At Olympia flute-playing accompanied certain of the events of the pentathlon. Pausanias says that the reason why the flute played a Pythian air while the athletes jumped was that this air was sacred to Apollo, who had beaten Hermes in running and Ares in boxing at Olympia.[2014] Thus on the chest of Kypselos a flutist was represented as standing between Admetos and Mopsos at their boxing match.[2015] But the explanation given by Philostratos seems more sensible, that leaping was a difficult contest, and that the flute stimulated the jumpers.[2016] At Argos, at the games in honor of Zeus Σθένιος, wrestlers contended to the tune of the flute.[2017] Many vase-paintings illustrate flute-playing at the pentathlon.[2018] At Olympia only a few monuments were set up in honor of musical victors, and these seem to have been statues erected honoris causa, instead of primarily for victories. An example is that of the Sikyonian flutist Pythokritos, who won a victory as αὐλητής in the sixth century B. C.[2019] Pausanias says that his monument was that of a small man with a flute wrought in relief on an inscribed slab. The explanation of such a description probably is that the size of the flute made the victor appear small, just as in the case of the monument of Sakadas just mentioned.[2020] We know that artists, poets, prose writers, musicians, and actors all had an audience at Olympia, and that statues were often erected there in honor of such men, though these are not to be treated as victor monuments and do not properly fall within the scope of the present work.[2021]
CHAPTER VI.
TWO MARBLE HEADS FROM VICTOR STATUES.[2022]
Plates 28–30 and Figures 68–77.
THE GROUP OF DAOCHOS AT DELPHI, AND LYSIPPOS.
If in these later years our knowledge of Skopas has been greatly augmented by the discovery of the Tegea heads (Fig. [73]), that of Lysippos has been almost revolutionized. With the discovery in 1894 at Delphi of the group of statues dedicated by the Thessalian Daochos[2023] in honor of various members of his house, whose dates covered nearly two centuries,[2024] an entirely new impetus was given to the study of the last of the great Greek sculptors. Homolle immediately recognized the fourth-century origin of the group, and at first pronounced the statue of Agias Lysippan;[2025] later he saw in the types, poses, and proportions of the group the mixed influences of Praxiteles, Skopas, and Lysippos, but referred the Agias to the school of Skopas,[2026] while still later he again pronounced it Lysippan.[2027] But its true character was not destined to be long in doubt. When Erich Preuner[2028] found almost the same metrical inscription, which was on the base of the best preserved statue of the group, that of Agias (Pl. [28] and Fig. [68]),[2029] in the traveling journal of Stackelberg,[2030] copied from a base in Pharsalos, the Thessalian home of Daochos, with the additional information that Lysippos of Sikyon made the statue, our views of the work of that artist had to undergo a thorough revision. For this discovery brought the Agias—if not the others of the group—into direct relation to Lysippos by documentary evidence, while the easily recognized Lysippan characteristics of the statue—the slender body and limbs, the small head, the proportions and pose—confirmed this connection on stylistic grounds. It became clear that Daochos had set up a series of statues in honor of his ancestors both at Pharsalos and Delphi. Whether the Thessalian group was of bronze, as is generally held, owing to the widespread belief that Lysippos worked only in metal, and the Delphian group was composed of contemporary marble copies of those originals, will be discussed further on. If the marble group was a copy, we may infer that it reproduced the original statues, not mechanically and laboriously as was often the case in Roman days, but accurately; for having employed a noted artist in the one case, the dedicator would have desired an accurate reproduction of the work in the other.
PLATE 28
