284 Br. Charles Waldstein [April 13, 



Eunning, jumping, and throwing the spear were typically light games ; 

 boxing and the pankration were typically heavy. The pentathlon 

 stood between both, and, uniting several kinds of games, had for its 

 aim the production of a normally built agile man. Other subdivisions 

 might thus be pointed out ; but they tended in themselves to drive 

 the artist towards the establishment of normal types for each part 

 of the body and for the proportions of the parts. Thus even in the 

 early period at the beginning of the fifth century, Ageladas of Argos, 

 the teacher of Myron, Pheidias, and Polykleitos, wrote a treatise on 

 the proportions of the human figure. Polykleitos of Argos and 

 Lysippos established a canon of the human figure of which we hear 

 that the one was square and massive, the other slimmer and lighter 

 with smaller head. We must not lose sight of the fact that these 

 canons of perfect human proportions were not at once represented in 

 an Apollo or a Hermes, but that the Doryphoros and the Apoxyomenos 

 are athletic statues. Those canons have been identified in these two 

 extant statues, a marble cojjy of the Doryphoros of Polykleitos in the 

 National Museum at Naples, and a copy of the Apoxyomenos of 

 Lysippos in the Braccio Nuovo of tho Vatican. They both have the 

 characteristics ascribed to these canons by ancient authors. 



In such canons and ideal types we are raised above the individual 

 to beings higher than man. Having been led by the palrestra down 

 to man, the artist can now rise up to the gods with a new ideal of 

 divine form, for the human form that is above existing man in its 

 perfection and still is possessed of human qualities brings the artist 

 face to face with the figures of Greek mythology. 



This influence which Greek athletic art, when once it was esta- 

 blished in all its truth to nature and ideal breadth, exerted upon 

 mythological art, is most clearly shown in extant monuments. 



It is really only after the period of transition that the types of 

 the various Greek gods as we know them become fixed and developed 

 in art, and for a long time we can then trace the immediate influence 

 of the palaestra in these statues of heroes and gods. 



After Polykleitos had established his athletic canon, in all the 

 works attributed to him and his school, whether athletes or gods, nay, 

 even in female figures, we can see the characteristic proportions of 

 the Doryphoros repeated. In later times, in the works of artists 

 that are not the direct offshoots of his school we can often notice the 

 influence of the athletic type of Polykleitos retained or even revived 

 in the figure of some god or hero. No doubt some gods and some 

 heroes are more adapted by their character to assume the form of 

 such a canon. So it is especially gods like Ares and heroes like 

 Herakles that from their nature are square and massive, and are thus 

 properly represented in the form of the "quadrata signa" of Polykleitos. 

 In the numerous mythological figures manifesting the Polykleitan 

 canon that have come to my notice, there have been instances in 

 which I at first thought they were athletes, and then found they were 

 mythological figures ; and some in which, for example, I thought the 



