CHAPTER II

.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF VICTOR STATUES AT OLYMPIA.

PLATES 2-7 AND FIGURES 3-8.

Only a few insignificant remnants of the forest of victor statues which once stood in the Altis at Olympia were unearthed by the German excavators. Most of these statues already in antiquity had been carried off to Italy,[416] while those which escaped the spoliation of the Roman masters of Greece were destroyed at the hands of the invading hordes of barbarians in the early Dark Ages. Consequently only here and there in modern museums can isolated fragments of these originals be discovered, which have accidentally survived the ravages of time and man.

In the almost complete absence of originals, therefore, we depend for our knowledge of them on a variety of sources. In attempting to reconstruct them we have two main sources of information to aid us, the literary and the archæological. To the former belong the many inscriptions found on the statue bases recovered at Olympia, which contain the name and native city of the victor, the athletic contest in which his victory was won, and frequently some account of his former athletic history; epigrams preserved in the Greek anthologies and elsewhere, some of which agree with those inscribed on the statue bases; more or less definite statements of scholiasts and the classical writers in general, especially the detailed account of the monuments of Olympia contained in the fifth and sixth books of the Ἑλλάδος περιήγησις of Pausanias, who visited the Altis during the reign of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus,[417] and also the somewhat systematic treatment of Greek sculptors and their works in the elder Pliny’s chapters on the History of Art.[418] To the latter source belong the remnants of statues in bronze and marble found at Olympia, as well as the recovered bases, on many of which the extant footmarks enable us to recover the pose of the statues which formerly stood upon them. Finally, in reconstructing these athlete statues, an intimate knowledge of Greek sculpture in all its phases and periods is essential. Here, as in the general study of Greek sculpture, where the destruction of originals has been almost complete, we are largely dependent on Roman copies which were executed by more or less skilled workmen, chiefly for wealthy Roman patrons of art who wished to use them to decorate the public buildings, baths, palaces, and villas of Rome and other Italian cities. A careful study of these copies has evolved a series of groups, which have been assigned with more or less probability to this or that artist.[419] Representations of the various poses of the athlete statues of Olympia and elsewhere are found also on every sort of sculptured and painted works—reliefs, vases, coins, gems—which are, therefore, valuable in any attempt to reconstruct the attitude of a given statue.

Taking into account all these sources of knowledge, it has been possible to reach tolerable certainty in reconstructing the main types of these victor monuments, and in identifying schools, masters, and individual works. This identification of athlete statues, especially those belonging to the fifth and fourth centuries B. C., among the countless Roman works which people modern museums, has already been achieved in many cases by archælogical investigations. The work of many masters of the archaic period and of the most important bronze sculptors of the great period of Greek art has been illustrated by such ascriptions; especially that of Myron, who represented figures in rhythmic action full of life and vigor; of the elder Polykleitos, who was a master in representing standing figures at rest fashioned according to a mathematical system of proportions; of Lysippos, who introduced a new canon of proportions in opposition to that of his predecessor Polykleitos, and who inaugurated the naturalistic tendency in Greek art, which was destined to he carried to such unbecoming lengths in succeeding centuries. The further identification of such statues, as our knowledge of the tendencies and traditions of the schools of Greek sculpture and our sources of information about athletic art become more and more extended, will be one of the most important tasks of the archæologist in the future.

Before discussing the appearance of individual types of these monuments, we shall consider certain general characteristics common to all of them. Long ago K. O. Mueller[420] summed up the common features of victor statues in these words: _Kurzgelocktes Haar, tuechtige Glieder, eine kraeftige Ausbildung der Gestalt und verhaeltnissmaessig kleine Koepfe characterisiren die ganze Gattung von Figuren; die zerschlagenen Ohren und die hervorgetriebenen Muskeln insbesondere die Faustkaempfer und Pankratiasten._ Though in the main this excellent summary still holds good, we are now in a position to correct it in part and to add other equally characteristic features to it. We shall briefly discuss, therefore, in the light of recent investigations, certain of the characteristics common to this _genre_ of sculpture—the material and size of these statues, their nudity and fashion of wearing the hair, their twofold division into iconic and aniconic, their proportions, and, lastly, the assimilation of their appearance to well-known types of hero or god.

SIZE OF VICTOR STATUES.

