Impressions of Victory: 2012 Olympic Medal Designs

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For those of you who have caught the Olympic fever, here are a few tidbits on the design of the Olympic medals which feature the Nike of Paionios. 

“We’re still chasing our first gold…Could this be the day that it happens?”

“All eyes are on Michael Phelps, going for18 Olympic medals.”

photo: getty images

Olympic fever is raging, and our obsession with medal counts only grows each day.  This prompted me to do a little thinking about the medals themselves– what they represent, and what is represented on them.

For ancient competitors at the Panhellenic Games (Olympia, Delphi, Isthmia, Nemea), the crown (stephanos) was the ultimate symbol of victory.  Only one crown was given–no second or third place–and each ‘host city’ had a different type of wreath: olive at Olympia, laurels at Delphi, pine at Isthmia, and wild celery at Nemea.  The action of crowning, whether with a wreath made of plants or of a woolen fillet, is thought to have been associated with ritual sacrifice and rites of passage.  The victor is symbolically seen as ready for a new stage in life; he is pleasing to the gods and a human form which all others aspire to be like.

Photo: PA

For today’s competitors in the modern Olympic Games, it’s all about the medals. Unlike the ancient games, medals can be won for first, second, and third place.  However, I’m sure we can agree that even competing at such a high level is a feat in itself (would the ancients have thought this, too?)  Just as each Panhellenic city had its unique crown, each Olympic host city has the opportunity to design the look of its ‘laurels.’  The design of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic medals are the impressions of victory, quite literally!

The front of the medals of the summer games all have the same image, which features Paionios’ Nike (a restoration) departing from the Parthenon (Athens) and arriving in the host city.  We have to take off our archaeologists’ hats for a moment and ignore the fact that Paionios’ Nike was from Olympia, not Athens. Instead, we put on our Olympic revivalist hats. Nike departing from Athens makes sense since the first modern Olympics were hosted in Athens. The reverse of the medal is the side that each host city gets to ‘custom design.’ You can read more about this year’s design here and here.

But my favorite medals are yet to be awarded: the medals for the Paralympic Games.   Paionios’ Nike features even more prominently.  To create the design, the winning designer, Lin Cheung, took two mouldings from the BM’s cast of Nike of Paionios: one from her chest where the folds of cloth are, and another from her wings. You can read more about Lin Cheung’s design here.

For me, the 2012 Paralympic medals are true impressions of Nikē: the symbol of victory–the goddess and state of being– but also Paionios of Mende’s artistic legacy. I have a feeling if the original sculptor were still alive today, he would be very proud to see that his sculpture was the winner of yet another artistic competition to commemorate victory.

 

 

Glory is an MPhil student in Classics at the University of Cambridge.  Her research interests include Athenian social and political history, athletic art, and the collection and display of antiquity. 

 

Greek, Charioteer, Victor, or ‘None of the Above?’ The Mystery of the Motya ‘Charioteer’

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The Motya ‘Charioteer’ is one of the most famous and controversial works of Classical sculpture. Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge, weighs in on the debate. 

the Motya 'Charioteer' in the British Museum's Duveen Gallery

On the island of Mozia (ancient Motya) in 1979 a quite remarkable discovery was made in regular excavations: a lifesize (1.81m as preserved) marble (Parian) sculpture of a male figure, dressed – or rather sheathed – in a transparently revealing see-through long khiton. Presumably he had originally been painted, but no trace of paint survives; the original placement of one arm is not certain, the other was placed on the body in such a way as to accentuate both the transparency of the garment and the fleshiness of the flesh beneath – indeed, the allure of the whole pose and attitude is as much feminine as masculine. Yet the head reveals traces of an attachment which could – only one possibility – have been a helmet. Such are the quality and date – ‘severe’ style of the 470s, probably – of the work that within a decade of its discovery it had prompted a major conference dedicated to it (published in Rome in 1988). Such are its strikingly individual characteristics that scholars are still, thirty years on, massively at odds over its contested interpretation – and the loan of the figure currently to the British Museum and its location there in the Duveen, i.e. Parthenon-marbles, Gallery have only fanned the flames.

