reason why the privilege of erecting portrait statues was given so seldom to Olympic victors was probably not because it was a highly esteemed honor. The real reason seems to have been that portraiture, with its tendency to realism, subordinated beauty to that realism and so conflicted with the Greek artistic ideal. The Thebans had a law which forbade caricature and commanded artists to make their statues more beautiful than the models. The Greeks worshiped beauty and hated ugliness. Many games in Greece were held in honor of personal beauty. Thus a contest of manly beauty among old men (ἀγὼν εὐανδρίας) was a part of the Panathenaic games at Athens.524 A contest of beauty among women, originating in the time of Kypselos, king of Arkadia, was kept up until the time of Athenæus.525 We hear of contests of beauty in Elis, at which three prizes were given,526 and of similar ones on the islands of Tenedos and Lesbos.527 The Crotonian Philippos, who won at Olympia in an unknown contest about 520 B. C., was honored after his death by the people of Egesta with a heroön and sacrifices because of his beauty.528 At Tanagra, in Bœotia, the most beautiful ephebe was chosen to carry a ram on his shoulders around the city wall at the festival of Hermes Kriophoros.529 At Aigion in Achaia the most beautiful boy was anciently chosen to be priest of Zeus.530 The most beautiful youths among the Spartans and Cretans dedicated offerings to Eros before battle.531 These and similar examples show the Greek feeling for beauty. The representation of passion and violence was foreign to the spirit of the best Greek art; it was rather the “quiet grandeur” (Stille Groesse) or “repose,” of which Winckelmann made so much, that was characteristic of that art. In Homer both men and gods, when wounded, shriek. Philoktetes, in the drama of Sophokles, wails throughout a whole act, when suffering from a gangrened foot. With the poets Zeus casts his thunderbolt in anger, but Pheidias has him hold it quietly in his hand. So we can see why portrait statues were rare at Olympia, where the representation of manly beauty and vigor was the rule. They were ruled out,58 not because of their increasing the honor accorded to the victor, but rather because they honored his egotism.532

Accordingly, since only victors who had won three or more contests at Olympia could set up iconic statues, the great majority of statues there represented some ideal type of common applicability, in which there was no attempt to show the individual features of this or that victor, but rather the typical athlete of muscular build. The older statues were merely variations of a few types which were held to be appropriate to the purpose. In process of time these few types in their treatment of details gradually approached truth to nature; this was especially characteristic of the Peloponnesian schools, which adopted the Doryphoros of Polykleitos as their norm of proportions. Statues of victors were the stock subject of the closely related schools of Argos and Sikyon.533 Doubtless, as E. A. Gardner says,534 there existed at Olympia itself a school of subordinate artists, who filled the regular demand for victor statues. However, some of these statues, especially those of the fifth and fourth centuries B. C., as we see them in originals and in Roman copies, and read the æsthetic judgments of them in Greek writers, were real works of art.

