Pausanias dates the introduction of the double foot-race at Olympia in Ol. 14 ( = 724 B. C.).1408 He does not say when the long race was instituted, but Eusebios says that it was in Ol. 15 ( = 720 B. C.).1409 The boys’ stade-race was introduced there in Ol. 37 ( = 632 B. C.).1410 The hoplite-race was inaugurated at the end of the sixth century B. C., in Ol. 65 ( = 520 B. C.).1411 Pausanias mentions 24 stadiodromoi at Olympia, who won 32 victories, which makes this event third in importance, next after boxing and wrestling. He mentions 7 victors in the double race with 11 victories, and 5 victors in the long race with 8 victories. He also mentions 12 hoplite victors with 14 victories. Consequently, in all four running events there, he records 48 victors with 65 victories, which brings the running races only to second place in importance at Olympia, ranking next after boxing.1412 The ordinary sprinter or stadiodromos, and the double sprinter, diaulodromos or hoplitodromos, naturally ran differently from the endurance runner or dolichodromos. Panathenaic vases clearly show this difference. Thus while the sprinter swung his arms violently, spreading the fingers apart and touching the ground only with his toes1413 (Figs. 36A and 37, left), the endurance runner, who had to conserve his strength to the last, ran with a long stride, holding his arms bent at the elbow and close to the body, his fists doubled and his body slightly bent forward, its weight resting on the ball of the foot, the heel being raised only a little. Thus Philostratos says that the dolichodromoi ran with their hands extended and with their fists balled, but that at the finish they also swung their arms violently like wings.1414 The race (showing balled fists) is seen on a Panathenaic amphora dating from the archonship of Nikeratos (333 B. C.), now in the British Museum, and on another of the sixth century B. C., pictured in Fig. 37 (right).1415 In the diaulos the movement was less violent. Thus on an Athens vase inscribed, “I am a diaulos runner,”1416 the movement is between that of a sprinter and an endurance runner. It seems probable that this difference in the style of running was similarly shown in sculpture.1417 We shall next consider certain sculptural monuments which represent runners.
The typical scheme for archaic and archaistic art was to represent the runner with one knee nearly touching the ground, the upper log forming a right angle with the lower, the other leg being perpendicular to the upper. This scheme appears on many vases and reliefs and in statuettes and statues.1418 This old method of depicting runners was kept up by vase-painters down to the time of the red-figured masters.1419 We see them on many reliefs, e. g., on the Ionic-Greek reliefs on the three archaic bronze tripods of the middle of the sixth century B. C. in the possession of Mr. James Loeb;1420 on a small bronze relief in the Metropolitan Museum in New York which represents a winged Boreas;1421 and on the marble funerary stele of the so-called dying hoplite runner found in 1902 near the Theseion, and now in the National Museum in Athens.1422 Almost the same position as that of the figure on this Athenian relief is seen in a small bronze in the Metropolitan Museum, whose primitive features and solidly massed hair date it in the early part of the sixth century B. C.1423 Another slightly larger bronze in the same museum represents Herakles running in a kneeling posture.1424 Because a spearman is incongruous behind a bowman, Kalkmann1425 and Furtwaengler1426 have interpreted the two kneeling figures near either end of the West gable of the temple on Aegina as archaic runners (see Fig. 21, left). We may further compare with these figures the positions, though not the motives, of two others from the West gable at Olympia,1427 as well as that of the kneeling bowman Herakles from the East gable of the temple on Aegina.1428 In this connection we shall also mention the life-size marble torso of a kneeling youth found in Nero’s villa at Subiaco in 1884 and now in the Museo delle Terme, Rome (Pl. 24).1429 This statue, representing a boy of delicate build apparently striding forward with the right leg and bending the left so that the knee nearly touches the ground, has been regarded by some scholars1430 as a runner, whose pose copies the archaic manner, being historically the last example known of its use in sculpture. The right shoulder is turned backward and the head, now missing, was turned back and upwards; the right arm is raised high and twisted about with the palm of the hand facing backward, the left arm extended with its hand in some way related to the right knee. The impression made on the spectator is that of a boy bending aside as if to ward off some danger. It is an excellent piece of work, evidently the marble copy of an original bronze. This has been variously assigned to the fifth, fourth, and even later centuries B. C.,1431 and interpreted in various ways1432—as a Niobid,1433 as Ganymedes swooped down upon by the eagle,1434 as Hylas drawn into the water by nymphs when he was filling his pitcher,1435 as a ball-player,1436 as a boy throwing a lasso,1437 as a gable figure,1438 as a runner at the games, etc. Many of these interpretations are purely fanciful; the last is, perhaps, as good as any, though the strongly turned upper body seems not quite fitted to it. If it represents a runner, the sculptor has reproduced the well-known archaic pose.
