A lost bronze athlete

You crafted voice of marble, tell me true:
Who set this statue here to glorify
Apollo’s altar? Panamyes, he,
Casbōllis’ son, and if you press for more,
It was the tenth such gifted to his store.

Hansen CEG 429, a verse incription from the stone base of a bronze statue, early fifth BC. The base was found built into the city wall of Halicarnassus; the statue, like so many, will have been melted down. Its metal has wandered through centuries of coins, cannons and cooking-pots, and an odd atom of it may be within spitting-distance of you right now.

 Donald Lavigne writes compellingly about this dedicatory poem and how it evokes and interacts with the statue's surroundings in the temple precinct:

 This opening up of the context, the placement of this statue and its two voices into an implied dialogue with the other monuments there suggests the importance of the relationship between the dedications as a whole—a this implies a that. It is not one dedication, but many, that actualizes the power of and honor due to the god.  Similarly, Panamyes gains honor from his individual dedication, but also, through association and competition with those other great men of Halicarnassus who are sure to have left their mark there as well.  The context actualizes the honor of the god hinted at in the epigram, which itself focuses upon the honor of Panamyes; but, both external and internal honorand are inseparable and mutually reinforcing.

The Carian-named Panamyes son of Casbōllis went on to some kind of role as an official witness (Mnēmōn or 'Remembrancer') for his city; he is named on the contemporary 'Lygdamis Decree' stele, discussed by Edwin Carawan in a chapter of a volume edited by E. Anne Mackay (BMCR review here). Apollo was again the beneficiary, this time of the entire worldly goods of on any party who broke the terms of the agreement thereby promulgated. You can read an English translation of the decree here.