In another section[421] we show that the overwhelming majority of the statues in the Altis were of bronze, though other materials, stone and wood, were also used in some cases. As to the size of these statues, no hard and fast rule seems to have been followed, but we may assume from the evidence at hand that they were in general life-size.[422] Lucian would have us believe that the Hellanodikai did not allow victors to set up statues larger than life.[423] We know, however, that there were exceptions to such a rule. In all probability the statue of Polydamas of Skotoussa by Lysippos, which Pausanias says stood on a high pedestal, was larger than life-size, if we may conjecture from its elevated position and the probable source of Pausanias’ remark that he “was the tallest of men, if we except the so-called heroes and the mortal race which preceded the heroes.”[424] The traces of footprints on the recovered pedestal of the statue of the Athenian pancratiast Kallias by the sculptor Mikon show that the statue was larger than life-size.[425] The footprints on the base of the statue of the Rhodian boxer Eukles by the Argive Naukydes are about 33 cm. long, and so the statue was slightly over life-size.[426] We know the actual size of at least two of these Olympic statues. The scholiast on Pindar, _Ol._ VII, Argum., on the basis of a fragment from Aristotle’s lost work on the Olympic victors and one from the little-known writer Apollas Ponticus,[427] says that the statue of the Rhodian boxer Diagoras was 4 cubits and 5 fingers tall,[428] _i. e._, about 6 feet 4.5 inches, somewhat over life-size.[429] From the same scholiast we learn that the statue of the son of Diagoras, the pancratiast Damagetos, was 4 cubits high, or less than that of the father by 5 fingers, and consequently just under 6 feet.[430] The footprints on the base of the statue of the boxer Aristion by the elder Polykleitos are 29 cm. long, and so the statue was just life-size.[431] There are several examples of such life-size statues,[432] while others are slightly below life-size.[433] The Polykleitan statue of a boxer in Kassel is under life-size.[434] The marble head of a statue found at Olympia, which we ascribe to Philandridas, the Akarnanian pancratiast, by Lysippos, (Frontispiece and Fig. 69) is also under life-size,[435] as is also that of the pancratiast Agias found at Delphi (Pl. 27 and Fig. 68). These two are in harmony with Pliny’s statement that Lysippos made the heads of his statues relatively small.[436] Perhaps this statement of Pliny was the basis of the opinion of Mueller recorded above that “comparatively small heads” characterize the whole _genre_ of victor statues. We have in the preceding chapter mentioned the marble fragments of the statues of boy victors, two-fifths to two-thirds life-size, found at Olympia.[437] The two marble helmeted heads of the archaic period found there, which we shall later ascribe to hoplite victors (Fig. 30), are exactly life-size.[438] Of the bronze fragments recovered at Olympia,[439] the head of a boxer of the fourth century B. C. (Fig. 61, A and B) is life-size,[440] while the extraordinarily beautifully sculptured right arm ascribed to a boy victor by Furtwaengler[441] is a little under life-size.

NUDITY OF VICTOR STATUES.

Most of the victor statues at Olympia were nude.[442] In the early period all athletes wore the loin-cloth. Cretan frescoes show it was the custom in the early Mediterranean world. The athletes of Homer girded themselves on entering the games of Patroklos,[443] and the girdle appears in the earliest athletic scenes on vases.[444] Throughout the historic period, however, the Greeks entered their contests in complete nudity, and this nudity naturally was carried over into athletic sculpture. Pliny’s[445] statement, _Graeca res nihil velare_, is, therefore, correct, despite another of Philostratos to the effect that at Delphi, at the Isthmus, and everywhere except at Olympia, the athlete wore the coarse mantle.[446] The beginning of the change from wearing the loin-cloth to complete nudity was ascribed to an accident. The Megarian runner Orsippos in the 15th Ol. (= 720 B. C.) dropped his loin-cloth while running, either accidentally or because it impeded him.[447] The story was commemorated by an epigram, perhaps by Simonides, which was inscribed on his tomb at Megara.[448] A copy of this epigram in the Megarian dialect, executed in late Roman or Byzantine times, when the original had become illegible, was discovered at Megara in 1769 and shows that its original was the source of Pausanias’ remarks.[449] Philostratos says that athletes contended nude at Olympia, either because of the summer heat or a mishap which befell the woman Pherenike of Rhodes. She accompanied her son, the boy boxer Peisirhodos, to Olympia disguised as a trainer, and in her joy at his victory she leaped over the barrier and disclosed her sex.[450] The practice does not appear to have become universal with all athletes in all the competitions at Olympia until some time after Orsippos’ day, since Thukydides says the abandonment of the girdle took place shortly before his time and that in his day it was still retained by certain foreigners, notably Asiatics, in boxing and wrestling matches.[451] The change is not illustrated in sculpture. The earliest victor statues, _i. e._, those of the “Apollo” type, are all nude. The nudity of this type shows an essential difference between Greek and foreigner and also between the later Greek and his rude ancestor. Plato gives the use of the loin-cloth as an example of convention, by which what seems peculiar to one generation becomes usual to another.[452] We see the change, however, in vase-paintings. The loin-cloth is common on seventh-century vases, but is gradually left off in later ones.

