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The Motya Youth: Apollo Karneios, Art, and Tyranny in theGreek WestJohn K. PapadopoulosPublished online: 31 Dec 2014.

To cite this article: John K. Papadopoulos (2014) The Motya Youth: Apollo Karneios, Art, and Tyranny in the Greek West, The ArtBulletin, 96:4, 395-423, DOI: 10.1080/00043079.2014.916559

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The Motya Youth: Apollo Karneios, Art, and Tyrannyin the Greek West

John K. Papadopoulos

Since its discovery in October 1979, the Motya—or Mozia—Youth has garnered a good deal of discussion and debate.Few statues of the Classical period have had such an impacton both Classical Greek and Phoenician studies more gener-ally, and few ancient sculptures had such a spectacular entryin the art historical, archaeological, and even philologicalbibliography of the later twentieth century. In his permanenthome in the Museo Giuseppe Whitaker (inv. no. 4310) onthe islet of Motya, the slightly over-life-size statue standsto a preserved height of 71¼ inches (181 centimeters)(Figs. 1–4). Much of the basic information, not least its con-text, was presented, together with a variety of interpretationsregarding the sculpture, in a Giornata di Studio (Study Day) in1986 (published in 1988).1 The results, coupled with laterstudies, have established a general consensus on at least oneaspect of the statue: the circumstances of its discovery indi-cate that the youth must have been carved in the course ofthe fifth century BCE, as it was found in a context sealed bythe Syracusan capture of the island in 397 BCE, and its styleprecludes a sixth century BCE or earlier date.2 Most scholarsconsequently date the statue to the period between about480 and 450 BCE.3 Stylistically, there is much to commendthe decade between 470 and 460 BCE for the creation of theMotya Youth, although a date as early as 480–477 cannot becategorically dismissed (see App.).

Far less consensus governs its interpretation, more particu-larly, the identity of the figure. The number of differentinterpretations of the youth’s identity proposed since 1979 isstaggering, and this has only added to the allure of whatmust be the finest extant example of early fifth-century BCEfreestanding stone sculpture in the Greek world. Yet, for allthe discussion, the statue displays one feature that has beeneither completely overlooked or never adequately addressedby all scholars who have written on it: the idiosyncratic treat-ment of the head. There are five holes on top of the head,one substantial, four smaller, some preserving traces of cop-per or bronze pins. Any interpretation of the statue—new orold—has to take these holes into consideration.

What the holes demand is that the figure was wearing onhis head something far more substantial than anything hith-erto suggested. The ramifications of these holes on art, initia-tion, performance, and politics in Sicily and the Greek Westin the early Classical period were profound.

The Many Identities of the Motya Youth

The statue was first identified as a charioteer by Paola Zan-cani Montuoro,4 an interpretation that was soon reaffirmedby a number of scholars, many of whom see it as representingeither a tyrant of Syracuse or Akragas as charioteer, or a victo-rious athlete (Xenokrates, Nikomachos). In either case, theGreekness of the statue was stressed.5 By the mid-1990s, twosynthetic works on the youth had appeared, one by Malcolm

Bell III, the other by Carlo Odo Pavese.6 Little can be addedto these two overviews, particularly that by Bell, who reaf-firmed the figure as an original Greek work and offered abrilliant narrative reconstruction based on Pindar’s victoryode Isthmian 2, which makes the statue a monument celebrat-ing the chariot victory of the horse breeder Xenokrates ofAkragas, at the Isthmian games for Poseidon, probably in476 BCE. Xenokrates died in Athens in 474 BCE shortly afterhis victory at the Panathenaia, leaving it to his charioteer, theAthenian Nikomachos, to return his ashes, his horses, andhis entourage to Sicily.7 Moreover, Bell boldly asked—fullycognizant of the dearth of evidence—after the identity of thesculptor, and pointed to the Athenian Kalamis as a likelyfigure.8

Following in the footsteps of Bell, R. R. R. Smith, in an arti-cle on athletic statues and Pindar, also sees the youth as acharioteer, and he goes on to speculate that he “might repre-sent a champion driver of the kind who achieved a big name,wealth, and mentions in poetry,” but cautions that there isno need to choose a precise name.9 From the style of thestatue, Smith deduces two things: first, the figure was a self-sufficient statue-monument: an independent figure, theraised right hand adjusting his victory crown or helmet. Sec-ond, the prominent musculature shows a youthful, hard-trained athlete, “with all the excellence (arete) of characterand body of a champion contestant: discipline, poise, hardwork, good breeding are all on display.”10 As we shall see,such arete is not exclusive to charioteers. More important,however, Smith adds a significant dimension to the contextof the youth, arguing that both the material record and theliterary record attest a strong Greek presence on Motya inthe fifth century BCE.11 Consequently, the Motya Youth“might be a monument of or for a local resident (a Greekmore likely than a Phoenician, but not certainly) whoacquired fame, fortune, and aristocratic pretensions drivingin the games of Greece.”12 Smith is careful to add that this isonly a hypothesis, favoring it over the more common inter-pretation that the statue arrived as booty from the Carthagi-nian sack of one of the Greek cities in 406 and 405 BCE—such as Selinunte, Himera, Akragas, Gela—to which I willreturn.An alternative line of reasoning saw the youth as Punic or

Phoenician and—whether or not it was carved by a Greekor Punic artist—either a deity such as Melqart or Melqart/Herakles, a Carthaginian hero, or a king/suffete, like Hamil-kar.13 These interpretations challenge the concept that theyouth is a charioteer, with Nina Bode’s reconstruction of thestatue as an archer—albeit Hamilkar as archer—or WernerFuchs’s view of the figure as a Punic hero or peltast (lightlyarmed infantryman) among the most noteworthy.14 ThePunic pedigree of the youth was most fully examined byAnna Maria Bisi.15 Whether the Motya Youth is Greek or

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Phoenician/Punic, it is clear that the marble used for it wasfrom the Aegean island of Paros.16

These were not the only interpretations of the MotyaYouth. Sandro Stucchi, for instance, saw the figure as the leg-endary Greek craftsman Daidalos—or Ikaros—who flew toSicily, reconstructing him with wings, whereas Enrico Pari-beni preferred to see a transvestite god or hero, perhaps

Achilles on Skyros, while another interpretation, one balanc-ing the “Greek” and “Punic” positions, saw the subject asGelon of Syracuse.17 Of these, Paribeni’s interpretationbrought to the fore the blatant sexuality of the figure,emphasized by his genital bulge and visible physique, andthis was followed by a number of scholars who identified thefigure as a transvestite dancer or as an actor.18 The latter ideahas been recently brought to the fore by Marco Santucci,who argues that the statue shows a youth dressed in woman’sclothing for initiation: something of an oxymoron, intendedto represent a “real” (if ritual) case of transvestism.19 WhereSmith finds in the musculature of the Motya Youth a hard-trained athlete, Santucci sees a soft and effeminate transves-tite. Neither scholar explains the holes on the head.20

1 The Motya Youth, variously dated between ca. 480 and 450BCE, white Parian marble, height 71¼ in. (181 cm). MuseoGiuseppe Whitaker, Mozia, I.G. 4310 (artwork in the publicdomain; photograph by Tahnee Cracchiola, provided by theJ. Paul Getty Museum, Villa Collection, Malibu, Calif., courtesyRegione Siciliana, Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identit�aSiciliana)

2 The Motya Youth. Museo Giuseppe Whitaker, Mozia, I.G.4310 (artwork in the public domain; photograph by TahneeCracchiola, provided by the J. Paul Getty Museum, VillaCollection, Malibu, Calif., courtesy Regione Siciliana,Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identit�a Siciliana)

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The two strongest arguments identifying the statue as acharioteer both have to do with the costume worn by theyouth: the first is the ankle-length chiton poderos or xystis; thesecond, the broad band wound twice around the chest.21

The two holes at the center of the band in front are normallythought to be for a metal bow/tie or something similar.22

For Bell, “the chest-band clinches the identification of thesculpture’s subject as a charioteer.”23 As for the xystis(ξystί&)—a robe of rich and soft material reaching to thefeet—it could be worn by both women and prominent men,especially by victorious charioteers. It could serve as a robe of

state, but, more important for our purposes, it could also beworn by musicians and performers, on both the tragic andcomic stage.24 It is precisely this type of garment, minus thechest band, that is worn by both Alkaios and Sappho, Greeklyric poets, on the celebrated Athenian red-figure kalathoidkrater—variously attributed to the Brygos Painter or theDokimasia Painter—originally from Akragas (Fig. 5).25 Con-sequently, although the xystis is a robe often worn by

3 The Motya Youth. Museo Giuseppe Whitaker, Mozia, I.G.4310 (artwork in the public domain; photograph by TahneeCracchiola, provided by the J. Paul Getty Museum, VillaCollection, Malibu, Calif., courtesy Regione Siciliana,Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identit�a Siciliana) 4 The Motya Youth. Museo Giuseppe Whitaker, Mozia, I.G.

4310 (artwork in the public domain; photograph by TahneeCracchiola, courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum, VillaCollection, Malibu, Calif., courtesy Regione Siciliana,Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identit�a Siciliana)

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charioteers, it is not exclusive to them, nor is it gender spe-cific. Even the garment worn by the well-known Delphi Chari-oteer (Fig. 6)—a statue near in date to the Motya Youth—isa thick robe, not the diaphanous drapery of the Motyastatue.26

If anything, the Motya Youth’s attire more closely resem-bles the transparent, “wet-look” drapery used for various fig-ures at the birth of Aphrodite on the Ludovisi Throne.27

Moreover, charioteers in antiquity were dressed for speed,and their long, heavy robes—like the leather jackets worn bymodern bikers—were well suited for the vicissitudes and dan-gers of the chariot race. The transparent xystis of the MotyaYouth is not the typical long, thick garment worn by chariot-eers, although some diaphanous depictions of drapery areknown on charioteers. Representations of bona fide chariot-eers from Classical antiquity where the genital bulge of thedriver can be perceived through his garment are exceedinglyrare, appearing only on a handful of Sicilian coins.28 Anotherdifference between the Motya Youth and the Delphi Chariot-eer is that the garment worn by the latter has sleeves; the xys-tis worn by the Motya Youth has no sleeves whatsoever, andthe very top of the shoulder straps is marked by cross-hatchedlines, indicating that the fabric at this point may have beenstrengthened by stitches.29 Moreover, there is a thin striprunning the vertical length of the Motya Youth’s garment

below the chest band, on the right side of the statue, that ter-minates at the rich folds of drapery at the bottom of the xystis(visible in Fig. 2), and which does not appear to extendabove the chest band; there is no such strip on the garmentworn by the Delphi Charioteer.As for the band around the chest, many charioteers do not

wear one, including the Delphi Charioteer, although he doeshave straps that extend from the shoulders to the armpits,crossing over at the back (Figs. 6, 7). Some representationsof charioteers show bands worn at chest height under thearms, especially on a series of Sicilian silver tetradrachmsfrom the 460s to the end of the fifth century BCE; some ofthese bands are narrow, others considerably wider than that

6 The Delphi Charioteer, part of a bronze chariot groupdedicated by a ruler of Gela and (later) by Polyzalos of Gela atDelphi, for a victory either in 478 or 474 BCE, height 70⅞ in.(180 cm). Delphi Museum (artwork in the public domain;photograph by Hans Rupprecht Goette)

5 Attributed to the Brygos Painter or the Dokimasia Painter,Red-figure kalathoid krater, depicting (side A), Alkaios andSappho, from Akragas, ca. 475 BCE, height 20⅝ in. (52.5 cm).Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich, SH 2416 WAF (artworkin the public domain; photograph by Renate K€uhling, providedby Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek, Munich)

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worn by the Motya Youth.30 But the vast majority of Archaicand Classical representations of charioteers, especially inAttic black- and red-figure pottery, show a more commonbelt or band worn around the waist, rather than the chest,just like that worn by the Delphi Charioteer.31 Althoughboth George Dontas and Eugenio La Rocca speculated thatthe band worn by the Motya Youth was intended to protectthe charioteer’s chest, Bell is surely correct when he statesthat the general purpose of the chest band, like the waistband, was “to secure the abundant material of the chiton andprevent it from interfering with the crucial movements of thecharioteer’s arms.”32 As we shall see, charioteers are not theonly figures to wear a xystis who perform critical action, espe-cially complex arm movements.

A key difference between the Motya Youth and DelphiCharioteer is that the latter is clearly holding the reins of thehorses and standing in a chariot, his columnlike lower bodyelongated out of proportion in order to raise his upper bodyclear of the chariot sides, particularly when seen from below(Fig. 6).33 Fragments of the bronze horses of a chariot teamare preserved at Delphi, and the charioteer is holding thereins, while no such accompanying fragments of a chariot orhorses—in whatever material—were found with the MotyaYouth. As the lack of the actual chariot and horses may wellbe due to the circumstances of preservation and excavation,it does not constitute an argument either for or against hisidentity as a charioteer.

