THE CASE FOR BRONZE.
The arguments adduced by Scherer and others in defense of the contention seem at first sight, although inferential in character, quite conclusive. In the first place, it has been pointed out that all the statuaries mentioned by Pausanias in his victor periegesis,[2178] if recorded at all in Pliny’s Historia Naturalis, appear there in the catalogue of bronze founders as workers in bronze κατ’ ἐξοχήν, while none of them is known exclusively as a sculptor in marble. As Hagelaïdas is the first in point of time, who flourished from the third quarter of the sixth century B. C. to the second quarter of the fifth,[2179] Scherer believed that all statues from his date down—posteriorum temporum—were of bronze; and as Rhoikos and Theodoros, the inventors of bronze founding, flourished about Ols. 50 to 60 ( = 580 to 540 B. C.),[2180] he believed that bronze might have been used up to their date. In the next place, the excavated bases, which have been identified as those of victor monuments, show footprints of bronze statues. Thirdly, actual bronze fragments, indubitably belonging to victor statues (of which two are attested by inscriptions), were found during the excavations of the Altis. These consist of the following:
(a) An inscribed convex piece of bronze of imperial times, “anscheinend vom Schenkel einer Bronzestatue herruehrend.”[2181]
(b) A similar inscribed fragment of the same period.[2182]
(c) The remarkable life-size portrait head of a boxer or pancratiast, which we have already discussed and reproduced (Fig. 61 A and B).[2183]
(d) A foot of masterly workmanship (Fig. [62]) ascribed by Furtwaengler[2184] to the end of the third century B. C. Its position shows that the statue of which it was a part was represented in motion, and consequently it has been assigned to a victor statue.
(e) A beautifully modeled right arm, somewhat under life-size, supposedly from the statue of a boy victor.[2185]
(f) A right lower leg of excellent workmanship, assigned by Furtwaengler to the same period as fragment e.[2186]
Still other bronze fragments of statues found at Olympia may have belonged to statues of victors, especially to those of boys.[2187] The small number of such fragments recovered—Scherer wrongly thought there was none—is explained by assuming that all of these statues were of bronze, and consequently were destroyed by the barbarians in their inroads into Greece during the early Middle Ages, when this metal was much prized.[2188] Another argument for believing that these statues were of bronze is the silence of Pausanias concerning the materials employed in them; for, in his enumeration of 192 such monuments, he mentions the material of only two statues, those of the boxer Praxidamas of Aegina[2189] and of the Opuntian pancratiast Rhexibios,[2190] and he mentions these because of their great antiquity, peculiar position in the Altis apart from the others (near the column of Oinomaos), and the fact that they were made of wood.[2191] Furthermore, in his book on Achaia there occurs this passage in reference to the statue of the victor Promachos, which was set up in the Gymnasion of Pellene: καὶ αὐτοῦ [Προμάχου] καὶ εἰκόνας ποιήσαντες οἱ Πελληνεῖς τὴν μὲν ἐς Ὀλυμπίαν ἀνέθεσαν, τὴν δὲ ἐν τῷ γυμνασίῳ, λίθου ταύτην καὶ οὐ χαλκοῦ.[2192] Most critics have inferred from these last words, “the one in the Gymnasion being of stone and not of bronze,” that, although Pausanias says nothing about the material of statues of victors in the Altis (barring the two just mentioned), by implication all these statues were of bronze; and they point out the fact that other writers furnish no evidence concerning the material used in them—an argument ex silentio to the same effect. Besides these arguments many others have been urged on purely a priori grounds; e. g., that, since these statues stood in the open air, subject to all kinds of weathering, they must have been made of bronze;[2193] that metal statues would have been cheaper and more easily prepared than those of marble;[2194] that the later Peloponnesian schools of athletic sculpture, which were characterized by their predilection for bronze-founding, would nowhere have been more prominently in evidence than at Olympia; etc.
Thus the case for the use of metal in these statues seems very well substantiated, and, for the reasons given, it can not be reasonably doubted that the vast majority of these monuments were made of bronze. But that they were not exclusively of metal, and that there were many exceptions to the general rule, not only can be conjectured on good grounds, but can be proved by discoveries made at the excavations. We shall briefly consider, then, each of the foregoing arguments in turn, and see whether, in the light of the accumulated evidence, they are really as well founded as they appear to be.