There were exceptions to the rule of nudity. Statues of charioteers were usually partly or wholly dressed in the long chiton, a custom explained in various ways.[453] The Delphi bronze _Charioteer_ (Fig. 66) is a good example of a draped one. Another _auriga_ almost nude is shown on a decadrachm of Akragas in the British Museum, dating from the end of the fifth century B. C.[454] There are also several examples of nude charioteers.[455] The Olympic runners and athletes generally were also bareheaded and barefoot. The only exceptions were the hoplite-runners, who wore helmets, and possibly charioteers, who wore sandals.[456] Statues of women victors also were draped. Though Ionian women could witness games,[457] and Spartan girls took part in athletic contests with boys,[458] women were rigorously excluded from crossing the Alpheios during the festival at Olympia.[459] They were allowed, however, to enter horses for the chariot-race and, if victorious, to set up monuments.[460] Only one woman was allowed to witness the games, the priestess of the old earth cult of Demeter Chamyne, who could sit at the altar in the stadion during the contests.[461] Pausanias notes but one exception of a woman infringing the rule of admission, Pherenike, the mother of the Rhodian victor Peisirhodos already mentioned. She was pardoned because her father, brothers, and son were victors, but the umpires passed a law that thereafter even trainers should be nude.[462] While excluded from the games proper, women had their own festival at Olympia in honor of Hera, which was known as the _Heraia_. These games occurred every four years[463] and included a foot-race between virgins, in which the course was one-sixth less than the stadion. The victress received an olive crown and also a share of the cow sacrificed to Hera, and was allowed to set up a painted picture of herself in the Heraion.[464] It has been generally assumed that the statue of a girl runner in the Galleria dei Candelabri of the Vatican represents one of these victresses (Plate 2),[465] since Pausanias says they ran with their hair down and wore a tunic which reached to just above the knees, leaving the right shoulder bare to the breast. That the statue represents a girl runner seems certain,[466] but that it can be referred to one of the Olympic girl victresses is doubtful. The description of Pausanias fits it in many respects, except that the chiton of the statue is too short, and he does not mention the girdle just below the bosom. Furthermore, he does not mention statues of girl victresses, but only pictures. Nothing can be argued from the palm-branch on the tree-stump, except that the Roman copyist thought it the statue of a victress. It does not necessarily refer to a victress at Olympia, for Pausanias elsewhere says that the palm-branch was given at many contests.[467] The statue represents a young girl leaning forward awaiting the signal to start,[468] but it is impossible to say to what games we should refer it. There were girls’ contests in and out of Greece—such as at the _Dionysia_ in Sparta[469] and in her colony Kyrene.[470] Such games were also held in the stadion of Domitian at Rome.[471] In fact the Palatine estate of the Barberini, from whom the Vatican acquired the statue, embraced the area of the old stadion of Domitian on the Palatine. It is probably of Doric workmanship, as it certainly represents a Dorian victress, though not necessarily by a Peloponnesian sculptor.[472]

THE ATHLETIC HAIR-FASHION.

[Illustration: PLATE 2

Marble Statue of a Girl Runner. Vatican Museum, Rome.]