More telling, however, is that in one of the few reconstruc-tions (by Pavese) of the Motya Youth standing in the car of afour-horse chariot, a crucial and much discussed aspect ofthe youth—his prominent sexuality, not least the genitalbulge beneath the drapery—is completely obscured fromview.34 Nikolaos Stampolidis does away with this obviousproblem by noting the possibility that the Motya Youth mayhave been standing in front of a chariot, with his horsesbeside him.35 Stampolidis further compares the Motya Youthwith the figure of Oinomaos—the “charioteer” par excel-lence—on the east pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olym-pia, whose right arm is bent, his hand on his hip, not unlikethe left arm of the Motya Youth.36 By rearranging the figuresto place Pelops on the right of Zeus and Oinomaos on theleft (as seen in Fig. 8), which agrees with Pausanias’s descrip-tion of the chariot race in which they competed, Stampolidisconcludes that their outstretched arms—rather than holdingstaffs or spears, as often restored—were holding the reins ofthe horses.37 The beauty of Stampolidis’s reconstruction ofthe pediment is the fact that the horses are there in all theirglory.

In a more recent presentation in April 2013, CaterinaGreco returned to the idea that the Motya Youth may bePelops, the mythical charioteer and native of Anatolia (Lydiaor Phrygia), who gave his name to the Peloponnese.38 Withthe aid of Poseidon, Pelops defeated Oinomaos in a chariotrace, in which the latter was killed, and in so doing Pelopswon the hand of Hippodamia, the daughter of Oinomaos.There is much to recommend this interpretation: Pelops’sname is associated with the Olympic Games as their firstfounder and with chariot racing.39 But if the Motya Youth isPelops—or any charioteer—the holes on top of the headremain unexplained.40

Both Pelops and Oinomaos in the Olympia pediment haveone arm raised: Pelops the right, Oinomaos the left. In a sim-ilar vein, the Motya Youth has his right arm raised. As AndrewStewart pointed out, such a stance is “inappropriate for acharioteer,” and he suggested that the right arm of the youthperhaps held a scepter, torch, or ritual staff, more appropri-ate for the Phoenician god Melqart or a Punic priest or nota-ble.41 Beyond this observation, what was once in the righthand of the Motya Youth remains unknown. In Pavese’sreconstruction, already noted, the youth’s raised right arm isbent holding a victory wreath above his head, but doubtshave been cast on restoring such an item.42

In the most recent published study of the Motya Youth,Olga Palagia agrees that the youth was not standing in a char-iot and instead argues that his stance indicates that he waspart of a sculptural group that had nothing to do with char-iots or charioteers. In maintaining that the youth wore a hel-met and held a spear, she returns to an older argument, inwhich the long robe is seen as a priestly garment. She identi-fies the figure as a seer who was part of a sculptural groupdedicated by none other than Gelon, the tyrant of Syracuse,to commemorate his victory over the Carthaginians at theBattle of Himera in 480 BCE.43 She compares the drapery tothat seen in various Parian reliefs and attributes the sculptureto an itinerant Parian workshop.44 Palagia also compares thechest band worn by the Motya Youth to the distinctive Assyr-ian belt often worn by military figures on Assyrian reliefs.45

Although I am in general agreement with Palagia’s argu-ments for the chronology of the Motya Youth—and in fullagreement with calling the statue a youth, not a charioteer—I am less convinced by her interpretation of him as a seer,wearing priestly garb but also a helmet and holding a spear.Moreover, the “Assyrian” belt was invariably worn around the

7 The Delphi Charioteer, detail of the back (artwork in thepublic domain; photograph by the author)

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waist, not the upper torso, often securing a dagger, and usu-ally shows a different form and decoration.Like all other scholars who have written on the youth, Pala-

gia does not address the full significance of the holes andcopper/copper-alloy pins on the head: If the youth was wear-ing a helmet, then why five holes on his head? As for what hewas holding in his upraised right hand, rather than focusingon what he may or may not have held, I prefer to see the rightarm and hand raised in order to support whatever was on hishead that required so many attachment holes and copper orbronze pins. In order to determine what may have been inhis raised right hand, we must turn to his head.

The Head of the Motya Youth

Prior to a new installation of the Motya Youth designed at theJ. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California, the statue was sup-ported, counterintuitively, by its head, as in the GoulandrisMuseum of Cycladic Art in Athens for the 2004 Olympics(Fig. 9). More recently, while on exhibit in the BritishMuseum, London, as a presumed charioteer—and, thus, anathlete appropriate for the Olympic Games of 2012—his pri-mary means of support was by his head (Fig. 10). On view inthe center of the Duveen Gallery together with the Parthe-non marbles, he is one of the few statues that could be placedin such distinguished company and not only hold his ownbut shine. A closer look at the head, together with the holesand associated copper or copper-alloy pins, suggests that theyouth must have worn something more substantial on hishead than (as has been proposed) a meniskos or helmet.46

More important, any interpretation has to take these holesinto account.As Bell noted, the sculptor of the Motya Youth “was more

interested in the face than the hair.”47 Yet the treatment ofthe crown of the head of the youth is one of the most intrigu-ing, if not surprising aspects of the figure; it has received agood deal of discussion. Ursula Knigge was the first to call

8 Central group of the east pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, before 457 BCE, with the youthful Pelops to Zeus’s right andOinomaos to the left (artwork in the public domain; photograph John Hios/akg-images and Thames and Hudson)

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9 The Motya Youth as displayed in the Goulandris Museum ofCycladic Art, Athens, in 2004 (artwork in the public domain;photograph by Hans Rupprecht Goette)

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attention to the fact that the “hairstyle,” if we may call it that,of the Motya Youth was remarkably similar to that of the mar-ble head of a Severe style statue from the Athenian Keramei-kos, which was discovered in 1978.48 On the Kerameikoshead, as on the head of the Motya Youth, a ring of beads rep-resents locks of hair, roughly carved, which border thesmoothly picked cranium that lacks any indication of hair.49

While Knigge and others explained this surface as picked tocarry some form of bronze head covering, such as a helmet,Bell understood it as a very real hairstyle fashionable at theend of the sixth and in the early fifth century BCE.50 Bellgoes on to assemble an impressive array of sculpted heads ofthe period before and after 500 BCE, together with headspainted on Athenian red-figure pottery of the PioneerGroup, which he sees as representing a shaven scalp, part ofa deliberate hairstyle.51 He remarks that a “youthful hairstylecombining a shaved scalp or very short locks with more deco-rative longer ones seems less improbable today than it mighthave a few years ago.”52 It is clear, however, that the head ofthe Motya Youth is not shaved but a surface roughly workeddown intentionally to accommodate some form of headdress,indicated by the five holes for attachment on the head.53 Thiswas made clear by Stampolidis in his careful study of theMotya Youth undertaken when the statue was in Athens; hisdescription of the head and raised right arm is critical to anyunderstanding of the figure (Figs. 11, 12):

. . . the right arm of the Youth of Mozia—as one can tellfrom the outline of the surviving part of the top of thearm, the shoulder muscles, the muscles in the armpit andthe groove above the break in the arm—was raised slightlyabove the horizontal and was probably bent at the elbowwith the forearm angled back to the head at a point aboveand behind the ear: this supposition seems to be sup-ported by the fact that the surface of the double knots of

hair at that point is only roughly worked in comparisonwith the more smoothly-finished locks at the correspond-ing point on the left side. In the same places (above theear on both sides) careful inspection reveals a small patchof smooth stone standing well above the level of theroughly-worked hair. It looks as if this smooth raised areawas not deliberately left like that by the sculptor to protectthe carving of the ears, but rather that it probably cameinto being when, for various reasons that need not con-cern us here, the original smooth surface of the crown ofthe head was roughly worked down to a lower level.54

Even if the youth had a shaved head framed by a rim ofcurls, then what are the five holes doing on the crown of hishead? These holes, some of which still hold copper/bronzepins or pegs (Figs. 11–13), compromise not only the idea ofa shaved head but also the very interpretation of the figure asa charioteer. As Bell describes them:

Bronze pins were inserted into the surface of the headabove the row of snailshells, at the two, five, seven, and teno’clock positions, when twelve is at the front; the lowerpair of these at the back was set at a greater distance fromthe band of snailshells, just above the maximum diameterof the cranium. . . .These holes are placed approximatelyin the same tilted plane. The bronze pins in the pair ofholes at the back are preserved to a length of two centi-meters, their outer ends bent down against the cranium;at the top the ends are either broken at the surface of thecranium (right side) or missing (left). At the crown of thehead is a larger hole, presumably for a meniskos.55

The larger central hole at the apex of the cranium was alsodiscussed by Gioacchino Falsone at the time of excavation.Having described the four smaller holes that accommodated

10 The Motya Youth as displayed in theBritish Museum, London, during the2012 Olympics, with the Parthenonfrieze behind (artwork in the publicdomain; photograph by Olga Palagia)

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some form of headgear (the two front holes, with traces ofmetal, have a diameter of 0.4 centimeters and depth of 2.4centimeters, while the bronze pins preserved in the two backholes measure 2 centimeters in length and 0.3 centimetersthick),56 Falsone describes a fifth, much larger and deeperhole at the center of the apex of the cranium (diameter 1.3,depth 7.2 centimeters).57 This larger hole at the top of thehead has served until today to stabilize the statue (Figs. 9,10). In examining this central hole at the Antiquities Conser-vation Department studio of the J. Paul Getty Museum inMalibu, Jerry Podany speculated, prior to the removal of themodern support stabilizing the statue, that this hole mayhave been enlarged by modern drilling to accommodatethe support at the top of the head. This is clearly not thecase, as current measurements (made in February 2013) agreewith those of Falsone recorded at the time of excavation(Figs. 14–16).

Stampolidis also put forward the idea that the “big hole atthe top of the head was probably for the attachment of a cres-cent-shaped covering (to protect the head of the statue frombirds) or something similar. . . . ”58 If the central hole wasindeed intended for a meniskos to keep away bird droppings,then why five holes? Virtually all of the examples of putativemeniskoi in Archaic and early Classical Greek sculpture wereattached to a single hole at the top of the head, never via onelarge hole with four smaller ones.59 Moreover, several schol-ars, especially Brunilde Ridgway, have rejected the idea ofmeniskoi as bird repellents, arguing instead that the metal

12 The Motya Youth, detail of the left side of the head (artworkin the public domain; photograph by Nikolaos Stampolidis)

13 The Motya Youth, detail of the back of the head showingholes with bent bronze pins/pegs (artwork in the publicdomain; photograph by Hans Rupprecht Goette)

11 The Motya Youth, detail of the right side of the head(artwork in the public domain; photograph by NikolaosStampolidis)

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attachments on the heads of Archaic sculpture should becompared to those of marble sphinxes, where remnants ofpaint and other devices indicate specific spikes, bars, pegs,and other metal attachments.60 She further asserts—withgood reason—that what is often understood as simplificationin the rendering of hair should, in fact, be seen as accommo-dating an elaborate head cover.

Not only are the five holes on the crown of the head of theMotya Youth crucial, but their placement is also significant.As Stampolidis reasons: “Both the workmanship of the holes,their relative positions and the presence of the metal insertsindicate that they were made for the attachment of someobject which probably weighed more heavily at the back ofthe head, partly because of the steep declivity there.”61 This,

coupled with the preserved musculature, as detailed by Stam-polidis, of the raised right arm, indicating that the forearmwas angled back to the head at a point above and behind theright ear, suggests that the right arm of the youth, as well as

14 The Motya Youth in the AntiquitiesConservation Department studio atthe J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu,February 6, 2013 (artwork in the publicdomain; photograph by the author)

15 The Motya Youth, detail of the top of the head showing themetal support by which the statue was stabilized, November 2012(artwork in the public domain; photograph by the author)

16 The Motya Youth, detail of the top of the head showing thecentral hole after the removal of the metal support, February 6,2013 (artwork in the public domain; photograph by the author)

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the metal pins, supported whatever was on the head. Thecombined evidence of the holes with their pins, the worked-down surface of the head, and the position of the right armwould seem to counter the conclusions that this was a victor’swreath, as reconstructed by Pavese, or a meniskos or helmet; itmust have been something considerably larger, heavier, andmore elaborate.

