Chapter VI

.[1056]

[Illustration: PLATE 12

Statue of an _Apoxyomenos_. Uffizi Gallery, Florence.]

The same motive is exemplified by many existing statues, statuettes, reliefs, etc. The marble statue of an athlete in the Uffizi, Florence, (Pl. 12),[1057] a copy of an original of the end of the fifth century B. C., wrongly restored as holding in both hands a vase at which the athlete is looking down, was interpreted by Bloch as an ephebe pouring oil from a lekythos held in the right hand into an aryballos held in the left. This action for an athlete has been characterized by Furtwaengler as “unparallelled, unclassical and, above all, absurd.” Through recent discoveries we now know that it represents an apoxyomenos, and that it should be restored with the left forearm close to the thigh, and with the right crossing the abdomen diagonally in the direction of the left hand. This attitude so closely corresponds with that of a figure on a gem as to make it probable that both gem and statue are copies of the same original. The figure on the gem[1058] holds a strigil in both hands and is generally explained as scraping the dirt from the left thigh; the light hand holds the handle and the left the blade. A hydria, palm-branch, and crown are pictured to the right—showing that the figure represents an athlete, just as the statue has the swollen ears of one. The attention of the athlete in both monuments is concentrated on the operation involved—a concentration reminding us of Myron’s _Diskobolos_. While, however, in the latter work the concentration is momentary, it is less transient in the Florence statue and also in the Munich _Oil-pourer_. This pose is too conscious in the Florentine statue to be the work of Myron. Arndt names no artist, but as the similarity between the head of the statue and that of the _Oil-pourer_ is so marked, and as every one now regards the latter as Attic—even if not by Alkamenes—he thinks that the two must be by the same Attic sculptor, although the Uffizi statue is somewhat later than the Munich one.[1059] The original of the Florence statue was famous, if we may judge by the existing number of replicas with variations.[1060]

Among statues showing the same motive and pose, we may note the bronze statue of an athlete over life-size—pieced together from 234 fragments—found by the Austrians at Ephesos and now in Vienna.[1061] The subject, pose, and heavy proportions recall the Argive school of Polykleitos, and its original has been assigned by Hauser to the Sikyonian Daidalos, the son and pupil of Patrokles, who was the pupil of Polykleitos. As further reproductions of the same type of figure, we may cite a bronze statuette in Paris,[1062] and a marble one found at Frascati in 1896 and now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.[1063]

A chalcedony scarab of archaic type in the British Museum represents a nude athlete with a lekythos slung over the left arm and a strigil in the left hand, which rests on the hip.[1064] A beautiful marble grave-relief, much mutilated, in the museum at Delphi,[1065] which dates from the middle of the fifth century B. C., represents a palæstra victor, with his arms extended to the right, cleansing himself with a strigil, which is held in the right hand, while a slave boy, holding the remnant of an aryballos in his right hand, looks up at him from the right. The careful anatomy of this relief may point to Pythagoras of Samos, as its author, though we have no certain work of his, for it fits the description of that artist by Pliny, who says that he was the first to express sinews and veins.[1066]

LIBATION-POURING.

[Illustration: PLATE 13

Statue of an Athlete, after Polykleitos. Farnsworth Museum, Wellesley College, U. S. A.]

[Illustration: FIG. 24.—Bronze Statuette of an Athlete. Louvre, Paris.]

