IV. VICTOR STATUES REPRESENTED IN MOTION

PLATES 22-25 AND FIGURES 32-62.

Just when the important step of representing the victor in motion instead of at rest was taken in Greek athletic sculpture we can not definitely say. The statement of Cornelius Nepos that the statues of athletes were first represented in movement in the fourth century B. C., after the time of the Athenian general Chabrias—whose image he describes as representing Chabrias in his favorite posture with his spear pointed at the enemy and his shield on his knee—has long since been shown to be worthless.[1278] Nor is the assumption of many archæologists[1279] that this advance in the plastic art was taken over into athletic sculpture soon after the statues of the Tyrannicides were set up at Athens, which represented them in the midst of their impetuous onslaught on Hipparchos, to be relied upon. These statues, however, occupy so important a place in the history of Greek sculpture that we shall consider them briefly in this connection.

THE TYRANNICIDES.

The bronze statues of the popular heroes Harmodios and Aristogeiton, by the sculptor Antenor, were, in all probability, set up in the Athenian agora in 506-5 B. C.[1280] The group was carried off to Susa by Xerxes in 480 B. C., and to replace it a new group, doubtless a free imitation of the older one, and probably also of bronze, was set up in 477 B. C., the work of the sculptors Kritios and Nesiotes.[1281] Nearly a century and a half later the stolen group was restored to Athens by Alexander the Great[1282] and the two continued to stand side by side in Athens down to the time of Pausanias. Neither of these groups has survived to our time, but a late Roman marble copy of one, somewhat over lifesize, found in the ruins of Hadrian’s villa and now in Naples, gives us a good idea of the original, despite restorations (Fig. 32, Harmodios).[1283]

The reconstruction of this group is aided by several minor works of art, reliefs, vase-paintings, coins, lead marks, etc., the number of which shows that it was a common subject for Athenian artists. Botho Graef, by a careful study of the female statue found on the Akropolis in 1886 and inscribed as the work of Antenor, has shown that the stylistic contrast between it and the Naples group is too great for the latter to be assigned to Antenor.[1284] It is now, therefore, the prevailing view that the Naples group reproduces the later statues of Kritios and his associate.[1285] We do not know, then, how the older group looked, but we are certain that it was different from the later one, for, in the years elapsing between the dates of the two, Attic sculptors had become entirely free from the Ionic influence which we discussed in the preceding chapter and which characterizes the female statue of Antenor. Archaic stiffness, however, is still traceable in the later group, for in the copy we see a work which is “concise, sinewy, hard, and with strained lines,” in harmony with Lucian’s characterization of the works of Hegias, Kritios, and Nesiotes.[1286]

The restorations of the Naples group, though right in the main, make us doubtful as to the exact pose of the original figures.[1287] Harmodios has new arms, new right leg, and left leg below the knee, while Aristogeiton has a Lysippan head in place of the original bearded one, to correspond better with that of his companion. His left arm, with the drapery hanging down, has been put on at a wrong angle, as he should be represented holding a scabbard in the left hand and a sword in the right. On a vase fragment (oinochoe) in Boston[1288] both heroes are making the onset, the younger one (Harmodios) in front of the other, but in the original statues, they were probably making the onset abreast, something that the vase-painter could not represent.[1289]

While the Akropolis ephebe, already discussed as showing Argive influence (Fig. 17), still shows but little break with the law of “frontality” formulated by J. Lange,[1290] whereby an “imaginary line passing through the skull, nose, backbone, and navel, dividing the body into two symmetrical halves, is invariably straight, never bending to either side,” the Tyrannicides have broken it completely. The ephebe has his head slightly turned to one side, and, because of resemblances in head and body to the figure of Harmodios, has been assigned to Kritios or his school.[1291] Another statue at rest ascribed to the same school is the athlete in the Somzée collection, which reminds us of the Pelops of the East Gable at Olympia.[1292] We have record of one more statue by Kritios himself, which was represented in motion only less violent than that of the Tyrannicides. Pausanias saw on the Akropolis of Athens a statue by him of the hoplite runner Epicharinos, which represented the athlete in the attitude of one practicing starts, perhaps in the very pose of the Tuebingen statuette (Fig. 42).[1293]

In the statues of the Tyrannicides, then, which might pass equally well for typical athletes of the time, we have examples of statues in motion at the end of the sixth century B. C.; for the same violent action must have characterized the earlier group of Antenor as the later one. We have seen that the Aeginetan sculptors not only made pediment groups in action at a date not later than that of the group by Kritios and Nesiotes, but single figures still earlier. Thus the sculptor Glaukias represented the Karystian boy boxer Glaukos in the act of sparring with an imaginary opponent.[1294] Though Glaukos won in Ol. 65 (= 520 B. C.), his statue was set up later by his son, perhaps as late as the end of the sixth century B. C., or the beginning of the fifth, as the floruit of the sculptor would show.[1295] This is the oldest example attested by literary evidence of an athlete statue in motion at Olympia. Whether Glaukias got his motive from Antenor’s Tyrannicides, or whether his work was the older, we can not determine, but it is safe to say that this genre of statuary must have existed at Olympia long before, as we know it did elsewhere. The Rampin head, already discussed as a fragment of a victor statue, shows by the turn of its neck that athlete statues represented in motion existed at least as far back as the first half of the sixth century B. C.[1296]

ANTIQUITY OF MOTION STATUES IN GREECE.

Apart from specifically athletic types, we know that statues in motion, especially those representing winged figures, antedated the sixth century B. C. in Greece, and were, perhaps, coeval with the very origin of Greek art.[1297] We know that the oldest Egyptian art attempted to render the human body in motion. We may instance the limestone funerary statuette dating from the Old Kingdom, which represents a slave woman grinding corn,[1298] and similar figures found in the graves of Memphis. In fact, the making of such statues ceased in Egyptian art after the end of the Old Kingdom. While Assyro-Babylonian art represented figures in motion only on reliefs, Cretan art, as we have seen in the first chapter, showed the utmost skill in representing movement in figures in the round. It used to be assumed that in Greek art motion statues developed out of the archaic “Apollo” type through the gradual freeing of legs and arms. Any such assumption is easily disproved by the fact that figures in motion exist, which date back almost as far as figures at rest. It is equally fallacious to argue that slight movement was easier for the early artist to represent than violent movement, for just the contrary was the case, so that in general the greater the movement represented, the greater is the age of the given monument. Early vase-paintings show that the early painter delighted in portraying free movement.[1299] It may be that the vase-painter preceded the sculptor in portraying movement, for it was easier to effect this in two dimensions than in three. But that statues in motion were already known at the beginning of the sixth century B. C., at least, is shown by the winged flying figure known as the Nike of Archermos,[1300] unearthed on the island of Delos by the French in 1877, which is a masterpiece of early Chian sculpture, perhaps coeval with the statue dedicated to Artemis by Nikandre of Naxos, found a year later on Delos,[1301] even though the latter appears more archaic. This earliest example of treating a flying figure in Greek sculpture we find repeated almost unchanged for a long time after, especially for akroteria figures on temples and in the minor arts. We might mention the bronze statuette of the end of the sixth century B. C., found on the Akropolis, which comes from the edge of a vessel and represents a winged Nike springing through the air, the legs in profile and the head and upper body turned to the front, just as in the figure of Archermos.[1302] Such figures completely disprove the contention of Sikes that the Greek idea of a winged Nike did not antedate the fifth century B. C.[1303] The early date of statues represented in a lunging attitude, like the Tyrannicides, is also shown by the story that Herakles destroyed his own statue by Daidalos in the agora of Elis, because in the night he mistook it for an enemy lunging at him. The scheme of combatants fighting with lances seems to have been native to Rhodian art at the end of the seventh century B. C., for we see it first on a painted terra-cotta plate in the British Museum, which represents Hektor and Menelaos fighting for the body of Euphorbos.[1304] This pose was taken over into other arts, as we see it in the bronze statuette of a warrior found in Dodona in 1880, now in the Antiquarium in Berlin, which dates from the end of the sixth century B. C., or the beginning of the fifth.[1305] All these examples are sufficient to show that representing the human figure in motion was an ancient motive in Greek art.

PYTHAGORAS AND MYRON.

Besides Kritios, two other sculptors of the transitional period—Pythagoras and Myron—gave a great impetus to the type of statue in motion in the first half of the fifth century B. C. Before proceeding further we shall briefly consider their artistic activity.

The attempt to ascribe something tangible to Pythagoras of Rhegion has often been made.[1306] Practically all we really know about him is that he was celebrated for his statues of athletes. Pausanias mentions seven statues at Olympia of victors who won in many different events, in running (including the hoplite-race), wrestling, boxing, and the chariot-race; and Pliny, in giving a list of his works, praises the statue of a pancratiast at Delphi.[1307] Thus Pausanias records the statues of the Sicilian wrestler Leontiskos, who won two victories in Ols. 81 and 82 (= 456 and 452 B. C.);[1308] of the boy boxer Protolaos of Mantinea, who won in Ol. (?) 74 (= 484 B. C.);[1309] of the boxer Euthymos of Lokroi, who won three times in Ols. 74, 76, 77 (= 484, 476, 472 B. C.);[1310] of Dromeus of Stymphalos, who won the long foot-race (δόλιχος) twice in Ols. (?) 80 and 81 (= 460 and 456 B. C.);[1311] of Astylos of Kroton, who won the stade-race, the double foot-race (δίαυλος) three times, and the hoplite-race twice in Ols. 73, 74, 75, 76 (= 488-476 B. C.);[1312] of the hoplite victor Mnaseas of Kyrene, victor in Ol. 81 (= 456 B. C.);[1313] and of the latter’s son Kratisthenes, who won the chariot-race in Ol. (?) 83 (= 448 B. C.).[1314] Some of these statues at Olympia must have been represented at rest, while others appear to have been represented in motion. Thus the statue of Mnaseas—though it is possible that it was represented in motion like that of Epicharinos by Kritios already mentioned—was probably represented at rest, since Pausanias described it simply as that of an ὁπλίτης ἀνήρ.[1315] When we inquire into the style of Pythagoras we do not find much that is definite to guide us. Besides the bare list of his works, we have little except the statement of Diogenes Laertios that he was the first to aim at rhythm and symmetry.[1316] Nevertheless many attempts have been made to identify his athlete statues with existing copies. Waldstein’s interpretation of the Choiseul-Gouffier statue in the British Museum (Pl. 7A), and of the so-called Apollo-on-the-Omphalos in Athens (Pl. 7B), as copies of an original athlete statue, is, as we have shown in the second chapter, well-founded, since the muscular build and the coiffure of these statues betoken the athlete. But his further attempt to show that the original was by Pythagoras, and his identifying it with the statue of the boxer Euthymos at Olympia, is not so reasonable.[1317]

The attempt to ascribe the head of a pancratiast from Perinthos in Dresden (Fig. 33)[1318] to Pythagoras is not convincing, though Furtwaengler has included it in his provisional Pythagorean group,[1319] as he does the boxer in the Louvre known as Pollux (Fig. 58),[1320] the athlete of the Boboli Gardens in Florence formerly called Harmodios by Benndorf,[1321] and the statue of an athlete of later style in Lansdowne House, London.[1322] Other scholars have also connected the Perinthos head with Pythagoras.[1323] Hermann brought it into relation with the bust in the Riccardi Palace in Florence, which, despite its swollen ears, we have already classed as representing a hero and not an athlete, because of the garment thrown over the shoulder.[1324] Furtwaengler tried to show that this bust was Myronian in style, classing it and the head of an athlete in Ince Blundell Hall, Lancashire, England,[1325] along with that of the earlier Diskobolos, explaining the acknowledged differences in the three by Pliny’s statement that Myron primus multiplicasse veritatem videtur.[1326] Arndt lists the Perinthos, Riccardi, and Ince Blundell heads, together with two others in the Jakobsen collection in Copenhagen,[1327] the head of the so-called Pollux of the Louvre, a bearded head in Petrograd,[1328] and the so-called head of Peisistratos in the Villa Albani, Rome,[1329] as works emanating from one school of sculptors—the differences being explained by the many copyists. But to attempt to differentiate within the group two different sculptors, Myron or Pythagoras, he finds impossible, chiefly because we are dealing in every case with copies and not with originals, and because in no case are we certain that the head belongs to the torso on which it is set.[1330] Still another critic, A. Schober, classes together as more or less related works the Riccardi, Ince Blundell, Perinthos, and Ny-Carlsberg heads, the Louvre boxer (Pollux), Chinnery Hermes in the British Museum,[1331] the Boboli athlete, the athlete metamorphosed into a Hermes in the Loggia Scoperta of the Vatican, and the Lansdowne athlete, and finds them all Myronian. He believes the Perinthos head to be the prototype of the Riccardi and Ince Blundell heads.[1332]

In all this confusion of opinion as to the style of Pythagoras, and in the absence of any fixed criterion of judgment furnished by an original authenticated work, it seems hazardous to ascribe this or that sculpture to this little-known artist. The difficulty of separating Myron and Pythagoras is even greater than that which confronts us in trying to distinguish works of Lysippos and Skopas in the next century. We may some day recover a genuine Pythagorean athlete statue, though this is extremely improbable now that we have no more to expect from Olympia and Delphi, where most of his statues appear to have stood. But despite the difficulty, many identifications of his Olympia statues have been suggested, some of which we shall now mention.

As Pausanias says that the victor Mnaseas was surnamed Libys, the Libyan, and that his statue was by Pythagoras, it may be that this is the statue mentioned by Pliny in the words: [Pythagoras] fecit ... et Libyn, puerum tenentem tabellam eodem loco (= Olympiae) et mala ferentem nudum.[1333] However, in that case we can not connect the words Libyn and puerum, since one represented a man and the other a boy.[1334] Consequently, Pliny is speaking of three different statues, and not two, by this artist. Reisch believes that the statues of the boy and the nude man were represented at rest,[1335] the boy bearing a tablet (i. e., an iconic πινάκιον) in his hand, like the Athenian youth appearing on a vase-painting in Munich.[1336] Another scholar, L. von Urlichs, formerly identified the boy carrying the tablet with the statue of Protolaos at Olympia,[1337] explaining the tablet as a means of characterizing the young learner. He changed his theory later,[1338] when, in consequence of the discovery of the Corinthian tablets, he called it a votive tablet. His son, H. L. von Urlichs, agreed with him because of a passage in the collection of Proverbs by Zenobios, the sophist of Hadrian’s age,[1339] according to which the marble statue of Nemesis at Rhamnous by Pheidias’ favorite pupil, the Parian sculptor Agorakritos,[1340] held an apple-branch in her left hand, from which a small tablet containing the artist’s name was suspended, and also because certain coins of Syracuse and Catania represent Nike as carrying a tablet hung by a ribbon, on which the coin-striker’s name was engraved.[1341] The same scholar further identified the nude man carrying the apples with the statue of Dromeus at Olympia. Since Pliny does not expressly say that the statue of the nude man was at Olympia, even though the sense of the passage inclines us to think it was, L. von Urlichs interprets the apples in the hand as an additional prize at Delphi, and so makes the statue that of a Pythian victor.[1342] All such identifications are based on too uncertain premises.

That Pythagoras did make statues in motion is proved by his statue of a limping man at Syracuse mentioned by Pliny[1343] in very realistic terms. We know of other statues by him representing athletes in motion only by inference. Thus, in the passage just quoted, Pliny says that he surpassed Myron with his Delphian pancratiast, which appears, inasmuch as Pliny merely calls the statue a pancratiast without mentioning any attribute, to have been represented in the characteristic lunging pose.[1344] However, we can not say definitely, since the contemporary statue of the pancratiast Kallias, by Mikon of Athens, was represented in the attitude of rest, as we learn from the footprints on its recovered base.[1345] Pliny also says that Pythagoras surpassed with his Delphian pancratiast his own statue of Leontiskos,[1346] a statement which similarly appears to mark the latter as a statue in motion. Reisch assumes that the statue of Euthymos was in motion, since Pausanias says it was an ἀνδριὰς θέας ἐς τὰ μάλιστα ἄξιος.[1347] On the whole, then, we may assume that Pythagoras was a sculptor who represented many of his victors in the attitude of motion.

Love of movement also characterized the artistic temperament of Myron, even though we know that he represented gods, heroes, and even athletes, at rest. Thus coins show that Athena in his Marsyas group was represented as standing in a tranquil pose.[1348] Similarly the Riccardi bust in Florence, already discussed, which may be Myronian, comes from a statue of a hero shown in an attitude of rest. Myron was the first Greek sculptor to make his statues and groups self-sufficient,[1349] that is, he gave to them a concentration which does not allow the spectator’s attention to wander. We readily see this new principle in art when we compare the Diskobolos and the group of the Tyrannicides. In the latter our attention is not concentrated, for a third figure, that of the tyrant on whom the onset is being made, is required in imagination to complete the group. We have no originals from Myron’s hand, but we are in far better case in regard to his work than in regard to that of Pythagoras, since we have unmistakable copies of two of his greatest works, the Marsyas and the Diskobolos. In them there is little trace of the archaic stiffness that is still visible in the Tyrannicides. Both of these works are represented in violent action, and in both there is complete concentration. While the Diskobolos represents a trained palæstra athlete executing a graceful movement, the Marsyas represents a wild Satyr of the woods, wholly untrained and controlled by savage passions, in the moment of fear.[1350] In the Diskobolos the face is impassive, being little affected by the violent movement of the body—a contrast only partly to be explained as due to the copyist; in the Marsyas, on the contrary, there is complete harmony between the facial expression and the violent action of the body.

Since we are chiefly dependent for our knowledge of Myron’s athletic work on the marble copies of the Diskobolos, which represents a new era in athletic art, and since this statue is perhaps the most famous athletic statue of all times, it will be well to speak of it here at some length. It is not, so far as we know, the statue of any particular victor, but rather a study in athletic sculpture.[1351] Of this work there are twelve full size replicas and several statuettes. We shall discuss only those which give us the best idea of the lost original. The most faithful copy is the superb marble statue in the Palazzo Lancellotti, Rome, discovered on the Esquiline in 1781 (head seen in Pl. 23).[1352] As the head has never been broken away from the body, this copy preserves the original pose, whereas all other copies have the head turned in the wrong direction.[1353] The head and face preserve Attic proportions and the treatment of the hair and muscles differs from that of the other copies, which disclose later elements. The hair, in particular, shows signs of archaism, just as it must have been treated in the original, as evinced by Pliny’s criticism.[1354] The most carefully worked copy, however, is the Parian marble torso, which was found in 1906 at Castel Porziano, the site of the ancient Laurentum, and is now in the Museo delle Terme, Rome (Pl. 22).[1355] This torso was already restored in antiquity. Since the villa in which it was found was built in Augustus’ day and was restored in the second century A. D., we have the approximate dates both of the origin and restoration of the statue. A weak copy, discovered in Tivoli in 1791, is in the Sala della Biga of the Vatican; the head, left arm, and right leg below the knee have been restored, the head wrongly (Fig. 34).[1356] A Græco-Roman copy discovered also in 1791, in Hadrian’s villa, is in the British Museum (Fig. 35).[1357] Here the head, although antique, belongs to another copy, and has been set upon the torso wrongly, in such a way that the throat has two Adam’s apples. It looks straight to the ground and not upward as in the Lancellotti copy. There is a better replica of the torso in the Capitoline Museum, which formerly belonged to the French sculptor Étienne Mounot (1658-1733), who wrongly restored it as a falling warrior. It agrees in accuracy with the Lancellotti copy, though it is dry and lifeless, and is a better guide to the original than either the Vatican or British Museum replicas.[1358] A combination of these and other copies gives us an excellent idea of the original bronze. In Pl. 23 we give a combination of the Vatican torso and the Lancellotti head from a cast in Munich.[1359] Perhaps a better combination is that given by Bulle[1360] from a cast made up of the delle Terme body, the Lancellotti head, the right arm and the diskos from the Casa Buonarroti in Florence, the feet from the British Museum copy and the fingers of the left hand being freely restored.