The assumption long held that short hair was always characteristic of the athlete is incorrect.[473] It is controverted equally by literary evidence and by the monuments. The Homeric Greek took pride in his long hair,[474] and doubtless the contestants at the games of Patroklos in the Iliad had long hair. Long hair was worn by some Athenians throughout Athenian history. From the end of the fifth century B. C., long hair was regarded as a mark of effeminacy[475] and was regularly worn only by the knights.[476] Short hair was worn as a sign of mourning in Athens from early days down.[477] Only the slaves regularly wore very short hair in the fifth century B. C.[478] The change to short hair in Athens was certainly due to the influence of the palæstra and to athletics in general.[479] We see just the opposite custom in vogue in Sparta. There, according to the code of Lykourgos,[480] men were compelled to wear long hair and children short hair. Thus the heroes of Leonidas entered the battle of Thermopylæ after combing their long locks.[481] After the Persian wars only children and men with laconizing or aristocratic sympathies[482] wore their hair long at Athens. When boys arrived at the age of ἔφηβοι, they had their hair cut at the feast of the οἰνιστήρια[483] and dedicated it to a god.[484] Soon after the Persian war period, athletes wore their hair short. Before that time, the wearing of long hair had already been discarded for obvious reasons in wrestling.[485] Similarly, in boxing and the pankration long hair was in the way, and was therefore early braided into two long plaits which were wound around the head in a peculiar way and tied into a knot at the top, the so-called Attic κρωβύλος, the oftenest mentioned manner of dressing the hair in Greek literature.[486] The oldest notice of this style of wearing the hair is found in a fragment of Asios.[487] Herakleides Ponticus[488] says it was used up to the time of the Persian wars. The _locus classicus_ is in Thukydides, who says it was worn in his day by old people only.[489] Earlier young men wore it,[490] but it went out of fashion between 470 and 460 B. C. In this connection we should mention that the professional athlete under the Roman Empire wore his hair uncut and tied up in an unsightly topknot known as the _cirrus_.[491]

The monumental evidence bears out the literary. Thus, on old Corinthian clay tablets freemen are represented with long hair, while slaves have short hair.[492] Hydrias from Caere (Cerveteri) and paintings from Klazomenai show that the Ionians wore their hair short for the first time in the sixth century B. C., the custom not becoming general until the fifth. Older Spartan monuments represent the hair long.[493] Attic vases show long hair on men until the second half of the sixth century B. C., when the black-figured vase masters began to represent them with short hair, a custom becoming general in the first half of the fifth. In statuary the _Diskobolos_ of Myron (Pls. 21, 26, and Figs. 34, 35) has short hair, and most statues of athletes before it have long hair, while most after it have short. Before the time of the _Diskobolos_, b.-f. and early r.-f. vase-painters often represented athletes with braided hair in the fashion of the warriors on the Aegina pediments. When short hair began to be used on athlete statues, these older braids were often replaced by victor bands.[494] We may roughly summarize by saying that statues before the date of the _Diskobolos_ which do not have long hair are probably those of athletes and not of gods, and, in any case, if they have braids bound up in the fashion of the κρωβύλος, they are almost always statues of athletes.[495] As for short hair on representations of gods, Furtwaengler has shown that it appears only after the middle of the fifth century B. C.[496] Prior to that date the hair of divinities fell over the neck and shoulders in curls, as in the statue of the _Olympian Zeus_ by Pheidias. By the time of Perikles, however, short curly hair reached only to the nape of the neck on statues of Zeus, and this style frequently appears on figures of the god on Attic vases of that period. Dionysos has short hair for the first time on the Parthenon frieze.[497] Furtwaengler has shown that Pheidias did not invent the short bound-up hair for goddess types, as we see it in the _Lemnian Athena_, but that he borrowed it from works already in existence.[498] Though the style was unknown in the archaic period, it appears on helmeted heads of Athena of the early fifth century B. C. showing Peloponnesian style—on coins, statuettes, reliefs, etc. It appears in Attic art exclusively on bareheaded types of Athena of the period just prior to that of the _Lemnia_.

