DEDICATIONS OF MUSICAL VICTORS AT OLYMPIA AND ELSEWHERE.
In closing this chapter we shall say a few words about monuments erected to trumpeters, heralds, and musical victors at Olympia, though such contests had nothing to do with athletics.
Contests for trumpeters and heralds were held in many parts of Greece.[1994] They were introduced at Olympia in Ol. 96 ( = 396 B. C.), when Timaios of Elis won as trumpeter and Krates of Elis as herald.[1995] Pausanias mentions an altar, near the entrance to the stadion, upon which trumpeters and heralds stood when competing.[1996] Such contests seem to have been mere displays of lung power. Herodoros, for example, who won as trumpeter at Olympia ten times in the last quarter of the fourth and beginning of the third century B. C.[1997], could blow two trumpets at once so loud that no one could stand near him.[1998] To perform such a feat he was said to be a very large man.[1999] Diogenes, son of Dionysios of Ephesos, won five victories in trumpeting at Olympia. He was twice periodonikes and also won many other victories at the Isthmus, Nemea, and elsewhere—eighty in all.[2000] We have an excellent bronze statuette of a trumpeter, which was found in the Hieron of Athena Chalkioikos at Sparta, dating from the middle of the fifth century B. C., about a century and a half before the event was introduced at Olympia.[2001] This “little masterpiece of Spartan art,” whose style resembles that of the Olympia pediment sculptures, represents a nude man standing, the left arm hanging by his side, while the right is bent upwards to the mouth, where it held a tubular object pointing upwards. Since the lips are tightly compressed, Dickins has interpreted the object as a trumpet. A much damaged bronze statuette in the British Museum represents a man playing on a long trumpet-shaped instrument.[2002] Trumpeters also appear now and then on r.-f. Attic vases of the middle of the fifth century B. C.
Music victors played a greater role at Delphi than elsewhere, since music from the first was the chief interest there. Monuments to such victors, though few in number, by little-known artists were set up there, but they seem to have enjoyed the same meagre honor at Delphi as the statues of athletic victors.[2003] We have record of a statue of the Epizephyrian Locrian kitharoidos Eunomos, set up in his native town in honor of his Pythian victory over Ariston of Rhegion. Timaios says that this monument showed a cicada seated on the singer’s lyre.[2004] Whether such monuments at Delphi or elsewhere were regarded as victor or votive in character, we can not say.[2005] Pausanias mentions several statues of poets and musicians, mostly mythical, on Mount Helikon, which were set up partly in consequence of victories won there or elsewhere.[2006] Of these the statue of the Thracian or Odrysian Thamyris was represented as a blind man holding a broken lyre;[2007] that of Arion of Methymna as riding a dolphin;[2008] that of Hesiod, seated, as holding a lute on his knees; and that of the Thracian Orpheus with Telete at his side and round about beasts in stone and bronze listening to his song. Of the statue of the Argive Sakadas, Pausanias says that the sculptor, not understanding Pindar’s poem on the victor, made the flutist no bigger than the flute.[2009] The epigram on the statue of the Sikyonian flutist Bacchiadas, mentioned by Athenæus as standing on Mount Helikon,[2010] was votive in character. The inscribed base of the statue of the kitharoidos Alkibios has been found on the Athenian Akropolis.[2011] Musical contests are pictured on many imitation Panathenaic vases, and many Greek reliefs seem to have been set up in honor of such victors. Among the latter we might instance the one in the Louvre representing Apollo, Artemis, and Leto,[2012] and another found in Sparta in 1885, which represents Artemis pouring a libation before Apollo.[2013]
At Olympia flute-playing accompanied certain of the events of the pentathlon. Pausanias says that the reason why the flute played a Pythian air while the athletes jumped was that this air was sacred to Apollo, who had beaten Hermes in running and Ares in boxing at Olympia.[2014] Thus on the chest of Kypselos a flutist was represented as standing between Admetos and Mopsos at their boxing match.[2015] But the explanation given by Philostratos seems more sensible, that leaping was a difficult contest, and that the flute stimulated the jumpers.[2016] At Argos, at the games in honor of Zeus Σθένιος, wrestlers contended to the tune of the flute.[2017] Many vase-paintings illustrate flute-playing at the pentathlon.[2018] At Olympia only a few monuments were set up in honor of musical victors, and these seem to have been statues erected honoris causa, instead of primarily for victories. An example is that of the Sikyonian flutist Pythokritos, who won a victory as αὐλητής in the sixth century B. C.[2019] Pausanias says that his monument was that of a small man with a flute wrought in relief on an inscribed slab. The explanation of such a description probably is that the size of the flute made the victor appear small, just as in the case of the monument of Sakadas just mentioned.[2020] We know that artists, poets, prose writers, musicians, and actors all had an audience at Olympia, and that statues were often erected there in honor of such men, though these are not to be treated as victor monuments and do not properly fall within the scope of the present work.[2021]
CHAPTER VI.
TWO MARBLE HEADS FROM VICTOR STATUES.[2022]
Plates 28–30 and Figures 68–77.