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 monumental evidence bears out the literary. Thus, on old Corinthian
clay tablets freemen are represented with long hair, while slaves
have short hair.[492] Hydrias from Caere (Cerveteri) and paintings
from Klazomenai show that the Ionians wore their hair short for the
first time in the sixth century B. C., the custom not becoming general
until the fifth. Older Spartan monuments represent the hair long.[493]
Attic vases show long hair on men until the second half of the sixth
century B. C., when the black-figured vase masters began to represent
them with short hair, a custom becoming general in the first half of
the fifth. In statuary the _Diskobolos_ of Myron (Pls. 21, 26, and
Figs. 34, 35) has short hair, and most statues of athletes before it
have long hair, while most after it have short. Before the time of the
_Diskobolos_, b.-f. and early r.-f. vase-painters often represented
athletes with braided hair in the fashion of the warriors on the Aegina
pediments. When short hair began to be used on athlete statues, these
older braids were often replaced by victor bands.[494] We may roughly
summarize by saying that statues before the date of the _Diskobolos_
which do not have long hair are probably those of athletes and not of
gods, and, in any case, if they have braids bound up in the fashion of
the κρωβύλος, they are almost always statues of athletes.[495] As for
short hair on representations of gods, Furtwaengler has shown that it
appears only after the middle of the fifth century B. C.[496] Prior
to that date the hair of divinities fell over the neck and shoulders
in curls, as in the statue of the _Olympian Zeus_ by Pheidias. By the
time of Perikles, however, short curly hair reached only to the nape
of the neck on statues of Zeus, and this style frequently appears on
figures of the god on Attic vases of that period. Dionysos has short
hair for the first time on the Parthenon frieze.[497] Furtwaengler has
shown that Pheidias did not invent the short bound-up hair for goddess
types, as we see it in the _Lemnian Athena_, but that he borrowed it
from works already in existence.[498] Though the style was unknown in
the archaic period, it appears on helmeted heads of Athena of the early
fifth century B. C. showing Peloponnesian style—on coins, statuettes,
reliefs, etc. It appears in Attic art exclusively on bareheaded types
of Athena of the period just prior to that of the _Lemnia_.
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