Antiquities Exhibits

Depictions of athletes were popular on gems of the late 500s BCE and thereafter.  Not only Greek but Etruscan artisans produced these miniature works of art and the collection of these gems became popular among the Roman elite. As I've mentioned previously, both Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great collected them. One such artist, Epimenes, from the Cyclades, produced scenes of nude youths with meticulously defined musculature in complex twisted poses. His youths sported locks of hair radiating from the crown of the head with clusters of curls on the forehead. He adopted these features from innovations in sculpture and vase-painting at the time. "It is clear that some form of amateur athletics must have taken place simulta­neously with the real business at hand, which was, naturally enough from the bias of Republican Rome, training for war," observes classicist Donald White, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. "Special ludi in­cluding spo...

This type of bronze pillar herm of Herakles wrapped in a lion skin  and wearing an ivy wreath, found in the sea off the coast of Halikarnassos, was often used as a boundary marker for gymnasia and palaestrae (exercise yards).  Marble examples have been found on the island of Delos.  Similar reliefs of Herakles have also been found  in east Greece on Hellenistic graves. I photographed this herm on my last visit to the British Museum in 2016.  It is dated between 200-100 BCE. Bronze herm of Herakles Greek 200-100 BCE Halikarnassos.  Photographed at The British Museum in London.