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Sufficient examples of the process of assimilation have now been given to prove that it was not an uncommon device of the ancient sculptor and to show the difficulty of distinguishing between types of gods and athletes.

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Plates 8–21 and Figures 9–31.

We have seen816 that it was a very old custom in Greece to dedicate statues of victors at the great national games to the god in whose honor the games were held. On many sites, especially at Olympia, tiny statuettes of clay or bronze of very primitive technique have been found in great numbers, which represent victors in many attitudes and ways—as horsemen, warriors, charioteers, etc. By the sixth century B.C. this ancient custom, as we learn from literary, epigraphical, and monumental sources, had developed, with the rapid progress attained by the sculptor’s art, into the regular practice of erecting life-size statues of athletes at the site of the games or in the native city of the victor. Especially at Olympia hundreds of such monuments were gradually collected, whose numbers and beauty must have exerted an overwhelming impression on the visitor to the Altis. We shall now begin the consideration of these monuments in detail.