Since the discovery of these groups by an international party of

Englishmen and Germans in 1811, and their restoration soon after their

arrival in Munich by the sculptor Thorwaldsen, many new fragments

have been discovered by Furtwaengler during his excavations of

the temple site in 1901, and have been incorporated into the

existing figures in the Glyptothek. His reconstruction, though not

definitive, is more in accord with artistic probability than any that

preceded.[962] As we should expect from the athletic tradition of the

Aeginetan school of sculpture just outlined, these sculptures represent

finely trained nude athletes, whose modeling shows great observation of

nature, especially in the treatment of muscles and veins. In fact it

has been truly said that anatomical knowledge was never expressed again

in Greek art so simply and naturally. The figures, without any excess

of flesh, are slightly under life-size, short and stocky—shoulders

square, but the waists slender and the legs long in proportion to the

bodies—and withal are very compact and full of strength. The figures

of the two pediments differ slightly, the eastern being more developed

than the western. Brunn, long ago, arguing from the stele of Aristion,

which then was the best example extant of archaic Attic art, showed

how that art was characterized by grace and dignity of effect, while

Aeginetan art was characterized by a finer study of nature. This

generalization is no longer a matter of inference, but of knowledge.

[Illustration: FIG. 21.—Two Figures, from the West Pediment of the

Temple on Aegina. Glyptothek, Munich.]

These groups represent the highest period of Aeginetan art. They

have been dated anywhere from the end of the sixth century B. C.

down to a period after the battle of Salamis.[963] Probably a date

just after that battle is correct, as Aeginetans won prizes of valor

there.[964] Any attempt to assign them to this or that artist is merely

conjectural. The general similarity in subject to that of the Delphi

group by Onatas, which represented the death in battle of Opis, the

king of the barbarian Iapygians, at the hands of the Tarentines,[965]

and the group at Olympia already mentioned as representing a Trojan

subject, led earlier scholars to assign the slightly more advanced

statues of the East Pediment to Onatas and the more archaic ones of

the West Pediment to Kallon. But we know both these sculptors only as

bronze workers. The violent action of some of the figures reminds us

at once of Pausanias’ description of the statue of the boxer Glaukos

by the sculptor Glaukias, which we have already mentioned. But on

the whole, though they are violent, the slight proportions of these

athletic figures do not fit the appearance of boxers and pancratiasts,

which, as we have seen, formed the staple of Aeginetan sculptors, but

rather those of runners. We see a good wrestler in the _Snatcher_ of

the East Gable (Fig. 20),[966] and the corresponding figure in the

right half of the same gable.[967] The _Champion_ of the West gable

(Fig. 21, left),[968] of the finest Parian marble, represented as

lunging forward, pressing on the enemy armed with helm, spear, and

shield, would pass as a good example of a hoplitodrome, far freer and

more individual than the warrior from Dodona.

ATTIC SCULPTORS.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.—Archaic Marble Head of a Youth. Jakobsen

Collection, Ny-Carlsberg Museum, Copenhagen.]

Owing to the Persian sack of the Athenian Akropolis in 480 and 479

B. C., and the subsequent burial of works of art there and their

rediscovery by the excavations of 1885-1889, we know more of archaic

Attic sculpture (600-480 B. C.) than of any other early school.[969]

We have already mentioned certain Attic works which show the influence

of the severer Argive school—_la petite boudeuse_, the head of the

yellow-haired ephebe (Fig. 18), the Akropolis athlete statue (Fig. 17),

etc.—which was prominent at the beginning of the fifth century B. C.,

works which can be attributed to Hegias, Kritios, and their associates.

They illustrate the reaction against Ionic taste, an influence which

came from Asia Minor and the islands, especially after the fall of the

Lydian Empire of Crœsus, and which for a time submerged native Attic

art. This Ionic art was characterized by great technical ability, and

by rich draperies and decorative effect. The archaic smile was its

special feature. Ionism is best represented by some of the Akropolis

_Korai_.[970] In athletic art we see Ionism at its flood tide in

the Rampin head found in Athens in 1877, now in the Louvre, which

corresponds in style with some of the earlier female statues of the

Akropolis.[971] This head has a more elaborate frisure than any of the

female heads and, in fact, the elaborate treatment of the hair of the

crown and forehead is more suitable to a female than a male statue.

The beard is carefully plaited, while traces of red seem to show that

the mustache was painted on. Similar traces of color appear on the

beard and hair. The smiling mouth, high ears, and almond eyes recall

many archaic works, but especially the _Apollo of Tenea_ (Pl. 8A). The

garland of oak leaves above the frisure of the forehead may suggest

a victor,[972] or perhaps a priest or assistant on some religious

embassy.[973] The turning of the neck—as in the ephebe statue of the

Akropolis (Fig. 17)—shows a break at this early time with archaism.

Another work illustrating Ionism is the fragment of a grave-stele

found near the Dipylon gate in 1873 and dating from the second half

of the sixth century B. C.[974] It represents the head of an athlete

in profile, the youth holding a diskos in his left hand, so placed

that his head is projected upon it in relief as on a nimbus. The top

of the head is broken off, but we see the usual archaic features in

the face—the almond-shaped eye (in profile), big nose with knob-like

nostrils, thick lips with the archaic smile, retreating chin and

forehead, and high ear with a huge lobe. The neck and chin, however,

are full of grace and strength, as is also the slender thumb outlined

against the diskos. As the stele broadens downward,[975] the figure

appears to have been represented with the feet apart, and so may have

represented a palæstra diskobolos on parade,[976] and is, therefore,

our earliest representation of such an athlete. A similar dress-parade

pose is seen on the stele of Aristion in the National Museum at Athens,

the work of the sculptor Aristokles, which represents a warrior with

a spear in the left hand.[977] Another torso of an ephebe in the

Akropolis Museum represents Ionic work from Paros.[978] Another head,

the so-called Rayet head in the Jakobsen collection in Copenhagen, one

of the most remarkable specimens of Greek archaic art[979] (Fig. 22),

somewhat later in date than the Rampin head, represents quite a different

tendency in Attic art. While the Rampin head represents Ionic

influence, this head represents pure Attic work untrammeled by foreign

influence, a true development of the old Attic sculpture in _poros_,

the best examples of which are to be found in the decorative sculptures

of the Old Temple of Athena on the Akropolis, enlarged by the

Peisistratidai. Comparing it with the head of the _Athena_ of the gable

of that temple,[980] we see great similarity in the simple execution

and reserve in the treatment of details—characteristics of pure Attic

sculpture—especially in the deep lines on either side of the mouth in

the Jakobsen head. The hair is pictorially treated like a cap, traces

of red appearing on it as well as on the lips and eyes. The Copenhagen

and Rampin heads, together with the famous portrait head in the old

Sabouroff collection,[981] and the head of a woman in the Louvre,[982]

form our best examples of old Attic art outside of the museums of

Athens.[983] The swollen ears of the Jakobsen head show that it is from

the funerary statue of a victor, perhaps a boxer. Furtwaengler wrongly

classed it as a portrait head.[984] A much discussed Attic work is the

archaic relief of a charioteer in the Akropolis Museum (Fig. 63).[985]

This was formerly thought (_e. g._, by Schrader) to be a block from the

later Ionic frieze of the old Hekatompedon which many believe survived

the Persian sack, but it is more likely a part of a frieze belonging

to a small shrine or altar. It represents a draped person entering a

two-horse chariot with the left foot, the hands outstretched to hold

the reins, the head and body leaning forward. Because of the _krobylos_

treatment of the hair, fitted for both sexes, and the long flowing

robe, the sex has been needlessly doubted, some calling it an Apollo or

a mortal charioteer, others an Athena or a Nike, even though the line

of the breast, so far as it is visible, shows no fullness, and the long

chiton is common in representations of male charioteers.[986] However,

for the appreciation of the relief it is of no consequence whether the

figure is male or female. It may be merely a dedicatory offering of

a Panathenaic victor in chariot racing, very possibly assimilated to

the type of Apollo,[987] as the god often appears in vase-paintings of

the same period in similar costume mounting a chariot.[988] We shall

discuss its interpretation more fully later on.[989] While Ionism was

prone to represent richly draped figures which concealed the form of

the body, we see in this relief, with its fine modeling, a suggestion

of the form beneath the folds of the garment, and so, perhaps,

only another example of an Attic master rebelling against alien

influence.[990]

At Olympia we have no names of Athenian sculptors prior to the Persian

war period. Kalamis helped Onatas with the monument of King Hiero

already mentioned. Mikon made a statue of a pancratiast, Kallias of

Athens, who won in Ol. 77 (= 472 B. C.).[991] The great Myron, of whom

we shall speak at length in the next chapter, made five statues of

victors, which were erected between Ols. 77 and 84 (= 472 and 444 B.

C.).[992] Only four later Athenian artists are mentioned: Silanion of

the fourth century, who made statues for three victors, whose victories

ranged from Ols. 102 to 114 (= 372 to 324 B. C.);[993] Polykles the

Elder, who made the statue of the boy pancratiast Amyntas of Eresos,

who won in Ol. (?) 146 (= 196 B. C.);[994] Timarchides and Timokles,

the sons of Polykles, who in common made the statue of the boxer

Agesarchos of Tritaia in Achaia, who won in Ol. (?) 143 (= 208 B.

C.)[995]

GENERAL MOTIVES OF STATUES AT REST.

The victor represented as standing at rest was often characterized

by general motives, such as praying, anointing or scraping himself,

offering libations, and the like. We shall now consider such motives in

detail.

ADORATION AND PRAYER.

