Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art

by Walter Woodburn Hyde

None of the statues of pentathletes at Olympia has been recovered with certainty in Roman copies. That some of them were represented at rest is shown by the base of the statue of the victor Pythokles of Elis, by the elder Polykleitos, which has been recovered.[1507] This base supported two different statues in succession. The feet of the earlier one by Polykleitos were riveted into circular holes, and behind the right foot on the upper surface of the base was inscribed the artist’s name, while the victor’s appeared on the vertical front. This statue was later removed and was replaced by another, whose pose was different, as we see from the footmarks, which show that the feet were attached with lead in hollows. Probably the old inscription was renewed in archaic letters when this second statue was set up, the older letters being retained, perhaps, to conceal the theft. The original statue was removed by the first century B. C., or perhaps under Nero;[1508] the new one was also inscribed as the work of Polykleitos. A base of the Hadrianic or Antonine age has been found in Rome, inscribed with the names Polykleitos and Pythokles.[1509] Since the footmarks do not agree with those of either one of the Olympia statues, Petersen believes that the existing footmarks are due to an older use of the base and that they have nothing to do with the statue of Pythokles. Perhaps the statue on the Roman base was the original one by Polykleitos removed from Olympia to Rome, though it is possible that it was only a copy, the original being elsewhere in Rome. While the later statue at Olympia had the feet squarely on the ground, the original one stood on the right foot, the left being drawn back and turned out, touching the ground only with the ball. Hence the left knee must have turned outwards, a natural position, if the head of the statue was turned slightly to the left. In other words, this is the usual Polykleitan scheme. Furtwaengler has made a strong though hardly convincing attempt to identify this original statue with a copy surviving in two replicas at Rome and Munich, which, as he believes, fit the conditions of the statue of Pythokles.[1510] These copies represent a nude youth standing with the weight of the body on the right leg, the left drawn back and outwards. The head is turned to the left, the right arm is held close to the side (the hand, perhaps, once holding a fillet), and the left forearm is outstretched from the elbow and holds an aryballos in the hand. The two works are manifestly Polykleitan in style—the body, head, and hair treatment resembling that of the Doryphoros. He assumed that the feet corresponded in scale with the footmarks on the Olympia base.

Helbig, in the first edition of his Fuehrer, recognized the kinship between the Vatican statuette and the Doryphoros of Polykleitos, and was prone to accept Furtwaengler’s identification; but later on, in the third edition, he ascribed the statuette only to the Polykleitan circle and denied that its foot position corresponded with that of the Pythokles base. Amelung also, while accepting its Polykleitan character, has shown that the feet of the statuette are closer together than those on the Olympia base and are placed at a slightly different angle. As for the Munich statue, both Helbig and Amelung have ruled it out of the evidence. The head, though similar to that of the statuette, also discloses marked differences, and the legs of the two works do not have the same pose. Loewy agrees with Amelung that the statue of Pythokles conformed with the type of the Diadoumenos—especially

Fig. 45.—Statue of a Boy Victor (the Dresden Boy). Albertinum, Dresden. with the Vaison copy (see Fig. [28])—and with that of the Doryphoros.[1511] We can not, therefore, safely assume that the statue of Pythokles has been recovered in any existing copy.[1512] A further variant of the works just discussed should be mentioned here—the beautiful marble statue of a boy victor in Dresden, known as the Dresden Boy (Fig. [45]).[1513] In this statue the leg position is nearly like that indicated by the marks on the Pythokles basis, though the left foot is not set so far back nor its tip so far out. The head is turned to the left and slightly lowered, the right arm hung to the side, and the left forearm was outstretched, the hand doubtless holding some athletic article, at which the boy is looking down, perhaps a diskos[1514] or a fillet. This beautiful athlete statue has many stylistic points in common with the Diadoumenos, and shows similar Attic influence, and its original may be referred with Furtwaengler to the later period of the master himself. It gives us an excellent idea how Polykleitos may have made his Olympia boy victors appear. A more remote variant seems to be furnished by a fourth-century B. C. bronze statuette of a youthful athlete in the Louvre.[1515] Here the position of the feet, the turn of the head, and the direction of the gaze are the same as in the Dresden Boy. However, as the right arm is raised horizontally, Furtwaengler believed that the right hand held a fillet which the youth is letting fall into the palm of the left.