Kalathiskos Dancers at the Festival of Apollo Karneios and

Elsewhere

A critical clue as to what the Motya Youth may have beenwearing on his head is offered by one of the finest of allSouth Italian red-figure vases, the Lucanian volute kraterdepicting, on the lower register on one side, dancers beside apillar inscribed KAPNEIOS.62 The krater, the name vase ofthe Lucanian Karneia Painter, was found in a tomb at Cegliedel Campo and is now in the Taranto Museum (inv. no.8263).63 The tomb in which it was found also yielded a hydriain the manner of the Athenian Meidias Painter, so the con-text can be reasonably dated to the last decade of the fifthcentury BCE.64 In discussing the early Lucanian vase painterwho decorated the vase, Arthur Dale Trendall remarked thatthere “are perhaps some Meidian elements in the drapery,but on the whole the Attic artist to whose work it stands near-est is the Dinos Painter.”65 It was Sir John Beazley who con-nected the upper and lower registers. Having described thetwo registers, he concluded:

It is improbable, in a work of such magnificence, thatthere is no connection between the two ranges, and thewhole picture must surely be based on a votive pinax dedi-cated to Apollo and commemorating a successful celebra-tion of the Karneia. One may conjecture that thekalathiskos-dance was an original performance at the Kar-neia, and that dramatic performances were a later addi-tion to the programme.66

The questions of whether or not the two registers wereconnected and whether or not the upper register representsa satyr play are not central to my argument,67 but the lowerregister provides us with a vivid image, one of the very bestpreserved, of what have come to be known as “kalathiskosdancers” (Figs. 17–21). The term is a conventional one, thedance owing its name to Ludolf Stephani.68 Gloria Ferrarihas maintained that the kalathiskos worn by the dancers is nota basket—a kalathos in Greek—but a crown of rays, and thatthe dancers were youths in the guise of stars.69 Whether theheaddress is an elaborate basket or composed of star rays hasno bearing on my conclusions. In order to avoid confusion,however, I retain the term “kalathiskos” or “kalathiskosdance” here. Ferrari also cautions that the dance is not exclu-sively connected with either Apollo or Sparta and claims thatthe visual representations are rooted in Athenian artistic tra-dition, overstating the case, without citing compellingevidence.70

From left to right, the lower register on Taranto 8263shows a pillar with the inscription “Karneios,” then a nakedyouth wearing a headband and holding his kalathiskostoward another naked youth, who wears a different type ofheaddress (Figs. 18, 19);71 between them a louterion or peri-rrhanterion—a washing basin—signals a cultic context.There are, in fact, two types of headdress on the krater—Iam not sure we can call both kalathiskoi, or crowns of rays—one a larger, broader, and more elaborate type held by thefirst youth from the left and worn by the fifth and seventhyouths in line, which is a kalathiskos (Figs. 18, 20, 21).72 Theother, a smaller version, more like a crown, with multipleupright elements that appear to be flexible, is worn by thesecond and fourth youths (Figs. 19, 20). Arthur BernardCook refers to the smaller headdress as a “palm-leaf crown.”73

Ferrari calls the latter “a crown of spiky, curving elementsemanating from a headband.”74 The third figure in line isthe aulos player (Fig. 19), dressed in a manner almost

17 Name vase of the Karneia Painter,volute krater, from Ceglie del Campo,last decade of the 5th century BCE,height 28⅜ in. (72 cm). MuseoNazionale, Taranto, I. G. 8263 (artworkin the public domain; photographcourtesy Hirmer Verlag, Munich,courtesy Soprintendenza per i BeniArcheologici della Puglia-Taranto)

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identical to the figure of the Boiotian aulos player Pronomos,on the celebrated name vase of the Pronomos Painter, nowin the Museo Nazionale Archeologico, Naples, made inAthens and of approximately the same date as Taranto8263.75 On the Pronomos vase the musician is seated, playinghis aulos; on Taranto 8263 he holds his aulos in his left hand,his phorbeia in his right.76

The fourth and fifth figures represent a group actuallydancing or, rather, practicing for the dance (Fig. 20). Thefourth figure is naked and wears the smaller, crownlike head-dress, the fifth is shown in action, swirling—dervishlike—with ballooning drapery and wearing the large kalathiskos. Itis the gender of this latter figure that is all-important: Beazleyrefers to the twirling figure as a woman, but Cook assumes itis a boy “dressed as a girl.”77 The breasts are not clearly ren-dered, but it would be difficult to press this detail too far. Ifonly the drapery ballooned a little higher, exposing the geni-tals of the dancer, we might know for sure. The draped

dancing figure has long locks of hair, but so, too, does theseventh, naked, figure, who also wears a kalathiskos and isclearly male (Fig. 21), as does the aulos player, also male.Between them stands another young man, naked except fordrapery loosely held around his lower body, holding a staff.Cook refers to him as a “spectator,” Beazley calls him a“civilian.”78

There are many other representations of kalathiskosdancers, on numerous red-figured vases of the later fifth andfourth century BCE, as well as on architecture.79 More oftenthan not, the dancers are male and naked, sometimes accom-panied by an aulos player.80 Occasionally, they are accompa-nied by a draped figure that may be male or female, such asthe central figure wearing a short chiton flanked by two nudedancing youths on another Lucanian krater from Gnathia(Farsano), now in Leiden, the name vase of the KalathiskosPainter (Fig. 22).81 All three dancers on the Leiden kraterwear the shorter crown, and the central draped figure has,

18 Name vase of the Karneia Painter,volute krater, detail showing the firstfigure from the left on the lowerregister, standing beside a pillarinscribed KAPNEIOS. MuseoNazionale, Taranto, I. G. 8263(artwork in the public domain;photograph provided by TrendallArchive, La Trobe University, Victoria,Australia, courtesy Soprintendenzaper i Beni Archeologici della Puglia-Taranto)

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like the nude male counterparts, short hair. In her discussionof this figure, Ferrari concludes, and I would concur, that thisis a youth in woman’s dress.82 That these dancers were osten-sibly male is even parodied by the comic actor wearing a kala-thiskos and clearly performing a dance before a figureinterpreted as a youthful Dionysos, who holds out fruittoward him, in his left hand (Fig. 23).83

Arguably, one of the most magnificent representations ofkalathiskos dancers appears on the portal of the heroonfrom Trysa (Gj€olbaschi) in Lycia, now in Vienna (Fig. 24).84

The doorway facing onto the interior of the heroon isflanked by jambs carved with dancers, but here, too, theirsex/gender is not immediately obvious, obscured as it is bywhat they wear. Cook, who had not seen the original, refersto them as “female (?) dancers,” stressing the query; bothwear short chitons. In the original engraving published byOtto Benndorf and George Niemann in 1889, which Cookused as his illustration and from which he described thereliefs, the gender of the dancers is indeed unclear. InBenndorf’s account, however, there is no such doubt. Heidentifies the two dancers, the only life-size figures on theentire monument, as youths who, with their graceful postureand soft form, may seem at first sight to be female. Bothyoung men framing the Trysa portal are dancing in a whirl-ing gesture, wearing their distinctive headdress, the lessbroad crown, which Benndorf calls a kalathos.85 The similar-ity of the whirling dancers on the Trysa portal with the twirl-ing figure on the Taranto vase is remarkable.

20 Name vase of the Karneia Painter, volute krater, detailshowing the fourth and fifth figures. Museo Nazionale, Taranto,I. G. 8263 (artwork in the public domain; photograph providedby Trendall Archive, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia,courtesy Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Puglia-Taranto)

19 Name vase of the Karneia Painter, volute krater, detailshowing the second and third figures, the latter the aulos player.Museo Nazionale, Taranto, I. G. 8263 (artwork in the publicdomain; photograph provided by Trendall Archive, La TrobeUniversity, Victoria, Australia, courtesy Soprintendenza per iBeni Archeologici della Puglia-Taranto)

21 Name vase of the Karneia Painter, volute krater, detailshowing the sixth and seventh figures. Museo Nazionale,Taranto, I. G. 8263 (artwork in the public domain; photographprovided by Trendall Archive, La Trobe University, Victoria,Australia, courtesy Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici dellaPuglia-Taranto)

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Good-quality photographs taken of the Trysa heroon in1881 indicate that the figure on the right side of the portalmust be male, as perceived by Benndorf.86 There is a clear,albeit abraded, genital bulge, while the musculature of thetorso visible beneath the drapery is not only distinctly flatchested but also well defined, strong, and male. The figureon the left side is similarly flat chested but lacks the better-defined musculature of the right figure, in part due to thepoorly preserved surface of the figure; the area of the genitalsis especially worn. Both figures are beardless and both appearto have short hair that covers the ears.87 Although the“chitons” worn by both figures on the Trysa portal are shorterthan the garment worn by the twirling dancer on the Tarantovase—and than the xystis worn by the Motya Youth—all thegarments are sleeveless. And while the draped kalathiskosdancer on the Leiden krater wears his drapery as low as theknee (Fig. 22), and the dancers on the Trysa portal weartheirs slightly above the knee, it is clear that the twirlingfigure on the Taranto krater wears a somewhat longer gar-ment.88 Clearly male are the eight grotesque musicians onthe lintel above the Trysa portal, who wear similar kalathis-koi. They have been associated with the Phoenician Kabeiroi(“great” gods of Phoenician origin, who in Greek mythologywere a group of minor deities) and are commonly linked tothe dancing youths flanking the portal below.89 Interestingly,the Trysa reliefs are more or less contemporary with the Ta-ranto krater: they were originally dated to 420–410 BCE andmore recently dated down slightly, to 380–370 BCE.90

That the figures flanking the portal of the heroon areyoung men, not women, is clinched by the figures on the“banquet relief” that flanks the dancer on the left side of theportal.91 In the lower register, below the relief of banquetersreclining on couches, are several female dancers wearinglong garments, which are also described by Benndorf as

chitons, dancing in front of an aulos player.92 To the rightare three young male dancers wearing short chitons—justlike those of the figures flanking the portal—and anotheraulos player. Here, there is no doubt whatsoever about thegender of the dancers.93 More telling is the fact that theyoung men are not dancing with the women; rather, the twogroups perform with members of their own sex, each withtheir own musician. On the basis of the Trysa reliefs, it is nowmore than plausible that the fifth dancing figure on the Tar-anto vase is a male. What also links the Trysa relief and theTaranto vase are the kalathiskoi worn by the whirlingdancers. And here it is crucial to stress that the examplesgiven above establish that not all kalathiskos dancers are nec-essarily linked with Apollo; they can be associated with Arte-mis, Dionysos, and even with the idiosyncratic figures on thelintel of the Trysa portal.All of the figures on the Taranto vase, including the musi-

cian, are youthful; some have short hair, others long hair.The scene as a whole gives the impression not of an actualperformance but of youths practicing for some sort of perfor-mance: the musician is not playing his aulos, the first figureholds his kalathiskos, the second is hardly dancing, while theseventh stands, statuelike, next to the “spectator/civilian,” ina pose reminiscent of the Motya Youth. The action, if we cancall it that, on the Taranto vase clearly takes place in a sanctu-ary of Apollo Karneios, the boundary of the sacred precinctclearly marked by the horos inscription (Fig. 18, at the farleft). Moreover, all of the figures, except perhaps the centraltwirling dancer, are clearly male, and a lone woman in thisgroup of young men would be odd, especially if the Karneia

22 Name vase of the Kalathiskos Painter, Lucanian bell krater,from Gnathia, ca. 400–390 BCE, height 16 in. (40.6 cm).Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden, RSx 4 (artwork in thepublic domain; photograph provided by the Rijksmuseum vanOudheden, Leiden)

23 Paestan bell krater showing Dionysos and a comic actorwearing a kalathiskos and dancing on a phlyax vase, ca. 350 BCE,height and diameter 14⅝ in. (37 cm). British Museum, London,F 188 (artwork in the public domain; photograph � Trustees ofthe British Museum)

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dance is a predramatic performance, as John Davidson Beaz-ley believed.94 It is possible, as Ferrari states so well, that thedraped Karneia dancers, like those on the Taranto and Lei-den kraters, were males who took on female roles at the festi-val: male youths “playing girls playing stars.”95

The fifth and the seventh figures on Taranto 8263, takentogether with the whirling, chiton-draped male dancers onthe Trysa portal, provide compelling insight into the identityof the Motya Youth. He is a young man—not a tyrant per se,nor is he a priest, charioteer, god, or clearly identified poten-tate, Greek or Carthaginian—taking part in an initiation cer-emony (such an interpretation does not preclude a Siciliantyrant, such as Gelon, shown as a youthful initiate). His xystismay show him for what he is, but it is the large and elaborateheaddress—what I have been calling a kalathiskos, whichrequired five pins to support—that would have made hisidentity clear. What this kalathiskos was actually made of wemay never know.96 As for the enigmatic chest band, this wasnot, as we have seen, a sine qua non of a charioteer, athlete,musician, dancer, transvestite, or whatever; what the chestband serves is any activity that requires freedom of movementfor the arms, be it the movement of a racing charioteer orthat of a youth dancing.

