A careful examination of the face suggests that it may have been studied from actual life. If, as some critics believe, the bust was made in Rome by some Greek sojourning there after the conquest of his own nation, a noble Roman matron may have been the model. Be that as it may, this is Hera as the Greeks worshipped her, and perhaps the best existing representation of the great goddess.
V
THE APOXYOMENOS
An important part of the Greek system of education was the training of the body in physical exercise. For this purpose there were gymnasia in every city, where the youth were trained in running, leaping, wrestling, throwing the javelin, and casting the discus. Great spaces were occupied by these gymnasia, which included buildings for dressing-rooms and baths, porticoes and halls used as assembly-rooms, walks, gardens, and the palæstra, or wrestling-field.
Every four years a great national festival was held at Olympia, consisting of games or contests in the various athletic sports. Every freeman of Hellenic blood had a birthright to take part in them. The contestants were required to undergo a preparatory training, often lasting months, in the gymnasium of Elis, the province in which Olympia was situated.
During the progress of the games a universal truce was proclaimed throughout Greece. All hostilities ceased for the time, and the Greeks as a united people assembled at Olympia for the joyous celebration in honor of Zeus. So important were these Olympic games that they were used as a standard for reckoning time. In assigning a date to an event, the Greeks used to say that it took place in this or that Olympiad, an Olympiad being the period of four years between two successive festivals.
We may well believe that the Olympic festivals, as well as the ordinary daily exercise in the city gymnasia, had great attractions for sculptors. The palæstra must have been a favorite resort of artists. What a sight it was when the young men came out of the dressing-rooms stripped for running, their bodies shining with oil,—what a play of muscles in the lithe young limbs as the runners "pressed toward the mark for the prize of the high calling!" The course was usually of deep sand, and was about three miles in length. The runners trained for special emergencies attained extraordinary speed and endurance. The race over, each youth returned to the dressing-rooms of the gymnasium and, taking a small instrument called the strigil, made of metal, ivory, or horn, scraped the oil from his body.
It is in this cleansing process that the young man of our illustration is engaged. The statue on this account is called the Apoxyomenos, which is a Greek word meaning "scraping himself." It represents a typical incident of the life of the gymnasium, such as might be seen any day of the year.