The pose of the Lancellotti copy agrees with Lucian’s description of the original: “Surely, said I, you do not speak of the quoit-thrower who stoops in the attitude of one who is making his cast, turning round toward the hand that holds the quoit, and bending the other knee gently beneath him, like one who will rise erect as he hurls the quoit?”[1361] That the head of the original was turned back as in the Lancellotti copy, and not downwards, as in the Vatican, British Museum and other replicas, is shown by this description, which is corroborated by two bronze statuettes in Munich and Arolsen[1362] and by a gem in the British Museum.[1363] Myron chose the most difficult, but at the same time the most characteristic, moment in swinging the diskos, the moment which combines the idea of rest and motion. The quoit has been swung back as far as it will go. The momentary pause before it is hurled forward suggests rest and at the same time implies motion, both that which has preceded and that which is to follow. It is this short pause at the end of the backward swing which the sculptor has fixed in the bronze. The right arm is stretched backwards as far as possible and draws with it the body with the left arm and head; in another instant the diskos will be hurled and the tension on the right leg relaxed. The original statue rested upon the right foot; the tree trunk is a necessary addition to the marble copies. As Greek art was mostly characterized by repose, we are not surprised that such a daring effect received the censure of the ancient critics. Quintilian says that if any one blames the statue for its labored effect, he is wrong, since the novelty and the difficulty of the work are its chief merits.[1364] For a statue of the transitional stage of Greek sculpture it is remarkably bold; only in imagination can we see the action by which the body has got into this position and by which it will recover its equilibrium. It illustrates a principle laid down by Lessing in the Laokoön: “Of ever changing nature the artist can use only a single moment and this from a single point of view. And as his work is meant to be looked at not for an instant, but with long consideration, he must choose the most fruitful moment, and the most fruitful point of view, that, to wit, which leaves the power of imagination free.”[1365]

Myron was the sculptor of five statues for four victors at Olympia, one of a pancratiast, another of a boxer, a third of a runner, and two of a victor in the hoplite-race and the chariot-race.[1366] Pliny also says that Myron made statues of pentathletes and pancratiasts at Delphi.[1367] Thus he showed as much versatility as Pythagoras in the representation of victors in different contests. None of these statues has survived and the identification of existing Roman copies with any of them is, of course, highly problematical. Thus, a little further on we make the suggestion that the statue of the boxer in the Louvre, commonly known as Pollux (Fig. 58), may be, because of its Myronian character, the statue of the unknown Arkadian boxer at Olympia mentioned by Pausanias (in connection with the boy boxer Philippos) as the work of Myron.[1368] Pliny, in the passage just cited, also mentions statues of pristae by Myron, a word which has given rise to many interpretations: e. g., sea-monsters (pristes or pistres), men working with a cross-cut saw (pristae), players at see-saw (pristae?),[1369] and boxers (pyctae).[1370] The manuscripts are unanimous for pristae, and hence it is probable that a realistic group by Myron is meant, since Myron is often classed as a realist in opposition to Polykleitos, the idealist. Long ago Dalecampius, followed in recent years by Furtwaengler,[1371] believed that these pristae formed a votive offering, and H. L. von Urlichs has shown that a group of sawyers as the dedication of some master-builder is quite in harmony with fifth-century traditions.[1372] H. Stuart Jones[1373] connects the words Perseum et pristas of Pliny’s text, and follows the theory of Mayer[1374] that the carpenters or sawyers were a part of a group, which represented the inclosure of Danaë and Perseus in the chest.

While the athletic statues in motion by Pythagoras and Myron became models for later sculptors, especially in the following century,[1375] the rest statues of Polykleitos still remained in vogue in works by members of his family and school down through the fourth century, as we have seen in our treatment of the Argive-Sikyonian sculptors at Olympia.

MOTION STATUES REPRESENTING VICTORS IN VARIOUS CONTESTS.

We shall now review the types of victor statues, which reproduced in their pose the various contests, i. e., statues in motion. We shall find it convenient to follow in the main the order of contests as they appear on the Oxyrhynchus Papyrus[1376]—the stade-race (στάδιον), double race (δίαυλος), long race (δόλιχος), pentathlon (πένταθλον), wrestling, (πάλη), boxing (πύξ), pankration (παγκράτιον), hoplite-race (ὁπλίτης), chariot-race (τέθριππον), and horse-race (κέλης)—except that we shall class the four running races (nos. 1, 2, 3, and 11) together and include the three boys’ contests (παίδων στάδιον, πάλη, πύξ, nos. 8, 9, 10) under the corresponding men’s events. The classification of competitors by ages (ἡλικίαι), which varied at different festivals, will need a word of explanation. While athletes at Nemea, the Isthmus, and Delphi were divided into three classes, παῖδες, ἀγένειοι, and ἄνδρες,[1377] at Olympia they were divided into two, παῖδες and ἄνδρες.[1378] At local competitions there was a more elaborate classification. Thus at the Bœotian Erotidia, boys were divided into younger and older;[1379] at the games held on the island of Chios there were five divisions, boys, younger, middle, and older ephebes, and men;[1380] and at the Athenian Theseia, the boys were divided into first, second, and third classes, while an open contest also existed for boys of any age.[1381] Girls at the Heraia at Olympia were similarly divided into three classes.[1382] Plato proposed three classes of athletes in his Laws—παιδικοί, ἄνδρες, and a third class, ἀγένειοι, between boys and men.[1383] The classification of athletes at Athens into παῖδες and ἄνδρες, adopted by Boeckh, Dittenberger, and Dumont,[1384] is now the one generally followed. According to it the παῖδες were subdivided into three classes, those τῆς πρώτης ἡλικίας, τῆς δευτέρας, and τῆς τρίτης; and so the ἀγένειοι were merely the παῖδες τῆς τρίτης ἡλικίας. The boys, including the ἀγένειοι, ranged from 12 to 18 years old; at 18 they became ἔφηβοι or ἄνδρες.[1385] We have already seen that the age of boy victors at Olympia was over 17 and under 20.[1386]

As we have already remarked in an earlier chapter, we are mostly indebted to Pausanias for our knowledge of the victor statues at Olympia.[1387] He mentions in his periegesis of the Altis 192 monuments, which were erected to 187 victors.[1388] Some of these victors won in more than one contest, so that there are 258 different victories recorded in all. In the following sections we shall see how these were distributed among the various contests.

RUNNERS: STADIODROMOI, DIAULODROMOI, DOLICHODROMOI.

Running races formed at all times a part of the Greek games and of the exercises of the youth in the gymnasia and palæstræ. A scholiast on Pindar[1389] says that the running race had its origin in the first celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries. It figures largely in mythology, especially at Olympia, which also shows its antiquity.[1390] In historic times many varieties of running developed, but four chief ones were practised at the great games.[1391] First there was the simple stade-race (στάδιον, δρόμος), which was merely the length of the stadion or 600 Greek feet, corresponding with the running race of Homer.[1392] Then there was the double race (δίαυλος), twice as long as the preceding, to the end of the course and back again.[1393] The long race (δόλιχος, ὁ μακρὸς δρόμος), which Philostratos derives from the institution of messenger runners (hemerodromoi),[1394] is variously given as seven, twelve, fourteen, twenty, and twenty-four stades in length, i. e., from about four-fifths of a mile to nearly three miles.[1395] Lastly there was the race in armor (ὁπλιτοδρόμος,[1396] ὁπλίτης,[1397] ἀσπίς.[1398]) The long race was instituted not so much as a contest of fleetness as of endurance. At Olympia only men were admitted, though there was such a race for boys at Delphi.[1399] The Cretans were famed in this style of running.[1400] The race in armor, which was a double race or two stades at Olympia, we shall discuss further on. Probably the boys’ stade-race at Olympia was shorter than that of the men. Plato, who gives the historic division of running races outlined above, has the boys run one-half of the men’s course and the ephebes (ἀγένειοι) two-thirds.[1401] Just so Pausanias has the girl runners at the Olympia Heraia run one-sixth of the men’s stadion.[1402]

At Olympia, as at the Panathenaia in Athens and probably elsewhere, the first event preceding all others was the stade-race. Pausanias says that it was the oldest event at Olympia,[1403] and it existed there all through antiquity from the first recorded Olympiad (= 776 B. C.), when Koroibos of Elis won.[1404] But the notion generally held[1405] that the stade-race for men was honored above all other events at Olympia, because the winner became ἐπώνυμος for the Olympiad and because his name occurs in the lists of Africanus for every Olympiad, is incorrect. In two passages Thukydides cites Olympic pancratiasts for dates,[1406] and in the earliest inscription which makes use of Olympiads for chronology the later introduced pankration is the event used.[1407] The literary supremacy of Athens, where, at the Panathenaia, the stade-race was the most important event, doubtless helped later in making the stade runner at Olympia eponymous. This custom, however, was not generally employed before the third century B. C.

Pausanias dates the introduction of the double foot-race at Olympia in Ol. 14 (= 724 B. C.).[1408] He does not say when the long race was instituted, but Eusebios says that it was in Ol. 15 (= 720 B. C.).[1409] The boys’ stade-race was introduced there in Ol. 37 (= 632 B. C.).[1410] The hoplite-race was inaugurated at the end of the sixth century B. C., in Ol. 65 (= 520 B. C.).[1411] Pausanias mentions 24 stadiodromoi at Olympia, who won 32 victories, which makes this event third in importance, next after boxing and wrestling. He mentions 7 victors in the double race with 11 victories, and 5 victors in the long race with 8 victories. He also mentions 12 hoplite victors with 14 victories. Consequently, in all four running events there, he records 48 victors with 65 victories, which brings the running races only to second place in importance at Olympia, ranking next after boxing.[1412] The ordinary sprinter or stadiodromos, and the double sprinter, diaulodromos or hoplitodromos, naturally ran differently from the endurance runner or dolichodromos. Panathenaic vases clearly show this difference. Thus while the sprinter swung his arms violently, spreading the fingers apart and touching the ground only with his toes[1413] (Figs. 36A and 37, left), the endurance runner, who had to conserve his strength to the last, ran with a long stride, holding his arms bent at the elbow and close to the body, his fists doubled and his body slightly bent forward, its weight resting on the ball of the foot, the heel being raised only a little. Thus Philostratos says that the dolichodromoi ran with their hands extended and with their fists balled, but that at the finish they also swung their arms violently like wings.[1414] The race (showing balled fists) is seen on a Panathenaic amphora dating from the archonship of Nikeratos (333 B. C.), now in the British Museum, and on another of the sixth century B. C., pictured in Fig. 37 (right).[1415] In the diaulos the movement was less violent. Thus on an Athens vase inscribed, “I am a diaulos runner,”[1416] the movement is between that of a sprinter and an endurance runner. It seems probable that this difference in the style of running was similarly shown in sculpture.[1417] We shall next consider certain sculptural monuments which represent runners.

The typical scheme for archaic and archaistic art was to represent the runner with one knee nearly touching the ground, the upper log forming a right angle with the lower, the other leg being perpendicular to the upper. This scheme appears on many vases and reliefs and in statuettes and statues.[1418] This old method of depicting runners was kept up by vase-painters down to the time of the red-figured masters.[1419] We see them on many reliefs, e. g., on the Ionic-Greek reliefs on the three archaic bronze tripods of the middle of the sixth century B. C. in the possession of Mr. James Loeb;[1420] on a small bronze relief in the Metropolitan Museum in New York which represents a winged Boreas;[1421] and on the marble funerary stele of the so-called dying hoplite runner found in 1902 near the Theseion, and now in the National Museum in Athens.[1422] Almost the same position as that of the figure on this Athenian relief is seen in a small bronze in the Metropolitan Museum, whose primitive features and solidly massed hair date it in the early part of the sixth century B. C.[1423] Another slightly larger bronze in the same museum represents Herakles running in a kneeling posture.[1424] Because a spearman is incongruous behind a bowman, Kalkmann[1425] and Furtwaengler[1426] have interpreted the two kneeling figures near either end of the West gable of the temple on Aegina as archaic runners (see Fig. 21, left). We may further compare with these figures the positions, though not the motives, of two others from the West gable at Olympia,[1427] as well as that of the kneeling bowman Herakles from the East gable of the temple on Aegina.[1428] In this connection we shall also mention the life-size marble torso of a kneeling youth found in Nero’s villa at Subiaco in 1884 and now in the Museo delle Terme, Rome (Pl. 24).[1429] This statue, representing a boy of delicate build apparently striding forward with the right leg and bending the left so that the knee nearly touches the ground, has been regarded by some scholars[1430] as a runner, whose pose copies the archaic manner, being historically the last example known of its use in sculpture. The right shoulder is turned backward and the head, now missing, was turned back and upwards; the right arm is raised high and twisted about with the palm of the hand facing backward, the left arm extended with its hand in some way related to the right knee. The impression made on the spectator is that of a boy bending aside as if to ward off some danger. It is an excellent piece of work, evidently the marble copy of an original bronze. This has been variously assigned to the fifth, fourth, and even later centuries B. C.,[1431] and interpreted in various ways[1432]—as a Niobid,[1433] as Ganymedes swooped down upon by the eagle,[1434] as Hylas drawn into the water by nymphs when he was filling his pitcher,[1435] as a ball-player,[1436] as a boy throwing a lasso,[1437] as a gable figure,[1438] as a runner at the games, etc. Many of these interpretations are purely fanciful; the last is, perhaps, as good as any, though the strongly turned upper body seems not quite fitted to it. If it represents a runner, the sculptor has reproduced the well-known archaic pose.

THE STATUE OF THE RUNNER LADAS.

We shall next consider the famous statue of the runner Ladas by Myron, which is unfortunately known to us only from literary evidence, but which attained in antiquity an even greater fame than his nameless Diskobolos, since it portrayed even more tension than that wonderful work. Its fame was partly due to the picturesque story how the victory cost the runner his life, for he died of strain while on his way home to Sparta; it was also due in no less degree to the striking way in which the victor was depicted.[1439]

Two fourth-century epigrams tell us of the statue. The first of these runs:

Λάδας τὸ στάδιον εἴθ’ ἥλατο, εἴτε διέπτη, οὐδὲ φράσαι δυνατόν· δαιμόνιον τὸ τάχος. [ὁ ψόφος ἦν ὕσπληγγος ἐν οὔασι, καὶ στεφανοῦτο Λάδας καὶ κάμνων δάκτυλον οὐ προέβη.][1440]

The second epigram, naming Myron as the sculptor, runs:

Οἷος ἔης φεύγων τὸν ὑπήνεμον, ἔμπνοε Λάδα, Θῦμον, ἐπ’ ἀκροτάτῳ πνεύματι θεὶς ὄνυχα, τοῖον ἐχάλκευσέν σε Μύρων, ἐπὶ παντὶ χαράξας σώματι Πισαίου προσδοκίην στεφάνου.

To these verses are added the following, which Benndorf thinks belonged to another epigram on the same statue:

πλήρης ἐλπίδος ἐστίν, ἄκροις δ’ ἐπὶ χείλεσιν ἆσθμα ἐμφαίνει κοίλων ἔνδοθεν ἐκ λαγόνων. πηδήσει τάχα χαλκὸς ἐπὶ στέφος, οὐδὲ καθέξει ἁ βάσις· ὢ τέχνη πνεύματος ὠκυτέρα.[1441]

Professor Ernest Gardner translates the two parts of the second epigram as follows:

“Like as thou wast in life, Ladas, breathing forth thy panting soul,[1442] on tip-toe, with every sinew at full strain, such hath Myron wrought thee in bronze, stamping on thy whole body thy eagerness for the victor’s crown of Pisa.”

“He is filled with hope, and you may see the breath caught on his lips from deep within his flanks; surely the bronze will leave its pedestal and leap to the crown. Such art is swifter than the wind.”[1443]

Even if part of the epigram is rhetorical, we can not doubt that Ladas was represented in the final spurt just before he arrived at the goal. His eagerness was not confined to the face—though the panting breath could have been indicated by half opened lips, but was visible in the whole body.[1444] Whereas the girl runner of the Vatican (Pl. 2) is represented at the beginning of the race, Myron’s statue represented Ladas at the end of it. Probably the victor was represented with his weight thrown on the advanced foot and with the arms close to the sides and bent at the elbows—a treatment which would have been easy for the sculptor of the Diskobolos. Mahler tried to identify the statue with one of the Naples group of so-called runners (Fig. 51).[1445] However, as we shall see, these probably represent wrestlers, and not runners, and neither of them shows any such tension as we should expect from the description of the statue of Ladas. Though Foerster believes that the statue of Ladas stood in Olympia, in honor of his victory in the long race there,[1446] we can not say definitely where it was.[1447]

Perhaps our best representation of runners is to be seen in the two marble statues discovered near Velletri and now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome (Figs. 38 and 39).[1448] The hair and the sharp edges of the modeling of the flesh, as well as the tree-stumps near the right legs, show that these statues are copies of bronze originals. They were at first interpreted as runners, but later were regarded as forming a group of wrestlers, who were standing opposite one another and holding their hands out for an opening. However, there is nothing in the pose or the expression of these statues to show the tension of two opponents. Moreover, they certainly never formed a group, for stylistic differences reveal that they are copies of statues by different artists who lived at different times; one belongs to the severe style of the last quarter of the fifth century,[1449] while the other, with its softer forms, smaller head, and deeper-set eyes, is a product of the fourth century B. C.[1450] The prominent edge of the chest is doubtless meant to indicate the hard breathing of a runner.[1451] Just in front of the tree-stump on the older statue is to be seen a round hole in the plinth, which may have been made for the end of a club held in the right hand, as such an object is found in other works of art, notably in a statuette from Palermo, which is the copy of a fifth-century B. C. original, and on a second-century B. C. grave-stele from Crete.[1452] Its use, however, is not certainly known.

Furtwaengler, by an ingenious process of reasoning, argued that he had recovered an actual statue of an Olympic runner in the so-called Alkibiades, formerly in the Villa Mattei, but now in the Sala della Biga of the Vatican.[1453] This torso he ascribed to the sculptor Kresilas, because of its likeness to the Perikles of that master, which once stood on the Akropolis,[1454] and to a marble torso in Naples representing a wounded man ready to fall, which he thinks is a copy of the Volneratus deficiens of Kresilas mentioned by Pliny.[1455] The Alkibiades is very similar to the Naples gladiator, though later in date; the bearded head, drawn-in stomach, and muscular chest, and the veins in the upper arm are common to both. The restorer of the Vatican statue has placed a helmet under the right foot. But the deep-breathing chest may indicate a runner, as we saw in the case of the statues of the Conservatori just discussed. Furtwaengler has the body bend further forward, so that the right foot may rest upon the ground and the glance be fixed upon the goal, with the arms extended at the elbows, a position proved for the right arm, at least, by the puntello above the hip. As the head shows portrait-like features and only those athletes who had won three victories had portrait statues, he has identified the original of the Alkibiades with the statue of the famous stade-runner Krison of Himera, who won his victories at Olympia just after the middle of the fifth century B. C., the approximate date of the Vatican copy.[1456] Such an identification appears, however, to be too far-fetched to be convincing.

STATUES OF BOY RUNNERS.

Probably the statues of boy runners did not differ essentially from those of men. That they were sometimes represented in motion is shown by the footprints on the recovered base of the statue of Sosikrates by an unknown artist. Here the right foot touched the ground only with the front portion.[1457] The view has often been expressed that the bronze statue in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome, known as the Spinario (Thorn-puller) portrays a runner (Fig. 40).[1458] It represents a boy, from twelve to fifteen years old, seated upon a rock bending over and engrossed in extracting a thorn from his left foot, which rests upon the right knee. The severe hair treatment, low forehead, full cheeks, and strong chin appear to show the ideal beauty of a boy of the period of about 460 B. C. The motive seems to have been inspired directly by nature—witness the supple bend of the back, the delicate arms, the naïve, though not too realistic, concentration of interest in the act portrayed. Few pieces of ancient sculpture have given rise to more discussion and extraordinary difference of opinion than this popular work. One school of archæologists[1459] believes it a late adaptation of a Hellenistic original, a more accurate copy being the one in the British Museum, and consequently views it as a purely genre statue impossible of conception before Alexander’s time. According to this view the London copy was an archaistic work of the time of Pasiteles. Another school, however, including Helbig, Wolters, Kekulé, and many others, sees in the Roman statue an original work of 460 to 450 B. C., chiefly because the face shows great similarity to those of the statues of the Olympia gables (especially to that of Apollo)[1460]. According to this view the statue can not have been a genre work, as such works of decorative character were of later origin, but the motive must be sought in some definite incident—in some myth or historical event. Thus it has been referred to the colonization of the Ozolian Lokroi, whose ancestor Lokros is said to have got a thorn in his foot and to have founded cities near where this occurred in fulfilment of an oracle. Many others, on the other hand, have seen in its motive that of a boy victor in running, who has gained his victory despite a thorn, which he is now pulling out, and who has dedicated his statue to commemorate both the victory and the untoward circumstances under which it was won. It has been assigned to various sculptors and schools—to Myron, Pythagoras, and Kalamis, and to Peloponnesian, Bœotian, and even Sicilian art.[1461] The boy’s absorption in his task certainly reminds us of the concentration so characteristic of the Diskobolos of Myron. In determining its age and artistic affiliations several things must be considered. In the first place, the Roman statue is a copy, as the rock on which the boy sits is cast with the figure, which would have been impossible in the fifth century B. C. The long hair on this copy, which is short on the one in the British Museum, falls down the neck, but not over the cheeks, as it should on a head which is thus bent downwards. Pasiteles almost certainly would have tied it with a ribbon. This shows that the original was the work of an artist who was used to making standing statues, and was not aware of the change in the representation of the hair brought about by drooping ones. Such considerations, in conjunction with the archaic facial characteristics, almost certainly refer the original work to the fifth century B. C., a date when genre statues, produced for adornment, did not exist. Consequently a definite incident must be represented by it, and it is quite possible that this incident should be sought in athletic sculpture in the representation of a boy runner.

