THE STATUE OF ARRHACHION AT PHIGALIA.
In his description of Arkadia, Pausanias mentions seeing the stone statue of the pancratiast Arrhachion in the market-place of Phigalia. He describes it as archaic, especially in pose, the feet being close together and the arms hanging by the sides to the hips; and adds that he was told that it once bore an inscription which had become illegible in his day.[2214] This Arrhachion won three victories at Olympia in the pankration in Ols. 52–54 ( = 572–564 B. C.).[2215] Therefore his statue is one of the oldest victor monuments of which we have record. At so early a date, before individual types of victor statues had been developed, we should expect, in harmony with the description of Pausanias, that this statue would conform in style with the well-known archaic “Apollo” type, the most characteristic of early Greek sculpture, which, as we saw in Chapter III, is exemplified in the long series of statues found all over the Greek world, the oldest class being represented by the
Fig. 79.—Stone Statue of the Olympic Victor Arrhachion, from Phigalia. In the Guards’ House at Bassai (Phigalia). example from Thera (Fig. [9]), and one of the youngest by that from Tenea near Corinth (Pl. [8A]).
In his commentary on the passage of Pausanias, Sir J. G. Frazer records that during a visit in May, 1890, he saw a recently discovered archaic stone statue in a field just outside Pavlitsa, a village on the site of the southeastern precincts of the old city of Phigalia, some 2.5 miles from the temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai. He thought that this statue agreed completely with Pausanias’ description of Arrhachion’s, even to the half-effaced inscription which he transcribed from its breast just below the neck.[2216] Through the courtesy of Dr. Svoronos, of the National Numismatic Museum in Athens, I have been able to procure a photograph of the monument from K. Kouroniotis, the Arkadian Ephor of antiquities stationed at Bassai, and I present it herewith (Fig. [79]). The statue is now cared for in the house of the temple guards. This statue, like all other examples of the series, represents a nude youth standing in a stiff, constrained attitude. It is badly mutilated and its surface is rough from weathering. Besides having lost its head, arms, and the lower part of the legs, it has been broken into two parts across the abdomen. The ends of curls on either side of the neck, extending a few inches over the breast, show that the head looked straight forward, thus following the usual law of “frontality,”[2217] which precluded any turning of the body; for a median line drawn down through the middle of the breastbone, the navel, and the αἰδοῖα would divide the statue into two equal halves. The body shows the quadrangular form of the earlier examples, the sculptor having worked in flat planes at right angles to one another, with the corners merely rounded off. The remains of arms broken off just below the shoulders show that they must have hung close to the sides. The shoulders are broad and square, and display none of the sloping lines characteristic of other examples, as, e. g., the one from Tenea. From the breast down the body is slender, the hips being very narrow. The legs show the usual flatness and the left one is slightly advanced, as is uniformly the case in every one of the series. They are somewhat more separated than in many other examples. The αἰδοῖα form a rude pyramidal mass, not being differentiated as they are, e. g., in the statues from Naxos and Orchomenos[2218] (Fig. [10]). Some attempt at modeling is visible in the muscles of the breast and lower abdomen. In general, it may be said that the similarity in attitude of this statue to Egyptian works impresses us, as it does in all the examples of early Greek sculpture. As the subject of Oriental, especially Egyptian, influence on early Greek art has given rise to very diverse views, we shall make a short digression at this point to discuss this interesting question.