An original Greek bronze statuette in Paris (Fig. 24)[1067] reproduces the motive of the statue of the boy wrestler Xenokles by the sculptor Polykleitos Minor at Olympia, as a comparison with the footprints on the recovered base of the latter shows.[1068] As the forms correspond with those of the _Doryphoros_ and _Diadoumenos_, and as its execution is so marvelous, Furtwaengler has ascribed the statuette to the circle of Polykleitos’ pupils. The position of the right hand, which has the thumbs drawn in, corresponds with that of the _Idolino_ (Pl. 14), which we are to discuss, and can best be explained by assuming that it similarly held a kylix; the left hand carried a staff-like attribute. The head is bent and looks to the right. Furtwaengler believed that, inasmuch as the act of pouring a libation does not occur in art or literature as an athletic motive, the statuette represented a hero or god. Many Roman marble copies show the same motive and preserve to us a Polykleitan work which corresponds in all essentials with the Louvre statuette.[1069] We mention two, the only ones of the type in which the heads are on the trunks, one in the Galleria delle Statue of the Vatican,[1070] the other in the Farnsworth Museum at Wellesley College (Pl. 13).[1071] These copies represent a youth standing with both feet flat upon the ground, the weight of the body resting upon the right one, while the left is turned a little to the side. He is looking downwards to the right. Doubtless we should restore these copies after the Paris bronze, with a kylix in the right hand. The palm-branch in a similar statue, to be mentioned further on, shows that in all probability the origin statue was that of an athlete; and that he was a famous athlete is shown by the number of copies of the torso and head.[1072] A bronze head from Herculaneum (Fig. 25)[1073] so strongly resembles in its forms the type under discussion—which Furtwaengler has called the “Vatican athlete standing at rest”[1074]—and corresponds with it so closely in its measurements, that it might be regarded as a copy of the same original, if certain differences, not due to the copyist, did not rather show that it comes from a closely allied work. This head shows an intense melancholy, which has been explained by Furtwaengler as due to the lack of skill on the part of the copyist, who fashioned it slightly askew. Amelung very properly explains the absence of the motive of libation-pouring in athletic art as merely a lacuna in our sources.[1075] If the original of these copies and variations represented an athlete, he was certainly pouring a libation before victory; if a warrior, he was doing the same thing before going on a campaign. In the latter case the left hand should be restored with a spear.

[Illustration: FIG. 25.—Bronze Head of an Athlete, from Herculaneum. Museum of Naples.]

We must also place here the life-size original Greek bronze in Florence, discovered at Pesaro, near Ancona, in 1530, and known from the early eighteenth century as the _Idolino_ (Pl. 14),[1076] for its motive connects it with the series just discussed. This is, perhaps, our finest bronze statue from antiquity, as it represents the highest ideal of boy beauty, just as the _Doryphoros_ does of manly beauty. The chief characteristics—the positions of the feet, head, and arms, though essentially those of the statues discussed, offer certain differences. Thus the left leg is placed more to one side and turned further outwards than in the statue of Xenokles and kindred works; the left hand hangs down at an angle to the leg differently from the others. In other words, by comparing it with the Paris statuette, we see a slightly different rhythm from that found in Polykleitan works. The _Idolino_ has been looked upon as Myronic by Kekulé,[1077] Studniczka,[1078] and hesitatingly Klein,[1079] while Mahler regarded it as Pheidian.[1080] Furtwaengler, however, by a careful analysis, has shown its Polykleitan characteristics—especially the shape of the head and the features, and the treatment of the hair, which reminds us of the Naples copy of the _Doryphoros_. Owing to differences, however, he did not assign it to the master himself, but suggested that it was the work of his pupil Patrokles.[1081] Bulle found the head Polykleitan, but the body Attic, and assigned the figure to an unknown Attic sculptor working in the Polykleitan circle. In this controversy on its style, a statue found in 1916 in the excavations of the Baths at Kyrene should be of use, for it is the most faithful of all the Roman copies known of the bronze original and clearly shows a Polykleitan character influenced by Attic art.[1082] By a comparison of this marble copy with the Florentine bronze we see that the latter was a subsequent rendition of the same original, and doubtless by some artist of lesser fame from the Polykleitan school, who was influenced by Attic art.