The Thorn-puller became a model for many imitations from the beginning of Hellenistic times on. These imitations tended to greater realism and consequently to the debasement of the original conception, for they were made to represent peasants, shepherds, satyrs, and even negroes. The motif was also transferred to figures of girls, as, e. g., in the fragment of a terra-cotta statuette found in 1912 at Nida-Haddernheim.[1462] In the early Empire it was frequently copied in marble, and again, during the Renaissance, the motive was used for small bronzes.[1463] Of Hellenistic copies, showing how the motive deteriorated, we shall mention only two: the marble one found on the Esquiline, in 1874, and known as the Castellani copy, now in the British Museum,[1464] the sculptor of which has made it into a truly genre fountain figure by transforming the noble features of the beautiful Greek runner into the snub nose and thick lips of a street Arab, and the still later bronze statuette found near Sparta and now in the Paris collection of Baron Edmund de Rothschild,[1465] which represents the boy extracting the thorn in anger.

Similarly the so-called Sandal-binder—with replicas in Paris (Fig. 8), London, Athens, Munich, and elsewhere, has been looked upon, without decisive grounds, to be sure, as a runner who is tying on his sandals after the race.[1466] We have already discussed this statue in Chapter II, in connection with the subject of assimilation.

HOPLITODROMOI.

The race in armor had a practical value in the training of soldiers, and so became a popular sport, since it appealed not only to the trained athlete, but to the citizen in general. It belonged to “mixed athletics,”[1467] i. e., to competitions which were conducted under handicap conditions, such as our obstacle races, and consequently it never attained the prestige of the strictly athletic events. It came last among the gymnic contests at Olympia and elsewhere,[1468] being followed by the equestrian events. It seems to have varied in different places in the distance run, in the armor of the runner, and in the rules which governed the race. At Olympia, as at Athens, it appears to have been a diaulos or a race of two stadia.[1469] The most strenuous race of the sort was run at the Eleutheria at Platæa, where the contestants were completely enveloped in armor[1470] and were subject to peculiar rules. At Olympia the competitors originally ran with helmets, greaves, and round shields, as we infer from scenes on archaic vases and from the statement of Pausanias that the statue of the first victor in this event, Damaretos of Heraia, was represented with these arms.[1471] In this passage Pausanias adds that the Eleans and other Greeks later (ἀνὰ χρόνον) gave up the greaves, and we find that they disappear on the vase-paintings.[1472] Hauser has shown that the vase-paintings, which, however, mostly illustrate the Athenian practice, display a varied custom in respect of the use of the greaves before about 520 B. C., the general use of them until about 450 B. C., and after that date their disuse.[1473] The helmet disappeared after the greaves, but the shield was never given up.[1474] Thus the bronze statue of Mnesiboulos of Elateia, a victor (σὺν τῇ ἀσπίδι) of Pausanias’ day, which stood in “Runner Street” of his native city, appears to have been represented with the shield.[1475] It was for this reason that the event was later sometimes called merely ἀσπίς.[1476] The shields that appear on the vases are always round and the helmets are Attic.[1477] The gradual reduction in the amount of the armor may have been a concession to the regular athletes, who probably looked upon the contest as a spurious sort of athletics. As for the style of the race, the hoplite runners seem to have run somewhat as the stade and double-course runners, i. e., with their right hands up and their arms violently swinging.[1478]

The picturesqueness of such a race appealed especially to vase-painters, who have given us all the details of the event. The preparations for the race are seen on a red-figured kylix from Vulci, now in Paris, ascribed to Euphronios (Panaitios), on which one runner is donning his armor, while others are practising preliminary runs.[1479] The start is seen in the right-hand figure depicted on a r.-f. kylix in Berlin (Fig. 41, a).[1480] On another r.-f. kylix we see a pair of hoplites, one slowing up before reaching the central post, the other turning it.[1481] The finish is seen on an obscene r.-f. kylix from Vulci in the style of Brygos, in the British Museum, where the bearded winner, with his helmet in his hand, looks back on his rival, and the latter, apparently in disgust, drops his shield.[1482] The most complete illustration of the race is to be seen on the r.-f. Berlin kylix just mentioned (Fig. 41, a, b, c.) Here on one side is a group of three runners; the right-hand one is bending over, ready to start; the one at the left is about to turn the central post, and the one in the centre, who is turned in an opposite direction, is on the home stretch; on the other side of the vase are three runners in full course, while another appears on the interior of the vase.[1483] Some vases seem to show that the contest often had a semi-comic character, the variations in running being used to amuse the spectators. Thus the shield might be dropped and picked up again,[1484] or it might be held in a peculiar manner.[1485] This comic element is brought out in the Aves of Aristophanes, in a scene in which Peisthetairos, while observing the chorus of birds advancing with their crests (λόφωσις), compares them with hoplite runners advancing to begin the race.[1486] The regular painter outdid the vase-painter in representing the runner in violent motion, if we may rely on Pliny’s description of two paintings of hoplites by Parrhasios.[1487] In one of these the runner was represented as perspiring as he ran, while in the other he was represented as having laid aside his arms and panting so realistically that the observer seemed to hear him.

We have few representations of hoplitodromes in sculpture. In the preceding chapter we discussed the two marble helmeted heads found at Olympia (Fig. 30), one of which shows that the statue of which it was a part was represented at rest, while the other, because of the twist in the neck, seems to have come from a statue which represented the runner in violent motion. Pausanias saw on the Athenian Akropolis the statue of the hoplite runner Epicharinos, the work of the sculptor Kritios, represented as practising starts (ὁπλιτοδρομεῖν ἀσκήσαντος).[1488] In the well-known Tux bronze in the University Museum at Tuebingen, we have a statuette in which the position of the statue of Epicharinos is probably reproduced. This little bronze, which is only 0.16 meter tall (Fig. 42),[1489] represents a bearded man, entirely nude, except for the Attic helmet on his head, standing with feet close together, knees slightly bent, and body inclined forward. The right arm is extended, while the left, crooked at the elbow, rests upon the hip. While Schwabe and Wolters, following the early theory of Hirt and of the sculptor Dannecker, interpreted the bronze as the figure of a charioteer, whose left hand was drawn back to hold the reins and whose right was outstretched in a gesture intended to quiet the horses, Hauser, de Ridder, Bulle, and many other archæologists have interpreted it better as a hoplitodrome. The left arm, then, carried a round shield, such as we have seen on Attic vases. The next moment the right leg will be advanced, the shield, held back to get a better start, will be pushed forward, and the runner will race to the goal in a series of leaps, since the weight of the shield would prevent him from following the more regular motion of the ordinary runner. It probably represents, therefore, a hoplite runner, not in the actual course, as Hauser thought, but practicing a preliminary start, as de Ridder argued. If the figure represented a charioteer, the legs would have been set farther apart, in order to give a firmer position, and it would not be represented as standing on a base, nor would it be wearing a helmet. The statuette stylistically belongs to the opening years of the fifth century B. C., and may well be a free imitation of a life-size original of such statues of hoplites as stood in the Altis at Olympia. Despite the energy depicted in this figure, it is rash to connect it with the Aeginetan sculptures, as Wolters and Collignon have done, since a comparison between it and the Champion of the East gable[1490] will show great differences. Brunn ascribed the original to Pythagoras; de Ridder, with reservations, to Kritios and Nesiotes; while Bulle is more reasonable in referring it to an important though unnamed artist of the early fifth century B. C.

Hartwig has published a bronze statuette from Capua,[1491] now in the Imperial collection at Vienna, representing a nude youth with a crested helmet on his head. There is no trace of a shield, but the helmet and the similarity of the pose to that of the Tuebingen bronze make it probable that this statuette also represents a hoplitodrome starting. The so-called Diomedes of Myronian style in the Palazzo Valentini, Rome,[1492] whose stooping posture recalls the Diskobolos and accordingly has been interpreted as one by Matz and von Duhn, more probably also represents a hoplite-runner, as Furtwaengler maintained, because of the similarity of its pose to that of the Tux bronze and because of its helmeted head.[1493]

Some other attempts to see hoplite runners in existing works of sculpture have not been so successful. Thus Rayet’s attempt to resuscitate the old interpretation of Quatremère de Quincy, who had explained the statue of the so-called Borghese Warrior by Agasias of Ephesos (Fig. 43) as that of a hoplitodrome just before reaching the goal, has been recently revived again by Six.[1494] This famous marble statue of the Louvre, belonging to late Greek art, is an example of the last development in the Argive-Sikyonian school, which for centuries had been devoted to athletic sculpture.[1495] Since the statue has no helmet, there seems to be no valid reason for not adhering to the usual interpretation, according to which it represents a warrior—by restoring the lost right arm and hand with a sword—who is defending himself against a foe above him, conceived of as seated upon a horse. The attitude and the upward gaze are certainly not those of a runner. Though Collignon, following Visconti, believes the figure to be one of a group, the man actually defending himself against a horseman and covering himself with his shield as he looks up, it is doubtful whether a second figure ever existed. The artist seems to have contented himself with representing, not a fight, but only a fighting pose. We are beginning to understand that the Greek sculptor left something to the imagination of the beholder.

An attempt has also been made to see a dying hoplite runner in the Parian marble archaic grave-relief in the National Museum in Athens, which has already been mentioned as an example of the archaic scheme of representing running.[1496] It represents a beardless youth running in a half-kneeling posture, even though the head is bent and turned in the opposite direction. The eyes appear to be closed—due, perhaps, to the faulty sculptor—and the two hands are touching the breast. While no shield is represented (it is contended that its presence would nearly hide the figure), still, because of the helmet and the position of the arm, which latter is obviously that of a long-distance runner, Philios, followed by Perrot-Chipiez and Bulle, explained it as the representation of a hoplite runner who is expiring at the end of his course. They date it about 520 B. C.,[1497] the date of the introduction of this race at Olympia. However, the absence of the shield, to say nothing of the greaves, seems an insuperable objection to such an hypothesis, as the shield was never omitted in this race, but was invariably its symbol. Svoronos is therefore more probably right in interpreting the relief as the monument of a military runner (δρομοκῆρυξ), even if his dating (490-480 B. C.) is somewhat too late,[1498] and if his identifying it with some particular messenger (such as the Athenian runner Pheidippides, who ran to Sparta for aid just prior to the battle of Marathon) is fanciful.

PENTATHLETES.

The peculiar features of the pentathlon (πένταθλον) were the three events, jumping, diskos-throwing, and javelin-throwing. All five events are summed up in Simonides’ epigram on the pentathlete Diophon, who won at Delphi and on the Isthmus, the second line of which runs: ἅλμα, ποδωκείην, δίσκον, ἄκοντα, πάλην.[1499]

The pentathlon did not exist in Homer’s time. Pindar expressly says that it did not exist in heroic days, but that then a separate prize was given for each feat.[1500] At the games on Scheria, King Alkinoos boasts to Odysseus of the superiority of his countrymen in πύξ τε παλαισμοσύνῃ τε καὶ ἅλμασιν ἠδὲ πόδεσσιν.[1501] The pentathlon for men was introduced at Olympia at the same time as wrestling toward the end of the eighth century, in Ol. 18 (= 708 B. C.),[1502] and the pentathlon for boys eighty years later, in Ol. 38 (= 628 B. C.), only to be stopped soon after.[1503] Pausanias mentions fifteen victors at Olympia, who had statues erected in their honor, for seventeen victories in the pentathlon, thus giving the pentathletes sixth rank there in point of number.

The b.-f. Bacchic amphora in Rome already discussed represents four events out of the five: running, leaping, diskos-throwing, and akontion-throwing (Figs. 36 A and 36 B).[1504] On several Panathenaic vases we find one or more events, and the three characteristic ones on several, one of which we here reproduce (Fig. 44).[1505]

The various events are common on r.-f. vases,[1506] though these may not represent the pentathlon contests, but merely gymnasium scenes, showing that such contests were important. We have already said that the pentathlon represented the whole physical training of Greek youths; consequently the pentathlete was looked upon as the typical athlete, being superior to all others in all-round development, even if surpassed by them in certain special events. It was for this reason that Polykleitos, in order to embody the principles of his athlete canon, made a statue of a javelin-thrower (the Doryphoros) as the best example of an all-round man.

None of the statues of pentathletes at Olympia has been recovered with certainty in Roman copies. That some of them were represented at rest is shown by the base of the statue of the victor Pythokles of Elis, by the elder Polykleitos, which has been recovered.[1507] This base supported two different statues in succession. The feet of the earlier one by Polykleitos were riveted into circular holes, and behind the right foot on the upper surface of the base was inscribed the artist’s name, while the victor’s appeared on the vertical front. This statue was later removed and was replaced by another, whose pose was different, as we see from the footmarks, which show that the feet were attached with lead in hollows. Probably the old inscription was renewed in archaic letters when this second statue was set up, the older letters being retained, perhaps, to conceal the theft. The original statue was removed by the first century B. C., or perhaps under Nero;[1508] the new one was also inscribed as the work of Polykleitos. A base of the Hadrianic or Antonine age has been found in Rome, inscribed with the names Polykleitos and Pythokles.[1509] Since the footmarks do not agree with those of either one of the Olympia statues, Petersen believes that the existing footmarks are due to an older use of the base and that they have nothing to do with the statue of Pythokles. Perhaps the statue on the Roman base was the original one by Polykleitos removed from Olympia to Rome, though it is possible that it was only a copy, the original being elsewhere in Rome. While the later statue at Olympia had the feet squarely on the ground, the original one stood on the right foot, the left being drawn back and turned out, touching the ground only with the ball. Hence the left knee must have turned outwards, a natural position, if the head of the statue was turned slightly to the left. In other words, this is the usual Polykleitan scheme. Furtwaengler has made a strong though hardly convincing attempt to identify this original statue with a copy surviving in two replicas at Rome and Munich, which, as he believes, fit the conditions of the statue of Pythokles.[1510] These copies represent a nude youth standing with the weight of the body on the right leg, the left drawn back and outwards. The head is turned to the left, the right arm is held close to the side (the hand, perhaps, once holding a fillet), and the left forearm is outstretched from the elbow and holds an aryballos in the hand. The two works are manifestly Polykleitan in style—the body, head, and hair treatment resembling that of the Doryphoros. He assumed that the feet corresponded in scale with the footmarks on the Olympia base.

Helbig, in the first edition of his Fuehrer, recognized the kinship between the Vatican statuette and the Doryphoros of Polykleitos, and was prone to accept Furtwaengler’s identification; but later on, in the third edition, he ascribed the statuette only to the Polykleitan circle and denied that its foot position corresponded with that of the Pythokles base. Amelung also, while accepting its Polykleitan character, has shown that the feet of the statuette are closer together than those on the Olympia base and are placed at a slightly different angle. As for the Munich statue, both Helbig and Amelung have ruled it out of the evidence. The head, though similar to that of the statuette, also discloses marked differences, and the legs of the two works do not have the same pose. Loewy agrees with Amelung that the statue of Pythokles conformed with the type of the Diadoumenos—especially with the Vaison copy (see Fig. 28)—and with that of the Doryphoros.[1511] We can not, therefore, safely assume that the statue of Pythokles has been recovered in any existing copy.[1512] A further variant of the works just discussed should be mentioned here—the beautiful marble statue of a boy victor in Dresden, known as the Dresden Boy (Fig. 45).[1513] In this statue the leg position is nearly like that indicated by the marks on the Pythokles basis, though the left foot is not set so far back nor its tip so far out. The head is turned to the left and slightly lowered, the right arm hung to the side, and the left forearm was outstretched, the hand doubtless holding some athletic article, at which the boy is looking down, perhaps a diskos[1514] or a fillet. This beautiful athlete statue has many stylistic points in common with the Diadoumenos, and shows similar Attic influence, and its original may be referred with Furtwaengler to the later period of the master himself. It gives us an excellent idea how Polykleitos may have made his Olympia boy victors appear. A more remote variant seems to be furnished by a fourth-century B. C. bronze statuette of a youthful athlete in the Louvre.[1515] Here the position of the feet, the turn of the head, and the direction of the gaze are the same as in the Dresden Boy. However, as the right arm is raised horizontally, Furtwaengler believed that the right hand held a fillet which the youth is letting fall into the palm of the left.

That statues of pentathletes at Olympia were also represented in motion is shown by the footmarks on the recovered base of one of the two statues mentioned by Pausanias as set up in honor of the Elean Aischines, who won two victories some time between Ols. 126 and 132 (= 276 and 252 B. C.).[1516] These marks show that the statue represented the victor in violent movement, since the left foot was turned outwards and the right one was brought almost to the edge of the base.

We shall next consider in some detail how the pentathlete may have been represented at Olympia in the three characteristic contests of jumping, diskos-throwing, and javelin-throwing. We have already discussed the runner, and in a future section we shall discuss the wrestler, both of whom contended in these events not only in the pentathlon, but also in the corresponding independent competitions.

JUMPERS.

Jumping was a well-known contest in heroic days. In Homer, however, it did not take place at the games of Patroklos, but only at those held by King Alkinoos.[1517] Quintus Smyrnæus has the Trojan heroes contend in jumping,[1518] and the contest goes back to mythology.[1519] Though Plato does not mention it, Aristotle does.[1520] Later it became an essential part of the pentathlon, though never an independent contest at the great games. It was probably considered to be the most representative feature of the pentathlon, perhaps because of the customary use of the halteres in the physical exercises of the gymnasium. Jumping-weights were, in fact, the special symbol of the pentathlon, and, as we saw in the preceding chapter, were often the definitive attributes indicated on statues of pentathletes.[1521] We shall next discuss the appearance and use of such jumping-weights. Their form is often a sure indication of the date of a statue.

