Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art

by Walter Woodburn Hyde

The Crown of Wild Olive.

The crown of wild olive[1158] in the hair is another general but not customary attribute of Olympic victor statues. Fewer sculptured heads show it than show the tainia, and in most of these the leaves have fallen off. Examples of its presence are afforded by the bronze head from Beneventum (Fig. [3]) in the Louvre,[1159] and on the realistic bronze head of a boxer found at Olympia (Fig. [61] A and B).[1160] A good illustration of a boy victor crowning himself is on a fourth-century B. C. funerary relief, found in 1873 at the Dipylon gate, and now in the Athens Museum.[1161] The victor is holding or placing a crown of leaves on his head. In the Museo delle Terme, Rome, is a mediocre headless copy of an original statue of the end of the fifth century B. C., the work of an artist of the Polykleitan school, the restoration of which as a victor engaged in wreathing his head is probable.[1162] A protuberance on the right shoulder seems to have been left by the end of the lemniskos or ribbon with which the wreath was adorned.[1163] The left hand carried an attribute, but probably not a palm-branch as Helbig assumed, since such a branch, if of metal, would have left traces on the shoulder. The same restoration has been proposed for another statue.[1164] A crown on the head, together with the remains of fingers near it, has been noticed on a bronze statue of Eros, of Hellenistic workmanship, found off Tunis in the sea,[1165] which shows Polykleitan influence.

PLATE 19

Statue known as the Westmacott Athlete. British Museum, London.

The statue of a Boy Crowning Himself, which has survived in many Roman copies and variant Greek originals, notably in the so-called Westmacott Athlete of the British Museum (Pl. [19]),[1166] a fragmentary statue of poorer workmanship in the Barracco collection in Rome,[1167] and a Greek copy from Eleusis now in the National Museum in Athens,[1168] and identified by many archæologists with the statue of the boy boxer Kyniskos by Polykleitos at Olympia, should be discussed here. While the Westmacott Athlete appears to be a copy from the original bronze, the Barracco statue, though showing the same pose, is unlike it in the treatment of hair and muscles, and with its Attic head, seems to be a carelessly executed variant, more or less Myronian in style, of the Polykleitan original. While its original may be assigned to the end of the fifth century B. C., the Eleusis variant, with its head differently placed, is not a Roman copy, but a Greek original statue showing the Polykleitan motive carried into the soft Attic style of the fourth century B. C.[1169] A fine copy of the head alone is in the possession of Sir Edgar Vincent, in his Constantinople collection.[1170] This should be associated with another head in Dresden, both being closely related to that of the Westmacott Athlete.[1171] The best copy of the head is in the Hermitage, in which the treatment of the hair approaches nearest to that of the bronze original.[1172] A marble head from Apollonia in Epeiros, now in the British Museum, which so closely resembles the head of the Westmacott Athlete that the missing sections of the neck and shoulders were restored by a cast from the latter, is somewhat different in style. For while the Westmacott head is a mechanical copy, this Greek head is full of vigor, disclosing Attic characteristics of the early fourth century B. C., and obviously is an Athenian imitation of the original, like the statue from Eleusis.[1173] A more remote variant is the beautiful marble head formerly in the possession of Dr. Philip Nelson in Liverpool, but now in America, which is not an exact copy of any of the known variants, but so closely resembles the Capitoline type of Wounded Amazon, assigned first by Otto Jahn and later by Furtwaengler to Kresilas, that it must be by the same hand.[1174] This head also reminds us of that of the Kresilæan Diomedes of the Munich Glyptothek (Pl. [21]),[1175] though the hair-treatment is Polykleitan.[1176] Both show a modification of Polykleitan forms under Attic influence. The numerous fine copies indicate that the original was a well-known work. That it was Polykleitan is clear from a study of the heads, which show a great resemblance to that of the Doryphoros, and of the body forms, which resemble those of both the Doryphoros and the Diadoumenos. While some believe this original a work of Polykleitos himself,[1177] others think that it was by one of his pupils or successors, who imitated the master’s early style. If the original, however, was not the statue of Kyniskos, there is little evidence that it was by Polykleitos himself.

The palm-trunk in the Westmacott copy certainly argues that the original was an athlete statue. The gesture of the right hand has given rise to different interpretations. The Barracco copy furnishes the best evidence, as on it the right arm is preserved to the wrist, the hand only being lost. Helbig at first (in the Barracco Catalogue) expressed the opinion that the right hand might have held an oil-flask, from which oil was being poured into the left. However, the position of the left hand, as shown by the puntello on the left hip, must have been the same as that on the Westmacott copy, i. e., hanging close to the left side. Helbig later (in the Fuehrer) explained the motive as that of a boy setting a crown on his head, as in the bronze Eros already mentioned. This interpretation, first suggested by Winnefeld,[1178] has been the favorite one among archæologists. But all sorts of other explanations of the motive of the original have been offered, as that the athlete was scraping his forehead or shoulders with the strigil,[1179] that the statue represented Narkissos looking into the pool and shading his eyes with his right hand,[1180] that it was an athlete standing at rest and holding an akontion in his right hand—a theory harmonizing with the poise of the head, but not with the turn of the wrist, which shows that the hand was held downwards[1181]—and that it was, in fact, the nudus talo incessens of Pliny.[1182] On the head of the Eleusis statue there is a mass of marble left over the right ear just opposite the place where the hand would be, if it were setting a wreath on the head. The fact that no marks are visible where the crown was attached is explained by the assumption that the wreath was of metal even in the marble copies. That this motive, moreover, was known to both Attic and Peloponnesian art in the second half of the fifth century B. C. is well attested. Thus we see on the Parthenon frieze a youth crowning himself with one hand, while holding the horse’s bridle with the other.[1183] The pose of this figure—especially the legs—recalls the Myronian Oil-pourer already discussed (Pl. [11]). On the other hand, one of the figures of the Ildefonso group in Madrid, which is Polykleitan in style, represents a boy wearing a wreath, a figure closely akin to the Westmacott Athlete, the leg position being the same in both and the poise of the head nearly so, although the arms are different, the left one being raised and the right hanging down.[1184] It is probable that the raised right hand of the original of the Westmacott and other replicas touched the wreath and the lowered left held a fillet. The best explanation, then, of the Westmacott Athlete and kindred works is that the motive of the original was allied to that of the Diadoumenos of Polykleitos, though the modeling is too soft for Polykleitos, showing that the copyists changed the original of the Argive master to suit a later and different taste. Whereas the Diadoumenos is tying on a victor’s fillet, the other is presumably placing a victor’s wreath on his head. Certainly no better restoration can be made for the Barracco copy. Furthermore, many other monuments, which show a similar attitude, and which must be regarded as very free imitations of the original, seem to show that the boy was represented as placing a wreath on his head.[1185]

