View:
By Section
[1] After my description of the votive offerings, I must now go on to mention the statues of race-horses and those of men, whether athletes or ordinary folk. Not all the Olympic victors have had their statues erected; some, in fact, who have distinguished themselves, either at the Games or by other exploits, have had no statue.
[2] These I am forced to omit by the nature of my work, which is not a list of athletes who have won Olympic victories, but an account of statues and of votive offerings generally. I shall not even record all those whose statues have been set up, as I know how many have before now won the garland of wild olive not by strength but by the chance of the lot.
360
Those only will be mentioned who themselves gained some distinction, or whose statues happened to be better made than others.
[3] On the right of the temple of Hērā is the statue of a wrestler, Symmakhos, the son of Aeschylus. He was an Eleian by birth. Beside him is Neolaidas, son of Proxenos, from Pheneus in Arcadia, who won a victory in the boys’ boxing match. Next comes Arkhedamos, son of Xenios, another Eleian by birth, who like Symmakhos overthrew wrestlers in the contest for boys. The statues of the athletes mentioned above were made by Alypos of Sikyon, a pupil of Naukydes of Argos.
[4] The inscription on Kleogenes the son of Silenus declares that he was a native and that he won a prize with a ridinghorse from his own private stable. Hard by Kleogenes are set up Deinolokhos, son of Pyrrhos, and Troilos, son of Alkinoos. They also were both Eleians by birth, though their victories were not the same. Troilos, at the time that he was umpire, succeeded in winning victories in the chariot-races, one for a chariot drawn by a full-grown pair and another for a chariot drawn by foals. The date of his victories was the hundred and second Festival.
361
[5] After this, the Eleians passed a law that in the future, no umpire was to compete in the chariotraces. The statue of Troilos was made by Lysippos. The mother of Deinolokhos had a dream, in which she thought that the son she clasped in her bosom had a garland on his head. For this reason, Deinolokhos was trained to compete in the Games and outran the boys. The artist was Kleon of Sikyon.
[6] As for Kyniska, daughter of Arkhidamos, her ancestry and Olympic victories, I have given an account thereof in my history of the Lacedaemonian kings.
362
By the side of the statue of Troilos at Olympia has been made a basement of stone, on which are a chariot and horses, a charioteer, and a statue of Kyniska herself, made by Apelles; there are also inscriptions relating to Kyniska.
[7] Next to her also have been erected statues of Lacedaemonians. They gained victories in chariot-races. Anaxandros was the first of his family to be proclaimed victor with a chariot, but the inscription on him declares that previously his paternal grandfather received the garland for the pentathlon. Anaxandros is represented in an attitude of prayer to the god, while Polykles, who gained the surname of Polykhalkos, likewise won a victory with a four-horse chariot, and his statue holds a ribbon in the right hand. Beside him are two children; one holds a wheel and the other is asking for the ribbon. Polykles, as the inscription on him says, also won the chariot-race at Pythō, the Isthmus and Nemeā.
Description of Greece. Pausanias. ed. W. H. S. Jones, ed. H. A. Ormerod, ed. Gregory Nagy. . .