1883.] on the Influence of Athletic Games upon Greek Art. 287 



tribes-Athene that we meet with on these archaic vases. The habit 

 of building up the scenes of mythical contests upon the actual scenes 

 of the palaestra was so strong that sometimes the vase-painter forgets 

 and betrays himself in mixing up in the same mythical scene athletic 

 and mythical elements. This archaic vase-picture from an unpub- 

 lished small Lekythos in the Louvre is an instance. The mythical 

 combatants are here Theseus and the Minotaur ; yet the vase-painter, 

 unconscious of the absurdity, places on either side two real nude 

 athletes in the attitude of ephedroi, as if awaiting their turn to enter 

 a boxing match with the monster whose head is being cut off by 

 Theseus. Peaceful contests are directly translated into armed struggles. 

 The metopes of the Parthenon and Theseion, the frieze of Phigalia, 

 show innumerable instances in which Theseus and Herakles struggling 

 with monsters, Lapiths slaying Centaurs and Amazons, are repre- 

 sented in the tyjncal attitudes and actions belonging to the palaestra 

 and studied there by the artist. 



These observations are not restricted to statues and vases, but 

 apply equally to the minor arts, such as that of the die-sinker and 

 gem-engraver. Coins manifest, far more, I believe, than has until 

 now been recognised, this immediate influence of the athletic games. 

 Mr. C. T. Newton and Mr. R. S. Poole have shown how in the coins 

 of Syracuse and Camarina even individual victories are recorded. I 

 shall merely point to one instance. This first coin of Selinus in 

 Sicily, the date of which is about the first half of the fifth century B.C., 

 represents the river-god Hypsas as a nude youth with a patera in the 

 one hand and a short branch in the other. As I have once before 

 endeavoured to show, the type of this figure, though reduced on a 

 small coin, corresponds in proportions, modelling, and attitude to the 

 Choiseul-Goufiier Pugilist whom I attribute to Pythagoras of Rhegion. 

 About 430 B.C. (observe that the Polykleitan canon had come in) the 

 same coin with the same river-god changes. As you see, the type, the 

 proportion of the figure becomes squarer and more thick-set, the one 

 leg is drawn back, the weight resting almost entirely upon the other 

 {uno crure ut insisterent is the characteristic attitude ascribed by Pliny 

 to the statues of Polykleitos), the branch is elongated and carried 

 more like a spear — in short, the figure approaches most manifestly the 

 type of the Doryphoros drawn on this diagram from the Naples 

 statue. 



If time permitted, I could bring before your notice instances to 

 show in the same manner the influence of the athletic games upon the 

 works of the other minor arts, such as gems and terra-cottas. Yet if 

 we have shown it in the greater arts, this also demonstrates it for the 

 lesser ones. For the minor arts of Greece, as has become evident 

 from so many instances, took their types and models from the great 

 works; often one and the same artist created both, and thus the 

 influence detected in the one applies by implication to the other. 



I hope that I have made you realise the important part played by 

 the athletic games in the development of Greek art. It must, I believe, 



Vol. X. (No. 76.) u 



