Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art

by Walter Woodburn Hyde

Racing Chariot and Horses. From an archaic b.-f. Hydria. Museum of Berlin.

Representations of the various chariot-races are commoner than those of any other Olympic contest, appearing on vases, reliefs, coins, and gems.[1848] There seem to have been two distinct types of racing-chariot in Greece.[1849] The four-horse chariot was a modification of the heroic two-horse war-chariot, which was a low car on two wheels, surmounted by a box consisting of a high framework, open only at the rear, and large enough to contain the chieftain and the charioteer. The war-chariot was known to both Mycenæan Greece and Crete. There is a relief of uncertain date in the Museum of Candia, which represents a chariot and charioteer.[1850] It is far superior to the type of chariots appearing in relief on the gravestones found at Mycenæ,[1851] though the type on both is of the same general pattern, having the same box and four-spoked wheels. On the Mycenæan reliefs the box seems to rest directly upon the rim of the wheel, and the portrayal of a single horse is very inartistic. On the Candia relief, however, there are at least two horses discernible, and both the horses and the warrior, who is about to mount the car, are lifelike. The Greek racing-car was much lighter than the Homeric and Mycenæan war-chariot, and the box had room only for the charioteer. It was drawn usually by four horses. The Athenian type appears on Panathenaic vases throughout the whole history of the manufacture of these vases,[1852] and also on Macedonian and Sicilian coins. On certain vases of later date the car is still lighter and has larger wheels. One of the earliest racing-cars is seen on a vase in the British Museum,[1853] dating from the eighth century B. C. It seems to be a two-horse car, as we should expect at this early date, though the artist has drawn but one horse. The charioteer is clothed in a long chiton, a custom which was generally kept throughout the history of the chariot-race. The regular two-horse type of chariot appears on vases as a cart, the body of the old war-chariot being so diminished that nothing is left but the driver’s seat with a square open framework on the sides. The driver rests his feet on a footboard suspended from the pole.[1854] Perhaps this represents a peculiarly Athenian type of chariot, since the two-horse chariot on coins of Philip II, son of Amyntas and father of Alexander the Great, a victor at Olympia in both horse-racing and charioteering, resembles the ordinary four-horse car, and the driver stands instead of sits.[1855] The mule-car was like the two-horse chariot, as we see in representations of it on coins of Rhegion and Messana.[1856] The best illustrations of racing with four-horse cars are afforded by coins of Sicilian cities.[1857] We see an excellent representation of such a race on a sixth-century B. C. Panathenaic vase recently found at Sparta, on which a chariot driven by a standing charioteer is represented as passing a pillar on the right, and therefore perhaps near the end of the race.[1858] The harnessing of two horses to a racing-car is seen on an archaic b.-f. hydria in Berlin (Pl. [26]).[1859] Here a third horse appears, led by a nude youth, who is crowned, and who therefore probably represents a victorious horse-racer. Several other b.-f. vase-paintings showing four-horse chariots have been collected by Gerhard.[1860] However, we are not dependent upon vase-paintings and coins to judge of the magnificence of Greek chariots of the historical period, for we have actual remains of them—war-chariots, to be sure, but not very unlike the ones used at the corresponding dates in Olympia. Among these is the fine bronze biga found in the grave of an Italian prince at Monteleone, Etruria, in 1902, and now one of the chief treasures of the Metropolitan Museum in New York.[1861] This is a war-chariot of the beginning of the sixth century B. C., the only complete ancient bronze chariot now known. The restored frame of wood is sheathed with thin bronze plates richly ornamented with reliefs in repoussé. Because of its form and its relationship to chariots appearing on archaic Ionic monuments of Asia Minor, for example, on the reliefs of sarcophagi from Klazomenai, and because of the strong resemblance between its decorative designs and those of archaic Italian monuments of Ionicizing style, Furtwaengler has classed it as the product of Ionic Greek art. Professor Chase, on the other hand, finds these decorations pure Etruscan in character, comparing them with the reliefs on three bronze tripods in the possession of Mr. James Loeb, which are dated some half a century later.[1862] In any case this chariot is “das glaenzendste, vollstaendigste” archaic metal work yet recovered. In the British Museum there are considerable remnants of the chariot-group of King Mausolos and his wife Artemisia, which once stood on the apex of the Mausoleion at Halikarnassos, the work, according to Pliny,[1863] of Pythis (or Pytheos), the architect and historian of the tomb.[1864] Besides the figures of the royal pair, we have the head of one horse, the hinder half of another, fragments of still others, and one wheel of the chariot.[1865]

CHARIOT-GROUPS AT OLYMPIA.