That statues of pentathletes at Olympia were also represented in motion is shown by the footmarks on the recovered base of one of the two statues mentioned by Pausanias as set up in honor of the Elean Aischines, who won two victories some time between Ols. 126 and 132 ( = 276 and 252 B. C.).[1516] These marks show that the statue represented the victor in violent movement, since the left foot was turned outwards and the right one was brought almost to the edge of the base.

We shall next consider in some detail how the pentathlete may have been represented at Olympia in the three characteristic contests of jumping, diskos-throwing, and javelin-throwing. We have already discussed the runner, and in a future section we shall discuss the wrestler, both of whom contended in these events not only in the pentathlon, but also in the corresponding independent competitions.

Jumpers.

Jumping was a well-known contest in heroic days. In Homer, however, it did not take place at the games of Patroklos, but only at those held by King Alkinoos.[1517] Quintus Smyrnæus has the Trojan heroes contend in jumping,[1518] and the contest goes back to mythology.[1519] Though Plato does not mention it, Aristotle does.[1520] Later it became an essential part of the pentathlon, though never an independent contest at the great games. It was probably considered to be the most representative feature of the pentathlon, perhaps because of the customary use of the halteres in the physical exercises of the gymnasium. Jumping-weights were, in fact, the special symbol of the pentathlon, and, as we saw in the preceding chapter, were often the definitive attributes indicated on statues of pentathletes.[1521] We shall next discuss the appearance and use of such jumping-weights. Their form is often a sure indication of the date of a statue.

Juethner has made a careful study of the different shapes of halteres and his conclusions have been followed, for the most part, by Gardiner.[1522] The halteres do not appear in Homer, but were in existence at least by the beginning of the sixth century B. C., and a little later they probably appeared on pentathlete statues. To this period belongs the lead weight from Eleusis now in Athens, whose inscription records that it was dedicated by one Epainetos to commemorate his victory in jumping.[1523] On vase-paintings of the sixth and fifth centuries B. C., we see numerous types, but two main ones. Early b.-f. vases show a semicircular piece of metal or stone with a deep depression on one side for a finger grip, the two club-like ends being equal (as in Figs. 36A and 44). In the early fifth century B. C., a club-like type came in, which shows many modifications in the size and shape of the ends.[1524] In the fifth century B. C., the second main type appeared, of an elongated semispherical form, thickest in the middle and with the ends pointed or rounded. These correspond with the “archaic” ones, which Pausanias saw on the figure of Agon in the dedicatory group of Mikythos at Olympia[1525] and describes as forming half an elongated circle and so fastened as to let the fingers pass through. We have two stone examples of this type: one found at Corinth, now in the Polytechnic Institute in Athens,[1526] in which a hole is cut behind the middle for the fingers and thumbs, and a more primitive single one from Olympia.[1527] Philostratos divides the Greek jumping-weights into “long” and “spherical,”[1528] which Juethner identifies with the two types just discussed. Gardiner, however, finds this impossible, since Pausanias speaks of one type as “archaic,” and he consequently thinks that these were no longer in use in the time of Philostratos. After the fifth century B. C. we have little evidence about halteres until Roman days, when a cylindrical type appears on Roman copies of Greek statues of athletes, on mosaics and wall-paintings.[1529] Thus it appears on the tree-trunk in two athlete statues in Dresden[1530] and the Pitti Gallery in Florence,[1531] and on the Lateran athlete mosaic from Tusculum of the imperial period.[1532] In Roman days jumping-weights were used for the most part in medical gymnastics, like our dumb-bells.[1533]