But it is the interpretation of the _Idolino_ which chiefly interests us here. While Longpérier called the similar Paris statuette a _Mercure aptère_, and the publisher of the statue from Kyrene called that copy a _Hermes_, yet Kekulé, Bulle, and most other archæologists have seen in the _Idolino_ an athlete. The inner surface of its outstretched right hand is left rough, and the fingers are in the same position as those of the Paris bronze. Such a position can be explained satisfactorily by restoring the hand with a kylix or a φιάλη, such as was commonly used in libations. The left hand is smooth and evidently empty, though Bulle restores it with a victor’s fillet, and so, following Kekulé, calls the statue that of a boy victor, who is bringing an offering to the altar in honor of his victory. The marble statue in the Galleria delle Statue has the right forearm restored; in the Kyrene statue the right hand is preserved and has a thick object held downwards at a greater angle than in the _Idolino_. The photograph does not let us judge decisively, but it seems to be too thick an object for the remnants of a kylix. A marble statue in the Barberini Palace, Rome,[1083] which resembles the _Idolino_ so closely as to be considered a copy of it, though with variations of pose and technique, has the arms broken off, and so adds nothing to the solution of the motive of the _Idolino_. The fact that a palm-stem stands beside the right leg, however, adds weight to the interpretation as victor. Furtwaengler interprets the _Idolino_ and kindred works as divinities. Though boys serve at libations, he thinks they never perform the ritual act of pouring the libation.[1084] That a libation-pourer should appear in the guise of a boy victor (that of Xenokles) he calls a genuine Argive trait. Svoronos, also, has recently tried to show that the _Idolino_ is not a victor,[1085] but represents the hero Herakles. He compares the figure with a fourth-century Pentelic marble relief in Athens,[1086] which represents Herakles standing at the door of Hades and beside him a father leading his son up to the open air. The pose of the figure of Herakles resembles that of the _Idolino_ in a remarkable way. In the relief Herakles holds a kylix in the right hand[1087] and a club in the left, and a lion skin is thrown over the left arm. Svoronos believes that the left hand in the relief explains the turning in of the left hand of the _Idolino_—for he believes that the latter also held a club. We must, however, leave the final solution of the motive of the _Idolino_ and kindred works open, although inclining to the belief that they represent a victor.

[Illustration: PLATE 14

Bronze Statue known as the _Idolino_. Museo Archeologico, Florence.]

[Illustration: FIG. 26.—Marble Statue of an Athlete(?). National Museum, Athens.]

A statue in Athens, which was found in 1888 in the Roman ruins at the Olympieion, may represent a boy victor pouring a libation (Fig. 26).[1088] It is a poor Roman copy, dry and lifeless, of a bronze original of the middle of the fifth century B. C.[1089] In this statue Mayer has seen the motive, and probably the copy, of the _Splanchnoptes_ (Roaster of Entrails) by the sculptor Styphax (or Styppax) of Cyprus, which, according to Pliny,[1090] represented Perikles’ slave “roasting entrails and blowing hard on the fire, to kindle it, till his cheeks swell.” He thinks that the position of the broken arms and a comparison of the figure with similar ones on vases make the identification possible. Von Salis concurs in his restoration and interpretation and publishes a small statuette in Athens from Dodona,[1091] which has a similar pose, and holds a three-pronged fork in the left hand, which he believes should be restored in the statue. Although statue and statuette have much in common (_e. g._, the position of the breast and shoulders, the treatment of the hair, etc.), which shows that both may be copies of one original, the conception of the two is somewhat different. The statue from Athens represents a boy standing busily engaged at the altar; the statuette represents one standing at rest merely looking on, the fork not being held in position for use.[1092] In any case the face of the Athens statue can not correspond with Pliny’s description—_ignemque oris pleni spiritu accendens_. Quite a different explanation of the statue is possible—one which Mayer thought improbable. The right arm—broken above the wrist—was raised to the height of the shoulder and may have held an object in the hand; the left arm—broken off below the shoulder—seems to have been held close to the body and appears to have corresponded in movement with the other. The boy, therefore, may have held a cup in the right hand and a branch or a victor fillet in the left. Thus it may merely be another example of a boy victor pouring a libation.

Certain other statues have been mistaken either for libation-pourers or oil-pourers, when they are really wine-pourers and have nothing to do with the athletic motives under discussion. A good example is the marble statue of a _Satyr_ in Dresden,[1093] which represents the youthful demi-god lifting a can with his right hand, out of which he is pouring wine into a drinking-horn held in the left. There are many copies of this work,[1094] a fact which shows that the original bronze was famous. An attempt has therefore been made to identify it with the bronze _Satyr_ of Praxiteles mentioned by Pliny as the _Periboëtos_ or “far-famed,”[1095] which seems to have been grouped with a _Dionysos_ and a figure of _Drunkenness_—a grouping which might fit the Dresden _Satyr_, since a second figure should be imagined, for which the horn is being filled. However, it differs stylistically so much from the _Hermes_ of Olympia that the ascription has been given up, though its graceful form shows Praxitelean influence and certainly emanates from the fourth century B. C.

RESTING AFTER THE CONTEST.

[Illustration: PLATE 15

Marble Head of an Athlete, after Kresilas (?). Metropolitan Museum, New York.]

