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The purpose of the present work is to study what is known of one of the most important genres of Greek sculpture—the monuments erected at Olympia and elsewhere in the Greek world in honor of victorious athletes at the Olympic games. Since only meagre remnants of these monuments have survived, the work is in the main concerned with the attempt to reconstruct their various types and poses.

The source-material on which the attempt is based has been indicated fully in the text; it is of two kinds, literary and archæological. To the former belong the explanatory inscriptions on the bases of victor statues found at Olympia and elsewhere, many of which agree verbally with epigrams preserved in the Greek Anthologies; the incidental statements of various kinds and value found in the classical writers and their scholiasts; and, above all, the detailed works of the two imperial writers, the elder Pliny and Pausanias. Pliny’s account of the Greek artists, which is inserted into his Historia Naturalis as a digression (Books XXXIV-XXXVI)—being artificially joined to the history of mineralogy on the pretext of the materials used—is, despite its uncritical and often untrustworthy character, one of our chief mines of information about Greek sculptors and painters. The portions of Pausanias’ Description of Greece which deal with Elis and the monuments of Olympia (Books V-VI), although they also evince little real understanding of art, are of far more direct importance to our subject, since they include a descriptive catalogue, doubtless based upon personal observation, of the greater part of the athlete monuments set up in the Altis at Olympia, the reconstruction of which is the chief purpose of the present work.

To the archæological sources, on the other hand, belong, first and foremost, the remnants of victor statues in stone and metal which have long been garnered in modern museums or have come to light during the excavation of the Altis. To this small number I hope I have added at least one marble fragment found at Olympia, the head of a statue by Lysippos, the last great sculptor of Greece (Frontispiece and Fig. 69). To this second kind of sources belong also the statue bases just mentioned, on many of which the extant footmarks enable us to determine the poses of the statues themselves which once stood upon them. Furthermore, an intimate knowledge of Greek athletic sculpture in all its periods and phases is, of course, essential in treating a problem of this nature. Here, as in the study of Greek sculpture in general, where the destruction of original masterpieces, apart from the few well-known but splendid exceptions, has been complete, we are almost entirely dependent upon second-hand evidence furnished by the numerous existing antique copies and adaptations of lost originals executed in marble and bronze by more or less skilled workmen for the Roman market.

Finally, not only are the innumerable statuettes and small bronzes surviving from antiquity of great value in any attempt to reconstruct the pose of a given athlete statue, but also the representations of various athlete figures on every sort of sculptured and painted work—vase-paintings, wall-paintings, reliefs, gems, coins, etc.

By using all such sources of information, it is possible to attain tolerable certainty in reconstructing the various types and poses of these lost monuments, and in identifying schools of athletic sculpture, masters, and even individual statues. But it must be stated at the outset that such identifications, from the very nature of the problem, are at best tentative in character. The attempt to see in Roman copies certain statues of athletes has often been made by archæologists. However probable such identifications may seem, we must not forget the simple fact that up to the present time not a single Roman copy has been conclusively proved to be that of an Olympic victor statue. Only as our knowledge of Greek sculpture is gradually extended by discoveries of additional works of art, and by future researches, will it be possible to attain an ever greater degree of probability. The further identification of these important monuments, as that of masterpieces of Greek sculpture generally, will thus remain one of the chief problems for the future archæologist. In the present book, where the body of material drawn upon is so immense and the scientific writings involved are so voluminous, manifestly the author can lay no claim to an exhaustive treatment. With due consciousness of the defects and shortcomings of the work, he can claim only to have made a small selection of such works of art as will best illustrate the various types of monuments under discussion.

The plan of the book is easily seen by a glance at the table of contents. After a preliminary chapter on the origin and development of Greek athletic games in general and on the custom of conferring athletic prizes on victors, the more specific subject of the work is introduced in Chapter II by brief discussions of the more general characteristics common to Olympic victor statues—their size, nudity, and hair-fashion, their portrait or non-portrait features, and the standard of beauty reached by some of them at least, as shown by the æsthetic judgments of certain ancient writers and by the fragmentary originals which have survived. The enumeration of these characteristics is followed by a brief account of the various canons of proportion assumed to have been used and taught by different schools of sculptors. The chapter ends with a more extended account of the little-known but important subject of the assimilation of this class of monuments to athlete types of gods and heroes.

