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
Juethner has made a careful study of the different shapes of
_halteres_ and his conclusions have been followed, for the most part,
by Gardiner.[1522] The _halteres_ do not appear in Homer, but were
in existence at least by the beginning of the sixth century B. C.,
and a little later they probably appeared on pentathlete statues.
To this period belongs the lead weight from Eleusis now in Athens,
whose inscription records that it was dedicated by one Epainetos to
commemorate his victory in jumping.[1523] On vase-paintings of the
sixth and fifth centuries B. C., we see numerous types, but two main
ones. Early b.-f. vases show a semicircular piece of metal or stone
with a deep depression on one side for a finger grip, the two club-like
ends being equal (as in Figs. 36A and 44). In the early fifth century
B. C., a club-like type came in, which shows many modifications in
the size and shape of the ends.[1524] In the fifth century B. C., the
second main type appeared, of an elongated semispherical form, thickest
in the middle and with the ends pointed or rounded. These correspond
with the “archaic” ones, which Pausanias saw on the figure of _Agon_
in the dedicatory group of Mikythos at Olympia[1525] and describes as
forming half an elongated circle and so fastened as to let the fingers
pass through. We have two stone examples of this type: one found at
Corinth, now in the Polytechnic Institute in Athens,[1526] in which a
hole is cut behind the middle for the fingers and thumbs, and a more
primitive single one from Olympia.[1527] Philostratos divides the Greek
jumping-weights into “long” and “spherical,”[1528] which Juethner
identifies with the two types just discussed. Gardiner, however, finds
this impossible, since Pausanias speaks of one type as “archaic,”
and he consequently thinks that these were no longer in use in the
time of Philostratos. After the fifth century B. C. we have little
evidence about _halteres_ until Roman days, when a cylindrical type
appears on Roman copies of Greek statues of athletes, on mosaics and
wall-paintings.[1529] Thus it appears on the tree-trunk in two athlete
statues in Dresden[1530] and the Pitti Gallery in Florence,[1531]
and on the Lateran athlete mosaic from Tusculum of the imperial
period.[1532] In Roman days jumping-weights were used for the most part
in medical gymnastics, like our dumb-bells.[1533]
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