[Illustration: MARBLE HEAD FROM OLYMPIA. MUSEUM AT OLYMPIA.]
OLYMPIC VICTOR MONUMENTS
AND
GREEK ATHLETIC ART
BY
WALTER WOODBURN HYDE
[Illustration]
PUBLISHED BY THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON, 1921
CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON
PUBLICATION NO. 268
PRESS OF GIBSON BROTHERS, INC.
WASHINGTON, D. C.
PREFACE.
The purpose of the present work is to study what is known of one of
the most important genres of Greek sculpture—the monuments erected
at Olympia and elsewhere in the Greek world in honor of victorious
athletes at the Olympic games. Since only meagre remnants of these
monuments have survived, the work is in the main concerned with the
attempt to reconstruct their various types and poses.
The source-material on which the attempt is based has been indicated
fully in the text; it is of two kinds, literary and archæological. To
the former belong the explanatory inscriptions on the bases of victor
statues found at Olympia and elsewhere, many of which agree verbally
with epigrams preserved in the _Greek Anthologies_; the incidental
statements of various kinds and value found in the classical writers
and their scholiasts; and, above all, the detailed works of the two
imperial writers, the elder Pliny and Pausanias. Pliny’s account of
the Greek artists, which is inserted into his _Historia Naturalis_
as a digression (Books XXXIV-XXXVI)—being artificially joined to the
history of mineralogy on the pretext of the materials used—is, despite
its uncritical and often untrustworthy character, one of our chief
mines of information about Greek sculptors and painters. The portions
of Pausanias’ _Description of Greece_ which deal with Elis and the
monuments of Olympia (Books V-VI), although they also evince little
real understanding of art, are of far more direct importance to our
subject, since they include a descriptive catalogue, doubtless based
upon personal observation, of the greater part of the athlete monuments
set up in the Altis at Olympia, the reconstruction of which is the
chief purpose of the present work.
To the archæological sources, on the other hand, belong, first and
foremost, the remnants of victor statues in stone and metal which have
long been garnered in modern museums or have come to light during the
excavation of the Altis. To this small number I hope I have added at
least one marble fragment found at Olympia, the head of a statue by
Lysippos, the last great sculptor of Greece (Frontispiece and Fig.
69). To this second kind of sources belong also the statue bases just
mentioned, on many of which the extant footmarks enable us to determine
the poses of the statues themselves which once stood upon them.
Furthermore, an intimate knowledge of Greek athletic sculpture in all
its periods and phases is, of course, essential in treating a problem
of this nature. Here, as in the study of Greek sculpture in general,
where the destruction of original masterpieces, apart from the few
well-known but splendid exceptions, has been complete, we are almost
entirely dependent upon second-hand evidence furnished by the numerous
existing antique copies and adaptations of lost originals executed in
marble and bronze by more or less skilled workmen for the Roman market.
Finally, not only are the innumerable statuettes and small bronzes
surviving from antiquity of great value in any attempt to reconstruct
the pose of a given athlete statue, but also the representations
of various athlete figures on every sort of sculptured and painted
work—vase-paintings, wall-paintings, reliefs, gems, coins, etc.
By using all such sources of information, it is possible to attain
tolerable certainty in reconstructing the various types and poses of
these lost monuments, and in identifying schools of athletic sculpture,
masters, and even individual statues. But it must be stated at the
outset that such identifications, from the very nature of the problem,
are at best tentative in character. The attempt to see in Roman copies
certain statues of athletes has often been made by archæologists.
However probable such identifications may seem, we must not forget the
simple fact that up to the present time not a single Roman copy has
been conclusively _proved_ to be that of an Olympic victor statue.
Only as our knowledge of Greek sculpture is gradually extended by
discoveries of additional works of art, and by future researches,
will it be possible to attain an ever greater degree of probability.
The further identification of these important monuments, as that of
masterpieces of Greek sculpture generally, will thus remain one of
the chief problems for the future archæologist. In the present book,
where the body of material drawn upon is so immense and the scientific
writings involved are so voluminous, manifestly the author can lay no
claim to an exhaustive treatment. With due consciousness of the defects
and shortcomings of the work, he can claim only to have made a small
selection of such works of art as will best illustrate the various
types of monuments under discussion.
The plan of the book is easily seen by a glance at the table of
contents. After a preliminary chapter on the origin and development
of Greek athletic games in general and on the custom of conferring
athletic prizes on victors, the more specific subject of the work is
introduced in Chapter II by brief discussions of the more general
characteristics common to Olympic victor statues—their size, nudity,
and hair-fashion, their portrait or non-portrait features, and the
standard of beauty reached by some of them at least, as shown by the
æsthetic judgments of certain ancient writers and by the fragmentary
originals which have survived. The enumeration of these characteristics
is followed by a brief account of the various canons of proportion
assumed to have been used and taught by different schools of sculptors.
