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
legs and narrow shoulders, while boxers have broad shoulders and small
legs, and he therefore recommends dancing as a better exercise than
athletics. As such differences in physique occur in vase-paintings of
the date, but not in statuary, the philosopher seems to be speaking of
athletics and not of sculpture. From these quotations of Aristotle and
Xenophon, we gather that the all-round development of the pentathlon
made beautiful athletes, and this beauty must have been carried over
into their statues. It is essentially the young man’s contest,[540]
and some of the pentathlete victors at Olympia and elsewhere were
noted for their strength in after life. Thus Ikkos of Tarentum, who
won at Olympia in Ol. 76 (= 476 B. C.), was the best teacher of
gymnastics of his day.[541] Gorgos of Elis was the only athlete to win
the pentathlon four times at Olympia, besides winning in two running
races.[542] Another Elean, Stomios, who won three prizes at Olympia
and Nemea, later became a leader of cavalry and beat his enemy in
single combat.[543] The Argive Eurybates, victor in the pentathlon at
Nemea, was very strong, and later, in a battle with the Aeginetans,
killed three opponents in single combats, but succumbed to the
fourth.[544] The Spartans and Krotonians seem to have been the best
pentathletes.[545] Noted sculptors made statues of these athletes.[546]
Plato, in the _de Leg._,[547] has the Athenian stranger praise Egyptian
art because of its stationary character. This bespeaks but little
artistic insight for the philosopher, though he was surrounded by the
wonderful artistic creations of the end of the great fifth century
B. C. The later classical writers were fond of expressing criticisms
of art. Thus Pasiteles, a Greek sculptor living in Rome in the first
century B. C., wrote five books on celebrated works of art throughout
the world.[548] The opinions on art of the Roman Varro appear in the
pages of Pliny.[549] Of all the ancient critics, Cicero was perhaps the
most superficial. In a passage in the _Brutus_[550] he gives us his
judgment of several sculptors. He finds the works of Kanachos too rigid
to imitate nature truthfully, while those of Kalamis, though softer
than those of Kanachos, are hard; Myron, though not completely faithful
to nature, produced beautiful works and Polykleitos was quite perfect.
The most trustworthy critic of sculpture in antiquity, on the other
hand, was certainly Lucian, as we see from many of his utterances,
especially from his account of an ideal statue, which combined the
highest excellences of several noted sculptures.[551] His criticism
of Hegias, Kritios, and Nesiotes, to the effect that their works were
“concise, sinewy, hard, and exactly strained in their lines,” might
have been made in the presence of the group of the _Tyrannicides_
(Fig. 32).[552] Unfortunately he touches the subject only casually,
though he might have written a fine history of Greek art. We must also
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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