Broadly, there are two schools of thought, the ‘Punic’ and the ‘Greek’, as I shall call them for convenience – and in this, like many who know far more about these things than I do, I am indebted to a powerful article by Malcolm Bell in the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome for 1995. Either the statue was made (by a Greek sculptor or workshop) for (and of?) a Phoenician-origin ruler or leading aristocrat of Motya or it was made elsewhere, in the Greek world and as a purely Greek commission, and then removed forcibly to Motya as loot, perhaps by Carthaginians, some time before 397 BCE (the presumptive date at which the contextual deposit was sealed). It would be a help, of course, if we knew for sure what – or rather what sort of a male figure – the statue depicted. If ‘Punic’, suggestions have ranged across god, hero, priest, official and private individual. If the ‘Greek’ hypothesis is adopted, then there are two major contestants for the prize: either he is a charioteer (the majority view), or – a powerfully argued minority view, which deserves all the respect due to the scholarship of Professor Olga Palagia of Athens University – he is a seer (mantis).

Rather than rehearse in detail all the possible arguments for and against either the Punic or the Greek hypothesis, I should like to suggest an alternative, hybrid view, which leans more to the ‘Punic’ than the ‘Greek’ but tries to do justice to both. On Occam’s razor principles, let’s first assume it was made for where it was found, more or less. That enables one at once to free oneself from having to bow to the normal social and stylistic constraints that would apply to a Greek work commissioned at that period by a Greek individual or body for a conventional Greek context and intended to perform a conventional Greek social, political or/and artistic function. Let us then further accept the most powerful single argument in favour of the ‘charioteer’ hypothesis, namely the nature and positioning on the body of the belt. (Palagia’s ‘seer’ hypothesis does go some way to accounting for the apparent transvestism of the handling of the drapery and the flesh beneath, but it does not adequately account for his belt; on the other hand, the long khiton does certainly when taken with the belt look like a xystis, the characteristic charioteer’s garb, but, had it been adorning an image of Dionysus, say, it would not have looked wildly odd or out of place.) We thus have, ex hypothesi, a commission by a non-Greek Motyan of a Greek, charioteer-like lifesize marble statue, which seems – for a purely Greek work – excessively feminine in its allure. How to explain the apparent mismatch? In two (or three?) words, cross-cultural misunderstanding.

Comparison with the Charioteer artwork of roughly the same epoch is both inevitable – and illuminating. It’s no accident as they say that the triumphal dedication at Delphi, the navel of the world, is in bronze – for that was the medium of choice by then for the very finest lifesize representational Greek artworks. But our charioteer is in marble, which – especially in its finest Parian form – had the advantage that it alone allowed the achievement of the virtuoso ‘wet-look’. That the commission was for a non-Greek context, moreover, allowed further artistic experiment, in the shape of the extraordinary handling of the sub-vestimental flesh, including by the way the rather prominent, ballet-dancer-like treatment of the genitals.

How to explain the misunderstanding? What the possibly in some sense philhellenic Motyan commissioner of this statue had perhaps failed to appreciate above all was that in Greek sports the charioteer was not himself the main man – or woman: that was the victorious owner of the horses and chariot, for whom the charioteer worked typically as a low-status hired professional. Rather as Plutarch said of Pheidias – one would not actually wish to be Pheidias, however much one admired his divine handiwork – so one might say that, if one was an elite Greek, one certainly would not wish to spend a vast amount of one’s money so as to be commemorated publicly as a charioteer.

I rest my case: the Motya Auriga is indeed (meant to be) a charioteer, and he is indeed a Greek work of art (of the highest art indeed), but he is a ‘barbarian’ not a Greek charioteer, designed to glorify a local Motyan aristocrat, but one who got a little lost in the translation of original Greek art and representation to his native island-city.

The Motya Charioteer is currently on display at the British Museum in London.  

Professor Paul A. Cartledge is the A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture in the Faculty of Classics, Cambridge, and a Fellow of Clare College.  His most recent books are on ancient Greek political thought in practice and a comprehensive history of Greece by cities, but he is perhaps most famous for his works on Sparta. He is also a holder of the Gold Cross of the Order of Honour and an honorary citizen of Sparta. 

Rediscovering the Delphi Charioteer

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Dr. Michael C. Scott puts us in the shoes of the Delphi Charioteer’s excavators and its ancient viewers:

At noon, in the museum, I look again at the Charioteer… You try to hold on to the details. Then the analysis bothers you; you have the impression that you are listening to a language not spoken anymore… We have worked like ants and like bees on these relics. How close have we come to the soul that created them? I mean this grace at its peak, this power, this modesty and the things that the bodies symbolise. This vital breath that makes the inanimate copper transcend the rules of logic and slip into another time…

George Seferis, Dokimes vol. 2 (1981), trans. C. Capri-Karka.

