One of these was in the market-place of Gythion (III, 21.8), another in front of the walls of Las beyond Gythion (III, 24.6), and the third on Mount Parnon near the boundaries of Argolis, Lakonia, and Tegea (III, 10.6). The head under discussion is more probably only one more example of the idealizing tendency of athletic Greek art, which assimilated the type of victor to that of god.[2169] In the case of the _Agias_ the sculptor plainly wished to raise the victor to the ideal height of the hero. The same idealization is visible in the head ascribed to the statue of Philandridas. In both these heads the ears, while small, are battered and swollen; the remains of the ears in the head from Sparta are too badly damaged to indicate whether these were swollen or not. But even if they were preserved and were in that condition, they would not be a distinguishing factor in determining whether the head belonged to the statue of a victor or of Herakles. In our consideration of the Olympia head we saw by a comparison with the _Lansdowne Herakles_, a statue universally recognized as that of the hero, how fundamentally different were the two in their whole conception and how differently a highly idealized athlete and a hero were treated by the same sculptor. The same might be said of the boyish head from Sparta, when compared with a genuine head of Herakles. For this reason, and because of the resemblance in expression between the _Philandridas_ and the head from Sparta, I am inclined to believe that the latter, instead of being a representation of a youthful Herakles, is really the idealized portrait of an athlete, probably that of a boy victor, either in the boxing or wrestling match,[2170] assimilated in form to that of the hero.[2171] CHAPTER VII. THE MATERIALS OF OLYMPIC VICTOR MONUMENTS, AND THE OLDEST DATED VICTOR STATUE.[2172] FIGURES 78-80. It has been assumed pretty generally by archæologists that the victor statues set up in the Altis at Olympia were uniformly of bronze. Scherer, in his inaugural dissertation _de olympionicarum Statuis_, which appeared in 1885, was the first to discuss the question fully,[2173] and his arguments and conclusions have been followed, for the most part, by later investigators. Thus Dittenberger and Purgold state unequivocally that these statues were “_ausnahmslos aus Bronze_”,[2174] while more recently Hitzig and Bluemner, in their great commentary on Pausanias, have again pronounced the dictum that “_die Siegerstatuen waren durchweg von Erz_”.[2175] Others, however, have not been quite so sweeping in their generalization. Thus Wolters believes that these statues, because they were set up in the open, were “_der Regel nach_” of bronze,[2176] and Furtwaengler and Urlichs assume that they were “_fast ausschliesslich aus Bronze_”.[2177] THE CASE FOR BRONZE.