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
The plan of the book is easily seen by a glance at the table of
contents. After a preliminary chapter on the origin and development
of Greek athletic games in general and on the custom of conferring
athletic prizes on victors, the more specific subject of the work is
introduced in Chapter II by brief discussions of the more general
characteristics common to Olympic victor statues—their size, nudity,
and hair-fashion, their portrait or non-portrait features, and the
standard of beauty reached by some of them at least, as shown by the
æsthetic judgments of certain ancient writers and by the fragmentary
originals which have survived. The enumeration of these characteristics
is followed by a brief account of the various canons of proportion
assumed to have been used and taught by different schools of sculptors.
The chapter ends with a more extended account of the little-known but
important subject of the assimilation of this class of monuments to
athlete types of gods and heroes.
In Chapters III and IV, which are the most important in developing the
problem of reconstruction, a division has been made into two great
statuary groups: those in which the victor was represented at rest,
where the particular contest was indicated, if indicated at all, by
very general motives or by particular athletic attributes; and those
in which the victor was represented in movement, _i. e._, in the
characteristic pose of the contest in which he won his victory.
Chapter V relates chiefly to the monuments of hippodrome victors, those
in the various chariot-races and horse-races, and ends with a very
brief notice of non-athlete victor dedications—those of musicians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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