In many ways we are lucky to be looking at the Charioteer at all. It is an original bronze statue dating back 2500 years. Unlike the vast majority of the many bronze statues that adorned the ancient Greek world, the Delphi charioteer was not melted down so that its valued bronze could be put to some other use. Indeed, it survived precisely because it was not being looked at. It was buried out of sight in the depths of the earth at Delphi for over a 1000 years, only to be brought to light once again during the major “big dig” excavation that uncovered the whole site in the 1890s. It was a triumphant find for the excavators – a beautiful and original piece of ancient sculpture – whose image was soon posted around the world. Later investigation revealed how it was just one surviving part of what had been originally a much grander bronze sculpture: the charioteer in his chariot holding reins that controlled several fast horses.

Seferis talks of the difficulty of understanding this extraordinary sculpture. I have some sympathy with his feeling – how close can we ever really come to understanding the way in which it impacted upon its surroundings and its viewers?  But what Seferis’ comments also bring out is the breathtaking skill with which this sculpture was created, and the incredibly vitality that it exudes. Anyone who has stood in front of it today – pride of place as it is in the museum at Delphi – feels the lightness and subtlety of the bronze features: skin, muscle, bone; and the bewitching detail of the inlaid metal and precious stones that make up the teeth, the eyes, eyelashes and parts of his clothing. You feel like the charioteer is breathing, waiting, perhaps one day to be let loose to drive his chariot again.

One thing we do know about this statue is that the ancients were just as in awe of it as we are – and that includes the descendents of its original dedicator, from Sicily, who happily re-dedicated it as a monument to their own glory in their heyday: the monument, it seems, could not be surpassed. And still it stands today, still beguiling us with its innate beauty and quiet, restrained, energy; a testament to the giddy heights of ancient Greek achievement.

 

Dr. Michael C. Scott is Research an Associate at Darwin College and an Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge, UK. His research interests include ancient history and archaeology of the Greek and Roman worlds.  He has also written and presented programs for the BBC: “Delphi: Bellybutton of the Ancient World” and “Guilty Pleasures: Luxury in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds.” Visit his website.

How are the mighty fallen: Nero and the farce of victory

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Today’s post is by Patrick Cook, a Classics graduate student at Cambridge.  Here, he enlightens us on royal participation in ancient sports, particularly chariot races.

One aspect in which the ancient games differed markedly from their modern counterpart was the direct involvement of rulers. Although modern Olympians may include the occasional minor member of a major royal family or else a major member of a minor royal family, there is in general a separation between the sporting and the political élites. This was not the case in the ancient world, where one sport — chariot racing — was very literally the ‘sport of kings’.

a royal appearance

Chariot racing assumed particular importance for those who were keen to assert their Greek identity. The games were open only Greeks, and competing allowed monarchs from the edges of the Greek world to show just how civilized —which is to say how Hellenized — they really were. Philip II of Macedon (382–336 BC) was one such example. Macedonians, who engaged in all sorts of non-Greek behaviour such as polygamy (Philip had seven wives according to one source), were considered barely Greek by their southern neighbours, but they did compete at the Olympics. Philip’s chariot teams enjoyed several wins, one of which supposedly occurred in late July of 356 BC, the very day that Philip’s wife Olympias gave birth to a son named Alexander, whose fame would one day outshine that of his father. We know that Philip regarded these victories as being very important because he commemorated them on his coinage (see picture).

Not every monarch from the periphery of the Greek world who entered chariot teams had the success of Philip: the entry Dionysius II of Syracuse (c. 397 BC–343 BC) ended in spectacular defeat and humiliation. According to the historian Diodorus Siculus, Dionysius’ chariots left the course and crashed.

Rulers who sponsored chariots did not drive their own teams, but instead employed professional drivers, which must have been some consolation to Dionysius, who must have felt that he had lost enough without risking his life. The emperor Nero (AD 37–68), however, was an unusual ancient ruler in most respects, not least the fact that he literally liked to be in the driving seat.

Nero was a fanatical Philhellene and a devoted supporter of theatre, music, and chariot racing. These he supported not only with his patronage but with active involvement, trying his hand at acting, singing and athletics. If his ancient biographers can be trusted (which is by no means certain), his attempts in these regards were marked more by enthusiasm than by accomplishment.