The literary evidence for Greek sculpture is, for the most part, very unsatisfactory. Though classical writers were uncritical and not fond of analysis, still they have left us some useful opinions about works of sculpture and painting. The history and criticism of sculpture began in Greece, in the fourth century B. C., with the Peripatetics. Aristotle, whose observations on painting and sculpture were slight, did not despise the “mimetic” arts as did the Socrates of Plato.535 In the Rhetoric536 he speaks of the beautiful bodies of youths who trained as pentathletes, since the varied exercises of the pentathlon made them so. We have a similar opinion expressed by Xenophon in what is, perhaps, the most59 interesting passage in Greek literature on criticism of art.537 He has Sokrates go to the sculptor Kleito and compliment him on his power of representing different physical types produced by various contests, noting differences between statues of runners and wrestlers and between those of boxers and pancratiasts. When asked how he makes statues lifelike, Kleito has no answer, and the philosopher says it is by the imitation of real men, i. e., nature. He adds: “Must you not then imitate the threatening eyes of those who are fighting and the triumphant expression of those who are victorious?” Though some have thought that these words refer to portrait statues, which were spoken of as a matter of course at the beginning of the fourth century B. C., it is more reasonable to suspect that Sokrates was speaking of the older sculptors—for we may recognize Polykleitos in Kleito538—and consequently that he is not referring to portraiture. In the Symposium of Xenophon539 Sokrates also complains that the long-distance runners (δολιχοδρόμοι) have thick legs and narrow shoulders, while boxers have broad shoulders and small legs, and he therefore recommends dancing as a better exercise than athletics. As such differences in physique occur in vase-paintings of the date, but not in statuary, the philosopher seems to be speaking of athletics and not of sculpture. From these quotations of Aristotle and Xenophon, we gather that the all-round development of the pentathlon made beautiful athletes, and this beauty must have been carried over into their statues. It is essentially the young man’s contest,540 and some of the pentathlete victors at Olympia and elsewhere were noted for their strength in after life. Thus Ikkos of Tarentum, who won at Olympia in Ol. 76 ( = 476 B. C.), was the best teacher of gymnastics of his day.541 Gorgos of Elis was the only athlete to win the pentathlon four times at Olympia, besides winning in two running races.542 Another Elean, Stomios, who won three prizes at Olympia and Nemea, later became a leader of cavalry and beat his enemy in single combat.543 The Argive Eurybates, victor in the pentathlon at Nemea, was very strong, and later, in a battle with the Aeginetans, killed three opponents in single combats, but succumbed to the fourth.544 The Spar60tans and Krotonians seem to have been the best pentathletes.545 Noted sculptors made statues of these athletes.546 Plato, in the de Leg.,547 has the Athenian stranger praise Egyptian art because of its stationary character. This bespeaks but little artistic insight for the philosopher, though he was surrounded by the wonderful artistic creations of the end of the great fifth century B. C. The later classical writers were fond of expressing criticisms of art. Thus Pasiteles, a Greek sculptor living in Rome in the first century B. C., wrote five books on celebrated works of art throughout the world.548 The opinions on art of the Roman Varro appear in the pages of Pliny.549 Of all the ancient critics, Cicero was perhaps the most superficial. In a passage in the Brutus550 he gives us his judgment of several sculptors. He finds the works of Kanachos too rigid to imitate nature truthfully, while those of Kalamis, though softer than those of Kanachos, are hard; Myron, though not completely faithful to nature, produced beautiful works and Polykleitos was quite perfect. The most trustworthy critic of sculpture in antiquity, on the other hand, was certainly Lucian, as we see from many of his utterances, especially from his account of an ideal statue, which combined the highest excellences of several noted sculptures.551 His criticism of Hegias, Kritios, and Nesiotes, to the effect that their works were “concise, sinewy, hard, and exactly strained in their lines,” might have been made in the presence of the group of the Tyrannicides (Fig. 32).552 Unfortunately he touches the subject only casually, though he might have written a fine history of Greek art. We must also refer to two other imperial writers, the elder Pliny and Pausanias. Pliny’s abstracts on art, though our chief ancient literary authority on Greek sculpture and painting, are neither critical nor trustworthy. A careful analysis of his chapters shows that he was a borrower many times removed, though he seldom acknowledged it. This is excusable when we consider the custom of literary borrowing in antiquity and also the fact that his chapters on art form merely an appendix to his Natural History, being joined on to it by a very artificial bond, for his abstract on bronze statuary (Bk. XXXIV) is brought in merely to complete his account of the metals. His knowledge of the older periods of Greek61 art is small and his bias in favor of the two Sikyonian sculptors Lysippos and Xenokrates is very evident. His worst mistakes are in chronology. He puts Pythagoras after Myron, and both after Polykleitos, while Hagelaïdas, who is made the teacher of Myron and Polykleitos, lives on to the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. His real criticism of sculpture is seen in his dictum of the Laokoön group, that it is a “work superior to all the pictures and bronzes of the world.”553 Our debt to Pausanias, especially for our knowledge of the victor monuments at Olympia, is immense. This debt may be gauged by the fact that he mentions in his work many times more statues than any other writer and that a large portion of the Schriftquellen of Overbeck is concerned with him. However, he shows little real understanding for art. His interest in statues is confined almost entirely to those which are noted for their antiquity or sanctity, and his account of them is usually the pivot around which he spins religious or mythological stories. Throughout his work his chief interest is religious; his interest in art for its own sake is very small. He devotes many pages to the throne of Zeus at Olympia, and describes the temple sculptures merely because the statue of Zeus is within. His detailed account of the athlete statues in the Altis is made chiefly because of his religious and antiquarian interest. Though imitating the style of Herodotos, he does it badly, so that his book is without much charm. In concluding this rough estimate of the ancient criticism of art, we might mention the fragmentary information to be gathered from many other writers, Dio Chrysostom, Quintilian,554 Plutarch, and others, whose names occur frequently in the footnotes. All such references to works of art in ancient writers are conveniently collected in the great compilation of Overbeck so often quoted.555

As for æsthetic judgments of the statues of victors at Olympia we have a few direct hints from different writers. The epigram from the base of the statue of the boy wrestler Theognetos by Ptolichos of Aegina reads in part: Κάλλιστον μὲν ἰδεῖν, ἀθλεῖν δ’ οὐ χείρονα μόρ[φης].556 Pliny says of the sculptor Mikon, who made the statue of the62 Athenian pancratiast Kallias: Micon athletis spectatur.557 The same writer says of the horses of Kalamis: equis sine aemulo expressis.558 Kalamis with Onatas of Aegina made a chariot-group for the Syracusan king Hiero.559 Pausanias, in mentioning the statue of the boxer Euthymos by Pythagoras, says that it is καὶ θέας ἐς τὰ μάλιστα ἄξιος.560 In mentioning the statue by the same sculptor of the wrestler Leontiskos, he says: εἴπερ τις καὶ ἄλλος ἀγαθὸς τὰ ἐς πλαστικήν.561 Of the Argive sculptor Naukydes he says, when speaking of the statue of the wrestler Cheimon, that it is among the finest works of that artist.562 In another passage, in which he describes the dedication of Phormis at Olympia, he speaks of an ugly horse, which, besides being smaller than other sculptured horses in the Altis, has “its tail cut off, and this makes it still uglier.”563 However, here he is not so much interested in its lack of beauty as in the curious fact which he adds, that despite its ugliness this bronze mare attracted stallions.

