Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art

by Walter Woodburn Hyde

[1343] H. N., XXXIV, 59: Syracusis autem claudicantem, cuius ulceris dolorem sentire etiam spectantes videntur. Gronovius, following Lessing, Laokoön, Ch. 2, identified it with a wounded Philoktetes: see Bluemner, Comm. zu Lessing’s Laokoön, pp. 508 f.; the words cuius ... videntur seem to have been derived from A. Pl., IV, 112, 1.4 (which refers to a bronze statue of Philoktetes): cf. Brunn, p. 134 and Jex-Blake, ad loc.

[1344] Cf. Benndorf, Anz. d. Wiener Akad., 1887, p. 92; von Sybel, Weltgesch. d. Kunst, p. 139.

[1345] Inschr. v. Ol., 146; Kallias won Ol. 77 ( = 472 B. C.): Oxy. Pap.; P., VI, 6.1; Hyde, 50; Foerster, 208.

[1346] In the Plinian passage Leontiskos figures rather as an artist, probably through Pliny’s misunderstanding of some Greek sentence in his authority; see L. von Urlichs, Rheinisches Museum, XLIV, 1889, p. 261.

[1347] P. 44.

[1348] L. von Sybel, Athena und Marsyas, Bronzemuenze des Berliner Museums, 1879.

[1349] This characteristic is expressed by the word αὐτάρκεια; cf. Plato, Phil., 67 A; Aristotle, Eth. Nicom., 1, 7.5–6 ( = 1097 b); etc.

[1350] Marble copy of the Marsyas was found in 1823 on the Esquiline and is now in the Lateran Museum, Rome: Helbig, Fuehrer, II, 1179; Rayet, I, Pl. 33; B. B., 208; Bulle, 95; von Mach, 65a; Baum., II, p. 1002, fig. 1210; Collignon, I, pp. 467 f. and fig. 234; F. W., 454; Reinach, Rép., II, 1, 15, 6. It is 1.95 meters high (Bulle). It is wrongly restored and only the head can be considered approximately faithful to the original. Cf. another copy of the head of Parian marble in the Museo Barracco, Rome: Helbig, I, 1104; Reinach, Têtes, pp. 53 f. and Pls. LXVI-LXVII; F. W., 455. A fourth-century B. C. bronze statuette from Patras, now in the British Museum, appears also to give the motive of the original group in Athens mentioned by Pliny, H. N., XXXIV, 57, and P., I, 24. 1: B. M. Bronzes, 269; Gaz. Arch., 1879, Pls. XXXIV-V and pp. 241 f.; A. Z., XXXVII, 1879, Pl. VIII (two views), pp. 91 f.; Rayet, I, Pl. 34; von Mach, 656; Reinach, Rép., II, 1, 51, nos. 5 and 7. It is 0.75 meter high. For other representations, see G. Hirschfeld, Athena und Marsyas, 32stes Berl. Winckelmannsprogr., 1872, Pls. I and II. For a copy of the head of Athena in Dresden, see B. B., 591 (three views).

[1351] Walter Pater, in his Greek Studies (in the essay on The Age of Athletic Prizemen), ed. 1895, pp. 309 f., calls the Diskobolos a work of genre. However, the Diskobolos can hardly be called a decorative statue, i. e., “a work merely imitative of the detail of actual life.” On p. 313 he rightly classes the Doryphoros as an “academic” work.

[1352] It was formerly in the Palazzo Massimi alla Colonna, and hence is often called the Massimi Diskobolos: B. B., no. 567, cf. 256 (head from cast); von Mach, 63; Collignon, I, Pl. XI, opp. p. 472; H. B. Walters, The Art of the Greeks, 1906, Pl. XXX; Gardner, Sculpt., Pl. XIII (head from cast); Overbeck, I, fig. 74, opp. p. 274; Reinach, Rép., I, 527, 1; for description, see M. D., 1098.