GENERAL MOTIVES OF STATUES AT REST. 133 
and showing Polykleitan influence, represents a nude youth standing 
erect with the forearms bent, showing that the two hands were ex- 
tended in prayer. The second, which dates from the first half of the 
fifth century B.C. (after the date of the Myronian Diskobolos), repre- 
sents a nude youth standing with the right hand raised to the lips in 
an attitude usual in saluting a divinity, while the left is by the side, 
with the palm to the front. 
ANOINTING. 
Various familiar motives from the everyday life of the gymnasium 
and palzstra were reproduced in the statues of athletes. One of 
the commonest methods was to represent the victor anointing his body 
with oil. ‘The use of oil was indispensable in all athletic eXEICISES, 
in order to make the body and limbs more supple, and especially in 
wrestling and the pankration, to make it difficult for one’s antagonist 
to get a grip.!_ Pliny mentions a painting by Theoros, representing a 
man se inunguentem,? which appears to have been a votive portrait of 
an athlete. The motive was common in vase-paintings and statuary. 
Several red-figured vases of the severe style, antedating the statues to 
be considered, show from realistic representations of palzstra scenes 
that it was customary for athletes to hold a round aryballos high in the 
right hand and pour oil from it into the left, which was placed across 
the body horizontally.* ‘the same motive appears with variations in 
statues.4 Thus the statue of an ephebe in Petworth House, Sussex, 
England,°® a statue, as Furtwaengler says, to be praised more for its 
excellent preservation than for its workmanship, represents an athlete, 
who holds a globular aryballos in his right hand raised over the shoulder, 
while the left arm is held across the abdomen. On the nearby tree- 
trunk are small cylindrical objects which seem to be boxing pads. This 
statue, and especially its head, have been regarded by Michaelis and 
Furtwaengler as unmistakably Polykleitan in style.6 Several other 
copies of original statues representing athletes pouring oil have been 
wrongly classed as replicas of one original,’ though they merely have 
essential features alike, due chiefly to the subject. First is the 
famous statue in the Glyptothek known as the Oelgiesser (Oil- 
pourer), a Roman copy of an Attic bronze of about the middle of the 
10n the custom of athletes smearing themselves with oil and dust in the palzstra before 
entering the wrestling match, see Lucian, Anacharsts, sive de exercitationibus, 28. 
2—. N., XXXV, 144. 
eee cited by L. Bloch, R. M., VII, 1892, pp. 88 f.; and especially one in 4. Z., 
XXXVII, 1879, Pl. IV (red- enced sre by ear vemides from Capua, now in Berlin): 
Hartwig, Dp griech. Meisterschalen, 1893, p. 570. Cf. Furtw., Mp., p. 259, Mw., p. 466. 
4Cf. Brunn, Annali, LI, 1879, pp. 201 f 
5Michaelis, pp. 601-2, no. 9; Bulle, p. 109, fig. 19; Furtw., Mp., p. 257, fig. 107, Mw., p 
465, fig. 77. It is 1.68 meters high (Michaelis). 
6It has the same foot position as that on the base of the statue of the boxer Kyniskos, by 
Polykleitos: Inschr. v. Ol., 149. 
7E. g.. by F. W., 462-4. 