Great artists were engaged to set up chariot-groups at Olympia and elsewhere. Many of the quadrigae and bigae mentioned by Pliny as the works of sculptors and painters must have been agonistic offerings.[1866] Aeginetan sculptors were especially in favor at Olympia. Thus Onatas, in conjunction with the Athenian Kalamis, made a group for King Hiero,[1867] and Glaukias made another for Hiero’s brother Gelo;[1868] Simon made an equestrian group for Phormis,[1869] and Philotimos made a statue for the horse-racer Xenombrotos of Kos.[1870] The oldest dedication by a chariot victor at Olympia was the votive offering of Miltiades, the son of Kypselos, of Athens, which consisted of an ivory horn of Amaltheia, inscribed with archaic letters and set up in the treasury of the Sikyonians. Miltiades won his victory in Ol. (?) 54 ( = 564 B. C.).[1871] The next oldest dedication at Olympia was that of a chariot, without any human figure, by the Spartan Euagoras, who won three victories in Ols. (?) 58–60 ( = 548–540 B. C.).[1872] This custom of dedicating merely the model of a chariot continued sporadically into the third century B. C. Thus Polypeithes of Sparta, who won a victory near the end of the sixth century B. C.,[1873] dedicated a chariot, while a figure of his father, the wrestler Kalliteles, stood beside it.[1874] A Pythian victor, Arkesilas IV, son of Battos IV, king of Kyrene, who won a victory in the 31st Pythiad ( = 462 B. C.), dedicated a chariot at Delphi.[1875] At the beginning of the fourth century B. C. the Spartan princess Kyniska set up “bronze horses less than life-size” in the pronaos of the temple of Zeus at Olympia. The recovered base shows that Pausanias was right about the size of this votive offering.[1876] Theochrestos of Kyrene, who won some time between Ols. (?) 100 and 122 ( = 380 and 292 B. C.),[1877] and Glaukon of Athens, who won in the third century B. C.,[1878] also set up votive chariots. The recovered base of Glaukon’s chariot shows that it was small. Sometimes a chariot victor, for economy’s sake, contented himself with dedicating merely a statue of himself in honor of his victory—a custom which continued from the sixth to the third centuries B. C. Perhaps one of the oldest examples of such a dedication of which we have record is that of the Elean Archidamas, who won a victory at an unknown date, but certainly some time after Ol. 66 ( = 515 B. C.).[1879] In the fifth century B. C., the Spartans Anaxandros[1880] and Lykinos[1881] dedicated merely statues of themselves. In the fourth century B. C. the Elean victors Timon,[1882] whose monument was by Daidalos, Troilos, whose monument was by Lysippos,[1883] and Telemachos, whose statue was by Philonides,[1884] set up statues in honor of their victories. The footprints on the inscribed base of the statue of Telemachos show that he was represented standing at rest with both feet flat on the ground. This was probably the position of the statues of the other two victors mentioned. The statue of the Spartan victor Polykles, surnamed Polychalkos, stood in a singular group. He was represented as being greeted on his return home by his children, one of whom held a small grace-hoop in his hand, while the other was trying to snatch the victor ribbon from his father’s hand.[1885] We learn from Diogenes Laertios that the tyrant Periandros of Corinth vowed to set up a golden statue of himself if he won the chariot-race.[1886]

The first instance chronologically recorded by Pausanias of a chariot victor dedicating his statue along with chariot and horses is that of king Gelo of Syracuse, the group being the work of the Aeginetan Glaukias.[1887] The first instance of a victor dedicating his statue in a group with chariot, horses, and charioteer, is that of Kleosthenes of Epidamnos, the group being the work of the Argive Hagelaïdas.[1888] Even the names of the horses were inscribed on this monument.[1889] The owner of the chariot, to be sure, took the prize, but he felt that the victory was due to the horses and driver, and so he associated them with himself in the monument. Sometimes the victor acted as his own charioteer. Thus the Spartan Damonon, already mentioned as the hero of many chariot victories in and near Sparta, tells in the inscription appearing on his votive relief that he was his own charioteer.[1890] In the first Isthmian Ode Pindar congratulates Herodotos of Thebes, who won the chariot-race (?) in 458 B. C., on not entrusting his chariot to strangers, but driving it himself.[1891] Thrasyboulos seems to have driven his father’s car at the victory commemorated by the sixth Pythian Ode, sung in honor of the chariot victory of Xenokrates of Akragas in 490 B. C. at Delphi. Karrhotos, the charioteer of Arkesilas of Kyrene already mentioned, was the latter’s brother-in-law.[1892] Similarly Aigyptos appears to have ridden his own horse at Olympia instead of entrusting it to a jockey.[1893] Sophokles, in the Electra, has the hero Orestes drive his own chariot at the Pythia. Kyniska, the daughter of king Archidamas of Sparta, was the first woman to enter the contests at the race-course and the first to win an Olympic victory with her chariot.[1894] Apart from the small votive offering, already mentioned as standing in the temple of Zeus, she had also a victor-group at Olympia, by the sculptor Apellas, consisting of chariot, horses, charioteer, and herself. The rounded form of the recovered base,[1895] in connection with the description of Pausanias, permits us to assume that the statue of the princess stood in front on the projecting rounded portion of the pedestal. This is the contention of Loewy, who opposes the theory of Furtwaengler[1896] that the statue stood away from the rest of the group, since Pausanias makes no mention of such an arrangement. In any case, the charioteer in the group can not have been separated from the car.

