Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art by Walter Woodburn Hyde
Chapter 1
1220 words | Chapter 1
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art
Author: Walter Woodburn Hyde
Release date: April 8, 2020 [eBook #61792]
Most recently updated: October 17, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61792
Credits: Produced by Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLYMPIC VICTOR MONUMENTS AND GREEK ATHLETIC ART ***
[Illustration: MARBLE HEAD FROM OLYMPIA. MUSEUM AT OLYMPIA.]
OLYMPIC VICTOR MONUMENTS
AND
GREEK ATHLETIC ART
BY
WALTER WOODBURN HYDE
[Illustration]
PUBLISHED BY THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON, 1921
CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON
PUBLICATION NO. 268
PRESS OF GIBSON BROTHERS, INC.
WASHINGTON, D. C.
PREFACE.
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.
Reading Tips
Use arrow keys to navigate
Press 'N' for next chapter
Press 'P' for previous chapter