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
Thus we see that the contention that the victor statues at Olympia
were exclusively of bronze, in the light of the evidence adduced, is
untenable.
THE STATUE OF ARRHACHION AT PHIGALIA.
In his description of Arkadia, Pausanias mentions seeing the stone
statue of the pancratiast Arrhachion in the market-place of Phigalia.
He describes it as archaic, especially in pose, the feet being close
together and the arms hanging by the sides to the hips; and adds
that he was told that it once bore an inscription which had become
illegible in his day.[2214] This Arrhachion won three victories at
Olympia in the pankration in Ols. 52-54 (= 572-564 B. C.).[2215]
Therefore his statue is one of the oldest victor monuments of which
we have record. At so early a date, before individual types of victor
statues had been developed, we should expect, in harmony with the
description of Pausanias, that this statue would conform in style with
the well-known archaic “Apollo” type, the most characteristic of early
Greek sculpture, which, as we saw in Chapter III, is exemplified in the
long series of statues found all over the Greek world, the oldest class
being represented by the example from Thera (Fig. 9), and one of the
youngest by that from Tenea near Corinth (Pl. 8A).
[Illustration: FIG. 79.—Stone Statue of the Olympic Victor Arrhachion,
from Phigalia. In the Guards’ House at Bassai (Phigalia).]
In his commentary on the passage of Pausanias, Sir J. G. Frazer records
that during a visit in May, 1890, he saw a recently discovered archaic
stone statue in a field just outside Pavlitsa, a village on the site of
the southeastern precincts of the old city of Phigalia, some 2.5 miles
from the temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai. He thought that this
statue agreed completely with Pausanias’ description of Arrhachion’s,
even to the half-effaced inscription which he transcribed from its
breast just below the neck.[2216] Through the courtesy of Dr. Svoronos,
of the National Numismatic Museum in Athens, I have been able to
procure a photograph of the monument from K. Kouroniotis, the Arkadian
_Ephor_ of antiquities stationed at Bassai, and I present it herewith
(Fig. 79). The statue is now cared for in the house of the temple
guards. This statue, like all other examples of the series, represents
a nude youth standing in a stiff, constrained attitude. It is badly
mutilated and its surface is rough from weathering. Besides having lost
its head, arms, and the lower part of the legs, it has been broken into
two parts across the abdomen. The ends of curls on either side of the
neck, extending a few inches over the breast, show that the head looked
straight forward, thus following the usual law of “frontality,”[2217]
which precluded any turning of the body; for a median line drawn
down through the middle of the breastbone, the navel, and the αἰδοῖα
would divide the statue into two equal halves. The body shows the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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