An even more striking change will be seen in the muscles of the abdomen. With us a young, well-proportioned man has usually a depression just above the iliac ridge, and the iliac line descending from the hips to the top of the legs makes only a slight inward curve. In the Greek body we see a firm roll of flesh lying just above the iliac crest, the iliac line running beneath it for a short distance inwards in a horizontal direction, and then bending downwards at an obtuse or sometimes almost a right-angle.
Of this plain fact two explanations are possible. Either the ancient sculptors wilfully falsified their models’ contours in the interests of ideal beauty, or else this difference between the ancient and modern abdomen really did exist. The first explanation is highly improbable considering the Greeks’ artistic conscience, and furthermore in their statues of women no trace of this horizontal iliac line is ever apparent. The only reasonable inference is that these muscles, which with us are so undeveloped as to be invisible, were the result of the constant physical training to which the Greek man, but not the Greek woman, was habituated.
In an artistic sense there can be no doubt as to the excellent effect which the ancient line produces. It gives proportion and an air of solidity and greatly diminishes the superficial area of the abdomen. And that it represented a real condition rather than an artistic ideal is a very probable fact, for the statues of Greek athletes often represent positions which for us with our weak abdomens are almost impossible of attainment. One of the most perfect of all, Myron’s Diskobolos--the young athlete throwing the diskos--seemed to Herbert Spencer ‘an impossible contortion’; and after a close examination of its poise he declared that at the next moment--if the action were continued--it would fall upon its nose. It is quite possible that such a regrettable accident would have been the result if our revered philosopher had attempted to perform the movement, but the muscles of the Greek body, properly trained and hardened, found in it no insuperable difficulty.
The movement that Myron represents is the swing back of the diskos. The athlete has already taken his stance, and with left foot forward has extended the diskos horizontally to the front in his right hand. Then comes the decisive action: the whole weight of the body is transferred to the right foot, whose toes grip the ground at full tension; the left foot trails back, offering no resistance either to the pause or the coming momentum; the body swings round upon the fixed pivot of the right foot. The diskos held in the right hand comes downwards and backwards; head and body turn with it; the next moment the body will swing round again with a forward lift and the diskos will fly from the extended hand. Whether the force of the throw relies entirely upon the lift of the thighs and the swing of the body, or upon the arm alone, swinging rapidly in a free shoulder socket, will depend upon the weight of the diskos used. In either case it is the pause at the end of the backward swing that the sculptor has fixed in the bronze.