44 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF VICTOR STATUES AT OLYMPIA. 
statues which formerly stood upon them. Finally, in reconstructing 
these athlete statues, an intimate knowledge of Greek sculpture in all 
its phases and periods is essential. Here, as in the general study of 
Greek sculpture, where the destruction of originals has been almost 
complete, we are largely dependent on Roman copies which were 
executed by more or less skilled workmen, chiefly for wealthy Roman 
patrons of art who wished to use them to decorate the public build- 
ings, baths, palaces, and villas of Rome and other Italian cities. A 
careful study of these copies has evolved a series of groups, which have 
been assigned with more or less probability to this or that artist.! 
Representations of the various poses of the athlete statues of Olympia 
and elsewhere are found also on every sort of sculptured and painted 
works—reliefs, vases, coins, gems—which are, therefore, valuable in 
any attempt to reconstruct the attitude of a given statue. 
Taking into account all these sources of knowledge, it has been 
possible to reach tolerable certainty in reconstructing the main types 
of these victor monuments, and in identifying schools, masters, and 
individual works. This identification of athlete statues, especially 
those belonging to the fifth and fourth centuries B. C., among the 
countless Roman works which people modern museums, has already 
been achieved in many cases by archeological investigations. ~The work 
of many masters of the archaic period and of the most important bronze 
sculptors of the great period of Greek art has been illustrated by such 
ascriptions; especially that of Myron, who represented figures in rhyth- 
mic action full of life and vigor; of the elder Polykleitos, who was a 
master in representing standing figures at rest fashioned according to a 
mathematical system of proportions; of Lysippos, who introduced a 
new canon of proportions in opposition to that of his predecessor 
Polykleitos, and who inaugurated the naturalistic tendency in Greek 
art, which was destined to be carried to such unbecoming lengths in 
succeeding centuries. ‘The further identification of such statues, as 
our knowledge of the tendencies and traditions of the schools of Greek 
sculpture and our sources of information about athletic art become 
more and more extended, will be one of the most important tasks of | 
the archzologist in the future. 
Before discussing the appearance of individual types of these monu- 
ments, we shall consider certain general characteristics common to all 
of them. Long ago K. O. Mueller? summed up the common features 
of victor statues in these words: Kurzgelocktes Haar, tuechtige Glieder, 
eine kraeftige Ausbildung der Gestalt und verhaeltnissmaessig kleine 
Koepfe characterisiren die ganze Gattung von Figuren; die xerschlagenen 
Ohren und die hervorgetriebenen Muskeln insbesondere die Faustkaempfer 
1This process has never been carried further nor with greater insight than in Furtwaengler’s 
great work, Meisterwerke der griech. Plastik, 1893. 
2In his Handbuch der Archaeologie der Kunst, 3d ed., 1848, by F. G. Welcker, p. 740. 