Juethner has made a careful study of the different shapes of halteres and his conclusions have been followed, for the most part, by Gardiner.[1522] The halteres do not appear in Homer, but were in existence at least by the beginning of the sixth century B. C., and a little later they probably appeared on pentathlete statues. To this period belongs the lead weight from Eleusis now in Athens, whose inscription records that it was dedicated by one Epainetos to commemorate his victory in jumping.[1523] On vase-paintings of the sixth and fifth centuries B. C., we see numerous types, but two main ones. Early b.-f. vases show a semicircular piece of metal or stone with a deep depression on one side for a finger grip, the two club-like ends being equal (as in Figs. 36A and 44). In the early fifth century B. C., a club-like type came in, which shows many modifications in the size and shape of the ends.[1524] In the fifth century B. C., the second main type appeared, of an elongated semispherical form, thickest in the middle and with the ends pointed or rounded. These correspond with the “archaic” ones, which Pausanias saw on the figure of Agon in the dedicatory group of Mikythos at Olympia[1525] and describes as forming half an elongated circle and so fastened as to let the fingers pass through. We have two stone examples of this type: one found at Corinth, now in the Polytechnic Institute in Athens,[1526] in which a hole is cut behind the middle for the fingers and thumbs, and a more primitive single one from Olympia.[1527] Philostratos divides the Greek jumping-weights into “long” and “spherical,”[1528] which Juethner identifies with the two types just discussed. Gardiner, however, finds this impossible, since Pausanias speaks of one type as “archaic,” and he consequently thinks that these were no longer in use in the time of Philostratos. After the fifth century B. C. we have little evidence about halteres until Roman days, when a cylindrical type appears on Roman copies of Greek statues of athletes, on mosaics and wall-paintings.[1529] Thus it appears on the tree-trunk in two athlete statues in Dresden[1530] and the Pitti Gallery in Florence,[1531] and on the Lateran athlete mosaic from Tusculum of the imperial period.[1532] In Roman days jumping-weights were used for the most part in medical gymnastics, like our dumb-bells.[1533]

Philostratos says that the jump was the most difficult part of the pentathlon.[1534] It never existed as an independent competition despite its popularity in Greece. This popularity is attested by the frequency with which it is depicted on vases from the sixth century B. C. onward. Here the jumper is regularly shown with weights, and we can assume that many pentathlete statues were so represented, the sculptor ordinarily copying the kind of weight which was in use in his own age. While Philostratos in his day thought that the use of weights was merely to aid in exercise, Aristotle long before had rightly understood that the jumper could make a longer jump with than without them,[1535] a fact easily proved by the feats of modern jumpers. While the modern record for the running broad jump is 25 feet 3 inches,[1536] an English athlete jumped 29 feet 7 inches with the use of 5-pound weights,[1537] and a German officer in full uniform jumped 23 feet from a springboard.[1538] The recorded jumps of Phaÿllos at Delphi and of Chionis at Olympia, the former 55 feet and the latter 52, can not, however, be explained as ordinary broad jumps, even if we assume that the Greek jumper was far superior to the modern one. Such jumps would be impossible even with springboards or raised platforms, and we have no evidence that the Greeks used such devices. We might explain them on the theory of triple jumps[1539]—though the difficulty of such a solution is very great—or simply as mistakes in the records. Thus the record of Phaÿllos is found in a late epigram, in which this athlete is also said to have thrown the diskos 105 feet.[1540] That of Chionis is, to be sure, given by Africanus.[1541] But it is more than probable that νβʹ (52) of his record should read κβʹ (22), since the Armenian Latin text reads duos et viginti cubitus.[1542]

Vase-paintings tell us how the halteres were used.[1543] The jumper swung them forward and upward until they were level with or higher than the head; then he brought them down, bending the body forward until the hands were below the knees, the jump taking place on the return swing. We find the preliminary swing represented most commonly on the vases;[1544] we also see on them the top of the upward swing,[1545] the bottom of the downward swing,[1546] the jumper in midair,[1547] and the moment just before alighting.[1548] The act of landing is seen on an Etruscan wall-painting from a tomb at Chiusi.[1549] Running jumps are the ones most commonly depicted.[1550]

The representation of the jump, therefore, was specially adapted to the vase-painter and not to the sculptor. If any movement in the jump could have been represented to advantage in sculpture, it would have been the early position in which the weights were swung forward and upwards. This is the one represented on an incised bronze diskos from Sicily now in the British Museum,[1551] where an athlete, with his right leg drawn back for the spring, is holding the weights in his outstretched hands. A small finely modelled bronze statuette dating from the middle of the fifth century B. C., in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, may represent a jumper either just taking off, or perhaps just finishing the jump.[1552] The athlete is standing with his left foot advanced, his knees bent back, and his body leaning forward, and is holding both arms in front, the palms downwards. Such a concentrated attitude reminds us strongly of Myron, under whose influence this statuette must have been made. Some have interpreted it as the representation of a diver, though the hands seem to be held too far apart and the body wrongly poised for that position, as we see it in a statuette of a diver from Perugia.[1553] More likely a jumper is intended, as the attitude is very similar to that depicted on several vases.[1554] However, as the jumper has no halteres, it can not represent a pentathlete, but must be an ordinary gymnasium athlete.

DISKOBOLOI.

The diskos-throw (δισκοβολία) goes back to mythology and heroic days.[1555] In Homer, at the games of Patroklos, Achilles casts a metal mass called the σόλος.[1556] This was the primitive type of diskos. Of such early contests and feats of strength we have a good record in the red-sandstone mass, weighing 143.5 kilograms (= 315 pounds), which has been found at Olympia, marked with a sixth-century inscription to the effect that one Bybon threw it over his head.[1557] There is nothing athletic, however, about the use of such a stone or of the Homeric solos. The diskos was also known to Homer.[1558] It was of stone, and in Pindar the heroes Nikeus, Kastor, and Iolaos still hurl the stone diskos instead of the metal one of the poet’s day.[1559] The stone diskos appears on sixth-century vases as a white object,[1560] but metal ones were introduced at the end of the sixth century B. C. A bronze one from Kephallenia (?) in the British Museum has a sixth-century inscription in the Doric dialect and in the alphabet of the Ionian Islands, which gives the dedication of Exoïdas to the Dioskouroi.[1561] Several others have been found in different parts of Greece, especially at Olympia.[1562] Pausanias says that boys used a lighter diskos than men.[1563]

While only unimportant monuments outside of vase-paintings illustrate the jump, those illustrating the diskos-throw are rich and varied, including not only vases, but statues, statuettes, small bronzes, reliefs, coins, and gems.[1564]

In his careful attempt at reconstructing the method of casting the diskos, E. N. Gardiner has distinguished seven different positions, which are illustrated by the monuments.[1565] He shows that while the swing of the quoit was always the same, i. e., in a vertical and not in a horizontal arc, and the throw was invariably made from a position like that of Myron’s statue, the preliminary and certain other movements varied. It will be well, before discussing representations of the diskos-thrower in sculpture, very briefly to recapitulate his summary of positions, using the evidence which he and others have collected. First, the preliminary position or stance, with three variations: either the position of the Standing Diskobolos of the Vatican (Pl. 6), which occurs in bronzes, but not on vases; or the position in which the diskobolos raises the quoit with the left hand level with the shoulder, which occurs on vase-paintings;[1566] or that in which the diskos is held outwards in both hands level with the waist.[1567] From any of these stance positions, either with or without change of feet, we reach the second position, in which the diskos is raised in both hands and extended either horizontally to the front and level with the head,[1568] or held above the head.[1569] Thirdly the diskos is swung downwards and rests upon the right forearm, with either foot forward.[1570] This position leads up to that of Myron’s statue, in which the diskos is swung as far back as possible (Pls. 22, 23, and Figs. 34, 35).[1571] The fifth position is the beginning of the forward swing, when the body is straightened.[1572] As the diskos swings downwards and the left foot advances, the sixth position is reached.[1573] Lastly the right foot is advanced after the diskos is cast.[1574]

A victor statue of a diskobolos might conceivably have taken any one of these seven positions. We have already considered the two statues, the Standing Diskobolos of Naukydes in the Vatican (Pl. 6) and that of Myron (Pls. 22, 23, and Figs. 34, 35), the two most important works in sculpture to illustrate positions of the throw. The statue of Naukydes is not taking aim, as Juethner maintains, nor looking down the course. The head is inclined a little to the right and downwards, and the eyes are directed to the ground only a short distance away, thus measuring the distance the left foot is to be advanced, when the diskos is finally swung forward for the cast, which takes place off the left and not off the right foot. The right forearm is rightly restored, as it thus appears on bronzes which imitate this stance.[1575] A different stance is shown in a fine bronze statuette in the Metropolitan Museum (Fig. 46),[1576] dating from about 480 B. C. This little masterpiece of the transition period of Attic art, still disclosing archaic traits, represents a diskobolos standing firmly on both legs, the right being slightly advanced, and holding with the left hand the diskos level with the head. That he is preparing for intense action is seen by the way in which the toes catch the ground. Though the right arm is broken off from below the shoulder, we can infer from vase-paintings which show diskoboloi in the same position[1577] that it was lowered and bent at the elbow and the hand left open. From this position the diskos will be raised high above the head with both hands, as in a bronze in Athens,[1578] which illustrates Gardiner’s second position.

The movement is carried a little further—showing the moment of transition to the downward swing or third position—in a fifth-century B. C. bronze in the British Museum.[1579] Here a nude, beardless athlete is represented standing with the right foot advanced and holding the diskos in both hands before him above the head. The right hand grasps the quoit underneath and the left at the top.[1580] The third position is well illustrated by the tiny archaic bronze on the cover of a lebes in the British Museum,[1581] which represents a nude and beardless youth standing with the left foot advanced and with the left hand raised, while the right holds the diskos. Almost the same pose is also seen in a small bronze in the Antiquarium, Berlin.[1582]

Two archaic statuettes from the Akropolis, now in the National Museum in Athens, and recently published, should be mentioned in this connection.[1583] The more archaic of these represents a youth in an attitude which has been misunderstood. De Ridder interpreted it as a dancing man, while Staïs thought it represented a youth walking along with his left hand raised as if to ward off a blow. White, however, showed that it (like another less perfect example from the Akropolis, no. 6594) represents a diskobolos standing with the right foot advanced and holding the diskos in front of the body with the right hand, resting it against the flat of the forearm, while the left arm is raised above the head. Thus it is another example illustrating the initial stage of Gardiner’s third position. The other statuette, wrongly mounted, should, according to White, be made to lean further forward; the knees are bent, the body swung forward from the hips, the head thrown back and upward, the right arm stretched forth with the flat of the forearm uppermost and the left similarly placed. Gardiner and Staïs interpreted this figure as a charioteer, and de Ridder as either a jumper, who has raised his halteres preparatory to the leap, or a diskobolos. White has shown that the position of the right arm proves it to be a diskobolos, represented in a movement between Gardiner’s third and fourth positions, just prior to that of Myron’s statue. De Ridder believed both statues to be Aeginetan, but no. 6614, when compared with Myron’s statue, is certainly Attic, and resemblances in the treatment of the hair, eyes, and mouth show that both statuettes are of the same school. It has often been said that Myron’s great statue had no predecessor, as it certainly had no successor. Its fame was enhanced by the assumption that Myron passed at one stride from such statues as the Tyrannicides to that complex work. Such works, however, as these statuettes—especially no. 6614—show that the preliminary problems had been solved on a humble scale before Myron undertook his consummate work. Here, then, we have works by artists who belonged to the very movement which produced Myron.

For the last three positions analyzed by Gardiner (nos. 5, 6, 7) our only illustrations appear to be vase-paintings.

AKONTISTAI.

Javelin-throwing (ἀκοντίζειν, ἀκοντισμός) was very old and was universal in Greece, its origin being traced back to mythology.[1584] Stassoff tried to trace it to Oriental sources,[1585] but inasmuch as no such contest is shown on the monuments of Egypt or Assyria, Juethner is probably right in assuming that it was Greek in origin. In Homer it was a separate contest at the games of Patroklos.[1586] Juethner has distinguished two types of javelin-throwing in the historical period: one in which the spear or akontion was pointed more or less upwards,[1587] the other in which it was held horizontally.[1588] Only the former type is represented in illustrations of purely athletic competitions, the latter type referring to illustrations of the practical use of javelin-throwing, i. e., in war or in the chase. Vase-paintings of palæstra scenes almost invariably show javelins with blunt points; the throwers’ heads are frequently turned back before the throw, and there is no sign of any target. On vase-paintings, however, which represent practical javelin-throwing from horseback, the javelins are pointed. This proves that in athletic contests the throw was for distance and not at a mark.[1589] The javelin used in Greek games had several names, ἄκων, ἀκόντιον, etc.[1590] It was about the height of a man, as we know from its appearance on a Spartan relief,[1591] and from many vase-paintings representing palæstra scenes (Fig. 44). It was thrown by means of a thong (ἀγκύλη, Lat. amentum), which was fastened near the centre and consisted of a detachable leathern strip from 12 to 18 inches long. This was bound tight, with a loop left, into which the thrower inserted his first and middle fingers.[1592] The method of casting is seen on many vases.[1593] Gardiner has analyzed three different positions from vase-paintings. Usually the throw was made with a short run, though standing throws are also pictured.[1594] First the thrower extends the right arm back to its full length and, with the left hand opposite the right breast, holds the end of the spear and pushes it back, holding it downwards or horizontally.[1595] Next he starts to run, turning his body sidewise and extending his left arm to the front. On a r.-f. Munich kylix[1596] we see the first and second positions. The youth on the left is steadying the javelin with the left hand, while the one on the right has just let it go. A further turn of the body to the right takes place and the right knee is bent, while the right shoulder is dropped and the hand is turned outwards.[1597] The actual cast is very uncommon on vase-paintings, because of difficulty in representing it.[1598]

Because of the assumed lack of sculptural monuments, Reisch[1599] and others have wrongly doubted whether javelin-throwers were represented in sculpture as victors. There certainly is no a priori reason why athletic sculptors might not have made statues in any one of the three poses which Gardiner has distinguished on vase-paintings, even if this contest, like jumping, was better adapted to the painter than to the sculptor. Furthermore, we shall attempt to show that such monuments actually did exist.

The best example of such a javelin-thrower seems to be the Doryphoros, the most famous statue of Polykleitos, in which he illustrated his canon of athletic forms. The Doryphoros exists in many copies, all of which agree fairly well in style and proportions. K. Friedrichs, in his monograph Der Doryphoros des Polyklets, which appeared in 1863,[1600] was the first to show that the statue found in 1797 in the Palaistra at Pompeii, and now in the Naples Museum (Pl. 4), was a copy of the original bronze, as it shows all the peculiarities of the master’s style known to us from tradition.[1601] Mahler enumerates 7 statues, 17 torsos, and 36 heads copied from the original, and the fine, but expressionless, Augustan bronze bust from the villa of the Pisos, Herculaneum, inscribed as the work of the sculptor Apollonios, son of Archios, of Athens, which is now in Naples (Fig. 47).[1602] The best-preserved copy of the statue, the one in Naples, is surpassed in workmanship by the green basalt torso in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence[1603] and by the marble one formerly in the possession of Count Pourtalès in Berlin.[1604] A poorer copy is to be found in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican (Fig. 48).[1605] In these copies we see a thick-set youth standing with the weight of the body on the right leg, the left one thrown back and touching the ground only with the toes, seemingly ready to advance, though the shoulders do not partake of the walking action. He is represented, therefore, at the moment of transition from walking to a rest position—in other words in a purely theoretical pose—at rest, indeed, but just ready again to advance.[1606] His left hand held a short akontion over the shoulder and not the long spear (δόρυ), whence the name Doryphoros or spear-bearer is derived.[1607] The head is turned to the same side as the advanced foot, which perhaps is an example of the monotony in the work of the master complained of by ancient critics; variety would have been attained by turning it in the opposite direction. In the carefully worked bronze original, which, however, must have had an insignificant intellectual aspect, the apparently simple problem—hitherto vainly attempted in Greek art—of representing a man standing almost motionless, but full of life, was for the first time solved. It is a long way from the motionless figures known as “Apollos,” with their arms glued to the sides and their legs close together, to this vigorous athlete. As we have already indicated, Greek art developed the first step beyond the “Apollos” by further advancing one leg of a statue and, it may be, extending one forearm horizontally. The next step was to place one foot slightly sidewise and thus relieve it of the weight of the body—the well-known scheme of the “free” and “rest” leg. At first the relaxation was slight, the “free” leg not being intended to move forward, nor the parts of the body to be much shifted. Polykleitos’ innovation consisted in having the legs so placed, one behind the other, that the figure, while apparently resting on one,[1608] seemed to be advancing. On the ground of the familiar passage in Pliny cited, it has been generally assumed that Polykleitos introduced the walking motive into sculpture. However, this motive was probably the invention of the earlier Argive school, borrowed by Polykleitos for his canon, as seen in the statue of the so-called Munich King (Zeus?), of the Glyptothek, which Furtwaengler has shown to be a work of about 460 B. C.[1609]

Does the Doryphoros represent a pentathlete victor? Since Quintilian says that it appears ready for war or for the exercises of the palæstra,[1610] Helbig and others have classed it as a warrior, perhaps one of the Achilleae mentioned by Pliny[1611] as set up in the Greek gymnasia. Furtwaengler stressed the incorrectness of calling an athlete a Doryphoros[1612]—a name originally given to an attendant bearing a lance (δόρυ), and so inapplicable to the statue of Polykleitos, which represented not a server, but an athlete carrying an akontion (witness the Berlin gem already mentioned)—but later[1613] concluded that an athlete statue with the akontion might have been vaguely described in late art jargon as a spear-bearer. Consequently he found probable the interpretation of the various doryphoroi mentioned by Pliny[1614] as victor statues, and thought that the original of the Doryphoros of Polykleitos might very well have represented an Olympic pentathlete, which was originally set up at Argos, where it was also adopted for a figure on the heroic grave-relief already mentioned, which represented the youth with a spear over his shoulder standing beside a horse. Bulle also thinks that the statue represented a victor athlete set up in some sacred spot.

For its interpretation as the statue of a pentathlete victor, an added proof is furnished by the discovery of a late Roman copy of it at Olympia.[1615] This may very well have been the dedication of an athlete of late date—of the first century B. C. or of the first A. D.—who preferred to be represented by a copy of the famous work of Polykleitos rather than by a new statue. Treu’s contention that the torso is too large for a victor statue,[1616] because Lucian says that the Hellanodikai did not allow statues of victors to be over life-size,[1617] falls to the ground, since we know that exceptions to the rule existed at Olympia.[1618] He agrees with Collignon[1619] in interpreting it as a decorative statue, which surely involves an anachronism in the middle of the fifth century B. C.; and his argument that its good preservation shows it to have been set up in an interior room, perhaps of the Bouleuterion, in whose ruins it was found, adducing this as additional evidence of its decorative character, is no proof, since victor statues at Olympia seem sometimes to have been housed.[1620] Thus the theory that the Doryphoros represents a pentathlete victor is well within the range of possibilities.

Two bronze statuettes in the Metropolitan Museum,[1621] New York, belonging to the second half of the fifth century B. C., may be representations on a small scale of pentathletes with the akontion. The first shows a youth standing with the weight of the body on the left foot, the right drawn slightly back. The left hand, held close to the side, may have carried an akontion, the right arm being extended. The other, more carelessly executed, represents a youth standing similarly with his weight on the left foot, the right being drawn back. Here again the left arm is hanging by the side, and probably held the same attribute as the first statuette. The right arm is also bent at the elbow. A patera may have been held in the outstretched hand of each. The square build, short thighs, flat abdomen, long skull, and oval face are all Polykleitan characteristics, and remind us of the series of kindred works already discussed, which, as Furtwaengler believed, went back to the original statue of the boy wrestler Xenokles at Olympia, the work of the younger Polykleitos.[1622]

WRESTLERS.

Wrestling (πάλη) is perhaps the oldest, and in any case is the most universal, of athletic sports. Wall-paintings at Beni-Hasan on the Nile, dating from about 2000 B. C., show nearly all the grips and throws now known.[1623] Plato says that this sport was instituted in mythical times.[1624] In Greece its origin is lost in mythology.[1625] The very name palaistra, “wrestling school,” indicates the early importance of the contest. It was one of the most popular of Greek sports from the time of Homer down.[1626] This popularity is shown by the frequency with which it appears in mythology and art. Early b.-f. vases picture Herakles wrestling with giants and monsters. Here we see the same holds and throws as in the palæstra scenes on later r.-f. vases. The whole history of coins down to imperial days shows such scenes. No other exercise required so much strength and agility, and consequently wrestling matches early became a part of the great games. At Olympia wrestling was introduced in Ol. 18 (= 708 B. C.), the same year in which the pentathlon was instituted.[1627] The boys’ match appeared there less than a century later in Ol. 37 (= 632 B. C.).[1628] Pausanias mentions statues erected to 36 victors (for 45 victories), which makes this contest second only in importance to boxing there.

There were two sorts of wrestling in Greece, wrestling in the proper sense (ὀρθὴ πάλη), where each tried to throw his antagonist to the ground, making his shoulders touch three times, and ground wrestling (κύλισις, ἁλίνδησις), where the fight was continued on the ground by using every means, except biting and gouging, till one was exhausted. The first kind was the only one used in the event called πάλη at Olympia, as well as in the pentathlon; the other was used only in the pankration. In this section we shall discuss only the first.[1629] A recently discovered papyrus of the second century A. D., containing brief instructions for wrestling lessons intended to help the παιδοτρίβης, indicates that every movement in the contest was systematically taught.[1630] The various positions used—grips and throws—are shown by many monuments, vase-paintings, gems, coins,[1631] statuettes, and statues. The vases[1632] especially illustrate the various holds assumed by wrestlers during a bout—front (σύστασις), side (παράθεσις), wrist, arm, neck (τραχηλίζειν), and body holds. Still others illustrate the various throws—flying mare,[1633] heave,[1634] buttocks and cross-buttocks (ἕδραν στρέφειν), and tripping (ὑποσκελίζειν). We here reproduce two such paintings. The first, the obverse of a r.-f. amphora from Vulci, signed by Andokides and now in Berlin (Fig. 49),[1635] shows two positions. In the central group the wrestler on the left side has grasped his opponent’s left wrist with his right hand. The latter, however, has rendered the grip useless by passing his own right hand behind his opponent’s back and grasping his right arm just below the elbow. In this way he keeps his opponent from turning round, which movement would not have been possible if the latter had grasped him by the upper arm. In the group of wrestlers to the right we see an illustration of a body hold. Here a youthful athlete has lifted his bearded antagonist clear off his feet preliminary to throwing him. However, the one lifted from the ground has caught his foot around his opponent’s leg, which is an illustration of tripping. On a r.-f. kylix in the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia (Fig. 50a),[1636] we see a body hold preparatory to the heave; here to the right are two youths wrestling, and to the left stands a bearded trainer with his rod. One wrestler has already lost his balance and is supporting himself with both hands on the ground, while the other with his left hand holds the other’s right arm down, and with his right prepares to throw him over his head.