Bulle[499] has gone carefully into the technique of the hair by different Greek artists. In archaic times this was “_ein, man darf sagen, unmoegliches Problem_.” The primitive means at the disposal of the early artist made it impossible to render the hair naturally and hence it was conventionalized. Two styles arose in archaic times, which endured with modifications all through Greek art. The one was the pictorial (_malerisch_), where only the general appearance of the hair was represented, the merest necessary plastic form being added.[500] Painting here helped the shortcomings of the sculptor to some extent. The second style was the plastic (_plastisch_), where individual locks were attempted. The plastic use of light and shade made the use of color now less necessary. Such examples as the _Korai_ of the Akropolis Museum and the Rampin head in the Louvre show the difficulty which the early artist encountered in representing hair plastically. In the Rampin head[501] we see examples of three sorts of plastic hair treatment: the pearl-string (_Perlschnuerre_) on the neck, grained hair (_Koerner_) in the beard, and snail-volutes (_geperlte Schnecken_) on the forehead. None of the three seems to belong integrally to the head, but each appears to have been pasted on. The pearl-string fashion was first used in the soft _poros_ stone and was only later successfully transferred to marble. During the severe style of Greek sculpture, both fashions, pictorial and plastic, were used, as we see them in the pediment groups from the temple of Zeus at Olympia. In the period of Pheidias the plastic treatment was used almost exclusively, as we see in the _Lemnian Athena_. In the next century impressionism came in, though the plastic treatment still continued, for we see it in the bronze work of Lysippos and the marble work of Praxiteles. The old pictorial treatment was revived again in the later Hellenistic age.

ICONIC AND ANICONIC STATUES.

In a well-known passage Pliny says that “the ancients did not make any statue of individuals unless they deserved immortality by some distinction, originally by a victory at some sacred games, especially those of Olympia, where it was the custom to dedicate statues of all those who had conquered, and portrait statues if they had conquered three times. These are called iconic.”[502] Many solutions of this passage have been offered. Older commentators, as Hirt and Visconti,[503] interpreted Pliny’s word _iconicas_ as life-size statues. Scherer, however, easily refuted this idea and showed that the adjective εἰκονικός, though ambiguous in its meaning, had nothing to do with size, but referred rather to an individual as opposed to a typical sense in relation to statuary. In his explanation he referred to the words of Lessing in the _Laokoön_: _es ist das Ideal eines gewissen Menschen, nicht das Ideal eines Menschen ueberhaupt_.[504] Nowadays all scholars agree that Pliny’s word refers to portrait statues.[505] However, Pliny’s dictum about the right of setting up portrait statues is certainly open to doubt.[506] It can not have been true of monuments erected before the fourth century B. C., when portrait statues were rare. Portraiture was a form of realism and was a product of the later period of Greek art—especially after the time of Lysippos. In the fourth century B. C. we find one well-attested exception to Pliny’s rule. The discovered inscription from the base of a monument erected to the horse-racer Xenombrotos of Cos,[507] reads (fifth line): τοῖ[ος], ὁποῖο[ν] ὁ[ρ]ᾷς Ξεινόμβροτο[ς]. These words indubitably point to a portrait statue. However, neither the recovered epigram nor Pausanias indicates anything about this victor being a τρισολυμπιονίκης, and consequently he appears not to have merited a portrait statue.[508] Pliny’s statement can be explained in many ways: it may be apocryphal, or different usages may have fitted different periods; or the rule may have held good only for gymnic victors and not for equestrian ones, which, being strictly votive in character, may not have been restricted to its operation.[509]

PORTRAIT STATUES.

