II. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF VICTOR STATUES AT OLYMPIA

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 the 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. Mueller[420] 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 Faustkaempfer 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.

SIZE OF VICTOR STATUES.

In another section[421] 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 tall,[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 Furtwaengler[441] is a little under life-size.

NUDITY OF VICTOR STATUES.

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’s[445] 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, 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. 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 years[463] 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 hair 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 Sparta[469] 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 ATHLETIC HAIR-FASHION.

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 his 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 effeminacy[475] 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 sympathies[482] wore their hair long at Athens. When boys arrived at the age of ἔφηβοι, they had their hair cut at the feast of the οἰνιστήρια[483] 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 notice of this style of wearing the hair is found in a fragment of Asios.[487] Herakleides Ponticus[488] 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, 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.

Bulle[499] 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 head[501] 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.

ICONIC AND ANICONIC STATUES.

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, 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]

PORTRAIT STATUES.

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 Euthymos[514] 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 Gardner[516] 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. The 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 Lucian[520] 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] Pliny[523] 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 the 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, not because of their increasing the honor accorded to the victor, but rather because they honored his egotism.[532]

ANICONIC STATUES.

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.

ÆSTHETIC JUDGMENTS OF CLASSICAL WRITERS.

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 Rhetoric[536] 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 most 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 Kleito[538]—and consequently that he is not referring to portraiture. In the Symposium of Xenophon[539] 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 Spartans 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 Brutus[550] 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 Greek 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 the 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.

GREEK ORIGINALS OF VICTOR STATUES.

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 Athens[565] (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 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 modesty[567] 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.

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:

“The gymnastically trained bodies of these slim boys and youths and vigorous men are evidence of the ennobling effect of athletics. Presented in complete nudity they are not faithful portraits from life, but motives or models from the palæstra transformed and exalted to the highest ideal of physical beauty and strength. They are the most splendid human beings that the art of any period has created.”[574]

CANONS OF PROPORTION.

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 of 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. Pliny[579] says that symmetria has no Latin equivalent, and in several passages[580] 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 of 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. Kalkmann[592] 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. Fritsch[593] has done for the whole body 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, and 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 identity 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. Guillaume[610] has made a careful analysis of it in reference to Galen’s[611] 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 Rome[612] (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 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.

ASSIMILATION OF OLYMPIC VICTOR STATUES TO TYPES OF GODS AND HEROES.

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 Athens[615] (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 Staïs[616] 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, look 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 Verona[621] shows the dead portrayed as a winged Hermes, and a similar figure appears on a stele from Tanagra.[622] The so-called Commodus in Mantua[623] 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, a 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 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 on 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 repose[631] 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. Furtwaengler[637] 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] Other examples of the conversion of statues will be given in our treatment of assimilation.

ATHLETE STATUES ASSIMILATED TO TYPES OF HERMES.

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 Aischylos[640] 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 and 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 wrestling[654] and inaugurated the sports of the palæstra.[655] Pausanias mentions a Gymnasion of Hermes at Athens[656] 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 of 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 Attic 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 Kietz[670] 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 almost 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 coins[675] even in detail, Bosanquet, followed by Svoronos, looks upon this “little masterpiece” as a copy of the Argive master.

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 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 lifesize 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 Lansdowne 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 other 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 Odyssey[694] 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. 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.

In all this discrepancy of opinion it is not difficult to recognize elements of both god and mortal blended. The resemblance in the expression and features of the face to those of the Praxitelean Hermes, even though superficial, as well as the pose of the right arm recall the god; the muscular build of the figure fits either the god Hermes, in his character of overseer of the sports of the palæstra, or an athlete. It therefore seems reasonable to see in this Hellenistic statue of varied artistic tendencies merely the representation of an athlete, perhaps of a pentathlete, who is holding a crown or possibly an apple as a prize of victory in the right hand, whose form and features have been assimilated to those of Hermes.

How the statue of an indisputable Hermes Logios, on the other hand, appears, may be seen in the Hermes Ludovisi of the Museo delle Terme, Rome,[705] and in its replica in the Louvre. The original of this marble copy, dating from the middle of the fifth century B. C., has been variously ascribed to Pheidias,[706] Myron,[707] and others. In this statue the petasos, chlamys, and kerykeion indicate the god, while the position of the right arm raised toward the head[708] and the earnest expression of concentration in the face bespeak the god of oratory. The careful replica of the statue, except the head, in the Louvre, is the work of Kleomenes of Athens, a sculptor of the first century B. C. The copyist, however, has given to the original a Roman portrait-head, whence it has been falsely called Germanicus.[709] The Paris statue, then, is merely another example of the conversion of an original god-type, for the sculptor wished to represent a Roman under the guise of Hermes Logios, since the inscribed tortoise shell retained at the feet is a well-known attribute of the god.

Another excellent example of a true Hermes head is the fine Polykleitan one in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which is a copy of a well-known type represented by the Boboli Hermes in Florence and other replicas.[710] Though S. Reinach classed this head as Kresilæan,[711] its true Polykleitan character has been established,[712] even if it does not merit the praise formerly given it by Robinson, of being “easily the best extant copy of a work by Polykleitos.”[713]

The so-called Jason of the Louvre and its many replicas[714] (Fig. 8) probably represent athletes in the guise of Hermes. These statues are copies of an original of the end of the fourth century B. C., when the favorite motive originated—probably with Lysippos—of representing a figure, as in this case, with one foot on a rock, bending over and tying a sandal. Since the replicas in Munich and Paris extend both arms to the right foot, while those in London and Athens extend the left arm over the breast, with the hand resting on the right knee, Klein has argued two different versions of a common type. He compares the former with figures on the west frieze of the Parthenon, the latter with the well-known relief of Nike tying her sandal, from the Nike balustrade now in the Akropolis Museum. The one type he assigns to Lysippos, the other (with both arms down) to an earlier artist. However, the proportions of both groups agree with the Lysippan canon and so we should assume only one artist. The discussion whether the figure is tying or untying the sandal is as barren as the similar one raised about the Athena from the Nike balustrade;[715] but the question as to who is represented by the type is worthy of careful consideration. The statue in the Louvre at first was believed to represent Cincinnatus called from the plough, but Winckelmann, without evidence, gave it its present name of Jason. In recent years it has been interpreted as Hermes tying on his sandals, his head raised to hearken to the behest of Zeus before going forth from Olympos on his duties as messenger. This interpretation was based on the description of a statue of the god by Christodoros,[716] and the fact that the type conforms with a representation of Hermes on a coin of Markianopolis in Mœsia.[717] Arndt has argued from the coin and from the motive of the statue that Hermes and not an athlete is intended; thus the inclination of the head, he thinks, is not that of an athlete looking out over the theatre, since the regard is not far off, but merely upward; the presence of the chlamys and the sandals also fits the god. He therefore refers the copies to a Hermes-type originated by Lysippos. But Froehner’s idea that they represent athletes, even if the type were invented for Hermes, is in line with our idea of the assimilation of athlete types to that of Hermes. In this connection it may be added that the head of an athlete in Turin,[718] dating from the late third or early second century B. C., is very similar to that of the Louvre figure, and especially to the Fagan head in London. The pose of an athlete binding on a sandal was doubtless chosen by the sculptor merely to show the play of the muscles.

Heads of Hermes are often found with victor fillets,[719] and some of these doubtless are from statues of victors. The beautiful fourth-century B. C. Parian marble head of a beardless youth in the British Museum, known as the Aberdeen head,[720] which resembles so strongly the Praxitelean Hermes, although lacking its delicacy, may be from a victor statue assimilated to the god, for holes show that it once wore a metal wreath. In Roman days the Doryphoros of Polykleitos, as we have seen, was adapted to represent Hermes, and was set up in various palæstræ and gymnasia. The Naples copy of the Doryphoros stood in the Palaistra of Pompeii,[721] and statues of ephebes carrying lances (hastae, δόρατα) and called Achilleae by Pliny,[722] which must have been largely copies of Polykleitos’ great statue, were set up in gymnasia. A later type of Hermes-head often appeared on bodies of the Doryphoros,[723] while other statues, showing the body of the Doryphoros draped with the chlamys,[724] and many torsos following the attitude and form of this statue, have the chlamys, which shows that they were intended for the god.[725] Hermes in the Doryphoros pose, in a bronze of the British Museum,[726] is probably intended for an athlete. Furtwaengler has shown[727] that the old Argive schema of the boxer Aristion at Olympia by Polykleitos[728] was used in the master’s circle for statues of Hermes. The best preserved example of a number of existing statues of this type is one in Lansdowne House, London,[729] in the pose of the Aristion, holding an object—probably a kerykeion—in the hand and a chlamys over the left shoulder.

ATHLETE STATUES ASSIMILATED TO TYPES OF APOLLO.

Apollo figures in mythology as an athlete. In the Iliad, at the opening of the boxing match between Epeios and Euryalos,[730] he is mentioned as the god of boxing, which refers, perhaps, to his presiding over the education of youths (κουροτρόφος) and to his gift of manly prowess. Pausanias records that he overcame Hermes in running and Ares in boxing.[731] He gives these victories of the god as the reason why the flute played a Pythian air at the later pentathlon. Plutarch says that the Delphians sacrificed to Apollo the boxer (πύκτης), and the Cretans and Spartans to Apollo the runner (δρομαῖος).[732] Apollo’s fight with Herakles to wrest from the hero the stolen tripod of Delphi,[733] which is the subject of many surviving works of art,[734] is outside the realm of athletics. As with Hermes, it is often difficult to distinguish between statues of Apollo and those of victors assimilated to his type. A good instance of this doubt is afforded by the long and indecisive discussion of the monument represented by several replicas, especially by the Choiseul-Gouffier statue in the British Museum (Pl. 7A), and the so-called Apollo-on-the-Omphalos (Pl. 7B) found in 1862 in the ruins of the theatre of Dionysos at Athens, and now in the National Museum there.[735] The bronze original of these marble copies must have been famous, to judge from the number of replicas of it. It has been ascribed to many different artists—to Kalamis, Pythagoras, Alkamenes, Pasiteles,[736] to one on more, to another on less probability. As A. H. Smith has pointed out, the krobylos treatment of the hair almost certainly indicates an Attic sculptor of the first half of the fifth century B. C. But here again the main interest in these copies is to determine whether the original represented Apollo or an athlete. The connection between the Athens replica and the omphalos found with it is all but disproved[737] and can not be used as evidence that the statue represents the god. However, the original has been called an Apollo because of the presence of a quiver on certain of the copies. Thus, while we have a tree-trunk beside the Choiseul-Gouffier example, we have a quiver on the copy in the Palazzo Torlonia in Rome,[738] and on a similar statue in the Fridericianum in Kassel,[739] and both tree and quiver on the fragment of a leg from the Palatine now in the Museo delle Terme.[740] The Ventnor head in the British Museum[741] has long locks suited to Apollo, and the head from Kyrene there[742] was actually found in a temple of Apollo. It has also been pointed out that the head of a similar figure, undoubtedly an Apollo, appears on a relief in the Capitoline Museum,[743] and a similar figure is found on a red-figured krater in Bologna, which shows the god standing on a pillar with a laurel wreath in the lowered left hand and a bowl in the right.[744] On coins of Athens, moreover, we see the figure of Apollo in a similar attitude with a laurel wreath in the lowered right hand and a bow in the left.[745] From such evidence a good case for an Apollo has been made out by many scholars—A. H. Smith, Winter,[746] Helbig,[747] Conze,[748] Furtwaengler,[749] Schreiber,[750] Dickins, and others. The evidence of the quiver in the delle Terme fragment and the Torlonia replica is looked upon as a deliberate device of the copyist to indicate the god. The attempt especially to connect it with the Apollo Alexikakos of Kalamis[751] must certainly fall, since the date is about the only thing in its favor. In the long list of statues ascribed to this sculptor,[752] there is none of an athlete, and the Choiseul-Gouffier type, whether it represents Apollo or an athlete, has a markedly athletic character. If the Delphi Charioteer (Fig. 66) be ascribed to Kalamis, certainly this type of statue can have nothing to do with him or his school. Nor is the type at all identical with the Alexikakos appearing on coins of Athens,[753] in which the locks of hair, in the true archaic fashion of a cultus statue, fall down over the god’s shoulders. Besides, the work of Kalamis, characterized by λεπτότης and χάρις,[754] must have been of the delicate later archaic style of the transition period.

Waldstein, however, has made a good case against the evidence adduced for interpreting the original as Apollo and he believes that the statue represents an athlete.[755] The thongs thrown over the stump in the Choiseul-Gouffier statue, doubtless those of a boxer, seem to point to an athlete for that copy at least. The muscular form and athletic coiffure of all the copies also point to the same conclusion, even if Waldstein’s ascription of the original statue to the boxer Euthymos, whose statue by Pythagoras of Rhegion stood in the Altis at Olympia,[756] is only a guess. Wolters thinks the Choiseul-Gouffier statue may represent an athlete, but is against Waldstein’s ascription of the work to Pythagoras.[757]

Though differing in detail, the rendering of the hair, common to all the replicas, is a purely athletic coiffure. The argument for attributing the original to Apollo, based on the curls around the face, is of no importance, since a similar coiffure appears on many ephebe heads by various Attic masters of the same or a slightly earlier period. The hair treatment on a little-known replica of the head in the British Museum[758] gives us an additional argument in determining whether the original was an Apollo or not. On this head there are two corkscrew curls side by side just back of the ears, which are so inorganically attached and so unsuited to the style of head as to make us believe that they were added by the copyist, even if their absence in other copies were not proof enough of this fact. Apparently the copyist adopted a well-known type of athlete and tried to convert it into an Apollo by the use of this Apolline hair attribute. The only other Apolline attribute, the quiver on the copies in the Palazzo Torlonia[759] and Museo delle Terme, may have been added as a fortuitous adjunct by the copyists, who were converting an original athlete statue into one of Apollo. It may be added, also, that the quiver does not always indicate the god, as we shall see in discussing the Delian Diadoumenos (Pl. 18). When we consider, therefore, the athletic pose, the massive outline and proportions, the high-arched chest, the muscular arms and thighs, the accentuation of the veins,[760] the fashion of the hair, and the relatively small size of the head, together with the presence of the boxing-thongs on the London example, it seems reasonable to conclude that in this series of copies we may see an original athlete statue, which in certain cases was later transformed into statues of Apollo. Even if the original was actually an Apollo, its proportions were far better suited to the patron of athletic exercises than to the leader of a celestial choir.

An instance of the similar use of the same type of head is shown by the colossal statue of Apollo unearthed at Olympia.[761] Here we see the same coiffure as in the heads discussed, but the presence of the remnants of a lyre indubitably shows that this copy was intended for Apollo, and so it has been rightly assigned by Treu, not to the fifth, but to a later century. When long hair was no longer the fashion for athletes, a later artist might mistakenly think that the earlier plaits were genuinely Apolline, though we know that they were common to all early athletic art. Another head in the British Museum has been ably discussed by Mrs. Strong,[762] who shows that it comes from an Apollo and not from an athlete statue. It is similar to an Apollo pictured on a stater struck at Mytilene about 400 B. C.,[763] and consequently, like the statue from Olympia, it is merely an instance of the process of converting an athlete statue into that of an Apollo.

The marble copy of the Diadoumenos of Polykleitos, found on the island of Delos in 1894, and now in the National Museum in Athens[764] (Pl. 18), has a chlamys and a quiver introduced on the marble support against the right leg. Until recently these attributes were regarded as the arbitrary introductions of the Hellenistic copyist, who wished to convert the famous athlete statue into one of Apollo, but lately it has been suggested that they belonged to the original statue, which is assumed to have represented Apollo. Thus, Hauser has propounded the theory that the Diadoumenos was originally an Apollo.[765] He does not believe that the Delian sculptor could have transformed a short-haired athlete into an Apollo, since the typical Apollo after the time of Praxiteles was never represented as athletic. He later supported his theory that the Diadoumenos was originally an Apollo by the evidence of a bronze statuette and a Delphian coin, and reasserted his view that so virile a short-haired Apollo did not originate with the later copyist, but in the fifth century B. C.[766] Hauser’s argument that Apollo was the original of the Diadoumenos seems as unsuccessful as his contention that Polykleitos’ other great creation, the Doryphoros, is to be classed as an Achilles.[767] Loewy has sufficiently opposed Hauser’s theory of the Diadoumenos, by showing that the palm-tree prop in all the marble replicas of that statue points to athletic victories.[768] He rightly explains the Apolline attributes of the Delian copy as the perfectly natural additions of an artist who lived on the island reputed to be the birthplace of the god. His ascription of the Polykleitan statue to the pentathlete Pythokles, the base of whose statue at Olympia has been found,[769] is doubtful. More recently Ada Maviglia has shown the literary grounds for regarding the Diadoumenos as an athlete, and not an Apollo.[770]

The difficulty of distinguishing between statues of athletes and Apollo is also shown by the very beautiful fifth century B. C. Parian marble head in Turin,[771] which is certainly a copy of an original Greek bronze. Furtwaengler, because of the hair, wrongly believed it the head of a diadoumenos, and connected it with Kresilas,[772] while Amelung and Wace[773] have found in it Attic and Polykleitan influences. The hair is parted over the centre of the forehead, as in the Diadoumenos and the Doryphoros, and in other works attributed to the Polykleitan school, while the locks over the ears and the plaits wound round the head have Attic analogues.[774]

ATHLETE STATUES ASSIMILATED TO TYPES OF HERAKLES.