Prayer was a common motive represented in votive monuments. Pliny

mentions many such works by Greek sculptors.[996] The custom of

raising the arms in prayer is found all through Greek literature,

from Homer down.[997] Pausanias says that the people of Akragas made

an offering in the form of bronze statues of boys placed on the walls

of the Altis, προτείνοντάς τε τὰς δεξιὰς καὶ εἰκασμένους εὐχομένοις

τῷ θεῷ, these statues being the work of Kalamis.[998] In the Athenian

Asklepieion there were many τύποι καταμακτοὶ πρὸς πινακίῳ, among which

were representations of men and women in the praying attitude.[999]

The motive was used at Olympia in victor statues, representing the

victor as raising the hand in prayer to invoke victory.[1000] The

statue of the wrestler Milo, already discussed at length, shows that

this motive was employed at Olympia in the improved “Apollo” type in

the second half of the sixth century B. C.[1001] From the next century

we may cite the statue of the Spartan chariot victor Anaxandros, which

was represented as “praying to the god,”[1002] and the statues of the

Rhodian boxers Diagoras and Akousilaos, as we learn from a scholion on

Pindar,[1003] which is based on a fragment of Aristotle[1004] and on

one of Apollas.[1005] Of the statue of Diagoras it says: τὴν δεξιὰν

ἀνατείνων χεῖρα, τὴν δὲ ἀριστερὰν εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἐπικλίνων; of that of

Akousilaos: τῇ μὲν ἀριστερᾷ ἱμάντα ἔχων πυκτινόν, τὴν δὲ δεξιὰν

ὡς πρὸς προσευχὴν ἀνατείνων.[1006] The bronze statue from Athens, now

in the Antiquarium, Berlin,[1007] which represents a nude boy with the

right hand raised as if in prayer and the left lowered and holding a

leaping-weight—therefore a pentathlete—seems to correspond with this

description of the statue of Akousilaos. The same motive may have been

used in the statue of the chariot victress Kyniska, a princess of

Sparta, whose statue along with that of her charioteer and the chariot

was the work of the sculptor Apellas.[1008] This is the interpretation

of Furtwaengler,[1009] based on a passage in Pliny, which mentions

statues of _adornantes se feminas_[1010] by Apellas, which he reads

_adorantes feminas_. However, _adornantes_ may be right, for in another

passage, Pliny speaks of Praxiteles’ statue of a ψελιουμένη, _i. e._,

of a woman clasping a bracelet on her arm.[1011] Two notable bronze

statues will illustrate this motive of Olympic victor statues. The

statue found in 1502 at Zellfeld in Carinthia, now in Vienna,[1012] has

been interpreted both as a Hermes Logios and a votive statue in the

attitude of prayer,[1013] which latter interpretation the inscription

on the leg, giving a list of dedications,[1014] favors. However,

Furtwaengler believes it a free imitation of an Argive victor statue,

though not in the Polykleitan style. Because of its similarity to

the _Idolino_ (Pl. 14), he has ascribed its original to the sculptor

Patrokles. From technical considerations he believes it is not a Greek

original dedicated by Romans of a later period, but a Roman work (after

Patrokles) of the period of the inscription.[1015] The bronze statue of

the _Praying Boy_ in Berlin[1016] (Pl. 10) is one of our most beautiful

Greek bronzes and comes from the circle of Lysippos.[1017] We now know

that the uplifted arms of this statue, in which most scholars saw the

Greek attitude of prayer, are restorations which were probably made in

the time of Louis XIV, when the statue was in France. Of the original

motive we only can say that the action of the shoulders shows that

both arms were raised, but we do not know how far, or the position of

the hands. Monumental evidence shows that the hands in prayer should

have the palms turned away from the face instead of upwards, as in

the present statue, since the Greek position was the outgrowth of an

old apotropaic gesture, _i. e._, one directed against an evil spirit.

Mau’s idea[1018] that the figure represented a player catching a

ball is certainly inconsistent with the calm attitude of the statue.

Furtwaengler rejected it,[1019] and he has restored the arms and hands

on the basis of a Berlin gem[1020] and an _ex voto_ relief found by

the French excavators at Nemea in 1884.[1021] On this relief a youth

crowned with a woolen fillet is represented. On both relief and gem

the figures are in the same attitude, the arms raised over the head

_manibus supinis_, which confirms the restoration of the Berlin statue.

Many other monuments give the more usual attitude of prayer, not as

in the relief and gem discussed, but with only one hand extended as

high as the breast. Older writers thought that such monuments did not

represent the gesture of adoration, but one of _adlocutio_,[1022] an

opinion disproved by Pausanias’ statement about the bronze statues of

the Akragantines at Olympia, already mentioned. We may cite a relief

from Kleitor, now in Berlin,[1023] and a fine one of the fourth century

B. C. from Lamia (?),[1024] as well as a red-figured Etruscan stamnos

in Vienna representing, probably, Ajax praying before committing

suicide.[1025] We shall mention also two little statuettes in New York

which represent youths in the praying attitude.[1026] The first, dating

from the second half of the fifth century B. C., and showing

Polykleitan influence, represents a nude youth standing erect with the

forearms bent, showing that the two hands were extended in prayer. The

second, which dates from the first half of the fifth century B. C.

(after the date of the Myronian _Diskobolos_), represents a nude youth

standing with the right hand raised to the lips in an attitude usual in

saluting a divinity, while the left is by the side, with the palm to

the front.

[Illustration: PLATE 10

Bronze Statue of the _Praying Boy_. Museum of Berlin.]

ANOINTING.

Various familiar motives from the everyday life of the gymnasium

and palæstra were reproduced in the statues of athletes. One of the

commonest methods was to represent the victor anointing his body with

oil. The use of oil was indispensable in all athletic exercises,

in order to make the body and limbs more supple, and especially in

wrestling and the pankration, to make it difficult for one’s antagonist

to get a grip.[1027] Pliny mentions a painting by Theoros, representing

a man _se inunguentem_,[1028] which appears to have been a votive

portrait of an athlete. The motive was common in vase-paintings and

statuary. Several red-figured vases of the severe style, antedating

the statues to be considered, show from realistic representations of

palæstra scenes that it was customary for athletes to hold a round

aryballos high in the right hand and pour oil from it into the left,

which was placed across the body horizontally.[1029] The same motive

appears with variations in statues.[1030] Thus the statue of an ephebe

in Petworth House, Sussex, England,[1031] a statue, as Furtwaengler

says, to be praised more for its excellent preservation than for its

workmanship, represents an athlete, who holds a globular aryballos in

his right hand raised over the shoulder, while the left arm is held

across the abdomen. On the nearby tree-trunk are small cylindrical

objects which seem to be boxing pads. This statue, and especially its

head, have been regarded by Michaelis and Furtwaengler as unmistakably

Polykleitan in style.[1032] Several other copies of original statues

representing athletes pouring oil have been wrongly classed as replicas

of one original,[1033] though they merely have essential features

alike, due chiefly to the subject. First is the famous statue in the

Glyptothek known as the _Oelgiesser_ (_Oil-pourer_), a Roman copy of an

Attic bronze of about the middle of the fifth century B. C. (Pl.

11).[1034] Though the right arm and left hand are lost, it is clear

that the athlete held in his raised right hand an oil flask, as in

the Petworth statue.[1035] Notwithstanding that the head resembles

the Praxitelian _Hermes_,[1036] this does not show that the statue

is of fourth-century origin, for its original is older; it merely

shows that the art of Praxiteles was deeply rooted in that of his

fifth-century predecessors. Because of its Attic affiliations, Klein

tried to identify it with the Ἐγκρινόμενος of Alkamenes mentioned by

Pliny,[1037] by amending that title to Ἐγχριόμενος, the “Anointer.”

Brunn, however, rightly saw the analogy of the body forms to Myron’s

_Marsyas_,[1038] and Furtwaengler and Bulle have ascribed it to Lykios,

the son and pupil of that master, who worked about 440 B. C., the

approximate date of the original of the statue. A fragmentary head in

the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Fig. 23),[1039] formerly in private

possession in England, is a copy of the same original as the Munich

statue. Its special interest is that it is not an exact copy of the

original, as the Munich statue is, but a freer one, showing a fuller

mouth, fleshier cheeks, and deeper-set eyes. While the Munich statue

is the dry work of a Roman copyist of Augustus’ time, this head is by

a far abler Greek copyist of the second century B. C. A torso in the

Albertinum in Dresden, without a head,[1040] is similar to the

Munich statue, but hardly a replica. It probably goes back to an

original by an Attic master of the end of the fifth or beginning of

the fourth century B. C. Other under life-size statues related to this

torso show the same motive.[1041] A black-marble statue found at Porto

d’Anzio in 1758, and now in the Glyptothek,[1042] has the Polykleitan

standing motive. The left arm, which is stretched out, holds an oil

flask in the hand, while the right arm is lowered. The band, which

the position of the fingers shows that the right hand probably held,

indicates it is the statue of a victor. A bronze statuette from South

Italy, now in the British Museum,[1043] represents a nude youth holding

an alabastron in his right hand, while the left has the palm open to

receive the oil. The hair fashion (κρωβύλος) seems to point to an

Attic sculptor of about 470 B. C.[1044] The same motive is found on

terra-cotta statuettes from Myrina,[1045] on reliefs,[1046] and on

gems.[1047]

[Illustration: FIG. 23.—Head of so-called _Oil-pourer_. Museum of Fine

Arts, Boston.]

[Illustration: PLATE 11

Statue of the so-called _Oil-pourer_. Glyptothek, Munich.]

OIL-SCRAPING.

Another ordinary palæstra motive was employed in representing the

athlete after the contest, scraping oil and dirt from his body and

arms with the scraping-blade or strigil (στλεγγίς, _strigilis_).[1048]

This motive is not uncommon on r.-f. vase-paintings of the fifth

century B. C.[1049] It was treated in sculpture by many masters. Pliny

mentions such statues of athletes _destringentes se_ (ἀποξυόμενοι),

by Polykleitos, Lysippos, and Daidalos of Sikyon.[1050] Perhaps

the _perixyomenoi_ by Antignotos and Daïppos, the latter the son

of Lysippos, had the same motive.[1051] Of the _Apoxyomenos_ of

Polykleitos we have no authenticated copies in sculpture, though

Furtwaengler believes that he has found reminiscences of it on gems

which represent a youth resting the weight of his body on the left

leg, the right being drawn back (_i. e._, in the attitude of the

_Doryphoros_), the right forearm extended, and the left holding a

strigil. The similarity of these gem-designs makes it certain that

they are all derived from a well-known work of art.[1052] Perhaps the

fine bronze statuette, dating from the middle of the fifth century B.

C., and now in the Loeb collection in Munich, represents the pose of

the _destringens se_ by Polykleitos.[1053] It represents a nude youth

resting the weight of the body on the soles of both feet, the left one

slightly advanced, and holding a strigil in the raised right hand.

The famous marble copy of an _Apoxyomenos_ in the Vatican[1054] (Pl.

29), which, because of its long slim legs and graceful ankles, might

well represent a runner, has long been held to represent the canon

of Lysippos, as it exhibits proportions widely different from those

employed by Polykleitos, and agreeing with Pliny’s account of Lysippos’

innovations.[1055] However, the doubts arising in recent years as to

whether this statue is a copy of Lysippos’ statue or a later work will

be considered at length in Chapter VI.[1056]

[Illustration: PLATE 12

Statue of an _Apoxyomenos_. Uffizi Gallery, Florence.]

