1In 1861, excavations conducted by the Archaeological Society of Athens near the church of Ayios Dimitrios Katiforis in Plaka, a few metres east of the Tower of the Winds, brought to light a marble base¹ incorporated in the so-called Valerian wall that was dismantled at the time.² Made of white, medium-grained marble, the rectangular base carries relief decoration on its three preserved faces, while it is estimated that, for reasons of symmetry, the fourth face, heavily weathered as a result of its second use, was also carved. The upper surface bears a rectangular cutting meant for the insertion of a stele.³ Its unusual, off-centred placement was apparently dictated by the original location and display of the base.⁴

2The base’s imagery is related to horse breeding and horse racing. The poorly preserved face that is taken to be the front portrays a group of standing male figures, probably nine in all.⁵ The surviving figures (third, fourth and fifth figures from left) are grouped together, wearing mantles and standing in quiet poses. The third figure raises his right arm to crown himself.

3On the left side, a single race horse is shown in profile. The animal fills the entire relief panel, preventing the full carving of its tail. One assumes that an analogous scene was depicted on the now missing right side.

4The back depicts eight horses arranged in two groups of two pairs facing each other, accompanied by their youthful grooms.⁶ The first pair, partially preserved, moves to right. A lean groom is visible behind the horses. He is either ready to jump on one of the horses or trying to tame the only animal that does not stay still but raises its foreleg. The second groom stands before the next pair of horses. His right hand touches one of the horses’ heads, which is lowered to the ground. Next to him, the third pair of horses advances to the right, following another groom. At his feet, one sees the lowered head of a horse turning opposite him. For reasons of symmetry, a fourth groom may be reconstructed behind it.

5In terms of style, the base is characterized by unevenness in the quality of the carving. One notes, for instance, the graceful stance of the horse that lowers its head to drink or graze on the back, which contrasts sharply with the careless lean figures of the grooms. The horses are close to those on the square relief base carved by Bryaxis to commemorate a family victory in the anthippasia.⁷ Yet, they find their best parallel on a fragmentary base from the Acropolis, which is occasionally attributed to the same master.⁸ On stylistic grounds, the monument is dated to the last quarter of the 5^th century BC.⁹

6The base apparently supported a dedication by an individual victor in commemoration of a personal success in one or more equestrian events. Reliefs commemorating equestrian victories are well documented in Classical Athens. In addition to them, a number of relief bases dating to the last quarter of the 5^th century and the first of the 4^th are associated with athletic contests.¹⁰ Yet, this particular base deviates from what is “typical” for relief bases –if one may even use the term “typical” for a class of monuments that were never a mainstream choice for the display of sculptures. First, unlike other examples that represent a single moment in an event, the preparation for it, or its outcome, the base in question combines the preparation and aftermath of an equestrian race: the young grooms taking care of the horses that led the dedicant to the victory; the self-crowning young man standing among his peers; and horse images on the sides. Second, it features an unusually large number of horses –ten in all, if our restoration of the images is correct.

7Relief bases remained relatively rare in Greek art. They were occasionally selected as an alternative way of narrating a story, battling the horror vacui of a plain marble surface, or providing some sort of a “caption” with words substituted or even strengthened by imagery. And, although they occasionally employed standard themes, they were mostly commissioned to meet specific needs and tastes.

8Who dedicated this monument and what for? What stood atop it? The context of an equestrian victory is hard to find, but on the basis of certain elements one is tempted to suggest a connection with the equestrian successes of Alcibiades, who was famous in antiquity for horse breeding and racing.¹¹

Alcibiades at the Olympic Games

9Both Thucydides and Plutarch mention that in 416 BC Alcibiades, one of the leading political figures of his time, entered the Olympic Games with a record seven chariots in the quadriga, one of the most prestigious Olympic events, and won the first, second and fourth place.¹² His unprecedented success caused a major sensation.¹³ Athletic victories, especially in Panhellenic Games, granted the athlete status and influence.¹⁴ They constructed the image of a powerful city and a powerful leader.¹⁵ Athletes who competed acquired fame that could be the starting point for a political career.¹⁶ On the other hand, those already involved in politics used the victory to enhance their popularity.