Herakles was the reputed founder of the games at Olympia.[775] He was a famous wrestler, Pausanias frequently mentioning his combats with giants.[776] He won in both wrestling and the pankration at Olympia.[777] In connection with the victory of Straton of Alexandria, who won in these two events on the same day,[778] Pausanias names three men before him and three men after him who won in these events on the same day.[779] We learn their dates from Africanus.[780] After the date of the last of these victories, Ol. 204 (= 37 A. D.), the Elean umpires, in order to check professionalism, refused to allow contestants to enter for both events.[781] To win the crown of wild olive in both these events was therefore regarded as a great honor, and in the Olympic lists a special note was made of such victors, who were called πρῶτος, δεύτερος, τρίτος, κ. τ. λ., ἀφ’ Ἡρακλέους.[782] They also received the title of παράδοξος or παραδοξονίκης.[783] Statues of Herakles, like those of Hermes and Theseus, were commonly set up in gymnasia and palæstræ throughout Greece,[784] and it was but natural that Olympic victors, especially those in the two events mentioned, should want their statues assimilated to those of the hero. The difficulty of deciding whether a given statue is one of Herakles or of a victor is even greater than that of distinguishing between statues of victors and those of Hermes or Apollo. To quote Homolle: “Maintes fois, comme pour la tête d’Olympie, comme pour plusieurs autres encore, on peut se demander si le personnage représenté est le héros luimême sous les traits d’un athlête ou un athlête fait à l’image du héros.”[785] In reference to the statue of Agias by Lysippos discovered at Delphi, which is an excellent example of the assimilation process which we are discussing, he continues: “Ici en particulier, étant donnée la nature du monument, il est permis de supposer que l’auteur ... ait voulu élever le personnage à la hauteur idéale du type divin en qu’ Agias ait été assimilé à Héraclès.”[786]

We shall discuss a few examples of this process of assimilation to types of Herakles. Our ascription of the head from Olympia mentioned by Homolle, which was found in the ruins of the Gymnasion, to the statue of the Akarnanian pancratiast Philandridas by Lysippos[787] (Frontispiece and Fig. 69) will be discussed in a later chapter.[788] The swollen ears and hair-fillet might pass for hero or mortal, for in deciding whether a given head represents Herakles or a victor, the ears are not the deciding criterion, since many heroes had the “pancratiast” swollen ear, as we shall see later. A good example of assimilation is seen in the beautiful little marble head of a man, found in Athens and now in the Glyptothek Ny-Carlsberg in Copenhagen, dating from the early Hellenistic age.[789] As traces of color remain in the hair, some have thought that this head came from the reliefs on the “Alexander” sarcophagus from Sidon, belonging to the body of a headless youth represented there. Though the marble (Pentelic) and the dimensions would fit, it would be the only head on the sarcophagus with a band in the hair, and so the question can not be definitely decided.[790] The head was at first called a Herakles, though Furtwaengler rightly saw in it an ideal representation of an athlete, even if the ears are not swollen. A bronze head of a youth from Herculaneum, now in Naples, is evidently a part of the statue of a victor or of Herakles.[791] A Polykleitan ephebe head-type, with rolled fillet around the hair and swollen ears, represented by replicas in Naples, in Rome, and elsewhere, may represent a boxer in the guise of the hero.[792] In the Roman copy of the group of Herakles and Telephos in the Museo Chiaramonti of the Vatican, Herakles, still the god, wears a fillet.[793] Similarly, a colossal head of mediocre workmanship in the Sala dei Busti of the Vatican represents the hero with a fillet,[794] while another head in the Capitoline Museum, with fillet and swollen ears, seems to represent Herakles as a victorious athlete.[795] Many other heads in various museums, which are commonly called heads of Herakles, may represent athletes in the heroic guise. A good example is the Parian marble terminal bust of the fourth century B. C., representing a young Herakles wreathed with poplar, now in the British Museum (Fig. 31).[796] In this head the ears are bruised. It seems to have been copied from some well-known statue of Lysippan or Skopaic tendencies. Another head in the British Museum shows the beardless hero, his hair encircled by a diadem, and his ears broken and crushed.[797] This almost certainly comes from a victor statue. Many bronze statuettes in the British Museum may be interpreted either as Herakles or as victors.[798] A bronze from Corfu represents a nude Herakles or an athlete, with the left foot advanced and the left hand extended. The objects held in both hands are lost, but the challenging pose and expression indicate a boxer.[799] Similarly a small bronze in Berlin, represented with a fillet and in the walking pose, may be a Herakles or a victor.[800] Duetschke gives two examples of heads in the Uffizi, both of them having fillets, and one of them having swollen ears, which may come from statues of the hero or victors.[801] Heads of the hero with the rolled fillet can not, however, according to Furtwaengler, be classed as victors, since he believes that this attribute was borrowed from the symposium, to distinguish the glorified hero rejoicing in the celestial banquet.[802]

ATHLETES REPRESENTED AS THE DIOSKOUROI.

Kastor is said to have won the foot-race and Polydeukes the boxing match, at Olympia.[803] They had an altar at the entrance to the Hippodrome there,[804] and were called “Starters of the Race” at Sparta.[805] A stadion, in which they were fabled to have contended, was shown in Hermione, in Corinthia.[806] Kastor was a famous horse-racer in Homer and later writers,[807] and Polydeukes a famous boxer,[808] both being κατ’ ἐξοχήν the rider and boxer respectively.[809] Scenes showing Athena setting garlands on victorious hoplite racers (?) appear on reliefs of the Dioskouroi from Tarentum.[810] An archaic Argive inscription tells how a certain Aischylos won the stade-race four times and the hoplite-race three times at Argos, for which he dedicated a slab to the Dioskouroi, which depicted them in relief.[811] An inscribed bronze quoit of the sixth century B. C. from Kephallenia(?), now in the British Museum, was dedicated to the two heroes by Exoïdas for a victory (apparently in the pentathlon).[812] A bronze four-spoked wheel with a dedicatory inscription in their honor was found at Argos, probably the remnant of a monument erected for a chariot victory.[813] Doubtless certain victor statues were assimilated to them, though we have no direct evidence of the fact. Ordinary dead men appeared in the guise of the Dioskouroi on sepulchral reliefs, just as we have seen that in statuary they were heroized into statues of Hermes. Thus a grave-relief in honor of Pamphilos and Alexandros in Verona shows on the projecting lower rim the two Dioskouroi, the figure to the right carrying a lance in the right hand and holding the bridle of a horse in the left, while the figure to the left holds a lance in the left hand and touches a horse’s head with the right.[814] A votive relief in the British Museum represents two youths on horseback, who, despite the absence of the conical cap or pilleus, are probably the Dioskouroi.[815] Their short hair is bound with diadems, which shows that the dead men may have been victors.

Sufficient examples of the process of assimilation have now been given to prove that it was not an uncommon device of the ancient sculptor and to show the difficulty of distinguishing between types of gods and athletes.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

III. VICTOR STATUES REPRESENTED AT REST

PLATES 8-21 AND FIGURES 9-31.

We have seen[816] that it was a very old custom in Greece to dedicate statues of victors at the great national games to the god in whose honor the games were held. On many sites, especially at Olympia, tiny statuettes of clay or bronze of very primitive technique have been found in great numbers, which represent victors in many attitudes and ways—as horsemen, warriors, charioteers, etc. By the sixth century B. C. this ancient custom, as we learn from literary, epigraphical, and monumental sources, had developed, with the rapid progress attained by the sculptor’s art, into the regular practice of erecting life-size statues of athletes at the site of the games or in the native city of the victor. Especially at Olympia hundreds of such monuments were gradually collected, whose numbers and beauty must have exerted an overwhelming impression on the visitor to the Altis. We shall now begin the consideration of these monuments in detail.

The victor statues at Olympia, as elsewhere, may be conveniently divided into two main groups—those which represent the victor as standing or seated at rest, before or after the contest, and those which represent him in movement, i. e., in some contest schema.[817] Examples of statues of athletes represented at rest are common in Greek athletic sculpture. We need only mention the so-called Oil-pourer of Munich (Pl. 11), who is represented as pouring oil over his body to make his limbs more supple for the coming wrestling bout; the Diadoumenos of Polykleitos (Pls. 17, 18, and Fig. 28), who is binding a victor fillet around his head after a successful encounter; the Apoxyomenos of the school of Lysippos (Pl. 29), representing an athlete scraping off the oil and dirt from his body after his victory. In this class of statues, which forms by far the greater number and shows the richer motives, the poses are quiet and reserved, the figures are compact, and the expression earnest and even thoughtful. As examples of statues represented in movement we need only recall such well-known works as the Diskobolos of Myron with its rhythmic lines and vivacious expression (Pls. 22, 23, and Figs. 34, 35); the bronze wrestlers of Naples, who are bending eagerly forward watching for a grip (Fig. 51); or the artistically intertwined pancratiast group of Florence (Pl. 25). Such monuments show us the varied poses, the choice of the critical moment, the truth to life, and the masterly rhythm attained by certain sculptors.

THE APOLLO TYPE.

In this chapter we shall confine ourselves almost entirely to the statues of victors represented at rest, discussing those represented in motion chiefly in the next. Most of the oldest statues at Olympia, dating from a time when there were few variations in the sculptural type, must have been represented at rest and in the schema of the so-called “Apollos.” Ever since the discovery of the Apollo of Thera in 1836 (Fig. 9), this genre of sculpture, the most characteristic of the early period, extending from the end of the seventh century B. C. to the time of the gable groups of Aegina, has been carefully studied. Though we now know that the type passed equally well for gods and mortals,[818] we still keep the name, because of its familiarity and for the sake of having a common designation. That this type actually represented Olympic victors we have indubitable proof. Pausanias mentions the stone victor statue of the pancratiast Arrhachion, dating from the first half of the sixth century B. C., which stood in the agora of his native town Phigalia. He describes it as archaic in pose, with the feet close together and the arms hanging down the sides to the hips—the typical “Apollo” schema.[819] Moreover, this very statue has survived to our time (Fig. 79).[820] A study, therefore, of this type of statue will give us an idea of how some of the early statues at Olympia looked.

The “Apollo” statues,[821] because of differences in facial expression, have been conveniently divided into two groups: those represented by the examples from Thera, Melos, Volomandra, Tenea, etc., sometimes named the “grinning” group, because the corners of the mouth are turned upwards into the so-called “archaic smile,” and those represented by the examples from Orchomenos, the precinct of Mount Ptoion, and elsewhere, named the “stolid” group, because in them the mouth forms a straight line.[822] There are, however, essential differences between the statues of each group. Thus, while some of both groups—e. g., the examples from Melos, Volomandra, and Orchomenos—have square shoulders, most of the others have sloping ones. The type gradually improved, as in each successive attempt the sculptor overcame difficulties, until finally revolutionary changes had taken place in the original form. This improvement is seen in the treatment of the hair, in the modeling of the face and body, and in the proportions of the statues. In a head of a statue from Mount Ptoion[823]—which is broken off at the neck—we seem to see the sculptor in wood making his first attempt in stone. In the archaic example from Thera[824] (Fig. 9) the arms hang straight down close to the sides, as in the statue of Arrhachion, being detached only slightly from the body at the elbows, showing that the artist was afraid that they might break off. In other examples, as in the one from Orchomenos[825] (Fig. 10) and one from Mount Ptoion[826] (Fig. 11), the space between the arms and the body has become larger, while in the example from Melos[827] (Fig. 12) only the hands are glued to the thighs. In the “Apollo” found at Tenea in 1846, and now in Munich[828] (Pl. 8A), the arms are free, but the hands are held fast to the body by the retention of small marble bridges between them and the thighs. The final step has been taken in two examples from Mount Ptoion (Fig. 13), in which the arms from the shoulders down are free from the bodies.[829] The bridges shown on the photograph in the figure to the left, which connect the forearms with the thighs, are of plaster, being added at the time the statue was set up in Athens.[830] The figure to the right is smaller and clearly discloses Aeginetan influence. The audacity of the sculptor in entirely freeing the arms in both examples was rewarded by the arms being broken off. Similarly, in the Strangford Apollo of the British Museum (Fig. 14),[831] the arms, which hung loose from the shoulders, are broken away. The larger statue from Mount Ptoion just mentioned also has the arms slightly crooked at the elbows, the forearms being extended at an oblique angle to the body. This represents an intermediate stage between the earlier “Apollos,” in which the arms adhered vertically to the sides of the body (as e. g., in the ones from Orchomenos, Thera, Melos, and Tenea), and the later ones, in which the arms were bent, the forearms being extended at right angles to the body (see Figs. 15 and 19).[832]

The example from Thera shows the archaic method of working in planes parallel to front and side and at right angles to one another, the corners of the square block being merely rounded off. The outlines of muscles are indicated by shallow grooves, which do not affect the flatness of the surface, and there is but little facial expression. We see the chest outlined in some examples from Aktion.[833] In the Melian example the rectangular form is modified by cutting away the sides obliquely in arms and body; here there is more expression in the face, and the treatment of the hair and the proportions of the body are more developed. In the example from Orchomenos we see a great improvement in form. Here, as in later Bœotian examples, the original rectangular form of the example from Thera has become round, so that a horizontal cross-section through the waist is almost circular; the muscles of the abdomen are indicated and the skin is naturalistically shown in the back and at the elbows. In later Bœotian examples from Mount Ptoion, which are directly developed from the Orchomenos type,[834] the form is lighter and the proportions more graceful. In one example (Fig. 13, left) even the veins are shown. In the example mentioned above as showing Aeginetan influence, and dated about 500 B. C.,[835] the muscles are clearly marked, just as in the Strangford example and in the statues from the temple at Aegina, showing that foreign art had been introduced into Bœotia by that time. In the example from Volomandra in Attica,[836] we see affinity to the examples from Thera and Melos, but Attic softness in the carving of the shoulders and in the proportions. In the Apollo of Tenea (Pl. 8A), “by far the most beautiful preserved statue of archaic sculpture,”[837] a statue most carefully worked, we see a Peloponnesian example of the beginning of the sixth or even of the end of the seventh century B. C. Here the sculptor has shown great care in executing details and in the proportions. The eyes are not flat, but convex, and are wide open as in most of the earlier examples. The downward flow of the lines of the statue is striking, which is caused by the sloping shoulders and the elongated triangular-shaped abdomen. The slimness of the figure, with the contour of bones and muscles, is remarkable at so early a date. The fashioning of the knees is detailed. When we contrast this tall, slim, agile statue with the massively square-built Argive type found at Delphi (Pl. 8B), we find it reasonable to suspect that the Apollo of Tenea is an imported work, coming probably from the islands.[838] The two statues of (?) Kleobis and Biton, discovered at Delphi in 1893 and 1894, and inscribed with the name of the sculptor Polymedes of Argos, have added much to our knowledge of early Argive sculpture (Pl. 8B, = Statue A).[839] This Polymedes may have been one of the predecessors acknowledged by Eutelidas and Chrysothemis, among the first victor statuaries known to us by name, in the epigram preserved by Pausanias from the base of the monument of Damaretos and his son Theopompos at Olympia.[840] The epigram, in any case, implies that the reputation of the Argive school in athletic sculpture was already well established by the end of the sixth century B. C. These massively built statues, dating from the beginning of the sixth century B. C., outline the muscles to a certain extent, even showing the line of the false ribs by incised lines. They display, however, but little detail in modeling, except in the knees, where the artist has tried to indicate the bones and muscles. The features of the large heads are without expression; the large eyes are flat and not convex, as in the example from Tenea, though the Argive artist was, perhaps, later than the Corinthian one, and a long distance removed from the later artist of the Ligourió bronze (Fig. 16), to be discussed later.

In all these “Apollos,” which have been found all over the Greek world from Naukratis in Egypt to Ambrakia, and along the Asian coast and on the Aegean Isles, the archaic artists have attempted, by their modeling of the muscles, especially of the chest and abdomen, to express trained strength. The heavy Argive examples, which may be said to be the prototypes of the Ligourió bronze and of the Doryphoros of Polykleitos (Pl. 4 and Fig. 48), are in strong contrast with the lighter type best represented by the example from Tenea. In the former, with their big heads and shoulders and their powerful arms and legs, we may see early boxers or pancratiasts; in the latter a long-limbed runner, with powerful chest, but slim and supple legs. In the Apollo of Tenea there is no flabbiness nor softness, and yet no emaciation. We see very similar runners on Panathenaic vases. Between the two extremes we have a long series, those from Mount Ptoion and elsewhere.

