64 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF VICTOR STATUES AT OLYMPIA. 
Such beautiful works of art as these last show the influence which 
the great athletic festivals, and especially the Olympian, exerted on the 
development of Greek sculpture. In the gymnastic training carried 
on in the gymnasium and palestra, which culminated in these festi- 
vals, the Greek sculptor found an unrivaled opportunity to study the 
naked human figure in its best muscular development and in every 

Fic. 3.— Bronze Head of an Olympic Victor, from 
Beneventum. Louvre, Paris. 
pose. In fact, we may say with Furtwaengler that without athletics 
Greek art would be inconceivable.t. To quote from another work of 
the same scholar: 
“The gymnastically trained bodies of these slim boys and youths and vig- 
orous men are evidence of the ennobling effect of athletics. Presented in 
complete nudity they are not faithful portraits from life, but motives or mod- 
els from the palzstra transformed and exalted to the highest ideal of physical 
1 Bedeutung der Gymnastik in d. gr. Kunst, 1905; cf. also Gardner, Sculpt., p. 23, and Hbk., p. 215 