The Statue of the Runner Ladas.
We shall next consider the famous statue of the runner Ladas by Myron, which is unfortunately known to us only from literary evidence, but which attained in antiquity an even greater fame than his nameless Diskobolos, since it portrayed even more tension than that wonderful work. Its fame was partly due to the picturesque story how the victory cost the runner his life, for he died of strain while on his way home to Sparta; it was also due in no less degree to the striking way in which the victor was depicted.1439
Two fourth-century epigrams tell us of the statue. The first of these runs:
The second epigram, naming Myron as the sculptor, runs:
To these verses are added the following, which Benndorf thinks belonged to another epigram on the same statue:
Professor Ernest Gardner translates the two parts of the second epigram as follows:
“Like as thou wast in life, Ladas, breathing forth thy panting soul,1442 on tip-toe, with every sinew at full strain, such hath Myron wrought thee in bronze, stamping on thy whole body thy eagerness for the victor’s crown of Pisa.”
“He is filled with hope, and you may see the breath caught on his lips from deep within his flanks; surely the bronze will leave its pedestal and leap to the crown. Such art is swifter than the wind.”1443
Even if part of the epigram is rhetorical, we can not doubt that Ladas was represented in the final spurt just before he arrived at the goal. His eagerness was not confined to the face—though the panting breath could have been indicated by half opened lips, but was visible in the whole body.1444 Whereas the girl runner of the Vatican (Pl. 2) is represented at the beginning of the race, Myron’s statue represented Ladas at the end of it. Probably the victor was represented with his weight thrown on the advanced foot and with the arms close to the sides and bent at the elbows—a treatment which would have been easy for the sculptor of the Diskobolos. Mahler tried to identify the statue with one of the Naples group of so-called runners (Fig. 51).1445 However, as we shall see, these probably represent wrestlers, and not runners, and neither of them shows any such tension as we should expect from the description of the statue of Ladas. Though Foerster believes that the statue of Ladas stood in Olympia, in honor of his victory in the long race there,1446 we can not say definitely where it was.1447
Perhaps our best representation of runners is to be seen in the two marble statues discovered near Velletri and now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome (Figs. 38 and 39).1448 The hair and the sharp edges of the modeling of the flesh, as well as the tree-stumps near the right legs, show that these statues are copies of bronze originals. They were at first interpreted as runners, but later were regarded as forming a group of wrestlers, who were standing opposite one another and holding their hands out for an opening. However, there is nothing in the pose or the expression of these statues to show the tension of two opponents. Moreover, they certainly never formed a group, for stylistic differences reveal that they are copies of statues by different artists who lived at different times; one belongs to the severe style of the last quarter of the fifth century,1449 while the other, with its softer forms, smaller head, and deeper-set eyes, is a product of the fourth century B. C.1450 The prominent edge of the chest is doubtless meant to indicate the hard breathing of a runner.1451 Just in front of the tree-stump on the older statue is to be seen a round hole in the plinth, which may have been made for the end of a club held in the right hand, as such an object is found in other works of art, notably in a statuette from Palermo, which is the copy of a fifth-century B. C. original, and on a second-century B. C. grave-stele from Crete.1452 Its use, however, is not certainly known.