10Alcibiades was by no means an ordinary victor. He was an Olympic victor on a tremendous scale.¹⁷ Yet, his presence in Olympia was not only remembered for the victory per se. In the words of Isocrates, “he surpassed not only his fellow competitors, but all previous victors of the event, for he entered chariots that were too many in number, that not even the greatest cities had ever competed with so many and of such quality”.¹⁸ His athletic success was accompanied by a tremendous display of wealth that had an impact comparable to that of the actual victory. He set up a magnificent tent, performed grand sacrifices and provided hospitality and a victory feast to a large number of individuals outside the context of the polis. His self-promotion also included commissioning Euripides to write an ode to celebrate the victory, although the playwright did not ordinarily write such poems.¹⁹

Thee will I sing, O child of Cleinias;
A fair thing is victory, but fairest is what no other Hellene has achieved,
To run first, and second, and third in the contest of racing-chariots,
And to come off unwearied, and, wreathed with the olive of Zeus,
To furnish theme for herald’s proclamation.

11The poem pictures Alcibiades at the actual moment of the victory, when he is being crowned with Zeus’ olive wreath. It is clear from the sources that he was assisted in his plans by cities of the Athenian alliance, like Ephesos that provided the tent,²⁰ Lesbos that provided food and wine for the celebrations,²¹ Chios that provided fodder for his horses and animals of sacrifice,²² as well as certain individuals. He is also known to have borrowed the silver and gold vessels of the official Athenian delegation and inappropriately used them as if they were his own, even before they were used by the city.²³ In other words, he splurged –and managed to puzzle and irritate the Athenians.

12And then, there were the horses themselves. Up to that time, no individual had ever entered so many horses. Indeed, in a race where the entire Greek world could compete, roughly one fourth of the entries belonged to a single man.²⁴ As for the cost, it must have been tremendous.²⁵ It has been estimated that Alcibiades’ total property amounted to 100 talents,²⁶ and he spent 35 talents, namely one third of it, on that single day in the races. Undoubtedly he was supported, by means of loans or donations, by individuals and allies –or else he would soon have found himself in financial trouble.²⁷

13Evidently, in Olympia Alcibiades staged a performance meant to outbid his rivals, both in Athens and on the Panhellenic level. He wanted to be remembered not only for his athletic prowess, but also for his great expenditure and ambition. And he was successful. The chariot race in Olympia was part of his political strategy –namely an alternative route to fame and public exposure.²⁸

14Upon his return from Olympia, he used his success at the Games to persuade the assembly to appoint him as leader of the Sicilian Expedition. Thucydides records his speech:²⁹

More than to others, Athenians, it is up to me to take the lead. And I think that I am worth it. On the basis of my splendid performance at the Olympic Games, the Greeks assumed our city to be very powerful and greater than it really is. Custom regards such displays as honorable, and they cannot be made without leaving behind them an impression of power.

15And he succeeded, winning an impressive personal victory that also had historical ramifications for Athens.

A controversial character

16To be sure, Alcibiades was no ordinary man.³⁰ He was an extreme, highly controversial character.³¹ A darling and an enemy at the same time. Charming and dangerous, he was more than anything else an overly ambitious man who could not be accommodated in the city in any normal way, neither was he expected to subject himself to the conventional rules of the community. Thus, he is remembered for traits as diverse as his mightiness in war and his extravagance, his swiftness and his vanity. The same goes for his conduct, which made him both lead his city to great victories and betray it.