Pausanias mentions the monuments of several victors at Olympia who were entitled to portrait statues on the strength of Pliny’s rule, though we have no indication that they were so honored. Thus he mentions the statues of Dikon,[510] Sostratos,[511] Philinos,[512] and Gorgos.[513] The early fifth-century boxer Euthymos[514] also won three victories, but at a time before we should expect a portrait statue. The Periegete also mentions several victors who won three or more times, though he does not say that they had any statues, portrait or otherwise.[515] Percy Gardner[516] has shown how erroneous is the prevailing view that the Greeks neglected portraiture in their art and left it for the Romans to develop. He shows that Greek artists of the third and second centuries B. C. left a great many portraits of the highest artistic value and that portraits of Romans before the time of Augustus, and the best Roman examples during the Empire, were made by Greek sculptors. The number of Greek portraits in our museums, especially in Rome, is very great.[517] From archaic times down to the middle of the fifth century B. C. we should not expect portraiture. In the earlier period, therefore, it is difficult to distinguish between statues of gods and those of men. In the great period of Greek art, from the time of Perikles on to that of Alexander, the general tendency of Greek sculpture was so ideal that portraits, when they existed, seem impersonal. The later copyists of portraits also idealized them. Thus Pliny, in speaking of Kresilas’ portrait of Perikles, says that this artist _nobiles viros nobiliores fecit_—in other words, that he idealized them.[518] The portraits of Alexander were especially idealized. In the first half of the fourth century we first hear of realistic portraiture. Thus Demetrios, who flourished 380-360 B. C.,[519] made a “very beautiful” statue of a Corinthian general named Pelichos, which Lucian[520] says had a fat belly, bald head, hair floating in the wind, and prominent veins, “like the man himself.”[521] Except for the hair this description by the satirist seems to have been correct. At the end of the fourth century B. C. anatomical detail began to be shown in sculpture. Largely under the influence of Lysippos, the personality of victors began to be emphasized in figure and face in a very realistic way. We can distinguish between such portraits of victors before and after the time of Lysippos.[522] Pliny[523] says that Lysistratos, the brother of Lysippos, was the first to obtain portraits by making a plaster mould on the features and so to render likenesses exactly, as “previous artists had only tried to make them as beautiful as possible.” In any case, by the time of Lysippos realistic portraiture began to be emphasized. We see it at Olympia in the later bronze pancratiast’s head found there (Fig. 61, A and B), and in a still more revolting style in the _Seated Boxer_ of the Museo delle Terme (Pl. 16, and Fig. 27).

The reason why the privilege of erecting portrait statues was given so seldom to Olympic victors was probably not because it was a highly esteemed honor. The real reason seems to have been that portraiture, with its tendency to realism, subordinated beauty to that realism and so conflicted with the Greek artistic ideal. The Thebans had a law which forbade caricature and commanded artists to make their statues more beautiful than the models. The Greeks worshiped beauty and hated ugliness. Many games in Greece were held in honor of personal beauty. Thus a contest of manly beauty among old men (ἀγὼν εὐανδρίας) was a part of the Panathenaic games at Athens.[524] A contest of beauty among women, originating in the time of Kypselos, king of Arkadia, was kept up until the time of Athenæus.[525] We hear of contests of beauty in Elis, at which three prizes were given,[526] and of similar ones on the islands of Tenedos and Lesbos.[527] The Crotonian Philippos, who won at Olympia in an unknown contest about 520 B. C., was honored after his death by the people of Egesta with a _heroön_ and sacrifices because of his beauty.[528] At Tanagra, in Bœotia, the most beautiful ephebe was chosen to carry a ram on his shoulders around the city wall at the festival of Hermes Kriophoros.[529] At Aigion in Achaia the most beautiful boy was anciently chosen to be priest of Zeus.[530] The most beautiful youths among the Spartans and Cretans dedicated offerings to Eros before battle.[531] These and similar examples show the Greek feeling for beauty. The representation of passion and violence was foreign to the spirit of the best Greek art; it was rather the “quiet grandeur” (_Stille Groesse_) or “repose,” of which Winckelmann made so much, that was characteristic of that art. In Homer both men and gods, when wounded, shriek. Philoktetes, in the drama of Sophokles, wails throughout a whole act, when suffering from a gangrened foot. With the poets Zeus casts his thunderbolt in anger, but Pheidias has him hold it quietly in his hand. So we can see why portrait statues were rare at Olympia, where the representation of manly beauty and vigor was the rule. They were ruled out, not because of their increasing the honor accorded to the victor, but rather because they honored his egotism.[532]

ANICONIC STATUES.

Accordingly, since only victors who had won three or more contests at Olympia could set up iconic statues, the great majority of statues there represented some ideal type of common applicability, in which there was no attempt to show the individual features of this or that victor, but rather the typical athlete of muscular build. The older statues were merely variations of a few types which were held to be appropriate to the purpose. In process of time these few types in their treatment of details gradually approached truth to nature; this was especially characteristic of the Peloponnesian schools, which adopted the _Doryphoros_ of Polykleitos as their norm of proportions. Statues of victors were the stock subject of the closely related schools of Argos and Sikyon.[533] Doubtless, as E. A. Gardner says,[534] there existed at Olympia itself a school of subordinate artists, who filled the regular demand for victor statues. However, some of these statues, especially those of the fifth and fourth centuries B. C., as we see them in originals and in Roman copies, and read the æsthetic judgments of them in Greek writers, were real works of art.

