NARRATOR: Leaning on one leg, a nude bronze man lifts two fingers to his head. Is he waving? Beckoning you closer? Perhaps he is thinking, scratching his head at a puzzling thought. Follow his fingers; they point towards a clue. Nestled in the thick waves of his hair is an olive wreath---now missing its slender leaves---which were awarded to the victors of the Olympic games.

MUSIC: [triumphant music]
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In Ancient Greece, athletes were typically depicted nude. This athlete has a lean physique with long slender legs and taut abdominals. As you walk around his body, you might notice that he isn't incredibly buff. The soft modelling of his body, paired with his round cheeks, suggests that this athlete is young.

This young athlete lifts his hand to remove his olive wreath and dedicate it to the gods in an act of tribute. The Olympic games were held in honor of the god Zeus, and statues of Olympic victors were erected at the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia. This bronze athlete was made over two millennia ago---between 300 and 150 B.C.---and would have stood on this sacred hill amidst a sea of statues, hundreds in fact.

Few bronze statues survive from Olympia, as many were destroyed or melted down and repurposed. This athlete is one of a handful of life-size bronze statues, and was preserved, for many years, underwater.

SOUND EFFECTS: [starting at port, we hear the sounds of the ship leaving, a big storm hits]

He was wrenched from a stone base---evident by his severed ankles---and placed on a ship to Italy. The ship wrecked in a storm and sank, with its cargo, to the bottom of the Adriatic Sea.

SOUND EFFECTS: [sound of heavy object sinking in water]

There, for centuries, the athlete waited underwater.

SOUND EFFECTS: [large, deep bubbles]

Slowly, the golden bronze of his skin turned brown and green from the saltwater. His copper nipples lost their shine, and his eyes---once made of ivory or glass---washed away. Over time, he became home to a number of tiny sea-creatures.

SOUND EFFECTS: [distant ship horn, sounds of men yelling, hoisting, splash of an object emerging from water]

In the early 1960s, by chance, a group of fishermen hauled the bronze athlete from the waters of the Adriatic. Though the sea altered his appearance, it also provided shelter, as it was the only way this bronze statue has survived for so long. Now, his triumph is that he is one of few ancient Greek bronze sculptures left in the world.