“To you, Artemis, Phileratis made this dedication; accept her gift, goddess, and be her salvation.”
(Callimachus, Epigram 33)The colors with which Archaic kouroi and korai were originally decorated undoubtedly served to
enhance their life-like appearance and will have contributed to their function as, virtually, an abstract
representation of vitality. For this reason, they were appropriately used as grave markers, as an
indication, not of who the deceased was or what he or she looked like, but of the vital energy that the
deceased now lacked. Alternatively, kouroi and korai were set up in the sanctuary of a deity as a
dedicatory offering. Again, the statue does not particularize the dedicator, although an inscription may
specify who dedicated the statue. In fact, the inscription in some instances makes it clear that a given kore
was dedicated by a man, so that the statue cannot be seen as being a representation of the dedicator. Nor
can it be a representation of the deity to whom it is dedicated. For, although korai are generally dedicated
to female deities and kouroi generally to male, in the same way that goddesses are generally served by
female priests and gods by male, there are enough exceptions that this cannot be taken as an absolute rule.
In any event, the kouroi and korai are lacking the attributes that would identify them with a particular
deity. The one attribute that korai, but not kouroi, have is the dedicatory offering that they hold out to the
deity in their right hand. In most instances, as in figure 25, the extended right forearm of the kore has been
broken off; in the few cases where the offering survives it is a piece of fruit, usually a pomegranate, or a
small animal, either a bird or a hare. A kore is, therefore, a life-like representation of a mortal making an
offering to a god, which representation is itself an offering by a mortal to a god. Its permanence marks a
contrast with the ephemeral character of the mortal dedicator and of the perishable object offered to the
deity by the kore. Therefore, whether the statue is used as a grave marker or as a votive offering, its
(fictive) vitality marks a contrast either with the lifeless state of the deceased or with the everlasting life
of the deity.
We have spent so much time discussing kouroi and korai both because of their importance in the history of
Western art and because they relate particularly well to a number of the features that we have seen to be
characteristic of the Archaic Period. The polis form of society that was taking shape in the Archaic
Period encouraged free public expression but necessitated a tempering of individual ambition. These
statues of generic yet highly attractive and youthful citizens allowed families to memorialize their loved
ones in conspicuous fashion and allowed individuals to display their pious devotion to the god without
erecting portrait statues that might vie with the cult statues of the gods for individuality. Further, these
statues were erected either in communal cemeteries or in communal sanctuaries, both of which arose in
conjunction with the development of the polis. And, like the oriental influences seen in the poetry of
Hesiod and the adoption of the Phoenician writing system, these sculptures represent characteristically
Greek modifications of imports from non-Greek cultures, in this case the appropriation and transformation
of iconography derived from Egypt. Part of that transformation took the form of removing the (minimal)
clothing worn by the pharaoh and exposing the kouros in a state of total nudity, which, as we have seen, is
the state in which men trained for and competed in the athletic contests in the Panhellenic games, yet
another product of the Archaic Period.
“Stop and grieve at the monument for Croesus, now departed. He died in the front ranks of battle,
slain by furious Ares.” (Inscription from the base of a kouros in the National Archaeological
Museum, Athens, ca. 530 BC)The Greek acceptance of (male) nudity in public statuary and at the public games has been the subject of a