From vase-paintings, then, we can see what positions the sculptor might have used in representing groups of wrestlers. For the positions of individual figures of wrestlers, we are guided by several statues and small bronzes. The preliminary position (σύστασις) seems to be best represented by the bronze statues of wrestling boys discovered at Herculaneum in 1754, and now in the Museum of Naples (Fig. 51).[1637] These figures have been variously interpreted as runners,[1638] diskoboloi,[1639] and wrestlers. Their attitude, bent forward with outstretched hands, implies the utmost expectancy. If they were runners, they would lean further forward; as they are standing, they could not begin to run without loss of time in raising the heels of the forward feet. If, on the other hand, they represented diskos-throwers at the moment just subsequent to the throw, their right feet would be advanced and not their left, in order to recover their balance, as we have seen above in considering Gardiner’s seventh position. The position of their arms, however, and the expression of their faces make it almost certain that they are wrestlers eagerly watching for an opening. The two statues certainly belong together, and may have been set up as antagonists in the villa in whose ruins they were found. F. Hauser was the first to show that the form of body and head in both was the same.[1640] While most critics believe that they are Hellenistic in origin, Bulle is certainly right in showing that the body ideal expressed is Lysippan—i. e., long legs and slender trunk—even if he goes too far in ascribing them to the master himself, basing his conclusion chiefly on the similarity of their ears with those of the Apoxyomenos (Pl. 29). A good illustration of a hand or wrist grip is afforded by a small wrestler group, which decorates the rim of a bronze bowl from Borsdorf.[1641] This is a poorly wrought Etruscan work of fifth-century B. C. Greek origin. The two wrestlers have already gripped and their heads are close together, though the lunge in each case is much exaggerated. Similar are the two groups on the rim of a bronze bowl in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.[1642] A third-century B. C. Etruscan cista in the Metropolitan Museum,[1643] has a handle on the lid in the form of two nude wrestlers, whose bodies are inclined toward one another, their heads in contact, and their arms locked behind their heads. Groups of wrestlers in similar attitudes commonly appear as cista handles.[1644] A portion of a bronze group of wrestlers was dredged from the sea near Kythera and is now in Athens.[1645] The heave is represented by a metope from the Theseion representing the wrestling bout between Theseus and Kerkyon.[1646] A later moment is seen in a bronze wrestling-group in Paris.[1647] The cross-buttocks is illustrated by a small Hellenistic bronze group in the collection of James Loeb in Munich, of which five other copies are known.[1648] Here two athletes, one bearded and the other beardless, are just ending the bout. The youth is in the power of the man, who stands behind him and presses him down by holding his arms backward. All the other replicas differ from the Loeb example in that the victor has both legs and not one in front of the right leg of the vanquished wrestler. A good illustration of tripping is seen in another related series of groups known to us in five bronze copies. These represent a wrestler on the ground supporting himself on his left arm, while over him stands the victor, whose left foot is twisted around the other’s right. These groups are, like the preceding, also Roman provincial copies of a Hellenistic original.[1649] The two groups are very similar, the only real difference being that the vanquished wrestler in the second series still has his left arm free and holds himself up on his right knee. Both series seem to have been influenced by the marble pancratiast group in the Uffizi (Pl. 25).[1650] The head of an athlete in the Museo delle Terme, Rome,[1651] shows by its strongly projecting neck that it comes from the statue either of a runner ready to start or of a wrestler about to grip his adversary. The face is fourth-century B. C. Attic in character and the head may, therefore, come from Euphranor’s circle. Pliny speaks of a panting wrestler (luctator anhelans) by the statuary Naukeros, which must have exhibited the contestant in intense movement.[1652] It might have represented him after victory, as in the painting of Parrhasios discussed above, which pictured a hoplitodrome after the race, breathing hard.[1653] Pliny also mentions a painting of a wrestler by Antidotos without describing it.[1654] As we have already remarked, doubtless some of the apoxyomenoi and perixyomenoi mentioned by Pliny were also wrestlers.

Whether wrestling-groups were set up at Olympia is doubtful. Chariot-groups were indeed common, but there is no reason why the victorious wrestler should have had himself coupled with his defeated opponent. Pausanias, moreover, mentions no such groups. We are therefore safe in inferring that in most, if not in all, cases the wrestler would content himself with a single statue, and this might represent him in any position in which he was not actually interlocked with his adversary. That such statues represented him both in repose and in motion is attested by recovered bases. The footprints on the base of the statue of the Elean wrestler Paianios, a victor of the early third century B. C.,[1655] shows us that he was represented as standing in repose, the weight of the body resting on the right leg, the left being drawn back and touching the ground with the toes only. A hole in the base may have been for a spear on which the victor’s hand rested, though the statue is not that of a pentathlete. The perfectly preserved footprints on the base of the statue of the boy wrestler Xenokles by Polykleitos the Younger show that he was represented as standing with his weight on the right leg, the left being slightly advanced and to one side, though resting flat on the ground. The head was probably turned a little to the right. Thus the wrestler was poised ready to grip his adversary.[1656] This statue must have been a favorite among athlete monuments, since the same motive appears in various Roman copies, which Furtwaengler assigns to the immediate circle of the pupils of Polykleitos. The statue of the Argive wrestler Cheimon by Naukydes may have represented him in motion, since Pausanias, in mentioning two statues of the victor, one in Olympia and the other in the temple of Concord at Rome, says that they were among the most famous works of that sculptor. From this encomium Reisch has assumed that the one at Olympia was represented in lively motion.[1657]

BOXERS.

Boxing, like wrestling, was one of the oldest sports in Greece, as it has been everywhere else. The fist is the simplest and most natural of all weapons.[1658] Boxing was popular already in Homer, matches being described both in the Iliad and the Odyssey.[1659] Homer speaks of it as πυγμαχίη ἀλεγεινή,[1660] and this “painful” character is also mentioned by Xenophanes.[1661] However, boxing was far older than epic poetry. We have already seen that it was the only form of real athletics in Aegean Crete. One of the oldest representations of a boxing match is seen on the fragments of a bronze shield discovered there in the grotto of Zeus on Mount Ida. Here on a single concentric ring are seen two warriors, armed like Assyrians with corslets, shields, and helmets, fighting with doubled fists.[1662] The high antiquity of boxing in Greece is also shown by myths.[1663] At Olympia Apollo is said to have beaten Ares,[1664] and Polydeukes won a victory there.[1665] Apollo appears as the god of boxing in the Iliad,[1666] and the Delphians sacrificed to Apollo Πύκτης.[1667] Herakles, Polydeukes, Tydeus, and Theseus were all famed boxers; the latter was said to have invented the art.[1668] The historical boxing match was introduced at Olympia in Ol. 23 (= 688 B. C.), and Onomastos of Smyrna, the first victor, instituted the rules of the contest.[1669] The boys’ contest was instituted in Ol. 41 (= 616 B. C.).[1670] It was by far the most popular contest there. Of the 192 monuments erected to 187 victors mentioned by Pausanias, 56, or nearly one-third, were erected to men and boy boxers for 63 victories.

Greek boxing[1671] is conveniently divided into two periods by the kind of glove used in the matches. From Homer down to the end of the fifth century B. C., soft gloves (ἱμάντες, ἱμάντες λεπτοί or μειλίχαι) were used; from then to late Roman days the heavy gloves (σφαῖραι or ἱμάντες ὀξεῖς) were the fashion. The weighted Roman cestus was not used in the Greek contest. Before discussing representations of boxers in art, we shall devote a few words to these two kinds of boxing-gloves, which frequently give us the date of a given monument.[1672] The Cretans are thought to have worn boxing-gloves, as they seem to be visible on the so-called Boxer Vase from Hagia Triada (Fig. 1). Here, on the top and lower two rows, a leather gauntlet appears to cover the arm to beyond the elbow, being padded over the fist and confined at the wrist by a strap. Mosso derives the later Greek glove, which appears on athlete statues, from this primitive thong.[1673] In any case the antiquity of the glove in Greece is attested by its origin being ascribed to the myth of Amykos, king of the Bebrykes.[1674] Gloves were already known to Homer, who speaks of “well-cut thongs of ox-hide.”[1675] They are not mentioned in any detail before the time of Pausanias and Philostratos, so that we are mostly dependent for our knowledge of them on the monuments. The simplest form consisted of long, thin ox-hide thongs, which were wound round the hands, the soft gloves (ἱμάντες μαλακώτεροι or μειλίχαι) of later writers.[1676] They were used, not to deaden the blow, but to increase its force. Vase-paintings show that the thongs were about 10 or 12 feet long before being wound.[1677] On the exterior of a r.-f. kylix from Vulci by Douris, in the British Museum, showing chiefly boxing scenes, we see two youths standing before a paidotribes preparing to put on the thongs (Fig. 54).[1678] One of them is holding the unwound thong in his outstretched hands. A similar figure appears on the r.-f. vase in Philadelphia already discussed (Fig. 50b), which represents a palæstra scene.[1679] This scene has been wrongly interpreted as an illustration of the game of σκαπέρδη described by Pollux[1680] as a sort of tug-of-war, the unwound thong being explained as the rope used in this game,[1681] and the hurling-sticks stuck in the ground at either end as goals instead of akontia. A wound thong is seen hanging on the wall to the left. Philostratos describes how the boxing thongs were put on,[1682] and vase-paintings illustrate the method.[1683] The best example of the thongs on statuary is afforded by the bronze arm found in the sea off Antikythera (Cerigotto) (Fig. 52), which Svoronos[1684] believes to be a remnant of the statue of the Nemean victor Kreugas of Epidamnos, which stood in the temple of Apollo Lykios in Argos.[1685] Pausanias says that Kreugas was crowned notwithstanding that he was killed by his adversary Damoxenos, and his description of the soft glove corresponds so closely with the one on the recovered arm that it seems as if it had been written in the presence of the statue: “In those days boxers did not yet wear the sharp thong (ἱμὰς ὀξύς) on each wrist, but boxed with the soft straps (μειλίχαις), which they fastened under the hollow of the hand in order that the fingers might be left bare; these soft straps were thin thongs (ἱμάντες λεπτοί) of raw cowhide, plaited together in an ancient fashion.”[1686] The strap allowed the ends of the fingers to project, and was held together by a cord wound around the forearm, just as Philostratos says. These μειλίχαι were used at the great games through the fifth century B. C., and were continued in the palæstra in the fourth. Early in the latter century the σφαῖραι mentioned by Plato[1687] and other writers appeared. We see them on Panathenaic vases of that century and on Etruscan cistæ of the following one.[1688] About the same time the regular ἱμάντες ὀξεῖς came in,[1689] but the old μειλίχαι or something similar were still used in the exercises of the palæstra.[1690]

Our best illustration of these more formidable gloves on statuary is the gauntlet clearly represented on the forearms of the Seated Boxer of the Museo delle Terme (Fig. 53). Here a close-fitting glove covers each forearm, leaving the upper joints of the fingers free and the palm open. It extends to above the wrist and ends in a rim of fur. Over it are drawn three thick bands of leather, which cover the first joints of the fingers and are fastened together on the outside of the hands with metal clasps. A soft pad keeps these bands from chafing the fingers. They are kept in place and the wrists are strengthened by two narrow straps which are interlaced several times around hand and wrist. Similar gloves appear on the Sorrento boxer in Naples (Fig. 57),[1691] on the bronze forearm of a statue from Herculaneum in Naples,[1692] on a left fist found in 1887 in the arena at Verona,[1693] and on many other statues and fragments. The last representation in art of this sort of glove appears on the Roman relief in the Lateran, which dates from the time of Trajan, and represents a fight between two pugilists.[1694] The metal cestus was a Roman invention. None of the late Greek writers—neither Plutarch, nor Pausanias, nor Philostratos—makes any mention of this loaded glove. The “sharp thongs” were enough to cause all the injuries mentioned by the writers of the Greek Anthology.[1695] The cestus, perhaps used in the later gladiatorial shows in Greece, but never in the great games there, gave the death blow to real boxing. Virgil describes it and the vicious results of its use.[1696]

There are fewer representations of boxing matches on vases than of almost any other Greek sport, despite its great popularity. Gardiner has collected a number of vase-paintings dating from the sixth to the fourth centuries B. C., which illustrate the different positions assumed by boxers in action—attack, slipping, ducking, and leg and arm movements. We reproduce two from r.-f. kylikes in the British Museum. In one by Douris (Fig. 54)[1697] we have, besides the group already mentioned of two athletes preparing to put on thongs, three pairs of boxers engaged in a bout. In two groups one of the contestants is seen from behind; in all three the boxers extend their left arms for guarding and draw the right back for hitting—the fists being level with the shoulders. In one group we see the beginning of the fight, in the other two the middle, perhaps, and the end of it, respectively. In the last scene one contestant has fallen to the ground on his knee, and his conqueror has swung his right hand far back for a final blow, only to be stopped by the other, who raises his finger in token of defeat. On the other vase we see, besides a scene from the pankration, two pairs of boxers sparring (Fig. 55).[1698] Here in one group the contestants do not have their fists doubled, but keep their fingers opened. On an Attic b.-f. Panathenaic panel-amphora in the University Museum in Philadelphia (Fig. 56),[1699] we see bearded boxers sparring, while a boxer with thongs in his right hand stands to the right, and a trainer with his rod at the left. Statues of victorious boxers at Olympia were represented either in motion, i. e., probably in the position of sparring, or in repose, like that of the boy boxer Kyniskos by the elder Polykleitos discussed in the preceding chapter. The same foot position visible on the Kyniskos base[1700] occurs on two other Olympia bases, which, therefore, must have supported Polykleitan statues represented in repose. One of these, in the form of an astragalos, will be discussed further on in our treatment of pancratiast statues; the other supported the statue of the boy boxer Hellanikos of Lepreon, who won a victory in Ol. 89 (= 424 B. C.).[1701] In this case the statue was also life-size, the left foot was firmly placed, and the right was set back resting on the ball, the stride being a little longer than in the case of the Kyniskos. Three other Olympia bases supported statues of boxers represented in repose, those of the boy Tellon from the Arkadian town Oresthasion,[1702] of the Epidaurian Aristion by the elder Polykleitos,[1703] and of the Rhodian Eukles by Naukydes of the Polykleitan circle.[1704] Furtwaengler believed that a number of existing statues of the Hermes type reproduced the statue of Aristion, because of a similar foot position. Among them the Pentelic marble one in Lansdowne House, London, is the best preserved, and most faithfully reproduces the Polykleitan style.[1705]

We may infer how a Polykleitan statue of a boxer at rest looked, from the Roman copy of one in Kassel.[1706] Here a youth just out of boyhood is represented as standing with the weight of the body resting upon the right leg and the head turned to the right. The forearms are covered with gloves, the right fist being raised for attack and the left for defense. Another marble statue, representing a boxer in repose, was found in a fragmentary condition in Sorrento in 1888, and is now in the National Museum at Naples (Fig. 57).[1707] It is inscribed as the work of Koblanos of Aphrodisias in Karia, whom we know as a copyist of the first century A. D., and who was active in reproducing Greek works for the Roman market.[1708] The body forms are too badly injured for us accurately to date the original from which this copy was made, but the head gives us the clue, as its style appears to be a connecting link between that of the seated statue of Herakles, in the Palazzo Altemps in Rome[1709] and the Munich Oil-pourer (Pl. 11),[1710] as it shows affinity to both. Though Sogliano referred it to the school of Lysippos and Juethner to the beginning of the fourth century B. C., it shows indubitable Myronian characteristics and may have been the work of Myron’s pupil Lykios, who is known to us as an athlete sculptor.[1711] In this statue the youth is resting his weight on his right leg, the left, with full sole on the ground, being turned to one side. The left forearm is extended outwards and to the side, the head leaning toward the right leg—in other words, the athlete is represented in an attitude similar to that of the Idolino (Pl. 14). As there is an olive crown in the hair, it seems reasonable to conclude that the original statue was that of an Olympic victor.

By the beginning of the fifth century B. C., if not earlier, boxers were represented in violent motion, as we saw in the case of the statue of the boy boxer Glaukos, by the Aeginetan sculptor Glaukias,[1712] represented in the act of sparring (σκιαμαχῶν). Whether he was represented as facing an imaginary antagonist or as merely punching a bag we can not say, though the latter seems the more probable. The motive is depicted in many art works, notably in the figure of a youth punching a bag which hangs from a tree on the Ficoroni cista in the Museo Kircheriano, Rome,[1713] and in that of another represented on the so-called Peter cista in the Museo Gregoriano Etrusco of the Vatican, whose engraved scenes show exercises of the palæstra.[1714] The same motive is seen also in a statuette in the Museo Chiaramonti of the Vatican, which is proved to be that of a boy boxer by the glove on the right hand.[1715] Here the boy is represented with the right foot far advanced and rising on the toes of both feet, the right shoulder being drawn back, the right forearm raised, and the left extended forwards. The marble torso of a copy of the same original on a large scale is in Berlin.[1716] While Amelung believes that the original of both statuette and torso was a bronze of the second half of the fourth century B. C., Furtwaengler thought that the torso went back to the severe style of the fifth century, and that this original once stood in Olympia, where it might have served as the inspiration for a carelessly worked bronze statuette of a boxer found there, which repeats the motive of the torso and similarly belongs to the fifth century B. C. (Fig. 2).[1717] The Olympia statuette also has the right foot advanced, the upper part of the body leans backward, and the left arm with open palm is outstretched for defense, while the right with balled fist is held up ready to strike. It certainly is a votive offering of an Olympic victor—doubtless one of the small reductions, which were not uncommonly erected for economy’s sake.[1718] Whether the Aeginetan Glaukias also made victor statues in repose is doubtful.

Waldstein, on insufficient grounds, has argued that the so-called Strangford Apollo in the British Museum (Fig. 14)[1719] is a copy of the statue at Olympia of the famous Thasian boxer and pancratiast Theagenes by Glaukias. Its close observation of nature finds its analogy in the statues of the Aeginetan pediment groups (see Figs. 20, 21). The statue of the boy boxer Athenaios of Ephesos, by an unknown sculptor, was represented as lunging at his adversary, as we see from the footmarks on the recovered base. The left foot was advanced and turned outwards, while the right one touched the ground only with the toes.[1720] Similarly the statue of the boxer Damoxenidas by Nikodamos of Arkadia was represented as about to strike. On its recovered base the left foot stood solidly upon the ground, while the right foot was drawn back and touched the ground only with the toes—if we judge rightly from the size of the missing part of the stone.[1721] The statue of the Ionian boxer Epitherses by Pythokritos of Rhodes seems to have had but one foot flat upon the ground, and consequently must have been represented in motion, though we are not sure of the position of the other, since one stone of the base is missing.[1722]

The bronze plate from the base of the statue of the boy boxer Philippos, an Azanian of Pellene, was found at Olympia and has been referred to the end of the fourth or beginning of the third century B. C.[1723] However, since Pausanias says that Myron made the statue,[1724] various attempts have been made to reconcile the discrepancy in dates. Our own solution is that the statue seen by Pausanias did not represent Philippos at all, but some earlier unnamed Arkadian boxer, who was contemporary with Myron.[1725] Years later the Azanian boy Philippos won a victory at Olympia and attached the recovered epigram to the old base, in which he implored Zeus to let the ancient glory of Arkadia be revived in him, and also a newer one in which he said that he had restored the statue of Myron.[1726] Pausanias saw the newer one, but omitted to mention the older, which was probably illegible from weathering. He therefore thought that the original Myronian statue used by Philippos represented the latter victor.[1727] The words on the affixed plate beginning ὧδε στὰς ὁ Πελασγὸς ἐπ’ Ἀλφειῷ ποκα πύκτας κ. τ. λ., may refer to the position of the boxer rather than to a portrait of the victor.[1728] We have long ago hazarded the suggestion[1729] that the so-called Pollux of the Louvre (Fig. 58),[1730] whose body forms recall the Marsyas and whose head recalls the Diskobolos, may go back to the statue of the unnamed Arkadian by Myron.[1731] But the uncertainty which we have found in a former section[1732] in assigning this and kindred works to Myron or to Pythagoras leaves it only a suggestion.