The chapter ends with a more extended account of the little-known but
important subject of the assimilation of this class of monuments to
athlete types of gods and heroes.
In Chapters III and IV, which are the most important in developing the
problem of reconstruction, a division has been made into two great
statuary groups: those in which the victor was represented at rest,
where the particular contest was indicated, if indicated at all, by
very general motives or by particular athletic attributes; and those
in which the victor was represented in movement, _i. e._, in the
characteristic pose of the contest in which he won his victory.
Chapter V relates chiefly to the monuments of hippodrome victors, those
in the various chariot-races and horse-races, and ends with a very
brief notice of non-athlete victor dedications—those of musicians.
Chapter VI gives a stylistic analysis of what are conceived to be
two original marble heads from lost victor statues, one of which is
ascribed to Lysippos, the great bronze-founder and art-reformer of
the fourth century B. C., while the other is regarded as an early
Hellenistic work of eclectic tendencies. The publication of these
marble heads and of the oldest-dated victor statue, which is also of
marble and which is discussed in Chapter VII, reinforced by other
evidence adduced in the latter chapter, overthrows the belief that all
victor statues were uniformly made of bronze. The publication of the
Olympia head also controverts the usual assumption of archæologists
that Lysippos worked only in metal. The last chapter is concerned with
a topographical study of the original positions in the Altis of the
various athlete monuments discussed, and with a list of all the victor
monuments known to have been erected outside Olympia in various cities
of the ancient world. These last three chapters are based on papers
which have already appeared in the _American Journal of Archæology_
(Chapters VI, VII, and the first half of VIII) and in the _Transactions
of the American Philological Association_ (the last half of Chapter
VIII). Permission to use them in the present book has been kindly
granted to the author by Dr. James A. Paton, former editor-in-chief
of the _American Journal of Archæology_, and by Professor Clarence P.
Bill, the secretary of the American Philological Association.
Although it has been my aim throughout to present my own views in
regard to the various works of art under discussion, I must, of
course, acknowledge that the book is largely based upon the work and
conclusions of preceding scholars who have treated various phases of
the same subject. It would, however, be unnecessary and even impossible
here to acknowledge all the works laid directly or indirectly under
contribution in the composition of the book. Most of these have been
recorded in the footnotes.
But I wish here to express, in a more general way, my indebtedness
to the standard histories of Greek sculpture, by Brunn, Collignon,
Gardiner, Lechat, Murray, Overbeck, Richardson, and others, which must
form the foundation of the knowledge of any one who writes on any phase
of the subject. Among these, two have been found especially valuable:
Bulle’s _Der schoene Mensch im Altertum_, which is justly noted for
its comprehensive views and sound judgments; and Furtwaengler’s _Die
Meisterwerke der griechischen Plastik_, which, although it has been
known to English readers in its enlarged edition by Miss Eugénie
Sellers for over a quarter of a century, is still prized for its
extensive firsthand knowledge of the monuments and for its brilliant
inductions, even if the latter at times are carried too far.
Perhaps my greatest debt has been to the excellent volume entitled
_Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals_, by E. Norman Gardiner, M. A.,
a scholar whose practical knowledge of modern athletic sports and
wide familiarity with the ancient source material, both literary and
monumental, has well fitted him to deal afresh with the subject treated
so learnedly over three quarters of a century ago in Krause’s _Die
Gymnastik und Agonistik der Hellenen_. I have also constantly drawn
upon Gardiner’s collection of vase-paintings which illustrate athletic
scenes.
I should also note here several other works which have been of great
assistance in writing this book, such as Juethner’s _Ueber antike
Turngeraethe_ and edition of Philostratos’ _de Arte gymnastica_,
Reisch’s _Griechische Weihgeschenke_, Rouse’s _Greek Votive Offerings_,
and Foerster’s _Die Sieger in den Olympischen Spielen_. The
chronological list of victors in the latter compilation was, in large
part, the foundation of my earlier work _de olympionicarum Statuis_.
I have also received most valuable help from the standard catalogues of
modern museums, _e. g._, those by Amelung, Dickins, Helbig, Kabbadias,
Lechat, Richter, de Ridder, Staïs, Svoronos, and especially the
admirable ones of the classical collections in the British Museum. I
regret that, owing to the recent war, some of the latest catalogues,
those especially of the smaller foreign museums, have not been
available.
