THE CASE FOR STONE. 328 
the column of Oinomaos), and the fact that they were made of 
wood.’ Furthermore, in his book on.4chaia there occurs this passage 
in reference to the statue of the victor Promachos, which was set up in 
the Gymnasion of Pellene: kai avrod [poudxovu] kat eixdvas rounoarres 
ot IlehAnvets THv pev és Odvurriay avebecav, Thy b€ & TS yumvaciw, \LOouv 
TaUTHY Kal ov xadkov.2, Most critics have inferred from these last words, 
“the one in the Gymnasion being of stone and not of bronze,” that, although 
Pausanias says nothing about the material of statues of victors in the 
Altis (barring the two just mentioned), by implication all these statues 
were of bronze; and they point out the fact that other writers furnish 
no evidence concerning the material used in them—an argument ex 
silentio to the same effect. Besides these arguments many others have 
been urged on purely a priori grounds; e. g., that, since these statues 
stood in the open air, subject to all kinds of weathering, they must 
have been made of bronze;* that metal statues would have been cheaper 
and more easily prepared than those of marble;* that the later Pelo- 
ponnesian schools of athletic sculpture, which were characterized by 
their predilection for bronze-founding, would nowhere have been more 
prominently in evidence than at Olympia; etc. 
Thus the case for the use of metal in these statues seems very well 
substantiated, and, for the reasons given, it can not be reasonably 
doubted that the vast majority of these monuments were made of 
bronze. But that they were not exclusively of metal, and that there 
were many exceptions to the general rule, not only can be conjectured 
on good grounds, but can be proved by discoveries made at the ex- 
cavations. We shall briefly consider, then, each of the foregoing 
arguments in turn, and see whether, in the light of the accumulated 
evidence, they are really as well founded as they appear to be. 
THE CASE FOR STONE. 
As for the first point, that the statuaries mentioned by Pausanias 
appear only in Pliny’s catalogue of bronze founders, we must remember 
that Pausanias himself says® that he is making only a selection of the 
victor monuments in the Altis, those of the more famous athletes. 
1That of Rhexibios was of fig-wood and that of Praxidamas of cypress, and consequently less 
decayed than the other. We know that cypress-wood was largely used for the early 6ava because 
of its hardness and durability: ¢. g., the gilded statue in Ephesos, mentioned by Xenophon, Anab., 
V, 3.12. Theophrastos speaks of the durability of this wood: de Plant. hist., V, 4.2 (xpoviwrara 
doxet 7a Kumapirrwa evar). Cf. Hehn, Kulturpflanzen und Haustiere®, 1894, pp. 276 f.; H. 
Bluemner, Technologie und Terminologie d. Gewerbe und Kuenste bei Griechen und Roemern, 1879, 
II, pp. 257 f.; Hitz.-Bluemn., II, 2, p. 625. 
2VII, 27.5. Scherer also, p. 18, n. 4, adduces a passage from the work of the second-century 
A. D. rhetorician Aristeides, xara r&v étopy., II, p. 544 (ed. Dindorf), which he thinks points to 
the exclusive use of metal for victor statues: tovs éml oregaytTav aywvwv oxepwmpeba, olov rov Awpréa 
.... kal wavras, oy eixdves xadxal; he also refers to a passage in Dio Chrysost., Orat., XXVIII, 
Pep, 531, R: (289 M). 
3F. W., no. 213, p. 101; Scherer, p. 18, n. 3; Vischer, Aesthetik, III, §607, p. 377; and cf. S. 
Reinach, R. Et. Gr., XX, p. 413. 
4See Koehler, Gesam. Schriften (ed. Stephani), VI, p. 345. a) Te 1829 