Furtwaengler, by an ingenious process of reasoning, argued that he had recovered an actual statue of an Olympic runner in the so-called Alkibiades, formerly in the Villa Mattei, but now in the Sala della Biga of the Vatican.1453 This torso he ascribed to the sculptor Kresilas, because of its likeness to the Perikles of that master, which once stood on the Akropolis,1454 and to a marble torso in Naples representing a wounded man ready to fall, which he thinks is a copy of the Volneratus deficiens of Kresilas mentioned by Pliny.1455 The Alkibiades is very similar to the Naples gladiator, though later in date; the bearded head, drawn-in stomach, and muscular chest, and the veins in the upper arm are common to both. The restorer of the Vatican statue has placed a helmet under the right foot. But the deep-breathing chest may indicate a runner, as we saw in the case of the statues of the Conservatori just discussed. Furtwaengler has the body bend further forward, so that the right foot may rest upon the ground and the glance be fixed upon the goal, with the arms extended at the elbows, a position proved for the right arm, at least, by the puntello above the hip. As the head shows portrait-like features and only those athletes who had won three victories had portrait statues, he has identified the original of the Alkibiades with the statue of the famous stade-runner Krison of Himera, who won his victories at Olympia just after the middle of the fifth century B. C., the approximate date of the Vatican copy.1456 Such an identification appears, however, to be too far-fetched to be convincing.
Statues of Boy Runners.
Probably the statues of boy runners did not differ essentially from those of men. That they were sometimes represented in motion is shown by the footprints on the recovered base of the statue of Sosikrates by an unknown artist. Here the right foot touched the ground only with the front portion.1457 The view has often been expressed that the bronze statue in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome, known as the Spinario (Thorn-puller) portrays a runner (Fig. 40).1458 It represents a boy, from twelve to fifteen years old, seated upon a rock bending over and engrossed in extracting a thorn from his left foot, which rests upon the right knee. The severe hair treatment, low forehead, full cheeks, and strong chin appear to show the ideal beauty of a boy of the period of about 460 B. C. The motive seems to have been inspired directly by nature—witness the supple bend of the back, the delicate arms, the naïve, though not too realistic, concentration of interest in the act portrayed. Few pieces of ancient sculpture have given rise to more discussion and extraordinary difference of opinion than this popular work. One school of archæologists1459 believes it a late adaptation of a Hellenistic original, a more accurate copy being the one in the British Museum, and consequently views it as a purely genre statue impossible of conception before Alexander’s time. According to this view the London copy was an archaistic work of the time of Pasiteles. Another school, however, including Helbig, Wolters, Kekulé, and many others, sees in the Roman statue an original work of 460 to 450 B. C., chiefly because the face shows great similarity to those of the statues of the Olympia gables (especially to that of Apollo)1460. According to this view the statue can not have been a genre work, as such works of decorative character were of later origin, but the motive must be sought in some definite incident—in some myth or historical event. Thus it has been referred to the colonization of the Ozolian Lokroi, whose ancestor Lokros is said to have got a thorn in his foot and to have founded cities near where this occurred in fulfilment of an oracle. Many others, on the other hand, have seen in its motive that of a boy victor in running, who has gained his victory despite a thorn, which he is now pulling out, and who has dedicated his statue to commemorate both the victory and the untoward circumstances under which it was won. It has been assigned to various sculptors and schools—to Myron, Pythagoras, and Kalamis, and to Peloponnesian, Bœotian, and even Sicilian art.1461 The boy’s absorption in his task certainly reminds us of the concentration so characteristic of the Diskobolos of Myron. In determining its age and artistic affiliations several things must be considered. In the first place, the Roman statue is a copy, as the rock on which the boy sits is cast with the figure, which would have been impossible in the fifth century B. C. The long hair on this copy, which is short on the one in the British Museum, falls down the neck, but not over the cheeks, as it should on a head which is thus bent downwards. Pasiteles almost certainly would have tied it with a ribbon. This shows that the original was the work of an artist who was used to making standing statues, and was not aware of the change in the representation of the hair brought about by drooping ones. Such considerations, in conjunction with the archaic facial characteristics, almost certainly refer the original work to the fifth century B. C., a date when genre statues, produced for adornment, did not exist. Consequently a definite incident must be represented by it, and it is quite possible that this incident should be sought in athletic sculpture in the representation of a boy runner.