PANCRATIASTS.

The pankration (παγκράτιον)[1733] was a combination of boxing and wrestling, in which the contestants fought either standing, or prone on the ground. While the wrestler merely tried to throw his opponent in a series of bouts, the pancratiast continued the fight on the ground until one or the other acknowledged defeat. The etymology of the word shows that it was a contest in which every power of the contestants was exerted to the utmost.[1734] Strangling, pummeling, kicking, and, in fact, everything but biting and gouging were allowed. Both Lucian[1735] and Philostratos[1736] speak of the prohibition against biting and gouging, which statements Gardiner thinks are quotations from the rules governing the contest at Olympia, as they are twice quoted by Aristophanes.[1737] Philostratos, however, says that the Spartans allowed both biting and gouging, but that the Eleans allowed only strangling. A case of gouging the eye of an opponent with the thumb is seen on the r.-f. kylix in the British Museum, already mentioned (Fig. 55).[1738] Here the official is rushing up with his rod to punish such a breach of the rules. Philostratos calls the men’s pankration the “fairest” of contests at Olympia, probably in reference to the impression made on the spectators by the various positions of the contestants, who had to rely quite as much on skill as on strength. Pindar wrote eight odes in praise of this contest.[1739] However, even though it was carefully regulated at Olympia by rules, it was a dangerous sport—τὸ δεινὸν ἄεθλον ὅ παγκράτιον καλέουσιν, in the words of the protesting philosopher Xenophanes.[1740] But it was never the brutal sport which some modern writers have pictured it.[1741] Plato, to be sure, kept it out of his ideal State,[1742] not, however, because of its brutality, but merely because its distinctive feature, the struggle on the ground, was of no service in training a soldier. The Greeks themselves considered the boxing match far more dangerous. Inasmuch as gloves were not used in the pankration, this seems reasonable.[1743] We have in the preceding section mentioned the epithets applied to boxing. Pausanias, in speaking of the boxing match between Theagenes and Euthymos, says that the former was too much wearied by that contest to enter the pankration, and was in consequence compelled to pay a talent to the god and another to Euthymos.[1744] In speaking of another contest, between Kapros and Kleitomachos, he records that the latter told the umpires that the pankration should be brought on before he had received hurts from boxing.[1745] Artemidoros states that no wounds resulted from the pankration.[1746] However, death by strangulation was often the result of the bout. Thus the pancratiast Arrhachion was crowned after he had been throttled by his adversary, for just before expiring he was able to put one of the toes of his opponent out of joint and the pain caused the latter to let go his grip.[1747] Pausanias tells also how the boxer Kreugas was slain by Damoxenos in the pankration at Nemea, but adds that the body of the former was proclaimed victor.[1748]

The pankration was not known to Homer, though later writers ascribed its invention either to Theseus or Herakles, the typical mythical examples of skill as opposed to brute force.[1749] It was introduced at Olympia in Ol. 33 (= 648 B. C.),[1750] long after the separate events, wrestling and boxing, had appeared there. The boys’ contest was instituted at Olympia in Ol. 145 (= 200 B. C.),[1751] though it had appeared elsewhere much earlier.[1752] It must have been a popular sport at Olympia, since Pausanias records statues erected to twenty victors for thirty victories in this contest.

Vase-paintings[1753] show many grips and throws of the pankration—the flying mare, leg hold,[1754] tilting backwards by holding the antagonist’s foot, “chancery” (i. e. catching the adversary around the neck with one arm and hitting his face with the other fist), stomach throw (i. e., seizing the adversary by the arms or shoulders and at the same time planting one’s foot in the other’s stomach, and then throwing him over one’s head),[1755] jumping on the back of one’s opponent,[1756] strangling, wrestling and boxing combined, and kicking and boxing combined. Ground wrestling is very commonly depicted on vases and especially on gems, since such groups were adapted to oblong or oval spaces.[1757] We reproduce a pancratiast scene from a Panathenaic amphora of Kittos, dating from the fourth century B. C., in the British Museum (Fig. 59).[1758] This is a conventional representation of wrestling and boxing combined. The pancratiast at the right of the group has rushed in with his head down and has been caught around the neck by his adversary’s arm, a hopeless position, from which he can not escape. The latter is either about to complete the neck hold (if it be an actual case of “chancery”), or perhaps to hit him with his right hand. A third pancratiast is looking on from the extreme right, while a paidotribes, switch in hand, appears at the left. The fight on the ground is well depicted on the r.-f. kylix of the British Museum already discussed as showing boxing scenes (Fig. 55).[1759]

We have but few representations of pancratiasts in sculpture. The preliminary sparring—known as ἀκροχειρισμός[1760]—must have characterized the statue of the Sikyonian pancratiast Sostratos at Olympia by an unknown sculptor, since Pausanias says that this victor was known as ὁ ἀκροχερσίτης, explaining the epithet as that of one who gained his victories by seizing and bending his adversaries’ fingers, holding them fast till he yielded.[1761] Since a Delphian inscribed base[1762] gives the same number of victories as Pausanias, we infer that they were given also on the Olympia base, the source of Pausanias’ information. Since nothing is said, however, of Sostratos’ mode of fighting in the Delphi inscription, Pausanias must have argued it from the pose of the statue. The Sicilian wrestler Leontiskos of a century earlier, whose statue was by Pythagoras, had, according to Pausanias, used similar tactics, for “he vanquished his adversaries by bending back their fingers.”[1763] These cases show that statues of pancratiasts and wrestlers were frequently represented in vigorous lunging attitudes as well as in groups. The epigram on the base of the monument of the pancratiast Teisikrates at Delphi shows that the statue was represented in a similar way.[1764] The same lunging attitude is also shown on the Halimous grave-relief.[1765] Sometimes the contest ended with the preliminary sparring, though usually it developed into wrestling and boxing.

A good representation of a pancratiast trying to kick his antagonist seems to be furnished by the small bronze statuette from Autun, South France, now in the Louvre (Fig. 60).[1766] This statuette is of mediocre workmanship, its hard muscles, imperfect proportions, and realism showing that it comes from the Hellenistic period of Greek art. It represents a bearded athlete, who holds his hands ready to strike and his left foot raised apparently to kick his adversary’s leg. The foot is just ready to return to its original position, so that the motive of this poor little statuette discloses a transient period of time between two movements, just as the Diskobolos and Marsyas of Myron did. We have already noted[1767] that on the head is a cap with a ring in the top, by which it could be suspended as a decorative piece, or perhaps as part of a steelyard. Hauser believes that this motive was known to the elder Polykleitos and that this is the interpretation of that sculptor’s statue of a nudus talo incessens mentioned by Pliny, a statue which has formed the basis for much discussion among archæologists.[1768] The Plinian passage, therefore, is to be translated as “the nude man attacking with his heel (talo)”—in other words, it describes a statue represented as kicking, which was allowable in the pankration. The manuscripts of Pliny all read talo, which Benndorf[1769] thought could be retained only by assuming that the naturalist mistranslated his Greek source γυμνὸς ἀστραγάλῳ ἐπικείμενος, translating the word ἐπικείμενος “standing upon,” as incessens “pursuing.” He therefore assumed that Polykleitos’ statue stood upon an astragalos (talus) basis, which he believed was the forerunner of the statue of Opportunity (Καιρός) by Lysippos,[1770] and he referred it to the knuckle-bone basis found at Olympia.[1771] Woelfflin,[1772] however, has shown that talo incessens can only mean “mit einem Knochel nach Jemand einwerfen.” Following this, Furtwaengler showed[1773] how impossible on grammatical and other grounds it was to read talo in Benndorf’s sense, since the passage then would mean “advancing towards” or “pursuing,” by means of a knuckle-bone, which is manifestly nonsense. The word could be only instrumental in use, as Woefflin said, i. e., the weapon by means of which the man was attacking. Furtwaengler, therefore, followed Benndorf’s earlier alternative reading telo, assuming that Pliny mistakenly wrote talo because he was influenced by the presence of the same word in the passage immediately following: duosque pueros item nudos talis ludentes qui vocantur astragalizontes.[1774] But Hauser’s interpretation of talo meets all the conditions better, since it keeps the manuscript readings, makes grammatical Latin, and seems to be illustrated by the statuette in question.

Sometimes the statues of Olympic pancratiasts were represented at rest with the weight of the body equally on both legs, as we see from the recovered basis of the statue of the Athenian Kallias by the Athenian sculptor Mikon.[1775] Furtwaengler has identified a statue in the Somzée Collection as a copy of this work.[1776] The footprints on the recovered base of the statue of the Rhodian Dorieus show that it was represented at rest with one leg slightly advanced.[1777] We have actual remnants of statues of Olympic pancratiasts in the marble head found at Olympia, which we are to assign to the statue of the Akarnanian Philandridas by Lysippos, mentioned by Pausanias (Frontispiece and Fig. 69),[1778] and the beautiful statue of Agias discovered by the French at Delphi in 1894, a work by the same sculptor (Pl. 28 and Fig. 68).[1779]

The struggle on the ground implies groups and not single statues. Our best representation of such a group is furnished by the famous marble one in the Uffizi, Florence (Pl. 25).[1780] Though having no pretensions to be a victor monument, this group is the most important monument extant connected with the pankration, a fine anatomical study from Hellenistic times, evincing the direct influence of Lysippos in its proportions.[1781] It shows affinity of design to certain sculptures from the frieze of the Great Altar at Pergamon.[1782] Pliny speaks of a symplegma by Kephisodotos, the son of Praxiteles, at Pergamon, but that group was of an erotic character and can not have had anything to do with the Florentine one.[1783] Unfortunately the group in question has been much restored, though the restoration in the main is right. The heads, though probably antique, do not seem to belong to the statues, but both appear to be copies of the head of one of the Niobids, with which group the pancratiasts were discovered in 1583. The right arm of the uppermost athlete seems to have been wrongly restored; in any case this athlete is not strangling his opponent. One youth has thrown the other down on to his knee, and his left leg is intertwined with the left leg of the other, and he is drawing back his arm to aim a blow. The wrestler underneath supports himself upon his left arm, and the intention of his opponent is to destroy this support by a blow of the fist, which would bring the contest to a sudden conclusion, since the right arm of the under youth is fast and he must defend himself with the left. As Gardiner points out, such a situation is illustrated by Heliodoros’ description of the match between Theagenes and an Aethiopian champion.[1784] The under man’s position, however, may suddenly change and the issue yet be in his favor. Many writers have explained the group as ordinary wrestlers,[1785] but Gardiner has conclusively shown that it belongs to the pankration, since in wrestling the contest is ended when one of the contestants has been thrown, while here the struggle is continuing on the ground.[1786]

Kapros of Elis was the first of seven Olympic victors to emulate the fabled feat of Herakles by winning the pankration and wrestling matches on the same day—that is, he was the first professional strong man.[1787] The other six all came from the East. It has been suggested[1788] that the colossal Farnese Herakles found in Rome in the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla in 1540 and now in Naples, inscribed as the work of the Athenian Glykon, which represents the hero leaning wearily on his club against a rock,[1789] may represent the type of these professional strong men, who called themselves the successors of Herakles. But such a suggestion is as unfounded as the one already examined, which identifies the original of the Seated Boxer of the Museo delle Terme (Pl. 16 and Fig. 27) with Kleitomachos of Thebes, the redoubtable opponent of Kapros, since the dates in both cases are against such identifications. The Farnese statue and other replicas of the same original[1790] obviously revert to a Lysippan original, though they are considerably metamorphosed by the taste of a later age. Such big swollen muscles at first sight appear to be alien to the sculptor of the graceful Agias, but that the Naples copy by Glykon—who, from the inscription on the base, must be referred to the first century B. C.[1791]—really represents the work of Lysippos seems well established by the fact that a smaller copy, though still over life-size, of poorer workmanship, in the Pitti Gallery in Florence, is inscribed as Λυσίππου ἔργον.[1792] This type of weary hero appears in the Telephos group on the small Pergamene frieze, but is even earlier, since the latter seems to have been borrowed from a statue which is reproduced on a coin of Alexander, which was struck at least as early as 300 B. C.[1793] The type of Herakles wearied by his superhuman labors was inaugurated still earlier by Lysippos, who was fond of representing the hero in many poses, seated and standing, resting and laboring. We might mention his colossal bronze statue of Herakles, which was set up in Tarentum and then carried to Rome and placed on the Capitol by Q. Fabius Maximus, when Tarentum was captured in 209 B. C., and was later transferred to the Hippodrome at Constantinople, where it remained until the sack of that city by the Franks in 1204.[1794] It is hazardous, therefore, to reject the evidence, and it will be best to see in the original a genuine Lysippan work, as do Bulle, Overbeck, von Mach, Schnaase,[1795] and others, and so to make Glykon responsible only for the exaggerations of his own copy. Thus we have to face the fact of divergent styles in the great bronze founder of the fourth century B. C., even if we admit with Richardson that “for our peace of mind this statue might well have been sunk in the sea.”[1796]

Long ago, I referred the life-size bronze portrait-like head of a boxer or pancratiast found at Olympia, now in the Athens Museum (Figs. 61A and B),[1797] to one of two statues of the pancratiast Kapros mentioned by Pausanias.[1798] The remnant of a wild-olive crown in the hair proves that it comes from the statue of an Olympic victor. Its bruised appearance may, however, betoken the punishment administered by the gloves of a boxer rather than by the bare fists of a pancratiast. That Greek sculpture was not always ideal we have seen from the description of the Seated Boxer of the Museo delle Terme (Pl. 16 and Fig. 27). This peculiarly life-like head is another example of the same realism; it would be hard to name a more brutal and repellent piece from the whole range of Greek sculpture. The profession of this bruiser is evident in every feature, for the sculptor has betrayed it by the swollen ears, flat nose, thick neck, swollen cheeks, projecting under lip, frowning brows, and unkempt hair and beard. All these traits—especially the treatment of the eyes—give to it the sullen gloomy look so characteristic of boxers and pancratiasts.[1799] The man appears to be awaiting the attack, his contracted brows showing alert expectation, and his closed lips great determination. Furtwaengler, Bulle, Flasch, and others have dated it in the fourth century B. C., and are fain to see in it the work of an artist of the immediate circle of Lysippos or Lysistratos;[1800] but its exaggerated realism seems rather to point to a later period, not earlier than the third century B. C.[1801] The bronze foot of a victor statue also found at Olympia (Fig. 62)[1802] has been assigned by Furtwaengler to one of the statues of Kapros, an ascription which we also have followed.[1803] The position of this foot shows—as an experiment with a living model has disclosed—great movement, which makes it obvious that it comes from a statue in lively motion, probably of a boxer or pancratiast. It belongs to the statue of a strong man of coarse build; there is not the slightest trace of unnecessary flesh on it, but the whole is vigorous muscle, even the swollen veins being clearly visible in the photograph. While Furtwaengler finds its stylistic parallels in the copies of the Pergamene works of the third century B. C., e. g., the Dying Gaul statues, the material and form of the base fitting that period, Wolters emphasizes its stylistic analogy to the bronze head just discussed.

The monuments which represent equestrian victors will be left for another chapter.

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V. MONUMENTS OF HIPPODROME AND MUSICAL VICTORS

PLATES 26-27 AND FIGURES 63-67.

In the preceding chapters we have considered the monuments of victors in various gymnic contests, in which the victor won by his own strength and skill. In the present chapter we shall be concerned chiefly with the monuments set up by victors at Olympia in chariot- and horse-races, in which the victory did not depend upon the athletic prowess of the victor, but upon the skill of his charioteer or jockey and the endurance of his horses.[1804] Though such events were not in the strict sense a part of Greek athletics, they formed a very important feature of the festival at Olympia as elsewhere.[1805] Indeed the four-horse chariot-race was the most spectacular and brilliant event at Olympia. Chariot-races, and to a less extent horse-races, were the sport only of the rich—kings, princes, and nobles.[1806] Thus victories were won in these events at Olympia in the fifth century B. C. by Hiero and Gelo, kings of Syracuse, and Arkesilas IV of Kyrene; in the fourth, by Philip II of Macedonia, and in Roman days by Tiberius, Germanicus, Nero, and many others. Alkibiades in Ol. 91 (= 416 B. C.), i. e., in the midst of the great Peloponnesian war, entered seven chariots at Olympia and won three prizes.[1807] Sometimes a city entered a chariot or horse. Thus in Ol. 77 (= 472 B. C.) the public chariot of Argos, and in Ol. 75 (= 480 B. C.) the public horse of the same city, won at Olympia.[1808] Such entries show not only the expense attending these contests, but also their importance in the eyes of the Greeks.

Hippodromes, chariot-races, and horse-races were very common in Greece. A votive inscription in the museum at Sparta, dating from near the middle of the fifth century B. C., enumerates sixty victories by Damonon and his son Enymakratidas in both chariot- and horse-races at eight different meets in or near Lakonia, and Damonon was merely a local victor, unknown at Olympia.[1809] Greeks of Sicily and Magna Græcia were especially fond of such contests, as we see these constantly represented on coins of different cities there from the beginning of the fifth century B. C. on.[1810] However, only a few of the sites of these many hippodromes are now known, and only one can be positively identified, that mentioned by Pausanias on Mount Lykaios in Arkadia.[1811] The others are known from literary sources.[1812] The one at Olympia was destroyed in the course of centuries by the floods of the Alpheios, and its exact location can not be determined, though we know in general that it lay somewhere southeast of the Altis, between the river and the Stadion, and surmise that it ran somewhat parallel to the latter.[1813]

Its measurements, however, are known to us from a Greek metrological parchment manuscript in the old Seraglio, Constantinople, which dates from the eleventh century A. D.[1814] According to it the length of the course, i. e., from the starting-point to turning-post and return, was about 8 stades (1538 meters, 16 centimeters) or nearly 1 mile. One of the two sides—which Pausanias says were of unequal length[1815]—was 3 stades and 1 plethron long. The breadth of the course at the starting-point was 1 stade and 4 plethra. We are told, however, that only a portion of the entire course, six stades, or about two-thirds of a mile, was traversed in the various races.

The oldest literary account of a Greek chariot-race is found in Homer in the description of the games of Patroklos—the longest and finest episode there described.[1816] But the first trace of such a contest goes back to mythology, to the story of Pelops and Oinomaos contending for the hand of the latter’s daughter Hippodameia.[1817] This mythical race began at the village of Pisa in Elis and ended at the altar of Poseidon on the Isthmus of Corinth.[1818] The chariot-race was the chief if not the only event at the oldest funeral games in Greece, those mentioned by Pausanias as held in honor of Azan, the son of Arkas, in Arkadia.[1819] It figured largely in mythology[1820] and was represented in many works of art.[1821] At Olympia it was one of the earliest, and perhaps the earliest, of the events. Pausanias says that the four-horse chariot-race was introduced there in Ol. 25 (= 680 B. C.),[1822] but this may merely mean, as Gardiner points out, the date of exchanging the older prehistoric two-horse chariot for the one drawn by four horses. In any case the antiquity of the race at Olympia is shown by the great number of early votive offerings in the form of models of chariots and horses, which have been found there in a stratum extending below the foundations of the Heraion.

PROGRAMME OF HIPPODROME EVENTS.

By the middle of the third century B. C. the fully developed programme of equestrian events at Olympia and elsewhere consisted of six races, three for full-grown horses (τέλειοι), and three for colts (πῶλοι); for each of these two classes there were a four-horse chariot-race (ἅρμα, τέθριππον), a two-horse chariot-race (συνωρίς), and a horse-race (κέλης), thus:

ἅρματι τελείῳ, συνωρίδι τελείᾳ, κέλητι τελείῳ. ἅρματι πωλικῷ, συνωρίδι πωλικῇ, κέλητι πωλικῷ.