In Chapters III and IV, which are the most important in developing the problem of reconstruction, a division has been made into two great statuary groups: those in which the victor was represented at rest, where the particular contest was indicated, if indicated at all, by very general motives or by particular athletic attributes; and those in which the victor was represented in movement, i. e., in the characteristic pose of the contest in which he won his victory.

Chapter V relates chiefly to the monuments of hippodrome victors, those in the various chariot-races and horse-races, and ends with a very brief notice of non-athlete victor dedications—those of musicians.

Chapter VI gives a stylistic analysis of what are conceived to be two original marble heads from lost victor statues, one of which is ascribed to Lysippos, the great bronze-founder and art-reformer of the fourth century B.C., while the other is regarded as an early Hellenistic work of eclectic tendencies. The publication of these marble heads and of the oldest-dated victor statue, which is also of marble and which is discussed in Chapter VII, reinforced by other evidence adduced in the latter chapter, overthrows the belief that all victor statues were uniformly made of bronze. The publication of the Olympia head also controverts the usual assumption of archæologists that Lysippos worked only in metal. The last chapter is concerned with a topographical study of the original positions in the Altis of the various athlete monuments discussed, and with a list of all the victor monuments known to have been erected outside Olympia in various cities of the ancient world. These last three chapters are based on papers which have already appeared in the American Journal of Archæology (Chapters VI, VII, and the first half of VIII) and in the Transactions of the American Philological Association (the last half of Chapter VIII). Permission to use them in the present book has been kindly granted to the author by Dr. James A. Paton, former editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Archæology, and by Professor Clarence P. Bill, the secretary of the American Philological Association.

Although it has been my aim throughout to present my own views in regard to the various works of art under discussion, I must, of course, acknowledge that the book is largely based upon the work and conclusions of preceding scholars who have treated various phases of the same subject. It would, however, be unnecessary and even impossible here to acknowledge all the works laid directly or indirectly under contribution in the composition of the book. Most of these have been recorded in the footnotes.

But I wish here to express, in a more general way, my indebtedness to the standard histories of Greek sculpture, by Brunn, Collignon, Gardiner, Lechat, Murray, Overbeck, Richardson, and others, which must form the foundation of the knowledge of any one who writes on any phase of the subject. Among these, two have been found especially valuable: Bulle’s Der schoene Mensch im Altertum, which is justly noted for its comprehensive views and sound judgments; and Furtwaengler’s Die Meisterwerke der griechischen Plastik, which, although it has been known to English readers in its enlarged edition by Miss Eugénie Sellers for over a quarter of a century, is still prized for its extensive firsthand knowledge of the monuments and for its brilliant inductions, even if the latter at times are carried too far.

Perhaps my greatest debt has been to the excellent volume entitled Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals, by E. Norman Gardiner, M. A., a scholar whose practical knowledge of modern athletic sports and wide familiarity with the ancient source material, both literary and monumental, has well fitted him to deal afresh with the subject treated so learnedly over three quarters of a century ago in Krause’s Die Gymnastik und Agonistik der Hellenen. I have also constantly drawn upon Gardiner’s collection of vase-paintings which illustrate athletic scenes.

I should also note here several other works which have been of great assistance in writing this book, such as Juethner’s Ueber antike Turngeraethe and edition of Philostratos’ de Arte gymnastica, Reisch’s Griechische Weihgeschenke, Rouse’s Greek Votive Offerings, and Foerster’s Die Sieger in den Olympischen Spielen. The chronological list of victors in the latter compilation was, in large part, the foundation of my earlier work de olympionicarum Statuis.

