Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art

by Walter Woodburn Hyde

Fig. 67.—Horse-Racer. From a Sixth-Century B. C. b.-f. Panathenaic Vase. British Museum, London.

Vase-paintings show that the jockey was generally nude and rode without stirrups or saddle. We see nude long-haired jockeys on horseback with whips pictured on a sixth-century B. C. Panathenaic amphora in the British Museum.[1973] One also appears on a silver tetradrachm in the same museum, which commemorates the Olympic victory of Philip II of Macedonia.[1974] Here the victorious mounted jockey has a palm in his hand, the symbol of his victory. On the other hand, the jockey is sometimes represented as wearing a close-fitting short-sleeved chiton. We see such a one on an archaic b.-f. Panathenaic vase of the sixth century B. C. in the British Museum (Fig. [67]).[1975] In front of the mounted youth on this vase stands a herald in official robes, from whose mouth issue the words “the horse of Dyneiketos is victorious.” Behind the jockey is an attendant bearing a wreath in his left hand and holding a prize tripod over his head. The short chiton also appears on a horse-racer on the Amphiaraos vase.[1976] We see racing boys on a proto-Corinthian lekythos in the museum at Taranto, with tripods as prizes.[1977] A fine example of five nude horse-racers also appears on a vase pictured in the Daremberg-Saglio Dictionary.[1978] Here one has fallen from his horse and is being dragged by the bridle.

A boy on a galloping horse is shown on a terra-cotta relief from Thera.[1979] On a funerary marble relief from Sicily, now in the Museo Gregoriano, Rome, a rider is represented urging his horse on with a whip.[1980] An Athenian relief shows victorious ephebes leading horses,[1981] while another from Athens shows a mounted boy.[1982] Horsemen representing Athenian knights appear on many slabs of the Parthenon frieze,[1983] either mounted or standing by their horses.

The inscribed base of Onatas found on the Akropolis seems to have borne the statue of a horse-racer.[1984] The bronze statue of Isokrates at Athens, which represented him as a παῖς κελητίζων, is mentioned by the pseudo-Plutarch.[1985] A bronze statuette in Athens from Dodona represents an ephebe on a galloping horse.[1986] A statue in the Palazzo Orlandi in Florence represents a horse-rider.[1987] In the Akropolis Museum there are two monuments which we should mention in this connection. One is the lower part of the statue of a nude rider on horseback, the mutilated horse being represented as pawing the ground with its forefoot. Closely resembling it in scale and finish, though more developed in style, is another fragmentary statue of a horse without a rider, the latter probably to be understood as standing in front of the horse, as in some of the riders pictured on the Parthenon frieze. The two are good examples of pre-Persian Attic sculpture.[1988] A later example is the small bronze statuette of an ephebe represented as a horseman (the horse is lacking) discovered recently at the French excavations at Volubilis in Morocco. This almost perfectly preserved work has been referred to the first half of the fifth century B. C.[1989] The position of the hands holding the reins reminds us strongly of the Delphi Charioteer (Fig. [66]). The diadem in the hair shows that a victor is represented. A small bronze statuette in the Loeb collection in Munich represents a boy riding a prancing horse, which is standing on its hind legs. This vigorous, but poorly finished, work is decorative in character and probably once belonged to the crown of a candelabrum. It appears to be either an Etruscan or early Roman work based on a Hellenistic original.[1990]

THE APOBATES HORSE-RACE.

In a previous section we discussed the apobates chariot-race run at the Panathenaic games in Athens, in which the apobates leaped down and ran to the goal abreast of the chariot. We shall now briefly speak of a similar race at Olympia (the κάλπη) in which the rider leaped from his mare in the last lap and ran with her to the goal.[1991] There is no certain illustration in sculpture or on vase-paintings of this race, but Gardiner believes that something like it appears on coins of Tarentum, on which a nude youth, armed with a small round shield, is represented in the act of jumping from his horse.[1992] The military character of this race, like that of the apobates chariot-race discussed, is shown by the shield held in the left hand of the dismounting horseman. Helbig has shown that the Greek knight of the sixth century B. C. was merely a mounted infantryman, the successor of the Homeric warrior who used his chariot merely for pursuit or flight, while actually fighting from the ground.[1993] Just so the knight rode to battle on his horse, but dismounted when near the enemy, leaving the horse in charge of his squire, as the Homeric chieftain left his chariot in charge of his charioteer. This old custom of the heroic age survived not only in the Panathenaic chariot-race, but also, for a few years in the fifth century B. C., in the Olympic mare-race known as the κάλπη. It seems to have been instituted there for military reasons in order to revive the old form of fighting that had gone out of use just at the close of the sixth century B. C., but it endured for only a half century, from Ols. 71 to 84 ( = 496 to 444 B. C.). The corresponding chariot-race at Athens and elsewhere continued at least to the end of the fourth century B. C.

