Funerary monument for an athlete

Carved in profile on a tall, rectangular stone shaft, or stele, this standing young man is represented as a gifted athlete. He is nude, as was the Greek custom during training and competition. The youth's pronounced musculature, especially evident in his arms and legs, attests to his high level of fitness. His head is crowned with an olive wreath, an honor bestowed upon victors at games such as those at Olympia and Athens. A small oil flask (aryballos), decorated with floral and geometric designs in low relief, dangles from a strap clenched in his right hand, alluding to the practice among Greek athletes of applying oil to clean and moisten the body before exercising. Two pomegranates held overhead in his left hand might be gifts from an admirer (athletes were widely adored for their beauty) but also carry Underworld connotations befitting the funerary function of the stele; this fruit, filled with seeds, commonly symbolized fertility as well, and its appearance here could imply that the youth's life ended before he reached manhood.Although said to come from Thebes in Boiotia, this representation of a youthful athlete once belonged to an imposing grave monument of a type popular among elite Athenian families. The shaft, reconstructed from five original marble fragments to a height of about 2.1 meters (7 feet), would have been capped by a decorative element, possibly a sphinx. Two letters of an inscription are preserved on the shaft above the head, probably indicating that the name of the deceased began with the letters theta omicron ("Tho . . . "). Stelai carved with nude youths are the counterpart of freestanding statues, known as kouroi, which were commonly erected as funerary monuments by Greeks during the Archaic period. Rather than individualized likenesses, both forms of sculpted representations present generic, highly idealized images of men in their physical prime. Embodying the ancient Greek ideal of arete (excellence), these images, which commemorated the dead, were intended to inspire the living.