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
In an unpublished paper by my former teacher, Dr. Alfred Emerson, which
was read by Professor D. M. Robinson before the Archæological Institute
of America at its Christmas meeting in Providence in 1910, and entitled
_The Case of Kyniska_,[1897] the argument was made that the chariot was
in miniature; that the statue of Kyniska was a portrait, because of the
wording of the recovered epigram; and, lastly that the smallest of the
so-called bronze dancers from the villa of the Pisos in Herculaneum,
now in Naples, is a late reproduction of the statue at Olympia by
Apellas. Emerson thinks that Pliny no doubt often visited the villa and
may well have had these statues in mind when he mentioned Apellas as
the author of several statues of women adorning themselves.[1898]
The monument erected by Hiero, son of Deinomenes and brother and
successor of king Gelo at Syracuse, who won two horse-races and a
four-horse chariot victory at Olympia in Ols. 76, 77, 78 (= 476-468
B. C.),[1899] consisted of a bronze chariot, on which the charioteer
was mounted, and on either side a race-horse with a jockey on each.
Onatas made the chariot (and possibly the statue of the driver), while
Kalamis sculptured the horses and jockeys. Such a division among
sculptors was not uncommon at Olympia. Thus the Aeginetan artist
Simon and the Argive Dionysios made a group in common for Phormis,
which we have already mentioned, consisting of two horses and two
charioteers.[1900] The Chian Pantias and the Aeginetan Philotimos made
a group in common for Xenombrotos of Kos, victor in horse-racing, and
for his son, the boy boxer Xenodikos, which consisted of statues of
the man and the boy on horseback.[1901] Pliny mentions a four-horse
chariot-group for which the elder Praxiteles made the charioteer and
Kalamis the chariot, adding that Praxiteles did this out of kindness,
not wishing it to be thought that Kalamis had failed in representing
the man after succeeding in representing the horses.[1902]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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