ÆSTHETIC JUDGMENTS OF CLASSICAL WRITERS.

The literary evidence for Greek sculpture is, for the most part, very unsatisfactory. Though classical writers were uncritical and not fond of analysis, still they have left us some useful opinions about works of sculpture and painting. The history and criticism of sculpture began in Greece, in the fourth century B. C., with the Peripatetics. Aristotle, whose observations on painting and sculpture were slight, did not despise the “mimetic” arts as did the Socrates of Plato.[535] In the _Rhetoric_[536] he speaks of the beautiful bodies of youths who trained as pentathletes, since the varied exercises of the pentathlon made them so. We have a similar opinion expressed by Xenophon in what is, perhaps, the most interesting passage in Greek literature on criticism of art.[537] He has Sokrates go to the sculptor Kleito and compliment him on his power of representing different physical types produced by various contests, noting differences between statues of runners and wrestlers and between those of boxers and pancratiasts. When asked how he makes statues lifelike, Kleito has no answer, and the philosopher says it is by the imitation of real men, _i. e._, nature. He adds: “Must you not then imitate the threatening eyes of those who are fighting and the triumphant expression of those who are victorious?” Though some have thought that these words refer to portrait statues, which were spoken of as a matter of course at the beginning of the fourth century B. C., it is more reasonable to suspect that Sokrates was speaking of the older sculptors—for we may recognize Polykleitos in Kleito[538]—and consequently that he is not referring to portraiture. In the _Symposium_ of Xenophon[539] Sokrates also complains that the long-distance runners (δολιχοδρόμοι) have thick legs and narrow shoulders, while boxers have broad shoulders and small legs, and he therefore recommends dancing as a better exercise than athletics. As such differences in physique occur in vase-paintings of the date, but not in statuary, the philosopher seems to be speaking of athletics and not of sculpture. From these quotations of Aristotle and Xenophon, we gather that the all-round development of the pentathlon made beautiful athletes, and this beauty must have been carried over into their statues. It is essentially the young man’s contest,[540] and some of the pentathlete victors at Olympia and elsewhere were noted for their strength in after life. Thus Ikkos of Tarentum, who won at Olympia in Ol. 76 (= 476 B. C.), was the best teacher of gymnastics of his day.[541] Gorgos of Elis was the only athlete to win the pentathlon four times at Olympia, besides winning in two running races.[542] Another Elean, Stomios, who won three prizes at Olympia and Nemea, later became a leader of cavalry and beat his enemy in single combat.[543] The Argive Eurybates, victor in the pentathlon at Nemea, was very strong, and later, in a battle with the Aeginetans, killed three opponents in single combats, but succumbed to the fourth.[544] The Spartans and Krotonians seem to have been the best pentathletes.[545] Noted sculptors made statues of these athletes.[546] Plato, in the _de Leg._,[547] has the Athenian stranger praise Egyptian art because of its stationary character. This bespeaks but little artistic insight for the philosopher, though he was surrounded by the wonderful artistic creations of the end of the great fifth century B. C. The later classical writers were fond of expressing criticisms of art. Thus Pasiteles, a Greek sculptor living in Rome in the first century B. C., wrote five books on celebrated works of art throughout the world.[548] The opinions on art of the Roman Varro appear in the pages of Pliny.[549] Of all the ancient critics, Cicero was perhaps the most superficial. In a passage in the _Brutus_[550] he gives us his judgment of several sculptors. He finds the works of Kanachos too rigid to imitate nature truthfully, while those of Kalamis, though softer than those of Kanachos, are hard; Myron, though not completely faithful to nature, produced beautiful works and Polykleitos was quite perfect. The most trustworthy critic of sculpture in antiquity, on the other hand, was certainly Lucian, as we see from many of his utterances, especially from his account of an ideal statue, which combined the highest excellences of several noted sculptures.[551] His criticism of Hegias, Kritios, and Nesiotes, to the effect that their works were “concise, sinewy, hard, and exactly strained in their lines,” might have been made in the presence of the group of the _Tyrannicides_ (Fig. 32).[552] Unfortunately he touches the subject only casually, though he might have written a fine history of Greek art. We must also refer to two other imperial writers, the elder Pliny and Pausanias. Pliny’s abstracts on art, though our chief ancient literary authority on Greek sculpture and painting, are neither critical nor trustworthy. A careful analysis of his chapters shows that he was a borrower many times removed, though he seldom acknowledged it. This is excusable when we consider the custom of literary borrowing in antiquity and also the fact that his chapters on art form merely an appendix to his _Natural History_, being joined on to it by a very artificial bond, for his abstract on bronze statuary (Bk. XXXIV) is brought in merely to complete his account of the metals. His knowledge of the older periods of Greek art is small and his bias in favor of the two Sikyonian sculptors Lysippos and Xenokrates is very evident. His worst mistakes are in chronology. He puts Pythagoras after Myron, and both after Polykleitos, while Hagelaïdas, who is made the teacher of Myron and Polykleitos, lives on to the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. His real criticism of sculpture is seen in his dictum of the _Laokoön_ group, that it is a “work superior to all the pictures and bronzes of the world.”[553] Our debt to Pausanias, especially for our knowledge of the victor monuments at Olympia, is immense. This debt may be gauged by the fact that he mentions in his work many times more statues than any other writer and that a large portion of the _Schriftquellen_ of Overbeck is concerned with him. However, he shows little real understanding for art. His interest in statues is confined almost entirely to those which are noted for their antiquity or sanctity, and his account of them is usually the pivot around which he spins religious or mythological stories. Throughout his work his chief interest is religious; his interest in art for its own sake is very small. He devotes many pages to the throne of Zeus at Olympia, and describes the temple sculptures merely because the statue of Zeus is within. His detailed account of the athlete statues in the Altis is made chiefly because of his religious and antiquarian interest. Though imitating the style of Herodotos, he does it badly, so that his book is without much charm. In concluding this rough estimate of the ancient criticism of art, we might mention the fragmentary information to be gathered from many other writers, Dio Chrysostom, Quintilian,[554] Plutarch, and others, whose names occur frequently in the footnotes. All such references to works of art in ancient writers are conveniently collected in the great compilation of Overbeck so often quoted.[555]

