Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art by Walter Woodburn Hyde

2. Kylon, of Athens.[2444] Pausanias records that a bronze statue of

this victor stood upon the Athenian Akropolis, erected, as he supposes, in honor of his beauty and reputation as an Olympic victor (I, 28.1). Kylon was the leader of the well-known conspiracy of 632 B. C., when he tried to make himself tyrant of Athens.[2445] Furtwaengler has proposed the theory that this monument was not set up in honor of Kylon by the Athenians, as Pausanias says, but that it was a dedication by his family after his Olympic victory.[2446] A. Schaefer,[2447] however, more justly believed that the statue was an expiatory offering for the massacre of Kylon’s companions on the Akropolis,[2448] set up in the time of Perikles, the date of which would account for the “beauty” of the statue. Still another scholar[2449] believes that Pausanias’ remark was called forth by the epigram on the statue.[2450]