A rendering shows what the restoration of the Motya Youthbased on the figures on the Taranto vase would look like(Fig. 25). The youth’s upraised right arm would have sup-ported the kalathiskos, his left arm bent, with the left handon his hip or slightly above, precisely in the gesture of theMotya Youth. As Stampolidis put it so well, the right arm wasfractionally above the horizontal, bent at the elbow, with theforearm angled back to the head, at a point above andbehind his right ear.97 This is uncannily similar to the sev-enth figure on the Taranto vase, the naked young man wholooks straight out to the viewer (Fig. 21), but the statue from

Motya wears a xystis such as that worn by the dancing fifthfigure. The roughly picked surface of the head of the statue,together with the holes on top, presupposes a headdresslarge enough to warrant such support, including extra pinsat the back of the head, and large enough to cover most ofthe head except for the visible curls on the front, sides, andback.All of the features of the Motya Youth as preserved—the

youthful appearance, the xystis, the worked-down treatmentof the head, the holes on top, the upraised right arm, theposition of the left arm, and the sexuality of the figure—canbe explained if he is reconstructed as a kalathiskos dancer, ayoung initiate at rest, at the end of the dance performance.No other published interpretation has explained convinc-ingly all these features taken together.As for the youth’s blatant sexuality, I think this would have

been as obvious to anyone in antiquity as it is to any modernviewer of the statue. And it is here that Apollo, whether Kar-neios or Delphinios or with another epithet, plays a role,beginning with one of the most charged Doric contexts inthe Aegean where Apollo Karneios, young men, and initia-tion meet. Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen’s excavation atthe site of ancient Thera at the close of the nineteenth andbeginning of the twentieth century brought to light a terraceassociated with the sanctuary of Apollo Karneios, replete withvarious erotic inscriptions of the Archaic period carved onthe rock.98 The most famous of these, “By (Apollo) Delphi-nios, Krimon copulated here with a boy, the brother of Bathy-kles,” has often been quoted,99 but there are many others:“Pheidippidas had sex, Timagoras and Enpheres and I cop-ulated”;100 “Krimon [ever-active] copulated with Amotionhere.”101 Of these inscriptions, Jan Bremmer has noted thatthe invocation of Apollo Delphinios points to a connectionwith initiation.102 Whether they are interpreted as sexual

24 Interior of the portal of the heroonfrom Trysa (Gj€olbaschi), showingkalathiskos dancers framing thedoorway and grotesque Bes-like figures,also wearing kalathiskoi, above,ca. 380–370 BCE. KunsthistorischesMuseum, Vienna, Antikensammlung(artwork in the public domain;photograph by Burger, 1881, fromWolfgang Oberleitner, Das Heroon vonTrysa: Ein lykisches F€urstengrab des 4.Jahrhunderts v. Chr. [Mainz: Philipp vonZabern, 1994], 14, fig. 17)

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inscriptions sanctifying erotic relationships, as many schol-ars assume, or slanders of the type found on Pompeian wallscenturies later, as preferred by Henri Ir�en�ee Marrou,Sir Kenneth Dover, and Bremmer, among others, the out-spokenly sexual content of the inscriptions cannot bedenied.103 What historic (post–Bronze Age) Thera alsooffers, ironically, is both a Phoenician and Greek pedigree,the same pedigrees that scholars have seen in the MotyaYouth. The island was settled by Dorians from Sparta, andthe inhabitants spoke the Doric dialect. Spartans alsofounded Taranto, the ancient Taras. According to bothHerodotus (4.147) and Pausanias (3.1.7–8), the island ofThera was first settled by Phoenicians who lived on it sincethe days of Kadmos and called it Kalliste, the “Fair One.”These Phoenicians were the descendants of Membliaros,the son of Poikiles, and had already settled the islandbefore the coming of Theras, the eponymous founder ofThera, son of Autesion of Thebes and himself a descendantof Phoenician Kadmos.104

The Phoenician and Greek complexities of Thera are ofinterest, not least for the early cults on the island, amongwhich Apollo Karneios looms large. The Archaic Theraninscriptions establish an early Doric association of ApolloKarneios and initiates. Whatever Greek or Phoenician ele-ments modern scholars have seen in, or projected on, theMotya Youth, it is the attraction of young initiates of Apollodancing—whether naked or wearing a xystis—to the gaze ofolder men, whatever their intentions, that may prove a fruit-ful avenue of inquiry for further research on the statue.105

In his insistence that initiation is an unsatisfactory interpre-tation of the Karneia festival as a whole, Noel Robertson(who favors instead its warlike elements) does not take intoaccount the evidence from Thera, presented above, northat of the dancing youths on the Taranto krater.106 By 676BCE—the traditional date worked out by Hellanikos ofLesbos—there were even musical contests at the reorgan-ized Karneia, with Terpander of Lesbos the first victor, whoinaugurated a succession of visits by foreign poets and per-formers.107 Moreover, in the context of the Karneia festival,a link to warriors in the camp, on the one hand, and the ini-tiation of youths, on the other, need not be mutually exclu-sive. Indeed, the differences between male age groups seenin Thera are also acted out in Sparta in the domain ofApollo. As Walter Burkert observes, at the Gymnopaidiai—normally considered the festival of naked boys (though seebelow)—admission was barred to unmarried men, who, fortheir part, had to organize and finance the Karneia festi-val, and accordingly, they bear the title of Karneatai.108

Although the Karneia festival included an “imitation ofthe military life,” it also featured musical and athleticcompetitions.109 As Robert Parker put it so well, “Spartanfestivals seem to have been closer to a fete champetre thanto the parade of tanks in Red Square.”110

Sparta and its colony at Thera, first settled in the IronAge by Phoenicians, may seem a long way from the colonialworld of western Sicily. What links the Dorian Aegean withthe west, however, are the many Dorian colonies in Sicily andsouthern Italy—and even North Africa—and it is precisely inthe foundation of these colonies that Apollo Karneios, togetherwith his festivals, became a critical factor (Figs. 26–28).

“No Other Dance More Divine Has Apollo Beheld”: The

Karneia as a Colonial Foundation Ritual

Pindar (Pythian Ode 5.77–93) and Callimachus (Hymn II toApollo, 85–89), in their poetic retelling of the foundation ofCyrene, relate elements of the contemporary festival ofApollo Karneios. Pindar (Pythian Ode 5.78) speaks of the com-munal banquet with its many sacrifices at the feast of ApolloKarneios. But it is Callimachus (Hymn II to Apollo, 85–87)who brings in the dance in the context of Cyrene: “Greatly,indeed, did Phoibos [Apollo] rejoice as the belted warriorsof Enyo danced with the yellow-haired Libyan women whenthe season of the Karneian feast came round.” In lines 93–94,Callimachus continues: “No other dance more divine hasApollo beheld, nor to any city has he given so many blessingsas he has to Cyrene. . . .”This was one view from the west. Although we do not

see young men dancing with blond Libyan women on theTaranto vase, what we do see is a dance of a type that

25 Reconstruction of the Motya Youth shown wearing akalathiskos such as those seen on the Lucanian volute krater,Taranto 8263 (drawing by Anne Hooton)

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was also celebrated at the Gymnopaidiai in Sparta,although without the distinctive headdress. As Parkerexplains, the

Gymnopaidiai was probably by derivation the festival notof “naked boys” (paides), as most ancient etymologiststhought, nor of “jokes” (paidiai), “made by those with noclothes on,” which was perhaps a view known to Plutarch,nor of course of “bare feet” as the Roman translator whocoined Nudipedalia supposed, but of dancing (paidia/paizo) “unclad” or perhaps “unarmed.”. . .

for we know that competitive dancing by choirs of adults aswell as boys formed the main content of the festival.111 Mostof the dancers on the Taranto vase are naked, all are youths,and all are clearly unarmed. In a similar vein, I do not believethat the Motya Youth was ever armed or helmeted.It is these three elements—feast, sacrifices, and the

dance—that are standard at the annual festival of ApolloKarneios.112 What else can we glean from our sourcesabout the Karneia festival? As already pointed out, weknow something of the organization and those responsi-ble for the festival, at least for the city where it all started;

27 Map of Greece and the Aegeanshowing some of the principal sitesmentioned in the text (map preparedby Kathryn Chew)

26 Map of the Mediterranean showing some of the principal sites mentioned in the text (map prepared by Kathryn Chew)

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at Sparta, nine skiades (huts or tents) were erected for theKarneia, each accommodating nine men, three from eachphratry (brotherhood).113 Three phratriai are included ineach of the skiades, and thus there is a representativebody of men meeting for a communal banquet beneath amakeshift roof, where everything is done by military com-mand.114 Such a context is, as Burkert so nicely puts it,“outside the sphere of everyday life, separated, yet boundto one another in a quasi-military camp life.”115 In thisway, the Karneia festival was, in one sense, a true copy orimitation of a soldierly way of life. Fifteen unmarriedyoung men (the Karneatai) organized the Spartan Karneiaand supplied the staphylodromoi, the all-important “graperunners.”116 The latter ran after a heavily garlandedfigure, who was evidently draped with fillets of wool, per-haps referred to as the Stemmatias, or “Garland-man.”117 Ifthe Garland-man was caught, this counted as a goodomen for the city for the coming year. As Parker con-cludes, chasing a lone individual may not have been asgrim or terrifying as it may seem at first sight, for “theGarland-man invoked blessings on the city as he ran: thiswas not the hunting down of an enemy to the city, and itis possible to imagine the event as quite cheerful.”118

The number nine was of added significance, as the Karneiafestival lasted for nine days.119 It appears, furthermore, tohave been a festival jam-packed with different types ofevents.120 In addition to the feasting, sacrifices, and dancing,there were the musical and athletic contests already referredto, the imitation of the military life with the erection of theskiades, and the procession of models of the rafts that had car-ried the “sons of Herakles” across the Corinthian Gulf fromcentral, mainland Greece to the Peloponnese, at the narrow-est point of the gulf, at Rion.121

As for the dancing, we can press what evidence we havea little further. For instance, to judge from Aristophanes’sLysistrata, one of the features of Spartan life that most

struck outsiders was their predilection for odd and vigorousdances.122 What we see on the Taranto vase may seem, tomodern viewers or outsiders, odd, not least in the elaborateheaddress, but the whirling of the youthful figures, both onthe Taranto krater and the Trysa portal, is certainly vigorous.Ironically, the Spartans themselves assembled in the theaternot to witness dramatic festivals of the Athenian type but towatch dancing choirs of boys.123 In all this, a common fea-ture running through not only the Karneia but also the Gym-nopaidiai and the Hyakinthia—the three principal festivals ofthe Spartans124—is the central role played by youths or boysand the significance of elaborate initiatory systems. This is apoint well made by Parker, who stresses that Sparta was theonly city of mainland Greece where such elaborate initiationsystems survived, continuously adapted to new needs, andwhere adolescents of both sexes played major roles in thefestivals of the city, which is why Artemis and Apollo, thegods of the young, were so prominent in the Spartan pan-theon.125 The other common feature running through thethree principal Spartan festivals is that they all honor Apollo.One additional element of the Karneia festival needs to be

stressed: the fact that war could not be waged during theperiod of the festival. This had a number of well-known con-sequences, not least for two prominent Dorian city-states,Argos and Sparta, on a number of occasions.126 Thucydides(5.54) relates how the Lakedaimonians marched out againstLeuktra, “but as the sacrifices for crossing the border werenot favorable, they went back home themselves, and sentword to their allies, after the coming month—the month ofKarneios, a festival among the Dorians—to prepare to takethe field. When they withdrew, the Argives set out on the27th of the month preceding Karneios, and continuing toobserve that day during the whole time, invaded Epidaurosand proceeded to ravage it.” The Argive ploy was a wily one:by calling every day they were in Epidaurian territory the27th of the month preceding Karneios, they thus postponed

28 Map of Sicily showing some of theprincipal sites mentioned in the text(map prepared by Kathryn Chew)

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the beginning of the following month until their work wasdone. As self-respecting Dorians, the Argives, on religiousgrounds, could not wage war during the period of the monthof the Karneian festival.127 The ramifications for Sparta weregreater still during the Persian Wars: it was due to the Kar-neia that the Spartans arrived too late at the Battle of Mara-thon, and for the same reason the Spartan king Leonidas wassent to Thermopylai with an inadequate contingent of Spar-tan troops.128 The Spartans, furthermore, held back duringthe Karneia in fighting other Greeks in 419 and 418 BCE.129

Above all, the Karneia was celebrated not just in Sparta butin all the cities linked with Sparta outside mainland Greece,and in all the Dorian colonies of the Greek west. In his studyof Greek ethnicity, Robertson rightly stresses the importanceof festivals, and religion more generally, as a defining crite-rion of any ethnos, including the Dorians, Ionians, Aiolians,and Dryopians.130 Key to all this was the regulation of activi-ties by means of a calendar of months. Karneios was thename of one of the months of the Dorian calendar (oftenequated with the Attic month of Metageitnion), and the Kar-neia festival ran for nine days in the month of Karneios,which, if equated with Metageitnion, would be the secondquarter of our month of August.131 Our knowledge of theSpartan sacred calendar is only partial.132 Largely on the tes-timony of Thucydides—which, when dealing with the Kar-neia, is contradictory—supplemented by the passage inEuripides, Alkestis (445–52), both Athenian sources and thusnot Doric, Ferrari has questioned the association of the Spar-tan month of Karneia with Athenian Metageitnion, prefer-ring to see the Karneia festival at a slightly later time of theyear, in the fall.133 She adds that the “particular connectionwith Apollo may be understood—not only at Sparta—in lightof festivals that celebrated the cycle of the seasons, punctu-ated by the risings and settings of stars.”134

