218 VICTOR STATUES REPRESENTED IN MOTION. 
halteres, it can not represent a pentathlete, but must be an ordinary 
gymnasium athlete. 
DIsKOBOLOI. 
The diskos-throw (éroxoBorXta) goes back to mythology and heroic 
days.1 In Homer, at the games of Patroklos, Achilles casts a metal 
mass called the oddos.2, This was the primitive type of diskos. Of 
such early contests and feats of strength we have a good record in the 
red-sandstone mass, weighing 143.5 kilograms (= 315 pounds), which has 
been found at Olympia, marked with a sixth-century inscription to the 
effect that one Bybon threw it over his head.’ There is nothing ath- 
letic, however, about the use of such a stone or of the Homeric solos. 
The diskos was also known to Homer.‘ It was of stone, and in Pindar 
the heroes Nikeus, Kastor, and Iolaos still hurl the stone diskos instead 
of the metal one of the poet’s day.® ‘The stone diskos appears on sixth- 
century vases as a whiteobject,® but metal ones were introduced at 
the end of the sixth century B.C. A bronze one from Kephallenia (?) in 
the British Museum has a sixth-century inscription in the Doric dialect 
and in the alphabet of the Ionian Islands, which gives the dedication 
of Exoidas to the Dioskouroi.’ Several others have been found in 
different parts of Greece, especially at Olympia.’ Pausanias says 
that boys used a lighter diskos than men.® | 
While only unimportant monuments outside of vase-paintings illus- 
trate the jump, those illustrating the diskos-throw are rich and varied, 
including not only vases, but statues, statuettes, small bronzes, reliefs, 
coins, and gems.!° 
In his careful attempt at reconstructing the method of casting the 
diskos, E. N. Gardiner has distinguished seven different positions, 
— 
1Krause, I, pp. 439 f. £. g., Apollo unintentionally slays Hyakinthos while contending with 
him in diskos-throwing: Euripides, Helena, 1469 f.; etc. 
*Tliad, XXIII, 826 f. Later imitators of Homer use the word also: e. g., Apoll. Rhod., III, 1366. 
3Inschr.v. Ol., 717; I.G. A., 370; Juethner, pp. 22-23. A larger block of volcanic rock weighing 
480 kilograms has been found at Santorin with an inscription dating from about 500 B. C. stating 
that one Eumastas lifted it from the ground: J. G., XIII, no. 449. See J. H. S., XXVII, 1907, 
p.2. Sucha scene is depicted on the interior of a r.-f. kylix in the Louvre, G 96; J. H.S., l.c., 
fig. 1. 
4Od., [V, 626 and VIII, 186f. The diskos-throw was well known as a measure:e. g., Il., XXIII, 
431. Scholiasts tried to show the difference between the solos and the diskos: see Juethner, pp. 19f. 
8) > GALS Ras i hrs VET 
SE. g.,on a b.-f. amphora in the British Museum: B. M. Vases, B 271; J. H.S., XXVII, Pl. I; 
Gardiner, p. 314, fig. 71; cf. the Panathenaic amphora, B 134 (=Fig. 44); J. H. S., XXVII, 
Pl. XVIII. 
"B. M. Bronzes, no. 3207; Gardiner, p. 317, fig. 73; Rev. arch., XVIII, 1891, Pl. XVIII, p. 45. 
It is 6.5 inches in diameter. The inscription is written retrograde. 
he list of fifteen in J. H. S., XXVII, p. 6; Gardiner, p. 316; eight of these are from Olympia. 
O15 3535. 
0Furtwaengler shows that there are numerous representations of Myron’s Diskobolos on gems: 
Die antiken Gemmen, e. g., Pls. XLIV, nos. 26, 27, and LXVI, 8; cf. also a gem in the British 
Museum: B. M. Gems, 742 and Pl. 11. , 
