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
Equestrian victors dedicated their chariots, or models of them, and
their horses. These models might be large or small. We have notices of
large chariot-groups at Olympia of Kleosthenes,[180] Gelo,[181] and
Hiero of Syracuse;[182] of small ones of Euagoras,[183] Glaukon,[184]
Kyniska,[185] and Polypeithes.[186] A large number of miniature models
of chariots and horses in bronze and terra cotta have been found at
Olympia,[187] some of which have no wheels. Many very thin foil wheels
have also been found.[188] Furtwaengler[189] believes that these
wheels are conventional reductions of whole chariots. Some of them
are cast[190] and they are generally four-spoked, but two mule-car
wheels are five-spoked.[191] These various models are so common and of
so little value, however, that they may have had nothing to do with
chariot-races.[192]
Many great artists, _e. g._, Kalamis,[193] Euphranor,[194] and
Lysippos,[195] are known to have made chariot-groups and it is
reasonable to assume that some of these were votive in character.
Besides dedications of chariot victors, we find at Olympia also those
of horse-racers. These were similarly both large and small, with and
without jockeys. Thus jockeys on horseback by Kalamis stood on either
side of Hiero’s chariot.[196] Krokon of Eretria, who won the horse-race
at the end of the sixth century B. C.,[197] dedicated a small bronze
horse at Olympia.[198] The monument of the sons of Pheidolas of
Corinth,[199] representing a horse on the top of a column, must have
been small. Pausanias, in mentioning the two statues of the Spartan
chariot victor Lykinos by Myron,[200] says that one of the horses which
the victor brought to Olympia was not allowed to enter the foal-race,
and therefore was entered in the horse-race. This story was probably
told Pausanias by the Olympia guides and may have arisen from the
smallness of one of the horses in the monument.[201] The sculptors
Kalamis,[202] Kanachos,[203] and Hegias[204] are known to have made
groups representing horse-victors, and Pliny derives the whole _genre_
of equestrian monuments from the Greeks.[205] Great numbers of small
figures of horses and riders have been excavated at Olympia[206] and
elsewhere.[207] Equestrian groups of various kinds were also known
outside Olympia. Thus Arkesilas IV of Kyrene offered a chariot model at
Delphi for a victory in 466 B. C;[208] the base found on the Akropolis
of Athens and inscribed with the name Onatas probably upheld such a
group;[209] the equestrian statue of Isokrates on the Akropolis was
also probably a dedication for a victory in horse-racing.[210]
DEDICATION OF STATUES AT OLYMPIA AND ELSEWHERE.
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