54 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF VICTOR STATUES AT OLYMPIA. 
ICONIC AND ANICONIC STATUES. 
In a well-known passage Pliny says that “the ancients did not make 
any statue of individuals unless they deserved immortality by some 
distinction, originally by a victory at some sacred games, especially 
those of Olympia, where it was the custom to dedicate statues of all 
those who had conquered, and portrait statues if they had conquered 
three times. ‘These are called iconic.”*! Many solutions of this pas- 
sage have been offered. Older commentators, as Hirt and Visconti,” 
interpreted Pliny’s word iconicas. as life-size statues. Scherer, how- 
ever, easily refuted this idea and showed that the adjective eixovixds, 
though ambiguous in its meaning, had nothing to do with size, but 
referred rather to an individual as opposed to a typical sense in rela- 
tion to statuary. In his explanation he referred to the words of Lessing 
in the Laokoon: es ist das Ideal eines gewissen Menschen, nicht das 
Ideal eines Menschen ueberhaupt.2 Nowadays all scholars agree that 
Pliny’s word refers to portrait statues. However, Pliny’s dictum 
about the right of setting up portrait statues is certainly open to doubt.® 
It can not have been true of monumients erected before the fourth 
century B.C., when portrait statues were rare. Portraiture was a 
form of realism and was a product of the later period of Greek art— 
especially after the time of Lysippos. In the fourth century B. C. 
we find.one well-attested exception to Pliny’s rule. ‘The discovered 
inscription from the base of a monument erected to the horse-racer 
Xenombrotos of Cos,® reads (fifth line): roclos|, éroto[y] d[p|as ZevouB- 
poto|s]. ‘hese words indubitably point to a portrait statue. However, 

17, N., XXXIV, 16 (Jex-Blake’s transl.) The Latin of the last portion of this passage runs: 
Olympiae, ubt omnium qui vicissent statuas dicari mos erat, eorum vero qui ter 1bi superavissent ex 
membris 1psorum similitudine expressa, quas iconicas vocant. 
*Hirt, Ueber das Bildniss der Alten, 1814-15, p. 7; Visconti, Iconographie grecque (1st ed. Paris 
1808, Milan, 1824-26), Discours prelim., p. VIII, n. 4. They argued from Lucian’s pro Imag., 
11, a passage already discussed supra, p. 45 and n. 3. 
3Scherer, pp. 9 f., and especially p. 13; Lessing, Laokoén, II, 13, made Pliny’s words a text 
for a famous passage. 
4For the latest discussion of Pliny’s passage, see Inschr. v. Ol., pp. 236 and 295-6 (the latter in 
reference to the inscribed base of the statue of Xenombrotos to be discussed a few lines infra). 
5Klein, quoted by Jex-Blake, p. 14, footnote to line 7, believes Pliny’s statement apocryphal, an 
idea escaping all scholars except, perhaps, Bluemner in his commentary on the Laokoén (p.503). 
Evidently Pliny, or his source, is explaining the discrepancy between ideal and portrait 
statues as the result of an improbable rule, since the ancients applied little historical! criticism to 
art, and hence did not distinguish between works representing types and those representing 
individuals. Dio Chrysostom, in his treatise Hepi xa\Xous (Orat., XXI, 1, p. 501 R), tries to 
explain the difference between early and late statues on the ground of physical degeneration 
in the latter. 
6Inschr.v. Ol., 170. He wonin OL. (?) 83 (=448 B. C.): P., VI, 14.12; Hyde, 133; Foerster, 
327. This date follows the reasoning of Robert, O. S., pp. 180 f. Pausanias, /. c., mentions another 
monument of the victor, the inscribed base of which has been found: Jnschr. v. Ol., 154, though 
Dittenberger wrongly refers it to Damasippos: Foerster, 812; Hyde, pp. 53-4. The same author- 
ity refers no. 170 to the middle of the fourth century B. C., or a couple of decades later, because 
of the lettering and orthography. The monument of no. 170 must, therefore, have been set up 
long after the victory—about a century later. 