We do not doubt that the early statues of athletes at Olympia showed all the variations we have discussed in these “Apollos.” Of this type, then, were the statues at Olympia of the Spartan Eutelidas, the oldest mentioned by Pausanias,[841] those of Phrikias of Pelinna in Thessaly,[842] and of Phanas of Pellene in Achæa,[843] to whom, later on in this chapter, we shall ascribe the two archaic marble helmeted heads found at Olympia (Fig. 30), the wooden statues of Praxidamas and Rhexibios,[844] the statue of Kylon on the Akropolis of Athens,[845] and that of Hetoimokles at Sparta.[846] The statue of the famous wrestler Milo of Kroton by the sculptor Dameas, mentioned by Pausanias[847] and described by Philostratos,[848] must also have conformed with the “Apollo” type, though it showed a step in advance of the earlier ones by having its arms bent at the elbow, the forearms being extended horizontally outward. This statue needs a somewhat detailed account. The description of Philostratos seems to have been founded on the account in Pausanias[849] of Milo’s prowess, which, in turn, may have arisen from the appearance of the statue and the cicerone’s description. Philostratos says that it stood on a quoit with the feet close together and with the left hand grasping a pomegranate, the fingers of the right hand being extended straight out, and a fillet encircling the brows.[850] Philostratos has Apollonios explain the attributes of the statue on the ground that the people of Kroton represented their famous victor in the guise of a priest of Hera. This would explain the priestly fillet and the pomegranate sacred to the goddess, while the diskos, on which the statue rested, would be the shield on which Hera’s priest stood when praying. Scherer, however, rightly pointed out that the statue in the Altis was of Milo the victor and not the priest. He therefore explained the diskos[851] merely as a round basis on which the statue, of the archaic “Apollo” type with its feet close together, stood, and the tainia as a victor band. He followed Philostratos in believing that the gesture of the right hand was one of adoration.[852] He looked upon the object in the left hand not as a pomegranate at all, but as an alabastron, a toilet article adapted to a victor. He, therefore, believed that the Apollo of the elder Kanachos of Sikyon,[853] the so-called Philesian Apollo,[854] represented nude and holding a tiny fawn in the right hand and a bow in the left, would give a good idea of the pose of Milo’s statue.[855] Hitzig and Bluemner believe this explanation of Scherer probable, although they rightly disagree with him in his exchanging the pomegranate for an alabastron, since Pausanias expressly mentions a pomegranate in the hand of another victor statue at Olympia.[856] Pliny speaks of a male figure by Pythagoras, mala ferentem nudum,[857] and Lucian says apples were prizes at Delphi,[858] and we know that Milo was also a Pythian victor. The same commentators believe that Pausanias’ story of Milo bursting a cord drawn round his brow by swelling his veins arose from the victor band on the statue, and the story of the strength of his fingers from the position of the fingers on it.

We have seen in the “Apollo” statues a considerable variety of physical types. In the sixth century B. C. the artist was feeling his way and was hampered by local school tendencies. At first he knew only how to produce rigid statues in the conventional Egyptian attitude with the arms glued to the sides, the two halves of the body being symmetrical and the hips on the same level. He gradually improved on this model, making the position more elastic—as in the statue of Milo—rightly indicating bones and muscles and giving to the figure natural proportions. Bulle has shown on one plate[859] three statuettes which illustrate the improvements reached in bronze in various parts of Greece by the end of the sixth century B. C. To the left is represented a victorious palæstra gymnast—as is indicated by the remnants of akontia in the hands—in the Akropolis Museum (Fig. 15);[860] in the center is the Payne Knight statuette of the British Museum,[861] carrying a fawn in the right hand, which is a copy of the Philesian Apollo which stood in the Didymaion near Miletos; to the right is Hermes with the petasos, short-girded tunic, and winged sandals, holding a ram in the left and probably a kerykeion in the right hand.[862] The attributes of the three, then, attest respectively a victor, Apollo, and Hermes. In all three the arms are freed from the body, and the muscles of the breast, chest, and abdomen are indicated, though carelessly in the case of the victor. The proportions of the three vary greatly; the Attic victor has a large head, broad shoulders, powerful chest, long body, and short legs; the Apollo has long legs, shorter though slimmer body, and small head;[863] the Hermes has a clearly outlined figure and shows the careful modeling so characteristic of the schools of Argos and Sikyon in the fifth century B. C. Bulle shows that the further development of the “Apollo” type was halted by the Argive school, which, while continuing the restful pose of these figures, counteracted their rigidity by inclining the head to the side and throwing the weight unevenly on the legs by lowering one hip and further advancing one foot. The central line was no longer vertical, but curved, and it was now possible to give greater detail to chest and abdomen. Polykleitos finally perfected this curve and threw back the left foot, resting the weight of the body on the right—from which time on we have the regular scheme of “free” and “rest” legs. Despite all these later improvements, Olympic victors continued to set up statues in the rest attitude of the “Apollo” type down perhaps into the third century B. C. Such dedications were the result both of school tendencies and economy, especially in the case of equestrian victors, who frequently were content to use such “actionless” statues in place of groups. We have only to mention the monuments of Timon of Elis, whose statue was the work of the Sikyonian Daidalos,[864] and of Telemachos of Elis, whose statue was made by the otherwise unknown sculptor Philonides.[865]

Before systematically considering victor statues at Olympia and elsewhere with general motives, i. e., represented at rest, we shall now rapidly sketch the development of athletic sculpture in four great centres, Argos, Sikyon, Aegina, and Athens, even though some of the works mentioned were represented in motion. Sculptors of other schools known at Olympia will be treated incidentally in both this and the following chapters.

THE AFFILIATED SCHOOLS OF ARGOS AND SIKYON.

While in general it is unprofitable to discuss sculptors who have not surely left any example of their art behind, there are two early schools of Peloponnesian sculpture, those of Argos and Sikyon, which, though we may assign work to them only by conjecture, can not be summarily passed over, owing to their great importance in the history of Greek athletic art. The bronze used in their works was too valuable to escape the barbarians, and, furthermore, the monotony, which must have characterized early Peloponnesian sculpture, militated against these works being reproduced to any great degree by later copyists.

THE SCHOOL OF ARGOS.

The Argive school was devoted mainly to athletic statuary. The greatest name in old Argive art is that of Ageladas or Hagelaïdas,[866] the reputed teacher of Myron and Polykleitos, who lived from the third quarter of the sixth century into the second quarter of the fifth century B. C. While his connection with Myron and Polykleitos is scarcely to be doubted,[867] his supposed connection with Pheidias has made the chronology of the life of this sculptor one of the difficult problems of the ancient history of art. A scholion on Aristophanes’ Ranae, 504, dates the statue known as the Herakles Alexikakos in the Attic deme Melite by Hagelaïdas after the pestilence in Athens of 431-430 B. C., and makes the Argive sculptor (Gelados = Hagelaïdas) the teacher of Pheidias. As his statue of the Olympic victor Anochos commemorated a victory won in Ol. 65 (= 520 B. C.), this late date is manifestly impossible.[868] Furthermore, a better tradition says that Hegias was the teacher of the Attic master.[869] Furtwaengler’s attempt to show that these two divergent traditions were really in accord, by the assumption that Hegias was the pupil of Hagelaïdas and that his art came from the latter—thus explaining certain similarities in the work of Hagelaïdas and Pheidias,—does not solve the problem.[870] As the scholion is based on a good tradition,[871] the best solution of the difficulty is that of Kalkmann[872] and others, that the Alexikakos was the work of a younger Hagelaïdas, the grandson of the famous master, by the intermediate Argeiadas. For a lower limit to the activity of Hagelaïdas there seems to be no good reason for distrusting the evidence that he made a bronze Zeus for the Messenians to be set up at Naupaktos, whither they moved in 455 B. C.[873] This makes quite possible a period of collaboration of four or five years at least between Polykleitos and Hagelaïdas.

Pausanias mentions the monuments of three victors at Olympia by Hagelaïdas: the statues of the pancratiast Timasitheos of Delphi, who won two victories some time between Ols. (?) 65 and 67 (520 and 512 B. C.);[874] of the runner Anochos of Tarentum, who won in the stade- and double-race in Ols. 65 and (?) 66 (= 520 and 516 B. C.);[875] and the chariot-group of Kleosthenes of Epidamnos, who won in Ol. 66 (= 516 B. C.).[876]

None of the works of Hagelaïdas at Olympia or elsewhere is known. Messenian coins of the fourth century B. C. show the motives of two of his statues, that of his Zeus Ithomatas just mentioned as being made for the Messenians,[877] and the beardless Zeus παῖς at Aigion.[878] However, we infer the characteristics of his style from the bronze statuette in Berlin which was found at Ligourió near Epidauros (Fig. 16).[879] This is undoubtedly an Argive work contemporary with the later period of Hagelaïdas. Furtwaengler and Frost are right in looking upon it as showing the prototype of the canon of Polykleitos. Though too small to count as a characteristic work of the early Argive school, it shows us that the style of that school was a short and stocky type, similar to Aeginetan works, only somewhat fleshier and heavier. The straight mouth and heavy chin, the treatment of the eyelids, and the clumsy limbs are all archaic features to be expected in the period preceding Polykleitos. The modeling is carefully executed, showing a knowledge of anatomy. If such excellence is found in a statuette, we can form some idea of the perfection of a statue by the master.

The bronze Apollo from Pompeii now in the Naples Museum,[880] with marble replicas in Mantua and Paris,[881] shows us how Hagelaïdas treated a god type, while the statue of an athlete by Stephanos will give us some idea of how he treated his victor statues, as it seems to have been modeled after an athlete statue of the early fifth century B. C., perhaps after a work by some pupil of the master. Stephanos belonged to the school of Pasiteles, a group of sculptors flourishing at Rome at the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire. They devoted themselves to the reproduction of early fifth-century statues. They were not ordinary copyists, for their works show individual mannerisms and a system of proportions foreign to the originals. Thus their statues have the square shoulders of the Argive school, but the slim bodies and slender legs of the period of Lysippos and his scholars. Apart from such mannerisms, then, in the male figure signed Stephanos, pupil of Pasiteles, in the Villa Albani in Rome (Pl. 9),[882] which reappears in a very similar statue in groups combined with a female figure of related style,[883] or with another male figure,[884] we may see a copy of a bronze original of the Argive school before Polykleitos. The standing motive and the body forms are the same in both the Mantuan Apollo and the Stephanos figure, although the former is more developed and the head type is different in both; this shows that the two, while displaying the same basic ideal, were not works of the same master.[885] As the statue by Stephanos has a fillet around the hair, it may well represent an ideal athlete, who in the original held an aryballos or similar palæstra attribute in the raised left hand. It is interesting to compare the copies of this group with those of another representing mother and son, the work of Menelaos, the pupil of Stephanos, which, though transferred from Greek to Roman taste in respect of drapery and forms, is merely a variation of the same theme without any heroic traits.[886]

The influence of Hagelaïdas can be easily traced in other schools of art, especially in the Attic School and in the sculptures of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, whether these latter be Peloponnesian in origin or not. It will be convenient in this connection to discuss briefly the style of these important sculptures, which we have already mentioned several times. The statement of Pausanias,[887] that the sculptors of the East and West Gables were Paionios of Mende in Thrace and Alkamenes respectively—the latter being known as the pupil of Pheidias[888]—was not doubted until the discovery of the Olympia sculptures.[889] Then doubts arose both on chronological and stylistic grounds, and now only a few archæologists would maintain that either artist had anything to do with these groups. The style of the two gables (as well as that of the metopes) is so similar that many have assigned them to one and the same artist.[890] They have been referred to many schools from Ionia to Sicily, even including a local Elean one. Thus Brunn assigned them to a North Greek-Thracian school; Flasch[891] and (more recently) Joubin[892] to the Attic; Kekulé[893] and Friedrichs-Wolters[894] to a West Greek (Sicilian) one, because of their similarity to the metopes of temple E at Selinos; Furtwaengler[895] to an Ionic one (Parian masters). Most scholars, however, including K. Lange,[896] Treu,[897] Studniczka,[898] Collignon,[899] and Overbeck,[900] have referred them to Peloponnesian sculptors.[901]

To return to the art of Hagelaïdas: if we assume that the Ligourió bronze comes from the school of that Argive master certain conclusions must be drawn. The figure is archaic, but does not have the archaic smile. In Athens at the end of the archaic period there was a reaction against this smile, and doubtless the Athenian artists were strongly influenced by Argive models. Thus an archaic bronze head of a youth, found on the Akropolis and dating from about 480 B. C., shows a serious mouth, a strong chin, heavy upper eyelids, and finely worked hair, characteristics which we found in the Ligourió statuette. These traits show that the statuette and the head were the forerunners of the Apollo of the West Gable at Olympia. So finished a bronze as this one from the Akropolis, at the beginning of the fifth century B. C., has inclined Richardson to look upon it as “not improbably a work of Hagelaïdas,”[902] though here again Furtwaengler would ascribe it to Hegias.[903] The Parian marble statue of an ephebe found on the Akropolis (Fig. 17)[904]—one of the most beautiful recovered during the excavations there—shows the same Argive influence. This statue is chronologically the first masterpiece, thus far recovered, which marks the break with archaism by having its head turned slightly to one side.[905] It has the same pose as the Athlete by Stephanos and probably represents a palæstra victor. The head, with its heavy chin, and the muscular body strikingly resemble the Harmodios (Fig. 32), which has led Furtwaengler and others to ascribe it to Kritios or his school.[906] At the same time a similarity is seen between this head and that of the Apollo of the West Gable at Olympia, and so with Bulle and others we ascribe it to the Argive school.

One of the female statues (Korai) found on the Akropolis, and approximately of the same date as the ephebe, viz, the fragmentary one consisting of head and bust and known popularly as la petite boudeuse, shows the same revolt against Ionism.[907] In many respects this statue is very different from most of the other Akropolis Korai. The eyes are not yet set back naturally, but the appearance of depth is attained by thickening the eyelids, quite in contrast with the modeling of the eyeball in most of the other statues. The corners of the mouth turn down, which gives it the appearance of pouting. This statue is also our first example in sculpture of the so-called Greek profile—the nose continuing the line of the forehead. The same Argive influence in Athenian art is also discernible in the Parian marble head of an athlete with traces of yellow in the hair (Fig. 18),[908] which may be dated a little later than the Akropolis ephebe—about 470 B. C. Because of its resemblance to the Apollo of Olympia, its Attic-Peloponnesian origin seems clear.[909] Its expression is comparable with that of the Kore just discussed—as it has the same mouth, eyes, and nose, both monuments showing the reaction against the archaic smile, which characterized the Ionian period of Attic art. This same Ionic reaction also may be seen in the bronze statuette of a diskobolos in the Metropolitan Museum (Fig. 46),[910] which resembles in style that of the Tyrannicides, but shows also Argive traits. These Argive traits, small head and slender limbs, are easily seen by comparing this statuette with the Ligourió bronze.

We have already mentioned the monumental group of the hoplite victor Damaretos and of the pentathlete Theopompos, which was made about 500 B. C. by the Argive sculptors Chrysothemis and Eutelidas.[911] These artists were known to later antiquity only by the epigram inscribed on the base of this monument at Olympia, and the probable dates of the two victories of Theopompos, Ols. (?) 69 and 70 (= 504 and 500 B. C.), show that they were contemporaries of Hagelaïdas, and not, as formerly was believed, the forerunners of his school.[912]

Polykleitos, a Sikyonian by birth,[913] migrated early to Argos to become the pupil of Hagelaïdas, and became the great master of the Argive school in the next generation after him. We have four statues by him at Olympia. His earliest work probably was the statue of the boxer Kyniskos of Mantinea, who won in Ol. (?) 80 (= 460 B. C.); he made the statues of the Elean pentathlete Pythokles and of the Epidamnian boxer Aristion, both of whom won their victories in Ol. 82 (= 452 B. C.); and lastly he made the statue of the boy boxer Thersilochos from Kerkyra, who won in Ol. (?) 87 (= 432 B. C.)[914] The footprints on the three recovered bases of the statues of the first three show that all were represented at rest. Of Patrokles, the brother of Polykleitos, Pausanias mentions no statues at Olympia, though Pliny says that he made athlete statues.[915] Of Naukydes,[916] the nephew or brother of Polykleitos, we have record of three athlete statues at Olympia: those of the wrestlers Cheimon of Argos, who won in Ol. 83 (= 448 B. C.), and Baukis of Trœzen, who won some time between Ols. (?) 85 and 90 (= 440 and 420 B. C.); also one of the boxer Eukles of Rhodes, who won some time between Ols. 90 and 93 (= 420 and 408 B. C.).[917] A contemporary of Naukydes was the sculptor Phradmon, who, according to Pliny, was a contemporary of Polykleitos;[918] he made the statue of the boy wrestler Amertas of Elis, who won a victory some time between Ols. 84 and 90 (= 444 and 420 B. C.).[919] In the next century, Polykleitos Minor, the grandson or grandnephew of the great Polykleitos, and the pupil of Naukydes,[920] had three statues at Olympia: those of the boy boxer Antipatros of Miletos, whose victory is given by Africanus as Ol. 98 (= 388 B. C.); of the two boy wrestlers Agenor of Thebes, who won some time between Ols. 93 and 103 (= 408 and 368 B. C.), and Xenokles of Mainalos, who won some time between Ols. 94 and 100 (= 404 and 380 B. C.).[921] The inscribed base of the latter has been recovered and the footprints show that the statue was represented at rest, the body resting equally on both feet, the left slightly advanced. Andreas, a second-century B. C. Argive sculptor, made a statue at Olympia of the boy wrestler Lysippos of Elis, who won some time between Ols. 149 and 157 (= 184 and 152 B. C.).[922]

THE SCHOOL OF SIKYON.