A very favorite motive was to represent a victor, either standing or seated, resting after the exertions of the contest (ἀναπαυόμενος). An excellent example of this motive in a standing posture is the fourth-century B. C. statue of Attic workmanship found at Porto d’Anzio and now in the Vatican,[1096] which reproduces the type of the _Apollo Lykeios_.[1097] Many of the statues, by various sculptors, which represent the victor standing at rest may be intended to represent him as resting after the contest. The well-known head of a youth adorned with the victor’s chaplet, and preserved in four copies in European museums, appears to come from a statue which represented a victor in this manner. The best of these copies is in the collection of Lord Leconfield at Petworth House, Sussex.[1098] We should add a fifth, a Roman copy of the head, in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (Pl. 15).[1099] In these copies the ears are not swollen, and a certain refinement and gentleness show that the original was not from the statue of a boxer or pancratiast, but from that of another type of athlete, perhaps a pentathlete. Since Pliny mentions the statue of a _Doryphoros_ by Kresilas,[1100] and because of its supposed Kresilæan style, Furtwaengler, albeit on slender grounds, has attempted to identify the original of these heads with that work.[1101] The expression is certainly one of complete repose. On the crown of the head, and on the left side over the fillet, is a rectangular broken surface,[1102] apparently the remnant of a support for the right arm, which, as Conze thought, proves that the athlete stood with one arm resting on the head, the hand hanging over the left side. Furtwaengler admitted that such an attitude might be that of an apoxyomenos,[1103] but pointed out that the expression of the face in all the copies seems too tranquil for such an interpretation. Since the victor was in repose and the left arm required a slight support, he believed that this support might have been an akontion. He therefore reconstructed the original statue as that of a resting pentathlete, and assigned it to the great Cretan contemporary of Pheidias, who worked in Athens.[1104] The number of replicas at least shows that the original was a famous work.

Perhaps our best example of the motive of a seated victor resting after the contest is the bronze statue of a boxer found in Rome in 1884 and now in the Museo delle Terme there (Pl. 16 and Fig. 27).[1105] This is a masterpiece in the portrayal of brute strength in the most naturalistic and revolting way. If we like to think of victors as having noble forms, we are rudely startled on looking at this brutal prize-fighter. If we compare it with works of the fifth and fourth centuries B. C., we see in it, as in no other example of Greek sculpture, the great change which professionalism had later wrought in the Greek ideal of athletics. Here are massive proportions, bulging muscles, arms and legs hard and muscle-bound. We can compare it only with the bronze head of a boxer found at Olympia (Fig. 61 A and B) of similar style and age.[1106] But there we have only the head, while here we have a complete statue almost perfectly preserved, the only restorations being a portion of the left thumb, a piece of the right flank, and the base.

[Illustration: FIG. 27.—Head from Statue of the _Seated Boxer_. Museo delle Terme, Rome.]

[Illustration: PLATE 16

Bronze Statue of the _Seated Boxer_. Museo delle Terme, Rome.]

It represents a professional boxer, who is seated exhausted at the close of the bout, the severity of which is indicated by every part of the body. He leans forward, his arms rest on his thighs, and his head, sunk between his shoulders, is raised and turned to the right, as he stupidly looks around at the applauding spectators. His nose is broken and his ears are swollen and scars of the contest show on his face and limbs. Beneath his retreating upper lip some of his teeth appear to have been knocked out as the result of previous fights, while indications of the recent struggle are to be seen in the blood dripping from his ears and the deep lacerations in face and shoulder, which may have once been filled with red paint to make his appearance even more realistic. The right eye is swollen and the lower lid and the cheek imperceptibly sink into each other. The mustache shows flecks of blood and the swollen back of the right hand protrudes through the glove. His nose is clotted with blood and he seems to be struggling to get his breath.

Such realism and delight in depicting the hideous show that the work, like the Olympia head, belongs to the Hellenistic age. The careful workmanship, especially visible in the hair and beard and in the hair on the chest[1107], proves that the statue is not a Roman copy, but a Greek original of the beginning of the Hellenistic age, of the end of the fourth or beginning of the third century B. C. Nor is it a portrait, as Winter maintained,[1108] since it is an adaptation of a late type of Herakles. It certainly is a victor statue from one of the great Greek games, and is, perhaps, from Olympia itself. Since the head is turned toward the right shoulder and the mouth is open, as if speaking, Wunderer tried, on the basis of a passage in the history of Polybios,[1109] to identify it with the statue of the famous Theban boxer and pancratiast Kleitomachos at Olympia by an unknown artist.[1110] The historian states that Kleitomachos, while fighting with the Egyptian Aristonikos, was angered by the acclaim given the foreigner and, stepping aside, chided the spectators for not cheering one who was fighting for the honor of Greece. The speech caused a revulsion in the popular feeling, which helped, even more than the fists of Kleitomachos, to vanquish Aristonikos. However, the motive of the statue does not fit the incident, as the boxer is not speaking, but breathing hard, nor is the seated posture that of one haranguing a crowd. Moreover, the date of the Theban’s victory is too late for the statue.[1111]

ATTRIBUTES OF VICTOR STATUES.

