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
On heads of Herakles the swollen ears are very common. The first dated
representation of the hero with battered ears appears to be on coins
of Euagoras I, the king of Salamis in Cyprus during the years 410-374
B. C.[1268] We have several examples in sculpture from the fourth
century B. C. Thus swollen ears and the victor fillet appear on the
Skopaic head in the Capitoline Museum.[1269] Another example is the
terminal bust of the youthful hero found in 1777 at Genzano, and now
in the British Museum (Fig. 31).[1270] This head wreathed with poplar
leaves, is probably a Græco-Roman copy of an original of the fourth
century B. C., by an artist of the school of Lysippos. In the group
representing Herakles and his son Telephos, a Roman copy in the Museo
Chiaramonti of the Vatican, the hero is represented with fillet and
battered ears.[1271] A Parian marble head, encircled by a crown, in the
Glyptothek, going back to a Lysippan bronze original, seems to come
from the statue of the hero represented as a victor.[1272] Another
life-size head, of poor workmanship, in the Chiaramonti collection of
the Vatican, sometimes confused with the _Doryphoros_ head-type, seems
to come from a statue of Herakles, as shown by the broken ears and
rolled fillet, the latter a well-known attribute of the hero taken from
the symposium.[1273] A much finer replica is the bust from Herculaneum
now in Naples.[1274] Swollen ears appear also on heads of Ares. We
may instance the helmeted one in the Louvre,[1275] and especially the
replica in the Palazzo Torlonia in Rome.[1276] They are less prominent
on a Parian marble head of the god in the Glyptothek, which appears
to be a copy of an original of which the _Ares Ludovisi_ is a more
complete one.[1277]
[Illustration: FIG. 31.—Head of Herakles, from Genzano. British Museum
London.]
[Illustration: PLATE 21
Statue of _Diomedes with the Palladion_. Glyptothek, Munich.]
So far as we know, the statues of wrestlers, runners (except
hoplitodromes), and probably pancratiasts were not distinguished by
special attributes. In these cases the sculptor was obliged to express
the type of contest in the figure itself. His problem, therefore,
was to represent the victor in the characteristic pose of the contest
in which he had won his victory, that is, by representing the statue as
if in movement. This brings us to the second division of our treatment
of victor statues, those which represented the victor not at rest, but
in motion, a scheme which, in course of time, was extended not only
to victors in wrestling and running, but to those in all contests, by
representing them in the very act of contending. The treatment of this
class of monuments will occupy the chief portion of Chapter IV.
CHAPTER IV.
VICTOR STATUES REPRESENTED IN MOTION.
PLATES 22-25 AND FIGURES 32-62.
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