Nero entered the Olympic chariot race in AD 67 and chose to drive the chariot himself. According to the biographer Suetonius what followed was a farce and a sham victory:

‘He was thrown out of his chariot, he was again replaced, but could not retain his seat, and was obliged to give up, before he reached the goal, but was nevertheless crowned’.

It was not necessary to finish first to be the victor, when one was the emperor.

Suetonius was born a year after Nero’s death, so his account is not contemporaneous. Nor is necessarily a factual account of the 67 Olympics (although it may well be). His fundamental point is moral: emperors who don’t behave like an emperor should are liable to end up in the dirt. This moralizing strain is one of the most prominent trends in ancient biography, where it served to reassert rules of acceptable behaviour — and Nero’s behaviour was not considered acceptable for an emperor. The emperor’s position meant that crowning him as an Olympic victor when he so clearly wanted that title, but a biographer could make this ‘victory’ look ridiculous, which in many ways is the greatest act of political subversion.

 

Patrick Cook is a recent MPhil graduate from St. Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge. His research interests include Roman cultural history, biography, and rhetoric, with a particular focus on representations of the bodies of politicians and emperors.

Olympic Torch Relay

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photo credit: Claude Schneider

Here in Cambridge, we’ve welcomed the Olympic Torch during our Big Weekend. It arrived on Parker’s Piece yesterday around 6:50pm, and departed from Trinity College on a punt earlier this morning. Nothing says ‘Cambridge’ like a punt ride!

On my way to Parker’s Piece, I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the torch and (I presume) one of the torch-bearers or volunteers. When I reached Park, I was not surprised at just how crowded it was.  I’m sure anyone else who has been to any Torch Relay event around the UK has experienced the same thing.

It takes a fair amount of dedication and a high tolerance for crowded, muddy places to wait around for a good half hour or so for a glimpse of the flame for about three seconds! (Granted, it’s still probably nothing compared to the amount that Usain Bolt trains for his sub-10-second sprint!)

While standing around in the buzz of the crowd, I overheard quite a few people asking very interesting questions: When did this tradition of the torch begin? How does the torch get from place to place? Are the runners really running non-stop? Have they really kept the flame alive since ancient times? I couldn’t help but think about the ancient versus modern versions of this so-called ‘Olympic’ torch ‘relay.’  While a lot of people think that our modern torch relay has ancient origins, it’s actually a little bit more complicated than that.

This is probably very obvious, but ‘our’ torch relay is not an actual race, but a procession, and was started in 1936 for the Berlin Games.  That said, the flame has not been alive since the ancient games, but ceremonially (re) lit at Olympia before the modern relays begin.  (The Atlantic did an excellent photo essay on this year’s ceremony, which you can see here).  From there, it leaves for the host country by plane, car, boat, or whatever inventive transport is available (with a ‘backup’ flame and plenty of spare torches, of course!)

So if our torch ‘relay’ is a modern invention, what ancient connections exist? It’s an interesting question to try and answer. A torch race  didn’t exist at the ancient Olympic games, but we do have evidence for race with torches existing at other athletic festivals, most famously at the games of Athens. Pausanias (ca. 170 AD) describes the torch race (lampadedromia) in the following way:

red-figure pelike showing torch racers. IV 3734 Kunsthistorisches Museum, Antikensammlung, Vienna, Austria

“There is an altar of Prometheus in the Akademy, and they run from this to the city holding burning torches.  The contest is to run and keep the torch burning at the same time.  The torch and the victory are extinguished together for the front runner, and the victory passes on to the second place runner.  But if his torch goes out, the third place runner takes the victory; and if everybody’s torches go out, nobody wins” (Pausanias’ Description of Greece, 1.30.2; trans. by Stephen Miller in Arete, 2004).

In other words, it appears the ancient torch relay was a proper torch race.  Where we might have gotten the idea to start a modern relay to ‘rally the country,’ if you will, is another question entirely. For more information on an ancient model for our modern ‘relay,’ check out what Dr. Jason König has to say on festival envoys here. It’s a fantastic blog on the Ancient and Modern Olympics.

Now it’s my turn to pass the the (metaphorical) torch to my classmate, Patrick Cook, next, who has a very interesting piece about victory and royalty.  Stay tuned!