17In the year 416 BC, at the time of his victory, Alcibiades was at once at his most loved and most feared. To quote Dionysus in Aristophanes’ Frogs: “the city longs for him, hates him, but wants to have him”.³² Indeed Alcibiades made no effort to subject himself to the rules or norms of his contemporary society. On the contrary, he deliberately tried to stand out from the crowd and believed that he was on a different level from his fellow citizens.³³ This was also noted by Thucydides who aptly commented that he refused to be “upon equality with the rest”.³⁴

18Indeed, it was a number of elements that set Alcibiades apart from the crowd. And horses were a key element to differentiate him not only from the demos as a whole, but also from his key political opponents.

19Alcibiades’ Olympic victory was not his first one. We also know of his victory at Nemea, whereas a victory in a chariot race in the Panathenaia of 418 BC is postulated on the basis of the large number of Panathenaic amphoras found among Alcibiades’ property and confiscated after he was condemned for mutilating the herms and profaning the Mysteries.³⁵ Horses were, thus, special to him, not only as a favourite pastime or as a sport, but as a key element in the construction of his public image. Alcibiades used them to increase his visibility in Athenian politics, gain public exposure, secure a distinct political profile for himself and increase support.³⁶

Horses and political power

20His interest in horses apparently began ca. 420 BC. At that time, he married into the hippotrophic family of Callias II, acquired wealth through marriage and entered the Athenian political life.³⁷ That wealth grew, and it clearly helped him rise to political power and achieve prominence.

21Within this context, Alcibiades’ participation in the Olympics was apparently pursued as a means to enhance his political profile.³⁸ It is interesting to note that in the last quarter of the 5^th century, horse breeding and horse racing were no longer an indispensable component of Athenian politics.³⁹ On the contrary, despite its prestige it was rather unpopular with the lower class, thus most politicians backed away from it, preferring to spend money through the official system of liturgies.⁴⁰ That is what Nicias, Alcibiades’ main opponent, did intensely.⁴¹ Yet, Alcibiades capitalized on horse racing, not only because it allowed him to rapidly build a distinct personal profile at home and abroad, but also because it provided him with a unique element that differentiated him from his key rival, whose prestige was built over the years through more orthodox liturgical spending.⁴² Hippotrophia provided the field of an expenditure competition where low-born Nicias probably could not follow. Horses were an expensive sport,⁴³ yet the anticipated outcome was tempting enough to justify the effort.⁴⁴ At a time when the relationship between an elite individual like himself and the demos was in a process of renegotiation, Alcibiades realized that it was still useful for a political leader to emphasize the distance that separated him from the demos, by displaying symbols of his wealth, public achievement and elite lifestyle. As a matter of fact, this was the last use of a Panhellenic equestrian victory as a means to retain political power within Athens.⁴⁵

A taste for extravagance

22Athenaeus, who quotes the earlier historian Satyrus, states that upon his return from Olympia, Alcibiades commemorated his victories by a double pinax made by Aglaophon.⁴⁶ One of them showed Olympia and Pythia, personifications of the respective games, crowning him, and the other showed the seated Nemea, the local goddess of the sanctuary where the Nemean Games were held, holding him on her lap, him looking more beautiful than the female figures. Plutarch in Alcibiades’ Life states that the artist Aristophon painted Nemea having Alcibiades on her lap.⁴⁷ Despite the different names quoted, both sources apparently refer to the same monument. Plutarch also describes the reactions of the Athenians to it: “The people were delighted and flocked to look at the picture. But the elders were offended at it, too. They thought it a sight fit for a tyrant’s court and an insult to the laws of Athens”. Plutarch aptly provides a political explanation for the offense taken by the elders of Athens. Indeed, Alcibiades’ decision to boast a private victory using personifications is the clearest 5^th-century example of the public use of art that was privately commissioned.⁴⁸

23Pausanias reports that during his time a painting representing a figure identified as Alcibiades and his victory at Nemea existed in the Pinacothece of the Propylaia.⁴⁹ He merely states that certain elements in the painting allude to Alcibiades’ victory in the Nemean Games. If he refers to the same image, then the painting was certainly on public display at the time of his visit. But even if the painting he saw was that of Alcibiades, the context of its original presentation is not clear.