These six events comprised the ἀγὼν ἱππικός at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, Corinth, Athens, and elsewhere, as opposed to the ἀγὼν γυμνικός.[1823] The distinction between horses and colts was apparently a matter which was decided by the Hellanodikai at Olympia. Thus, Pausanias recounts how the Spartan victor Lykidas entered a pair of colts for the chariot-race, and that one of them was rejected by the judges; he thereupon entered both for the race with full-grown horses and won it.[1824] Though such a story does not fit the date of Lykidas, who won before the colt-race was introduced at Olympia, it shows the method of selection.[1825] The race in which the chariot was drawn by four full-grown horses (ἵππων τελείων δρόμος) was introduced, as we have seen, in Ol. 25. The contestants drove twelve times round the course, a distance of seventy-two stades or over eight miles.[1826] Pausanias mentions the monuments of eighteen such victors at Olympia for nineteen victories. The race in which the chariot was drawn by four colts (πώλων ἅρμα) was introduced in Ol. 99 (= 384 B. C.),[1827] and extended eight times round the course, or about 5.5 miles.[1828] Pausanias mentions the monuments of only two such victors at Olympia.[1829] The race in which the chariot was drawn by pairs of full-grown horses (συνωρίς) was introduced in Ol. 93 (408 B. C.) and extended eight times round the course.[1830] Pausanias mentions but one victor in this event at Olympia[1831] and an Olympic victress who had a statue erected to her in Sparta for such a victory.[1832] This was probably the original chariot-race at Olympia revived in Ol. 93, since the two-horse chariot was the historical descendant of the Homeric war-chariot.[1833] Panathenaic vases show that this race existed at Athens in the sixth century B. C., side by side with the four-horse chariot-race and horseback-race. The earliest of these vases, the so-called Burgon vase in the British Museum,[1834] was a prize there for this event. The race in which the chariot was drawn by a pair of colts (συνωρὶς πώλων) was introduced at Olympia in the third century B. C., in Ol. 129 (= 264 B. C.),[1835] and extended three times around the course. Pausanias mentions no monument erected to a victor in this race. The horse-race (ἵππος κέλης) was instituted in Ol. 33 (= 648 B. C.)[1836], and the foal-race (πῶλος κέλης) nearly four centuries later, in Ol. 131 (256 B. C.).[1837] Neither of these races was known to Homer, for κελετίζειν in the Iliad,[1838] as we saw in Chapter I, refers only to the acrobatic feat of vaulting from the back of one horse to that of another. Pausanias mentions monuments erected to eight victors (for nine victories) in the regular horse-race at Olympia. We conclude from a passage of his work[1839] that the riding-race consisted of one lap only or six stades, about two-thirds of a mile. A mule chariot-race (ἀπήνη) was introduced in Ol. 70 (= 500 B. C.), and a trotting-race with mares (κάλπη) in Ol. 71 (= 496 B. C.), but both were abolished in Ol. 84 (= 444 B. C.).[1840] Pausanias mentions one monument erected to an anonymous victor in κάλπη, who won some time between Ols. 72 and 84 (= 492 and 444 B. C.).[1841] He mentions the first victor in the mule-race, Thersias of Thessaly, but this does not occur in his periegesis of the Altis.[1842] Only three other victors in this event are known to us, and they came from Sicilian towns.[1843]

Equestrian events were discontinued at Olympia in the first century B. C., owing to the waning of interest in athletics in consequence of the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 B. C. They were revived thereafter under the Empire only spasmodically and were destined finally to be replaced by the amusements of the Roman circus. Thus we learn from the Armenian version of Africanus that the chariot-race ceased at Olympia in Ol. 178 (= 68 B. C.). It must, however, have been reinstated toward the end of the century, since Tiberius Claudius Nero—afterwards the Emperor Tiberius—won in Ol. 194 (= 4 B. C.).[1844] It again went into disuse, since Africanus says that it, πάλαι κωλυθείς, was reintroduced in Ol. 199 (= 17 A. D.), when Germanicus, the adopted son of Tiberius, won.[1845] Once more it was discontinued, and again renewed in Ol. 222 (= 109 A. D.), according to the same authority, who, however, does not name any victor for that date. Just when this discontinuance took place, we can not say, but it was certainly after Ol. 211 (= 65 A. D.), when the emperor Nero is known to have won victories in various kinds of chariot-races.[1846] Three Olympiads before, an Elean, Tiberios Klaudios Aphrodeisios, had also won the horse-race.[1847]

REPRESENTATIONS OF THE CHARIOT-RACE.

Representations of the various chariot-races are commoner than those of any other Olympic contest, appearing on vases, reliefs, coins, and gems.[1848] There seem to have been two distinct types of racing-chariot in Greece.[1849] The four-horse chariot was a modification of the heroic two-horse war-chariot, which was a low car on two wheels, surmounted by a box consisting of a high framework, open only at the rear, and large enough to contain the chieftain and the charioteer. The war-chariot was known to both Mycenæan Greece and Crete. There is a relief of uncertain date in the Museum of Candia, which represents a chariot and charioteer.[1850] It is far superior to the type of chariots appearing in relief on the gravestones found at Mycenæ,[1851] though the type on both is of the same general pattern, having the same box and four-spoked wheels. On the Mycenæan reliefs the box seems to rest directly upon the rim of the wheel, and the portrayal of a single horse is very inartistic. On the Candia relief, however, there are at least two horses discernible, and both the horses and the warrior, who is about to mount the car, are lifelike. The Greek racing-car was much lighter than the Homeric and Mycenæan war-chariot, and the box had room only for the charioteer. It was drawn usually by four horses. The Athenian type appears on Panathenaic vases throughout the whole history of the manufacture of these vases,[1852] and also on Macedonian and Sicilian coins. On certain vases of later date the car is still lighter and has larger wheels. One of the earliest racing-cars is seen on a vase in the British Museum,[1853] dating from the eighth century B. C. It seems to be a two-horse car, as we should expect at this early date, though the artist has drawn but one horse. The charioteer is clothed in a long chiton, a custom which was generally kept throughout the history of the chariot-race. The regular two-horse type of chariot appears on vases as a cart, the body of the old war-chariot being so diminished that nothing is left but the driver’s seat with a square open framework on the sides. The driver rests his feet on a footboard suspended from the pole.[1854] Perhaps this represents a peculiarly Athenian type of chariot, since the two-horse chariot on coins of Philip II, son of Amyntas and father of Alexander the Great, a victor at Olympia in both horse-racing and charioteering, resembles the ordinary four-horse car, and the driver stands instead of sits.[1855] The mule-car was like the two-horse chariot, as we see in representations of it on coins of Rhegion and Messana.[1856] The best illustrations of racing with four-horse cars are afforded by coins of Sicilian cities.[1857] We see an excellent representation of such a race on a sixth-century B. C. Panathenaic vase recently found at Sparta, on which a chariot driven by a standing charioteer is represented as passing a pillar on the right, and therefore perhaps near the end of the race.[1858] The harnessing of two horses to a racing-car is seen on an archaic b.-f. hydria in Berlin (Pl. 26).[1859] Here a third horse appears, led by a nude youth, who is crowned, and who therefore probably represents a victorious horse-racer. Several other b.-f. vase-paintings showing four-horse chariots have been collected by Gerhard.[1860] However, we are not dependent upon vase-paintings and coins to judge of the magnificence of Greek chariots of the historical period, for we have actual remains of them—war-chariots, to be sure, but not very unlike the ones used at the corresponding dates in Olympia. Among these is the fine bronze biga found in the grave of an Italian prince at Monteleone, Etruria, in 1902, and now one of the chief treasures of the Metropolitan Museum in New York.[1861] This is a war-chariot of the beginning of the sixth century B. C., the only complete ancient bronze chariot now known. The restored frame of wood is sheathed with thin bronze plates richly ornamented with reliefs in repoussé. Because of its form and its relationship to chariots appearing on archaic Ionic monuments of Asia Minor, for example, on the reliefs of sarcophagi from Klazomenai, and because of the strong resemblance between its decorative designs and those of archaic Italian monuments of Ionicizing style, Furtwaengler has classed it as the product of Ionic Greek art. Professor Chase, on the other hand, finds these decorations pure Etruscan in character, comparing them with the reliefs on three bronze tripods in the possession of Mr. James Loeb, which are dated some half a century later.[1862] In any case this chariot is “das glaenzendste, vollstaendigste” archaic metal work yet recovered. In the British Museum there are considerable remnants of the chariot-group of King Mausolos and his wife Artemisia, which once stood on the apex of the Mausoleion at Halikarnassos, the work, according to Pliny,[1863] of Pythis (or Pytheos), the architect and historian of the tomb.[1864] Besides the figures of the royal pair, we have the head of one horse, the hinder half of another, fragments of still others, and one wheel of the chariot.[1865]

CHARIOT-GROUPS AT OLYMPIA.

Great artists were engaged to set up chariot-groups at Olympia and elsewhere. Many of the quadrigae and bigae mentioned by Pliny as the works of sculptors and painters must have been agonistic offerings.[1866] Aeginetan sculptors were especially in favor at Olympia. Thus Onatas, in conjunction with the Athenian Kalamis, made a group for King Hiero,[1867] and Glaukias made another for Hiero’s brother Gelo;[1868] Simon made an equestrian group for Phormis,[1869] and Philotimos made a statue for the horse-racer Xenombrotos of Kos.[1870] The oldest dedication by a chariot victor at Olympia was the votive offering of Miltiades, the son of Kypselos, of Athens, which consisted of an ivory horn of Amaltheia, inscribed with archaic letters and set up in the treasury of the Sikyonians. Miltiades won his victory in Ol. (?) 54 (= 564 B. C.).[1871] The next oldest dedication at Olympia was that of a chariot, without any human figure, by the Spartan Euagoras, who won three victories in Ols. (?) 58-60 (= 548-540 B. C.).[1872] This custom of dedicating merely the model of a chariot continued sporadically into the third century B. C. Thus Polypeithes of Sparta, who won a victory near the end of the sixth century B. C.,[1873] dedicated a chariot, while a figure of his father, the wrestler Kalliteles, stood beside it.[1874] A Pythian victor, Arkesilas IV, son of Battos IV, king of Kyrene, who won a victory in the 31st Pythiad (= 462 B. C.), dedicated a chariot at Delphi.[1875] At the beginning of the fourth century B. C. the Spartan princess Kyniska set up “bronze horses less than life-size” in the pronaos of the temple of Zeus at Olympia. The recovered base shows that Pausanias was right about the size of this votive offering.[1876] Theochrestos of Kyrene, who won some time between Ols. (?) 100 and 122 (= 380 and 292 B. C.),[1877] and Glaukon of Athens, who won in the third century B. C.,[1878] also set up votive chariots. The recovered base of Glaukon’s chariot shows that it was small. Sometimes a chariot victor, for economy’s sake, contented himself with dedicating merely a statue of himself in honor of his victory—a custom which continued from the sixth to the third centuries B. C. Perhaps one of the oldest examples of such a dedication of which we have record is that of the Elean Archidamas, who won a victory at an unknown date, but certainly some time after Ol. 66 (= 515 B. C.).[1879] In the fifth century B. C., the Spartans Anaxandros[1880] and Lykinos[1881] dedicated merely statues of themselves. In the fourth century B. C. the Elean victors Timon,[1882] whose monument was by Daidalos, Troilos, whose monument was by Lysippos,[1883] and Telemachos, whose statue was by Philonides,[1884] set up statues in honor of their victories. The footprints on the inscribed base of the statue of Telemachos show that he was represented standing at rest with both feet flat on the ground. This was probably the position of the statues of the other two victors mentioned. The statue of the Spartan victor Polykles, surnamed Polychalkos, stood in a singular group. He was represented as being greeted on his return home by his children, one of whom held a small grace-hoop in his hand, while the other was trying to snatch the victor ribbon from his father’s hand.[1885] We learn from Diogenes Laertios that the tyrant Periandros of Corinth vowed to set up a golden statue of himself if he won the chariot-race.[1886]

The first instance chronologically recorded by Pausanias of a chariot victor dedicating his statue along with chariot and horses is that of king Gelo of Syracuse, the group being the work of the Aeginetan Glaukias.[1887] The first instance of a victor dedicating his statue in a group with chariot, horses, and charioteer, is that of Kleosthenes of Epidamnos, the group being the work of the Argive Hagelaïdas.[1888] Even the names of the horses were inscribed on this monument.[1889] The owner of the chariot, to be sure, took the prize, but he felt that the victory was due to the horses and driver, and so he associated them with himself in the monument. Sometimes the victor acted as his own charioteer. Thus the Spartan Damonon, already mentioned as the hero of many chariot victories in and near Sparta, tells in the inscription appearing on his votive relief that he was his own charioteer.[1890] In the first Isthmian Ode Pindar congratulates Herodotos of Thebes, who won the chariot-race (?) in 458 B. C., on not entrusting his chariot to strangers, but driving it himself.[1891] Thrasyboulos seems to have driven his father’s car at the victory commemorated by the sixth Pythian Ode, sung in honor of the chariot victory of Xenokrates of Akragas in 490 B. C. at Delphi. Karrhotos, the charioteer of Arkesilas of Kyrene already mentioned, was the latter’s brother-in-law.[1892] Similarly Aigyptos appears to have ridden his own horse at Olympia instead of entrusting it to a jockey.[1893] Sophokles, in the Electra, has the hero Orestes drive his own chariot at the Pythia. Kyniska, the daughter of king Archidamas of Sparta, was the first woman to enter the contests at the race-course and the first to win an Olympic victory with her chariot.[1894] Apart from the small votive offering, already mentioned as standing in the temple of Zeus, she had also a victor-group at Olympia, by the sculptor Apellas, consisting of chariot, horses, charioteer, and herself. The rounded form of the recovered base,[1895] in connection with the description of Pausanias, permits us to assume that the statue of the princess stood in front on the projecting rounded portion of the pedestal. This is the contention of Loewy, who opposes the theory of Furtwaengler[1896] that the statue stood away from the rest of the group, since Pausanias makes no mention of such an arrangement. In any case, the charioteer in the group can not have been separated from the car.

In an unpublished paper by my former teacher, Dr. Alfred Emerson, which was read by Professor D. M. Robinson before the Archæological Institute of America at its Christmas meeting in Providence in 1910, and entitled The Case of Kyniska,[1897] the argument was made that the chariot was in miniature; that the statue of Kyniska was a portrait, because of the wording of the recovered epigram; and, lastly that the smallest of the so-called bronze dancers from the villa of the Pisos in Herculaneum, now in Naples, is a late reproduction of the statue at Olympia by Apellas. Emerson thinks that Pliny no doubt often visited the villa and may well have had these statues in mind when he mentioned Apellas as the author of several statues of women adorning themselves.[1898]

The monument erected by Hiero, son of Deinomenes and brother and successor of king Gelo at Syracuse, who won two horse-races and a four-horse chariot victory at Olympia in Ols. 76, 77, 78 (= 476-468 B. C.),[1899] consisted of a bronze chariot, on which the charioteer was mounted, and on either side a race-horse with a jockey on each. Onatas made the chariot (and possibly the statue of the driver), while Kalamis sculptured the horses and jockeys. Such a division among sculptors was not uncommon at Olympia. Thus the Aeginetan artist Simon and the Argive Dionysios made a group in common for Phormis, which we have already mentioned, consisting of two horses and two charioteers.[1900] The Chian Pantias and the Aeginetan Philotimos made a group in common for Xenombrotos of Kos, victor in horse-racing, and for his son, the boy boxer Xenodikos, which consisted of statues of the man and the boy on horseback.[1901] Pliny mentions a four-horse chariot-group for which the elder Praxiteles made the charioteer and Kalamis the chariot, adding that Praxiteles did this out of kindness, not wishing it to be thought that Kalamis had failed in representing the man after succeeding in representing the horses.[1902]

In some of the Olympic chariot-groups doubtless the charioteer was represented at the moment of entering the chariot or already in it. Sometimes a figure of Nike took the place of the charioteer, in order that the victor’s exploit might be more exalted. Thus Pausanias, in mentioning the bronze chariot of Kratisthenes of Kyrene by Pythagoras of Rhegion,[1903] says that statues of Nike and Kratisthenes himself are mounted upon the car. The Nike in some cases was replaced by the figure of a young maiden, who stood beside the victor, as in the cases of the Elean Timon[1904] and the Macedonian Lampos.[1905] Pliny notes a similar example in reference to the chariot of Teisikrates, a Delphian victor in the two-horse chariot-race.[1906] The maiden in all these cases may have been merely a Nike personified or a mortal.[1907] Pliny records that the painter Nikomachos, son and pupil of Aristeides, painted a Victoria quadrigam in sublime rapiens.[1908] The figure of Nike appears often on reliefs. Thus on a terra-cotta sarcophagus from Klazomenai we see a two-horse chariot driven by a boy, while alongside is a winged female figure—Iris or Nike—mounting it.[1909] The moment of victory is shown on an Attic marble votive relief representing a four-horse chariot, now in the British Museum. Here a figure of Nike is represented as floating in the air and extending a wreath (now wanting) towards the head of the charioteer, who is draped with a tunic girdled at the waist, as he mounts the car. If the charioteer in this relief is a female (which is doubtful), it may he the personification of the city to which the winner belongs.[1910] On a votive relief in Athens a horse is represented as being crowned by Nike.[1911] On a relief in Madrid Nike is represented as driving a chariot.[1912] A quadriga with a female figure, apparently Nike, appears on a relief dedicated to Hermes and the Nymphs, which was found in Phaleron.[1913] Doubtless some of the chariot-groups at Olympia represented movement—the start, the course, or the end of the race—as do these and similar reliefs.[1914] We should add that the figure of Nike was not confined to equestrian monuments. On the Ficoroni cista in Rome is represented the boxing match between Polydeukes and Amykos among the Bebrykes. In the centre we see Amykos hanged to a tree by the hands, while to the right stands Athena, and above her Nike is flying with a crown and fillet of victory for Polydeukes.[1915]

REMAINS OF CHARIOT-GROUPS.

From this discussion of the literary evidence about the monuments of chariot victors at Olympia and elsewhere, we shall turn to a brief consideration of certain existing works of sculpture, reliefs and statues, which will serve to illustrate the manner in which the sculptor represented this class of victor monuments.

The motive of representing a figure in the act of mounting a chariot is old. Amphiaraos was thus represented on the chest of Kypselos at Olympia[1916] and appears in a similar pose on the b.-f. Corinthian vase from Cerveteri, now in Berlin, which we have already mentioned.[1917] Among reliefs we shall first discuss the Parian (?) marble one found in 1822 near the Propylaia at Athens and now in the Akropolis Museum (Fig. 63).[1918] Here we see represented a robed figure stepping into a chariot, holding the reins in the extended hands. This Attic work, perhaps dating from the very beginning of the fifth century B. C., has long been admired for its vigor and grace. Whether the figure is male or female, human or divine, is still a matter of debate. The head is too badly weathered to make the decision final. The upper part of the figure of Hermes (?) on another fragment, which appears to come from the same relief and which was found near the south wall of the Akropolis in 1859,[1919] has made it seem reasonable to call the charioteer a god, perhaps Apollo.[1920] The hair of Hermes and of the charioteer is arranged in the old Attic krobylos fashion. This also makes it natural to interpret the charioteer as male, despite the slender and delicate arms and hands, which appear to be female.[1921] But such effeminate male figures are not unknown to Attic art, which was characterized by grace and softness.[1922] The line of the breast, however, shows no such fulness as archaic masters were wont to give to female forms, and hence this figure may very well be that of a male. Schrader has tried to refer the slab to the frieze of the Old Temple of Athena, which, he believes, survived the sack of the Akropolis by Xerxes,[1923] thus assuming a chariot-frieze similar to the later one appearing on the Mausoleion at Halikarnassos, which antedated similar scenes on the Parthenon frieze by nearly a century. As the Parthenon slabs represent mortal charioteers, who are doubtless males, the relief may also represent a mortal. However, the Akropolis relief may have had nothing to do with any temple frieze nor with the adornment of a great altar of Athena, as Furtwaengler contended,[1924] but may be from a votive monument set up by a chariot victor.[1925]

We see a good representation in relief of a chariot-group on one side of the arched roof of the so-called Chimæra tomb discovered by Sir Charles Fellows at Xanthos in Lykia. Here is represented a chariot drawn by four horses, in which stands a charioteer, with sleeved tunic and Phrygian cap, and an armed figure. Because of the figure of the Chimæra in the lower right-hand corner, the charioteer, despite the absence of Pegasos, has been called Bellerophon.[1926]

THE APOBATES CHARIOT-RACE.

