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
Victors with monuments of the seventh century B. C.:
1. Chionis, of Sparta.[2443] Besides his statue by Myron and the tablet
containing a list of his victories at Olympia mentioned by Pausanias
(VI, 13.2), the same writer records a similar tablet in Sparta, erected
near the royal tomb of the Agids, likewise set up by his townspeople
(III, 14.3). The Spartan tablet, like the monuments in his honor at
Olympia, was doubtless set up long after the victory, about Ols. 77 or
78 (= 472 or 468 B. C.).
2. Kylon, of Athens.[2444] Pausanias records that a bronze statue of
this victor stood upon the Athenian Akropolis, erected, as he supposes,
in honor of his beauty and reputation as an Olympic victor (I, 28.1).
Kylon was the leader of the well-known conspiracy of 632 B. C., when
he tried to make himself tyrant of Athens.[2445] Furtwaengler has
proposed the theory that this monument was not set up in honor of Kylon
by the Athenians, as Pausanias says, but that it was a dedication by
his family after his Olympic victory.[2446] A. Schaefer,[2447] however,
more justly believed that the statue was an expiatory offering for the
massacre of Kylon’s companions on the Akropolis,[2448] set up in the
time of Perikles, the date of which would account for the “beauty” of
the statue. Still another scholar[2449] believes that Pausanias’ remark
was called forth by the epigram on the statue.[2450]
3. Hipposthenes, of Sparta.[2451] Pausanias records that a temple was
dedicated to him in Sparta, where he received divine worship (III,
15.7). It has been argued that the words of Pausanias (_l. c._) show
that Hipposthenes here was worshiped only in the character of Poseidon,
whose epithet was ἵππιος (_cf._ P., I, 30.4).[2452]
Of the sixth century B. C.:
4. Hetoimokles, son of Hipposthenes of Sparta.[2453] Pausanias mentions
a statue of this victor at Sparta (III, 13.9).
5. Arrhachion, of Phigalia.[2454] Pausanias records the stone statue
in the archaic pose, and with weathered inscription, erected to this
victor in the market-place at Phigalia (VIII, 40.1), which we have
discussed at length in the preceding chapter (Fig. 79).
6. Kimon, the son of Stesagoras, of Athens.[2455] Aelian mentions αἱ
Κίμωνος ἵπποι χαλκαῖ, very true to the originals, in Athens,[2456]
which seem to have been set up in honor of his three chariot victories
at Olympia. His first victory was won when he was in banishment at the
hands of the tyrant Peisistratos, son of Hippokrates. Having entered
his horses under the tyrant’s name for the second contest, he was in
consequence recalled, and a third time entered them and won under his
own name.[2457] The pseudo-Andokides confuses this older Kimon with the
younger, when he calls the latter an Olympic victor.[2458] Similarly a
scholiast on Aristophanes[2459] confuses him with Megakles, who won a
victory τεθρίππῳ in Ol. 47 (= 592 B. C.).[2460]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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