Whether the original of the series was an actual victor statue at Olympia or not is an interesting question. It has been repeatedly suggested that it was the very statue of the boy boxer Kyniskos there, mentioned by Pausanias, the base of which has been recovered.[1186] The external evidence for the identity consists altogether in the similarity in the position of the feet on this base and in the series of copies, which argues a similar pose. The base shows that the left leg bore the weight of the statue; it was slightly advanced and rested on the sole, while the right leg was set back and rested on the ball only. Thus the statue of Kyniskos was represented in the characteristic Polykleitan schema of rest, except that the position of the legs is reversed from that of the Doryphoros, Diadoumenos, Amazon, and other works of the master. We might add that this same reversal appears on two other bases found at Olympia, which held victor statues by the elder Polykleitos[1187] and one by the younger.[1188] Moreover, the leg position of the canon does not occur in the works of the master’s pupils Naukydes and Daidalos, and only in one work of Kleon.[1189] This shows that teacher and pupils also used another motive, i. e., the old canon of Hagelaïdas, besides the one associated with the Doryphoros. The similarity in the position of the feet on the Olympia base and in the series of statues discussed has led some scholars, e. g., Petersen and Collignon, to accept the proposed identity. This similarity in foot position, the probability that the statue on the basis was life-size, like those of the Westmacott series, and the palm-tree support in the British Museum replica, all pointing to a victor statue, make the identity well within the range of possibility, but by no means certain. It is necessary only to rehearse the objections to this view. In the first place the length of the foot on the Olympia basis can not be accurately measured for purposes of comparison. In the next place Polykleitos, as we have just seen, made other statues of victors at Olympia with almost the identical foot position of that of Kyniskos. Furthermore, it seems very unlikely that so celebrated an original as that of these many replicas could have been standing in the Altis so late as the time of Pausanias.[1190] It is difficult, also, to understand why an imitative Attic sculptor of the fourth century B. C., should make a copy of an Arkadian boy victor statue for Eleusis. And lastly we must not forget that up to the present time not a single Roman copy has been conclusively identified with that of a victor statue at Olympia. If the date of the victory of Kyniskos were definitely fixed, the question of identity would be better substantiated. By a process of exclusion, to be sure, Robert reached the date Ol. 80 ( = 460 B. C.),[1191] but other dates are possible. Under these circumstances there seems to be little more than the possibility that we have recovered an actual victor statue at Olympia in these copies.[1192]

The Palm-branch.

The palm-branch, either woven into a wreath or held in the hand, was a victor attribute. Pausanias says that a crown of palm leaves was common to many contests, and that the victor everywhere in Greece carried a palm-branch in his right hand.[1193] He refers the custom to mythical times, tracing it back to the contest held by Theseus on Delos in honor of Apollo.[1194] Pliny mentions a painting by the Sikyonian Eupompos, which represented a victor certamine gymnico palmam tenens.[1195] While Milchhoefer[1196] believed that the motive of an athlete setting a crown on his head with his right hand and holding a palm in his left, which is repeated frequently and with variation in many works of art, went back to this painting of Eupompos, Furtwaengler[1197] goes further in assuming that the painter derived the motive from the statue of Polykleitos represented by the Westmacott Athlete and kindred works just discussed. The pupils of the great sculptor appear to have transferred his school from Argos to Sikyon, and were, therefore, associated with Eupompos. This attribute of the palm, permanent in bronze statues, has been broken off for the most part in marble ones. We see it in an unfinished statue of a young athlete in the National Museum, Athens, who holds the palm-branch in his hand. Here it has survived, since the statue was only blocked out.[1198] It is prominent in the funerary stele from the Dipylon representing a victor, which has been mentioned in a preceding section;[1199] here the palm extends from the left hand, which is held down close to the side, up to the shoulder. We have already noted that the copyist added a palm-branch to the stump placed beside the Vatican girl runner (Pl. [2]). In the Choiseul-Gouffier Apollo (Pl. [7A]) the left hand should doubtless be restored with the palm-branch, because of the projecting notch of marble on the side of the left leg near the knee.[1200] A similar notch appears also on the Apollo-on-the-Omphalos in Athens (Pl. [7B]), which shows that the left hand held a long attribute, which was doubtless a palm-branch. This attribute occurs frequently on vases.[1201] We see it on a marble statue found at Formiae and now in the Glyptothek Ny-Carlsberg in Copenhagen, which shows the same motive as that of the statue by Stephanos (Pl. [9]), though in a freer style of execution. Here the lowered right hand holds a palm-branch, which is shown in low relief against the right arm.[1202]