Whether August or later September, all the Dorian cities ofthe Peloponnese kept the same count of lunar months intheir local calendars, as Robertson points out, and theDorian cities overseas were just as devoted to the festival.135

What all Dorians had in common was the Karneia festival,the month of Karneios, and, of course, the worship of ApolloKarneios.136 The festival of Apollo Karneios was celebrated atSparta, Thera, and Cyrene, as well as at Sikyon and Sybaris-Thurioi, while the month Karneios is even more widespread:it is attested in Sparta and elsewhere in the Peloponnese atEpidauros and Epidauros Limera; in the Aegean islands ofKalymnos, Kos, Nisyros, and Rhodes, as well as at Knossos onCrete; on Sicily it is known at Akragas, Gela, Syracuse, andTauromenion.137

As for the Dorians in the west, Apollo Karneios held an evendeeper meaning. In his discussion of the original purpose ofthe Karneia, Robertson remarks that this was “very likely toprognosticate whether and when a Dorian community shouldsail abroad to occupy new territory. When conditionschanged, the festival with its enterprising spirit remained.”138

Similarly, Irad Malkin comments, “the Karneia are celebratedby colonists who go from the Peloponnese to other poleis.”139

As Malkin so well puts it, the “cult of Apollo Karneios forged achain linking Sparta, Thera, and Cyrene and thus expressed,in Greek terms, what often eludes the observer: the Greekawareness of the ‘world of Spartan colonization.’”140 This

chain was larger still, transcending Sparta, Thera, and Cyrene,involving as it did Taras and any Dorian colony of Sicily andsouthern Italy. Within this landscape, the performance ofSpartan or, more accurately, Dorian rituals was to play a criti-cal role in a colonial context. In citing Callimachus’s Hymn IIto Apollo (line 93), Malkin observes that the “Karneia thusbecomes tantamount to a foundation ritual.”141 The associa-tion of Apollo with colonial foundations is also manifested intwo other epithets of the god: Apollo Delphinios and ApolloArchegetes. The former was not a salient Dorian god, sinceApollo Delphinios—with his dolphin and maritime attri-butes—was somewhat more universal, sharing a Delphic andthus Panhellenic association, which was more prominentlypresent in Ionian cities.142 As a god of colonial foundations,Apollo Archegetes is well known. After all, the very first Greekcolonist of Sicily, Thoukles or Theokles, on founding the cityof Naxos in northeast Sicily, set up an altar to Apollo Arch-egetes.143 That Apollo Karneios may perhaps be one of thereasons Apollo came to be archegetes (leader) is, as Malkinpoints out, “perhaps a startling idea.”144

The “Spartan Mediterranean” in the Archaic and

Classical Periods

In his detailed study of the Spartan Mediterranean, Malkinmaps the extent of Spartan territory or, more accurately,what he refers to as areas associated with Sparta (Fig. 26).145

Within the Aegean there are, in addition to Sparta and Lako-nia (or what can be called the homeland), the islands ofThera, Melos, Kythera, and east Crete, together with Knidosand its territory on the west coast of Asia Minor and Hera-kleia Trachinia near Thermopylai (Fig. 27).146 In southernItaly the only full-fledged Spartan colony (apoikia) in all ofMagna Graecia was at Taras (Taranto), which, together withSatyrion, controlled the best harbor in the Gulf of Tarantoand one of the finest harbors anywhere in the Mediterranean(Fig. 28).147 In Thomas Dunbabin’s apt formulation, the“story of the foundation of Taras is told with abundant anduntrustworthy detail, but the main lines are clear.”148 Accord-ing to Eusebius, the colony was founded in 706 BCE, with theSpartan Phalanthos as the leader (oikist). The story of thefoundation and the subsequent history of Taras have beencovered many times and need not be repeated here. Whatmatters here is that the cults of Taras are almost exclusivelySpartan, and this is a feature that, as we shall see, is commonin other parts of the Greek west.149

Elsewhere in southern Italy, Malkin suggests that, at leastto some degree, both Kroton (traditionally an Achaian col-ony, or apoikia) and Lokroi Epizephyrioi (traditionally theapoikia of Opuntian Lokris) claimed Sparta as a metropolis(mother city).150 On the other side of the Mediterranean, inNorth Africa, there is the Theran colony of Cyrene and itssurrounds in Cyrenaica (eastern Libya).151 As Malkin stresses,the “fundamental Greek charter myth of Libya includesSparta, Thera, and Cyrene, and thus expresses the authenticconceptual unity of a Spartan world of colonization.”152 Com-mon to Sparta, Thera, and Cyrene is Apollo, and especiallyhis byname, Karneios. In Hymn II to Apollo, lines 71–73, Cal-limachus declares: “But I call thee Karneios; for such is themanner of my fathers. Sparta, O Karneios, was your firstfoundation; and next Thera; but the third the city of

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Cyrene.” The two other “Spartan” topoi of North Africa areKinyps and “Lake Tritonis” (Fig. 26).153

Arguably, the most significant Spartan topos for our pur-poses is the region of Eryx in northwestern Sicily (Fig. 28).The story is well told by Herodotus (5.42–43) of two Spartanhalf brothers, Kleomenes and Dorieus, the former regardedas being on the verge of madness, whereas the latter was con-sidered the finest young man of his generation. At the deathof their father, King Anaxandrides, the Spartans followedtheir usual custom and put the eldest son, Kleomenes, onthe throne. Indignant and unable to bear the prospect ofbeing ruled by Kleomenes, Dorieus asked the Spartans for abody of men and took them off to found a settlement. Do-rieus, however, observed none of the usual customs or for-malities—such as consulting the Delphic oracle on a suitablesite—but went off in a temper to Libya, with some Therans,appropriately, as guides. He settled on land by the riverKinyps, but within three years was driven out by the Macae, aLibyan tribe, and the Carthaginians, so he returned to thePeloponnese. There he was advised by a certain Anticharesof Eleon in Boiotia, on the strength of the oracles given toLaios, to found the city of Herakleia in Sicily. Accordingto Laios, all the country of Eryx in western Sicily belonged tothe Herakleidai—the sons of Herakles—since it was Herakleshimself who was its original conqueror.154

The outcome of Dorieus’s claim on the land of Eryx wasultimately unsuccessful, but it is the manner in which heclaimed the land that is crucial. As Malkin recounts,“Herakles is said to have simply taken possession of the landof Eryx. Dorieus, a Herakleid of the Spartan royal house, wasobviously about to re-enact the myth of the Return of theHerakleidai, except that now the claim was applied not tothe Peloponnese but to western Sicily.”155

That the story of the struggle between Herakles and Eryx,which preceded Dorieus, appears to have been told by Stesi-choros (active ca. 600–550 BCE), the first great poet of theGreek west—who was traditionally connected either with Mat-auros in Calabria or else Himera or Katane in Sicily—seemsfairly certain.156 Stesichoros’s Geryoneis relates Herakles’s theftof the cattle of Geryon. As another, later, Sicilian author,Diodorus Siculus—the Sicilian—tells it (first century BCE),the hero Eryx—who gave his name to the mountain in north-western Sicily, and ultimately to the Elymian city, and wherehe constructed a temple to his mother, Aphrodite Erykina—challenged Herakles to a wrestling match.157 Herakles wason his way home with the cattle of Geryon when Eryx issuedhis challenge; Eryx was killed and Herakles handed Eryx’skingdom to its inhabitants, telling them that his owndescendants would come to take possession of the land indue course, which is where Dorieus comes in. But Heraklesand Dorieus were not the only Dorians interested in thiscorner of Sicily. Diodorus Siculus also narrates the story ofthe failed expedition led by another Herakleid, Pentathlosof Knidos, to Lilybaion in 580 BCE, which faced PhoenicianMotya.158 This was the first open war between Greeks andPhoenicians in Sicily that we know of.159

The year 580 BCE was fateful, as this was the traditional dateof the founding of Akragas, a colony of Gela—itself a Doriancolony of Cretans and Rhodians—which grew rapidly, control-ling, together with Gela, much of the south coast of Sicily.160

The north coast of Sicily was controlled by a somewhat earlierfoundation, at Himera, traditionally in 648 BCE by IonianZanklaians, with the aid of exiles from Dorian Syracuse, theMyletidai clan; for this reason, according to Thucydides(6.5.1), the dialect of Himera was a mixture of Chalkidic(Ionic) and Doric.161 Together, Himera to the north andAkragas, along with Gela, to the south encroached on Phoeni-cian-Punic–controlled western Sicily. The sovereignty of Phoe-nician western Sicily could not go unchallenged.A century after the foundation of Akragas, in 480 BCE,

Gelon, the son of Deinomenes, the tyrant of Syracuse,defeated the Carthaginians at the Battle of Himera.162 Thestory is well known: the Carthaginian invasion was led byHamilkar, who arrived at Panormos, in northwest Sicily, westof Himera.163 From there he marched on Himera and estab-lished a camp. On seeing the force—estimated by Herodotus(7.165) and Diodorus Siculus (11.20.2, 13.94.5) at 300,000,though probably much closer to one-tenth that number—encamped on the hills to the west of Himera, Theron, thetyrant of Akragas, who was in command in Himera, immedi-ately asked for support from his ally Gelon; the latter hadmarried Theron’s daughter, Damarete. Consequently, Gelonset off from Syracuse with an army of 50,000 foot soldiers and5,000 cavalry (these figures are also unreliable). Heencamped to the south of the city, and his cavalry had imme-diate success over the Carthaginians. Letters from Hamilkarto his Selinuntine allies were intercepted by Gelon, who setout with his cavalry to Hamilkar’s naval camp. Hamilkar wascaught unaware, while sacrificing, and was killed—or threwhimself into the flames as a sacrifice—and his ships were seton fire. As Dunbabin relates, the “victory was complete, theCarthaginian fleet was burnt, and there was no way of escapefor the survivors.”164 The single Battle of Himera was so deci-sive that the Carthaginians sent ambassadors to Sicily to askfor peace, in fear that Gelon would descend on Africa.165

Moreover, later historians regarded Gelon’s rule as some-thing of a golden age of Sicily and western Greece.166

What is striking about the Battle of Himera is its date, 480BCE. It is precisely the same year in which the Athenians, vir-tually single-handedly and in their own territory, defeatedthe might of the Persian armada at the Battle of Salamis. In abrilliant series of papers, Andrew Stewart linked the Persianand Carthaginian invasions—the former of Greece and espe-cially Athens and Attica, the latter of Sicily—with the begin-nings of the Classical style.167 He showed through areexamination of the nineteenth-century excavations on theAthenian Acropolis that the style probably did not predatethe Persian invasion of 480–479 BCE, and that finds fromelsewhere in Athens and Attica, as well as from Phokis,Aigina, and Sicily, demonstrated similar results. Moreover,Stewart returned to the origins and significance of the Severestyle of sculpture and art and boldly suggested that the tyran-nicides of Kritios and Nesiotes, dedicated in 477/476 BCE,inaugurated the style, which constitutes the first or early Clas-sical style, and that the Greek victories at Salamis and Himerasomehow inspired it.168

As we have seen, most scholars date the Motya Youth to thesame period, sometime between 480 and 450 BCE, and thecontext in which the statue was found was sealed by the Syra-cusan capture and destruction of the island of Motya in 397

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BCE (see above and below).169 Too much was happening inSicily in or around 480 BCE to be coincidental, so I wouldlike to conclude by returning to the statue itself to explorethe possibility that it might represent one of the powerbrokers of Sicily in the earlier fifth century BCE, inaugurat-ing for Greek art in Sicily what the tyrannicides did in Athensat the same time.

