MONUMENTS ILLUSTRATING THE HORSE-RACE.
When we turn to the monuments which illustrate the horse-race, we find as varied a number—vase-paintings, reliefs, coins, statuary, etc.—as in the case of chariot victors.
Fig. 67.—Horse-Racer. From a Sixth-Century B. C. b.-f. Panathenaic Vase. British Museum, London.
Vase-paintings show that the jockey was generally nude and rode without stirrups or saddle. We see nude long-haired jockeys on horseback with whips pictured on a sixth-century B. C. Panathenaic amphora in the British Museum.[1973] One also appears on a silver tetradrachm in the same museum, which commemorates the Olympic victory of Philip II of Macedonia.[1974] Here the victorious mounted jockey has a palm in his hand, the symbol of his victory. On the other hand, the jockey is sometimes represented as wearing a close-fitting short-sleeved chiton. We see such a one on an archaic b.-f. Panathenaic vase of the sixth century B. C. in the British Museum (Fig. [67]).[1975] In front of the mounted youth on this vase stands a herald in official robes, from whose mouth issue the words “the horse of Dyneiketos is victorious.” Behind the jockey is an attendant bearing a wreath in his left hand and holding a prize tripod over his head. The short chiton also appears on a horse-racer on the Amphiaraos vase.[1976] We see racing boys on a proto-Corinthian lekythos in the museum at Taranto, with tripods as prizes.[1977] A fine example of five nude horse-racers also appears on a vase pictured in the Daremberg-Saglio Dictionary.[1978] Here one has fallen from his horse and is being dragged by the bridle.
A boy on a galloping horse is shown on a terra-cotta relief from Thera.[1979] On a funerary marble relief from Sicily, now in the Museo Gregoriano, Rome, a rider is represented urging his horse on with a whip.[1980] An Athenian relief shows victorious ephebes leading horses,[1981] while another from Athens shows a mounted boy.[1982] Horsemen representing Athenian knights appear on many slabs of the Parthenon frieze,[1983] either mounted or standing by their horses.
The inscribed base of Onatas found on the Akropolis seems to have borne the statue of a horse-racer.[1984] The bronze statue of Isokrates at Athens, which represented him as a παῖς κελητίζων, is mentioned by the pseudo-Plutarch.[1985] A bronze statuette in Athens from Dodona represents an ephebe on a galloping horse.[1986] A statue in the Palazzo Orlandi in Florence represents a horse-rider.[1987] In the Akropolis Museum there are two monuments which we should mention in this connection. One is the lower part of the statue of a nude rider on horseback, the mutilated horse being represented as pawing the ground with its forefoot. Closely resembling it in scale and finish, though more developed in style, is another fragmentary statue of a horse without a rider, the latter probably to be understood as standing in front of the horse, as in some of the riders pictured on the Parthenon frieze. The two are good examples of pre-Persian Attic sculpture.[1988] A later example is the small bronze statuette of an ephebe represented as a horseman (the horse is lacking) discovered recently at the French excavations at Volubilis in Morocco. This almost perfectly preserved work has been referred to the first half of the fifth century B. C.[1989] The position of the hands holding the reins reminds us strongly of the Delphi Charioteer (Fig. [66]). The diadem in the hair shows that a victor is represented. A small bronze statuette in the Loeb collection in Munich represents a boy riding a prancing horse, which is standing on its hind legs. This vigorous, but poorly finished, work is decorative in character and probably once belonged to the crown of a candelabrum. It appears to be either an Etruscan or early Roman work based on a Hellenistic original.[1990]