perhaps in the attitude of the well-known Tübingen bronze, which represents a hoplitodromos practising starts[108] (Fig. 12). [Illustration: Fig. 12. Bronze Statuette of Hoplitodromos. Tübingen.] [Illustration: Fig. 13. Myron’s Diskobolos (from a bronzed cast made in Munich, combining the Vatican body and the Massimi head).] The last-named statues at once suggest the Diskobolos of Myron (Fig. 13). This statue marks a new departure in athletic art. It is not, as far as we know, a statue in honour of any particular victor, but a study in athletic genre. To the same class belong the Doryphoros and Diadumenos of Polycleitus.[109] The earlier statues had been ideal in as far as they were not portrait statues, but statues of athletic types connected with the name of some victor, and many such statues are assigned to Myron and Polycleitus. But the statues of which we are speaking were avowedly and professedly ideal studies in athletic art. Myron undertook to represent the athlete in motion. He chose that most difficult, yet most characteristic moment in the swing of the diskobolos, which alone combines the idea of rest and that of motion, when the diskos has been swung back to its full extent, and the momentary pause suggests stability, while the insecurity of the delicate balance implies the strong movement which has preceded it, and the more violent movement which is to follow. No other moment could give the same idea of force and swiftness. If we look at the countless representations of the diskobolos on vases and in bronzes, we see that the fixing of any other moment in the swing destroys at once all idea of motion. The movement is checked at an unnatural point, and the result is lifeless. Only at the close of the swing backward does the brief pause give the artist an excuse for fixing it in bronze. It is a magnificent conception, and in spite of minor defects magnificently executed. Unfortunately we know the statue only through more or less late and inaccurate marble copies. Perhaps the truest idea of the grace of the original bronze can be obtained from the bronzed cast in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, from which our illustration is taken. The diskobolos is, as has been said, a study of athletic action, and it is therefore difficult to form a true idea of his proportions, nor was the artist concerned so much with proportions as with movement. Yet if we can imagine the diskobolos standing at rest, he might well take his place besides the glorious youths of the Parthenon frieze, tall like the Tyrannicides, yet of somewhat lighter build, taller and lighter likewise than the type of Polycleitus. [Illustration: Fig. 14. Doryphoros, after Polycleitus. Naples. (_Greek Sculpture_, Fig. 74.)] [Illustration: Fig. 15. Diadumenos from Vaison, after Polycleitus. British Museum. (_Greek Sculpture_, Fig. 75.)]