24Did Alcibiades commission an image of himself to commemorate his equestrian victories? The dedication of paintings to commemorate victories is rare compared to other types of dedications; however, we know from the sources that Alcibiades had commissioned the painter Agatharchus to paint his house, thus he was a known lover of painting and affiliated with one of the great masters of his time.⁵⁰

25It seems plausible that Alcibiades commissioned the double painted pinax and originally placed it in his own house, for himself and his guests to enjoy, or in a temple or sanctuary associated with him and his family, rather than in a civic context. Civic space was reserved for images of gods and heroes, as well as for images related to the city and its victories. Yet, the reactions quoted in Plutarch, which allude to numbers of viewers, make it possible that it was displayed in a non-civic context but was available for public view. The pinax was later transferred to the Pinacothece of the Propylaia, when it was turned into a gallery. A personal commemoration of this sort would be fitting with the degree of self-presentation in the surviving speech quoted in Thucydides, as well as with the content of Euripides’ epinikion.

26The image of Alcibiades and Nemea described in the sources has been associated with the image of Aphrodite and Adonis on a hydria of the Medeas Painter dating to 420-410 BC.⁵¹ On the vase,⁵² which was found in a tomb in Populonia, the goddess Aphrodite and her lover Adonis sit in an idyllic landscape. Adonis reclines sensationally into the lap of Aphrodite, whereas Aphrodite caresses his nude torso. Shapiro has suggested that the image was inspired by Aglaophon’s painting and comes as close as we may get to an image of Alcibiades drafted in his own time.⁵³ In both cases, a goddess or personification holds a mortal in a somewhat erotic pose, in a reversal of typical roles. Moreover, the features of the male figure on the vase, such as the long and curly hair, extravagant headband and dreamy look, match Satyrus’ comment that Alcibiades’ face in the painting was more beautiful than that of any woman.⁵⁴ If this association is correct, we can understand why the Athenian elders were scandalized by Aglaophon’s painting. The image of Alcibiades crowned by a goddess, as well as the impact of his splurge at Olympia and his famous Oriental-style purple robes, would evoke the fear of his contemporaries that he has tyrannical aspirations.⁵⁵

27Could the relief base in the National Museum have supported the painted pinax of the sources? To begin with, a connection with Alcibiades is permissible by both date and iconography. The large number of horses displayed and the image of a self-crowning athlete on its damaged long face are in line with both Alcibiades’ love for horses and his tendency for self-promotion. The selection of a relief base per se is by no means standard practice in Athenian art, and this particular one, with its many horses, is certainly commissioned to meet the taste and needs of an individual keen to showcase his equestrian background and talent. The base’s unusual carving on all four faces suggests that it supported a monument that was meant to be visible from more than one side, like the double-faced pinax of the sources. Lastly, the off-centre placement of the cutting for the dedication on its top points to a special setting for the original display of the entire monument, possibly selected to provide ample light and a clear view of its decoration, as was often the case with paintings. Moreover, the motif of the self-crowning athlete shown on the base is in line with that of Alcibiades being crowned by Olympias and Pythias on the painted pinax, as well as the passage quoted as the epinician hymn.⁵⁶

28Would a relief base be employed as a support for a painted pinax? Judging by the types of monuments known to have been supported by relief bases, this is certainly not to be excluded. Painted pinakes were ordinarily done on pieces of wood, stone or terracotta, whereas the decoration could be rendered in tempera on a surface prepared with white paint or chalk.⁵⁷ This base could well have supported a marble pinax that was painted on two sides, taking into consideration the need for proper viewing and, thus, opting for a special off-centred placement of the monument.

29If these associations are correct, this weathered relief base may well be part of an original dedication by Alcibiades that testifies to his love of horses, the role of horses for his public image and political career, as well as his determination to leave behind him an impression of power.