Greek Ideal as Hyperreal: Greco-Roman Sculpture and the Athletic Male Body

Abstract

Two rooms over from the highly frequented Parthenon Frieze in the British Museum stands a Greco-Roman sculpture of an athletic male youth (fig. 1).1 This sculpture has a museum plaque that gives visitors little information beyond what they might be able to observe for themselves. The plaque simply reads “God or Athlete.” In contrast to the vast amounts of historical information and political debate that surround the famous Parthenon frieze, one might be disappointed not to learn any specific historical or contextual information for this particular sculpture.2 Yet, the indecisive title of this piece may be taken as a case in point for the complexities involved with the Greek visual legacy of the male body. On the one hand, the title “God or Athlete”