For illustrative matter, I have made no effort to reproduce merely
striking works of art, but have, for the most part, presented
well-known works which readily illustrate the problems treated in the
text. I have availed myself of collections of photographs kindly placed
at my disposal by Professors Herbert E. Everett of the School of Fine
Arts of the University of Pennsylvania, D. M. Robinson of the Johns
Hopkins University, A. S. Cooley of the Moravian College at Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania, and Dr. Mary H. Swindler of Bryn Mawr College. The
various collections of plates and the books and journals from which I
have taken illustrations are duly noted in the List of Illustrations.
In addition, I wish to thank the following corporations and individuals
for permission to reproduce plates and text-cuts from the works cited:
the Council of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies,
of London, for the use of four plates appearing in the _Journal of
Hellenic Studies_ (Figs. 44, 54, 55, and 59); the Trustees of the
British Museum in London for seven plates from _Marbles and Bronzes
in the British Museum_ (Pls. 7A, 17, 19; Figs. 14, 28, 31, and 35);
Professor E. A. Gardiner and his publishers, Duckworth and Co., of
London, for two plates from _Six Greek Sculptors_ (Pl. 30; Fig. 71);
Mr. H. R. Hall, of the British Museum, and his publisher, Philip Lee
Warner, of London, for one from _Aegean Archæology_ (Fig. 1); Professor
Allan Marquand, of Princeton University, for one text-cut from the
_American Journal of Archæology_ (Fig. 49), and Dr. J. M. Paton,
former editor-in-chief, for three other text-cuts from the same journal
(Figs. 70, 72, 79).
To the following I am also indebted for individual photographs: Dr. J.
N. Svoronos, Director of the Numismatic Museum, Athens, Greece, for
one of the oldest-dated statues of an Olympic victor (Fig. 79), which
has already appeared in the _American Journal of Archæology_; Dr. A.
Fairbanks, of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for those of the statue
of a Charioteer (?) and of the fragmentary head of the _Oil-pourer_ (Pl.
27; Fig. 23); Dr. Edward Robinson, of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, for those of the fine Kresilæan and Praxitelian heads (Pls.
15, 20), and of the bronze statuette of a diskobolos (Fig. 46); Prof.
Alice Walton, of Wellesley College, for one of the Polykleitan athlete
(Pl. 13); the Director of the Fogg Art Museum of Cambridge, Mass., for
that of the so-called _Meleager_ (Fig. 77); Dr. S. B. Luce, recently of
the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, for photographs of two
vase-paintings showing athletic scenes (Figs. 50, 56), and Dr. Eleanor
F. Rambo, formerly of the same Museum, for a copy of the Knossos
wall-painting (Pl. 1).
A word might be added as to the spelling of Greek proper names. Since
consistency in this matter seems unattainable, I have adopted the
method outlined in the _British School Annual_ (XV, 1908-09, p. 402),
whereby the names of persons, places, buildings, festivals, etc., are
transliterated from the Greek forms, except those which have become a
part of the English language. But even here I have sometimes deviated
from the practice of using familiar English forms.
In abbreviations of the names of journals (see pages XVI-XIX) I have
largely conformed with the usage long recommended by the _American
Journal of Archæology._
For convenience in identifying the many works of art, discussed or
mentioned in the text and foot-notes, I have constantly referred to
well-known collections of plates, such as those of Brunn-Bruckmann,
Bulle, Rayet, and von Mach. For further convenience, I have also in
most cases referred to the outline drawings of statues in Reinach’s
_Répertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine_, and in some cases
to the older ones found in Clarac’s _Musée de sculpture antique et
moderne_, and in Mueller and Wieseler’s _Denkmaeler der alten Kunst_.
In closing, I have the pleasant duty of thanking generally the many
friends who have given me valuable suggestions and assistance,
especially Professor Lane Cooper, of Cornell University, for reading
the proof-sheets of the entire work, and Professor Alfred Emerson, now
of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, my former teacher, for revising the list
of _Corrigenda_.
WALTER WOODBURN HYDE.
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
_Philadelphia, October, 1921._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
EARLY GREEK GAMES AND PRIZES 1-42
Sports in Crete 1
Athletics in Homer 7
Origin of Greek Games in the Cult of the Dead 9
Early History of the Four National Games 14
Early Prizes for Athletes 18
Dedication of Athlete Prizes 21
Dedication of Statues at Olympia and Elsewhere 24
Honors Paid to Victors by their Native Cities 32
Votive Character of Victor Dedications 37
Miscellaneous Memorials to Victors 40
Honorary Statues 41