Fig. 40.—Statue of the Thorn-puller (Spinario). Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome.
Probably the statues of boy runners did not differ essentially from those of men. That they were sometimes represented in motion is shown by the footprints on the recovered base of the statue of Sosikrates by an unknown artist. Here the right foot touched the ground only with the front portion.[1457] The view has often been expressed that the bronze statue in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome, known as the Spinario (Thorn-puller) portrays a runner (Fig. [40]).[1458] It represents a boy, from twelve to fifteen years old, seated upon a rock bending over and engrossed in extracting a thorn from his left foot, which rests upon the right knee. The severe hair treatment, low forehead, full cheeks, and strong chin appear to show the ideal beauty of a boy of the period of about 460 B. C. The motive seems to have been inspired directly by nature—witness the supple bend of the back, the delicate arms, the naïve, though not too realistic, concentration of interest in the act portrayed. Few pieces of ancient sculpture have given rise to more discussion and extraordinary difference of opinion than this popular work. One school of archæologists[1459] believes it a late adaptation of a Hellenistic original, a more accurate copy being the one in the British Museum, and consequently views it as a purely genre statue impossible of conception before Alexander’s time. According to this view the London copy was an archaistic work of the time of Pasiteles. Another school, however, including Helbig, Wolters, Kekulé, and many others, sees in the Roman statue an original work of 460 to 450 B. C., chiefly because the face shows great similarity to those of the statues of the Olympia gables (especially to that of Apollo)[1460]. According to this view the statue can not have been a genre work, as such works of decorative character were of later origin, but the motive must be sought in some definite incident—in some myth or historical event. Thus it has been referred to the colonization of the Ozolian Lokroi, whose ancestor Lokros is said to have got a thorn in his foot and to have founded cities near where this occurred in fulfilment of an oracle. Many others, on the other hand, have seen in its motive that of a boy victor in running, who has gained his victory despite a thorn, which he is now pulling out, and who has dedicated his statue to commemorate both the victory and the untoward circumstances under which it was won. It has been assigned to various sculptors and schools—to Myron, Pythagoras, and Kalamis, and to Peloponnesian, Bœotian, and even Sicilian art.[1461] The boy’s absorption in his task certainly reminds us of the concentration so characteristic of the Diskobolos of Myron. In determining its age and artistic affiliations several things must be considered. In the first place, the Roman statue is a copy, as the rock on which the boy sits is cast with the figure, which would have been impossible in the fifth century B. C. The long hair on this copy, which is short on the one in the British Museum, falls down the neck, but not over the cheeks, as it should on a head which is thus bent downwards. Pasiteles almost certainly would have tied it with a ribbon. This shows that the original was the work of an artist who was used to making standing statues, and was not aware of the change in the representation of the hair brought about by drooping ones. Such considerations, in conjunction with the archaic facial characteristics, almost certainly refer the original work to the fifth century B. C., a date when genre statues, produced for adornment, did not exist. Consequently a definite incident must be represented by it, and it is quite possible that this incident should be sought in athletic sculpture in the representation of a boy runner.
The Thorn-puller became a model for many imitations from the beginning of Hellenistic times on. These imitations tended to greater realism and consequently to the debasement of the original conception, for they were made to represent peasants, shepherds, satyrs, and even negroes. The motif was also transferred to figures of girls, as, e. g., in the fragment of a terra-cotta statuette found in 1912 at Nida-Haddernheim.[1462] In the early Empire it was frequently copied in marble, and again, during the Renaissance, the motive was used for small bronzes.[1463] Of Hellenistic copies, showing how the motive deteriorated, we shall mention only two: the marble one found on the Esquiline, in 1874, and known as the Castellani copy, now in the British Museum,[1464] the sculptor of which has made it into a truly genre fountain figure by transforming the noble features of the beautiful Greek runner into the snub nose and thick lips of a street Arab, and the still later bronze statuette found near Sparta and now in the Paris collection of Baron Edmund de Rothschild,[1465] which represents the boy extracting the thorn in anger.
Similarly the so-called Sandal-binder—with replicas in Paris (Fig. [8]), London, Athens, Munich, and elsewhere, has been looked upon, without decisive grounds, to be sure, as a runner who is tying on his sandals after the race.[1466] We have already discussed this statue in Chapter II, in connection with the subject of assimilation.
Hoplitodromoi.
The race in armor had a practical value in the training of soldiers, and so became a popular sport, since it appealed not only to the trained athlete, but to the citizen in general. It belonged to “mixed athletics,”[1467] i. e., to competitions which were conducted under handicap conditions, such as our obstacle races, and consequently it never attained the prestige of the strictly athletic events. It came last among the gymnic contests at Olympia and elsewhere,[1468] being followed by the equestrian events. It seems to have varied in different places in the distance run, in the armor of the runner, and in the rules which governed the race. At Olympia, as at Athens, it appears to have been a diaulos or a race of two stadia.[1469] The most strenuous race of the sort was run at the Eleutheria at Platæa, where the contestants were completely enveloped in armor[1470] and were subject to peculiar rules. At Olympia the competitors originally ran with helmets, greaves, and round shields, as we infer from scenes on archaic vases and from the statement of Pausanias that the statue of the first victor in this event, Damaretos of Heraia, was represented with these arms.[1471] In this passage Pausanias adds that the Eleans and other Greeks later (ἀνὰ χρόνον) gave up the greaves, and we find that they disappear on the vase-paintings.[1472] Hauser has shown that the vase-paintings, which, however, mostly illustrate the Athenian practice, display a varied custom in respect of the use of the greaves before about 520 B. C., the general use of them until about 450 B. C., and after that date their disuse.[1473] The helmet disappeared after the greaves, but the shield was never given up.[1474] Thus the bronze statue of Mnesiboulos of Elateia, a victor (σὺν τῇ ἀσπίδι) of Pausanias’ day, which stood in “Runner Street” of his native city, appears to have been represented with the shield.[1475] It was for this reason that the event was later sometimes called merely ἀσπίς.[1476] The shields that appear on the vases are always round and the helmets are Attic.[1477] The gradual reduction in the amount of the armor may have been a concession to the regular athletes, who probably looked upon the contest as a spurious sort of athletics. As for the style of the race, the hoplite runners seem to have run somewhat as the stade and double-course runners, i. e., with their right hands up and their arms violently swinging.[1478]
Fig. 41.—Hoplitodromes. Scenes from a r.-f. Kylix. Museum of Berlin.