Chapter IV. Victor Statues Represented in Motion

Plates 22–25 and Figures 32–62.

Just when the important step of representing the victor in motion instead of at rest was taken in Greek athletic sculpture we can not definitely say. The statement of Cornelius Nepos that the statues of athletes were first represented in movement in the fourth century B. C., after the time of the Athenian general Chabrias—whose image he describes as representing Chabrias in his favorite posture with his spear pointed at the enemy and his shield on his knee—has long since been shown to be worthless. Nor is the assumption of many archæologists that this advance in the plastic art was taken over into athletic sculpture soon after the statues of the Tyrannicides were set up at Athens, which represented them in the midst of their impetuous onslaught on Hipparchos, to be relied upon. These statues, however, occupy so important a place in the history of Greek sculpture that we shall consider them briefly in this connection.