The Sikyonian school of bronze founders was closely affiliated with the one at Argos. Early in the archaic period the brothers Dipoinos and Skyllis, sons or pupils of the mythical Daidalos of Crete, migrated to Sikyon.[923] A generation later another Cretan sculptor, Aristokles, founded there an artist family which lasted through seven or eight generations.[924] His two grandsons Aristokles and Kanachos are known to have collaborated with Hagelaïdas on a group of three Muses.[925] Many have seen in the small bronze found in the sea off Piombino, Tuscany, and now in the Louvre (Fig. 19),[926] a copy of the Apollo Philesios, the best-known work of Kanachos. This gem of the bronze art, in true archaic style, may very well represent the Apollo, which, according to the description of Pliny[927] and the evidence of Milesian copper coins of all periods,[928] had as attributes a fawn in the outstretched right hand and a bow in the left. However, Overbeck,[929] followed by von Mach, believes that it is not a copy of Kanachos’ Apollo, but merely represents a boy assisting at a sacrifice, and that the original held a cup in the left hand and a saucer in the right. In any case the statuette is too inaccurate to give us more than the pose of the Apollo of Kanachos, even if it were proved to be a copy. It may be merely a reproduction of the mythological type of Apollo, which the artist himself followed, and so we can not say definitely to what school it belongs. The Payne Knight bronze in the British Museum,[930] which holds a tiny fawn in the right hand, the bow originally in the left hand being lost, has better pretensions, perhaps, to be a copy of the Apollo. Another archaic half life-size bronze, formerly in the Palazzo Sciarra,[931] is of a similar type, though its style is different. Another bronze statuette from Naxos, now in Berlin,[932] shows the same position of the hands, but has an aryballos or pomegranate in the right hand. We have already classed it as an example of the conversion of an original god-type into that of a victor. We might also mention the mutilated torso found by Holleaux at the sanctuary of Apollo Ptoios in Bœotia (Fig. 12, right), which has a similar pose to that of the statuette from Piombino, and whose hair technique shows that it is an imitation of a bronze work.[933] However, as we shall see later, it may be rather representative of the Aeginetan school of sculptors. All these works may tell us of the general character of the Apollo, but little of its style.[934]

No athlete statue by Aristokles or his brother Kanachos is known to have stood at Olympia. That the latter actually made victor statues, however, is proved by Pliny’s statement (l. c.) that he made celetizontas pueros. Of the later Sikyonian school we have twenty-seven statues of victors made by eleven different sculptors, whose dates range from near the end of the fourth down into the third century B. C., of whom we shall give a chronological list. Alypos, the pupil of the Argive Naukydes, had four statues at Olympia: those of the wrestler Symmachos of Elis, of the boy boxer Neolaïdas of Pheneus, of the boy wrestler Archedamos of Elis, and of the boy and man wrestler Euthymenes of Mainalos, all of whom must have won their victories some time between Ols. 94 and 104 (= 404 and 364 B. C.).[935] Kanachos, the Younger, made one statue, that of the boy boxer Bykelos of Sikyon, who won some time between Ols. 92 and 105 (= 412 and 360 B. C.).[936] Olympos made the statue of the pancratiast Xenophon of Aigion, who won some time between Ols. 95 and 105 (= 400 and 360 B. C.).[937] The sculptor Daidalos, the son and pupil of Patrokles, and probably the nephew of Polykleitos, made four monuments for four victors: the equestrian group of the Elean charioteer Timon and his son Aigyptos, a victor in horse-racing, and statues of the Elean wrestler Aristodemos and the stade-runner Eupolemos. Their victories fell between Ols. 96 and 103 (= 396 and 368 B. C.).[938] Damokritos made the statue of the Elean boy boxer Hippos, who won between Ols. 96 and 107 (= 396 and 352 B. C.).[939] Kleon had five statues credited to him, all but one being of boy victors: those of the boy runner Deinolochos of Elis, the pentathlete Hysmon of Elis, the two boy boxers Kritodamos, and of Alketos of Kleitor, and of the boy runner Lykinos of Heraia. Their victories fell between Ols. 94 and 103 (= 404 and 368 B. C.).[940] The great Lysippos had the same number of victor statues as Kleon, and also two honor statues at Olympia: those of the equestrian victor Troilos of Elis, of the Akarnanian pancratiast Philandridas, of the wrestler Cheilon of Patrai, of the pancratiast Polydamas of Skotoussa, and of the hoplite-runner Kallikrates. Their victories occurred between Ols. 102 and 115 (= 372 and 320 B. C.).[941] The son of Lysippos, Daïppos, made two statues, one for the Elean boy boxer Kallon and the other for the Elean Nikandros, who won the double foot-race. Their victories fell within the activity of the sculptor, Ols. 115 and 125 (= 320 and 280 B. C.).[942] Daitondas made the statue of the Elean boy boxer Theotimos, who won his victory some time between Ols. 116 and 120 (= 316 and 300 B. C.).[943] Eutychides, the most famous pupil of Lysippos, famed alike as a bronze founder, statuary, and painter, carved the statue of the boy runner Timosthenes of Elis, who won some time between Ols. 115 and 125 (= 320 and 280 B. C.).[944] Pliny gives Ol. 121 (= 296 B. C.) as the floruit of this sculptor, which was probably the date of the erection of his most famous work, the colossal bronze Tyche, as tutelary deity of the city of Antioch on the Orontes, which was founded by Seleukos I in Ol. 119.3 (= 302 B. C.).[945] This shows that Eutychides was already by that date a famed sculptor, having begun his career by 330-320 B. C. Kantharos, the pupil of Eutychides, made the statues of the two boy wrestlers Kratinos of Aigira and Alexinikos of Elis, who won their victories some time between Ols. 120 and 130 (= 300 and 260 B. C.).[946]

ÆGINETAN SCULPTORS.

We have but little left of the prominent early Aeginetan school of bronze sculptors. Of Kallon, the earliest historical sculptor of the school, the reputed pupil of Tektaios and Angelion (who in turn were the pupils of Dipoinos and Skyllis), we have only literary evidence. He was typical of archaic severity just prior to the era of transition, and therefore should be compared with Hegias of Athens and Kanachos of Sikyon. For Onatas, the most famous of the Aeginetan sculptors, whose floruit was in the first half of the fifth century B. C., we have evidence of many monuments at Olympia. Besides the colossal Herakles dedicated by the Thasians,[947] a Hermes dedicated by the people of Pheneus,[948] and a large group of nine statues of Greek heroes standing on a curved base faced by a statue of Nestor on another, the group being dedicated by the Achaians,[949] he made a chariot and charioteer to commemorate the victory of Hiero of Syracuse at Olympia in 468 B. C., for which monument Kalamis furnished two horses.[950] Glaukias made a bronze chariot for Hiero’s brother Gelo of Gela, who later became tyrant of Syracuse, and who won a chariot victory in Ol. 73 (= 488 B. C.).[951] This sculptor also excelled in fashioning statues of boxers and pancratiasts, making the monuments of the boxers Philon of Kerkyra and Glaukos of Karystos, and that of the renowned boxer and pancratiast Theagenes of Thasos.[952] The statue of Glaukos was represented in the schema of one “sparring” (σκιαμαχῶν),[953] and so was in movement and not at rest. We have athlete statues by three other Aeginetan sculptors at Olympia. Thus Ptolichos, the pupil of the Sikyonian Aristokles, set up statues of the Aeginetan boy wrestler Theognetos, who won in Ol. 76 (= 476 B. C.), and of the boy boxer Epikradios of Mantinea, who won between Ols. (?) 72 and 74 (= 492 and 484 B. C.);[954] Serambos made the statue of the boy boxer Agiadas of Elis, who won between Ols. (?) 72 and 74;[955] Philotimos made the horse for the horse-racing victory of Xenombrotos of Kos, who won in Ol. (?) 83 (= 448 B. C.).[956] All of these sculptors appear to have used bronze exclusively, and their art, though independent, showed a bias toward Peloponnesian work. There are few examples left of this art. The bronze head of a bearded warrior or hoplite victor found on the Akropolis, if we are justified in classing it as Aeginetan and not Attic, shows the excellence which we associate with this school.[957] The delicate execution of its hair and beard, as well as the strength and precision of this head, makes it not unworthy of being ascribed to one of the best artists of the school, perhaps to Onatas himself. The beardless bronze head discovered in 1756 in the villa of the Pisos in Herculaneum, now in Naples, has also been assigned to Onatas, as its features are similar to those of the one under discussion.[958] The Tux bronze statuette of a hoplitodrome, to be discussed in Ch. IV (Fig. 42), has also been assigned to an Aeginetan master.[959] The marble statue known as the Strangford Apollo in the British Museum, already mentioned (Fig. 14),[960] may show the characteristics of the early school in marble, though it is impossible to say whether it is a copy of a bronze original or a minor work in stone under Aeginetan influence. The smaller “Apollo” from Mount Ptoion, already discussed (Fig. 13, right),[961] appears to show in exaggerated form the same Aeginetan traits. However, we get out best notion of Aeginetan work in marble from the gable statues in the Munich Museum, representing Homeric warriors fighting, which adorned the temple of Aphaia in the northeastern corner of the island. Their importance in this connection calls for a brief account of them.

Since the discovery of these groups by an international party of Englishmen and Germans in 1811, and their restoration soon after their arrival in Munich by the sculptor Thorwaldsen, many new fragments have been discovered by Furtwaengler during his excavations of the temple site in 1901, and have been incorporated into the existing figures in the Glyptothek. His reconstruction, though not definitive, is more in accord with artistic probability than any that preceded.[962] As we should expect from the athletic tradition of the Aeginetan school of sculpture just outlined, these sculptures represent finely trained nude athletes, whose modeling shows great observation of nature, especially in the treatment of muscles and veins. In fact it has been truly said that anatomical knowledge was never expressed again in Greek art so simply and naturally. The figures, without any excess of flesh, are slightly under life-size, short and stocky—shoulders square, but the waists slender and the legs long in proportion to the bodies—and withal are very compact and full of strength. The figures of the two pediments differ slightly, the eastern being more developed than the western. Brunn, long ago, arguing from the stele of Aristion, which then was the best example extant of archaic Attic art, showed how that art was characterized by grace and dignity of effect, while Aeginetan art was characterized by a finer study of nature. This generalization is no longer a matter of inference, but of knowledge.

These groups represent the highest period of Aeginetan art. They have been dated anywhere from the end of the sixth century B. C. down to a period after the battle of Salamis.[963] Probably a date just after that battle is correct, as Aeginetans won prizes of valor there.[964] Any attempt to assign them to this or that artist is merely conjectural. The general similarity in subject to that of the Delphi group by Onatas, which represented the death in battle of Opis, the king of the barbarian Iapygians, at the hands of the Tarentines,[965] and the group at Olympia already mentioned as representing a Trojan subject, led earlier scholars to assign the slightly more advanced statues of the East Pediment to Onatas and the more archaic ones of the West Pediment to Kallon. But we know both these sculptors only as bronze workers. The violent action of some of the figures reminds us at once of Pausanias’ description of the statue of the boxer Glaukos by the sculptor Glaukias, which we have already mentioned. But on the whole, though they are violent, the slight proportions of these athletic figures do not fit the appearance of boxers and pancratiasts, which, as we have seen, formed the staple of Aeginetan sculptors, but rather those of runners. We see a good wrestler in the Snatcher of the East Gable (Fig. 20),[966] and the corresponding figure in the right half of the same gable.[967] The Champion of the West gable (Fig. 21, left),[968] of the finest Parian marble, represented as lunging forward, pressing on the enemy armed with helm, spear, and shield, would pass as a good example of a hoplitodrome, far freer and more individual than the warrior from Dodona.

ATTIC SCULPTORS.

Owing to the Persian sack of the Athenian Akropolis in 480 and 479 B. C., and the subsequent burial of works of art there and their rediscovery by the excavations of 1885-1889, we know more of archaic Attic sculpture (600-480 B. C.) than of any other early school.[969] We have already mentioned certain Attic works which show the influence of the severer Argive school—la petite boudeuse, the head of the yellow-haired ephebe (Fig. 18), the Akropolis athlete statue (Fig. 17), etc.—which was prominent at the beginning of the fifth century B. C., works which can be attributed to Hegias, Kritios, and their associates. They illustrate the reaction against Ionic taste, an influence which came from Asia Minor and the islands, especially after the fall of the Lydian Empire of Crœsus, and which for a time submerged native Attic art. This Ionic art was characterized by great technical ability, and by rich draperies and decorative effect. The archaic smile was its special feature. Ionism is best represented by some of the Akropolis Korai.[970] In athletic art we see Ionism at its flood tide in the Rampin head found in Athens in 1877, now in the Louvre, which corresponds in style with some of the earlier female statues of the Akropolis.[971] This head has a more elaborate frisure than any of the female heads and, in fact, the elaborate treatment of the hair of the crown and forehead is more suitable to a female than a male statue. The beard is carefully plaited, while traces of red seem to show that the mustache was painted on. Similar traces of color appear on the beard and hair. The smiling mouth, high ears, and almond eyes recall many archaic works, but especially the Apollo of Tenea (Pl. 8A). The garland of oak leaves above the frisure of the forehead may suggest a victor,[972] or perhaps a priest or assistant on some religious embassy.[973] The turning of the neck—as in the ephebe statue of the Akropolis (Fig. 17)—shows a break at this early time with archaism. Another work illustrating Ionism is the fragment of a grave-stele found near the Dipylon gate in 1873 and dating from the second half of the sixth century B. C.[974] It represents the head of an athlete in profile, the youth holding a diskos in his left hand, so placed that his head is projected upon it in relief as on a nimbus. The top of the head is broken off, but we see the usual archaic features in the face—the almond-shaped eye (in profile), big nose with knob-like nostrils, thick lips with the archaic smile, retreating chin and forehead, and high ear with a huge lobe. The neck and chin, however, are full of grace and strength, as is also the slender thumb outlined against the diskos. As the stele broadens downward,[975] the figure appears to have been represented with the feet apart, and so may have represented a palæstra diskobolos on parade,[976] and is, therefore, our earliest representation of such an athlete. A similar dress-parade pose is seen on the stele of Aristion in the National Museum at Athens, the work of the sculptor Aristokles, which represents a warrior with a spear in the left hand.[977] Another torso of an ephebe in the Akropolis Museum represents Ionic work from Paros.[978] Another head, the so-called Rayet head in the Jakobsen collection in Copenhagen, one of the most remarkable specimens of Greek archaic art[979] (Fig. 22), somewhat later in date than the Rampin head, represents quite a different tendency in Attic art. While the Rampin head represents Ionic influence, this head represents pure Attic work untrammeled by foreign influence, a true development of the old Attic sculpture in poros, the best examples of which are to be found in the decorative sculptures of the Old Temple of Athena on the Akropolis, enlarged by the Peisistratidai. Comparing it with the head of the Athena of the gable of that temple,[980] we see great similarity in the simple execution and reserve in the treatment of details—characteristics of pure Attic sculpture—especially in the deep lines on either side of the mouth in the Jakobsen head. The hair is pictorially treated like a cap, traces of red appearing on it as well as on the lips and eyes. The Copenhagen and Rampin heads, together with the famous portrait head in the old Sabouroff collection,[981] and the head of a woman in the Louvre,[982] form our best examples of old Attic art outside of the museums of Athens.[983] The swollen ears of the Jakobsen head show that it is from the funerary statue of a victor, perhaps a boxer. Furtwaengler wrongly classed it as a portrait head.[984] A much discussed Attic work is the archaic relief of a charioteer in the Akropolis Museum (Fig. 63).[985] This was formerly thought (e. g., by Schrader) to be a block from the later Ionic frieze of the old Hekatompedon which many believe survived the Persian sack, but it is more likely a part of a frieze belonging to a small shrine or altar. It represents a draped person entering a two-horse chariot with the left foot, the hands outstretched to hold the reins, the head and body leaning forward. Because of the krobylos treatment of the hair, fitted for both sexes, and the long flowing robe, the sex has been needlessly doubted, some calling it an Apollo or a mortal charioteer, others an Athena or a Nike, even though the line of the breast, so far as it is visible, shows no fullness, and the long chiton is common in representations of male charioteers.[986] However, for the appreciation of the relief it is of no consequence whether the figure is male or female. It may be merely a dedicatory offering of a Panathenaic victor in chariot racing, very possibly assimilated to the type of Apollo,[987] as the god often appears in vase-paintings of the same period in similar costume mounting a chariot.[988] We shall discuss its interpretation more fully later on.[989] While Ionism was prone to represent richly draped figures which concealed the form of the body, we see in this relief, with its fine modeling, a suggestion of the form beneath the folds of the garment, and so, perhaps, only another example of an Attic master rebelling against alien influence.[990]

At Olympia we have no names of Athenian sculptors prior to the Persian war period. Kalamis helped Onatas with the monument of King Hiero already mentioned. Mikon made a statue of a pancratiast, Kallias of Athens, who won in Ol. 77 (= 472 B. C.).[991] The great Myron, of whom we shall speak at length in the next chapter, made five statues of victors, which were erected between Ols. 77 and 84 (= 472 and 444 B. C.).[992] Only four later Athenian artists are mentioned: Silanion of the fourth century, who made statues for three victors, whose victories ranged from Ols. 102 to 114 (= 372 to 324 B. C.);[993] Polykles the Elder, who made the statue of the boy pancratiast Amyntas of Eresos, who won in Ol. (?) 146 (= 196 B. C.);[994] Timarchides and Timokles, the sons of Polykles, who in common made the statue of the boxer Agesarchos of Tritaia in Achaia, who won in Ol. (?) 143 (= 208 B. C.)[995]

GENERAL MOTIVES OF STATUES AT REST.