We are not, however, dependent upon such meagre scraps of evidence from classical writers, nor upon contested Roman copies,564 for an idea of the workmanship of some of the Olympic victor statues. We can judge it in no uncertain way by the few originals found at Olympia and by others which are to be found in European museums. As an example of the former we have only to recall the life-size bronze bearded head of a boxer or pancratiast of the third century B. C., which is now in the National Museum at Athens565 (Fig. 61, A and B). Its only decoration, an olive crown whose leaves have disappeared, proves it to be from the statue of a victor, and its wild locks, brutal look, flattened nose, and wide mouth represent a naturalistic study of the utmost strength and fineness, which could only have been produced after the time of Lysippos. We shall discuss this remarkable head more fully in Chapter IV. As examples of original victor 63 monuments in European museums we shall mention three. The bronze head of a boxer in the Glyptothek at Munich (Pl. 3) is an original of the first rank.566 It is from a statue found near Naples in 1730, which was later destroyed, and it probably represents the head of a boy of about twelve years, a victor in boxing, to judge from the victor band in the hair and the fact that the visible part of the right ear is swollen. Like the head of the Diadoumenos of Polykleitos (Figs. 28, 29) this beautiful head exemplifies fully the “ethical grace” or modesty567 so characteristic of the best Greek art, and it certainly merits Furtwaengler’s praise of being the “most precious treasure of the Glyptothek.”568 Another head, found in Beneventum and now in the Louvre (Fig. 3)569 is a splendid Greek original of the last decade of the fifth century B. C., and, as Mrs. Strong says, should arouse in us a sense of what precious relics may still lie hidden in our museums.570 The victor fillet in the hair, consisting of two sprays of what seems to be wild olive (remnants of which appear in front), shows that the statue must once have ornamented the Altis. Like the one in Munich, this head shows Polykleitan inspiration tempered by Attic influence.571 Lastly, the bronze head of a youth from the tablinum, of the so-called villa of the Pisos at Herculaneum, now in Naples,572 is, to judge from its technique, an excellent original Greek work (Fig. 4). Here again the hair fillet shows it is from a victor statue, though its provenience from Olympia can not be established.

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Such beautiful works of art as these last show the influence which the great athletic festivals, and especially the Olympian, exerted on the development of Greek sculpture. In the gymnastic training carried on in the gymnasium and palæstra, which culminated in these festivals, the Greek sculptor found an unrivaled opportunity to study the naked human figure in its best muscular development and in every pose. In fact, we may say with Furtwaengler that without athletics Greek art would be inconceivable.573 To quote from another work of the same scholar:

In attempting to identify a given statue as the copy of a work by this or that master, certain well-known canons of proportion, which were taught and practiced by various Greek sculptors and schools, must be taken into consideration.

Greek art may, like Greek philosophy and poetry, be summarized under the names of three qualities which constantly occur in classical literature—συμμετρία, εὐρυθμία or ῥυθμός, and ἀναλογία.575 Symmetry may be defined as “that technical regard for the placing of the parts to the best advantage,” the symmetrical arrangement of the parts of66 a statue or group of figures.576 Rhythm, following Vitruvius,577 is that tertium quid which is indispensable to true art. Analogy (Latin proportio)578 refers to the measured ratio of part to part in any given work of art, whether in architecture, painting, or sculpture. Most scholars nowadays interpret symmetry and analogy as the same thing. Pliny579 says that symmetria has no Latin equivalent, and in several passages580 keeps the Greek word, as does Vitruvius. Here Otto Jahn rightly says proportio or commensus would have adequately translated it.581 P. Gardner explains the word properly as “the proportion of one part of the body as measured against another.”582 Brunn held that, as symmetry was the relation of part to part in a statue at rest, rhythm expressed this relationship in one represented in motion.583 The simplest illustration of rhythm is seen in walking: when the right foot is advanced the left arm swings out in rhythm, and so the balance of the body is kept. Rhythm, therefore, has to do with balance in motion, and may refer equally to cadence in poetry and music and to movement in sculpture. An excellent example in sculpture is afforded by Myron’s Diskobolos (Pls. 21, 22, and Figs. 34, 35), while the balancing of figures on many Greek reliefs—especially on Attic funerary stelæ—illustrates symmetry (cf. Fig. 75). Pliny characterizes certain artists by their success in effecting symmetry and rhythm. Thus Myron surpassed Polykleitos in being more rhythmic and in paying more attention to symmetry.584 He says that Lysippos most diligently preserved symmetry by bringing unthought-of innovations into the square canon 67of earlier artists.585 Parrhasios was the first to introduce symmetry into painting.586 Diogenes Laertios says that the sculptor Pythagoras was the first to aim at rhythm as well as symmetry.587 In all such passages it is clear that canons of proportion are meant.

The doctrine of human proportions is very ancient, originating in Egyptian art.588 It appears early in Greek architecture in the proportions of columns and other members of a temple,589 and it was soon transferred to sculpture. As Greek sculpture evolved on traditional lines,590 we should assume that it paid attention to the doctrine of proportions in the human figure, based on numerical ratios, and that such a doctrine would vary from age to age in the various schools of sculpture. Such an assumption is borne out by both literary and archæological evidence. Toward the end of Hellenism many writers refer to just such a measured basis of proportion in Greek art.591 Archæologists have shown by the careful study of multitudes of statues that such proportions exist in Greek sculpture. Thus A. Kalkmann592 has proved that there are sets of ratios in the treatment of the face used by successive schools of sculpture, which were canonical, whether formulated or not. G. Fritsch593 has done for the whole body68 what Kalkman has done for the face. In fact, anthropometry in relation to Greek sculpture has now become an exact science.594