The same motive is exemplified by many existing statues, statuettes,

reliefs, etc. The marble statue of an athlete in the Uffizi, Florence,

(Pl. 12),[1057] a copy of an original of the end of the fifth century

B. C., wrongly restored as holding in both hands a vase at which

the athlete is looking down, was interpreted by Bloch as an ephebe

pouring oil from a lekythos held in the right hand into an aryballos

held in the left. This action for an athlete has been characterized

by Furtwaengler as “unparallelled, unclassical and, above all,

absurd.” Through recent discoveries we now know that it represents an

apoxyomenos, and that it should be restored with the left forearm close

to the thigh, and with the right crossing the abdomen diagonally in

the direction of the left hand. This attitude so closely corresponds

with that of a figure on a gem as to make it probable that both gem and

statue are copies of the same original. The figure on the gem[1058]

holds a strigil in both hands and is generally explained as scraping

the dirt from the left thigh; the light hand holds the handle and the

left the blade. A hydria, palm-branch, and crown are pictured to the

right—showing that the figure represents an athlete, just as the statue

has the swollen ears of one. The attention of the athlete in both

monuments is concentrated on the operation involved—a concentration

reminding us of Myron’s _Diskobolos_. While, however, in the latter

work the concentration is momentary, it is less transient in the

Florence statue and also in the Munich _Oil-pourer_. This pose is too

conscious in the Florentine statue to be the work of Myron. Arndt names

no artist, but as the similarity between the head of the statue and

that of the _Oil-pourer_ is so marked, and as every one now regards the

latter as Attic—even if not by Alkamenes—he thinks that the two must

be by the same Attic sculptor, although the Uffizi statue is somewhat

later than the Munich one.[1059] The original of the Florence statue

was famous, if we may judge by the existing number of replicas with

variations.[1060]

Among statues showing the same motive and pose, we may note the

bronze statue of an athlete over life-size—pieced together from 234

fragments—found by the Austrians at Ephesos and now in Vienna.[1061]

The subject, pose, and heavy proportions recall the Argive school

of Polykleitos, and its original has been assigned by Hauser to the

Sikyonian Daidalos, the son and pupil of Patrokles, who was the pupil

of Polykleitos. As further reproductions of the same type of figure, we

may cite a bronze statuette in Paris,[1062] and a marble one found at

Frascati in 1896 and now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.[1063]

A chalcedony scarab of archaic type in the British Museum represents

a nude athlete with a lekythos slung over the left arm and a strigil

in the left hand, which rests on the hip.[1064] A beautiful marble

grave-relief, much mutilated, in the museum at Delphi,[1065] which

dates from the middle of the fifth century B. C., represents a palæstra

victor, with his arms extended to the right, cleansing himself with a

strigil, which is held in the right hand, while a slave boy, holding

the remnant of an aryballos in his right hand, looks up at him from

the right. The careful anatomy of this relief may point to Pythagoras

of Samos, as its author, though we have no certain work of his, for it

fits the description of that artist by Pliny, who says that he was the

first to express sinews and veins.[1066]

LIBATION-POURING.

[Illustration: PLATE 13

Statue of an Athlete, after Polykleitos. Farnsworth Museum, Wellesley

College, U. S. A.]

[Illustration: FIG. 24.—Bronze Statuette of an Athlete. Louvre, Paris.]

An original Greek bronze statuette in Paris (Fig. 24)[1067] reproduces

the motive of the statue of the boy wrestler Xenokles by the sculptor

Polykleitos Minor at Olympia, as a comparison with the footprints on

the recovered base of the latter shows.[1068] As the forms correspond

with those of the _Doryphoros_ and _Diadoumenos_, and as its execution

is so marvelous, Furtwaengler has ascribed the statuette to the

circle of Polykleitos’ pupils. The position of the right hand, which

has the thumbs drawn in, corresponds with that of the _Idolino_ (Pl.

14), which we are to discuss, and can best be explained by assuming

that it similarly held a kylix; the left hand carried a staff-like

attribute. The head is bent and looks to the right. Furtwaengler

believed that, inasmuch as the act of pouring a libation does not occur

in art or literature as an athletic motive, the statuette represented a

hero or god. Many Roman marble copies show the same motive and preserve

to us a Polykleitan work which corresponds in all essentials with the

Louvre statuette.[1069] We mention two, the only ones of the type in

which the heads are on the trunks, one in the Galleria delle Statue

of the Vatican,[1070] the other in the Farnsworth Museum at Wellesley

College (Pl. 13).[1071] These copies represent a youth standing with

both feet flat upon the ground, the weight of the body resting upon the

right one, while the left is turned a little to the side. He is looking

downwards to the right. Doubtless we should restore these copies after

the Paris bronze, with a kylix in the right hand. The palm-branch

in a similar statue, to be mentioned further on, shows that in all

probability the origin statue was that of an athlete; and that he was

a famous athlete is shown by the number of copies of the torso and

head.[1072] A bronze head from Herculaneum (Fig. 25)[1073] so strongly

resembles in its forms the type under discussion—which Furtwaengler has

called the “Vatican athlete standing at rest”[1074]—and corresponds

with it so closely in its measurements, that it might be regarded as

a copy of the same original, if certain differences, not due to the

copyist, did not rather show that it comes from a closely allied work.

This head shows an intense melancholy, which has been explained by

Furtwaengler as due to the lack of skill on the part of the copyist,

who fashioned it slightly askew. Amelung very properly explains the

absence of the motive of libation-pouring in athletic art as merely

a lacuna in our sources.[1075] If the original of these copies and

variations represented an athlete, he was certainly pouring a libation

before victory; if a warrior, he was doing the same thing before going

on a campaign. In the latter case the left hand should be restored with

a spear.

[Illustration: FIG. 25.—Bronze Head of an Athlete, from Herculaneum.

Museum of Naples.]

We must also place here the life-size original Greek bronze in

Florence, discovered at Pesaro, near Ancona, in 1530, and known from

the early eighteenth century as the _Idolino_ (Pl. 14),[1076] for its

motive connects it with the series just discussed. This is, perhaps,

our finest bronze statue from antiquity, as it represents the highest

ideal of boy beauty, just as the _Doryphoros_ does of manly beauty.

The chief characteristics—the positions of the feet, head, and arms,

though essentially those of the statues discussed, offer certain

differences. Thus the left leg is placed more to one side and turned

further outwards than in the statue of Xenokles and kindred works;

the left hand hangs down at an angle to the leg differently from the

others. In other words, by comparing it with the Paris statuette,

we see a slightly different rhythm from that found in Polykleitan

works. The _Idolino_ has been looked upon as Myronic by Kekulé,[1077]

Studniczka,[1078] and hesitatingly Klein,[1079] while Mahler regarded

it as Pheidian.[1080] Furtwaengler, however, by a careful analysis, has

shown its Polykleitan characteristics—especially the shape of the head

and the features, and the treatment of the hair, which reminds us of

the Naples copy of the _Doryphoros_. Owing to differences, however, he

did not assign it to the master himself, but suggested that it was the

work of his pupil Patrokles.[1081] Bulle found the head Polykleitan,

but the body Attic, and assigned the figure to an unknown Attic

sculptor working in the Polykleitan circle. In this controversy on its

style, a statue found in 1916 in the excavations of the Baths at Kyrene

should be of use, for it is the most faithful of all the Roman copies

known of the bronze original and clearly shows a Polykleitan character

influenced by Attic art.[1082] By a comparison of this marble copy

with the Florentine bronze we see that the latter was a subsequent

rendition of the same original, and doubtless by some artist of lesser

fame from the Polykleitan school, who was influenced by Attic art.

But it is the interpretation of the _Idolino_ which chiefly interests

us here. While Longpérier called the similar Paris statuette a _Mercure

aptère_, and the publisher of the statue from Kyrene called that copy a

_Hermes_, yet Kekulé, Bulle, and most other archæologists have seen in

the _Idolino_ an athlete. The inner surface of its outstretched right

hand is left rough, and the fingers are in the same position as those

of the Paris bronze. Such a position can be explained satisfactorily by

restoring the hand with a kylix or a φιάλη, such as was commonly used

in libations. The left hand is smooth and evidently empty, though Bulle

restores it with a victor’s fillet, and so, following Kekulé, calls the

statue that of a boy victor, who is bringing an offering to the altar

in honor of his victory. The marble statue in the Galleria delle Statue

has the right forearm restored; in the Kyrene statue the right hand

is preserved and has a thick object held downwards at a greater angle

than in the _Idolino_. The photograph does not let us judge decisively,

but it seems to be too thick an object for the remnants of a kylix.

A marble statue in the Barberini Palace, Rome,[1083] which resembles

the _Idolino_ so closely as to be considered a copy of it, though with

variations of pose and technique, has the arms broken off, and so adds

nothing to the solution of the motive of the _Idolino_. The fact that

a palm-stem stands beside the right leg, however, adds weight to the

interpretation as victor. Furtwaengler interprets the _Idolino_ and

kindred works as divinities. Though boys serve at libations, he thinks

they never perform the ritual act of pouring the libation.[1084] That

a libation-pourer should appear in the guise of a boy victor (that of

Xenokles) he calls a genuine Argive trait. Svoronos, also, has recently

tried to show that the _Idolino_ is not a victor,[1085] but represents

the hero Herakles. He compares the figure with a fourth-century

Pentelic marble relief in Athens,[1086] which represents Herakles

standing at the door of Hades and beside him a father leading his son

up to the open air. The pose of the figure of Herakles resembles that

of the _Idolino_ in a remarkable way. In the relief Herakles holds

a kylix in the right hand[1087] and a club in the left, and a lion

skin is thrown over the left arm. Svoronos believes that the left

hand in the relief explains the turning in of the left hand of the

_Idolino_—for he believes that the latter also held a club. We must,

however, leave the final solution of the motive of the _Idolino_

and kindred works open, although inclining to the belief that they

represent a victor.

[Illustration: PLATE 14

Bronze Statue known as the _Idolino_. Museo Archeologico, Florence.]

[Illustration: FIG. 26.—Marble Statue of an Athlete(?). National Museum,

Athens.]

A statue in Athens, which was found in 1888 in the Roman ruins at

the Olympieion, may represent a boy victor pouring a libation (Fig.