I have also received most valuable help from the standard catalogues of modern museums, e. g., those by Amelung, Dickins, Helbig, Kabbadias, Lechat, Richter, de Ridder, Staïs, Svoronos, and especially the admirable ones of the classical collections in the British Museum. I regret that, owing to the recent war, some of the latest catalogues, those especially of the smaller foreign museums, have not been available.

For illustrative matter, I have made no effort to reproduce merely striking works of art, but have, for the most part, presented well-known works which readily illustrate the problems treated in the text. I have availed myself of collections of photographs kindly placed at my disposal by Professors Herbert E. Everett of the School of Fine Arts of the University of Pennsylvania, D. M. Robinson of the Johns Hopkins University, A. S. Cooley of the Moravian College at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Dr. Mary H. Swindler of Bryn Mawr College. The various collections of plates and the books and journals from which I have taken illustrations are duly noted in the List of Illustrations.

In addition, I wish to thank the following corporations and individuals for permission to reproduce plates and text-cuts from the works cited: the Council of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, of London, for the use of four plates appearing in the Journal of Hellenic Studies (Figs. 44, 54, 55, and 59); the Trustees of the British Museum in London for seven plates from Marbles and Bronzes in the British Museum (Pls. 7A, 17, 19; Figs. 14, 28, 31, and 35); Professor E. A. Gardiner and his publishers, Duckworth and Co., of London, for two plates from Six Greek Sculptors (Pl. 30; Fig. 71); Mr. H. R. Hall, of the British Museum, and his publisher, Philip Lee Warner, of London, for one from Aegean Archæology (Fig. 1); Professor Allan Marquand, of Princeton University, for one text-cut from the American Journal of Archæology (Fig. 49), and Dr. J. M. Paton, former editor-in-chief, for three other text-cuts from the same journal (Figs. 70, 72, 79).

To the following I am also indebted for individual photographs: Dr. J. N. Svoronos, Director of the Numismatic Museum, Athens, Greece, for one of the oldest-dated statues of an Olympic victor (Fig. 79), which has already appeared in the American Journal of Archæology; Dr. A. Fairbanks, of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for those of the statue of a Charioteer(?) and of the fragmentary head of the Oil-pourer (Pl. 27; Fig. 23); Dr. Edward Robinson, of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, for those of the fine Kresilæan and Praxitelian heads (Pls. 15, 20), and of the bronze statuette of a diskobolos (Fig. 46); Prof. Alice Walton, of Wellesley College, for one of the Polykleitan athlete (Pl. 13); the Director of the Fogg Art Museum of Cambridge, Mass., for that of the so-called Meleager (Fig. 77); Dr. S. B. Luce, recently of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, for photographs of two vase-paintings showing athletic scenes (Figs. 50, 56), and Dr. Eleanor F. Rambo, formerly of the same Museum, for a copy of the Knossos wall-painting (Pl. 1).

A word might be added as to the spelling of Greek proper names. Since consistency in this matter seems unattainable, I have adopted the method outlined in the British School Annual (XV, 1908–09, p. 402), whereby the names of persons, places, buildings, festivals, etc., are transliterated from the Greek forms, except those which have become a part of the English language. But even here I have sometimes deviated from the practice of using familiar English forms.

In abbreviations of the names of journals (see pages XVI-XIX) I have largely conformed with the usage long recommended by the American Journal of Archæology.

For convenience in identifying the many works of art, discussed or mentioned in the text and foot-notes, I have constantly referred to well-known collections of plates, such as those of Brunn-Bruckmann, Bulle, Rayet, and von Mach. For further convenience, I have also in most cases referred to the outline drawings of statues in Reinach’s Répertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine, and in some cases to the older ones found in Clarac’s Musée de sculpture antique et moderne, and in Mueller and Wieseler’s Denkmaeler der alten Kunst.

In closing, I have the pleasant duty of thanking generally the many friends who have given me valuable suggestions and assistance, especially Professor Lane Cooper, of Cornell University, for reading the proof-sheets of the entire work, and Professor Alfred Emerson, now of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, my former teacher, for revising the list of Corrigenda.

Walter Woodburn Hyde.

University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, October, 1921.