The Making of The Art of Victory

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Behind every exhibition–physical or digital–are countless stories that are left untold.  Every object has the potential to tell multiple stories.  For example, when you look at a pot, you can choose to talk about what the images are and what they represent, or you could talk about how it was made back in ancient times. Maybe you want to just use the pot as an illustration of a historical event or aspect of society in antiquity.  Alternatively, you could highlight how, where, and when it was discovered, or how it got to the museum.  It’s up to the curator to decide which story to tell.  But, if you’re as curious as I am when you visit an exhibition, you might wonder, ‘Who came up with this idea?’ ‘Who designed the labels?’ ‘Why was this object selected?’

That’s why I thought I’d start off the Victory Blog with a little behind-the-scenes tour of the making of this website. I’m far from being a curator, but I was lucky enough this year to get to ‘play curator’ as part of my coursework, and it has been an unforgettable learning experience and makes me truly appreciate and admire what curators and museum workers have to do! So I hope this post is less self-indulgent than it seems, and actually speaks for the work that curators, web designers, and museum educators do! And for the reader, I hope that finding out the answers to those questions listed above are just as interesting as finding the answers to questions like, ‘Where was this object found?’ and ‘What type of vase is this?’  They help us understand how we construct our own stories and conjure up our own unique images of the ancient Greeks.

So, here are some FAQs about The Art of Victory and my work on it.

Where did you get the idea to create The Art of Victory?

Last summer, when I was brainstorming what I wanted to do for my MPhil dissertation, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask my supervisors if it would be possible to do a project such as designing an exhibition for my dissertation, or at least to accompany it.  I was more than thrilled when they responded with enthusiasm, and after getting the green light from the Faculty, we started brainstorming what topic/theme for my dissertation-display.  Since the Olympics were coming up, we thought that doing something Olympics-related would be appropriate.

What other ideas did you have for an online gallery?

There were a few ‘rejected’ themes and titles, actually.  For example, one of my supervisors and I thought it might be neat to explore sport and democracy, so I started researching that idea more.  Easy to write about, but very difficult to display.  It wasn’t until late in November or December that I had a walk around the Fitz’ Greek and Roman Gallery by myself and noticed all the different portrayals of victory and modes of commemoration that I thought, ‘Hey, victory is an interesting image and idea,’ and talking about the different ways of commemorating would also allow me to talk about the different forms of competition manifested in sports.  That’s when I came up with the idea of the ‘art’ of victory, which (I hope people gather) has a double meaning: victory was an ‘art’ to the ancient Greeks in the sense that it was a skill that required intense training to win, and it was also a type of social performance (or in many cases, fortune!). At the same time, victory was more than an achievement and the end of a competition—it was one of the most powerful ideas and images in Greek art that touches on so many other ideas about social prominence, religion, and beauty, and that’s what this online gallery hopes to show. And from a marketing perspective, ‘The Art of Victory’ just sounded nice.  (My dissertation was titled ‘Rivalling Panhellenism: Competition and Commemoration in Ancient Greek Athletics,’ which was just a little too pedantic and contained to many loaded words for an exhibition in my opinion!)

Why is this exhibition online instead of in the physical space?

Initially I wanted to do a physical exhibition, but there wasn’t space or time available at the Fitz or the Cast Gallery.   So my supervisor at the time (Dr. Kate Cooper) suggested an online gallery.  It just so happened that the online galleries were being updated anyway, so this would be a perfect opportunity to be part of the ‘renovation.’  It’s a blessing in disguise, really; you can do so much online that you can’t do in a physical space– like have maps and word definitions pop up when you want them to, and closer views of object details that you probably don’t get to see if it were behind glass.

How did you pick objects for this gallery?

I think I had a very atypical experience in ‘curating’ this gallery.  Most curators don’t have the luxury of starting with a theme, and then being able to ‘shop’ for objects.  To start, I looked at lots of different exhibition catalogues of similar exhibitions, thought about what I liked and didn’t like about objects selected and how they were described.  Then, I thought about specific points I wanted to get across in this gallery, or specific questions I wanted to answer.  The hardest part is matching images and objects with those ideas that I want to talk about.  It’s a back-and-forth between looking at the physical objects, writing something about them, and then seeing if the object is a good illustration of what you’ve written (and vice versa).

getting some close-up camera phone shots

Dr. Lucilla Burn taught me how to ‘choose’ objects during the ‘shopping’ stage.  She’s a wizard with pottery and just about everything, and really helped me think through every stage of the process.  First and foremost, you have to consider whether the object is the best illustration of your relevant point.  But you also have to think about aesthetics– ‘wholeness,’ and really subjective things like how ‘nice’ the object is.  Again, though, there’s a back-and-forth between these criteria and the point you’re trying to make.  At one point, I had a list of objects that included about four different red-figure kylikes of athletes holding strigils.  They were beautiful, and I had a certain affection for them, but I couldn’t really use each one without repeating myself, and the last thing I wanted to do was to just have a display that catalogued every pot with an athlete or winged victory on it.  So I ended up only including one of those kylikes of athletes holding strigils in the end (object 4).

