To the archæological sources, on the other hand, belong, first and foremost, the remnants of victor statues in stone and metal which have long been garnered in modern museums or have come to light during the excavation of the Altis. To this small number I hope I have added at least one marble fragment found at Olympia, the head of a statue by Lysippos, the last great sculptor of Greece (Frontispiece and Fig. 69). To this second kind of sources belong also the statue bases just mentioned, on many of which the extant footmarks enable us to determine the poses of the statues themselves which once stood upon them. Furthermore, an intimate knowledge of Greek athletic sculpture in all its periods and phases is, of course, essential in treating a problem of this nature. Here, as in the study of Greek sculpture in general, where the destruction of original masterpieces, apart from the few well-known but splendid exceptions, has been complete, we are almost entirely dependent upon second-hand evidence furnished by the numerous existing antique copies and adaptations of lost originals executed in marble and bronze by more or less skilled workmen for the Roman market. Finally, not only are the innumerable statuettes and small bronzes surviving from antiquity of great value in any attempt to reconstruct the pose of a given athlete statue, but also the representations of various athlete figures on every sort of sculptured and painted work—vase-paintings, wall-paintings, reliefs, gems, coins, etc. By using all such sources of information, it is possible to attain tolerable certainty in reconstructing the various types and poses of these lost monuments, and in identifying schools of athletic sculpture, masters, and even individual statues. But it must be stated at the outset that such identifications, from the very nature of the problem, are at best tentative in character. The attempt to see in Roman copies certain statues of athletes has often been made by archæologists. However probable such identifications may seem, we must not forget the simple fact that up to the present time not a single Roman copy has been conclusively _proved_ to be that of an Olympic victor statue. Only as our knowledge of Greek sculpture is gradually extended by discoveries of additional works of art, and by future researches, will it be possible to attain an ever greater degree of probability. The further identification of these important monuments, as that of masterpieces of Greek sculpture generally, will thus remain one of the chief problems for the future archæologist. In the present book, where the body of material drawn upon is so immense and the scientific writings involved are so voluminous, manifestly the author can lay no claim to an exhaustive treatment. With due consciousness of the defects and shortcomings of the work, he can claim only to have made a small selection of such works of art as will best illustrate the various types of monuments under discussion.