The greatest artists—architects, painters, and sculptors—of all times have taught and practised the doctrine that certain proportions are beautiful, e. g., the proportion of the height of the head or the length of the foot to the whole body, or the length of parts of the head or body to other parts. In modern times we have only to mention such names as those of da Vinci, Duerer, Raphael Mengs, and Flaxman.595 In Greek days there were many artists who formulated such canons of proportions. Greek sculptors followed ratios of proportions so closely that we have statues of various schools, which are distinguished by fixed proportions of parts, such as the Old Attic, Old Argive, Polykleitan, Argive-Sikyonian or Lysippan, etc. Some of these schools used the foot as the common measure, while others used the palm, finger, or other member.596 The earliest works on Greek art were treatises, now lost, by artists in which they worked out their theories of the principles underlying the proportions of the human figure.597 We shall briefly consider a few of these canons, together with the usual pose of body which conformed with them. The earliest Peloponnesian canon, which we can analyze, was that followed by Hagelaïdas of Argos and his school, a canon which was still used in the Polykleitan circle. Here the weight of the body rested upon the left leg, while the right one was slightly bent at the knee, its foot resting flat on the ground; the right arm hung by the side and the left was usually in action, and the head was slightly inclined to the left side; the shoulders were extraordinarily broad in comparison with the hips, the right one being slightly raised. These qualities produced a short stocky figure, firmly placed.598 In the middle of the fifth century B. C., Polykleitos worked out a theory of proportions in the form of a commentary on his famous statue known as the Doryphoros. This canon was characterized by squareness and massiveness of build. The weight of the body generally rested on the right foot, while the left was drawn back, its foot touching the ground with the ball only. Sometimes this pose was reversed, the left foot carrying the body-weight, as in the three bases of statues by the master found at Olympia (i. e., those of the athletes Pythokles, Aristion, and69 Kyniskos, to be discussed later), and in the works of some of his pupils, notably in those of Naukydes, Daidalos, and Kleon.599 Euphranor, who flourished, according to Pliny, in Ol. 104 ( = 364–361 B. C.), and wrote works on symmetry and color, was the “first” to master the theory of symmetry.600 Pliny, however, found his bodies too slender and his heads and limbs too large, a criticism of his painting which must have been equally applicable to his sculpture. His canon did not make much headway, as the majority of sculptors in his century were still under the domination of the canon of Polykleitos. It was left for Lysippos, in the second half of the fourth century B. C., finally to break this domination of the great fifth-century sculptor. Pliny quotes Douris as saying that he was the pupil of no man, and that because of the advice of the painter Eupompos he was a follower of nature—which appears to be a cut at the schools which mechanically followed fixed rules.601 His statues had smaller heads, and more slender and less fleshy limbs, than those of his predecessors, in order that the apparent height of the figure might be increased.602 While Polykleitos made his heads one-seventh of the total height of the statue, Lysippos made his one-eighth—if this change may be seen in the Apoxyomenos (Pl. 28), which is certainly a work of his school, if not of the master himself. Pliny further records his saying that while his predecessors represented men as they were, Lysippos represented them as they appeared to be. This means that Pliny regarded him as the first impressionistic artist.603 Pliny mentions other artists who wrote on art, and it is probable that theories of proportions formed the main element of such works.604

The best example of symmetry, i. e., of the ratio of proportions, in Greek sculpture is afforded by the Doryphoros of Polykleitos, which Pliny says was called the Canon, and he adds that this sculptor was the only one who embodied his art in a single work.605 The identity70 of the canon with this statue seems to be attested by the anecdote told of Lysippos that the Doryphoros was his master,606 and by Quintilian’s statement that sculptors took it as a model.607 The best-preserved copy of the Doryphoros, despite its rather lifeless character, is the one discovered in Pompeii and now in Naples (Pl. 4).608 As other late Roman copies do not conform to the identical proportions of this copy, it is perhaps difficult to say exactly what the canon of Polykleitos was. Possibly the original, if it had been preserved, would also strike us as somewhat lifeless; but we must remember that the statue was made merely to illustrate a theory of proportions. The dimensions of the Naples statue are known from very careful measurements and the proportions agree with those given in the description by Galen to be mentioned. It is almost exactly 2 meters, or 6 feet 8 inches, high.609 The length of the foot is 0.33 meter, or one-sixth of the total height, while the length of the face is 0.20 meter, or one-tenth of the height. E. Guillaume610 has made a careful analysis of it in reference to Galen’s611 statement that Chrysippos found beauty in the proportion of the parts, “of finger to finger, and of all the fingers to the palm and wrist, and of these to the forearm, and of the forearm to the upper arm, and of all the parts to each other, as they are set forth in the canon of Polykleitos.” He has found that the palm, i. e., the breadth of the hand at the base of the fingers, is a common measure of the proportions of the body. This palm is one-third the length of the foot, one-sixth that of the lower leg, one-sixth that of the thigh, and one-sixth that of the distance from the navel to the ear, etc. Such a remarkable correspondence in measurements would seem to show, if we had no other proofs, that the Naples statue reproduces the canon of Polykleitos more closely than any other.

A good example of asymmetry is afforded by the so-called Spinario of the Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome612 (Fig. 40). This justly prized statue shows more asymmetry, perhaps, than any other down to its date—just before the middle of the fifth century B. C. Though its composition is such that there is no vantage-point from which it forms 71 a harmonious whole, still its effect on the beholder is far from displeasing. Such a creation shows that a Greek artist, even without paying attention to the symmetrical arrangement of parts, could at times produce an attractive piece of sculpture.

