Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic ArtHyde, Walter Woodburn
History
Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art
Hyde, Walter Woodburn
Olympics; Sculpture, Greek; Sports -- Greece
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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