Art, Initiation, Performance, and Politics in Sicily in the Early

Classical Period

I began with the premise that the figures on the Taranto kra-ter (Figs. 17–21), together with the chiton-draped maledancers on the Trysa portal (Fig. 24), both dating to theend of the fifth century BCE or slightly later, provide aninsight into the identity of the Motya Youth. He is a youngman taking part in an initiation ceremony: a dancer wearing

a xystis and a headdress conventionally referred to as a kala-thiskos performing for Apollo Karneios. Dancing and sing-ing were, as we have seen, key features of the Karneiafestival both in Sparta and in the Dorian west. Indeed, itwas in the Dorian west that these rituals took on addedmeaning, as the Karneia festival had become tantamount toa foundation ritual.In stating that the Motya Youth was not a tyrant per se, nor

a priest, charioteer, god, or clearly identified potentate,Greek or Carthaginian like Gelon or Hamilkar, my aim wasnot to throw the baby out with the bathwater but rather tostress that there is nothing inherent in the statue to identifythe person represented, particularly as too few of his attri-butes survive. Key to any identification of the statue are theholes in the head and, thus, the nature of the headdress thatnecessitated such support. The youth’s left hand is firmly onhis hip pressing into his flesh (Fig. 29). His right hand israised in such a way to indicate that he is most likely support-ing the headdress rather than holding another attribute(Fig. 25). His distinctive sleeveless xystis is of a type most typi-cally worn by performers: dancers, poets, musicians (seeespecially Fig. 5). The only thing that his other attribute, thechest band, presupposes is any action that requires the foldsof the drapery not to interfere with the action beingperformed.Although we cannot identify an individual represented by

the figure as it survives, the context and date of the MotyaYouth demand, at the very least, an attempt. As we have seen,the battles of Himera and Salamis in 480 BCE were watershedevents that determined and defined the trajectory of the Greekworld for years to come. To avoid the question is to avoid oneof the most interesting issues in Greek sculpture in a formativeand highly experimental period. Just at the time when sculp-tors on the Greek mainland were turning to bronze for votiveand commemorative statuary, sculpture in stone in the Greekwest, particularly in Sicily, witnessed a resurgence, and theresult was one of the most idiosyncratic styles of early Classicalsculpture. Of the surviving corpus of early fifth-century sculp-ture from the Greek west, the Motya Youth is probably the fin-est example. In any attempt to identify the individualrepresented by the Motya Youth, it is useful to begin with thenames that have been aired the most: the usual suspects.Hamilkar he cannot be, as it would seem highly unlikely, if

not preposterous, that any Phoenician/Carthaginian—orGreek for that matter—would dedicate a statue made of Par-ian marble by a Greek sculptor of the man who disastrouslylost not only his life but his entire fleet in his invasion ofSicily. The argument, however, that the statue may representa Sicilian Greek has more to commend it, and in this, OlgaPalagia’s idea that the Motya Youth was part of a sculpturalgroup dedicated by none other than Gelon, the tyrant of Syr-acuse, in commemoration of his victory over the Carthagi-nians at the Battle of Himera, was well conceived.170

Although with hindsight it seems improbable that the youthwore a helmet and held a spear, as Palagia supposed, or thathis long robe, replete with chest band, was a priestly garment,the association with Gelon—or another contemporary Sicil-ian Greek potentate like Gelon’s ally, Theron of Akragas, oreven his brother Hieron—is cogent. To insist that the statuewas, after all, a victorious charioteer, faces the problem with

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29 The Motya Youth. Museo Giuseppe Whitaker, Mozia, I.G.4310 (artwork in the public domain; photograph by TahneeCracchiola, provided by the J. Paul Getty Museum, VillaCollection, Malibu, Calif., courtesy Regione Siciliana,Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali e dell’Identit�a Siciliana)

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which I began: What would a charioteer be wearing on hishead that warranted five holes and metal pins?

Rather than seeing the Motya Youth as part of a sculpturalgroup dedicated by Gelon, I would like to turn around Pa-lagia’s argument and suggest the possibility that the figure isa stand-alone statue of Gelon himself as a youthful andunarmed initiate of Apollo Karneios. The new mount onwhich the statue is now displayed, which allows one to walkaround the figure and to take in the extraordinary detailsof the musculature, drapery, and overall design of thisremarkable youth, only bolsters the impression that this is astand-alone figure or one that was, at most, one of a smallgroup of no more than two figures (Figs. 1–4, 29). Is thereany evidence that the Motya Youth might be Gelon? Directevidence there is none, but a circumstantial case may bemade. The relevant material is preserved in the writings ofDiodorus Siculus and Aelian.

After the Battle of Himera, Gelon called an assembly of theSyracusans and issued orders for each man to come fullyarmed. As for himself, Diodorus Siculus states that Gelon

came to the assembly not only with no arms but not evenwearing a tunic and clad only in a cloak, and stepping for-ward he rendered an account of his life and of all he haddone for the Syracusans; and when the throng shouted itsapproval at each action he mentioned and showed espe-cially its amazement that he had given himself unarmedinto the hands of any who might wish to slay him, so farwas he from being a victim of vengeance as a tyrant thatthey united in acclaiming him with one voice benefactorand savior and king.171

Although Classical scholars have largely focused on the pre-cise constitutional meaning of the titles that Diodorus andothers had thrust on Gelon,172 less attention has been paidto the manner in which Gelon (re)presented himself:unarmed.

A similar story is related by Aelian (late second to thirdcentury CE), in his Varia historia, but he gives it an interestingtwist: an actual statue of Gelon unarmed in the Temple ofHera. The relevant section is worth quoting in full:

After his victory over the Carthaginians at Himera, Gelonhad the whole of Sicily under his control. He then wentunarmed into the main square [of Syracuse] and declaredthat he was returning power to the citizens. They declinedit, because they had learned by experience that he wasmore a friend of the people than is usual for a man with amonarch’s power. For this reason there is a statue of himin the temple of Sicilian Hera, which portrays himunarmed. The inscription attests his action.173

In book 13.37, Aelian echoes Diodorus Siculus in relating thestory of Gelon appearing unarmed before the assembledcompany, where he goes on to state:

“Here you are, I stand before you lightly dressed and withno weapons, and you may do what you like with me.” TheSyracusans admired his decision, and some of themhanded over the conspirators to him to punish, and gavehim command of the city. But he left it to the people to

deal with the conspirators. The Syracusans set up a statueof him wearing a tunic [the word in Greek is chiton] with-out a belt; this was a memorial to his popularity with thepublic and a lesson to future rulers.174

Whether or not this was the same statue as that set up in theTemple of Hera is not clear, though it would seemmost likelythat it was. Whether there were one or two statues is not theissue, for Syracuse was not sacked by the Carthaginians, sothis statue—or statues—referred to in our literary testimoniacannot be the Motya Youth.What matters is that the Syracusans set up at least one

statue of Gelon depicting him unarmed. Its context, in theTemple of Sicilian Hera, was charged, as this was a locus notfor representations of mere mortals but of images, usually ofgold and ivory—and, in the context of Sicily, perhaps acro-lithic, like the statue of the Morgantina goddess175—ofimmortal deities. In a similar vein, the context of the MotyaYouth, whoever the statue represents, is charged. Undoubt-edly carved by a Greek sculptor, the Motya Youth was origi-nally set up in one of the Greek cities of Sicily. If Palagia’sargument is of any consequence, then Himera stands out asa strong possibility, making the statue a commemoration ofthe tyrant’s victory over the Carthaginians in 480 BCE, butother Greek cities, not least Akragas and Gela, are possibili-ties, of which Gela perhaps has the strongest claim.176 Whenexactly the statue was put in place is unclear, but all theevidence points to sometime between 480 and 450 BCE.Gelon died in 478/477 BCE and was succeeded by hisbrother, Hieron, and, consequently, most scholars find itdifficult to imagine the statue being set up any length oftime after his death. The idea that the statue was erectedposthumously, especially of the man who defeated theCarthaginians so comprehensively, has never been seri-ously considered. But Gelon was, in a sense, no ordinaryman: What other contemporary mortals had their statueset up in a temple?What is critical here is that Stewart’s dating of the Clas-

sical style to after the Battle of Salamis—and thereby afterthe Battle of Himera—poses no obstacle to accepting theMotya Youth as a portrait of Gelon. After all, the sculp-tural group that may have initiated the early Classical stylein Athens, the tyrannicides by Kritios and Nesiotes, was areplacement, in 477/476 BCE, for an earlier groupcommissioned by Kleisthenes and produced by the Athe-nian sculptor Antenor. The tyrannicides themselves werekilled in 514 BCE, and Antenor’s sculptural group couldonly have been installed after the fall of the Peisistratidtyranny in 510 BCE.177 Whether it was Antenor’s groupthat was associated with the early Classical style or that byKritios and Nesiotes, as preferred by Stewart, both sculp-tural groups were made and put in place after the deathof the men they commemorate.178 This said, it is very pos-sible that a statue of Gelon was set up immediately after480, but before his death in 478/477 BCE.As for portraits this early in the history of Greek sculpture,

it is true that, apart from statues of victorious athletes, few,if any, individuals were allowed to put up portrait statuesof themselves in the early fifth century BCE, although thebases of some earlier Archaic kouroi erected as funerary

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monuments name individuals. The tyrannicides were cer-tainly conceived of as portraits, although they were not set upby Harmodios and Aristogeiton. It is precisely here that thetestimony of Diodorus Siculus and Aelian, already cited, is socrucial, for it is clear that there was at least one portrait statueof Gelon erected by the Syracusans soon after the Battle ofHimera. Aelian, in particular, does not mince his words; thestatue of Gelon was put in place by the Syracusans, not byGelon. As to the fate of this statue and as to when, precisely,it was set up, there is no information.179 We know of at leastone other portrait statue of Gelon of Gela, son of Deino-menes. It was seen by Pausanias at Olympia, showing him as avictorious athlete, indeed, as a charioteer, replete with char-iot. This statue celebrated a victory in the 73rd Olympiad andthus in the 480s BCE; we even know the name of the sculptor,Glaukias of Aigina.180

For anyone alive in any of the Greek cities of Sicily at thetime, the memory of the Battle of Himera would have beenclear. As an anonymous youth—whether an initiate or athleteor charioteer—there is little that would be remarkable aboutthe Motya figure, particularly if he was, as Palagia believes,part of a larger group. As a representation of Gelon himself,or even as a dedication by Gelon, the statue would have beenan in-your-face reminder of the man who meted out one ofthe most humiliating Carthaginian military defeats in history.If the statue depicts a youthful and unarmed initiate, theinsult was greater still—this was not a sculpture of a heavilyarmed military giant but a beardless boy: the tactical geniusGelon as an initiate to the Dorian god par excellence. Art,initiation, and performance were fused into a powerful politi-cal message.

Coda: History, Speculation, and the Dance

The vicissitudes of the Greek-Carthaginian conflict in Sicilywere such that by the end of the fifth century BCE, the bootwas on the other foot, and Carthaginian armies laid waste toGreek cities in Sicily. In 409 BCE the Carthaginians obliter-ated Himera as an act of revenge; the site was abandoned,and in 408/7 the Carthaginians founded Thermae Him-eraeae, just under seven miles (about 11 kilometers) to thewest, where the Himerian refugees ultimately settled. In thefollowing year, 407/6, the commander of the Carthaginianexpedition against the Sicilian Greeks, Hannibal (not thegreat Hannibal born in 247 BCE, the bane of Rome andone of the greatest military tacticians of history), died andwas succeeded by Himilkar (or Himilko [not to be con-fused with Hamilkar]). The latter sacked Akragas, and hewent on to defeat another Syracusan tyrant, Dionysios I,before Gela in 406 BCE, conquering both Gela and Kama-rina.181 In relating the story of Himilkar’s victories, partic-ularly in the case of the sack of Akragas, Diodorus Siculusstates:

But Himilkar, after pillaging and industriously ransackingthe temples and dwellings, collected as great a store ofbooty as a city could be expected to yield which had beeninhabited by two hundred thousand people, had goneunravaged since the date of its founding, had been well-nigh the wealthiest of the Greek cities of that day, andwhose citizens, furthermore, had shown their love of the

beautiful in expensive collections of works of art of everydescription. Indeed, a multitude of painting executedwith the greatest care was found and an extraordinary num-ber of sculptures of every description and worked with great skill.The most valuable pieces, accordingly, Himilkar sent toCarthage, among which, as it turned out, was the bull ofPhalaris, and the rest of the pillage he sold as booty.182

Among the remarkable collections of works of art looted bythe Carthaginians, Diodorus singles out the paintings andsculptures. It was probably during this time, or the slightlyearlier sack of Himera, that the Motya Youth was moved fromwhichever of the Greek cities to which it was originally dedi-cated to the islet of Motya, one of the three military and com-mercial strongholds of Carthaginian Sicily, the others beingPanormos and Soloeis.Punic Motya, however, was not to last for very long. In

397 BCE Dionysios I sacked the islet after a memorablesiege.183 The statue, toppled over, was sealed by thedestruction deposit, not to be unearthed until 1979.Although there is evidence of occupation of the city in theHellenistic period, at least until 241 BCE, the site was notresurrected to its former position, with Lilybaion, foundedby Himilkar, replacing it as a Carthaginian stronghold ofwestern Sicily.My interpretation of the Motya Youth as Gelon—or some-

one like Gelon—is little more than speculation: as I havestated, there is no direct evidence to support the claim andno compulsion, beyond curiosity, to identify a precise indi-vidual. As a statue of a dancer initiate of Apollo Karneios,however, there is far less ambivalence, for statues of dancers,especially early dancers, were in a league unto themselves.Athenaios, in his description of dances by youths on MountHelicon, recites an epigram: “Both things I did—I dancedand I taught the dance to men at the shrine of the Muses;the flute player was Anakos of Phigaleia. I am Bacchiades ofSikyon. Of a truth this is a beauty guerdon [reward] dedi-cated to the goddesses at Sikyon.”184 Theophrastos (cited inAthenaios) related that it was a Sicilian, Andron of Katane,who first set rhythmic motions of the human body to pipemusic. Consequently, the verb sikelizein—to do like the Sicil-ians—was, as Kathryn Morgan writes, “for the ancients, a syn-onym for orcheisthai, to dance.”185 Athenaios also states: “thestatues made by the artists of old are relics of the ancientmode of dancing.”186

The dance dedicated to Apollo Karneios on the Tarantokrater (Fig. 17) is precisely such a relic, a predramatic perfor-mance by young men that spirals back to the very core ofDorian identity and memory. The Motya Youth representedsomething similar, not in the Dorian homeland but in a for-eign, colonial context, one in which Dorian identity had tobe won and prominently displayed.