Since Greek art in the main was idealistic, we should not be surprised to discover in athletic sculpture a tendency toward assimilating victor statues to well-known types of gods or heroes, especially to those of Hermes, Apollo, and Herakles, who presided over contests or gymnasia and palæstræ. This phenomenon is only a further example of the extraordinary, almost superhuman, honors which were paid to victors at the great games. In the absence of sufficient means of identification, it is often very difficult to distinguish with certainty between statues of victors and those of the gods and heroes to whom they were assimilated. This difficulty, as we shall see, is especially observable in the case of Herakles. Even later antiquity recognized that statues of athletes were sometimes confused with those of heroes, just as those of heroes were with those of gods, as we learn from a passage in Dio Chrysostom’s oration on Rhodian affairs.613 This difficulty is one of the most perplexing problems that still face the student of Greek sculpture.

It was not an uncommon custom in Greece to heroize in this way an ordinary dead man.614 One of the most striking instances of this custom is afforded by the so-called Hermes of Andros, a statue found in a grave-chamber on the island in 1833 and now in Athens615 (Pl. 5). It has been a matter of dispute among archæologists whether this statue represents the god Hermes or a mortal in his guise. Although Staïs616 looks on it as un problème peut-être à jamais insoluble, there seems little reason for doubting that it represents a defunct mortal. Its place of finding in a tomb along with the statue of a woman of the Muse type, which probably represents the man’s consort,617 the presence of a snake on the adjacent tree trunk, the absence of sandals and kerykeion, and the portrait—like features—all point to the conclusion that a man and not a god is represented. The downcast, almost melancholy, look72 seems also to make it a funereal figure. The powerful proportions of a perfectly developed athlete, displaying no tendency toward the representation of brute force, show that the man is idealized into the type of Hermes, the god of the palæstra, rather than into the light-winged messenger of Olympos. The Belvedere Hermes of the Vatican,618 and a better one known as the Farnese Hermes of the British Museum,619 are noteworthy replicas of the type. The latter carries the kerykeion in the left hand and wears sandals, with a small chlamys over the left arm and shoulder. These attributes show that Hermes was intended in this copy. Probably the original of these various replicas, a work dating from the end of the fourth century B. C., and ascribed to Praxiteles or his school in consequence of similarity in pose and build of body and head to the Hermes of Olympia, was intended to represent Hermes. In the one from Andros, at least, the copyist intended to heroize a mortal under the type of the god. Similarly, the statue known as the Standing Hermes in the Galleria delle Statue of the Vatican,620 which has the kerykeion and chlamys, whether its original represented Hermes, hero or mortal, has been made by the copyist to represent Hermes, the god of athletics, as the late attribute of wings in the hair proves. Other examples of dead men represented as Hermes are not uncommon. Thus a Greek grave-stele in Verona621 shows the dead portrayed as a winged Hermes, and a similar figure appears on a stele from Tanagra.622 The so-called Commodus in Mantua623 is interpreted by Conze and Duetschke as the figure of a dead youth in Hermes’ guise. But this custom of representing defunct mortals as gods was less common in Roman art. The bust of a dead youth on a Roman grave-stone in Turin,624 set up in honor of L. Mussius, is a good example. Here the cock, sheep, and kerykeion, symbols of the god, show that the youth is represented as Hermes.

Not only dead men, however, were heroized in this manner. It was not an uncommon practice in later Greece for living men, especially princes, to have their statues assimilated to types of gods and heroes, 73a practice which was very common in imperial Rome.625 Thus many of the Hellenistic princes were pleased to have their statues assimilated to those of the heroic Alexander. One of the best examples of this process is furnished by the original Fig. 5.—Bronze Portrait-statue of a Hellenistic Prince. Museo delle Terme, Rome. bronze portrait statue of such a prince, which was unearthed in Rome in 1884 and is now in the Museo delle Terme there (Fig. 5).626 It has been identified as the portrait of several kings of Macedon and elsewhere,627 but the similarity of the head of the statue to heads portrayed on Macedonian coins is only superficial.628 All that we can say is that this beautiful work, representing the prince in the heroic guise of a nude athlete of about thirty years, belongs to the third century B. C., the epoch following Lysippos. The sculptor, wishing to combine the ideal with the real, appears to have copied the motive directly from a bronze statue by Lysippos, which represented Alexander leaning with his left hand high on a staff.629 The pose also recalls that of the third-century B. C. statue of Poseidon found on74 Melos and now in Athens.630 The free leg, body, and head modeling correspond so nearly with the Apoxyomenos (Pl. 28) that it was at first called a work of Lysippos, but its lack of repose631 shows that it must be a continuation of the work of that sculptor by some pupil, who wished to outdo his master in both form and expression.

