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
time after the victory.[314]
HONORS PAID TO VICTORS BY THEIR NATIVE CITIES.
Since the victor was deemed the representative of the state, he often
received a more substantial reward than a statue erected at the cost of
his fellow citizens. The herald, in proclaiming his victory, proclaimed
also the name of his town, which thus shared in his success. At Athens
it was customary for a victor at the great games to receive a reward of
money. To encourage an interest in athletics there, Solon established
money prizes for victorious athletes. We have already said that 100
drachmæ were given to a victor at the Isthmus, while 500 were allotted
to one at Olympia. Solon further ordained that victors should eat at
the Prytaneion at the public expense.[315] Probably other Greek states
followed the Athenian custom. We know from an inscription that the
Panathenaic victors in the stade-race received 50 amphoræ of oil, the
pancratiast 40, and others 30.[316] Later, in Rome, victors had special
privileges granted them, including maintenance at the public expense,
a privilege which Mæcenas advised the emperor Augustus to limit to
victors at Olympia, Delphi, and Rome.[317] Augustus in other ways
enlarged the privileges of athletes.[318] When we consider the intimate
connection between religion and athletics and the Panhellenic fame of a
victor at the great games, we can easily understand the indignation of
the native town when its athletes did anything dishonorable. Sometimes
a victor was bribed to appear as the citizen of some other state. Thus
Astylos of Kroton, who won in running races in Ols. 73-76 (= 488-476
B. C.), had himself proclaimed in his last two contests a Syracusan to
please King Hiero. The citizens of his native town burned his house and
pulled down his statue, which had been placed there in the temple of
Hera.[319] The Cretan Sotades, who won the long running race in Ol. 99
(= 384 B. C.), was bribed at the next Olympiad by the city of Ephesos
to proclaim himself an Ephesian, and was in consequence exiled.[320]
Dikon, a victor in running races at the beginning of the fourth century
B. C., proclaimed himself first a citizen of Kaulonia, but later,
“for a sum of money,” entered the men’s contest as a Syracusan.[321]
Sometimes such attempts at bribery proved unsuccessful. Thus the
father of the boy boxer Antipatros of Miletos, who won in Ol. 98 (=
388 B. C.), accepted a bribe from some Syracusans, who were bringing
an offering to Olympia from Dionysios, to let the boy be proclaimed
a Syracusan. But the boy himself refused the bribe and had inscribed
on his statue by the younger Polykleitos that he was a Milesian, the
first Ionian to dedicate a statue at Olympia.[322] The Spartan chariot
victor Lichas has already been mentioned as having entered his chariot
in the name of Thebes. The reason was that at the time the Spartans
were excluded from entering the games at Olympia. He won, and in his
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