The victor represented as standing at rest was often characterized by general motives, such as praying, anointing or scraping himself, offering libations, and the like. We shall now consider such motives in detail.

ADORATION AND PRAYER.

Prayer was a common motive represented in votive monuments. Pliny mentions many such works by Greek sculptors.[996] The custom of raising the arms in prayer is found all through Greek literature, from Homer down.[997] Pausanias says that the people of Akragas made an offering in the form of bronze statues of boys placed on the walls of the Altis, προτείνοντάς τε τὰς δεξιὰς καὶ εἰκασμένους εὐχομένοις τῷ θεῷ, these statues being the work of Kalamis.[998] In the Athenian Asklepieion there were many τύποι καταμακτοὶ πρὸς πινακίῳ, among which were representations of men and women in the praying attitude.[999] The motive was used at Olympia in victor statues, representing the victor as raising the hand in prayer to invoke victory.[1000] The statue of the wrestler Milo, already discussed at length, shows that this motive was employed at Olympia in the improved “Apollo” type in the second half of the sixth century B. C.[1001] From the next century we may cite the statue of the Spartan chariot victor Anaxandros, which was represented as “praying to the god,”[1002] and the statues of the Rhodian boxers Diagoras and Akousilaos, as we learn from a scholion on Pindar,[1003] which is based on a fragment of Aristotle[1004] and on one of Apollas.[1005] Of the statue of Diagoras it says: τὴν δεξιὰν ἀνατείνων χεῖρα, τὴν δὲ ἀριστερὰν εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἐπικλίνων; of that of Akousilaos: τῇ μὲν ἀριστερᾷ ἱμάντα ἔχων πυκτινόν, τὴν δὲ δεξιὰν ὡς πρὸς προσευχὴν ἀνατείνων.[1006] The bronze statue from Athens, now in the Antiquarium, Berlin,[1007] which represents a nude boy with the right hand raised as if in prayer and the left lowered and holding a leaping-weight—therefore a pentathlete—seems to correspond with this description of the statue of Akousilaos. The same motive may have been used in the statue of the chariot victress Kyniska, a princess of Sparta, whose statue along with that of her charioteer and the chariot was the work of the sculptor Apellas.[1008] This is the interpretation of Furtwaengler,[1009] based on a passage in Pliny, which mentions statues of adornantes se feminas[1010] by Apellas, which he reads adorantes feminas. However, adornantes may be right, for in another passage, Pliny speaks of Praxiteles’ statue of a ψελιουμένη, i. e., of a woman clasping a bracelet on her arm.[1011] Two notable bronze statues will illustrate this motive of Olympic victor statues. The statue found in 1502 at Zellfeld in Carinthia, now in Vienna,[1012] has been interpreted both as a Hermes Logios and a votive statue in the attitude of prayer,[1013] which latter interpretation the inscription on the leg, giving a list of dedications,[1014] favors. However, Furtwaengler believes it a free imitation of an Argive victor statue, though not in the Polykleitan style. Because of its similarity to the Idolino (Pl. 14), he has ascribed its original to the sculptor Patrokles. From technical considerations he believes it is not a Greek original dedicated by Romans of a later period, but a Roman work (after Patrokles) of the period of the inscription.[1015] The bronze statue of the Praying Boy in Berlin[1016] (Pl. 10) is one of our most beautiful Greek bronzes and comes from the circle of Lysippos.[1017] We now know that the uplifted arms of this statue, in which most scholars saw the Greek attitude of prayer, are restorations which were probably made in the time of Louis XIV, when the statue was in France. Of the original motive we only can say that the action of the shoulders shows that both arms were raised, but we do not know how far, or the position of the hands. Monumental evidence shows that the hands in prayer should have the palms turned away from the face instead of upwards, as in the present statue, since the Greek position was the outgrowth of an old apotropaic gesture, i. e., one directed against an evil spirit. Mau’s idea[1018] that the figure represented a player catching a ball is certainly inconsistent with the calm attitude of the statue. Furtwaengler rejected it,[1019] and he has restored the arms and hands on the basis of a Berlin gem[1020] and an ex voto relief found by the French excavators at Nemea in 1884.[1021] On this relief a youth crowned with a woolen fillet is represented. On both relief and gem the figures are in the same attitude, the arms raised over the head manibus supinis, which confirms the restoration of the Berlin statue. Many other monuments give the more usual attitude of prayer, not as in the relief and gem discussed, but with only one hand extended as high as the breast. Older writers thought that such monuments did not represent the gesture of adoration, but one of adlocutio,[1022] an opinion disproved by Pausanias’ statement about the bronze statues of the Akragantines at Olympia, already mentioned. We may cite a relief from Kleitor, now in Berlin,[1023] and a fine one of the fourth century B. C. from Lamia (?),[1024] as well as a red-figured Etruscan stamnos in Vienna representing, probably, Ajax praying before committing suicide.[1025] We shall mention also two little statuettes in New York which represent youths in the praying attitude.[1026] The first, dating from the second half of the fifth century B. C., and showing Polykleitan influence, represents a nude youth standing erect with the forearms bent, showing that the two hands were extended in prayer. The second, which dates from the first half of the fifth century B. C. (after the date of the Myronian Diskobolos), represents a nude youth standing with the right hand raised to the lips in an attitude usual in saluting a divinity, while the left is by the side, with the palm to the front.

ANOINTING.

Various familiar motives from the everyday life of the gymnasium and palæstra were reproduced in the statues of athletes. One of the commonest methods was to represent the victor anointing his body with oil. The use of oil was indispensable in all athletic exercises, in order to make the body and limbs more supple, and especially in wrestling and the pankration, to make it difficult for one’s antagonist to get a grip.[1027] Pliny mentions a painting by Theoros, representing a man se inunguentem,[1028] which appears to have been a votive portrait of an athlete. The motive was common in vase-paintings and statuary. Several red-figured vases of the severe style, antedating the statues to be considered, show from realistic representations of palæstra scenes that it was customary for athletes to hold a round aryballos high in the right hand and pour oil from it into the left, which was placed across the body horizontally.[1029] The same motive appears with variations in statues.[1030] Thus the statue of an ephebe in Petworth House, Sussex, England,[1031] a statue, as Furtwaengler says, to be praised more for its excellent preservation than for its workmanship, represents an athlete, who holds a globular aryballos in his right hand raised over the shoulder, while the left arm is held across the abdomen. On the nearby tree-trunk are small cylindrical objects which seem to be boxing pads. This statue, and especially its head, have been regarded by Michaelis and Furtwaengler as unmistakably Polykleitan in style.[1032] Several other copies of original statues representing athletes pouring oil have been wrongly classed as replicas of one original,[1033] though they merely have essential features alike, due chiefly to the subject. First is the famous statue in the Glyptothek known as the Oelgiesser (Oil-pourer), a Roman copy of an Attic bronze of about the middle of the fifth century B. C. (Pl. 11).[1034] Though the right arm and left hand are lost, it is clear that the athlete held in his raised right hand an oil flask, as in the Petworth statue.[1035] Notwithstanding that the head resembles the Praxitelian Hermes,[1036] this does not show that the statue is of fourth-century origin, for its original is older; it merely shows that the art of Praxiteles was deeply rooted in that of his fifth-century predecessors. Because of its Attic affiliations, Klein tried to identify it with the Ἐγκρινόμενος of Alkamenes mentioned by Pliny,[1037] by amending that title to Ἐγχριόμενος, the “Anointer.” Brunn, however, rightly saw the analogy of the body forms to Myron’s Marsyas,[1038] and Furtwaengler and Bulle have ascribed it to Lykios, the son and pupil of that master, who worked about 440 B. C., the approximate date of the original of the statue. A fragmentary head in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Fig. 23),[1039] formerly in private possession in England, is a copy of the same original as the Munich statue. Its special interest is that it is not an exact copy of the original, as the Munich statue is, but a freer one, showing a fuller mouth, fleshier cheeks, and deeper-set eyes. While the Munich statue is the dry work of a Roman copyist of Augustus’ time, this head is by a far abler Greek copyist of the second century B. C. A torso in the Albertinum in Dresden, without a head,[1040] is similar to the Munich statue, but hardly a replica. It probably goes back to an original by an Attic master of the end of the fifth or beginning of the fourth century B. C. Other under life-size statues related to this torso show the same motive.[1041] A black-marble statue found at Porto d’Anzio in 1758, and now in the Glyptothek,[1042] has the Polykleitan standing motive. The left arm, which is stretched out, holds an oil flask in the hand, while the right arm is lowered. The band, which the position of the fingers shows that the right hand probably held, indicates it is the statue of a victor. A bronze statuette from South Italy, now in the British Museum,[1043] represents a nude youth holding an alabastron in his right hand, while the left has the palm open to receive the oil. The hair fashion (κρωβύλος) seems to point to an Attic sculptor of about 470 B. C.[1044] The same motive is found on terra-cotta statuettes from Myrina,[1045] on reliefs,[1046] and on gems.[1047]

OIL-SCRAPING.

Another ordinary palæstra motive was employed in representing the athlete after the contest, scraping oil and dirt from his body and arms with the scraping-blade or strigil (στλεγγίς, strigilis).[1048] This motive is not uncommon on r.-f. vase-paintings of the fifth century B. C.[1049] It was treated in sculpture by many masters. Pliny mentions such statues of athletes destringentes se (ἀποξυόμενοι), by Polykleitos, Lysippos, and Daidalos of Sikyon.[1050] Perhaps the perixyomenoi by Antignotos and Daïppos, the latter the son of Lysippos, had the same motive.[1051] Of the Apoxyomenos of Polykleitos we have no authenticated copies in sculpture, though Furtwaengler believes that he has found reminiscences of it on gems which represent a youth resting the weight of his body on the left leg, the right being drawn back (i. e., in the attitude of the Doryphoros), the right forearm extended, and the left holding a strigil. The similarity of these gem-designs makes it certain that they are all derived from a well-known work of art.[1052] Perhaps the fine bronze statuette, dating from the middle of the fifth century B. C., and now in the Loeb collection in Munich, represents the pose of the destringens se by Polykleitos.[1053] It represents a nude youth resting the weight of the body on the soles of both feet, the left one slightly advanced, and holding a strigil in the raised right hand. The famous marble copy of an Apoxyomenos in the Vatican[1054] (Pl. 29), which, because of its long slim legs and graceful ankles, might well represent a runner, has long been held to represent the canon of Lysippos, as it exhibits proportions widely different from those employed by Polykleitos, and agreeing with Pliny’s account of Lysippos’ innovations.[1055] However, the doubts arising in recent years as to whether this statue is a copy of Lysippos’ statue or a later work will be considered at length in Chapter VI.[1056]

The same motive is exemplified by many existing statues, statuettes, reliefs, etc. The marble statue of an athlete in the Uffizi, Florence, (Pl. 12),[1057] a copy of an original of the end of the fifth century B. C., wrongly restored as holding in both hands a vase at which the athlete is looking down, was interpreted by Bloch as an ephebe pouring oil from a lekythos held in the right hand into an aryballos held in the left. This action for an athlete has been characterized by Furtwaengler as “unparallelled, unclassical and, above all, absurd.” Through recent discoveries we now know that it represents an apoxyomenos, and that it should be restored with the left forearm close to the thigh, and with the right crossing the abdomen diagonally in the direction of the left hand. This attitude so closely corresponds with that of a figure on a gem as to make it probable that both gem and statue are copies of the same original. The figure on the gem[1058] holds a strigil in both hands and is generally explained as scraping the dirt from the left thigh; the light hand holds the handle and the left the blade. A hydria, palm-branch, and crown are pictured to the right—showing that the figure represents an athlete, just as the statue has the swollen ears of one. The attention of the athlete in both monuments is concentrated on the operation involved—a concentration reminding us of Myron’s Diskobolos. While, however, in the latter work the concentration is momentary, it is less transient in the Florence statue and also in the Munich Oil-pourer. This pose is too conscious in the Florentine statue to be the work of Myron. Arndt names no artist, but as the similarity between the head of the statue and that of the Oil-pourer is so marked, and as every one now regards the latter as Attic—even if not by Alkamenes—he thinks that the two must be by the same Attic sculptor, although the Uffizi statue is somewhat later than the Munich one.[1059] The original of the Florence statue was famous, if we may judge by the existing number of replicas with variations.[1060]

Among statues showing the same motive and pose, we may note the bronze statue of an athlete over life-size—pieced together from 234 fragments—found by the Austrians at Ephesos and now in Vienna.[1061] The subject, pose, and heavy proportions recall the Argive school of Polykleitos, and its original has been assigned by Hauser to the Sikyonian Daidalos, the son and pupil of Patrokles, who was the pupil of Polykleitos. As further reproductions of the same type of figure, we may cite a bronze statuette in Paris,[1062] and a marble one found at Frascati in 1896 and now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.[1063]

A chalcedony scarab of archaic type in the British Museum represents a nude athlete with a lekythos slung over the left arm and a strigil in the left hand, which rests on the hip.[1064] A beautiful marble grave-relief, much mutilated, in the museum at Delphi,[1065] which dates from the middle of the fifth century B. C., represents a palæstra victor, with his arms extended to the right, cleansing himself with a strigil, which is held in the right hand, while a slave boy, holding the remnant of an aryballos in his right hand, looks up at him from the right. The careful anatomy of this relief may point to Pythagoras of Samos, as its author, though we have no certain work of his, for it fits the description of that artist by Pliny, who says that he was the first to express sinews and veins.[1066]

LIBATION-POURING.

An original Greek bronze statuette in Paris (Fig. 24)[1067] reproduces the motive of the statue of the boy wrestler Xenokles by the sculptor Polykleitos Minor at Olympia, as a comparison with the footprints on the recovered base of the latter shows.[1068] As the forms correspond with those of the Doryphoros and Diadoumenos, and as its execution is so marvelous, Furtwaengler has ascribed the statuette to the circle of Polykleitos’ pupils. The position of the right hand, which has the thumbs drawn in, corresponds with that of the Idolino (Pl. 14), which we are to discuss, and can best be explained by assuming that it similarly held a kylix; the left hand carried a staff-like attribute. The head is bent and looks to the right. Furtwaengler believed that, inasmuch as the act of pouring a libation does not occur in art or literature as an athletic motive, the statuette represented a hero or god. Many Roman marble copies show the same motive and preserve to us a Polykleitan work which corresponds in all essentials with the Louvre statuette.[1069] We mention two, the only ones of the type in which the heads are on the trunks, one in the Galleria delle Statue of the Vatican,[1070] the other in the Farnsworth Museum at Wellesley College (Pl. 13).[1071] These copies represent a youth standing with both feet flat upon the ground, the weight of the body resting upon the right one, while the left is turned a little to the side. He is looking downwards to the right. Doubtless we should restore these copies after the Paris bronze, with a kylix in the right hand. The palm-branch in a similar statue, to be mentioned further on, shows that in all probability the origin statue was that of an athlete; and that he was a famous athlete is shown by the number of copies of the torso and head.[1072] A bronze head from Herculaneum (Fig. 25)[1073] so strongly resembles in its forms the type under discussion—which Furtwaengler has called the “Vatican athlete standing at rest”[1074]—and corresponds with it so closely in its measurements, that it might be regarded as a copy of the same original, if certain differences, not due to the copyist, did not rather show that it comes from a closely allied work. This head shows an intense melancholy, which has been explained by Furtwaengler as due to the lack of skill on the part of the copyist, who fashioned it slightly askew. Amelung very properly explains the absence of the motive of libation-pouring in athletic art as merely a lacuna in our sources.[1075] If the original of these copies and variations represented an athlete, he was certainly pouring a libation before victory; if a warrior, he was doing the same thing before going on a campaign. In the latter case the left hand should be restored with a spear.

