Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art

by Walter Woodburn Hyde

REPRESENTATIONS OF THE CHARIOT-RACE.

PLATE 26

Racing Chariot and Horses. From an archaic b.-f. Hydria. Museum of Berlin.

Representations of the various chariot-races are commoner than those of any other Olympic contest, appearing on vases, reliefs, coins, and gems.[1848] There seem to have been two distinct types of racing-chariot in Greece.[1849] The four-horse chariot was a modification of the heroic two-horse war-chariot, which was a low car on two wheels, surmounted by a box consisting of a high framework, open only at the rear, and large enough to contain the chieftain and the charioteer. The war-chariot was known to both Mycenæan Greece and Crete. There is a relief of uncertain date in the Museum of Candia, which represents a chariot and charioteer.[1850] It is far superior to the type of chariots appearing in relief on the gravestones found at Mycenæ,[1851] though the type on both is of the same general pattern, having the same box and four-spoked wheels. On the Mycenæan reliefs the box seems to rest directly upon the rim of the wheel, and the portrayal of a single horse is very inartistic. On the Candia relief, however, there are at least two horses discernible, and both the horses and the warrior, who is about to mount the car, are lifelike. The Greek racing-car was much lighter than the Homeric and Mycenæan war-chariot, and the box had room only for the charioteer. It was drawn usually by four horses. The Athenian type appears on Panathenaic vases throughout the whole history of the manufacture of these vases,[1852] and also on Macedonian and Sicilian coins. On certain vases of later date the car is still lighter and has larger wheels. One of the earliest racing-cars is seen on a vase in the British Museum,[1853] dating from the eighth century B. C. It seems to be a two-horse car, as we should expect at this early date, though the artist has drawn but one horse. The charioteer is clothed in a long chiton, a custom which was generally kept throughout the history of the chariot-race. The regular two-horse type of chariot appears on vases as a cart, the body of the old war-chariot being so diminished that nothing is left but the driver’s seat with a square open framework on the sides. The driver rests his feet on a footboard suspended from the pole.[1854] Perhaps this represents a peculiarly Athenian type of chariot, since the two-horse chariot on coins of Philip II, son of Amyntas and father of Alexander the Great, a victor at Olympia in both horse-racing and charioteering, resembles the ordinary four-horse car, and the driver stands instead of sits.[1855] The mule-car was like the two-horse chariot, as we see in representations of it on coins of Rhegion and Messana.[1856] The best illustrations of racing with four-horse cars are afforded by coins of Sicilian cities.[1857] We see an excellent representation of such a race on a sixth-century B. C. Panathenaic vase recently found at Sparta, on which a chariot driven by a standing charioteer is represented as passing a pillar on the right, and therefore perhaps near the end of the race.[1858] The harnessing of two horses to a racing-car is seen on an archaic b.-f. hydria in Berlin (Pl. [26]).[1859] Here a third horse appears, led by a nude youth, who is crowned, and who therefore probably represents a victorious horse-racer. Several other b.-f. vase-paintings showing four-horse chariots have been collected by Gerhard.[1860] However, we are not dependent upon vase-paintings and coins to judge of the magnificence of Greek chariots of the historical period, for we have actual remains of them—war-chariots, to be sure, but not very unlike the ones used at the corresponding dates in Olympia. Among these is the fine bronze biga found in the grave of an Italian prince at Monteleone, Etruria, in 1902, and now one of the chief treasures of the Metropolitan Museum in New York.[1861] This is a war-chariot of the beginning of the sixth century B. C., the only complete ancient bronze chariot now known. The restored frame of wood is sheathed with thin bronze plates richly ornamented with reliefs in repoussé. Because of its form and its relationship to chariots appearing on archaic Ionic monuments of Asia Minor, for example, on the reliefs of sarcophagi from Klazomenai, and because of the strong resemblance between its decorative designs and those of archaic Italian monuments of Ionicizing style, Furtwaengler has classed it as the product of Ionic Greek art. Professor Chase, on the other hand, finds these decorations pure Etruscan in character, comparing them with the reliefs on three bronze tripods in the possession of Mr. James Loeb, which are dated some half a century later.[1862] In any case this chariot is “das glaenzendste, vollstaendigste” archaic metal work yet recovered. In the British Museum there are considerable remnants of the chariot-group of King Mausolos and his wife Artemisia, which once stood on the apex of the Mausoleion at Halikarnassos, the work, according to Pliny,[1863] of Pythis (or Pytheos), the architect and historian of the tomb.[1864] Besides the figures of the royal pair, we have the head of one horse, the hinder half of another, fragments of still others, and one wheel of the chariot.[1865]