Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art

by Walter Woodburn Hyde

The struggle on the ground implies groups and not single statues. Our best representation of such a group is furnished by the famous marble one in the Uffizi, Florence (Pl. [25]).[1780] Though having no pretensions to be a victor monument, this group is the most important monument extant connected with the pankration, a fine anatomical study from Hellenistic times, evincing the direct influence of Lysippos in its proportions.[1781] It shows affinity of design to certain sculptures from the frieze of the Great Altar at Pergamon.[1782] Pliny speaks of a symplegma by Kephisodotos, the son of Praxiteles, at Pergamon, but that group was of an erotic character and can not have had anything to do with the Florentine one.[1783] Unfortunately the group in question has been much restored, though the restoration in the main is right. The heads, though probably antique, do not seem to belong to the statues, but both appear to be copies of the head of one of the Niobids, with which group the pancratiasts were discovered in 1583. The right arm of the uppermost athlete seems to have been wrongly restored; in any case this athlete is not strangling his opponent. One youth has thrown the other down on to his knee, and his left leg is intertwined with the left leg of the other, and he is drawing back his arm to aim a blow. The wrestler underneath supports himself upon his left arm, and the intention of his opponent is to destroy this support by a blow of the fist, which would bring the contest to a sudden conclusion, since the right arm of the under youth is fast and he must defend himself with the left. As Gardiner points out, such a situation is illustrated by Heliodoros’ description of the match between Theagenes and an Aethiopian champion.[1784] The under man’s position, however, may suddenly change and the issue yet be in his favor. Many writers have explained the group as ordinary wrestlers,[1785] but Gardiner has conclusively shown that it belongs to the pankration, since in wrestling the contest is ended when one of the contestants has been thrown, while here the struggle is continuing on the ground.[1786]

PLATE 25

Marble Group of Pancratiasts. Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

Kapros of Elis was the first of seven Olympic victors to emulate the fabled feat of Herakles by winning the pankration and wrestling matches on the same day—that is, he was the first professional strong man.[1787] The other six all came from the East. It has been suggested[1788] that the colossal Farnese Herakles found in Rome in the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla in 1540 and now in Naples, inscribed as the work of the Athenian Glykon, which represents the hero leaning wearily on his club against a rock,[1789] may represent the type of these professional strong men, who called themselves the successors of Herakles. But such a suggestion is as unfounded as the one already examined, which identifies the original of the Seated Boxer of the Museo delle Terme (Pl. [16] and Fig. [27]) with Kleitomachos of Thebes, the redoubtable opponent of Kapros, since the dates in both cases are against such identifications. The Farnese statue and other replicas of the same original[1790] obviously revert to a Lysippan original, though they are considerably metamorphosed by the taste of a later age. Such big swollen muscles at first sight appear to be alien to the sculptor of the graceful Agias, but that the Naples copy by Glykon—who, from the inscription on the base, must be referred to the first century B. C.[1791]—really represents the work of Lysippos seems well established by the fact that a smaller copy, though still over life-size, of poorer workmanship, in the Pitti Gallery in Florence, is inscribed as Λυσίππου ἔργον.[1792] This type of weary hero appears in the Telephos group on the small Pergamene frieze, but is even earlier, since the latter seems to have been borrowed from a statue which is reproduced on a coin of Alexander, which was struck at least as early as 300 B. C.[1793] The type of Herakles wearied by his superhuman labors was inaugurated still earlier by Lysippos, who was fond of representing the hero in many poses, seated and standing, resting and laboring. We might mention his colossal bronze statue of Herakles, which was set up in Tarentum and then carried to Rome and placed on the Capitol by Q. Fabius Maximus, when Tarentum was captured in 209 B. C., and was later transferred to the Hippodrome at Constantinople, where it remained until the sack of that city by the Franks in 1202.[1794] It is hazardous, therefore, to reject the evidence, and it will be best to see in the original a genuine Lysippan work, as do Bulle, Overbeck, von Mach, Schnaase,[1795] and others, and so to make Glykon responsible only for the exaggerations of his own copy. Thus we have to face the fact of divergent styles in the great bronze founder of the fourth century B. C., even if we admit with Richardson that “for our peace of mind this statue might well have been sunk in the sea.”[1796]

Fig. 61.—Bronze Head of Boxer (?), from Olympia. National Museum, Athens.

Long ago, I referred the life-size bronze portrait-like head of a boxer or pancratiast found at Olympia, now in the Athens Museum (Figs. 61A and B),[1797] to one of two statues of the pancratiast Kapros mentioned by Pausanias.[1798] The remnant of a wild-olive crown in the hair proves that it comes from the statue of an Olympic victor. Its bruised appearance may, however, betoken the punishment administered by the gloves of a boxer rather than by the bare fists of a pancratiast. That Greek sculpture was not always ideal we have seen from the description of the Seated Boxer of the Museo delle Terme (Pl. [16] and Fig. [27]). This peculiarly life-like head is another example of the same realism; it would be hard to name a more brutal and repellent piece from the whole range of Greek sculpture. The profession of this bruiser is evident in every feature, for the sculptor has betrayed it by the swollen ears, flat nose, thick neck, swollen cheeks, projecting under lip, frowning brows, and unkempt hair and beard. All these traits—especially the treatment of the eyes—give to it the sullen gloomy look so characteristic of boxers and pancratiasts.[1799] The man appears to be awaiting the attack, his contracted brows showing alert expectation, and his closed lips great determination. Furtwaengler, Bulle, Flasch, and others have dated it in the fourth century B. C., and are fain to see in it the work of an artist of the immediate circle of Lysippos or Lysistratos;[1800] but its exaggerated realism seems rather to point to a later period, not earlier than the third century B. C.[1801] The bronze foot of a victor statue also found at Olympia (Fig. [62])[1802] has been assigned by Furtwaengler to one of the statues of Kapros, an ascription which we also have followed.[1803] The position of this foot shows—as an experiment with a living model has disclosed—great movement, which makes it obvious that it comes from a statue in lively motion, probably of a boxer or pancratiast. It belongs to the statue of a strong man of coarse build; there is not the slightest trace of unnecessary flesh on it, but the whole is vigorous muscle, even the swollen veins being clearly visible in the photograph. While Furtwaengler finds its stylistic parallels in the copies of the Pergamene works of the third century B. C., e. g., the Dying Gaul statues, the material and form of the base fitting that period, Wolters emphasizes its stylistic analogy to the bronze head just discussed.