There is also a bronze statue of Cratisthenes of Cyrene , and on the chariot stand Victory and Cratisthenes himself. It is thus plain that his victory was in the chariot-race. The story goes that Cratisthenes was the son of Mnaseas the runner, surnamed the Libyan by the Greeks. His offerings at Olympia are the work of Pythagoras of Rhegium .
Here too I remember discovering the statue of Anaximenes, who wrote a universal history of ancient Greece , including the exploits of Philip the son of Amyntas and the subsequent deeds of Alexander. His honor at Olympia was due to the people of Lampsacus . Anaximenes bequeathed to posterity the following anecdotes about himself. Alexander, the son of Philip, no meek and mild person but a most passionate monarch, he circumvented by the following artifice.
Sotades at the ninety-ninth Festival 1 was victorious in the long race and proclaimed a Cretan, as in fact he was. But at the next Festival he made himself an Ephesian, being bribed to do so by the Ephesian people. For this act he was banished by the Cretans.
The first athletes to have their statues dedicated at Olympia were Praxidamas of Aegina , victorious at boxing at the fifty-ninth Festival 2 , and Rexibius the Opuntian, a successful pancratiast at the sixty-first Festival 3 . These statues stand near the pillar of Oenomaus, and are made of wood, Rexibius of figwood and the Aeginetan of cypress, and his statue is less decayed than the other.
Description of Greece. Pausanias. W.H.S. Jones (Translator), H.A. Ormerod (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1918-1935.
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