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
Great artists were engaged to set up chariot-groups at Olympia and
elsewhere. Many of the _quadrigae_ and _bigae_ mentioned by Pliny
as the works of sculptors and painters must have been agonistic
offerings.[1866] Aeginetan sculptors were especially in favor at
Olympia. Thus Onatas, in conjunction with the Athenian Kalamis, made
a group for King Hiero,[1867] and Glaukias made another for Hiero’s
brother Gelo;[1868] Simon made an equestrian group for Phormis,[1869]
and Philotimos made a statue for the horse-racer Xenombrotos of
Kos.[1870] The oldest dedication by a chariot victor at Olympia was
the votive offering of Miltiades, the son of Kypselos, of Athens,
which consisted of an ivory horn of Amaltheia, inscribed with archaic
letters and set up in the treasury of the Sikyonians. Miltiades won his
victory in Ol. (?) 54 (= 564 B. C.).[1871] The next oldest dedication
at Olympia was that of a chariot, without any human figure, by the
Spartan Euagoras, who won three victories in Ols. (?) 58-60 (= 548-540
B. C.).[1872] This custom of dedicating merely the model of a chariot
continued sporadically into the third century B. C. Thus Polypeithes
of Sparta, who won a victory near the end of the sixth century B.
C.,[1873] dedicated a chariot, while a figure of his father, the
wrestler Kalliteles, stood beside it.[1874] A Pythian victor, Arkesilas
IV, son of Battos IV, king of Kyrene, who won a victory in the 31st
Pythiad (= 462 B. C.), dedicated a chariot at Delphi.[1875] At the
beginning of the fourth century B. C. the Spartan princess Kyniska
set up “bronze horses less than life-size” in the pronaos of the
temple of Zeus at Olympia. The recovered base shows that Pausanias was
right about the size of this votive offering.[1876] Theochrestos of
Kyrene, who won some time between Ols. (?) 100 and 122 (= 380 and 292
B. C.),[1877] and Glaukon of Athens, who won in the third century B.
C.,[1878] also set up votive chariots. The recovered base of Glaukon’s
chariot shows that it was small. Sometimes a chariot victor, for
economy’s sake, contented himself with dedicating merely a statue of
himself in honor of his victory—a custom which continued from the sixth
to the third centuries B. C. Perhaps one of the oldest examples of such
a dedication of which we have record is that of the Elean Archidamas,
who won a victory at an unknown date, but certainly some time after
Ol. 66 (= 515 B. C.).[1879] In the fifth century B. C., the Spartans
Anaxandros[1880] and Lykinos[1881] dedicated merely statues of
themselves. In the fourth century B. C. the Elean victors Timon,[1882]
whose monument was by Daidalos, Troilos, whose monument was by
Lysippos,[1883] and Telemachos, whose statue was by Philonides,[1884]
set up statues in honor of their victories. The footprints on the
inscribed base of the statue of Telemachos show that he was represented
standing at rest with both feet flat on the ground. This was probably
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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