On the north frieze of the Parthenon there were originally at least 9 four-horse chariot groups,[1927] while on the south frieze there were 10 such groups.[1928] These various groups represent a ceremonial chariot-race called the apobates, known at Athens and in Bœotia and a favorite contest at the Panathenaic games.[1929] This race preserved the tradition of Homeric warfare, when the chieftain was driven to battle in his chariot, but dismounted to fight, remounting only to pursue or avoid his enemy. During the race, while the charioteer kept the horses at full speed, the apobates dismounted, ran alongside the chariot, and mounted again. In the last lap he dismounted and ran beside the chariot to the goal.[1930] In the North frieze we see the charioteer in the chariot, and the apobates, armed with shield and helmet, either stepping down from the chariot or standing beside it; while a third figure, a marshal, stands nearby. Thus on slab XIV we see the apobates about to step down; on slab XV he is standing up in the chariot; on slab XVII (Fig. 64) he is leaning back, supporting himself by means of his right hand, which grasps the chariot rail, and is just ready to step down; on slab XXII he is remounting the chariot. In the scenes on the South frieze, on the other hand, the apobates is not represented as dismounting, but is standing either inside the chariot or by its side. The South frieze, therefore, represents preparation or the beginning of the race, while the North one represents the actual course. There is, therefore, as Gardiner points out, no need to accept Michaelis’ theory that the two friezes portray different motives, the North one representing the apobates at the games and the South one representing war-chariots. The double character of the race is shown by inscriptions which make both charioteer and apobates equally victors. Many other reliefs show the apobates dismounting. Thus, on a fragmentary relief found in 1886 at the Amphiareion at Oropos and now in Athens,[1931] we see a nude and beardless youth standing in a chariot, which is moving rapidly to the left. He has a helmet on his head and a shield in his left hand and holds on to the rim of the chariot, as in the Parthenon frieze slab just mentioned. To his right is a charioteer with his arms outstretched to hold the reins. As this relief is obviously influenced by the Parthenon frieze, it must stand midway between that frieze and the Hellenistic relief to be described below. Another relief, found at Oropos in 1835[1932] and dating from the first half of the fourth century B. C., represents a four-horse chariot moving to the left and containing two persons. One is the charioteer, who has long waving hair and a short beard and is clothed in the usual long tunic; the other is a nude apobates, who is armed with helmet and shield and holds on to the rim of the chariot with his right hand, the upper part of his body being inclined backwards, the knees bent, and the shield held away from the body.[1933] We can not say whether these two reliefs from the Amphiareion represent offerings of apobatai, who were victorious at races held in Oropos or elsewhere in Bœotia, or represent the victorious Panathenaic apobatai. They may well be ex votos to the hero Amphiaraos at the games held in Oropos. We see an excellent illustration of an apobates in the very act of dismounting on a Hellenistic votive relief discovered in 1880 on the Akropolis, which dates from the end of the fourth century B. C.[1934] A marble relief, supposably from Herculaneum, but now in Portugal,[1935] represents a figure dressed in a long chiton. Wolters suggests that it may represent an apobates, but the absence of the usual armor makes it probable that a charioteer is intended. In a future section we shall discuss the apobates in the horse-race at Olympia known as κάλπη.

STATUES OF CHARIOTEERS.

The best-preserved slab from the small Parian marble chariot-frieze from the Mausoleion of Halikarnassos, now in the British Museum, represents a male figure standing in a chariot (Fig. 65).[1936] This long-haired charioteer, dressed in a tunic which extends to the feet and is girded at the waist, is leaning forward in an eager attitude. The folds of his garment curved to the wind show the speed of his horses, and the mutilated face discloses a look of intense excitement. The deep-set eyes and overhanging brows recall the Tegea heads of Skopas (Fig. 73) and the combatants pictured on the so-called Alexander Sarcophagus discovered near Sidon in 1887 and now in Constantinople.[1937] The pose is so characteristic and spirited that it was copied by later artists on reliefs and gems.[1938] The same pose, forward inclination of the body, half-opened mouth, and intense look seem to be reproduced in a statue of the fourth century B. C. now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (Pl. 27).[1939] Robinson, because of the similarity of its head to certain heads of Apollo published by Overbeck,[1940] interpreted this statue as Apollo starting to run. Von Mach, however, has pointed out that its head bears a more striking resemblance to that of a Kore in Vienna.[1941] Klein interpreted it as a jumper, assuming that the two supports on the legs were for the wrists, indicating that the arms were held downwards, the hands, then, holding halteres. But von Mach makes it clear that these supports are not parallel, as Klein thought, but that they diverge outwards and consequently may have made the connection with the sides of a chariot rim. Furthermore, the likeness to the figure on the Mausoleion frieze (Fig. 65) makes it probable that we are here concerned with a charioteer. The objection to this theory on the ground of nudity is baseless. Though the conventional garb of the charioteer in Greek art from the eighth century B. C. onwards[1942] was certainly a long, close-fitting chiton, there are several examples in existence of nude charioteers.[1943] Similarly the objection that the artificial head-dress does not belong to a charioteer is equally erroneous. Klein has shown that it appears on several heads of boys, and, as von Mach says, it is certainly no better suited to Apollo or a jumper than to a boy driving colts in a chariot-race. The pose of the Boston statue also reminds us somewhat of that of the small bronze statue of a boy found in the Rhine near Xanten in 1858 and now in Berlin.[1944] This is a Roman work seemingly inspired by a Greek prototype, and has been interpreted variously as the statue of Bonus Eventus, Novus Annus, and Dionysos. However, here again the forward inclination of the body points to the interpretation of a charioteer,[1945] despite its nudity. The nude statue found on the Esquiline in 1874 and now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome, which has already been mentioned,[1946] has been shown to be that of a charioteer by a comparison with figures on Attic vases which represent mortals and gods entering chariots, and with a figure on the so-called Satrap Sarcophagus in Constantinople.[1947] The youth is represented as standing on his left foot; he places his right on the chariot floor and extends his hands to hold the reins. The statue seems to be a mediocre Roman copy of a Greek original bronze of about the middle of the fifth century B. C., as it shows certain traces of archaism. Furtwaengler has assigned it to the sculptor Kalamis along with a closely connected group of monuments.[1948]

Finally, in this connection, even though it has nothing to do with monuments set up at Olympia, we shall discuss the life-size bronze statue of the Charioteer discovered by the French in 1896 in the excavations of Delphi, and now the cynosure of the village museum there. (Fig. 66.)[1949] This example of ripe archaic art is one of the finest bronzes yet recovered in Greece. Its ancient fame is disclosed by the fact that it was copied in many monuments down to the end of antiquity.[1950] The figure is clothed in a short-sleeved chiton, which reached nearly to the ground, and is girded above the waist. With the figure were found also fragments of reins, which were held in the extended right hand, portions of three horses, a chariot pole, and the left arm and hand of a second figure, that of a boy or woman, showing that the Charioteer was part of a group. The group rested on a base on which was cut a two-line metrical inscription, the ends of which are preserved. The first line ends Πολύζαλός μ’ ἀνέθηκεν. A part of the inscription is lost and another part, including the above words, is written over the erased original, which is still partly legible. The original inscription gives the name of the first dedicator as ending in ιλας. From this ending Professor Washburn recovers the name Ἀρκεσίλας. He refers the original dedication to Arkesilas IV of Kyrene,[1951] and identifies it with the group known from Pausanias to have been dedicated at Delphi by the people of Kyrene, representing Battos and the figure of Libya crowning him in a chariot and the charioteer personified as Kyrene outside, the whole being the work of the Knossian sculptor Amphion.[1952] Svoronos[1953] follows Washburn’s suggestion and identifies the Charioteer with Battos, believing that the fragment of the left arm found with the statue is from the statue of Kyrene represented as a charioteer.[1954] Ingenious as the theory is, there are chronological difficulties in the way of accepting it unreservedly. Thus Amphion’s pupil Pison worked on the Spartan memorial of Aigospotamoi at Delphi in 404 B. C.[1955] Furthermore, the ending ιλας may equally well refer to Anaxilas, the tyrant of Rhegion, as the original dedicator,[1956] in which case it seems reasonable to assume that the group might have been the work of Pythagoras, the great sculptor of Rhegion.[1957] A Greek scholar believes that the original dedicator was Gelo, and that his name was erased and replaced by that of his brother Polyzalos; he consequently dates the group shortly after Gelo’s death in 478 B. C.[1958] He refers it to Glaukias of Aegina, while Joubin[1959] classes the Charioteer as an Attic work. However, the whole subject of Greek sculpture in the years just after the Persian war period is too complicated to name definitely the artist of this simple and severe work. Its deficiencies are as apparent as its virtues. Thus the parallel folds of the chiton show little of the form beneath; the feet are too flatly placed on the ground, and the contour of the head and face is not altogether graceful.[1960] Whatever the original purpose of the group was, it may well have been used by Polyzalos to honor the Pythian victory of his brother Hiero.[1961] From it, then, we can get, perhaps, an idea of the magnificence of Hiero’s monument by Onatas and Kalamis at Olympia.

DEDICATIONS OF VICTORS IN THE HORSE-RACE AT OLYMPIA AND ELSEWHERE.

The hippic victor at Olympia frequently dedicated merely the model of his victorious horse without the jockey, just as the early chariot victor dedicated a chariot without the charioteer. We have evidence of several instances of this custom from the sixth century B. C. on. Krokon of Eretria dedicated a small horse of bronze in the Altis.[1962] The Corinthian Pheidolas dedicated a model of his horse alone, but for a different reason.[1963] The jockey who rode for him fell off at the start, but the mare, named Aura, continued the race and reached the goal as victor. The owner was allowed by the judges to set up a monument to her. The sons of Pheidolas were also victors in the horse-race[1964] and set up a horse on a column with an epigram upon it—ἵππος ἐπὶ στήλῃ πεποιημένος καὶ ἐπίγραμμά ἐστιν ἐπ’ αὐτῷ. Just how this monument looked is doubtful. Pausanias may have seen the bronze horse of the father Pheidolas, and nearby a column with a bas-relief representing the horse of the sons;[1965] or the horse may have stood on top of the column in the round, since the epigram was ἐπ’ αὐτῷ (on the horse) and not ἐπ’ αὐτῇ (on the stele).[1966]

More frequently a jockey was seated upon the model of the horse, just as we see frequently on vase-paintings. In the Olympic monument of King Hiero already mentioned, race-horses with boys seated upon them stood on either side of the chariot in honor of his two victories in the horse-race and one in the chariot-race.[1967] Another Olympia group represented the boy horse-racer Aigyptos on horseback, and his father, the chariot victor Timon, standing beside him.[1968] This is also a case in which the victor (Aigyptos) acted as his own jockey. In the group representing Xenombrotos of Kos, the horse-racer, and his son, the boy boxer Xenodikos, by the Aeginetan Philotimos and the Chian Pantias respectively, the boy was seated on a horse and the statue of the father stood nearby.[1969] The base of this group has been recovered, large enough to have carried the two monuments.[1970] Pliny says that the sculptors Kanachos and Hegias made groups of horse-racers.[1971] We have seen that Pausanias mentions others by Kalamis and Daidalos. The work of Kalamis, the immediate predecessor of Pheidias, an artist noted for his grace and softness and as an unrivaled sculptor of horses,[1972] must have been excellent.

MONUMENTS ILLUSTRATING THE HORSE-RACE.

When we turn to the monuments which illustrate the horse-race, we find as varied a number—vase-paintings, reliefs, coins, statuary, etc.—as in the case of chariot victors.

Vase-paintings show that the jockey was generally nude and rode without stirrups or saddle. We see nude long-haired jockeys on horseback with whips pictured on a sixth-century B. C. Panathenaic amphora in the British Museum.[1973] One also appears on a silver tetradrachm in the same museum, which commemorates the Olympic victory of Philip II of Macedonia.[1974] Here the victorious mounted jockey has a palm in his hand, the symbol of his victory. On the other hand, the jockey is sometimes represented as wearing a close-fitting short-sleeved chiton. We see such a one on an archaic b.-f. Panathenaic vase of the sixth century B. C. in the British Museum (Fig. 67).[1975] In front of the mounted youth on this vase stands a herald in official robes, from whose mouth issue the words “the horse of Dyneiketos is victorious.” Behind the jockey is an attendant bearing a wreath in his left hand and holding a prize tripod over his head. The short chiton also appears on a horse-racer on the Amphiaraos vase.[1976] We see racing boys on a proto-Corinthian lekythos in the museum at Taranto, with tripods as prizes.[1977] A fine example of five nude horse-racers also appears on a vase pictured in the Daremberg-Saglio Dictionary.[1978] Here one has fallen from his horse and is being dragged by the bridle.

A boy on a galloping horse is shown on a terra-cotta relief from Thera.[1979] On a funerary marble relief from Sicily, now in the Museo Gregoriano, Rome, a rider is represented urging his horse on with a whip.[1980] An Athenian relief shows victorious ephebes leading horses,[1981] while another from Athens shows a mounted boy.[1982] Horsemen representing Athenian knights appear on many slabs of the Parthenon frieze,[1983] either mounted or standing by their horses.

The inscribed base of Onatas found on the Akropolis seems to have borne the statue of a horse-racer.[1984] The bronze statue of Isokrates at Athens, which represented him as a παῖς κελητίζων, is mentioned by the pseudo-Plutarch.[1985] A bronze statuette in Athens from Dodona represents an ephebe on a galloping horse.[1986] A statue in the Palazzo Orlandi in Florence represents a horse-rider.[1987] In the Akropolis Museum there are two monuments which we should mention in this connection. One is the lower part of the statue of a nude rider on horseback, the mutilated horse being represented as pawing the ground with its forefoot. Closely resembling it in scale and finish, though more developed in style, is another fragmentary statue of a horse without a rider, the latter probably to be understood as standing in front of the horse, as in some of the riders pictured on the Parthenon frieze. The two are good examples of pre-Persian Attic sculpture.[1988] A later example is the small bronze statuette of an ephebe represented as a horseman (the horse is lacking) discovered recently at the French excavations at Volubilis in Morocco. This almost perfectly preserved work has been referred to the first half of the fifth century B. C.[1989] The position of the hands holding the reins reminds us strongly of the Delphi Charioteer (Fig. 66). The diadem in the hair shows that a victor is represented. A small bronze statuette in the Loeb collection in Munich represents a boy riding a prancing horse, which is standing on its hind legs. This vigorous, but poorly finished, work is decorative in character and probably once belonged to the crown of a candelabrum. It appears to be either an Etruscan or early Roman work based on a Hellenistic original.[1990]

THE APOBATES HORSE-RACE.

In a previous section we discussed the apobates chariot-race run at the Panathenaic games in Athens, in which the apobates leaped down and ran to the goal abreast of the chariot. We shall now briefly speak of a similar race at Olympia (the κάλπη) in which the rider leaped from his mare in the last lap and ran with her to the goal.[1991] There is no certain illustration in sculpture or on vase-paintings of this race, but Gardiner believes that something like it appears on coins of Tarentum, on which a nude youth, armed with a small round shield, is represented in the act of jumping from his horse.[1992] The military character of this race, like that of the apobates chariot-race discussed, is shown by the shield held in the left hand of the dismounting horseman. Helbig has shown that the Greek knight of the sixth century B. C. was merely a mounted infantryman, the successor of the Homeric warrior who used his chariot merely for pursuit or flight, while actually fighting from the ground.[1993] Just so the knight rode to battle on his horse, but dismounted when near the enemy, leaving the horse in charge of his squire, as the Homeric chieftain left his chariot in charge of his charioteer. This old custom of the heroic age survived not only in the Panathenaic chariot-race, but also, for a few years in the fifth century B. C., in the Olympic mare-race known as the κάλπη. It seems to have been instituted there for military reasons in order to revive the old form of fighting that had gone out of use just at the close of the sixth century B. C., but it endured for only a half century, from Ols. 71 to 84 (= 496 to 444 B. C.). The corresponding chariot-race at Athens and elsewhere continued at least to the end of the fourth century B. C.

DEDICATIONS OF MUSICAL VICTORS AT OLYMPIA AND ELSEWHERE.

In closing this chapter we shall say a few words about monuments erected to trumpeters, heralds, and musical victors at Olympia, though such contests had nothing to do with athletics.

Contests for trumpeters and heralds were held in many parts of Greece.[1994] They were introduced at Olympia in Ol. 96 (= 396 B. C.), when Timaios of Elis won as trumpeter and Krates of Elis as herald.[1995] Pausanias mentions an altar, near the entrance to the stadion, upon which trumpeters and heralds stood when competing.[1996] Such contests seem to have been mere displays of lung power. Herodoros, for example, who won as trumpeter at Olympia ten times in the last quarter of the fourth and beginning of the third century B. C.[1997], could blow two trumpets at once so loud that no one could stand near him.[1998] To perform such a feat he was said to be a very large man.[1999] Diogenes, son of Dionysios of Ephesos, won five victories in trumpeting at Olympia. He was twice periodonikes and also won many other victories at the Isthmus, Nemea, and elsewhere—eighty in all.[2000] We have an excellent bronze statuette of a trumpeter, which was found in the Hieron of Athena Chalkioikos at Sparta, dating from the middle of the fifth century B. C., about a century and a half before the event was introduced at Olympia.[2001] This “little masterpiece of Spartan art,” whose style resembles that of the Olympia pediment sculptures, represents a nude man standing, the left arm hanging by his side, while the right is bent upwards to the mouth, where it held a tubular object pointing upwards. Since the lips are tightly compressed, Dickins has interpreted the object as a trumpet. A much damaged bronze statuette in the British Museum represents a man playing on a long trumpet-shaped instrument.[2002] Trumpeters also appear now and then on r.-f. Attic vases of the middle of the fifth century B. C.

Music victors played a greater role at Delphi than elsewhere, since music from the first was the chief interest there. Monuments to such victors, though few in number, by little-known artists were set up there, but they seem to have enjoyed the same meagre honor at Delphi as the statues of athletic victors.[2003] We have record of a statue of the Epizephyrian Locrian kitharoidos Eunomos, set up in his native town in honor of his Pythian victory over Ariston of Rhegion. Timaios says that this monument showed a cicada seated on the singer’s lyre.[2004] Whether such monuments at Delphi or elsewhere were regarded as victor or votive in character, we can not say.[2005] Pausanias mentions several statues of poets and musicians, mostly mythical, on Mount Helikon, which were set up partly in consequence of victories won there or elsewhere.[2006] Of these the statue of the Thracian or Odrysian Thamyris was represented as a blind man holding a broken lyre;[2007] that of Arion of Methymna as riding a dolphin;[2008] that of Hesiod, seated, as holding a lute on his knees; and that of the Thracian Orpheus with Telete at his side and round about beasts in stone and bronze listening to his song. Of the statue of the Argive Sakadas, Pausanias says that the sculptor, not understanding Pindar’s poem on the victor, made the flutist no bigger than the flute.[2009] The epigram on the statue of the Sikyonian flutist Bacchiadas, mentioned by Athenæus as standing on Mount Helikon,[2010] was votive in character. The inscribed base of the statue of the kitharoidos Alkibios has been found on the Athenian Akropolis.[2011] Musical contests are pictured on many imitation Panathenaic vases, and many Greek reliefs seem to have been set up in honor of such victors. Among the latter we might instance the one in the Louvre representing Apollo, Artemis, and Leto,[2012] and another found in Sparta in 1885, which represents Artemis pouring a libation before Apollo.[2013]

At Olympia flute-playing accompanied certain of the events of the pentathlon. Pausanias says that the reason why the flute played a Pythian air while the athletes jumped was that this air was sacred to Apollo, who had beaten Hermes in running and Ares in boxing at Olympia.[2014] Thus on the chest of Kypselos a flutist was represented as standing between Admetos and Mopsos at their boxing match.[2015] But the explanation given by Philostratos seems more sensible, that leaping was a difficult contest, and that the flute stimulated the jumpers.[2016] At Argos, at the games in honor of Zeus Σθένιος, wrestlers contended to the tune of the flute.[2017] Many vase-paintings illustrate flute-playing at the pentathlon.[2018] At Olympia only a few monuments were set up in honor of musical victors, and these seem to have been statues erected honoris causa, instead of primarily for victories. An example is that of the Sikyonian flutist Pythokritos, who won a victory as αὐλητής in the sixth century B. C.[2019] Pausanias says that his monument was that of a small man with a flute wrought in relief on an inscribed slab. The explanation of such a description probably is that the size of the flute made the victor appear small, just as in the case of the monument of Sakadas just mentioned.[2020] We know that artists, poets, prose writers, musicians, and actors all had an audience at Olympia, and that statues were often erected there in honor of such men, though these are not to be treated as victor monuments and do not properly fall within the scope of the present work.[2021]

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IV. VICTOR STATUES REPRESENTED IN MOTION

V. MONUMENTS OF HIPPODROME AND MUSICAL VICTORS