John K. Papadopoulos is professor of Archaeology and Classics at theUniversity of California at Los Angeles and chair of the ArchaeologyInterdepartmental Program. He is the author or editor of ten books,more than eighty articles, and some forty book reviews [Department ofClassics, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of CaliforniaLos Angeles, JKP@humnet.ucla.edu].

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NotesFor the opportunity of studying the Motya Youth while he was in the Conser-vation Studios of the J. Paul Getty Villa Museum, I am especially grateful toClaire Lyons and Jerry Podany. Without their assistance, this paper would nothave been possible. I am also grateful to a good many friends and colleaguesfor all manner of help, from reading drafts of this paper, discussion of variousaspects connected with it, or assistance with procuring information or illustra-tions: Gianfranco Adornato, Jackie Burns, Tahnee Cracchiola, Maria LuisaFam�a, Hans Rupprecht Goette, Kathryn Morgan, Sarah Morris, Olga Palagia,Gillian Shepherd, and Alexandra Sofroniew. The reconstruction of the MotyaYouth as a kalathiskos dancer (Fig. 25) is the work of Anne Hooton, to whomI am most grateful; the maps (Figs. 26–28) were prepared by Kathryn Chew. Ialso benefited enormously from the comments of many colleagues and par-ticipants of a Giornata di Studio at the J. Paul Getty Museum in May 2013, espe-cially Caterina Greco, Clemente Marconi, and Andrew Stewart. My thanks,too, for the comments of the anonymous reviewers of The Art Bulletin, whoforced me to sharpen my focus and rethink several issues; their commentshave greatly improved this paper. The shortcomings that remain are my own.

Unless otherwise noted, translations are mine.

1. See Nicola Bonacasa and Antonino Buttitta, eds., La statua marmorea diMozia e la scultura di stile severo in Sicilia: Atti della giornata di studio, Mar-sala, 1 giugno 1986 (Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1988); for the

context of the statue, see Gioacchino Falsone, “La scoperta, lo scavo e ilcontesto archeologico,” in ibid., 9–28.

2. Falsone, “La scoperta”; and Malcolm Bell III, “The Motya Charioteerand Pindar’s Isthmian 2,”Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 40(1995): 1–42, esp. 1–2. Among the few scholars arguing for a later datewas Paola Zancani Montuoro, “Heniochoi,” La Parola del Passato 216(1984): 221–29, who considered the statue Hellenistic on account of thedrapery.

3. See Carlo Odo Pavese, L’auriga di Mozia, Studia Archeologica 81 (Rome:“L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1996), esp. 61–62.

4. Zancani Montuoro, “Heniochoi.”

5. A. Span�o Gemellaro, “Eine Marmorstatue aus Mozia,” Antike Welt 16(1985): 16–22; Eugenio La Rocca, “Il giovane di Mozia come auriga,una testimonianza a farne,” La Parola del Passato 220 (1985): 452–63;Ji�r�ı Frel, “Interventi,” in Bonacasa and Buttitta, La statua marmorea diMozia, 113–15; George Dontas, “Un’opera siceliota, l’auriga di Mozia,”in ibid., 61–68; George Ortiz, “Interventi,” in ibid., 107–8; Luigi Polacco,“Interventi,” in ibid., 109–10; Giovanni Rizza, “Interventi,” in ibid., 133;Malcolm Bell III, “The Motya Charioteer,” American Journal of Archaeology95 (1991): 298; Fulvio Canciani, “Ipotesi sulla statua di Mozia,” in Koti-nos: Festschrift f€ur Erika Simon, ed. Heide Froning, Tonio H€olscher, andHarald Mielsch (Mainz: Phillip von Zabern, 1992), 172–74; Clemente

Appendix

Chronological Overview of Major Events and Monuments (all dates pre-500 BCE are tentative; fifth century BCE dates are

conventional)

Dates Major Events & Monuments

706 BCE Foundation of Taras (according to Eusebius)676 BCE Musical contests introduced at the reorganized Karneia Festival (according to Hellanikos of

Lesbos)648 BCE Foundation of Himeraca. 630 BCE Foundation of Cyrene580 BCE Foundation of Akragas; Battle of Lilybaion (first open war between Greeks and Phoenicians

on Sicily)491 BCE Rise of Gelon to power490 BCE Battle of Marathon480 BCE Battle of Thermopylai (August or September); Battle of Salamis (September); Battle of

Himera (supposedly on the same day as the Battle of Salamis or Thermopylai)480–450 BCE Accepted date range for the Motya Youth (the decade of 470–460 BCE being one consensus

date for the statue)479 BCE Battle of Plataia; Victory temples established at Himera and Syracuse; Temple of Zeus

Olympios at Akragas begun (unfinished in 406 BCE)478/477 BCE Death of Gelon478/477–467 BCE Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse477/476 BCE Tyrant Slayers sculpture by Kritios and Nesiotes in Athensca. 475–466 BCE Delphi Charioteer474 BCE Battle of Cumae (Kyme)473 BCE Death of Theron467–466 BCE Fall of Deinomenid tyranny at Syracusebefore 457 BCE Temple of Zeus at Olympia447–432 BCE Parthenon built on the Athenian Acropolis431–404 BCE Peloponnesian War415–413 BCE Failed Athenian invasion of Sicily410–405 BCE Carthaginians capture most of Sicily (Himera sacked in 409; Akragas and Gela in 406)410–400 BCE Date of the Taranto krater by the Karneia Painter406/405–368/367 BCE Dionysios I, tyrant of Syracuse (born 432 BCE)404 BCE Sparta defeats Athens; installment of oligarchy (Thirty Tyrants) in Athens403 BCE Democracy restored in Athens397 BCE Destruction of Motya by Dionysios I (Motya Youth found in the destruction debris of the

site)380–370 BCE Date of the heroon at Trysa in Lycia (originally dated 420–410 BCE)

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Marconi, Selinunte: Le metope dell’Heraion (Modena: Franco Cosimo Pa-nini, 1994), 217–18; and Nikolaos Stampolidis, “Appendix: The Chariot-eer of Mozia,” inMagna Graecia: Athletics and the Olympic Spirit on thePeriphery of the Hellenic World, ed. Stampolidis and Yannis Tassoulas(Athens: Museum of Cycladic Art, 2004), 34–38.

6. Bell, “The Motya Charioteer”; and Pavese, L’auriga di Mozia.

7. Bell, “The Motya Charioteer,” 23–25. For Pindar’s second Isthmian odeand the chronology of the events it depicts, see John Sandys’s introduc-tion to Isthmian 2 for the Loeb edition The Odes of Pindar (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1919), 446–47.

8. Bell, “The Motya Charioteer,” 26.

9. R. R. R. Smith, “Pindar, Athletes, and the Early Greek Statue Habit,” inPindar’ s Poetry, Patrons, and Festivals: From Archaic Greece to the RomanEmpire, ed. Simon Hornblower and Catherine Morgan (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2007), 133, where he specifically notes men like Kar-rhotos, the driver for King Arkesilas of Cyrene, or Nikomachos ofAthens, or even a rarer breed of aristocratic owner-drivers, like Herodo-tus of Thebes or Thrasyboulos of Akragas.

10. Ibid., 132–33.

11. Ibid., 134, citing David Asheri, “Carthaginians and Greeks,” in CambridgeAncient History, vol. 4, Persia, Greece and the Western Mediterranean c. 525–479 B.C., ed. John Boardman et al., 2nd ed. (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1988), 744; see further the testimony of Diodorus Sicu-lus 14.53.4.

12. Smith, “Pindar, Athletes, and the Statue Habit,” 134.

13. The identification as Melqart—or priest of Melqart—was first cham-pioned by Gioacchino Falsone, “La statue de Moty�e: Auriga ou pretreMelqart?” in Stemmata: M�elanges de philologie, d’ histoire et d’ arch�eologiegrecques offerts �a Jules Labarbe, ed. Jean Servais, Tony Hackens, and Bri-gitte Servais-Soyez (Li�ege: L’Antiquit�e Classique, 1987), 407–27; andlater by, among others, Antonio Di Vita, “La statua di Mozia,” in Bona-casa and Buttitta, La statua marmorea di Mozia, 39–52 (as Herakles-Mel-qart or Hannibal); Pier Giovanni Guzzo, “Interventi,” in ibid., 103–5;Paolo Moreno, “Interventi,” in ibid., 135–37; and idem, “Il deo diMozia,” Archeo 117 (1994): 120–23, esp. 122. I. Tamburello, “Interventi,”in Bonacasa and Buttitta, La statua marmorea di Mozia, 123–26, arguedthat the figure might represent a priest or a devotee of Baal or Tanit, butthat there was no certainty. The Hamilkar interpretation was aired byGilbert Charles-Picard, “Interventi,” in ibid., 99–102; Brigitte Servais-Soyez, “Interventi,” in ibid., 127–30, who saw it as a work of Pythagoras;and later by Nina Bode, “Die Statue von Mozia: Hamilkar als Heros,”Antike Kunst 36 (1993): 103–10. Others were less sanguine about identi-fying the statue with a particular figure: thus, Werner Fuchs, “La statuamarmorea di Mozia,” in Bonacasa and Buttitta, La statua marmorea diMozia, 79–81, preferred to see the figure as a Punic hero or even a pel-tast/slinger (fromboliere); Vincenzo Tusa, “La statua di Mozia,” La Paroladel Passato 213 (1983): 445–56; and idem, “Il giovane di Mozia,” in Bona-casa and Buttitta, La statua marmorea di Mozia, 53–60, saw Punic overtonesin the dress and argued for an “idealized figure of a Punic individual,”perhaps even the owner of a victorious chariot; cf. also idem, “Il giovanedi Mozia,” in Archaische und klassische griechische Plastik: Akten des internatio-nalen Kolloquiums vom 22.– 25. April 1985 in Athen, vol. 2, ed. HelmutKyrieleis (Mainz: Phillip von Zabern, 1986), 1–10; and A. Span�o Gemel-laro, “La statua marmorea di Mozia: Un’aggiornamento della questione,”Sicilia Archeologica 23 (1990): 19–37, considered the figure a Punicdeity or personage, or else a Phoenician charioteer. Hans Peter Isler,“Interventi,” in Bonacasa and Buttitta, La statua marmorea di Mozia, 139–40, was troubled by the charioteer interpretation but considered thestatue non-Greek; and Anna Maria Bisi, “La statua di Mozia nel quadrodella scultura fenicio-punica di ispirazione greca,” in ibid., 69–78, wiselyconcluded that in the absence of attributes there was no conclusive iden-tity but never doubted the Phoenico-Punic nature of the sculpture.

14. Bode, “Die Statue von Mozia,” 103–10; and Werner Fuchs, “La statuamarmorea di Mozia,” 79–81.

15. Bisi, “La statua di Mozia,” 69–78; contra Bell, “The Motya Charioteer,” 2.

16. C. Gorgoni and P. Pallante, “On Cycladic Marbles Used in the Greekand Phoenician Colonies of Sicily,” in Paria Lithos: Parian Quarries, Mar-ble and Workshops of Sculpture; Proceedings of the First International Conferenceon the Archaeology of Paros and the Cyclades, Paros, 2–5 October 1997, ed.Dimitri Schilardi and Dora Kotsonopoulou (Athens: Institute for theArchaeology of Paros and the Cyclades, 2000), 500; see also Olga Pala-gia, “O Neos tes Motyas kai e mache tes Imeras” [The Motya Youth andthe Battle of Himera], in EPAINOS Luigi Beschi, Benaki Museum, suppl.7, ed. Angelos Delivorrias, Giorgos Despinis, and Angelos Zarkadas(Athens: Benaki Museum, 2011), 291 n. 1.

17. Sandro Stucchi, “La statua marmorea da Mozia e il viaggio aereo diDedalo,” Atti della Pontifica Academia romana di Archeologia, Rendiconti 59(1986–87): 3–61; idem, “La statua marmorea trovata a Mozia: Per unanuova lettura del monumento,” in Bonacasa and Buttitta, La statua mar-morea di Mozia, 83–96; Enrico Paribeni, “Di alcuni chiarmenti e di un

quiz non risolto,” Quaderni Ticinesi 15 (1986): 43–59; and A. PrecopiLombardo, “Rappresenta ‘Gelone disarmato’ la statua di Mozia?” SiciliaArcheologia 71 (1989): 73–80; see further Bell, “The Motya Charioteer,”2 n. 6.