We must also place here the life-size original Greek bronze in Florence, discovered at Pesaro, near Ancona, in 1530, and known from the early eighteenth century as the Idolino (Pl. 14),[1076] for its motive connects it with the series just discussed. This is, perhaps, our finest bronze statue from antiquity, as it represents the highest ideal of boy beauty, just as the Doryphoros does of manly beauty. The chief characteristics—the positions of the feet, head, and arms, though essentially those of the statues discussed, offer certain differences. Thus the left leg is placed more to one side and turned further outwards than in the statue of Xenokles and kindred works; the left hand hangs down at an angle to the leg differently from the others. In other words, by comparing it with the Paris statuette, we see a slightly different rhythm from that found in Polykleitan works. The Idolino has been looked upon as Myronic by Kekulé,[1077] Studniczka,[1078] and hesitatingly Klein,[1079] while Mahler regarded it as Pheidian.[1080] Furtwaengler, however, by a careful analysis, has shown its Polykleitan characteristics—especially the shape of the head and the features, and the treatment of the hair, which reminds us of the Naples copy of the Doryphoros. Owing to differences, however, he did not assign it to the master himself, but suggested that it was the work of his pupil Patrokles.[1081] Bulle found the head Polykleitan, but the body Attic, and assigned the figure to an unknown Attic sculptor working in the Polykleitan circle. In this controversy on its style, a statue found in 1916 in the excavations of the Baths at Kyrene should be of use, for it is the most faithful of all the Roman copies known of the bronze original and clearly shows a Polykleitan character influenced by Attic art.[1082] By a comparison of this marble copy with the Florentine bronze we see that the latter was a subsequent rendition of the same original, and doubtless by some artist of lesser fame from the Polykleitan school, who was influenced by Attic art.

But it is the interpretation of the Idolino which chiefly interests us here. While Longpérier called the similar Paris statuette a Mercure aptère, and the publisher of the statue from Kyrene called that copy a Hermes, yet Kekulé, Bulle, and most other archæologists have seen in the Idolino an athlete. The inner surface of its outstretched right hand is left rough, and the fingers are in the same position as those of the Paris bronze. Such a position can be explained satisfactorily by restoring the hand with a kylix or a φιάλη, such as was commonly used in libations. The left hand is smooth and evidently empty, though Bulle restores it with a victor’s fillet, and so, following Kekulé, calls the statue that of a boy victor, who is bringing an offering to the altar in honor of his victory. The marble statue in the Galleria delle Statue has the right forearm restored; in the Kyrene statue the right hand is preserved and has a thick object held downwards at a greater angle than in the Idolino. The photograph does not let us judge decisively, but it seems to be too thick an object for the remnants of a kylix. A marble statue in the Barberini Palace, Rome,[1083] which resembles the Idolino so closely as to be considered a copy of it, though with variations of pose and technique, has the arms broken off, and so adds nothing to the solution of the motive of the Idolino. The fact that a palm-stem stands beside the right leg, however, adds weight to the interpretation as victor. Furtwaengler interprets the Idolino and kindred works as divinities. Though boys serve at libations, he thinks they never perform the ritual act of pouring the libation.[1084] That a libation-pourer should appear in the guise of a boy victor (that of Xenokles) he calls a genuine Argive trait. Svoronos, also, has recently tried to show that the Idolino is not a victor,[1085] but represents the hero Herakles. He compares the figure with a fourth-century Pentelic marble relief in Athens,[1086] which represents Herakles standing at the door of Hades and beside him a father leading his son up to the open air. The pose of the figure of Herakles resembles that of the Idolino in a remarkable way. In the relief Herakles holds a kylix in the right hand[1087] and a club in the left, and a lion skin is thrown over the left arm. Svoronos believes that the left hand in the relief explains the turning in of the left hand of the Idolino—for he believes that the latter also held a club. We must, however, leave the final solution of the motive of the Idolino and kindred works open, although inclining to the belief that they represent a victor.

A statue in Athens, which was found in 1888 in the Roman ruins at the Olympieion, may represent a boy victor pouring a libation (Fig. 26).[1088] It is a poor Roman copy, dry and lifeless, of a bronze original of the middle of the fifth century B. C.[1089] In this statue Mayer has seen the motive, and probably the copy, of the Splanchnoptes (Roaster of Entrails) by the sculptor Styphax (or Styppax) of Cyprus, which, according to Pliny,[1090] represented Perikles’ slave “roasting entrails and blowing hard on the fire, to kindle it, till his cheeks swell.” He thinks that the position of the broken arms and a comparison of the figure with similar ones on vases make the identification possible. Von Salis concurs in his restoration and interpretation and publishes a small statuette in Athens from Dodona,[1091] which has a similar pose, and holds a three-pronged fork in the left hand, which he believes should be restored in the statue. Although statue and statuette have much in common (e. g., the position of the breast and shoulders, the treatment of the hair, etc.), which shows that both may be copies of one original, the conception of the two is somewhat different. The statue from Athens represents a boy standing busily engaged at the altar; the statuette represents one standing at rest merely looking on, the fork not being held in position for use.[1092] In any case the face of the Athens statue can not correspond with Pliny’s description—ignemque oris pleni spiritu accendens. Quite a different explanation of the statue is possible—one which Mayer thought improbable. The right arm—broken above the wrist—was raised to the height of the shoulder and may have held an object in the hand; the left arm—broken off below the shoulder—seems to have been held close to the body and appears to have corresponded in movement with the other. The boy, therefore, may have held a cup in the right hand and a branch or a victor fillet in the left. Thus it may merely be another example of a boy victor pouring a libation.

Certain other statues have been mistaken either for libation-pourers or oil-pourers, when they are really wine-pourers and have nothing to do with the athletic motives under discussion. A good example is the marble statue of a Satyr in Dresden,[1093] which represents the youthful demi-god lifting a can with his right hand, out of which he is pouring wine into a drinking-horn held in the left. There are many copies of this work,[1094] a fact which shows that the original bronze was famous. An attempt has therefore been made to identify it with the bronze Satyr of Praxiteles mentioned by Pliny as the Periboëtos or “far-famed,”[1095] which seems to have been grouped with a Dionysos and a figure of Drunkenness—a grouping which might fit the Dresden Satyr, since a second figure should be imagined, for which the horn is being filled. However, it differs stylistically so much from the Hermes of Olympia that the ascription has been given up, though its graceful form shows Praxitelean influence and certainly emanates from the fourth century B. C.

RESTING AFTER THE CONTEST.

A very favorite motive was to represent a victor, either standing or seated, resting after the exertions of the contest (ἀναπαυόμενος). An excellent example of this motive in a standing posture is the fourth-century B. C. statue of Attic workmanship found at Porto d’Anzio and now in the Vatican,[1096] which reproduces the type of the Apollo Lykeios.[1097] Many of the statues, by various sculptors, which represent the victor standing at rest may be intended to represent him as resting after the contest. The well-known head of a youth adorned with the victor’s chaplet, and preserved in four copies in European museums, appears to come from a statue which represented a victor in this manner. The best of these copies is in the collection of Lord Leconfield at Petworth House, Sussex.[1098] We should add a fifth, a Roman copy of the head, in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (Pl. 15).[1099] In these copies the ears are not swollen, and a certain refinement and gentleness show that the original was not from the statue of a boxer or pancratiast, but from that of another type of athlete, perhaps a pentathlete. Since Pliny mentions the statue of a Doryphoros by Kresilas,[1100] and because of its supposed Kresilæan style, Furtwaengler, albeit on slender grounds, has attempted to identify the original of these heads with that work.[1101] The expression is certainly one of complete repose. On the crown of the head, and on the left side over the fillet, is a rectangular broken surface,[1102] apparently the remnant of a support for the right arm, which, as Conze thought, proves that the athlete stood with one arm resting on the head, the hand hanging over the left side. Furtwaengler admitted that such an attitude might be that of an apoxyomenos,[1103] but pointed out that the expression of the face in all the copies seems too tranquil for such an interpretation. Since the victor was in repose and the left arm required a slight support, he believed that this support might have been an akontion. He therefore reconstructed the original statue as that of a resting pentathlete, and assigned it to the great Cretan contemporary of Pheidias, who worked in Athens.[1104] The number of replicas at least shows that the original was a famous work.

Perhaps our best example of the motive of a seated victor resting after the contest is the bronze statue of a boxer found in Rome in 1884 and now in the Museo delle Terme there (Pl. 16 and Fig. 27).[1105] This is a masterpiece in the portrayal of brute strength in the most naturalistic and revolting way. If we like to think of victors as having noble forms, we are rudely startled on looking at this brutal prize-fighter. If we compare it with works of the fifth and fourth centuries B. C., we see in it, as in no other example of Greek sculpture, the great change which professionalism had later wrought in the Greek ideal of athletics. Here are massive proportions, bulging muscles, arms and legs hard and muscle-bound. We can compare it only with the bronze head of a boxer found at Olympia (Fig. 61 A and B) of similar style and age.[1106] But there we have only the head, while here we have a complete statue almost perfectly preserved, the only restorations being a portion of the left thumb, a piece of the right flank, and the base.

It represents a professional boxer, who is seated exhausted at the close of the bout, the severity of which is indicated by every part of the body. He leans forward, his arms rest on his thighs, and his head, sunk between his shoulders, is raised and turned to the right, as he stupidly looks around at the applauding spectators. His nose is broken and his ears are swollen and scars of the contest show on his face and limbs. Beneath his retreating upper lip some of his teeth appear to have been knocked out as the result of previous fights, while indications of the recent struggle are to be seen in the blood dripping from his ears and the deep lacerations in face and shoulder, which may have once been filled with red paint to make his appearance even more realistic. The right eye is swollen and the lower lid and the cheek imperceptibly sink into each other. The mustache shows flecks of blood and the swollen back of the right hand protrudes through the glove. His nose is clotted with blood and he seems to be struggling to get his breath.

Such realism and delight in depicting the hideous show that the work, like the Olympia head, belongs to the Hellenistic age. The careful workmanship, especially visible in the hair and beard and in the hair on the chest[1107], proves that the statue is not a Roman copy, but a Greek original of the beginning of the Hellenistic age, of the end of the fourth or beginning of the third century B. C. Nor is it a portrait, as Winter maintained,[1108] since it is an adaptation of a late type of Herakles. It certainly is a victor statue from one of the great Greek games, and is, perhaps, from Olympia itself. Since the head is turned toward the right shoulder and the mouth is open, as if speaking, Wunderer tried, on the basis of a passage in the history of Polybios,[1109] to identify it with the statue of the famous Theban boxer and pancratiast Kleitomachos at Olympia by an unknown artist.[1110] The historian states that Kleitomachos, while fighting with the Egyptian Aristonikos, was angered by the acclaim given the foreigner and, stepping aside, chided the spectators for not cheering one who was fighting for the honor of Greece. The speech caused a revulsion in the popular feeling, which helped, even more than the fists of Kleitomachos, to vanquish Aristonikos. However, the motive of the statue does not fit the incident, as the boxer is not speaking, but breathing hard, nor is the seated posture that of one haranguing a crowd. Moreover, the date of the Theban’s victory is too late for the statue.[1111]

ATTRIBUTES OF VICTOR STATUES.

At the beginning of the fifth century B. C. athletic training tended to produce a uniform standard of physical development, which was reflected in sculpture. At this date we do not find the divergence of style which we saw in our review of the “Apollo” type of the sixth century. Vase-paintings show the change better than sculpture. On black-figured vases of the sixth century B. C., we see a good deal of variety in groups of boxers and wrestlers, while on red-figured vases of the early fifth century the number of types is far less. In sculpture, however, differences in physical type did exist in the various schools at the beginning of the fifth century. We have, for example, the heavy, square-shouldered type in the Apollo Choiseul-Gouffier (Pl. 7A), which we have classed as a victor statue, and the tall, rawboned type in the Tyrannicides by Kritios and Nesiotes (Fig. 32, Harmodios).[1112] We have, on the other hand, a very different physical type in the short, stocky Aeginetan pedimental figures (Figs. 20 and 21). Between such extremes there are, of course, many gradations. We might instance the archaic bronze statuette of a diskobolos in the Metropolitan Museum (Fig. 46).[1113] However, notwithstanding the diversity in type, it is often difficult to distinguish runners from wrestlers, boxers from pentathletes. Thus few early fifth-century statues show the type of runner as well as the Apollo of Tenea (Pl. 8A), or that of a boxer as well as the “Apollo” from Delphi (Pl. 8B). The reason for this is the ideal element, which entered into all these statues and which was a reflection of the uniform development of athletics long before specialization had set in. Out of this uniformity grew the canon of Polykleitos, developed from that of Hagelaïdas.

The sculptor of the sixth century B. C. was incapable of differentiating between god and mortal. This was especially the case, as we have seen, with Apollo, as the “Apollo” type was a model of manly vigor. In the early fifth century the sculptor had largely overcome this difficulty, but still showed little diversity of type in treating statues of different kinds of athletes. A method of differentiation which was essential to athlete sculptors of the sixth century was found convenient of retention by those of the fifth—i. e., characterizing the statue of the victor by some attribute, in order, on the one hand, to differentiate it from the nude god or hero, and on the other to distinguish between different types of victors.

PRIMARY ATTRIBUTES OF VICTOR STATUES.

THE VICTOR FILLET.

In the first place, the sculptor would characterize the victor statue as such. The easiest way to do this would be to represent it with a fillet or chaplet (ταινία)[1114] bound round the head, as we saw was the case in the statue of Milo. This fillet was merely a band or riband of wool which was given the Olympic victor in addition to the garland of olive leaves, or the palm-branch, as a symbol of victory. Waldstein has argued that this fillet originally was not an essential attribute of the victor, but that the crown and palm were the prizes, and the fillet merely a decoration used on various occasions, such as at symposia,[1115] which only later became a general athletic attribute.[1116] Though the presence of the fillet on statues should not, therefore, be proof that the given statue is that of a victor,[1117] there is no defense for the contention of Passow[1118] that the tainia was in no sense a symbol of victory, but merely a toilet article among the gifts presented by the public to a victor at the ovation of the crowning. Pausanias says that the victor Lichas of Sparta was scourged by order of the umpires at Olympia for having set the tainia on the head of his victorious charioteer.[1119] This is sufficient evidence that it was not a mere toilet article, but rather a part of the official prize of victory. Similarly the tainia in the hand of Nike upon the right hand of the statue of Zeus by Pheidias at Olympia can not have been a toilet article.[1120]

We have many examples from athletic sculpture of the use of the fillet. Thus it appears on the bronze head of a boxer in the Glyptothek (Pl. 3)[1121] and on the bronze head from Herculaneum in Naples (Fig. 4),[1122] both of which have been discussed in Chapter II, as fragments of Greek original statues of Olympic victors. It also appears on the marble head of a youthful victor—not necessarily Olympic—from the Akropolis,[1123] which, because of the similarity in cheeks, mouth, and eyes to heads on the metopes of the Parthenon, should be dated somewhere between 450 and 440 B. C. It occurs on the Olympia marble head (Frontispiece and Fig. 69),[1124] which we ascribe in Chapter VI to Lysippos, and likewise on the statue of the pancratiast Agias in Delphi (Pl. 28, Fig. 68). In most athlete heads the fillet is twisted into a knot at the back of the head. In one case, on the Petworth head of a pentathlete already discussed,[1125] which, because of the curve of the neck, must come from a statue represented at rest, it is not so tied, but is wound round the head with the two ends tucked in and pushed through the fillet on either side over the temples.[1126] Though so practical an arrangement as the latter must have been common enough in real life, this seems to be the only example of its representation in sculpture.

The fillet, instead of encircling the head, was sometimes held in the hand, as in the case of the Spartan chariot victor Polykles at Olympia.[1127] A curious life-size statue of the Roman period, found in the Peiræus, represents a nude boy holding in his right hand over the breast a bundle of books and in the left an alabastron. The body is covered with fillets—fifteen in all—which appear to have been prizes won in gymnic contests, probably at the gymnasium or palæstra.[1128]

FILLET-BINDERS.

Statues representing victors binding fillets in their hair (diadoumenoi) are common to all periods of Greek art.[1129] We shall discuss only two—those of Pheidias and of Polykleitos.

