Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art

by Walter Woodburn Hyde

Fig. 15.—Bronze Statuette of a Palæstra Victor, from the Akropolis. Akropolis Museum, Athens. model, making the position more elastic—as in the statue of Milo—rightly indicating bones and muscles and giving to the figure natural proportions. Bulle has shown on one plate[859] three statuettes which illustrate the improvements reached in bronze in various parts of Greece by the end of the sixth century B. C. To the left is represented a victorious palæstra gymnast—as is indicated by the remnants of akontia in the hands—in the Akropolis Museum (Fig. [15]);[860] in the center is the Payne Knight statuette of the British Museum,[861] carrying a fawn in the right hand, which is a copy of the Philesian Apollo which stood in the Didymaion near Miletos; to the right is Hermes with the petasos, short-girded tunic, and winged sandals, holding a ram in the left and probably a kerykeion in the right hand.[862] The attributes of the three, then, attest respectively a victor, Apollo, and Hermes. In all three the arms are freed from the body, and the muscles of the breast, chest, and abdomen are indicated, though carelessly in the case of the victor. The proportions of the three vary greatly; the Attic victor has a large head, broad shoulders, powerful chest, long body, and short legs; the Apollo has long legs, shorter though slimmer body, and small head;[863] the Hermes has a clearly outlined figure and shows the careful modeling so characteristic of the schools of Argos and Sikyon in the fifth century B. C. Bulle shows that the further development of the “Apollo” type was halted by the Argive school, which, while continuing the restful pose of these figures, counteracted their rigidity by inclining the head to the side and throwing the weight unevenly on the legs by lowering one hip and further advancing one foot. The central line was no longer vertical, but curved, and it was now possible to give greater detail to chest and abdomen. Polykleitos finally perfected this curve and threw back the left foot, resting the weight of the body on the right—from which time on we have the regular scheme of “free” and “rest” legs. Despite all these later improvements, Olympic victors continued to set up statues in the rest attitude of the “Apollo” type down perhaps into the third century B. C. Such dedications were the result both of school tendencies and economy, especially in the case of equestrian victors, who frequently were content to use such “actionless” statues in place of groups. We have only to mention the monuments of Timon of Elis, whose statue was the work of the Sikyonian Daidalos,[864] and of Telemachos of Elis, whose statue was made by the otherwise unknown sculptor Philonides.[865]

Before systematically considering victor statues at Olympia and elsewhere with general motives, i. e., represented at rest, we shall now rapidly sketch the development of athletic sculpture in four great centres, Argos, Sikyon, Aegina, and Athens, even though some of the works mentioned were represented in motion. Sculptors of other schools known at Olympia will be treated incidentally in both this and the following chapters.

THE AFFILIATED SCHOOLS OF ARGOS AND SIKYON.

While in general it is unprofitable to discuss sculptors who have not surely left any example of their art behind, there are two early schools of Peloponnesian sculpture, those of Argos and Sikyon, which, though we may assign work to them only by conjecture, can not be summarily passed over, owing to their great importance in the history of Greek athletic art. The bronze used in their works was too valuable to escape the barbarians, and, furthermore, the monotony, which must have characterized early Peloponnesian sculpture, militated against these works being reproduced to any great degree by later copyists.

The School of Argos.

The Argive school was devoted mainly to athletic statuary. The greatest name in old Argive art is that of Ageladas or Hagelaïdas,[866] the reputed teacher of Myron and Polykleitos, who lived from the third quarter of the sixth century into the second quarter of the fifth century B. C. While his connection with Myron and Polykleitos is scarcely to be doubted,[867] his supposed connection with Pheidias has made the chronology of the life of this sculptor one of the difficult problems of the ancient history of art. A scholion on Aristophanes’ Ranae, 504, dates the statue known as the Herakles Alexikakos in the Attic deme Melite by Hagelaïdas after the pestilence in Athens of 431–430 B. C., and makes the Argive sculptor (Gelados = Hagelaïdas) the teacher of Pheidias. As his statue of the Olympic victor Anochos commemorated a victory won in Ol. 65 ( = 520 B. C.), this late date is manifestly impossible.[868] Furthermore, a better tradition says that Hegias was the teacher of the Attic master.[869] Furtwaengler’s attempt to show that these two divergent traditions were really in accord, by the assumption that Hegias was the pupil of Hagelaïdas and that his art came from the latter—thus explaining certain similarities in the work of Hagelaïdas and Pheidias,—does not solve the problem.[870] As the scholion is based on a good tradition,[871] the best solution of the difficulty is that of Kalkmann[872] and others, that the Alexikakos was the work of a younger Hagelaïdas, the grandson of the famous master, by the intermediate Argeiadas. For a lower limit to the activity of Hagelaïdas there seems to be no good reason for distrusting the evidence that he made a bronze Zeus for the Messenians to be set up at Naupaktos, whither they moved in 455 B. C.[873] This makes quite possible a period of collaboration of four or five years at least between Polykleitos and Hagelaïdas.

Pausanias mentions the monuments of three victors at Olympia by Hagelaïdas: the statues of the pancratiast Timasitheos of Delphi, who won two victories some time between Ols. (?) 65 and 67 (520 and 512 B. C.);[874] of the runner Anochos of Tarentum, who won in the stade- and double-race in Ols. 65 and (?) 66 ( = 520 and 516 B. C.);[875] and the chariot-group of Kleosthenes of Epidamnos, who won in Ol. 66 ( = 516 B. C.).[876]

None of the works of Hagelaïdas at Olympia or elsewhere is known. Messenian coins of the fourth century B. C. show the motives of two of his statues, that of his Zeus Ithomatas just mentioned as being made for the Messenians,[877] and the beardless Zeus παῖς at Aigion.[878] However, we infer the characteristics of his style from the bronze statuette in Berlin which was found at Ligourió near Epidauros (Fig. [16]).[879] This is undoubtedly an Argive work contemporary with the later period of Hagelaïdas. Furtwaengler and Frost are right in looking upon it as showing the prototype of the canon of Polykleitos. Though too small to count as a characteristic work of the early Argive school, it shows us that the style of that school was a short and stocky type, similar to Aeginetan works, only somewhat fleshier and heavier. The straight mouth and heavy chin, the treatment of the eyelids, and the clumsy limbs are all archaic features to be expected in the period preceding Polykleitos. The modeling is carefully executed, showing a knowledge of anatomy. If such excellence is found in a statuette, we can form some idea of the perfection of a statue by the master.