Photo.Holliday, Oxford
MYRON’S DISCOBOLUS
The Ashmolean, Oxford
The chief point of interest in the Dorian school, however, arises from a comparison of the works produced under its direct influence with the better-known examples of the Attic school. Early in the fifth century the school of sculpture located around Argos seems to have been one of the most influential in Greece. The Argive Ageladas, under whom Polyclitus was a student, is credited with having instructed the two other early masters—Myron and Phidias. However this may be, the Argive influence was not all-powerful amongst the Athenian sculptors. The variation between the two schools is more noticeable than the resemblance. And this is of vital interest, depending as it does upon the entirely different mental and emotional atmosphere in the two city-states.
If the two well-known statues of discoboli are compared with the “[Doryphorus]” of Polyclitus, the characteristic differences between the Athenian and Dorian schools are clear.
The standing “[Discobolus]” may well be a copy of the “Pentathlon Winner” of Alcamenes, a co-worker with Phidias, who reached his prime about 420 b.c. It shows the athlete holding the discus in his left hand. He is measuring the ground with his eye, testing the elasticity of his limbs and the sureness of his footing as he does so.
The “[Discobolus]” of Myron represents the Pentathlete in the act of throwing the discus. Lucian speaks of “the discus-thrower, bending into position for the cast: turning towards the hand holding the discus, and all but kneeling on one knee, he seems as if he would straighten himself up at the throw.” The statue is a consummate proof of Myron’s skill in the rendering of vigorous movement. The copies in the Vatican and the British Museum are in marble. In the original bronze the discus-thrower looked back, not at the ground, as in the restoration. The correct attitude can be seen in the recently discovered replica, now in the possession of the Italian Government, or, still better, in the fine bronze cast in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, which dispenses with the disfiguring support necessary in a marble copy.
Both these statues of discoboli are distinguished above all for the rhythm of their composition—a rhythm which is the expression in bronze of the beautifully balanced and magnificently full lives of the Athenians of the Periclean age. Polyclitus invested his figures with a natural vigour and dignity which won for him the suffrages of his Peloponnesian countrymen. But even allowing for the fact that we judge the Argive from late copies, while such originals as the Parthenon frieze remain to witness to the achievements of the rival school, it cannot be doubted that the Athenian ideal was the nobler and its attainment worthier of praise. Nor can we attribute the difference to anything else than the more vitalising atmosphere in which Athenian art was nourished—a fact which will be clear when we have estimated the circumstances which led to the erection of the Parthenon.