Pausanias mentions a statue by Pheidias, representing a Boy Binding on a Fillet, as standing in the Altis at Olympia.[1130] Robert has argued that this figure was the one of similar motive mentioned by Pausanias as on the throne of Zeus there.[1131] However, the figure on the throne was very probably in relief and not in the round.[1132] The cicerones at Olympia seem to have been imposing on the periegete when they said that a likeness to Pantarkes, the boy favorite of Pheidias, was to be seen in the face of this figure on the throne. The mention of Pantarkes has given rise to the usual identification of the παῖς ἀναδούμενος with the victor statue of the Elean Pantarkes mentioned by Pausanias as standing in the Altis.[1133] However, the assumption[1134] is far-fetched and must be rejected, because Pausanias mentions the two statues in two different parts of his periegesis of the Altis.[1135] Of the παῖς we know only the artist’s name. It was probably merely a votive gift,[1136] and the name of the person so honored was unknown to Pausanias. Of the statue of the victor Pantarkes we know only the name, and neither the artist nor the motive of the statue. It seems clear, therefore, that we have to do with three distinct monuments: the boy with the fillet, the throne figure by Pheidias, and the victor by an unknown sculptor.[1137]

The small marble statue in the British Museum known as the Diadoumenos Farnese[1138] (Pl. 17), which is now almost universally regarded as an Attic work,[1139] has been assumed by many archæologists to be a copy of Pheidias’ statue.[1140] Since Pausanias tells us that a statue by Pheidias stood in Olympia, representing an unknown boy binding a fillet around his head, and since the style of the Farnese statue shows great similarity in head and body forms and general bearing to certain figures on the Parthenon frieze,[1141] and its motive agrees with that of the Olympia statue, it seems reasonable to see in this little work a copy of the statue in the Altis by the great master. Furtwaengler and Bulle have shown that the motive of this work was initiated by Pheidias and not by Polykleitos, since the latter’s great statue was several years younger than the work of Pheidias at Olympia. That Pheidias was pleased with the motive is disclosed by the fact that he repeated it on the throne of Zeus.

The Diadoumenos of Polykleitos was little less famous than his Doryphoros, if we may judge by the number of copies which have survived and from literary notices of it.[1142] In all the copies of this work we see the well-known Polykleitan characteristics—powerful build, heavy proportions, and fidelity to nature; but none of the ideal tendency prominent in the works of Pheidias and his school, nor of the violent energy characteristic of Myron’s art. In all of them the pose of the earlier Doryphoros is retained, except that the arms are differently employed and the build of the body is more slender. Pliny, despite his statement—which is probably taken from some Greek authority—that monotony was the characteristic of Polykleitos’ works (paene ad unum exemplum),[1143] emphasizes this slenderness by calling the Doryphoros viriliter puer—Lessing’s Juengling wie ein Mann—and the Diadoumenos molliter juvenis—a youth of gentle form. This judgment of Pliny was difficult to understand so long as we had only the Vaison copy of the Diadoumenos to study. The Delian copy showed that supple grace was characteristic of the original, even if modified to suit the taste of three centuries later. Although the body forms and the attitudes of the Doryphoros and the Diadoumenos are very similar, the head of the latter, usually assigned to Polykleitos, is of a different type from that of the Doryphoros. While the head of the Doryphoros is square in profile, flat on top, and long from front to back, that of the Diadoumenos is rounder and softer and can best be explained on the assumption that Polykleitos later in life came under Attic influence. The copies of this work are many and varied.[1144] For a long time the marble copy in the British Museum found in 1862, at Vaison, France,[1145] was, despite its poor workmanship, considered our best copy (Fig. 28). It was made perhaps five hundred years after the original, at a time when sculpture was in its decline, and consequently can give us merely a suggestion of the character of Polykleitos’ statue. As it is a direct marble translation of the bronze, the muscular treatment appears exaggerated. Another marble copy was found in 1894 by the French excavators on the island of Delos, and is now in Athens (Pl. 18).[1146] The Delian artist added a mantle and a quiver to the nearby tree-trunk and thus converted an original victor statue into one of a god.[1147] Though its hands are lost, it is easy to see that the athlete is pulling the ends of the fillet together so as to tighten the knot at the back of the head. As this is a Hellenistic Greek copy, it comes far nearer to the original than the imperial Roman one from Vaison. The lighter proportions and softer modeling show the Attic influence on Polykleitos’ later career, although the fleshy forms are out of harmony with his art and evidently introduced by the copyist. One of the best preserved and most beautiful copies is the one in the Prado at Madrid.[1148] Although a Roman copy, like the one in the British Museum, it comes very near the original because of the precision in its details. There are many good copies of the head alone.[1149] Marble heads in Kassel and Dresden, evidently the works of Attic sculptors, show the pure Polykleitan traits. The one in Dresden[1150] (Fig. 29) surpasses all others in the beauty of its finish, being a careful and exact copy. The proportions and structure of the head are those of the Doryphoros, although the surface is differently treated. The Kassel head[1151] is not so exact in its details, but has more expression. Furtwaengler rightly calls it the better of the two as a work of art, but inferior as a copy. A marble head in the British Museum[1152] is a direct copy from the original bronze, like the Vaison statue. The clear-cut eyelids and wiry hair reproduce the original material, and its resemblance to the head of the Doryphoros is greater than that of any other copy.

A later variant of the statue is seen in a small terra-cotta statuette from Smyrna in private possession in London.[1153] It shows the Polykleitan type so completely assimilated to the style of Praxiteles that its genuineness has been doubted. Perhaps, with its Attic softness, it gives us a better idea of the beauty of the original than many of the other copies. Finally, we must mention the original bronze head of the fifth century B. C. in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, recently published by Percy Gardner.[1154] This head, put together from nine fragments, and restored as that of a boy fillet-binder, and rivaling in delicacy and beauty such original bronzes as the Beneventum head (Fig. 3) and the Idolino (Pl. 14), not only gives us the best idea of the technical ability attained by bronze workers in the middle of the fifth century B. C., but also helps us to understand the ancient repute of Polykleitos’ athletes. Here the headband and “starfish” arrangement of the hair have their close parallels in the Dresden, Kassel, and British Museum heads already discussed, which essentially reproduce the head of the Vaison statue (Fig. 28). As Gardner points out, it closely agrees with the type of the Farnese Diadoumenos (Pl. 17) only in one particular, the mode of tying the knot. While the Vaison athlete is preparing to tie it, the Farnese one has just finished the operation, the boy still holding the ends of the fillet in his hands. But only the treatment of the hair, the eye, and the ear offers a contrast. Despite these differences Gardner follows the older view of Brunn in regarding the Vaison and Farnese types as two variants of Polykleitan originals; but the pose, style, and proportions of the latter seem to us to be too thoroughly Attic to warrant us in bringing it into relation with the work of Polykleitos. Though the heads of the two are not so dissimilar, the pose, as Gardner also points out, is quite different. The Vaison figure is represented as walking, i. e., in the very act of changing the weight of the body from one leg to the other, while the Farnese athlete stands at rest with both feet flat upon the ground. Gardner rightly regards this exquisite head not as the original of the statue mentioned by Pliny, since the Vaison and Delian copies show that the latter represented a fully developed man, somewhat over life-size, and not a boy, but rather as a work of the Polykleitan school, though he does not exclude the possibility that it may come from one of the many boy athletes of the master.

Furtwaengler connects with the Diadoumenos the statue of a youthful boxer, slightly under life-size, which shows a similar motive. It is known to us in two copies, one in Kassel,[1155] the other in Lansdowne House, London.[1156] That it is a work of Polykleitos is shown by the correspondence of its body forms with those of both the Diadoumenos and the Doryphoros. A bronze statuette, dating from about 400 B. C., in the Akropolis Museum, also repeats the motive without being an exact copy.[1157]

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.

The crown of wild olive[1158] in the hair is another general but not customary attribute of Olympic victor statues. Fewer sculptured heads show it than show the tainia, and in most of these the leaves have fallen off. Examples of its presence are afforded by the bronze head from Beneventum (Fig. 3) in the Louvre,[1159] and on the realistic bronze head of a boxer found at Olympia (Fig. 61 A and B).[1160] A good illustration of a boy victor crowning himself is on a fourth-century B. C. funerary relief, found in 1873 at the Dipylon gate, and now in the Athens Museum.[1161] The victor is holding or placing a crown of leaves on his head. In the Museo delle Terme, Rome, is a mediocre headless copy of an original statue of the end of the fifth century B. C., the work of an artist of the Polykleitan school, the restoration of which as a victor engaged in wreathing his head is probable.[1162] A protuberance on the right shoulder seems to have been left by the end of the lemniskos or ribbon with which the wreath was adorned.[1163] The left hand carried an attribute, but probably not a palm-branch as Helbig assumed, since such a branch, if of metal, would have left traces on the shoulder. The same restoration has been proposed for another statue.[1164] A crown on the head, together with the remains of fingers near it, has been noticed on a bronze statue of Eros, of Hellenistic workmanship, found off Tunis in the sea,[1165] which shows Polykleitan influence.

The statue of a Boy Crowning Himself, which has survived in many Roman copies and variant Greek originals, notably in the so-called Westmacott Athlete of the British Museum (Pl. 19),[1166] a fragmentary statue of poorer workmanship in the Barracco collection in Rome,[1167] and a Greek copy from Eleusis now in the National Museum in Athens,[1168] and identified by many archæologists with the statue of the boy boxer Kyniskos by Polykleitos at Olympia, should be discussed here. While the Westmacott Athlete appears to be a copy from the original bronze, the Barracco statue, though showing the same pose, is unlike it in the treatment of hair and muscles, and with its Attic head, seems to be a carelessly executed variant, more or less Myronian in style, of the Polykleitan original. While its original may be assigned to the end of the fifth century B. C., the Eleusis variant, with its head differently placed, is not a Roman copy, but a Greek original statue showing the Polykleitan motive carried into the soft Attic style of the fourth century B. C.[1169] A fine copy of the head alone is in the possession of Sir Edgar Vincent, in his Constantinople collection.[1170] This should be associated with another head in Dresden, both being closely related to that of the Westmacott Athlete.[1171] The best copy of the head is in the Hermitage, in which the treatment of the hair approaches nearest to that of the bronze original.[1172] A marble head from Apollonia in Epeiros, now in the British Museum, which so closely resembles the head of the Westmacott Athlete that the missing sections of the neck and shoulders were restored by a cast from the latter, is somewhat different in style. For while the Westmacott head is a mechanical copy, this Greek head is full of vigor, disclosing Attic characteristics of the early fourth century B. C., and obviously is an Athenian imitation of the original, like the statue from Eleusis.[1173] A more remote variant is the beautiful marble head formerly in the possession of Dr. Philip Nelson in Liverpool, but now in America, which is not an exact copy of any of the known variants, but so closely resembles the Capitoline type of Wounded Amazon, assigned first by Otto Jahn and later by Furtwaengler to Kresilas, that it must be by the same hand.[1174] This head also reminds us of that of the Kresilæan Diomedes of the Munich Glyptothek (Pl. 21),[1175] though the hair-treatment is Polykleitan.[1176] Both show a modification of Polykleitan forms under Attic influence. The numerous fine copies indicate that the original was a well-known work. That it was Polykleitan is clear from a study of the heads, which show a great resemblance to that of the Doryphoros, and of the body forms, which resemble those of both the Doryphoros and the Diadoumenos. While some believe this original a work of Polykleitos himself,[1177] others think that it was by one of his pupils or successors, who imitated the master’s early style. If the original, however, was not the statue of Kyniskos, there is little evidence that it was by Polykleitos himself.

The palm-trunk in the Westmacott copy certainly argues that the original was an athlete statue. The gesture of the right hand has given rise to different interpretations. The Barracco copy furnishes the best evidence, as on it the right arm is preserved to the wrist, the hand only being lost. Helbig at first (in the Barracco Catalogue) expressed the opinion that the right hand might have held an oil-flask, from which oil was being poured into the left. However, the position of the left hand, as shown by the puntello on the left hip, must have been the same as that on the Westmacott copy, i. e., hanging close to the left side. Helbig later (in the Fuehrer) explained the motive as that of a boy setting a crown on his head, as in the bronze Eros already mentioned. This interpretation, first suggested by Winnefeld,[1178] has been the favorite one among archæologists. But all sorts of other explanations of the motive of the original have been offered, as that the athlete was scraping his forehead or shoulders with the strigil,[1179] that the statue represented Narkissos looking into the pool and shading his eyes with his right hand,[1180] that it was an athlete standing at rest and holding an akontion in his right hand—a theory harmonizing with the poise of the head, but not with the turn of the wrist, which shows that the hand was held downwards[1181]—and that it was, in fact, the nudus talo incessens of Pliny.[1182] On the head of the Eleusis statue there is a mass of marble left over the right ear just opposite the place where the hand would be, if it were setting a wreath on the head. The fact that no marks are visible where the crown was attached is explained by the assumption that the wreath was of metal even in the marble copies. That this motive, moreover, was known to both Attic and Peloponnesian art in the second half of the fifth century B. C. is well attested. Thus we see on the Parthenon frieze a youth crowning himself with one hand, while holding the horse’s bridle with the other.[1183] The pose of this figure—especially the legs—recalls the Myronian Oil-pourer already discussed (Pl. 11). On the other hand, one of the figures of the Ildefonso group in Madrid, which is Polykleitan in style, represents a boy wearing a wreath, a figure closely akin to the Westmacott Athlete, the leg position being the same in both and the poise of the head nearly so, although the arms are different, the left one being raised and the right hanging down.[1184] It is probable that the raised right hand of the original of the Westmacott and other replicas touched the wreath and the lowered left held a fillet. The best explanation, then, of the Westmacott Athlete and kindred works is that the motive of the original was allied to that of the Diadoumenos of Polykleitos, though the modeling is too soft for Polykleitos, showing that the copyists changed the original of the Argive master to suit a later and different taste. Whereas the Diadoumenos is tying on a victor’s fillet, the other is presumably placing a victor’s wreath on his head. Certainly no better restoration can be made for the Barracco copy. Furthermore, many other monuments, which show a similar attitude, and which must be regarded as very free imitations of the original, seem to show that the boy was represented as placing a wreath on his head.[1185]

Whether the original of the series was an actual victor statue at Olympia or not is an interesting question. It has been repeatedly suggested that it was the very statue of the boy boxer Kyniskos there, mentioned by Pausanias, the base of which has been recovered.[1186] The external evidence for the identity consists altogether in the similarity in the position of the feet on this base and in the series of copies, which argues a similar pose. The base shows that the left leg bore the weight of the statue; it was slightly advanced and rested on the sole, while the right leg was set back and rested on the ball only. Thus the statue of Kyniskos was represented in the characteristic Polykleitan schema of rest, except that the position of the legs is reversed from that of the Doryphoros, Diadoumenos, Amazon, and other works of the master. We might add that this same reversal appears on two other bases found at Olympia, which held victor statues by the elder Polykleitos[1187] and one by the younger.[1188] Moreover, the leg position of the canon does not occur in the works of the master’s pupils Naukydes and Daidalos, and only in one work of Kleon.[1189] This shows that teacher and pupils also used another motive, i. e., the old canon of Hagelaïdas, besides the one associated with the Doryphoros. The similarity in the position of the feet on the Olympia base and in the series of statues discussed has led some scholars, e. g., Petersen and Collignon, to accept the proposed identity. This similarity in foot position, the probability that the statue on the basis was life-size, like those of the Westmacott series, and the palm-tree support in the British Museum replica, all pointing to a victor statue, make the identity well within the range of possibility, but by no means certain. It is necessary only to rehearse the objections to this view. In the first place the length of the foot on the Olympia basis can not be accurately measured for purposes of comparison. In the next place Polykleitos, as we have just seen, made other statues of victors at Olympia with almost the identical foot position of that of Kyniskos. Furthermore, it seems very unlikely that so celebrated an original as that of these many replicas could have been standing in the Altis so late as the time of Pausanias.[1190] It is difficult, also, to understand why an imitative Attic sculptor of the fourth century B. C., should make a copy of an Arkadian boy victor statue for Eleusis. And lastly we must not forget that up to the present time not a single Roman copy has been conclusively identified with that of a victor statue at Olympia. If the date of the victory of Kyniskos were definitely fixed, the question of identity would be better substantiated. By a process of exclusion, to be sure, Robert reached the date Ol. 80 (= 460 B. C.),[1191] but other dates are possible. Under these circumstances there seems to be little more than the possibility that we have recovered an actual victor statue at Olympia in these copies.[1192]

THE PALM-BRANCH.