The Thorn-puller became a model for many imitations from the beginning of Hellenistic times on. These imitations tended to greater realism and consequently to the debasement of the original conception, for they were made to represent peasants, shepherds, satyrs, and even negroes. The motif was also transferred to figures of girls, as, e. g., in the fragment of a terra-cotta statuette found in 1912 at Nida-Haddernheim.1462 In the early Empire it was frequently copied in marble, and again, during the Renaissance, the motive was used for small bronzes.1463 Of Hellenistic copies, showing how the motive deteriorated, we shall mention only two: the marble one found on the Esquiline, in 1874, and known as the Castellani copy, now in the British Museum,1464 the sculptor of which has made it into a truly genre fountain figure by transforming the noble features of the beautiful Greek runner into the snub nose and thick lips of a street Arab, and the still later bronze statuette found near Sparta and now in the Paris collection of Baron Edmund de Rothschild,1465 which represents the boy extracting the thorn in anger.
Similarly the so-called Sandal-binder—with replicas in Paris (Fig. 8), London, Athens, Munich, and elsewhere, has been looked upon, without decisive grounds, to be sure, as a runner who is tying on his sandals after the race.1466 We have already discussed this statue in Chapter II, in connection with the subject of assimilation.
Hoplitodromoi.
The race in armor had a practical value in the training of soldiers, and so became a popular sport, since it appealed not only to the trained athlete, but to the citizen in general. It belonged to “mixed athletics,”1467 i. e., to competitions which were conducted under handicap conditions, such as our obstacle races, and consequently it never attained the prestige of the strictly athletic events. It came last among the gymnic contests at Olympia and elsewhere,1468 being followed by the equestrian events. It seems to have varied in different places in the distance run, in the armor of the runner, and in the rules which governed the race. At Olympia, as at Athens, it appears to have been a diaulos or a race of two stadia.1469 The most strenuous race of the sort was run at the Eleutheria at Platæa, where the contestants were completely enveloped in armor1470 and were subject to peculiar rules. At Olympia the competitors originally ran with helmets, greaves, and round shields, as we infer from scenes on archaic vases and from the statement of Pausanias that the statue of the first victor in this event, Damaretos of Heraia, was represented with these arms.1471 In this passage Pausanias adds that the Eleans and other Greeks later (ἀνὰ χρόνον) gave up the greaves, and we find that they disappear on the vase-paintings.1472 Hauser has shown that the vase-paintings, which, however, mostly illustrate the Athenian practice, display a varied custom in respect of the use of the greaves before about 520 B. C., the general use of them until about 450 B. C., and after that date their disuse.1473 The helmet disappeared after the greaves, but the shield was never given up.1474 Thus the bronze statue of Mnesiboulos of Elateia, a victor (σὺν τῇ ἀσπίδι) of Pausanias’ day, which stood in “Runner Street” of his native city, appears to have been represented with the shield.1475 It was for this reason that the event was later sometimes called merely ἀσπίς.1476 The shields that appear on the vases are always round and the helmets are Attic.1477 The gradual reduction in the amount of the armor may have been a concession to the regular athletes, who probably looked upon the contest as a spurious sort of athletics. As for the style of the race, the hoplite runners seem to have run somewhat as the stade and double-course runners, i. e., with their right hands up and their arms violently swinging.1478
The picturesqueness of such a race appealed especially to vase-painters, who have given us all the details of the event. The preparations for the race are seen on a red-figured kylix from Vulci, now in Paris, ascribed to Euphronios (Panaitios), on which one runner is donning his armor, while others are practising preliminary runs.1479 The start is seen in the right-hand figure depicted on a r.-f. kylix in Berlin (Fig. 41, a).1480 On another r.-f. kylix we see a pair of hoplites, one slowing up before reaching the central post, the other turning it.1481 The finish is seen on an obscene r.-f. kylix from Vulci in the style of Brygos, in the British Museum, where the bearded winner, with his helmet in his hand, looks back on his rival, and the latter, apparently in disgust, drops his shield.1482 The most complete illustration of the race is to be seen on the r.-f. Berlin kylix just mentioned (Fig. 41, a, b, c.) Here on one side is a group of three runners; the right-hand one is bending over, ready to start; the one at the left is about to turn the central post, and the one in the centre, who is turned in an opposite direction, is on the home stretch; on the other side of the vase are three runners in full course, while another appears on the interior of the vase.1483 Some vases seem to show that the contest often had a semi-comic character, the variations in running being used to amuse the spectators. Thus the shield might be dropped and picked up again,1484 or it might be held in a peculiar manner.1485 This comic element is brought out in the Aves of Aristophanes, in a scene in which Peisthetairos, while observing the chorus of birds advancing with their crests (λόφωσις), compares them with hoplite runners advancing to begin the race.1486 The regular painter outdid the vase-painter Fig. 42.—Bronze Statuette of a Hoplitodrome (?). University Museum, Tuebingen. in representing the runner in violent motion, if we may rely on Pliny’s description of two paintings of hoplites by Parrhasios.1487 In one of these the runner was represented as perspiring as he ran, while in the other he was represented as having laid aside his arms and panting so realistically that the observer seemed to hear him.
