"Grant them," you pray in Pindar's
own words, grant them with feet so light to pass through life!"
The face of the young man, as you see him in the British Museum for
instance, with fittingly inexpressive expression, (look into, look at
the curves of, the blossom-like cavity of the opened mouth) is
beautiful, but not altogether virile. The eyes, the facial lines
which they gather into one, seem ready to follow the coming motion of
the discus as those of an onlooker might be; [289] but that head does
not really belong to the discobolus. To be assured of this you have
but to compare with that version in the British Museum the most
authentic of all derivations from the original, preserved till lately
at the Palazzo Massimi in Rome. Here, the vigorous head also, with
the face, smooth enough, but spare, and tightly drawn over muscle and
bone, is sympathetic with, yields itself to, the concentration, in
the most literal sense, of all beside;--is itself, in very truth, the
steady centre of the discus, which begins to spin; as the source of
will, the source of the motion with which the discus is already on
the wing,--that, and the entire form.
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