ASSIMILATION OF OLYMPIC VICTOR STATUES. 71 
a harmonious whole, still its effect on the beholder is far from dis- 
pleasing. Such a creation shows that a Greek artist, even without 
paying attention to the symmetrical arrangement of parts, could at 
times produce an attractive piece of sculpture. 
ASSIMILATION OF OLYMPIC VICTOR STATUES TO TYPES 
OF GODS AND HEROES. 
Since Greek art in the main was idealistic, we should not be sur- 
prised to discover in athletic sculpture a tendency toward assimilating 
victor statues to well-known types of gods or heroes, especially to those 
of Hermes, Apollo, and Herakles, who presided over contests or gymna- 
sia and palestre. ‘This phenomenon is only a further example of the 
extraordinary, almost superhuman, honors which were paid to victors 
at the great games. In the absence of sufficient means of identifica- 
tion, it is often very difficult to distinguish with certainty between 
statues of victors and those of the gods and heroes to whom they were 
assimilated. ‘This difficulty, as we shall see, is especially observable 
in the case of Herakles. Even later antiquity recognized that statues 
of athletes were sometimes confused with those of heroes, just as those 
of heroes were with those of gods, as we learn from a passage in Dio 
Chrysostom’s oration on Rhodian affairs.1. This difficulty is one of 
the most perplexing problems that still face the student of Greek 
sculpture. | 
It was not an uncommon custom in Greece to heroize in this way an 
ordinary dead man.?. One of the most striking instances of this cus- 
tom is afforded by the so-called Hermes of Andros, a statue found in a 
grave-chamber on the island in 1833 and now in Athens? (PI. 5). It 
has been a matter of dispute among archzologists whether this statue 
represents the god Hermes or a mortal in his guise. Although Stais* 
looks on it as un probleme peutétre a jamais insoluble, there seems 
little reason for doubting that it represents a defunct mortal. Its place 
of finding in a tomb along with the statue of a woman of the Muse type, 
which probably represents the man’s consort,° the presence of a snake 
on the adjacent tree trunk, the absence of sandals and kerykeion, and 
the portrait-like features—all point to the conclusion that a man and 
not a god is represented. The downcast, almost melancholy, look 

10rat., XXXI, 89 f. (614 R). 
2In the present discussion we shall confine ourselves to the assimilation of mortal types to 
those of athletic gods and heroes, omitting the larger question of assimilation to divine types 
in general. A good example of the latter is afforded by P., VIII, 9.7-8. Here, in noting that 
the Mantineans worshipped Antinoos as a god by the erection of a temple and the celebration 
of mysteries and games, he says that images and paintings of the hero were in the Gymnasion 
there, the latter Avoviow wdd.oTa eixaopévac. 
3Kabbadias, no. 218; Rev. Arch., III (ler Sér.), 1846, Pl. 53, fig. 2; Ph. Le Bas, Voyage archéo- 
wgique (ed. Reinach), Pl. CXVIII, p. 107; B. B., 18; von Mach, 191; F. W., 1220; Reinach. 
Rép., II, 1, 149, 10. 
4Marbres et Bronzes, p. 49. 
5Kabbadias, no. 219. 