As for æsthetic judgments of the statues of victors at Olympia we have a few direct hints from different writers. The epigram from the base of the statue of the boy wrestler Theognetos by Ptolichos of Aegina reads in part: Κάλλιστον μὲν ἰδεῖν, ἀθλεῖν δ’ οὐ χείρονα μόρ[φης].[556] Pliny says of the sculptor Mikon, who made the statue of the Athenian pancratiast Kallias: _Micon athletis spectatur_.[557] The same writer says of the horses of Kalamis: _equis sine aemulo expressis_.[558] Kalamis with Onatas of Aegina made a chariot-group for the Syracusan king Hiero.[559] Pausanias, in mentioning the statue of the boxer Euthymos by Pythagoras, says that it is καὶ θέας ἐς τὰ μάλιστα ἄξιος.[560] In mentioning the statue by the same sculptor of the wrestler Leontiskos, he says: εἴπερ τις καὶ ἄλλος ἀγαθὸς τὰ ἐς πλαστικήν.[561] Of the Argive sculptor Naukydes he says, when speaking of the statue of the wrestler Cheimon, that it is among the finest works of that artist.[562] In another passage, in which he describes the dedication of Phormis at Olympia, he speaks of an ugly horse, which, besides being smaller than other sculptured horses in the Altis, has “its tail cut off, and this makes it still uglier.”[563] However, here he is not so much interested in its lack of beauty as in the curious fact which he adds, that despite its ugliness this bronze mare attracted stallions.

GREEK ORIGINALS OF VICTOR STATUES.

[Illustration: PLATE 3

Bronze Head of an Olympic Victor. Glyptothek, Munich.]

We are not, however, dependent upon such meagre scraps of evidence from classical writers, nor upon contested Roman copies,[564] for an idea of the workmanship of some of the Olympic victor statues. We can judge it in no uncertain way by the few originals found at Olympia and by others which are to be found in European museums. As an example of the former we have only to recall the life-size bronze bearded head of a boxer or pancratiast of the third century B. C., which is now in the National Museum at Athens[565] (Fig. 61, A and B). Its only decoration, an olive crown whose leaves have disappeared, proves it to be from the statue of a victor, and its wild locks, brutal look, flattened nose, and wide mouth represent a naturalistic study of the utmost strength and fineness, which could only have been produced after the time of Lysippos. We shall discuss this remarkable head more fully in