Before discussing the subject of the assimilation of victor statues to types of god and hero, we must make it clear that often, for certain reasons, statues of athletes were later converted into those of gods, and vice versa. Such examples of metamorphosing statues have nothing to do with the process of assimilation under discussion. A few examples will make this clear. An archaic bronze statuette from Naxos,632 reproducing the type of the Philesian Apollo of Kanachos, since it has the same position of hands as in the original, as we see it later reproduced on coins of Miletos and in other copies,633 holds an aryballos in the right hand instead of a fawn. As it is absurd to represent Apollo with the bow in one hand and an oil-flask in the other, it seems clear that in this statuette the copyist has converted a well-known Apollo into an athlete by addition of an athletic attribute. Famous statues were put to many different uses by later copyists. Thus Furtwaengler has shown that the statue of the boy boxer Kyniskos by Polykleitos at Olympia,634 which represented the athlete crowning himself, was modified to represent various deities, heroes, etc. Thus a copy from Eleusis of the fourth century B. C., because of its provenience and the soft lines of the face, suggests a divinity, perhaps Triptolemos.635 A copy of the same type in the Villa Albani (no. 222) has an antique piece of a boar’s head on the nearby tree-stump and, consequently, may represent Adonis or Meleager. A torso in the Museo Torlonia (no. 22) represents Dionysos, another in the Museo delle Terme has a mantle and caduceus and so represents Hermes, while on coins of Commodus the same figure, with the lion’s skin and club, represents Herakles.636 No ancient statue was used more extensively as a model for other types than the famous Doryphoros of Polykleitos. Furtwaengler637 has collected a long list of later conversions of this work into statues both marble and bronze, statuettes, reliefs, etc., representing Pan, Ares, Hermes, and in one case an ordinary mortal.638 Other75 examples of the conversion of statues will be given in our treatment of assimilation.

Hermes was one of the principal ἐναγώνιοι or ἀγώνιοι θεοί, i. e., gods who presided over contests, or who were overseers of gymnasia and palæstræ, or were teachers of gymnastics (γυμνάσται).639 Greek writers often mention these athletic gods. Thus Aischylos640 often uses the term, not in the sense of ἀγοραῖοι θεοί, “the great assembled gods,” (ἀγὼν = ἀγορά),641 but in the sense of gods who presided over contests.642 This is evident from the fact that Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon, and Hermes are the gods especially mentioned by Aischylos in this sense, and the first three correspond with the Olympian and Nemean games (Zeus), the Pythian (Apollo), and the Isthmian (Poseidon), while Hermes is concerned in them all. Thus the epithet ἀγώνιοι, in the Agamemnon of Aischylos refers to Zeus,643 Apollo,644 and Hermes.645 If the word referred to the twelve greater gods, as some have thought, other deities more important than Hermes would have been included. Elsewhere the word ἀγώνιος always refers to contests.646 Hermes was worshipped at Athens and elsewhere as a god of contests.647 The agonistic character of this god is shown by the fact that statues and altars were erected to him all over Greece.648 He was sometimes coupled with Herakles as the protector of contests,649 and the images of the two often stood in gymnasia.650 A fragmentary votive relief of the second century A. D. is inscribed with a dedication to both by a certain Horarios, victor in torch-racing.651 Athenian ephebes made offerings to Hermes,652 and to Hermes and Herakles in common, after their training was over. Thus Dorykleides of Thera, a victor in boxing and76 the pankration at unknown games, dedicated a thank-offering to the two.653 Hermes was early the god of youthful life and sports, especially those of the palæstra. He is said to have founded wrestling654 and inaugurated the sports of the palæstra.655 Pausanias mentions a Gymnasion of Hermes at Athens656 and an altar of Hermes ἐναγώνιος together with one of Opportunity (Καιρός) at the entrance to the Stadion at Olympia.657 He says that the people of Pheneus in Arkadia held games in his honor called the Hermaia,658 and he records the defeat of the god by Apollo in running.659 With such an athletic record there is little wonder that the Greek sculptor would often take his ideal of Hermes from the god of the palæstra and gymnasium, representing him as an athletic youth harmoniously developed by gymnastic exercises. It was but natural that a victor at Olympia or elsewhere should wish to have his statue—which rarely could be a portrait—conform with that athletic type.

An excellent instance of this tendency seems to be afforded by the so-called Standing Diskobolos in the Sala della Biga of the Vatican (Pl. 6),660 known since its discovery by Gavin Hamilton in 1792. It represents a youth who is apparently taking position for throwing the diskos, the weight of the body resting on the left leg, the knees slightly bent, the feet firmly planted, and the diskos held in the left hand, just prior to its being passed to the right. This position is one which immediately precedes that of Myron’s great statue. The bronze original dates from the second half of the fifth century B. C., and has been variously assigned to Myron by Brunn, to Alkamenes by Kekulé, followed by Overbeck, Michaelis and Furtwaengler,661 and to Naukydes, the brother and pupil of Polykleitos.662 The head of the Vatican statue shows no trace of Peloponnesian art, but rather resembles Attic types 77of the end of the fifth century B. C. However, as we shall see, this head does not appear to belong to the statue. Among the works of Alkamenes Pliny mentions a bronze pentathlete,663 called the Enkrinomenos, and this work has been identified with the statue under discussion.664 Such an assumption is tenable only if the statue fits Pliny’s epithet. This epithet appears to mean “undergoing a test,” and should refer not to the statue, for we know nothing of any principle of selecting statues, but to the athlete represented, the ἔγκρισις referring to the selection of athletes before the contest.665 Pliny’s statue, then, presumably, represented a pentathlete, not in action as the Vatican statue does, but standing at rest before his judges. An all-round athlete like a pentathlete would especially fit such an ordeal, and his statue, albeit lighter and more graceful, would be an ideal one like the Doryphoros of Polykleitos.666 We know how Alkamenes treated Hermes from the bearded herma of that god found in Pergamon in 1903 and inscribed with his name.667 Its massive features, broad forehead, and wide-opened eyes bear no analogy to the head on the Vatican statue, nor to the one with which Helbig would replace it. The ascription of the statue to Naukydes is better founded. As the head of the statue is Attic and not Argive, it is difficult to connect the work with a Peloponnesian artist. However, the present head of the statue can not be shown to belong to it, and no other replica has a head which can be proved to belong to the body. A fragmentary replica of the statue, of good workmanship, was found in Rome in 1910, and nearby a head, which must belong to the torso.668 This head fits the Vatican statue better than the head now on it, and certainly comes from the Polykleitan circle—both head and body showing elements of Polykleitan style. This new head represents the transition from Polykleitan art to that of the next century, i. e., to the head-types of Skopas, Praxiteles, and other Attic78 masters. Presumably, then, in the original of this fragment and its replicas, we have a famous statue—the one by Naukydes mentioned by Pliny.669

