The movement is carried a little further—showing the moment of transition to the downward swing or third position—in a fifth-century B. C. bronze in the British Museum.[1579] Here a nude, beardless athlete is represented standing with the right foot advanced and holding the diskos in both hands before him above the head. The right hand grasps the quoit underneath and the left at the top.[1580] The third position is well illustrated by the tiny archaic bronze on the cover of a lebes in the British Museum,[1581] which represents a nude and beardless youth standing with the left foot advanced and with the left hand raised, while the right holds the diskos. Almost the same pose is also seen in a small bronze in the Antiquarium, Berlin.[1582]
Two archaic statuettes from the Akropolis, now in the National Museum in Athens, and recently published, should be mentioned in this connection.[1583] The more archaic of these represents a youth in an attitude which has been misunderstood. De Ridder interpreted it as a dancing man, while Staïs thought it represented a youth walking along with his left hand raised as if to ward off a blow. White, however, showed that it (like another less perfect example from the Akropolis, no. 6594) represents a diskobolos standing with the right foot advanced and holding the diskos in front of the body with the right hand, resting it against the flat of the forearm, while the left arm is raised above the head. Thus it is another example illustrating the initial stage of Gardiner’s third position. The other statuette, wrongly mounted, should, according to White, be made to lean further forward; the knees are bent, the body swung forward from the hips, the head thrown back and upward, the right arm stretched forth with the flat of the forearm uppermost and the left similarly placed. Gardiner and Staïs interpreted this figure as a charioteer, and de Ridder as either a jumper, who has raised his halteres preparatory to the leap, or a diskobolos. White has shown that the position of the right arm proves it to be a diskobolos, represented in a movement between Gardiner’s third and fourth positions, just prior to that of Myron’s statue. De Ridder believed both statues to be Aeginetan, but no. 6614, when compared with Myron’s statue, is certainly Attic, and resemblances in the treatment of the hair, eyes, and mouth show that both statuettes are of the same school. It has often been said that Myron’s great statue had no predecessor, as it certainly had no successor. Its fame was enhanced by the assumption that Myron passed at one stride from such statues as the Tyrannicides to that complex work. Such works, however, as these statuettes—especially no. 6614—show that the preliminary problems had been solved on a humble scale before Myron undertook his consummate work. Here, then, we have works by artists who belonged to the very movement which produced Myron.
For the last three positions analyzed by Gardiner (nos. 5, 6, 7) our only illustrations appear to be vase-paintings.
Akontistai.
Javelin-throwing (ἀκοντίζειν, ἀκοντισμός) was very old and was universal in Greece, its origin being traced back to mythology.[1584] Stassoff tried to trace it to Oriental sources,[1585] but inasmuch as no such contest is shown on the monuments of Egypt or Assyria, Juethner is probably right in assuming that it was Greek in origin. In Homer it was a separate contest at the games of Patroklos.[1586] Juethner has distinguished two types of javelin-throwing in the historical period: one in which the spear or akontion was pointed more or less upwards,[1587] the other in which it was held horizontally.[1588] Only the former type is represented in illustrations of purely athletic competitions, the latter type referring to illustrations of the practical use of javelin-throwing, i. e., in war or in the chase. Vase-paintings of palæstra scenes almost invariably show javelins with blunt points; the throwers’ heads are frequently turned back before the throw, and there is no sign of any target. On vase-paintings, however, which represent practical javelin-throwing from horseback, the javelins are pointed. This proves that in athletic contests the throw was for distance and not at a mark.[1589] The javelin used in Greek games had several names, ἄκων, ἀκόντιον, etc.[1590] It was about the height of a man, as we know from its appearance on a Spartan relief,[1591] and from many vase-paintings representing palæstra scenes (Fig. [44]). It was thrown by means of a thong (ἀγκύλη, Lat. amentum), which was fastened near the centre and consisted of a detachable leathern strip from 12 to 18 inches long. This was bound tight, with a loop left, into which the thrower inserted his first and middle fingers.[1592] The method of casting is seen on many vases.[1593] Gardiner has analyzed three different positions from vase-paintings. Usually the throw was made with a short run, though standing throws are also pictured.[1594] First the thrower extends the right arm back to its full length and, with the left hand opposite the right breast, holds the end of the spear and pushes it back, holding it downwards or horizontally.[1595] Next he starts to run, turning his body sidewise and extending his left arm to the front. On a r.-f. Munich kylix[1596] we see the first and second positions. The youth on the left is steadying the javelin with the left hand, while the one on the right has just let it go. A further turn of the body to the right takes place and the right knee is bent, while the right shoulder is dropped and the hand is turned outwards.[1597] The actual cast is very uncommon on vase-paintings, because of difficulty in representing it.[1598]
Because of the assumed lack of sculptural monuments, Reisch[1599] and
Fig. 47.—Bust of the Doryphoros, after Polykleitos, by Apollonios. Museum of Naples. others have wrongly doubted whether javelin-throwers were represented in sculpture as victors. There certainly is no a priori reason why athletic sculptors might not have made statues in any one of the three poses which Gardiner has distinguished on vase-paintings, even if this contest, like jumping, was better adapted to the painter than to the sculptor. Furthermore, we shall attempt to show that such monuments actually did exist.
The best example of such a javelin-thrower seems to be the Doryphoros, the most famous statue of Polykleitos, in which he illustrated his canon of athletic forms. The Doryphoros exists in many copies, all of which agree fairly well in style and proportions. K. Friedrichs, in his monograph Der Doryphoros des Polyklets, which appeared in 1863,[1600] was the first to show that the statue found in 1797 in the Palaistra at Pompeii, and now in the Naples Museum (Pl. [4]), was a copy of the original bronze, as it shows all the peculiarities of the master’s style known to us from tradition.[1601] Mahler enumerates 7 statues, 17 torsos, and 36 heads copied from the original, and the fine, but expressionless, Augustan bronze bust from the villa of the Pisos, Herculaneum, inscribed as the work of the sculptor Apollonios, son of Archios, of Athens, which is now in Naples (Fig. [47]).[1602] The best-preserved