26).[1088] It is a poor Roman copy, dry and lifeless, of a bronze

original of the middle of the fifth century B. C.[1089] In this

statue Mayer has seen the motive, and probably the copy, of the

_Splanchnoptes_ (Roaster of Entrails) by the sculptor Styphax (or

Styppax) of Cyprus, which, according to Pliny,[1090] represented

Perikles’ slave “roasting entrails and blowing hard on the fire, to

kindle it, till his cheeks swell.” He thinks that the position of the

broken arms and a comparison of the figure with similar ones on vases

make the identification possible. Von Salis concurs in his restoration

and interpretation and publishes a small statuette in Athens from

Dodona,[1091] which has a similar pose, and holds a three-pronged

fork in the left hand, which he believes should be restored in the

statue. Although statue and statuette have much in common (_e. g._, the

position of the breast and shoulders, the treatment of the hair, etc.),

which shows that both may be copies of one original, the conception

of the two is somewhat different. The statue from Athens represents

a boy standing busily engaged at the altar; the statuette represents

one standing at rest merely looking on, the fork not being held in

position for use.[1092] In any case the face of the Athens statue

can not correspond with Pliny’s description—_ignemque oris pleni

spiritu accendens_. Quite a different explanation of the statue is

possible—one which Mayer thought improbable. The right arm—broken above

the wrist—was raised to the height of the shoulder and may have held an

object in the hand; the left arm—broken off below the shoulder—seems

to have been held close to the body and appears to have corresponded

in movement with the other. The boy, therefore, may have held a cup in

the right hand and a branch or a victor fillet in the left. Thus it may

merely be another example of a boy victor pouring a libation.

Certain other statues have been mistaken either for libation-pourers

or oil-pourers, when they are really wine-pourers and have nothing

to do with the athletic motives under discussion. A good example is

the marble statue of a _Satyr_ in Dresden,[1093] which represents the

youthful demi-god lifting a can with his right hand, out of which he

is pouring wine into a drinking-horn held in the left. There are many

copies of this work,[1094] a fact which shows that the original bronze

was famous. An attempt has therefore been made to identify it with the

bronze _Satyr_ of Praxiteles mentioned by Pliny as the _Periboëtos_ or

“far-famed,”[1095] which seems to have been grouped with a _Dionysos_

and a figure of _Drunkenness_—a grouping which might fit the Dresden

_Satyr_, since a second figure should be imagined, for which the horn

is being filled. However, it differs stylistically so much from the

_Hermes_ of Olympia that the ascription has been given up, though its

graceful form shows Praxitelean influence and certainly emanates from

the fourth century B. C.

RESTING AFTER THE CONTEST.

[Illustration: PLATE 15

Marble Head of an Athlete, after Kresilas (?). Metropolitan Museum, New

York.]

A very favorite motive was to represent a victor, either standing or

seated, resting after the exertions of the contest (ἀναπαυόμενος).

An excellent example of this motive in a standing posture is the

fourth-century B. C. statue of Attic workmanship found at Porto d’Anzio

and now in the Vatican,[1096] which reproduces the type of the _Apollo

Lykeios_.[1097] Many of the statues, by various sculptors, which

represent the victor standing at rest may be intended to represent him

as resting after the contest. The well-known head of a youth adorned

with the victor’s chaplet, and preserved in four copies in European

museums, appears to come from a statue which represented a victor in

this manner. The best of these copies is in the collection of Lord

Leconfield at Petworth House, Sussex.[1098] We should add a fifth,

a Roman copy of the head, in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (Pl.

15).[1099] In these copies the ears are not swollen, and a certain

refinement and gentleness show that the original was not from the

statue of a boxer or pancratiast, but from that of another type of

athlete, perhaps a pentathlete. Since Pliny mentions the statue of a

_Doryphoros_ by Kresilas,[1100] and because of its supposed Kresilæan

style, Furtwaengler, albeit on slender grounds, has attempted to

identify the original of these heads with that work.[1101] The

expression is certainly one of complete repose. On the crown of the

head, and on the left side over the fillet, is a rectangular broken

surface,[1102] apparently the remnant of a support for the right arm,

which, as Conze thought, proves that the athlete stood with one arm

resting on the head, the hand hanging over the left side. Furtwaengler

admitted that such an attitude might be that of an apoxyomenos,[1103]

but pointed out that the expression of the face in all the copies seems

too tranquil for such an interpretation. Since the victor was in repose

and the left arm required a slight support, he believed that this

support might have been an akontion. He therefore reconstructed the

original statue as that of a resting pentathlete, and assigned it to

the great Cretan contemporary of Pheidias, who worked in Athens.[1104]

The number of replicas at least shows that the original was a famous

work.

Perhaps our best example of the motive of a seated victor resting after

the contest is the bronze statue of a boxer found in Rome in 1884

and now in the Museo delle Terme there (Pl. 16 and Fig. 27).[1105]

This is a masterpiece in the portrayal of brute strength in the

most naturalistic and revolting way. If we like to think of victors

as having noble forms, we are rudely startled on looking at this

brutal prize-fighter. If we compare it with works of the fifth and

fourth centuries B. C., we see in it, as in no other example of Greek

sculpture, the great change which professionalism had later wrought in

the Greek ideal of athletics. Here are massive proportions, bulging

muscles, arms and legs hard and muscle-bound. We can compare it only

with the bronze head of a boxer found at Olympia (Fig. 61 A and B) of

similar style and age.[1106] But there we have only the head, while

here we have a complete statue almost perfectly preserved, the only

restorations being a portion of the left thumb, a piece of the right

flank, and the base.

[Illustration: FIG. 27.—Head from Statue of the _Seated Boxer_. Museo

delle Terme, Rome.]

[Illustration: PLATE 16

Bronze Statue of the _Seated Boxer_. Museo delle Terme, Rome.]

It represents a professional boxer, who is seated exhausted at the

close of the bout, the severity of which is indicated by every part of

the body. He leans forward, his arms rest on his thighs, and his

head, sunk between his shoulders, is raised and turned to the right,

as he stupidly looks around at the applauding spectators. His nose is

broken and his ears are swollen and scars of the contest show on his

face and limbs. Beneath his retreating upper lip some of his teeth

appear to have been knocked out as the result of previous fights, while

indications of the recent struggle are to be seen in the blood dripping

from his ears and the deep lacerations in face and shoulder, which may

have once been filled with red paint to make his appearance even more

realistic. The right eye is swollen and the lower lid and the cheek

imperceptibly sink into each other. The mustache shows flecks of blood

and the swollen back of the right hand protrudes through the glove. His

nose is clotted with blood and he seems to be struggling to get his

breath.

Such realism and delight in depicting the hideous show that the work,

like the Olympia head, belongs to the Hellenistic age. The careful

workmanship, especially visible in the hair and beard and in the hair

on the chest[1107], proves that the statue is not a Roman copy, but

a Greek original of the beginning of the Hellenistic age, of the end

of the fourth or beginning of the third century B. C. Nor is it a

portrait, as Winter maintained,[1108] since it is an adaptation of a

late type of Herakles. It certainly is a victor statue from one of

the great Greek games, and is, perhaps, from Olympia itself. Since

the head is turned toward the right shoulder and the mouth is open,

as if speaking, Wunderer tried, on the basis of a passage in the

history of Polybios,[1109] to identify it with the statue of the famous

Theban boxer and pancratiast Kleitomachos at Olympia by an unknown

artist.[1110] The historian states that Kleitomachos, while fighting

with the Egyptian Aristonikos, was angered by the acclaim given the

foreigner and, stepping aside, chided the spectators for not cheering

one who was fighting for the honor of Greece. The speech caused a

revulsion in the popular feeling, which helped, even more than the

fists of Kleitomachos, to vanquish Aristonikos. However, the motive of

the statue does not fit the incident, as the boxer is not speaking,

but breathing hard, nor is the seated posture that of one haranguing a

crowd. Moreover, the date of the Theban’s victory is too late for the

statue.[1111]

ATTRIBUTES OF VICTOR STATUES.

At the beginning of the fifth century B. C. athletic training tended

to produce a uniform standard of physical development, which was

reflected in sculpture. At this date we do not find the divergence of

style which we saw in our review of the “Apollo” type of the sixth

century. Vase-paintings show the change better than sculpture. On

black-figured vases of the sixth century B. C., we see a good deal

of variety in groups of boxers and wrestlers, while on red-figured

vases of the early fifth century the number of types is far less.

In sculpture, however, differences in physical type did exist in

the various schools at the beginning of the fifth century. We have,

for example, the heavy, square-shouldered type in the _Apollo

Choiseul-Gouffier_ (Pl. 7A), which we have classed as a victor

statue, and the tall, rawboned type in the _Tyrannicides_ by Kritios

and Nesiotes (Fig. 32, _Harmodios_).[1112] We have, on the other

hand, a very different physical type in the short, stocky Aeginetan

pedimental figures (Figs. 20 and 21). Between such extremes there

are, of course, many gradations. We might instance the archaic

bronze statuette of a diskobolos in the Metropolitan Museum (Fig.

46).[1113] However, notwithstanding the diversity in type, it is

often difficult to distinguish runners from wrestlers, boxers from

pentathletes. Thus few early fifth-century statues show the type of

runner as well as the _Apollo of Tenea_ (Pl. 8A), or that of a boxer

as well as the “_Apollo_” from Delphi (Pl. 8B). The reason for this

is the ideal element, which entered into all these statues and which

was a reflection of the uniform development of athletics long before

specialization had set in. Out of this uniformity grew the canon of

Polykleitos, developed from that of Hagelaïdas.

The sculptor of the sixth century B. C. was incapable of

differentiating between god and mortal. This was especially the case,

as we have seen, with Apollo, as the “Apollo” type was a model of manly

vigor. In the early fifth century the sculptor had largely overcome

this difficulty, but still showed little diversity of type in treating

statues of different kinds of athletes. A method of differentiation

which was essential to athlete sculptors of the sixth century was found

convenient of retention by those of the fifth—_i. e._, characterizing

the statue of the victor by some attribute, in order, on the one hand,

to differentiate it from the nude god or hero, and on the other to

distinguish between different types of victors.

PRIMARY ATTRIBUTES OF VICTOR STATUES.

THE VICTOR FILLET.