We have few representations of hoplitodromes in sculpture. In the preceding chapter we discussed the two marble helmeted heads found at Olympia (Fig. 30), one of which shows that the statue of which it was a part was represented at rest, while the other, because of the twist in the neck, seems to have come from a statue which represented the runner in violent motion. Pausanias saw on the Athenian Akropolis the statue of the hoplite runner Epicharinos, the work of the sculptor Kritios, represented as practising starts (ὁπλιτοδρομεῖν ἀσκήσαντος).1488 In the well-known Tux bronze in the University Museum at Tuebingen, we have a statuette in which the position of the statue of Epicharinos is probably reproduced. This little bronze, which is only 0.16 meter tall (Fig. 42),1489 represents a bearded man, entirely nude, except for the Attic helmet on his head, standing with feet close together, knees slightly bent, and body inclined forward. The right arm is extended, while the left, crooked at the elbow, rests upon the hip. While Schwabe and Wolters, following the early theory of Hirt and of the sculptor Dannecker, interpreted the bronze as the figure of a charioteer, whose left hand was drawn back to hold the reins and whose right was outstretched in a gesture intended to quiet the horses, Hauser, de Ridder, Bulle, and many other archæologists have interpreted it better as a hoplitodrome. The left arm, then, carried a round shield, such as we have seen on Attic vases. The next moment the right leg will be advanced, the shield, held back to get a better start, will be pushed forward, and the runner will race to the goal in a series of leaps, since the weight of the shield would prevent him from following the more regular motion of the ordinary runner. It probably represents, therefore, a hoplite runner, not in the actual course, as Hauser thought, but practicing a preliminary start, as de Ridder argued. If the figure represented a charioteer, the legs would have been set farther apart, in order to give a firmer position, and it would not be represented as standing on a base, nor would it be wearing a helmet. The statuette stylistically belongs to the opening years of the fifth century B. C., and may well be a free imitation of a life-size original of such statues of hoplites as stood in the Altis at Olympia. Despite the energy depicted in this figure, it is rash to connect it with the Aeginetan sculptures, as Wolters and Collignon have done, since a comparison between it and the Champion of the East gable1490 will show great differences. Brunn ascribed the original to Pythagoras; de Ridder, with reservations, to Kritios and Nesiotes; while Bulle is more reasonable in referring it to an important though unnamed artist of the early fifth century B. C.
