Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art
MARBLE HEAD FROM OLYMPIA MUSEUM AT OLYMPIA
BY WALTER WOODBURN HYDE
Published by the Carnegie Institution of Washington Washington, 1921 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON Publication No. 268 PRESS OF GIBSON BROTHERS, INC. WASHINGTON, D. C.
The purpose of the present work is to study what is known of one of the most important genres of Greek sculpture—the monuments erected at Olympia and elsewhere in the Greek world in honor of victorious athletes at the Olympic games. Since only meagre remnants of these monuments have survived, the work is in the main concerned with the attempt to reconstruct their various types and poses.
The source-material on which the attempt is based has been indicated fully in the text; it is of two kinds, literary and archæological. To the former belong the explanatory inscriptions on the bases of victor statues found at Olympia and elsewhere, many of which agree verbally with epigrams preserved in the Greek Anthologies ; the incidental statements of various kinds and value found in the classical writers and their scholiasts; and, above all, the detailed works of the two imperial writers, the elder Pliny and Pausanias. Pliny’s account of the Greek artists, which is inserted into his Historia Naturalis as a digression (Books XXXIV-XXXVI)—being artificially joined to the history of mineralogy on the pretext of the materials used—is, despite its uncritical and often untrustworthy character, one of our chief mines of information about Greek sculptors and painters. The portions of Pausanias’ Description of Greece which deal with Elis and the monuments of Olympia (Books V-VI), although they also evince little real understanding of art, are of far more direct importance to our subject, since they include a descriptive catalogue, doubtless based upon personal observation, of the greater part of the athlete monuments set up in the Altis at Olympia, the reconstruction of which is the chief purpose of the present work.
Walter Woodburn Hyde
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PREFACE.
CONTENTS.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
THE MOST COMMON ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES.
SPORTS IN CRETE.
ATHLETICS IN HOMER.
ORIGIN OF GREEK GAMES IN THE CULT OF THE DEAD.
EARLY HISTORY OF THE FOUR NATIONAL GAMES.
EARLY PRIZES FOR ATHLETES.
DEDICATION OF ATHLETE PRIZES.
DEDICATION OF STATUES AT OLYMPIA AND ELSEWHERE.
HONORS PAID TO VICTORS BY THEIR NATIVE CITIES.
VOTIVE CHARACTER OF VICTOR DEDICATIONS.
MISCELLANEOUS MEMORIALS TO VICTORS.
HONORARY STATUES.
SIZE OF VICTOR STATUES.
NUDITY OF VICTOR STATUES.
THE ATHLETIC HAIR-FASHION.
ICONIC AND ANICONIC STATUES.
ÆSTHETIC JUDGMENTS OF CLASSICAL WRITERS.
GREEK ORIGINALS OF VICTOR STATUES.
CANONS OF PROPORTION.
ASSIMILATION OF OLYMPIC VICTOR STATUES TO TYPES OF GODS AND HEROES.
THE APOLLO TYPE.
THE AFFILIATED SCHOOLS OF ARGOS AND SIKYON.
ÆGINETAN SCULPTORS.
ATTIC SCULPTORS.
GENERAL MOTIVES OF STATUES AT REST.
ATTRIBUTES OF VICTOR STATUES.
PRIMARY ATTRIBUTES OF VICTOR STATUES.
SECONDARY ATTRIBUTES OF VICTOR STATUES.
Hoplitodromoi.
THE TYRANNICIDES.
ANTIQUITY OF MOTION STATUES IN GREECE.
PYTHAGORAS AND MYRON.
MOTION STATUES REPRESENTING VICTORS IN VARIOUS CONTESTS.
Hoplitodromoi.
PROGRAMME OF HIPPODROME EVENTS.
REPRESENTATIONS OF THE CHARIOT-RACE.
CHARIOT-GROUPS AT OLYMPIA.
REMAINS OF CHARIOT-GROUPS.
THE APOBATES CHARIOT-RACE.
STATUES OF CHARIOTEERS.
DEDICATIONS OF VICTORS IN THE HORSE-RACE AT OLYMPIA AND ELSEWHERE.
MONUMENTS ILLUSTRATING THE HORSE-RACE.
THE APOBATES HORSE-RACE.
DEDICATIONS OF MUSICAL VICTORS AT OLYMPIA AND ELSEWHERE.
THE GROUP OF DAOCHOS AT DELPHI, AND LYSIPPOS.
THE APOXYOMENOS OF THE VATICAN, AND LYSIPPOS.
THE AGIAS AND THE APOXYOMENOS COMPARED, AND THE STYLE OF LYSIPPOS.
THE HEAD FROM OLYMPIA.
THE OLYMPIA HEAD AND THAT OF THE AGIAS.
IDENTIFICATION OF THE OLYMPIA HEAD.
THE DATES OF PHILANDRIDAS AND LYSIPPOS.
LYSIPPOS AS A WORKER IN MARBLE, AND STATUE “DOUBLES.”
HEAD OF A STATUE OF A BOY FROM SPARTA, AND THE ART OF SKOPAS.
COMPARISON OF THE TEGEA HEADS AND THE HEAD FROM SPARTA.
THE STYLES OF SKOPAS AND LYSIPPOS COMPARED.
THE SPARTA HEAD COMPARED WITH THAT OF THE PHILANDRIDAS.
THE SPARTA HEAD AN ECLECTIC WORK AND AN EXAMPLE OF ASSIMILATION.
THE CASE FOR BRONZE.
THE CASE FOR STONE.
THE STATUE OF ARRHACHION AT PHIGALIA.
EGYPTIAN INFLUENCE ON EARLY GREEK SCULPTURE.
EARLY VICTOR STATUES AND THE “APOLLO” TYPE.
STATUES MENTIONED BY PAUSANIAS.
SUMMARY OF RESULTS.
STATUES NOT MENTIONED BY PAUSANIAS, BUT KNOWN FROM RECOVERED BASES.
OLYMPIC VICTOR MONUMENTS ERECTED OUTSIDE OLYMPIA.
SUMMARY OF RESULTS.
STATISTICS OF OLYMPIC VICTOR STATUARIES.
FOOTNOTES
INDEX.