In the first place, the sculptor would characterize the victor statue

as such. The easiest way to do this would be to represent it with

a fillet or chaplet (ταινία)[1114] bound round the head, as we saw

was the case in the statue of Milo. This fillet was merely a band

or riband of wool which was given the Olympic victor in addition

to the garland of olive leaves, or the palm-branch, as a symbol of

victory. Waldstein has argued that this fillet originally was not

an essential attribute of the victor, but that the crown and palm

were the prizes, and the fillet merely a decoration used on various

occasions, such as at symposia,[1115] which only later became a general

athletic attribute.[1116] Though the presence of the fillet on statues

should not, therefore, be proof that the given statue is that of a

victor,[1117] there is no defense for the contention of Passow[1118]

that the _tainia_ was in no sense a symbol of victory, but merely a

toilet article among the gifts presented by the public to a victor at

the ovation of the crowning. Pausanias says that the victor Lichas of

Sparta was scourged by order of the umpires at Olympia for having set

the _tainia_ on the head of his victorious charioteer.[1119] This is

sufficient evidence that it was not a mere toilet article, but rather

a part of the official prize of victory. Similarly the _tainia_ in the

hand of Nike upon the right hand of the statue of Zeus by Pheidias at

Olympia can not have been a toilet article.[1120]

We have many examples from athletic sculpture of the use of the fillet.

Thus it appears on the bronze head of a boxer in the Glyptothek (Pl.

3)[1121] and on the bronze head from Herculaneum in Naples (Fig.

4),[1122] both of which have been discussed in Chapter II, as fragments

of Greek original statues of Olympic victors. It also appears on the

marble head of a youthful victor—not necessarily Olympic—from the

Akropolis,[1123] which, because of the similarity in cheeks, mouth,

and eyes to heads on the metopes of the Parthenon, should be dated

somewhere between 450 and 440 B. C. It occurs on the Olympia marble

head (Frontispiece and Fig. 69),[1124] which we ascribe in Chapter VI

to Lysippos, and likewise on the statue of the pancratiast Agias in

Delphi (Pl. 28, Fig. 68). In most athlete heads the fillet is twisted

into a knot at the back of the head. In one case, on the Petworth head

of a pentathlete already discussed,[1125] which, because of the curve

of the neck, must come from a statue represented at rest, it is not

so tied, but is wound round the head with the two ends tucked in and

pushed through the fillet on either side over the temples.[1126] Though

so practical an arrangement as the latter must have been common enough

in real life, this seems to be the only example of its representation

in sculpture.

The fillet, instead of encircling the head, was sometimes held in

the hand, as in the case of the Spartan chariot victor Polykles at

Olympia.[1127] A curious life-size statue of the Roman period, found

in the Peiræus, represents a nude boy holding in his right hand over

the breast a bundle of books and in the left an alabastron. The body is

covered with fillets—fifteen in all—which appear to have been prizes

won in gymnic contests, probably at the gymnasium or palæstra.[1128]

FILLET-BINDERS.

Statues representing victors binding fillets in their hair

(_diadoumenoi_) are common to all periods of Greek art.[1129] We shall

discuss only two—those of Pheidias and of Polykleitos.

[Illustration: PLATE 17

Statue known as the _Farnese Diadoumenos_. British Museum, London.]

Pausanias mentions a statue by Pheidias, representing a _Boy Binding on

a Fillet_, as standing in the Altis at Olympia.[1130] Robert has argued

that this figure was the one of similar motive mentioned by Pausanias

as on the throne of Zeus there.[1131] However, the figure on the throne

was very probably in relief and not in the round.[1132] The cicerones

at Olympia seem to have been imposing on the periegete when they said

that a likeness to Pantarkes, the boy favorite of Pheidias, was to be

seen in the face of this figure on the throne. The mention of Pantarkes

has given rise to the usual identification of the παῖς ἀναδούμενος with

the victor statue of the Elean Pantarkes mentioned by Pausanias

as standing in the Altis.[1133] However, the assumption[1134] is

far-fetched and must be rejected, because Pausanias mentions the two

statues in two different parts of his _periegesis_ of the Altis.[1135]

Of the παῖς we know only the artist’s name. It was probably merely a

votive gift,[1136] and the name of the person so honored was unknown to

Pausanias. Of the statue of the victor Pantarkes we know only the name,

and neither the artist nor the motive of the statue. It seems clear,

therefore, that we have to do with three distinct monuments: the boy

with the fillet, the throne figure by Pheidias, and the victor by an

unknown sculptor.[1137]

The small marble statue in the British Museum known as the _Diadoumenos

Farnese_[1138] (Pl. 17), which is now almost universally regarded as an

Attic work,[1139] has been assumed by many archæologists to be a copy

of Pheidias’ statue.[1140] Since Pausanias tells us that a statue by

Pheidias stood in Olympia, representing an unknown boy binding a fillet

around his head, and since the style of the _Farnese_ statue shows

great similarity in head and body forms and general bearing to certain

figures on the Parthenon frieze,[1141] and its motive agrees with that

of the Olympia statue, it seems reasonable to see in this little work a

copy of the statue in the Altis by the great master. Furtwaengler and

Bulle have shown that the motive of this work was initiated by Pheidias

and not by Polykleitos, since the latter’s great statue was several

years younger than the work of Pheidias at Olympia. That Pheidias was

pleased with the motive is disclosed by the fact that he repeated it on

the throne of Zeus.

[Illustration: PLATE 18

Statue of the _Diadoumenos_, from Delos, after Polykleitos. National

Museum, Athens.]

[Illustration: FIG. 28.—Statue of the _Diadoumenos_, from Vaison, after

Polykleitos. British Museum, London.]

The _Diadoumenos_ of Polykleitos was little less famous than his

_Doryphoros_, if we may judge by the number of copies which have

survived and from literary notices of it.[1142] In all the copies of

this work we see the well-known Polykleitan characteristics—powerful

build, heavy proportions, and fidelity to nature; but none of the

ideal tendency prominent in the works of Pheidias and his school, nor

of the violent energy characteristic of Myron’s art. In all of them

the pose of the earlier _Doryphoros_ is retained, except that the arms

are differently employed and the build of the body is more slender.

Pliny, despite his statement—which is probably taken from some Greek

authority—that monotony was the characteristic of Polykleitos’ works

(_paene ad unum exemplum_),[1143] emphasizes this slenderness by

calling the _Doryphoros_ _viriliter puer_—Lessing’s _Juengling wie ein

Mann_—and the _Diadoumenos_ _molliter juvenis_—a youth of gentle form.

This judgment of Pliny was difficult to understand so long as we had

only the Vaison copy of the _Diadoumenos_ to study. The Delian copy

showed that supple grace was characteristic of the original, even if

modified to suit the taste of three centuries later. Although the body

forms and the attitudes of the _Doryphoros_ and the _Diadoumenos_ are

very similar, the head of the latter, usually assigned to Polykleitos,

is of a different type from that of the _Doryphoros_. While the head

of the _Doryphoros_ is square in profile, flat on top, and long from

front to back, that of the _Diadoumenos_ is rounder and softer and

can best be explained on the assumption that Polykleitos later in

life came under Attic influence. The copies of this work are many

and varied.[1144] For a long time the marble copy in the British

Museum found in 1862, at Vaison, France,[1145] was, despite its poor

workmanship, considered our best copy (Fig. 28). It was made perhaps

five hundred years after the original, at a time when sculpture was in

its decline, and consequently can give us merely a suggestion of the

character of Polykleitos’ statue. As it is a direct marble translation

of the bronze, the muscular treatment appears exaggerated. Another

marble copy was found in 1894 by the French excavators on the island of

Delos, and is now in Athens (Pl. 18).[1146] The Delian artist added

a mantle and a quiver to the nearby tree-trunk and thus converted an

original victor statue into one of a god.[1147] Though its hands are

lost, it is easy to see that the athlete is pulling the ends of the

fillet together so as to tighten the knot at the back of the head. As

this is a Hellenistic Greek copy, it comes far nearer to the original

than the imperial Roman one from Vaison. The lighter proportions and

softer modeling show the Attic influence on Polykleitos’ later career,

although the fleshy forms are out of harmony with his art and evidently

introduced by the copyist. One of the best preserved and most beautiful

copies is the one in the Prado at Madrid.[1148] Although a Roman copy,

like the one in the British Museum, it comes very near the original

because of the precision in its details. There are many good copies of

the head alone.[1149] Marble heads in Kassel and Dresden, evidently the

works of Attic sculptors, show the pure Polykleitan traits. The one

in Dresden[1150] (Fig. 29) surpasses all others in the beauty of its

finish, being a careful and exact copy. The proportions and structure

of the head are those of the _Doryphoros_, although the surface is

differently treated. The Kassel head[1151] is not so exact in its

details, but has more expression. Furtwaengler rightly calls it the

better of the two as a work of art, but inferior as a copy. A marble

head in the British Museum[1152] is a direct copy from the original

bronze, like the Vaison statue. The clear-cut eyelids and wiry hair

reproduce the original material, and its resemblance to the head of the

_Doryphoros_ is greater than that of any other copy.

[Illustration: FIG. 29.—Head of the _Diadoumenos_, after Polykleitos.

Albertinum, Dresden.]

A later variant of the statue is seen in a small terra-cotta statuette

from Smyrna in private possession in London.[1153] It shows the

Polykleitan type so completely assimilated to the style of Praxiteles

that its genuineness has been doubted. Perhaps, with its Attic

softness, it gives us a better idea of the beauty of the original

than many of the other copies. Finally, we must mention the original

bronze head of the fifth century B. C. in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford,

recently published by Percy Gardner.[1154] This head, put together

from nine fragments, and restored as that of a boy fillet-binder, and

rivaling in delicacy and beauty such original bronzes as the Beneventum

head (Fig. 3) and the _Idolino_ (Pl. 14), not only gives us the best

idea of the technical ability attained by bronze workers in the middle

of the fifth century B. C., but also helps us to understand the ancient

repute of Polykleitos’ athletes. Here the headband and “starfish”

arrangement of the hair have their close parallels in the Dresden,

Kassel, and British Museum heads already discussed, which essentially

reproduce the head of the Vaison statue (Fig. 28). As Gardner points

out, it closely agrees with the type of the _Farnese Diadoumenos_

(Pl. 17) only in one particular, the mode of tying the knot. While

the Vaison athlete is preparing to tie it, the Farnese one has just

finished the operation, the boy still holding the ends of the fillet

in his hands. But only the treatment of the hair, the eye, and the ear

offers a contrast. Despite these differences Gardner follows the older

view of Brunn in regarding the Vaison and Farnese types as two variants

of Polykleitan originals; but the pose, style, and proportions of the

latter seem to us to be too thoroughly Attic to warrant us in bringing

it into relation with the work of Polykleitos. Though the heads of the

two are not so dissimilar, the pose, as Gardner also points out, is

quite different. The Vaison figure is represented as walking, _i. e._,

in the very act of changing the weight of the body from one leg to the

other, while the Farnese athlete stands at rest with both feet flat

upon the ground. Gardner rightly regards this exquisite head not as the

original of the statue mentioned by Pliny, since the Vaison and Delian

copies show that the latter represented a fully developed man, somewhat

over life-size, and not a boy, but rather as a work of the Polykleitan

school, though he does not exclude the possibility that it may come

from one of the many boy athletes of the master.