In an unpublished paper by my former teacher, Dr. Alfred Emerson, which was read by Professor D. M. Robinson before the Archæological Institute of America at its Christmas meeting in Providence in 1910, and entitled The Case of Kyniska,[1897] the argument was made that the chariot was in miniature; that the statue of Kyniska was a portrait, because of the wording of the recovered epigram; and, lastly that the smallest of the so-called bronze dancers from the villa of the Pisos in Herculaneum, now in Naples, is a late reproduction of the statue at Olympia by Apellas. Emerson thinks that Pliny no doubt often visited the villa and may well have had these statues in mind when he mentioned Apellas as the author of several statues of women adorning themselves.[1898]

The monument erected by Hiero, son of Deinomenes and brother and successor of king Gelo at Syracuse, who won two horse-races and a four-horse chariot victory at Olympia in Ols. 76, 77, 78 ( = 476–468 B. C.),[1899] consisted of a bronze chariot, on which the charioteer was mounted, and on either side a race-horse with a jockey on each. Onatas made the chariot (and possibly the statue of the driver), while Kalamis sculptured the horses and jockeys. Such a division among sculptors was not uncommon at Olympia. Thus the Aeginetan artist Simon and the Argive Dionysios made a group in common for Phormis, which we have already mentioned, consisting of two horses and two charioteers.[1900] The Chian Pantias and the Aeginetan Philotimos made a group in common for Xenombrotos of Kos, victor in horse-racing, and for his son, the boy boxer Xenodikos, which consisted of statues of the man and the boy on horseback.[1901] Pliny mentions a four-horse chariot-group for which the elder Praxiteles made the charioteer and Kalamis the chariot, adding that Praxiteles did this out of kindness, not wishing it to be thought that Kalamis had failed in representing the man after succeeding in representing the horses.[1902]

In some of the Olympic chariot-groups doubtless the charioteer was represented at the moment of entering the chariot or already in it. Sometimes a figure of Nike took the place of the charioteer, in order that the victor’s exploit might be more exalted. Thus Pausanias, in mentioning the bronze chariot of Kratisthenes of Kyrene by Pythagoras of Rhegion,[1903] says that statues of Nike and Kratisthenes himself are mounted upon the car. The Nike in some cases was replaced by the figure of a young maiden, who stood beside the victor, as in the cases of the Elean Timon[1904] and the Macedonian Lampos.[1905] Pliny notes a similar example in reference to the chariot of Teisikrates, a Delphian victor in the two-horse chariot-race.[1906] The maiden in all these cases may have been merely a Nike personified or a mortal.[1907] Pliny records that the painter Nikomachos, son and pupil of Aristeides, painted a Victoria quadrigam in sublime rapiens.[1908] The figure of Nike appears often on reliefs. Thus on a terra-cotta sarcophagus from Klazomenai we see a two-horse chariot driven by a boy, while alongside is a winged female figure—Iris or Nike—mounting it.[1909] The moment of victory is shown on an Attic marble votive relief representing a four-horse chariot, now in the British Museum. Here a figure of Nike is represented as floating in the air and extending a wreath (now wanting) towards the head of the charioteer, who is draped with a tunic girdled at the waist, as he mounts the car. If the charioteer in this relief is a female (which is doubtful), it may he the personification of the city to which the winner belongs.[1910] On a votive relief in Athens a horse is represented as being crowned by Nike.[1911] On a relief in Madrid Nike is represented as driving a chariot.[1912] A quadriga with a female figure, apparently Nike, appears on a relief dedicated to Hermes and the Nymphs, which was found in Phaleron.[1913] Doubtless some of the chariot-groups at Olympia represented movement—the start, the course, or the end of the race—as do these and similar reliefs.[1914] We should add that the figure of Nike was not confined to equestrian monuments. On the Ficoroni cista in Rome is represented the boxing match between Polydeukes and Amykos among the Bebrykes. In the centre we see Amykos hanged to a tree by the hands, while to the right stands Athena, and above her Nike is flying with a crown and fillet of victory for Polydeukes.[1915]

REMAINS OF CHARIOT-GROUPS.

From this discussion of the literary evidence about the monuments of chariot victors at Olympia and elsewhere, we shall turn to a brief consideration of certain existing works of sculpture, reliefs and statues, which will serve to illustrate the manner in which the sculptor represented this class of victor monuments.