OLYMPIC VICTOR MONUMENTS AND GREEK ATHLETIC ART - CHAPTER III

Victor Statues Represented at Rest

Abstract

We have seen that it was a very old custom in Greece to dedicate statues of victors at the great national games to the god in whose honor the games were held. On many sites, especially at Olympia, tiny statuettes of clay or bronze of very primitive technique have been found in great numbers, which represent victors in many attitudes and ways—as horsemen, warriors, charioteers, etc. By the sixth century b. c. this ancient custom, as we learn from literary, epigraphical, and monumental sources, had developed, with the rapid progress attained by the sculptor’s art, into the regular practice of erecting life-size statues of athletes at the site of the games or in the native city of the victor. Especially at Olympia hundreds of such monuments were gradually collected, whose numbers and beauty must have exerted an overwhelming impression on the visitor to the Altis. We shall now begin the consideration of these monuments in detail.

The victor statues at Olympia, as elsewhere, may be conveniently divided into two main groups—those which represent the victor as standing or seated at rest, before or after the contest, and those which represent him in movement, i. e., in some contest schema. Examples of statues of athletes represented at rest are common in Greek athletic sculpture. We need only mention the so-called Oil-pourer of Munich, who is represented as pouring oil over his body to make his limbs more supple for the coming wrestling bout; the Diadoumenos of Polykleitos, who is binding a victor fillet around his head after a successful encounter; the Apoxyomenos of the school of Lysippos, representing an athlete scraping off the oil and dirt from his body after his victory. In this class of statues, which forms by far the greater number and shows the richer motives, the poses are quiet and reserved, the figures are compact, and the expression earnest and even thoughtful. As examples of statues represented in movement we need only recall such well-known works as the Diskobolos of Myron with its rhythmic lines and vivacious expression; the bronze wrestlers of Naples, who are bending eagerly forward watching for a grip; or the artistically intertwined pancratiast group of Florence. Such monuments show us the varied poses, the choice of the critical moment, the truth to life, and the masterly rhythm attained by certain sculptors.

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