Furtwaengler connects with the _Diadoumenos_ the statue of a youthful

boxer, slightly under life-size, which shows a similar motive. It is

known to us in two copies, one in Kassel,[1155] the other in Lansdowne

House, London.[1156] That it is a work of Polykleitos is shown by the

correspondence of its body forms with those of both the _Diadoumenos_

and the _Doryphoros_. A bronze statuette, dating from about 400 B. C.,

in the Akropolis Museum, also repeats the motive without being an exact

copy.[1157]

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.

The crown of wild olive[1158] in the hair is another general but not

customary attribute of Olympic victor statues. Fewer sculptured heads

show it than show the _tainia_, and in most of these the leaves have

fallen off. Examples of its presence are afforded by the bronze head

from Beneventum (Fig. 3) in the Louvre,[1159] and on the realistic

bronze head of a boxer found at Olympia (Fig. 61 A and B).[1160] A good

illustration of a boy victor crowning himself is on a fourth-century

B. C. funerary relief, found in 1873 at the Dipylon gate, and now in

the Athens Museum.[1161] The victor is holding or placing a crown of

leaves on his head. In the Museo delle Terme, Rome, is a mediocre

headless copy of an original statue of the end of the fifth century B.

C., the work of an artist of the Polykleitan school, the restoration of

which as a victor engaged in wreathing his head is probable.[1162] A

protuberance on the right shoulder seems to have been left by the end

of the _lemniskos_ or ribbon with which the wreath was adorned.[1163]

The left hand carried an attribute, but probably not a palm-branch

as Helbig assumed, since such a branch, if of metal, would have left

traces on the shoulder. The same restoration has been proposed for

another statue.[1164] A crown on the head, together with the remains

of fingers near it, has been noticed on a bronze statue of Eros, of

Hellenistic workmanship, found off Tunis in the sea,[1165] which shows

Polykleitan influence.

[Illustration: PLATE 19

Statue known as the _Westmacott Athlete_. British Museum, London.]

The statue of a _Boy Crowning Himself_, which has survived in many

Roman copies and variant Greek originals, notably in the so-called

_Westmacott Athlete_ of the British Museum (Pl. 19),[1166] a

fragmentary statue of poorer workmanship in the Barracco collection

in Rome,[1167] and a Greek copy from Eleusis now in the National

Museum in Athens,[1168] and identified by many archæologists with the

statue of the boy boxer Kyniskos by Polykleitos at Olympia, should be

discussed here. While the _Westmacott Athlete_ appears to be a copy

from the original bronze, the Barracco statue, though showing the same

pose, is unlike it in the treatment of hair and muscles, and with its

Attic head, seems to be a carelessly executed variant, more or less

Myronian in style, of the Polykleitan original. While its original may

be assigned to the end of the fifth century B. C., the Eleusis variant,

with its head differently placed, is not a Roman copy, but a Greek

original statue showing the Polykleitan motive carried into the soft

Attic style of the fourth century B. C.[1169] A fine copy of the head

alone is in the possession of Sir Edgar Vincent, in his Constantinople

collection.[1170] This should be associated with another head

in Dresden, both being closely related to that of the _Westmacott

Athlete_.[1171] The best copy of the head is in the Hermitage, in which

the treatment of the hair approaches nearest to that of the bronze

original.[1172] A marble head from Apollonia in Epeiros, now in the

British Museum, which so closely resembles the head of the _Westmacott

Athlete_ that the missing sections of the neck and shoulders were

restored by a cast from the latter, is somewhat different in style.

For while the Westmacott head is a mechanical copy, this Greek head is

full of vigor, disclosing Attic characteristics of the early fourth

century B. C., and obviously is an Athenian imitation of the original,

like the statue from Eleusis.[1173] A more remote variant is the

beautiful marble head formerly in the possession of Dr. Philip Nelson

in Liverpool, but now in America, which is not an exact copy of any of

the known variants, but so closely resembles the Capitoline type of

_Wounded Amazon_, assigned first by Otto Jahn and later by Furtwaengler

to Kresilas, that it must be by the same hand.[1174] This head also

reminds us of that of the Kresilæan _Diomedes_ of the Munich Glyptothek

(Pl. 21),[1175] though the hair-treatment is Polykleitan.[1176] Both

show a modification of Polykleitan forms under Attic influence. The

numerous fine copies indicate that the original was a well-known work.

That it was Polykleitan is clear from a study of the heads, which show

a great resemblance to that of the _Doryphoros_, and of the body forms,

which resemble those of both the _Doryphoros_ and the _Diadoumenos_.

While some believe this original a work of Polykleitos himself,[1177]

others think that it was by one of his pupils or successors, who

imitated the master’s early style. If the original, however, was

not the statue of Kyniskos, there is little evidence that it was by

Polykleitos himself.

The palm-trunk in the Westmacott copy certainly argues that the

original was an athlete statue. The gesture of the right hand has

given rise to different interpretations. The Barracco copy furnishes

the best evidence, as on it the right arm is preserved to the wrist,

the hand only being lost. Helbig at first (in the Barracco Catalogue)

expressed the opinion that the right hand might have held an oil-flask,

from which oil was being poured into the left. However, the position

of the left hand, as shown by the _puntello_ on the left hip, must

have been the same as that on the Westmacott copy, _i. e._, hanging

close to the left side. Helbig later (in the _Fuehrer_) explained

the motive as that of a boy setting a crown on his head, as in the

bronze _Eros_ already mentioned. This interpretation, first suggested

by Winnefeld,[1178] has been the favorite one among archæologists.

But all sorts of other explanations of the motive of the original

have been offered, as that the athlete was scraping his forehead or

shoulders with the strigil,[1179] that the statue represented Narkissos

looking into the pool and shading his eyes with his right hand,[1180]

that it was an athlete standing at rest and holding an akontion in

his right hand—a theory harmonizing with the poise of the head, but

not with the turn of the wrist, which shows that the hand was held

downwards[1181]—and that it was, in fact, the _nudus talo incessens_

of Pliny.[1182] On the head of the Eleusis statue there is a mass of

marble left over the right ear just opposite the place where the hand

would be, if it were setting a wreath on the head. The fact that no

marks are visible where the crown was attached is explained by the

assumption that the wreath was of metal even in the marble copies. That

this motive, moreover, was known to both Attic and Peloponnesian art

in the second half of the fifth century B. C. is well attested. Thus

we see on the Parthenon frieze a youth crowning himself with one hand,

while holding the horse’s bridle with the other.[1183] The pose of this

figure—especially the legs—recalls the Myronian _Oil-pourer_ already

discussed (Pl. 11). On the other hand, one of the figures of the

Ildefonso group in Madrid, which is Polykleitan in style, represents

a boy wearing a wreath, a figure closely akin to the _Westmacott

Athlete_, the leg position being the same in both and the poise of the

head nearly so, although the arms are different, the left one being

raised and the right hanging down.[1184] It is probable that the raised

right hand of the original of the Westmacott and other replicas touched

the wreath and the lowered left held a fillet. The best explanation,

then, of the _Westmacott Athlete_ and kindred works is that the motive

of the original was allied to that of the _Diadoumenos_ of Polykleitos,

though the modeling is too soft for Polykleitos, showing that the

copyists changed the original of the Argive master to suit a later

and different taste. Whereas the _Diadoumenos_ is tying on a victor’s

fillet, the other is presumably placing a victor’s wreath on his head.

Certainly no better restoration can be made for the Barracco copy.

Furthermore, many other monuments, which show a similar attitude, and

which must be regarded as very free imitations of the original, seem to

show that the boy was represented as placing a wreath on his head.[1185]

Whether the original of the series was an actual victor statue at

Olympia or not is an interesting question. It has been repeatedly

suggested that it was the very statue of the boy boxer Kyniskos there,

mentioned by Pausanias, the base of which has been recovered.[1186]

The external evidence for the identity consists altogether in the

similarity in the position of the feet on this base and in the series

of copies, which argues a similar pose. The base shows that the left

leg bore the weight of the statue; it was slightly advanced and rested

on the sole, while the right leg was set back and rested on the ball

only. Thus the statue of Kyniskos was represented in the characteristic

Polykleitan schema of rest, except that the position of the legs is

reversed from that of the _Doryphoros_, _Diadoumenos_, _Amazon_, and

other works of the master. We might add that this same reversal appears

on two other bases found at Olympia, which held victor statues by the

elder Polykleitos[1187] and one by the younger.[1188] Moreover, the

leg position of the canon does not occur in the works of the master’s

pupils Naukydes and Daidalos, and only in one work of Kleon.[1189]

This shows that teacher and pupils also used another motive, _i. e._,

the old canon of Hagelaïdas, besides the one associated with

the _Doryphoros_. The similarity in the position of the feet on the

Olympia base and in the series of statues discussed has led some

scholars, _e. g._, Petersen and Collignon, to accept the proposed

identity. This similarity in foot position, the probability that

the statue on the basis was life-size, like those of the Westmacott

series, and the palm-tree support in the British Museum replica, all

pointing to a victor statue, make the identity well within the range of

possibility, but by no means certain. It is necessary only to rehearse

the objections to this view. In the first place the length of the foot

on the Olympia basis can not be accurately measured for purposes of

comparison. In the next place Polykleitos, as we have just seen, made

other statues of victors at Olympia with almost the identical foot

position of that of Kyniskos. Furthermore, it seems very unlikely that

so celebrated an original as that of these many replicas could have

been standing in the Altis so late as the time of Pausanias.[1190] It

is difficult, also, to understand why an imitative Attic sculptor

of the fourth century B. C., should make a copy of an Arkadian boy

victor statue for Eleusis. And lastly we must not forget that up

to the present time not a single Roman copy has been conclusively

identified with that of a victor statue at Olympia. If the date of the

victory of Kyniskos were definitely fixed, the question of identity

would be better substantiated. By a process of exclusion, to be sure,

Robert reached the date Ol. 80 (= 460 B. C.),[1191] but other dates

are possible. Under these circumstances there seems to be little more

than the possibility that we have recovered an actual victor statue at

Olympia in these copies.[1192]

THE PALM-BRANCH.