A more important question for our discussion is whether the Vatican statue represents a victor (diskobolos) or Hermes. G. Habich has argued that the pose of the statue, standing with the right foot advanced, is not that of a diskobolos taking position. He quotes Kietz670 to the effect that no vase-painting or other monument has the exact position of this statue, and that the natural position for such a motive is to advance the left foot.671 Moreover, the fingers of the right hand, which are supposed especially to uphold the diskobolos theory, are modern in all the replicas. On a coin of Amastris in Paphlagonia, dating from the Antonines, and on one of Commodus struck at Philippopolis in Thrace, a figure of Hermes is pictured, which, in all essentials, reproduces the Vatican statue.672 Since the figure on the coins has a kerykeion or training-rod in the right hand and a diskos as a minor attribute in the left—merely a symbol of the god’s patronage of athletics—we should see in the Vatican statue a representation of Hermes as overseer of the palæstra. Pliny’s words—if we omit or transpose the first et—refer, therefore, to a statue of Hermes-Diskobolos and to the Ram-offerer which stood on the Athenian Akropolis, to two, therefore, and not to three different monuments. We should restore all the replicas of the statue, then, with the caduceus, to represent Hermes as gymnasiarch. Though this interpretation of the statue has found opponents,673 the evidence is strong that in it and its replicas we have an athlete in the guise of Hermes. If we think that the caduceus can not be brought into harmony with the chief motive of the statue, we must conclude with Helbig that the copyist in one isolated case—the one copied on the coins—changed an original victor statue into Hermes by adding the herald staff. This would make it an instance, not of assimilation of type, but of conversion.

A small bronze statuette standing upon a cylindrical base, which was found in the sea off Antikythera (Cerigotto), reproduces almost79 exactly the attitude of the statue of Naukydes (Fig. 6).674 Here the left hand is stretched out horizontally at the elbow, but the right arm is lost, so that we get no additional evidence as to the attribute carried. Because of its correspondence with the aforementioned coins675 even in detail, Bosanquet, followed by Svoronos, looks upon this “little masterpiece” as a copy of the Argive master.

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The statue discovered in the ruins of Hadrian’s villa in 1742 and now in the Capitoline Museum,676 which represents an ephebe nude, except for a chlamys thrown around the middle of his body, standing in an easy attitude with his left foot resting upon a rock and bending forward with the right arm extended in a gesture, was formerly looked Fig. 7.—Bronze Statue of a Youth, found in the Sea off Antikythera. National Museum, Athens. upon as a resting pancratiast. Because of its general likeness to Praxitelean figures—the head is especially like the Olympia Hermes—Furtwaengler interpreted the figure as that of Hermes Logios or Agoraios, the god of eloquence, and assigned it to an artist near to Praxiteles. However, it is probably nothing else than an idealized portrait of the age of Hadrian or the Antonines, and represents an ephebe, probably a victor, assimilated to the type of Hermes.677

