The "Self-Crowning Athlete"

This sculpture of a self-crowning athlete may have been offered in gratitude by an athlete following a victory.  It shows a young man placing an olive wreath on his head, a symbol of victory, but also a symbol of citizenship.  The "self-crowning athlete" came to represent democracy in ancient Athens where the right to self-rule could be earned through citizenship.  

The relief was found at Sounion, within the territory of the Leontis tribe.  The earliest literary reference to Sounion is in Homer's Odyssey (III. 278–285). The story recounts that as the various Greek commanders sailed back from Troy, the helmsman of the ship of King Menelaus of Sparta died at his post while rounding "Holy Sounion, Cape of Athens." Menelaus then landed at Sounion to give his companion full funeral honors with a cremation on a funeral pyre on the beach.  Sounion was fortified in the nineteenth year of the Peloponnesian War (413 BCE) for the purpose of protecting the passage of Euboean grain ships to Athens.

Although Sounion was said to be especially sacred to Athena and a temple dedicated to the goddess was originally constructed in the 6th century BCE, we learn from Aristophanes that Poseidon was also worshipped there.  An archaic temple to Poseidon was probably destroyed in 480 BCE by Persian troops during Xerxes I's invasion of Greece. After they defeated Xerxes in the naval Battle of Salamis, the Athenians placed an entire captured enemy trireme at Sounion as a trophy dedicated to Poseidon. Another temple of Poseidon was  constructed in 444–440 BCE during the rule of Pericles. When the fortress was constructed at Sounion during the Peloponnesian War, the temple was included within the fortification walls along with garrison quarters for a small naval base. The fortress was maintained well into the Hellenistic period but by the 1st century BCE, the Romans report the site was in decay.


Image: Votive Relief of the "Self-Crowning Athlete" from Sounion, around 460 BCE now in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.  Photographed at "The Greeks" exhibit displayed at The Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois.

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