Hartwig has published a bronze statuette from Capua,1491 now in the Imperial collection at Vienna, representing a nude youth with a crested helmet on his head. There is no trace of a shield, but the helmet and the similarity of the pose to that of the Tuebingen bronze make it probable that this statuette also represents a hoplitodrome starting. The so-called Diomedes of Myronian style in the Palazzo Valentini, Rome,1492 whose stooping posture recalls the Diskobolos and accordingly has been interpreted as one by Matz and von Duhn, more probably also represents a hoplite-runner, as Furtwaengler maintained, because of the similarity of its pose to that of the Tux bronze and because of its helmeted head.1493
Some other attempts to see hoplite runners in existing works of sculpture have not been so successful. Thus Rayet’s attempt to resuscitate the old interpretation of Quatremère de Quincy, who had explained the statue of the so-called Borghese Warrior by Agasias of Ephesos (Fig. 43) as that of a hoplitodrome just before reaching the goal, has been recently revived again by Six.1494 This famous marble statue of the Louvre, belonging to late Greek art, is an example of the last development in the Argive-Sikyonian school, which for centuries had been devoted to athletic sculpture.1495 Since the statue has no helmet, there seems to be no valid reason for not adhering to the usual interpretation, according to which it represents a warrior—by restoring the lost right arm and hand with a sword—who is defending himself against a foe above him, conceived of as seated upon a horse. The attitude and the upward gaze are certainly not those of a runner. Though Collignon, following Visconti, believes the figure to be one of a group, the man actually defending himself against a horseman and covering himself with his shield as he looks up, it is doubtful whether a second figure ever existed. The artist seems to have contented himself with representing, not a fight, but only a fighting pose. We are beginning to understand that the Greek sculptor left something to the imagination of the beholder.
An attempt has also been made to see a dying hoplite runner in the Parian marble archaic grave-relief in the National Museum in Athens, which has already been mentioned as an example of the archaic scheme of representing running.1496 It represents a beardless youth running in a half-kneeling posture, even though the head is bent and turned in the opposite direction. The eyes appear to be closed—due, perhaps, to the faulty sculptor—and the two hands are touching the breast. While no shield is represented (it is contended that its presence would nearly hide the figure), still, because of the helmet and the position of the arm, which latter is obviously that of a long-distance runner, Philios, followed by Perrot-Chipiez and Bulle, explained it as the representation of a hoplite runner who is expiring at the end of his course. They date it about 520 B. C.,1497 the date of the introduction of this race at Olympia. However, the absence of the shield, to say nothing of the greaves, seems an insuperable objection to such an hypothesis, as the shield was never omitted in this race, but was invariably its symbol. Svoronos is therefore more probably right in interpreting the relief as the monument of a military runner (δρομοκῆρυξ), even if his dating (490–480 B. C.) is somewhat too late,1498 and if his identifying it with some particular messenger (such as the Athenian runner Pheidippides, who ran to Sparta for aid just prior to the battle of Marathon) is fanciful.
Pentathletes.
The peculiar features of the pentathlon (πένταθλον) were the three events, jumping, diskos-throwing, and javelin-throwing. All five events are summed up in Simonides’ epigram on the pentathlete Diophon, who won at Delphi and on the Isthmus, the second line of which runs: ἅλμα, ποδωκείην, δίσκον, ἄκοντα, πάλην.1499
The pentathlon did not exist in Homer’s time. Pindar expressly says that it did not exist in heroic days, but that then a separate prize was given for each feat.1500 At the games on Scheria, King Alkinoos boasts to Odysseus of the superiority of his countrymen in πύξ τε παλαισμοσύνῃ τε καὶ ἅλμασιν ἠδὲ πόδεσσιν.1501 The pentathlon for men was introduced at Olympia at the same time as wrestling toward the end of the eighth century, in Ol. 18 ( = 708 B. C.),1502 and the pentathlon for boys eighty years later, in Ol. 38 ( = 628 B. C.), only to be stopped soon after.1503 Pausanias mentions fifteen victors at Olympia, who had statues erected in their honor, for seventeen victories in the pentathlon, thus giving the pentathletes sixth rank there in point of number.
The b.-f. Bacchic amphora in Rome already discussed represents four events out of the five: running, leaping, diskos-throwing, and akontion-throwing (Figs. 36 A and 36 B).1504 On several Panathenaic vases we find one or more events, and the three characteristic ones on several, one of which we here reproduce (Fig. 44).1505
The various events are common on r.-f. vases,1506 though these may not represent the pentathlon contests, but merely gymnasium scenes, showing that such contests were important. We have already said that the pentathlon represented the whole physical training of Greek youths; consequently the pentathlete was looked upon as the typical athlete, being superior to all others in all-round development, even if surpassed by them in certain special events. It was for this reason that Polykleitos, in order to embody the principles of his athlete canon, made a statue of a javelin-thrower (the Doryphoros) as the best example of an all-round man.