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
However, Treu[1218] showed that there was no stylistic connection
between the two heads. The slightly more archaic head B, badly injured
from weathering, I have referred to the Achaian hoplitodrome Phanas
of Pellene, who won Ol. 67 (= 512 B. C.).[1219] In this carefully
executed head the hair and beard are arranged in small locks and the
archaic smile is prominent. While the younger head is Attic, this
one is unmistakably Peloponnesian; and while the former comes from a
statue represented at rest, the latter, because of the twist of the
neck, seems to have come from one represented in violent motion. For
this reason Wolters believed that it came from the statue of a warrior
represented as thrown to the ground and defending himself.
The Myronic statue in the Palazzo Valentini, Rome, known as
_Diomedes_,[1220] whose pose recalls the _Diskobolos_, may represent
a hoplitodrome, because of its marked resemblance in attitude to the
Tuebingen bronze to be discussed in the next chapter (Fig. 42), and
because of the helmet on its head.[1221]
PENTATHLETES.
Pentathletes were represented by attributes taken from three of the
five contests—jumping, and throwing the diskos and the javelin. All
these attributes appear in gymnasium scenes pictured on red-figured
vases. Thus a kylix of the severe style in Munich[1222] gives us a
general picture of the exercises of the gymnasium. On the walls hang
diskoi in slings, strigils, leaping-weights, oil-flasks, sponges, and
javelins. Archaic leaping-weights (ἁλτῆρες) appeared in the hands of
the statue of the Elean Hysmon at Olympia by the Sikyonian sculptor
Kleon.[1223] Similarly, a figure of _Contest_ (Ἀγών) in the group set
up there by Mikythos had weights.[1224] The offering of the people of
Mende at Olympia very nearly deceived Pausanias into thinking it the
statue of a pentathlete, because of its ancient _halteres_.[1225] This
shows that these weights formed a regular attribute of pentathlete
statues there. A relief from Sparta[1226] represents an athlete
leaning on his spear and holding a pair of leaping-weights in his
right hand. There is a bronze statue of such a victor in the Berlin
Antiquarium.[1227] _Halteres_ hang on a tree-trunk to the right of
the statue of an athlete in the Pitti palace in Florence.[1228] The
breast of a marble torso, less than life-size, of a boy statue found at
Olympia, shows that the hands were stretched forward, and very possibly
the objects which they held were leaping-weights.[1229]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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