At the beginning of the fifth century B. C. athletic training tended to produce a uniform standard of physical development, which was reflected in sculpture. At this date we do not find the divergence of style which we saw in our review of the “Apollo” type of the sixth century. Vase-paintings show the change better than sculpture. On black-figured vases of the sixth century B. C., we see a good deal of variety in groups of boxers and wrestlers, while on red-figured vases of the early fifth century the number of types is far less. In sculpture, however, differences in physical type did exist in the various schools at the beginning of the fifth century. We have, for example, the heavy, square-shouldered type in the _Apollo Choiseul-Gouffier_ (Pl. 7A), which we have classed as a victor statue, and the tall, rawboned type in the _Tyrannicides_ by Kritios and Nesiotes (Fig. 32, _Harmodios_).[1112] We have, on the other hand, a very different physical type in the short, stocky Aeginetan pedimental figures (Figs. 20 and 21). Between such extremes there are, of course, many gradations. We might instance the archaic bronze statuette of a diskobolos in the Metropolitan Museum (Fig. 46).[1113] However, notwithstanding the diversity in type, it is often difficult to distinguish runners from wrestlers, boxers from pentathletes. Thus few early fifth-century statues show the type of runner as well as the _Apollo of Tenea_ (Pl. 8A), or that of a boxer as well as the “_Apollo_” from Delphi (Pl. 8B). The reason for this is the ideal element, which entered into all these statues and which was a reflection of the uniform development of athletics long before specialization had set in. Out of this uniformity grew the canon of Polykleitos, developed from that of Hagelaïdas.

The sculptor of the sixth century B. C. was incapable of differentiating between god and mortal. This was especially the case, as we have seen, with Apollo, as the “Apollo” type was a model of manly vigor. In the early fifth century the sculptor had largely overcome this difficulty, but still showed little diversity of type in treating statues of different kinds of athletes. A method of differentiation which was essential to athlete sculptors of the sixth century was found convenient of retention by those of the fifth—_i. e._, characterizing the statue of the victor by some attribute, in order, on the one hand, to differentiate it from the nude god or hero, and on the other to distinguish between different types of victors.

PRIMARY ATTRIBUTES OF VICTOR STATUES.

THE VICTOR FILLET.

In the first place, the sculptor would characterize the victor statue as such. The easiest way to do this would be to represent it with a fillet or chaplet (ταινία)[1114] bound round the head, as we saw was the case in the statue of Milo. This fillet was merely a band or riband of wool which was given the Olympic victor in addition to the garland of olive leaves, or the palm-branch, as a symbol of victory. Waldstein has argued that this fillet originally was not an essential attribute of the victor, but that the crown and palm were the prizes, and the fillet merely a decoration used on various occasions, such as at symposia,[1115] which only later became a general athletic attribute.[1116] Though the presence of the fillet on statues should not, therefore, be proof that the given statue is that of a victor,[1117] there is no defense for the contention of Passow[1118] that the _tainia_ was in no sense a symbol of victory, but merely a toilet article among the gifts presented by the public to a victor at the ovation of the crowning. Pausanias says that the victor Lichas of Sparta was scourged by order of the umpires at Olympia for having set the _tainia_ on the head of his victorious charioteer.[1119] This is sufficient evidence that it was not a mere toilet article, but rather a part of the official prize of victory. Similarly the _tainia_ in the hand of Nike upon the right hand of the statue of Zeus by Pheidias at Olympia can not have been a toilet article.[1120]

We have many examples from athletic sculpture of the use of the fillet. Thus it appears on the bronze head of a boxer in the Glyptothek (Pl. 3)[1121] and on the bronze head from Herculaneum in Naples (Fig. 4),[1122] both of which have been discussed in