DEDICATION OF ATHLETE PRIZES.
Just as soldiers on returning from successful campaigns might dedicate their spoils of victory, victors in athletic contests might consecrate to the gods their prizes. In the Homeric poems we have no certain evidence of such a custom. A Delphic tripod was ascribed to Diomedes and possibly this was a prize won at the funeral games in honor of Patroklos.[159] The first literary example of such a dedication of which we are certain is the prize tripod dedicated to the Helikonian Muses by Hesiod.[160] Frequently such dedications were tripods; thus a Pythian tripod was dedicated to Herakles at Thebes by the Arkadian musician Echembrotos in 586 B. C.;[161] a tripod was dedicated in the sixth century B. C. or perhaps earlier at Athens for some acrobatic or juggling trick;[162] a victorious boxer dedicated one at Thebes.[163] It became customary by the fifth century B. C. for victors at the Triopia to offer prize tripods to Apollo.[164] Tripods or fragments of them have been found at Olympia[165] and elsewhere. Many other objects were also offered.[166] Sometimes a victor would dedicate the object by which he won his victory instead of his prize, just as a soldier might dedicate his arms instead of his spoils of war. Certain types of victors, e. g., those especially in running, the race in armor, singing, etc., would be excluded from making such dedications owing to the nature of the contest. Pausanias[167] tells us, for instance, that twenty-five bronze shields were kept in the temple of Zeus at Olympia for the use of hoplite runners, which shows that these runners did not use all at least of their own armor. In some cases diskoi were lent to pentathletes. Pausanias[168] says that three quoits were kept in the treasury of the Sikyonians at Olympia for use in the pentathlon. There are, however, as we shall see, instances of quoits being dedicated by victors. The pentathlete might consecrate either his diskos, javelin, or jumping-weights.[169] Perhaps the huge red-sandstone block of the sixth century B. C., weighing 315 pounds and inscribed with the name and feat of Bybon, may have been such an ex voto,[170] since Pausanias says the contestants at Olympia originally used stones for quoits.[171] A stone, weighing 480 kilograms (about 1,056 pounds), was found on Thera, inscribed “Eumastos raised me from the ground.”[172] Poplios (Publius) Asklepiades, who won the pentathlon at Olympia in the third century A. D.,[173] dedicated a bronze diskos to Zeus, showing the old custom was kept up till late. Many bronze diskoi have been found in the excavations of the Altis.[174] We have instances of the dedication of jumping-weights (ἁλτῆρες).[175] Examples of dedicated strigils have been found at Olympia.[176] Torches were dedicated at Athens.[177] Actors dedicated their masks,[178] while some of the ivory lyres and plectra conserved in the Parthenon were probably offerings of musical victors at the Panathenaic games.[179] Equestrian victors dedicated their chariots, or models of them, and their horses. These models might be large or small. We have notices of large chariot-groups at Olympia of Kleosthenes,[180] Gelo,[181] and Hiero of Syracuse;[182] of small ones of Euagoras,[183] Glaukon,[184] Kyniska,[185] and Polypeithes.[186] A large number of miniature models of chariots and horses in bronze and terra cotta have been found at Olympia,[187] some of which have no wheels. Many very thin foil wheels have also been found.[188] Furtwaengler[189] believes that these wheels are conventional reductions of whole chariots. Some of them are cast[190] and they are generally four-spoked, but two mule-car wheels are five-spoked.[191] These various models are so common and of so little value, however, that they may have had nothing to do with chariot-races.[192]
Many great artists, e. g., Kalamis,[193] Euphranor,[194] and Lysippos,[195] are known to have made chariot-groups and it is reasonable to assume that some of these were votive in character. Besides dedications of chariot victors, we find at Olympia also those of horse-racers. These were similarly both large and small, with and without jockeys. Thus jockeys on horseback by Kalamis stood on either side of Hiero’s chariot.[196] Krokon of Eretria, who won the horse-race at the end of the sixth century B. C.,[197] dedicated a small bronze horse at Olympia.[198] The monument of the sons of Pheidolas of Corinth,[199] representing a horse on the top of a column, must have been small. Pausanias, in mentioning the two statues of the Spartan chariot victor Lykinos by Myron,[200] says that one of the horses which the victor brought to Olympia was not allowed to enter the foal-race, and therefore was entered in the horse-race. This story was probably told Pausanias by the Olympia guides and may have arisen from the smallness of one of the horses in the monument.[201] The sculptors Kalamis,[202] Kanachos,[203] and Hegias[204] are known to have made groups representing horse-victors, and Pliny derives the whole genre of equestrian monuments from the Greeks.[205] Great numbers of small figures of horses and riders have been excavated at Olympia[206] and elsewhere.[207] Equestrian groups of various kinds were also known outside Olympia. Thus Arkesilas IV of Kyrene offered a chariot model at Delphi for a victory in 466 B. C;[208] the base found on the Akropolis of Athens and inscribed with the name Onatas probably upheld such a group;[209] the equestrian statue of Isokrates on the Akropolis was also probably a dedication for a victory in horse-racing.[210]