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
Funeral games were held in honor of departed warriors and eminent
men all over the Greek world and at all periods, from the legendary
games of Patroklos and Pelias and others to those celebrated at
Thessalonika in Valerian’s time.[55] Thus Miltiades was honored by
games on the Thracian Chersonesus,[56] Leonidas and Pausanias at
Sparta,[57] Brasidas at Amphipolis,[58] Timoleon at Syracuse,[59] and
Mausolos at Halikarnassos.[60] Alexander instituted games in honor
of the dead Hephaistion[61] and the conqueror himself was honored
in a similar way.[62] The _Eleutheria_ were celebrated at Platæa at
stated times in honor of the soldiers who fell there against the
Medes in 479 B. C.,[63] and in the Academy a festival was held under
the direction of the polemarch in honor of the Athenian soldiers who
had died for their country and were buried in the Kerameikos.[64]
Funeral games were also common in Italy. We find athletic scenes
decorating Etruscan tombs—including boxing, wrestling, horse-racing,
and chariot-racing.[65] The Romans borrowed their funeral games from
Etruria as well as their gladiatorial shows, which were doubtless
also funerary in origin.[66] Frazer cites examples of the custom of
instituting games in honor of dead warriors among many modern peoples,
Circassians, Chewsurs of the Caucasus, Siamese, Kirghiz, in India, and
among the North American Indian tribes. Gardiner notes the Irish fairs
in honor of a departed chief, which existed from pagan days down to the
last century.[67]
The testimony of early Greek athletic art also points to the same
funerary origin of the games. The funeral games of Pelias and those
held by Akastos in honor of his father were depicted respectively
on the two most famous monuments of early Greek decorative art, on
the chest of Kypselos dedicated in the Heraion at Olympia and on
the throne of Apollo at Amyklai in Lakonia, the latter being the
work of the Ionian sculptor Bathykles. Though both these works are
lost, the description of one of them at least, that of the chest, by
Pausanias,[68] is so detailed and precise that the scenes represented
upon it have been paralleled figure for figure on early Ionian
(especially Chalkidian) and Corinthian vases, contemporary or later,
and on Corinthian and Argive decorative bronze reliefs. Many attempts
have been made, therefore, to restore the chest, and as more monuments
become known, which throw light on the composition and types, these
attempts are constantly growing in certainty, even though conjecture
may continue to enter in.[69]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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