The palm-branch, either woven into a wreath or held in the hand, was a

victor attribute. Pausanias says that a crown of palm leaves was common

to many contests, and that the victor everywhere in Greece carried a

palm-branch in his right hand.[1193] He refers the custom to mythical

times, tracing it back to the contest held by Theseus on Delos in honor

of Apollo.[1194] Pliny mentions a painting by the Sikyonian Eupompos,

which represented a _victor certamine gymnico palmam tenens_.[1195]

While Milchhoefer[1196] believed that the motive of an athlete setting

a crown on his head with his right hand and holding a palm in his

left, which is repeated frequently and with variation in many works of

art, went back to this painting of Eupompos, Furtwaengler[1197] goes

further in assuming that the painter derived the motive from the statue

of Polykleitos represented by the _Westmacott Athlete_ and kindred

works just discussed. The pupils of the great sculptor appear to have

transferred his school from Argos to Sikyon, and were, therefore,

associated with Eupompos. This attribute of the palm, permanent in

bronze statues, has been broken off for the most part in marble ones.

We see it in an unfinished statue of a young athlete in the National

Museum, Athens, who holds the palm-branch in his hand. Here it has

survived, since the statue was only blocked out.[1198] It is prominent

in the funerary stele from the Dipylon representing a victor, which

has been mentioned in a preceding section;[1199] here the palm extends

from the left hand, which is held down close to the side, up to the

shoulder. We have already noted that the copyist added a palm-branch

to the stump placed beside the Vatican girl runner (Pl. 2). In the

_Choiseul-Gouffier Apollo_ (Pl. 7A) the left hand should doubtless

be restored with the palm-branch, because of the projecting notch of

marble on the side of the left leg near the knee.[1200] A similar notch

appears also on the _Apollo-on-the-Omphalos_ in Athens (Pl. 7B), which

shows that the left hand held a long attribute, which was doubtless

a palm-branch. This attribute occurs frequently on vases.[1201] We

see it on a marble statue found at Formiae and now in the Glyptothek

Ny-Carlsberg in Copenhagen, which shows the same motive as that of the

statue by Stephanos (Pl. 9), though in a freer style of execution.

Here the lowered right hand holds a palm-branch, which is shown in low

relief against the right arm.[1202]

SECONDARY ATTRIBUTES OF VICTOR STATUES.

In course of time the sculptor was not content to represent victor

statues merely as victors, but differentiated the various kinds of

victors by special attributes.

HOPLITODROMOI.

[Illustration: FIG. 30.—Marble heads of two Hoplitodromoi, from

Olympia. Museum of Olympia.]

Thus a hoplite victor would be represented with his usual weapons.

Pausanias, in mentioning the statue at Olympia of the hoplite runner

Damaretos of Heraia by the Argive sculptors Eutelidas and Chrysothemis,

says that it “has not only a shield, as the armed runners still have,

but also a helmet on his head and greaves on his legs.”[1203] He adds

that the helmet and greaves were gradually abolished at Olympia and

elsewhere. We have seen that the statue of Damaretos was set up at the

beginning of the fifth century B. C., when his son Theopompos, the

pentathlete, won his second victory, the monuments of the two being in

common.[1204] Toward the middle of the fifth century the hoplite victor

Mnaseas of Kyrene had a statue at Olympia, the work of Pythagoras of

Rhegion, which represented him as an armed man.[1205] A Pythian victor,

Telesikrates, of the fifth century B. C., had a statue at Delphi, which

represented him with a helmet.[1206] We have actual remnants of two

hoplite victor statues of the sixth century B. C., in the two bearded

and helmeted life-size heads of Parian marble found at Olympia (Fig.

30, a, b = A; c, d = B).[1207] The younger of these heads (A), to which

probably belong either an arm and the remnants of a shield attached

with a ram and a representation of Phrixos upon it in relief,[1208] or

a shield fragment with a siren’s wing upon it[1209] and the fragment

of a shield edge[1210] and right foot of fine workmanship,[1211] I

assigned long ago to the statue of the Thessalian hoplitodrome Phrikias

of Pelinna, who won two victories in Ols. 68 and 69 (= 508 and 504 B.

C.).[1212] R. Foerster had referred this head to the statue of the

hoplite runner Damaretos of Heraia, whose monument, in common with

that of his son, the pentathlete Theopompos, was the work of the early

Argive sculptors Chrysothemis and Eutelidas.[1213] But this fresh and

vigorous head is not Peloponnesian, but shows strongly marked Attic

traits in its round face, full cheeks, and soft lips, and in the rows

of regularly wound locks of hair. The arm and foot similarly disclose

Attic softness and grace. Because of its Attic character, Treu and

Overbeck,[1214] in opposition to Foerster, ascribed it to the statue

of the Elean hoplite victor Eperastos mentioned by Pausanias.[1215]

Though the date of his victory is unknown, it certainly fell some

time after Ol. 111 (= 336 B. C.)—a date far too late for so archaic a

sculpture. Furtwaengler[1216] referred this and the more archaic head

B to the group of Phormis at Olympia, mentioned by Pausanias.[1217]

However, Treu[1218] showed that there was no stylistic connection

between the two heads. The slightly more archaic head B, badly injured

from weathering, I have referred to the Achaian hoplitodrome Phanas

of Pellene, who won Ol. 67 (= 512 B. C.).[1219] In this carefully

executed head the hair and beard are arranged in small locks and the

archaic smile is prominent. While the younger head is Attic, this

one is unmistakably Peloponnesian; and while the former comes from a

statue represented at rest, the latter, because of the twist of the

neck, seems to have come from one represented in violent motion. For

this reason Wolters believed that it came from the statue of a warrior

represented as thrown to the ground and defending himself.

The Myronic statue in the Palazzo Valentini, Rome, known as

_Diomedes_,[1220] whose pose recalls the _Diskobolos_, may represent

a hoplitodrome, because of its marked resemblance in attitude to the

Tuebingen bronze to be discussed in the next chapter (Fig. 42), and

because of the helmet on its head.[1221]

PENTATHLETES.

Pentathletes were represented by attributes taken from three of the

five contests—jumping, and throwing the diskos and the javelin. All

these attributes appear in gymnasium scenes pictured on red-figured

vases. Thus a kylix of the severe style in Munich[1222] gives us a

general picture of the exercises of the gymnasium. On the walls hang

diskoi in slings, strigils, leaping-weights, oil-flasks, sponges, and

javelins. Archaic leaping-weights (ἁλτῆρες) appeared in the hands of

the statue of the Elean Hysmon at Olympia by the Sikyonian sculptor

Kleon.[1223] Similarly, a figure of _Contest_ (Ἀγών) in the group set

up there by Mikythos had weights.[1224] The offering of the people of

Mende at Olympia very nearly deceived Pausanias into thinking it the

statue of a pentathlete, because of its ancient _halteres_.[1225] This

shows that these weights formed a regular attribute of pentathlete

statues there. A relief from Sparta[1226] represents an athlete

leaning on his spear and holding a pair of leaping-weights in his

right hand. There is a bronze statue of such a victor in the Berlin

Antiquarium.[1227] _Halteres_ hang on a tree-trunk to the right of

the statue of an athlete in the Pitti palace in Florence.[1228] The

breast of a marble torso, less than life-size, of a boy statue found at

Olympia, shows that the hands were stretched forward, and very possibly

the objects which they held were leaping-weights.[1229]

We have no direct literary reference to a victor statue at Olympia

of a pentathlete with the attributes of the diskos or javelin. That

they existed there, however, seems probable enough. Such a work as the

_Diskobolos_ of Myron, which displays the youthful victor in its every

line, other statues, statuettes, reliefs, and vase-paintings, show us

how the artist represented the different steps in the casting of the

quoit. Similarly, the famous _Doryphoros_ of Polykleitos, copies of

which have been identified in many museums (Pl. 4 and Fig. 48), will

give us an idea how a javelin thrower might have been represented at

rest. The akontion or victor’s casting-spear, was, as we see from the

Spartan relief of a pentathlete just mentioned, about the height of a

man. The attitude of the diskobolos and doryphoros will be discussed at

length in the next chapter.

BOXERS.

The statue of a boxer would be sufficiently characterized by thongs,

which he might carry in his hand, as in the statue of the Rhodian

Akousilaos at Olympia,[1230] or wound round his forearm, as in the

statue of a boxer in the Palazzo Albani, Rome,[1231] or on a near-by

prop, as on the tree-stump beside the _Choiseul-Gouffier Apollo_ in the

British Museum (Pl. 7A).[1232]

WRESTLERS.

Long ago Scherer tried to show that the aryballos was a

wrestler-attribute, since oil was so important in wrestling.[1233] He

interpreted as _aryballoi_ the pomegranates mentioned by Pausanias

as held in the hands of the statues of the wrestlers Milo[1234] and

Theognetos[1235] at Olympia, assuming that the Periegete mistook

oil-flasks for pomegranates (ῥοιαί). But it hardly seems reasonable

that such a small utensil, which was used by athletes in general,

could ever have been regarded as a peculiar attribute of the wrestler.

A similar attribute may have been held in the outstretched hand of

the half life-size archaic bronze “Apollo” of the Sciarra Palace in

Rome,[1236] and it occurs on other statues.[1237]

CAPS FOR BOXERS, PANCRATIASTS, AND WRESTLERS.

Often the boxer and pancratiast (and even wrestler)[1238] are

represented as wearing close-fitting caps, made up of thongs of

leather or of solid leather. This, however, can scarcely be called

a determining attribute. Our best example of such a cap is afforded

by an athlete head dating from the first half of the fifth century B.