Another example of assimilation may be the much-discussed bronze statue in the National Museum at Athens, which was accidentally discovered in 1901, along with the rest of a cargo of sculptures which had been wrecked off the island of Antikythera as it was on its way to Rome about the beginning of the first century B. C. (Fig. 7).678 This statue, the best preserved of the cargo, is a little over life81size and represents a nude youth standing with languid grace, the weight of his body resting upon the left leg, while the right is slightly bent and the right arm is extended horizontally, the hand holding a round object now lost and variously interpreted. In short, the pose strongly resembles that of the Vatican Apoxyomenos (Pl. 29). Opinions as to the age and authorship of this statue have been very diverse, ranging from the fifth century B. C. down to Hellenistic times and ascribing it to many masters and schools. Kabbadias, who published it, in conjunction with the other objects, directly after their discovery,679 thought it would prove to “rank as high among statues of bronze as does the Hermes of Praxiteles among those of marble,” and characterized it as “the most beautiful bronze statue that we possess.” Waldstein praised it in no less exaggerated terms, and classed it along with the Charioteer from Delphi (Fig. 66) as among the first Greek bronzes, if not among the finest specimens of Greek sculpture.680 He followed Kabbadias in assigning it to the fourth century B. C. and in interpreting it as Hermes. He at first ascribed it to Praxiteles or his school, but later he thought it more Skopaic.681 Th. Reinach placed it in the early fourth century B. C., but regarded it as the work of a sculptor influenced by Polykleitos, naming the youthful Praxiteles or Euphranor.682 He explained the pose as that of a man amusing a dog or a child with some round object. A Greek scholar, A. S. Arvanitopoulos, assigned the work to the fifth century B. C. and to the Attic school, referring it possibly to Alkamenes.683 However, as soon as the statue was properly cleansed and pieced together, its early dating was seen to be untenable, and its Hellenistic character became evident.684 E. A. Gardner found little resemblance in the head to that of the Praxitelean Hermes, but more in the treatment of hair and eyes to that of the Lansdowne82 Herakles (Pl. 30, Fig. 71,), which he ascribes to Skopas.685 He saw in its labored and even anatomical modeling similarity to the Apoxyomenos of the Vatican and concluded that it was, therefore, later than the fourth century B. C., being an eclectic piece disclosing influences of several fourth-century sculptors, the work of an imitator especially of Praxiteles and Skopas. K. T. Frost also assigned the work to the Hellenistic age, but believed it was the statue of a god and not of a mortal, and so followed Kabbadias and Waldstein in interpreting it as a Hermes Logios.686 Gardner had interpreted it as probably the statue of an athlete “in a somewhat theatrical pose,” though admitting it might be a genre figure representing an athlete catching a ball, even if its pose were against such an interpretation. In any case he was right in saying that the pose, even if incapable of solution, was chosen by the sculptor with a desire for display, as the centre of attraction is outside and not inside the statue, and so is against the αὐτάρκεια of earlier works. More recently, Bulle has asserted that it is not an original work at all, but, as evinced by the hard treatment of the hair, merely a copy. He also interprets it as a Hermes, restoring a kerykeion in the left hand, and he likens its oratorical pose to that of the Etruscan Orator found near Lago di Trasimeno in 1566 and now in the Museo Archeologico in Florence, or the Augustus from Primaporta in the Vatican.687 For its date he believes the statue marks the end of the Polykleitan “Standmotif” (the breadth of the body showing Polykleitan influence, the head, however, being too small and slender for the Argive master), and the inception of the Lysippan (the free leg not drawn back, but placed further out), as we see it in the Apoxyomenos. He concludes that its author can not have been a great master.688 Doubtless, the statue, which is the pride of the Athenian museum, is merely a representative example of the kind of bronze statues made in great numbers in the early Hellenistic age; but it shows the high degree of excellence attained at that time by very mediocre artists.689

Apart from its period, our chief interest in the statue is to determine whether a god or a mortal is portrayed. As there are no certain remnants of the round object held in the right hand, and no other83 accessories, many interpretations have been possible. Especially the gesture of the right arm has been the centre for such interpretations. Some have looked upon this gesture as “transitory,” i. e., the sweeping gesture of an orator or god of orators, and this has led to the interpretation of the statue as Hermes Logios.690 However, the round object in the fingers is against this assumption. Others have therefore regarded the gesture as “stationary,” i. e., the figure is holding an object in the hand, which is the main interest of the statue, and this view has therefore also given rise to many different explanations. Among mythological interpretations two have received careful attention. Svoronos has reasoned most ingeniously that the statue represents Perseus holding the head of Medusa in his hand, and finds a similar type on coins, gems, and rings. Thus, almost the identical pose of the statue is seen on an engraved stone in Florence, which shows Perseus holding the Gorgon’s head, and Svoronos has restored the bronze similarly.691 But certainly the right arm of the statue was not intended to carry so great a weight. Others have seen in it the statue of Paris by Euphranor, mentioned by Pliny as offering the apple as prize of beauty to Aphrodite.692 But the statue scarcely reflects the description of the Paris by Pliny. Other scholars have interpreted the statue as that of a mortal. S. Reinach believes that it may be a youth sacrificing.693 Kabbadias and E. A. Gardner admitted it might be the statue of a ball-player as well as of Hermes. Since this latter interpretation has become popular, let us consider its possibility at some length in reference to ball-playing in antiquity. Now we know that ball-playing (σφαιρίζειν, ἡ σφαιρικὴ τέχνη) was a favorite amusement of the Greeks from the time of Nausikaa and her brothers in the Odyssey694 to the end of Greek history, and that it was practiced at Rome from the end of the Republic to the end of the Empire.695 It seems to have been regarded less as a game than as a gymnastic exercise.84 Its origin is ascribed to the Spartans and to others.696 A special sort of ball-playing was known as φαινίνδα,697 and this is described in a treatise by the physician Galen, of the second century A. D., in which he recommended ball-playing as one of the best exercises.698 Because of his ability in the art of ball-playing, Aristonikos of Karystos, the ball-player of Alexander the Great, received Athenian citizenship and was honored with a statue.699 The philosopher Ktesibios of Chalkis was fond of the game.700 A special room, called the σφαιριστήριον, was a part of the later gymnasium.701 The game was specially indulged in at Sparta. Several inscriptions, mostly from the age of the Antonines, commemorate victories by teams of ball-players there.702 The name σφαιρεῖς was given to Spartan youths in the first year of manhood. These competitions took place in the Δρόμος at Sparta.703 Though, then, we should naturally expect statues of ball-players, like the one in Athens of Aristonikos already mentioned, the calm mien of the Cerigotto bronze and the direction of the gaze are certainly, as Th. Reinach said earlier, against interpreting it as the statue of one engaged in so active a sport. Von Mach, because of its voluptuous appearance, thought it might represent merely a bon vivant. While Lechat interpreted it as possibly an athlete receiving a crown from Nike,704 Arvanitopoulos would have the right hand either hold a lekythion or be quite empty, and the left a strigil, thus restoring the statue as an apoxyomenos. S. Reinach would regard it merely as a funerary monument.