The palm-branch, either woven into a wreath or held in the hand, was a victor attribute. Pausanias says that a crown of palm leaves was common to many contests, and that the victor everywhere in Greece carried a palm-branch in his right hand.[1193] He refers the custom to mythical times, tracing it back to the contest held by Theseus on Delos in honor of Apollo.[1194] Pliny mentions a painting by the Sikyonian Eupompos, which represented a victor certamine gymnico palmam tenens.[1195] While Milchhoefer[1196] believed that the motive of an athlete setting a crown on his head with his right hand and holding a palm in his left, which is repeated frequently and with variation in many works of art, went back to this painting of Eupompos, Furtwaengler[1197] goes further in assuming that the painter derived the motive from the statue of Polykleitos represented by the Westmacott Athlete and kindred works just discussed. The pupils of the great sculptor appear to have transferred his school from Argos to Sikyon, and were, therefore, associated with Eupompos. This attribute of the palm, permanent in bronze statues, has been broken off for the most part in marble ones. We see it in an unfinished statue of a young athlete in the National Museum, Athens, who holds the palm-branch in his hand. Here it has survived, since the statue was only blocked out.[1198] It is prominent in the funerary stele from the Dipylon representing a victor, which has been mentioned in a preceding section;[1199] here the palm extends from the left hand, which is held down close to the side, up to the shoulder. We have already noted that the copyist added a palm-branch to the stump placed beside the Vatican girl runner (Pl. 2). In the Choiseul-Gouffier Apollo (Pl. 7A) the left hand should doubtless be restored with the palm-branch, because of the projecting notch of marble on the side of the left leg near the knee.[1200] A similar notch appears also on the Apollo-on-the-Omphalos in Athens (Pl. 7B), which shows that the left hand held a long attribute, which was doubtless a palm-branch. This attribute occurs frequently on vases.[1201] We see it on a marble statue found at Formiae and now in the Glyptothek Ny-Carlsberg in Copenhagen, which shows the same motive as that of the statue by Stephanos (Pl. 9), though in a freer style of execution. Here the lowered right hand holds a palm-branch, which is shown in low relief against the right arm.[1202]

SECONDARY ATTRIBUTES OF VICTOR STATUES.

In course of time the sculptor was not content to represent victor statues merely as victors, but differentiated the various kinds of victors by special attributes.

HOPLITODROMOI.

Thus a hoplite victor would be represented with his usual weapons. Pausanias, in mentioning the statue at Olympia of the hoplite runner Damaretos of Heraia by the Argive sculptors Eutelidas and Chrysothemis, says that it “has not only a shield, as the armed runners still have, but also a helmet on his head and greaves on his legs.”[1203] He adds that the helmet and greaves were gradually abolished at Olympia and elsewhere. We have seen that the statue of Damaretos was set up at the beginning of the fifth century B. C., when his son Theopompos, the pentathlete, won his second victory, the monuments of the two being in common.[1204] Toward the middle of the fifth century the hoplite victor Mnaseas of Kyrene had a statue at Olympia, the work of Pythagoras of Rhegion, which represented him as an armed man.[1205] A Pythian victor, Telesikrates, of the fifth century B. C., had a statue at Delphi, which represented him with a helmet.[1206] We have actual remnants of two hoplite victor statues of the sixth century B. C., in the two bearded and helmeted life-size heads of Parian marble found at Olympia (Fig. 30, a, b = A; c, d = B).[1207] The younger of these heads (A), to which probably belong either an arm and the remnants of a shield attached with a ram and a representation of Phrixos upon it in relief,[1208] or a shield fragment with a siren’s wing upon it[1209] and the fragment of a shield edge[1210] and right foot of fine workmanship,[1211] I assigned long ago to the statue of the Thessalian hoplitodrome Phrikias of Pelinna, who won two victories in Ols. 68 and 69 (= 508 and 504 B. C.).[1212] R. Foerster had referred this head to the statue of the hoplite runner Damaretos of Heraia, whose monument, in common with that of his son, the pentathlete Theopompos, was the work of the early Argive sculptors Chrysothemis and Eutelidas.[1213] But this fresh and vigorous head is not Peloponnesian, but shows strongly marked Attic traits in its round face, full cheeks, and soft lips, and in the rows of regularly wound locks of hair. The arm and foot similarly disclose Attic softness and grace. Because of its Attic character, Treu and Overbeck,[1214] in opposition to Foerster, ascribed it to the statue of the Elean hoplite victor Eperastos mentioned by Pausanias.[1215] Though the date of his victory is unknown, it certainly fell some time after Ol. 111 (= 336 B. C.)—a date far too late for so archaic a sculpture. Furtwaengler[1216] referred this and the more archaic head B to the group of Phormis at Olympia, mentioned by Pausanias.[1217] However, Treu[1218] showed that there was no stylistic connection between the two heads. The slightly more archaic head B, badly injured from weathering, I have referred to the Achaian hoplitodrome Phanas of Pellene, who won Ol. 67 (= 512 B. C.).[1219] In this carefully executed head the hair and beard are arranged in small locks and the archaic smile is prominent. While the younger head is Attic, this one is unmistakably Peloponnesian; and while the former comes from a statue represented at rest, the latter, because of the twist of the neck, seems to have come from one represented in violent motion. For this reason Wolters believed that it came from the statue of a warrior represented as thrown to the ground and defending himself.

The Myronic statue in the Palazzo Valentini, Rome, known as Diomedes,[1220] whose pose recalls the Diskobolos, may represent a hoplitodrome, because of its marked resemblance in attitude to the Tuebingen bronze to be discussed in the next chapter (Fig. 42), and because of the helmet on its head.[1221]

PENTATHLETES.

Pentathletes were represented by attributes taken from three of the five contests—jumping, and throwing the diskos and the javelin. All these attributes appear in gymnasium scenes pictured on red-figured vases. Thus a kylix of the severe style in Munich[1222] gives us a general picture of the exercises of the gymnasium. On the walls hang diskoi in slings, strigils, leaping-weights, oil-flasks, sponges, and javelins. Archaic leaping-weights (ἁλτῆρες) appeared in the hands of the statue of the Elean Hysmon at Olympia by the Sikyonian sculptor Kleon.[1223] Similarly, a figure of Contest (Ἀγών) in the group set up there by Mikythos had weights.[1224] The offering of the people of Mende at Olympia very nearly deceived Pausanias into thinking it the statue of a pentathlete, because of its ancient halteres.[1225] This shows that these weights formed a regular attribute of pentathlete statues there. A relief from Sparta[1226] represents an athlete leaning on his spear and holding a pair of leaping-weights in his right hand. There is a bronze statue of such a victor in the Berlin Antiquarium.[1227] Halteres hang on a tree-trunk to the right of the statue of an athlete in the Pitti palace in Florence.[1228] The breast of a marble torso, less than life-size, of a boy statue found at Olympia, shows that the hands were stretched forward, and very possibly the objects which they held were leaping-weights.[1229]

We have no direct literary reference to a victor statue at Olympia of a pentathlete with the attributes of the diskos or javelin. That they existed there, however, seems probable enough. Such a work as the Diskobolos of Myron, which displays the youthful victor in its every line, other statues, statuettes, reliefs, and vase-paintings, show us how the artist represented the different steps in the casting of the quoit. Similarly, the famous Doryphoros of Polykleitos, copies of which have been identified in many museums (Pl. 4 and Fig. 48), will give us an idea how a javelin thrower might have been represented at rest. The akontion or victor’s casting-spear, was, as we see from the Spartan relief of a pentathlete just mentioned, about the height of a man. The attitude of the diskobolos and doryphoros will be discussed at length in the next chapter.

BOXERS.

The statue of a boxer would be sufficiently characterized by thongs, which he might carry in his hand, as in the statue of the Rhodian Akousilaos at Olympia,[1230] or wound round his forearm, as in the statue of a boxer in the Palazzo Albani, Rome,[1231] or on a near-by prop, as on the tree-stump beside the Choiseul-Gouffier Apollo in the British Museum (Pl. 7A).[1232]

WRESTLERS.

Long ago Scherer tried to show that the aryballos was a wrestler-attribute, since oil was so important in wrestling.[1233] He interpreted as aryballoi the pomegranates mentioned by Pausanias as held in the hands of the statues of the wrestlers Milo[1234] and Theognetos[1235] at Olympia, assuming that the Periegete mistook oil-flasks for pomegranates (ῥοιαί). But it hardly seems reasonable that such a small utensil, which was used by athletes in general, could ever have been regarded as a peculiar attribute of the wrestler. A similar attribute may have been held in the outstretched hand of the half life-size archaic bronze “Apollo” of the Sciarra Palace in Rome,[1236] and it occurs on other statues.[1237]

CAPS FOR BOXERS, PANCRATIASTS, AND WRESTLERS.

Often the boxer and pancratiast (and even wrestler)[1238] are represented as wearing close-fitting caps, made up of thongs of leather or of solid leather. This, however, can scarcely be called a determining attribute. Our best example of such a cap is afforded by an athlete head dating from the first half of the fifth century B. C., in the Capitoline Museum, Rome,[1239] formerly called a portrait of Juba II, who was the king of Numidia and Mauretania from 25 B. C. to 23 A. D. This ascription was based on the barbarous look of the head and the fact that another head, discovered in the Gymnasion of Ptolemy in Athens and thought to resemble it, was assumed to be that of Juba, since Pausanias mentions one of that prince there.[1240] It is rather the head of an athlete engaged in putting on a cap. This cap consists of three transverse leather pieces crossing the head from side to side, one over the forehead, one over the crown, and the third over the occiput, all three converging above the ears. A fourth strap fastens them together and is drawn over the crown from forehead to occiput. In the complete statue doubtless the hands were raised to the head, grasping the straps near the ears to fasten them. This is, therefore, an anticipation of the later Diadoumenos motive. We see it in a statuette formerly in the Stroganoff collection in Rome, but now in private possession in England,[1241] which represents an athlete putting on a similar head-dress. Though the arms of the statuette are gone, remains of the two hands are seen touching the left ear and tying the straps, one of which runs around the cranium above the swollen right ear. With this complicated head-dress we may compare the close-fitting cap—evidently of leather—pictured on an archaistic Greek votive relief-in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, in Rome, which represents an athlete washing his hands in a basin, which stands on a tripod.[1242] Here the cap is fastened by two bands, one around and the other under the chin. An object in the upper left corner of the relief, enclosed in a frame, appears to be a victor crown adorned with bow-knots. Such caps, used in wrestling, would make it impossible for an opponent to grasp the hair; in boxing and the pankration it would protect the head from injury. We saw that such a cap was pictured on a Munich kylix of the early fifth century B. C. It is probable that such caps were customary at a period before athletes lost their long hair and that it was continued afterwards for various reasons. The little statuette from Autun now in the Louvre (Fig. 60), representing a pancratiast, has a close-fitting cap. The ring at the top shows that this statuette was hung up—perhaps being used as a weight in a Roman scale, or perhaps for adornment. In later days boys while practising in the palæstra, but never at the public games, wore ear-lappets (ἀμφωτίδες or ἐπωτίδες) to protect their ears, not dissimilar to those worn in our day for protection against the cold. We see them on a marble head, formerly in the possession of Fabretti.[1243]

THE SWOLLEN EAR.

We have lastly to speak of the swollen ear, which was an attribute of victor statues, both primary and secondary, since it characterized victors as such, and also early differentiated victors in various contests. Swollen ears may have played a role as a characteristic attribute of pugilists in early times.[1244] We found them on the Rayet head in the Jacobsen collection (Fig. 22), which belongs to the last quarter of the sixth century B. C. and comes from the funerary statue of an athlete, probably a boxer. In course of time, however, they came to characterize pancratiasts, wrestlers,[1245] and athletes in general. The assumption, then, that heads with swollen ears come from statues of boxers,[1246] and that the boxer was known throughout Greek history as the “man with the crushed ear” is erroneous.[1247] The earliest literary reference to the bruised ear is in Plato.[1248] The philosopher used the term slightingly of those who imitated Spartan customs, especially Spartan boxing. The Lacedæmonians never boxed scientifically, but fought with bare fists and without rules. Literary evidence, furthermore, shows that bruised ears did not play the part in boxing matches which other bruised features of the face did—the eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, and chin. Vase-paintings sustain this evidence, for we often see bloody noses and cuts on the cheeks and chin, but no crushed ears.[1249] In short, the crushed ear was merely a professional characteristic, a realistic detail, common to athletes of various sorts, and, as we shall see, to warriors, gods, and heroes. To quote Homolle: “La bouffissure des oreilles ellemême n’est pas un trait personnel, mais un caractère professionnel; elle ne désigne pas Agias, mais en général le lutteur. Cette déformation peut atteindre même un dieu, s’il a pratiqué les exercices gymnastiques et passé sa vie dans les luttes”.[1250] It is found constantly on athletic types of heads in sculpture, whether these represent gods or mortals. A few examples will make this clear. The following heads of athletes show the swollen ears: the bronze portrait head of a boxer or pancratiast from Olympia, dating from the end of the fourth century B. C. or the beginning of the third (Fig. 61 A and B);[1251] the marble head from the statue of the boxer Philandridas set up among the victor statues at Olympia, the work of Lysippos (Frontispiece and Fig. 69);[1252] the head of the statue of the pancratiast Agias at Delphi (Pl. 28 and Fig. 68) ;[1253] that of the Seated Boxer in the Museo delle Terme in Rome (Pl. 16 and Fig. 27);[1254] that of the Apoxyomenos of the Uffizi in Florence (Pl. 12);[1255] the bronze head from an athlete statue found at Tarsos and now in Constantinople, an Attic work of the end of the fifth century B. C.;[1256] the beautiful bronze head of a boxer in the Glyptothek (Pl. 3);[1257] the head of the so-called Apollo-on-the-Omphalos in Athens (Pl. 7B);[1258] the athlete head from Perinthos (Fig. 33);[1259] the bronze copy of the head of the Doryphoros, found in Herculaneum and now in Naples, by the Attic artist Apollonios (Fig. 47);[1260] the Ince-Blundell head in England, to be discussed; four heads in Copenhagen;[1261] the remarkably beautiful bust of an athlete in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (Pl. 20), whose rounded skull, oval face, projecting lower forehead, and dreamy, half-closed eyes place it in the fourth century B. C., a work influenced by the art of Praxiteles.[1262]

When we consider heads of gods and heroes we find the swollen ears on a variety of types. We see them on the so-called Borghese Warrior of the Louvre (Fig. 43),[1263] formerly called a Gladiator, and on the marble statue of Kresilæan style in Munich, which has been known since Brunn’s interpretation as Diomedes (carrying off the Palladion from Troy) (Pl. 21).[1264] This latter statue is a careful, though inexact, Hadrianic copy of a famous work and is shown to represent the hero, and not an athlete, by the mantle thrown over the arm. Skill in the boxing match, the roughest and most dangerous of sports, is as appropriate to Diomedes as to Herakles himself. The crushed ears appear on the Dresden replica of this statue, a cast from the Mengs collection, the original of which was once probably in England,[1265] but do not appear on the poor copy in the Louvre.[1266] They also appear on the Myronian bust in the Riccardi Palace, Florence, which is a copy of an original that was, perhaps, the forerunner of the Kresilæan Diomedes.[1267] Here again the garment thrown over the left shoulder shows that a youthful hero, and not an athlete, is intended.

On heads of Herakles the swollen ears are very common. The first dated representation of the hero with battered ears appears to be on coins of Euagoras I, the king of Salamis in Cyprus during the years 410-374 B. C.[1268] We have several examples in sculpture from the fourth century B. C. Thus swollen ears and the victor fillet appear on the Skopaic head in the Capitoline Museum.[1269] Another example is the terminal bust of the youthful hero found in 1777 at Genzano, and now in the British Museum (Fig. 31).[1270] This head wreathed with poplar leaves, is probably a Græco-Roman copy of an original of the fourth century B. C., by an artist of the school of Lysippos. In the group representing Herakles and his son Telephos, a Roman copy in the Museo Chiaramonti of the Vatican, the hero is represented with fillet and battered ears.[1271] A Parian marble head, encircled by a crown, in the Glyptothek, going back to a Lysippan bronze original, seems to come from the statue of the hero represented as a victor.[1272] Another life-size head, of poor workmanship, in the Chiaramonti collection of the Vatican, sometimes confused with the Doryphoros head-type, seems to come from a statue of Herakles, as shown by the broken ears and rolled fillet, the latter a well-known attribute of the hero taken from the symposium.[1273] A much finer replica is the bust from Herculaneum now in Naples.[1274] Swollen ears appear also on heads of Ares. We may instance the helmeted one in the Louvre,[1275] and especially the replica in the Palazzo Torlonia in Rome.[1276] They are less prominent on a Parian marble head of the god in the Glyptothek, which appears to be a copy of an original of which the Ares Ludovisi is a more complete one.[1277]

So far as we know, the statues of wrestlers, runners (except hoplitodromes), and probably pancratiasts were not distinguished by special attributes. In these cases the sculptor was obliged to express the type of contest in the figure itself. His problem, therefore, was to represent the victor in the characteristic pose of the contest in which he had won his victory, that is, by representing the statue as if in movement. This brings us to the second division of our treatment of victor statues, those which represented the victor not at rest, but in motion, a scheme which, in course of time, was extended not only to victors in wrestling and running, but to those in all contests, by representing them in the very act of contending. The treatment of this class of monuments will occupy the chief portion of Chapter IV.

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II. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF VICTOR STATUES AT OLYMPIA…

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II. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF VICTOR STATUES AT OLYMPIA

III. VICTOR STATUES REPRESENTED AT REST