1883.] on the Influence of Athletic Games ujpon Greek Art. 291 



highest development. It leads to degeneration or, as the pathologist 

 would more accurately term it, to hypertrophy. Let me only bring 

 before you one interesting instance to illustrate this step towards 

 professional athleticism. This coin of Amyntas III. of Macedon, 

 who reigned from 389 to 369 B.C., representing a horse with its rider, 

 is typical in one respect of all similar representations before the 

 middle of the fourth century B.C., namely, in respect of the relation of 

 rider and horse and of the corresponding importance of both in the 

 minds of the people of that time. Like all representations of riders 

 down to the middle of the fourth century, the rider is here large in 

 comparison mth the horse. If now we turn to this coin of Philip of 

 Macedon, there is a striking difference in this respect, the horse being 

 disproportionately large, while the rider has dwindled down to an 

 undergrown jockey. The whole matter is explained by the fact that this 

 coin of Philip represents his racer, whom he sent to Olympia, and who 

 there came out the winner. Now, in the previous periods it was for 

 the rider's sake that horse-racing existed, it was to show and encourage 

 his skill in horsemanship, and he got the glory; there existed no 

 jockeys. In the time of Philip the horse became the great centre of 

 interest, and the gentleman rider and warrior of the Parthenon frieze 

 is no longer to be found at Olympia. In the course of this natural 

 or unnatural selection, the horse too has altered its form, merely to 

 excel in fleetness. It is curious to consider how similar the action of 

 these " laws " has been in ancient and in modern times. Thus not 

 only with the human form but even with animals the course taken by 

 the athletic games in the later periods tended to destroy the ideal of 

 form established, during the great age of Greek culture, by art 

 through the earlier influence of the same institution. 



In the last phases of the history of the palaestra we can distin- 

 guish three manifestations of the decline. Corresponding, first, to the 

 dramatic stage in the history of Greek sculpture, which led to the 

 ■groups of Pergamene and Rhodian schools, we have sensationalism 

 in the games, encouraging wonderful feats of abnormal strength or 

 skill, and in athlete statues, dramatic attitudes, boxers with arms 

 upraised, wrestlers leaning forward with arms extended, and a de- 

 velopment of muscles that remind us more of the dissecting-room than 

 of the artist's studio. Secondly, the brutality, the germs of which we 

 noticed in the previous period, now manifests itself fully. Instead of 

 the noble grandeur of a Doryphoros or a Choiseul-Gouffier Pugilist, 

 we have fleshy monsters who would be comic if they were not repul- 

 sive. The drawing of this figm-e is from a terra-cotta in the posses- 

 sion of M. Camille Lecuyer at Paris, and represents a pugilist with 

 arms upraised, whose bull-head reminds us so much of the Minotaur 

 that we may fairly doubt whether it does not represent a bull-headed 

 athlete or the Minotaur turned pugilist. Another telling instance of 

 this class is a bronze in the Cabinet des Medailles of the Bibliotheque 

 Nationale of the same city. It represents a pancratiast thick and 

 fleshy, with swollen face, arms upraised, in the act of kicking with 