DEDICATIONS OF MUSICAL VICTORS AT OLYMPIA AND ELSEWHERE.

In closing this chapter we shall say a few words about monuments erected to trumpeters, heralds, and musical victors at Olympia, though such contests had nothing to do with athletics.

Contests for trumpeters and heralds were held in many parts of Greece.[1994] They were introduced at Olympia in Ol. 96 ( = 396 B. C.), when Timaios of Elis won as trumpeter and Krates of Elis as herald.[1995] Pausanias mentions an altar, near the entrance to the stadion, upon which trumpeters and heralds stood when competing.[1996] Such contests seem to have been mere displays of lung power. Herodoros, for example, who won as trumpeter at Olympia ten times in the last quarter of the fourth and beginning of the third century B. C.[1997], could blow two trumpets at once so loud that no one could stand near him.[1998] To perform such a feat he was said to be a very large man.[1999] Diogenes, son of Dionysios of Ephesos, won five victories in trumpeting at Olympia. He was twice periodonikes and also won many other victories at the Isthmus, Nemea, and elsewhere—eighty in all.[2000] We have an excellent bronze statuette of a trumpeter, which was found in the Hieron of Athena Chalkioikos at Sparta, dating from the middle of the fifth century B. C., about a century and a half before the event was introduced at Olympia.[2001] This “little masterpiece of Spartan art,” whose style resembles that of the Olympia pediment sculptures, represents a nude man standing, the left arm hanging by his side, while the right is bent upwards to the mouth, where it held a tubular object pointing upwards. Since the lips are tightly compressed, Dickins has interpreted the object as a trumpet. A much damaged bronze statuette in the British Museum represents a man playing on a long trumpet-shaped instrument.[2002] Trumpeters also appear now and then on r.-f. Attic vases of the middle of the fifth century B. C.

Music victors played a greater role at Delphi than elsewhere, since music from the first was the chief interest there. Monuments to such victors, though few in number, by little-known artists were set up there, but they seem to have enjoyed the same meagre honor at Delphi as the statues of athletic victors.[2003] We have record of a statue of the Epizephyrian Locrian kitharoidos Eunomos, set up in his native town in honor of his Pythian victory over Ariston of Rhegion. Timaios says that this monument showed a cicada seated on the singer’s lyre.[2004] Whether such monuments at Delphi or elsewhere were regarded as victor or votive in character, we can not say.[2005] Pausanias mentions several statues of poets and musicians, mostly mythical, on Mount Helikon, which were set up partly in consequence of victories won there or elsewhere.[2006] Of these the statue of the Thracian or Odrysian Thamyris was represented as a blind man holding a broken lyre;[2007] that of Arion of Methymna as riding a dolphin;[2008] that of Hesiod, seated, as holding a lute on his knees; and that of the Thracian Orpheus with Telete at his side and round about beasts in stone and bronze listening to his song. Of the statue of the Argive Sakadas, Pausanias says that the sculptor, not understanding Pindar’s poem on the victor, made the flutist no bigger than the flute.[2009] The epigram on the statue of the Sikyonian flutist Bacchiadas, mentioned by Athenæus as standing on Mount Helikon,[2010] was votive in character. The inscribed base of the statue of the kitharoidos Alkibios has been found on the Athenian Akropolis.[2011] Musical contests are pictured on many imitation Panathenaic vases, and many Greek reliefs seem to have been set up in honor of such victors. Among the latter we might instance the one in the Louvre representing Apollo, Artemis, and Leto,[2012] and another found in Sparta in 1885, which represents Artemis pouring a libation before Apollo.[2013]