Fig. 11. Bronze Statuette from Ligourio. Berlin. (Greek Sculpture, Fig. 39.)
In the early part of the fifth century we still find a variety of physical type. On the one hand we have the Choiseul-Gouffier Apollo (Fig. [9]) with his broad square shoulders, powerful chest and back—essentially a big man, and therefore identified by Dr. Waldstein with the boxer Euthymus, though recent evidence tends to show that the statue really represents the god and no mortal athlete. At the other extreme we have the neat, small, sinewy forms of the warriors on the Aeginetan pediments (Fig. [10]). Between the two come a number of types. Unfortunately we have no extant examples of the great Argive school. The bronze in which the Argive sculptor worked was too valuable to escape the ravages of the plunderer, and a certain monotony, which must have characterized purely athletic sculpture, prevented the later copyist from reproducing these works. But if we may argue from the Ligourio bronze (Fig. [11]), the Argive type was short like the Aeginetan but heavier and more fleshy. On the other hand, the statues which are recognized as copies of the famous group of Critias and Nesiotes[[104]] representing Harmodius and Aristogeiton show a taller, larger-boned type, more approaching that of the Choiseul-Gouffier Apollo, which may perhaps be recognized as Athenian.[[105]] But in all this diversity of physical type we ask ourselves in vain what class of athlete is represented in any particular statue, whether a boxer, a wrestler, a pentathlete, or a runner. The reason seems to be that in all these statues the ideal element is strong; there is a difference of build, but each build is shown with the fullest all-round development of which it is capable. Certainly there is not in this period a single figure that represents a typical runner so clearly as does the Apollo of Tenea. Perhaps the nearest type to that of the runner is the Aeginetan; but unfortunately we know that the events in which Aegina won most distinction were wrestling and the pankration, winners in which we should expect to find characterized by a heavier build. The fact is that the real specialization of the athlete was only just beginning, and the universal athletic training had produced in the first half of the fifth century so uniform a standard of development that, runners perhaps excepted, it must have been difficult to distinguish between the representatives of other events, in all of which strength was more important than pace. Hence the earlier sculptors, in order to indicate an athlete’s victory, were forced to attach to his statue some special attribute, a diskos, or a pair of jumping weights for a pentathlete, a boxing thong for a boxer.[[106]] As their technical skill increased they began to represent the athlete in some characteristic position. Glaucias of Aegina showed the famous boxer Glaucus of Carystos sparring with an imaginary opponent.[[107]] At Athens Pausanias saw a statue of Epicharinus by Critius in the attitude of one practising for the hoplite race, perhaps in the attitude of the well-known Tübingen bronze, which represents a hoplitodromos practising starts[[108]] (Fig. [12]).
Fig. 12. Bronze Statuette of Hoplitodromos. Tübingen.
Fig. 13. Myron’s Diskobolos (from a bronzed cast made in Munich, combining the Vatican body and the Massimi head).
The last-named statues at once suggest the Diskobolos of Myron (Fig. [13]). This statue marks a new departure in athletic art. It is not, as far as we know, a statue in honour of any particular victor, but a study in athletic genre. To the same class belong the Doryphoros and Diadumenos of Polycleitus.[[109]] The earlier statues had been ideal in as far as they were not portrait statues, but statues of athletic types connected with the name of some victor, and many such statues are assigned to Myron and Polycleitus. But the statues of which we are speaking were avowedly and professedly ideal studies in athletic art. Myron undertook to represent the athlete in motion. He chose that most difficult, yet most characteristic moment in the swing of the diskobolos, which alone combines the idea of rest and that of motion, when the diskos has been swung back to its full extent, and the momentary pause suggests stability, while the insecurity of the delicate balance implies the strong movement which has preceded it, and the more violent movement which is to follow. No other moment could give the same idea of force and swiftness. If we look at the countless representations of the diskobolos on vases and in bronzes, we see that the fixing of any other moment in the swing destroys at once all idea of motion. The movement is checked at an unnatural point, and the result is lifeless. Only at the close of the swing backward does the brief pause give the artist an excuse for fixing it in bronze. It is a magnificent conception, and in spite of minor defects magnificently executed. Unfortunately we know the statue only through more or less late and inaccurate marble copies. Perhaps the truest idea of the grace of the original bronze can be obtained from the bronzed cast in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, from which our illustration is taken. The diskobolos is, as has been said, a study of athletic action, and it is therefore difficult to form a true idea of his proportions, nor was the artist concerned so much with proportions as with movement. Yet if we can imagine the diskobolos standing at rest, he might well take his place besides the glorious youths of the Parthenon frieze, tall like the Tyrannicides, yet of somewhat lighter build, taller and lighter likewise than the type of Polycleitus.
Fig. 14. Doryphoros, after Polycleitus. Naples. (Greek Sculpture, Fig. 74.)