C., in the Capitoline Museum, Rome,[1239] formerly called a portrait

of Juba II, who was the king of Numidia and Mauretania from 25 B. C.

to 23 A. D. This ascription was based on the barbarous look of the

head and the fact that another head, discovered in the Gymnasion of

Ptolemy in Athens and thought to resemble it, was assumed to be that

of Juba, since Pausanias mentions one of that prince there.[1240] It

is rather the head of an athlete engaged in putting on a cap. This

cap consists of three transverse leather pieces crossing the head

from side to side, one over the forehead, one over the crown, and the

third over the occiput, all three converging above the ears. A fourth

strap fastens them together and is drawn over the crown from forehead

to occiput. In the complete statue doubtless the hands were raised to

the head, grasping the straps near the ears to fasten them. This is,

therefore, an anticipation of the later _Diadoumenos_ motive. We see

it in a statuette formerly in the Stroganoff collection in Rome, but

now in private possession in England,[1241] which represents an athlete

putting on a similar head-dress. Though the arms of the statuette

are gone, remains of the two hands are seen touching the left ear

and tying the straps, one of which runs around the cranium above the

swollen right ear. With this complicated head-dress we may compare

the close-fitting cap—evidently of leather—pictured on an archaistic

Greek votive relief-in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, in Rome, which

represents an athlete washing his hands in a basin, which stands on a

tripod.[1242] Here the cap is fastened by two bands, one around and

the other under the chin. An object in the upper left corner of the

relief, enclosed in a frame, appears to be a victor crown adorned with

bow-knots. Such caps, used in wrestling, would make it impossible for

an opponent to grasp the hair; in boxing and the pankration it would

protect the head from injury. We saw that such a cap was pictured on

a Munich kylix of the early fifth century B. C. It is probable that

such caps were customary at a period before athletes lost their long

hair and that it was continued afterwards for various reasons. The

little statuette from Autun now in the Louvre (Fig. 60), representing

a pancratiast, has a close-fitting cap. The ring at the top shows that

this statuette was hung up—perhaps being used as a weight in a Roman

scale, or perhaps for adornment. In later days boys while practising

in the palæstra, but never at the public games, wore ear-lappets

(ἀμφωτίδες or ἐπωτίδες) to protect their ears, not dissimilar to those

worn in our day for protection against the cold. We see them on a

marble head, formerly in the possession of Fabretti.[1243]

THE SWOLLEN EAR.

We have lastly to speak of the swollen ear, which was an attribute of

victor statues, both primary and secondary, since it characterized

victors as such, and also early differentiated victors in various

contests. Swollen ears may have played a role as a characteristic

attribute of pugilists in early times.[1244] We found them on the

Rayet head in the Jacobsen collection (Fig. 22), which belongs to the

last quarter of the sixth century B. C. and comes from the funerary

statue of an athlete, probably a boxer. In course of time, however,

they came to characterize pancratiasts, wrestlers,[1245] and athletes

in general. The assumption, then, that heads with swollen ears come

from statues of boxers,[1246] and that the boxer was known throughout

Greek history as the “man with the crushed ear” is erroneous.[1247]

The earliest literary reference to the bruised ear is in Plato.[1248]

The philosopher used the term slightingly of those who imitated

Spartan customs, especially Spartan boxing. The Lacedæmonians never

boxed scientifically, but fought with bare fists and without rules.

Literary evidence, furthermore, shows that bruised ears did not play

the part in boxing matches which other bruised features of the face

did—the eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, and chin. Vase-paintings sustain this

evidence, for we often see bloody noses and cuts on the cheeks and

chin, but no crushed ears.[1249] In short, the crushed ear was merely

a professional characteristic, a realistic detail, common to athletes

of various sorts, and, as we shall see, to warriors, gods, and heroes.

To quote Homolle: “_La bouffissure des oreilles ellemême n’est pas un

trait personnel, mais un caractère professionnel; elle ne désigne pas

Agias, mais en général le lutteur. Cette déformation peut atteindre

même un dieu, s’il a pratiqué les exercices gymnastiques et passé sa

vie dans les luttes_”.[1250] It is found constantly on athletic types

of heads in sculpture, whether these represent gods or mortals. A few

examples will make this clear. The following heads of athletes show

the swollen ears: the bronze portrait head of a boxer or pancratiast

from Olympia, dating from the end of the fourth century B. C. or the

beginning of the third (Fig. 61 A and B);[1251] the marble head from

the statue of the boxer Philandridas set up among the victor statues

at Olympia, the work of Lysippos (Frontispiece and Fig. 69);[1252]

the head of the statue of the pancratiast Agias at Delphi (Pl. 28 and

Fig. 68) ;[1253] that of the _Seated Boxer_ in the Museo delle Terme

in Rome (Pl. 16 and Fig. 27);[1254] that of the _Apoxyomenos_ of the

Uffizi in Florence (Pl. 12);[1255] the bronze head from an athlete

statue found at Tarsos and now in Constantinople, an Attic work of

the end of the fifth century B. C.;[1256] the beautiful bronze head

of a boxer in the Glyptothek (Pl. 3);[1257] the head of the so-called

_Apollo-on-the-Omphalos_ in Athens (Pl. 7B);[1258] the athlete head

from Perinthos (Fig. 33);[1259] the bronze copy of the head of the

_Doryphoros_, found in Herculaneum and now in Naples, by the Attic

artist Apollonios (Fig. 47);[1260] the Ince-Blundell head in England,

to be discussed; four heads in Copenhagen;[1261] the remarkably

beautiful bust of an athlete in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (Pl.

20), whose rounded skull, oval face, projecting lower forehead, and

dreamy, half-closed eyes place it in the fourth century B. C., a work

influenced by the art of Praxiteles.[1262]

[Illustration: PLATE 20

Head of an Athlete, School of Praxiteles. Metropolitan Museum, New

York.]

When we consider heads of gods and heroes we find the swollen ears on

a variety of types. We see them on the so-called _Borghese Warrior_ of

the Louvre (Fig. 43),[1263] formerly called a _Gladiator_, and on the

marble statue of Kresilæan style in Munich, which has been known since

Brunn’s interpretation as _Diomedes_ (carrying off the Palladion from

Troy) (Pl. 21).[1264] This latter statue is a careful, though inexact,

Hadrianic copy of a famous work and is shown to represent the hero, and

not an athlete, by the mantle thrown over the arm. Skill in the boxing

match, the roughest and most dangerous of sports, is as appropriate

to _Diomedes_ as to Herakles himself. The crushed ears appear on the

Dresden replica of this statue, a cast from the Mengs collection, the

original of which was once probably in England,[1265] but do not appear

on the poor copy in the Louvre.[1266] They also appear on the Myronian

bust in the Riccardi Palace, Florence, which is a copy of an original

that was, perhaps, the forerunner of the Kresilæan _Diomedes_.[1267]

Here again the garment thrown over the left shoulder shows that a

youthful hero, and not an athlete, is intended.

On heads of Herakles the swollen ears are very common. The first dated

representation of the hero with battered ears appears to be on coins

of Euagoras I, the king of Salamis in Cyprus during the years 410-374

B. C.[1268] We have several examples in sculpture from the fourth

century B. C. Thus swollen ears and the victor fillet appear on the

Skopaic head in the Capitoline Museum.[1269] Another example is the

terminal bust of the youthful hero found in 1777 at Genzano, and now

in the British Museum (Fig. 31).[1270] This head wreathed with poplar

leaves, is probably a Græco-Roman copy of an original of the fourth

century B. C., by an artist of the school of Lysippos. In the group

representing Herakles and his son Telephos, a Roman copy in the Museo

Chiaramonti of the Vatican, the hero is represented with fillet and

battered ears.[1271] A Parian marble head, encircled by a crown, in the

Glyptothek, going back to a Lysippan bronze original, seems to come

from the statue of the hero represented as a victor.[1272] Another

life-size head, of poor workmanship, in the Chiaramonti collection of

the Vatican, sometimes confused with the _Doryphoros_ head-type, seems

to come from a statue of Herakles, as shown by the broken ears and

rolled fillet, the latter a well-known attribute of the hero taken from

the symposium.[1273] A much finer replica is the bust from Herculaneum

now in Naples.[1274] Swollen ears appear also on heads of Ares. We

may instance the helmeted one in the Louvre,[1275] and especially the

replica in the Palazzo Torlonia in Rome.[1276] They are less prominent

on a Parian marble head of the god in the Glyptothek, which appears

to be a copy of an original of which the _Ares Ludovisi_ is a more

complete one.[1277]

[Illustration: FIG. 31.—Head of Herakles, from Genzano. British Museum

London.]

[Illustration: PLATE 21

Statue of _Diomedes with the Palladion_. Glyptothek, Munich.]

So far as we know, the statues of wrestlers, runners (except

hoplitodromes), and probably pancratiasts were not distinguished by

special attributes. In these cases the sculptor was obliged to express

the type of contest in the figure itself. His problem, therefore,

was to represent the victor in the characteristic pose of the contest

in which he had won his victory, that is, by representing the statue as

if in movement. This brings us to the second division of our treatment

of victor statues, those which represented the victor not at rest, but

in motion, a scheme which, in course of time, was extended not only

to victors in wrestling and running, but to those in all contests, by

representing them in the very act of contending. The treatment of this

class of monuments will occupy the chief portion of Chapter IV.

CHAPTER 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]

[Illustration: FIG. 32.—Statue of _Harmodios_. Museum of Naples.]

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]

[Illustration: FIG. 33.—Head of an Athlete, from Perinthos. Albertinum,

Dresden.]

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.

[Illustration: PLATE 22

Statue of the _Diskobolos_, from Castel Porziano, after Myron.

Museo delle Terme, Rome.]

[Illustration: FIG. 34.—Statue of the _Diskobolos_, after Myron.

Vatican Museum, Rome.]

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.

[Illustration: FIG. 35.—Statue of the _Diskobolos_, after Myron.

British Museum, London.]

[Illustration: PLATE 23

Statue of the _Diskobolos_, after Myron. A bronzed Cast from the Statue

in the Vatican and Head from the Statue in the Palazzo Lancellotti,

Rome.]

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.

[Illustration: FIG. 36.—Athletic Scenes from a Bacchic Amphora in Rome.

A. Stadiodromoi and Leaper. B. Diskobolos and Akontistai.]

[Illustration: FIG. 37.—Athletic Scenes from a Sixth-century B. C.

Panathenaic Amphora. Stadiodromoi (left) and Dolichodromoi (right).]

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.

[Illustration: PLATE 24

Statue of a Kneeling Youth, from Subiaco. Museo delle Terme, Rome.]

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]

[Illustration: FIG. 38.—Statue of a Runner. Palazzo dei Conservatori,

Rome.]

[Illustration: FIG. 39.—Statue of a Runner. Palazzo dei Conservatori,

Rome.]

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.

[Illustration: FIG. 40.—Statue of the _Thorn-puller_ (_Spinario_).

Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome.]

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.

[Illustration: FIG. 41.—Hoplitodromes. Scenes from a r.-f. Kylix.

Museum of Berlin.]

[Illustration: FIG. 42.—Bronze Statuette of a Hoplitodrome (?).

University Museum, Tuebingen.]