And, I should add, going around museums and into the storage rooms at the Fitz was  probably my favorite part of the whole process.  There’s just nothing like getting up close and personal with these objects! I would have my notepad and pen out, scribbling notes like a madwoman, and taking pictures on my phone to help me remember which objects I was considering. Handling pots that people made and used thousands of years ago is a thrilling experience (but you have to control yourself and be very careful, too)!

What were some of the challenges you encountered?

Sketching page designs

I think the hardest part about this project was writing the labels, but it was also the most rewarding part, and something that I really enjoyed doing.  Writing short, 120-words-or less (roughly), descriptions that not only describe the object, but also relevant historical or archaeological or artistic ideas for a general audience is a lot harder than you think when you’re used to churning out pages for academicians who want lots of footnotes and complicated ideas.  I like figuring out how to write something that’s punchy but not ‘dumbed-down’ at all; it’s very rewarding

Second hardest part? Building the website itself. I had a really solid idea of what I wanted it to look like and how I wanted it to function, but I had no idea how to build it. I’m no programmer, so I’m lucky when Shaun Osborne volunteered his time to get me started. I owe a huge shout-out to him! I had to do a lot on my own, though—all of the design is my own, and the little details like spoilers (drop-down menus for additional information), embedded photo galleries, hover-text, and map pop-ups were my ideas.  I did a lot of wireframing by hand and then some mock-ups in photoshop and power point, but the problem was how I would make them actually work, which is where Shaun stepped in and told me, ‘You don’t have to reinvent the wheel here!’  We searched for different kinds of WordPress plugins, and I even learned quite a bit of html to get all of that working…in a period of about ten days!

an early mock-up of an object page

How long did it take to ‘build’ the gallery?

The actual construction of the website took less than two weeks.  However, I had been working on the narrative (researching for and writing the dissertation, all of the object information, etc.) for about two or three months already.  And like I said, I was brainstorming this project since last summer. As an MPhil student, you’re supposed to be working on your dissertation all year.  While I wasn’t working specifically on writing things for The Art of Victory over the 9-month course, I had to be thinking about how all my other essays and exercises would build up to this.  So a lot of my research built on itself over the year, even when I was writing about things like Myron’s discobolus or even Athenian drama.  When you’re in the middle of all your coursework, you think, ‘How am I ever going to get any of this done?’ but you also realize you’ve read quite a lot already and that the hardest part is just synthesizing the material into something new and imaginative.

What objects really stand out for you? 

Tough question. I suppose I have two personal favorites.  The first is the red-figure kylix of athletes (object 3), with the boy inside the krater on the tondo. I think it’s a fantastic combination of scenes, and your spirits are immediately lifted when you see it…or when you drink the spirits inside the cup! I also love the inscription, which is very common, but particularly apt for a boy who looks like he’s bathing in a bowl of wine– HO PAIS KALOS: “The boy is cute, eh?”  I also like what it represents.  It dates to a point, chronologically and iconographically, where we begin to see a shift from very ‘active’ and ‘competitive’ athletes on pottery to more ‘non-competitive’ and ‘abstract’ scenes.

 

The second one is the Nike Paionios.  To me, she really captures this ‘double movement’ of competition and commemoration:even the act of commemoration was a competitive act.  It’s not just ‘Oh yes, the Greeks competed over everything,’ but that images were meant to inspire competition– whether that was because they were symbols of military or athletic victory, or because they were strategically placed (like the Nike Paionios), or simply because they were stunning to look at. She’s been getting quite a lot of press recently because the 2012 Olympic Medals have her on them (in two ways!), but I’m going to save my commentary for later posts and leave space for future commentators to write.

*****

Glory is an MPhil student in Classics at the University of Cambridge.  Her research interests include Athenian social and political history, athletic art, and the collection and display of antiquity. 

Welcome to the Victory Blog

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Welcome to the ‘Victory Blog!’  Here, museum curators, Cambridge graduate students, and members of the Faculty of Classics will be sharing their thoughts about objects, events, and ideas related to The Art of Victory.  

Stay tuned for updates!