18. M. R. La Lomia, “Il giovane di Mozia �e un danzatore?” La Parola del Pas-sato 248 (1989): 377–96; Siri Sande, “Il giovane di Mozia, un attore?” Actaad Archaeologiam et Atrium Historiam Pertinentia 8 (1992): 35–51; and cf.Matilde Caltabiano, “Interventi,” in Bonacasa and Buttitta, La statua mar-morea di Mozia, 131–32.

19. Marco Santucci, “La statua di Mozia, Teline e la ierofantia dei Dinome-nidi,” Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 136 (2008): 137–60, esp.144; see further Franco De Angelis, “Archaeology in Sicily 2006–2010,”Archaeological Reports 58 (2012): 193; and on ritual transvestism, seeDavid Leitao, “The Perils of Leukippos: Initiatory Transvestism andMale Gender Ideology in the Ekdusia at Phaistos,” Classical Antiquity 14(1995): 130–63. Santucci, 144–51, goes further by fusing this idea withthat of Caltabiano (“Interventi,” 131–32), who associates the MotyaYouth with Herodotus’s account of Telines—an ancestor of Gelon whofirst settled Gela and who initiated, in a remarkable fashion, the mysteryrites of Demeter and Kore. As Herodotus (7.153.4) notes: “I have alwaysmaintained that it is by no means everybody who is equal to things likethat, which usually call for both strength and courage; yet people inSicily maintain that Telines was neither strong nor brave, but, on thecontrary, a rather soft and effeminate person.” It is precisely this aspectof Telines that, Santucci argues, explains the apparent “strangeness” ofthe Motya Youth (154). He refers to the chest band worn by the MotyaYouth as a strophion, a bralike band worn by women round the breast.

20. A somewhat more nuanced account of the Motya Youth by CaterinaGreco, in yet another recent study, finds the “sexual ambiguity” of thestatue difficult to decode. Greco, “Isole nell’isole: Testimonianze e do-cumenti archeologici della provincia di Trapani,” in Immagine e immaginidella Sicilia e di altre isole del Mediterraneo antico: Atti delle seste Giornate inter-nazionali di studi sull’ area elima e la Sicilia Occidentale nel contesto Mediterra-neo, Erice, 12–16 ottobre 2006, ed. Carmine Ampolo, vol. 2 (Pisa: Edizionidella Normale, 2009), 531–49, esp. 533–37. She follows the consensusview that the statue is a charioteer and suggests that it was made in Seli-nunte and moved to Motya in 409 BCE following the Carthaginian con-quest of the city. While Greco (533–37) goes to great lengths to musterparallels with the sculptural output of Selinunte, few of these survive inthe round.

21. Bell, “The Motya Charioteer,” 2.

22. This refers to the two holes in the belt: that on the viewer’s left has clearremnants of bronze surviving, whereas the right hole has no substantialtraces of bronze.

23. Bell, “TheMotyaCharioteer,” 3; cf. LaRocca, “Il giovane diMozia,” 452–60.

24. Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, and Henry Stuart Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), s.v. ξystί&. Forfurther discussion, see Dontas, “Un’opera siceliota,” 66–67; and Bell,“The Motya Charioteer,” 2, with n. 9.

25. Michalis Tiverios, Hellenike Techne: Archaia Angeia [Greek Art: AncientPottery] (Athens: Ekdotiki Athenon, 1996), 153, 305–6, fig. 129; the vasewas found at Akragas in Sicily and is now in the Staatliche Antikensamm-lungen, Munich. John Davidson Beazley ultimately assigned the vase tothe “very late” phase of the Brygos Painter, but a number of scholars,beginning with Martin Robertson and, most recently, Jenifer Neils, pre-fer to see it as a work by the Dokimasia Painter; see Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 385, no.228 (a 27); Robertson, The Art of Vase-Painting in Classical Athens (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 118; and Neils, “The Doki-masia Painter at Morgantina,” in Vasenbilder im Kulturtransfer: Zirkulationund Rezeption griechischer Keramik im Mittelmeerraum, Beihefte zum CorpusVasorum Antiquorum, Deutschland, vol. 5, ed. Stefan Schmidt andAdrian St€ahli (Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 2012), 5–6. For further dis-cussion on Sappho and Alkaios, see Gregory Nagy, “Did Sappho andAlcaeus Ever Meet?” in Literatur und Religion: Wege zu einer mythisch-rituellen Poetik bei den Griechen, Basiliensia—Mythos, Eikon, Poiesis,vol. 1.1, ed. Anton Bierl, Rebecca L€ammle, and Katharina Wesselmann(Munich: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 211–69.

26. Interestingly, the Delphi Charioteer has long been identified, by aninscribed base, as having been dedicated by a Sicilian Greek, Polyzalos ofGela, celebrating a victory at the Pythian Games, either in 478 or in 474BCE, although the identity of the dedicant or dedicants has beencogently questioned by a number of scholars. For the Delphi Charioteer,see Andrew Stewart, Greek Sculpture: An Exploration (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1990), 149, pl. 301. In a recent article, GianfrancoAdornato has questioned the commonly accepted reconstruction of thehistorical background of the Delphi Charioteer; Adornato, “DelphicEnigmas? The Gelas anasson, Polyzalos, and the Charioteer Statue,” Amer-ican Journal of Archaeology 112 (2008): 29–55. In his rereading of theinscription associated with the statue, Adornato identifies two dedicants:a Gelas anasson, or “ruler of Gela,” and Polyzalos, the son of Deinomenes

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and brother of Gelon, Hieron, and Thrasyboulos. He goes on to suggestthat there were two different dedications set up at the sanctuary ofApollo at Delphi: one dedicated by the Gelas anasson, which was laterappropriated by Polyzalos, and another by an unknown dedicant repre-sented by the bronze charioteer. A related argument was put forward in2007 by Smith, “Pindar, Athletes, and the Statue Habit,” 126–28, fig. 30,where the chariot monument was first dedicated by a ruler of Gela, thenreinscribed as a dedication of Polyzalos.

27. Cf. Guzzo, “Interventi,” 103–5. Whatever its precise date, the LudovisiThrone is usually dated to a time more or less contemporary with theMotya Youth.

28. See, for example, Colin M. Kraay and Max Hirmer, Greek Coins (NewYork: Harry N. Abrams, 1966), pl. 30, no. 93 (obverse), from Syracuse,dating to ca. 440 BCE.

29. The lack of sleeves on the Motya Youth’s xystis is more in keeping withthe garment worn by Alkaios on the red-figure kalathoid krater inMunich (Fig. 5), though not that worn by Sappho, which does havesleeves.

30. The Sicilian coins are discussed and illustrated in Bell, “The MotyaCharioteer,” 3, 33, figs. 5, 6; see also Kraay and Hirmer, pl. 45, no. 123(reverse), from Syracuse, dating to ca. 412–400 BCE.

31. A few examples of charioteers in Athenian black-figure and red-figurepottery are conveniently assembled by Bell, “The Motya Charioteer,” 34,figs. 7, 8. For charioteers wearing a belt around the waist, see, for exam-ple, the accompanying volume of the recent exhibition at the J. PaulGetty Museum, Claire L. Lyons et al., eds., Sicily: Art and Invention betweenGreece and Rome (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2013), 88, fig. 49;100, fig. 55; 178, fig. 115; 183, fig. 124. Stampolidis (“Appendix: TheCharioteer of Mozia,” 37) considers it a “broad ribbon” worn high onthe chest, and he writes: “Broad ribbons (not belts) are to be seen roundthe waists of racing charioteers in vase-paintings—and, what is more,without the cross-belts on the chest” (with reference to a charioteer on aPanathenaic amphora, for which see Panos Valavanis, Games and Sanctu-aries in Ancient Greece: Olympia, Delphi, Isthmia, Nemea, Athens [LosAngeles: Getty Publications, 2004], 438, fig. 633).

32. Dontas, “Un’opera siceliota,” 61–68; La Rocca, “Il giovane di Mozia,”452–60; and Bell, “The Motya Charioteer,” 3.

33. See Smith, “Pindar, Athletes, and the Statue Habit,” 129, figs. 34, 35;Adornato, “Delphic Enigmas?” 34–35, figs. 4, 5; and see further ClaudeRolley, “En regardant l’aurige,” Bulletin de Correspondance Hell�enique 114(1990): 285–97.

34. Pavese, L’auriga di Mozia, fig. 30.

35. Stampolidis, “Appendix: The Charioteer of Mozia,” 38 n. 38.

36. Ibid., 34; see further Pierre Grimal, The Penguin Dictionary of ClassicalMythology (London: Penguin Books, 1986), 336.

37. Stampolidis, “Appendix: The Charioteer of Mozia,” 38. In this recon-struction, the contestants, and not necessarily the kneeling figures(grooms) in front of them, would be controlling the horses. Moreover,as Stampolidis explains, Pelops would be looking at his chariot and hisbride-to-be would be uncovering her face to see him; similarly,Oinomaos would be looking at his chariot. The reconstruction ofthe Olympia pediment was digitally produced and published inRichard T. Neer, Greek Art and Archaeology: A New History, c. 2500–c. 150 BCE (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2012), 228, fig. 9.14;the original photograph that was digitally manipulated is courtesy ofJohn Hios/akg-images.

38. The presentation was given at the workshop Giornata di Studi: Rethinkingthe Mozia Youth, held at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Villa, LosAngeles, on April 27, 2013. I am grateful to Caterina Greco for providingan abstract of her paper.

39. The Olympic Games were later reintroduced by Herakles in Pelops’shonor, although they were sometimes thought to be the funeral gamesof Oinomaos.

40. Later representations of Pelops have him decked out in full Orientalgarb, including the Lydian/Phrygian cap, but such a cap, like a helmetor meniskos (see nn. 46 and 50 below), does not require five holes withmetal pins. An additional problem with a Phrygian cap has to do withthe characteristic extensions that would hang down the shoulders orback and which should show traces of attachment, none of which areevident on the Motya Youth.

41. Stewart, Greek Sculpture, 148.

42. It is worth noting that a self-crowning charioteer or athlete, in the Classi-cal Greek tradition, is tantamount to an act of hybris. Where a victor’swreath is shown, the victorious youth is taking it off in order to dedicateit. I am grateful to Andrew Stewart for pointing this out.

43. Palagia, “The Motya Youth.”

44. Ibid., esp. 283, 287, fig. 6.

45. Ibid., 288, fig. 9, which shows a detail of such a belt worn by a militaryfigure on a relief from the Palace of Sennacherib (705–681 BCE) atNineveh, now in the British Museum, London (inv. no. WA 124792).

46. Meniskos (plural meniskoi) in Greek literally means a crescent moon, abronze disk of sorts mounted on the head of some Greek sculpture toprevent bird droppings from accumulating on the statue. For the mean-ing of meniskoi, see Aristophanes, Birds, lines 1114–17; also Robert Man-uel Cook, “A Supplementary Note on Meniskoi,” Journal of HellenicStudies 96 (1976): 153–54.

47. Bell, “The Motya Charioteer,” 6.

48. Ursula Knigge, “Ein J€unglingskopf vom heiligen Tor in Athen,”Mitteilungen des Deutschen Arch€aologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung98 (1983): 45–56; discussed and illustrated by Bell, “The MotyaCharioteer,” 12, 37, figs. 15–16. Although sometimes referred to as anArchaic kouros, the statue is of a warrior and is assigned to the earlyClassical Severe style in Andrew Stewart, “The Persian and CarthaginianInvasions of 480 B.C.E. and the Beginning of the Classical Style: Part 2,The Finds from Other Sites in Athens, Attica, Elsewhere in Greece, andon Sicily; Part 3, The Severe Style: Motivations and Meaning,” AmericanJournal of Archaeology 112 (2008): 583–84.

49. Bell, “The Motya Charioteer,” 12, notes that this also occurs on a lateArchaic head in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and on the Aristodi-kos kouros in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. He fur-ther notes (12 nn. 67, 68, with references) that such a picked surface,without the raised rim of spirals, appears in other works, such as theSabouroff head in the Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin(thought to be from Aigina or Athens), and the Fauvel head in theMus�ee du Louvre, Paris (no. 2718); for full details on the Sabouroff andFauvel heads, see Bell, “The Motya Charioteer,” 12 nn. 67, 68; Jean Char-bonneaux, Roland Martin, and Francois Villard, Archaic Greek Art, 620–480 BC (London: Thames and Hudson, 1971), 151, fig. 187; BrunildeSismondo Ridgway, The Archaic Style in Greek Sculpture (Princeton: Prince-ton University Press, 1977), 76–77 n. 33; for further discussion, seeGisela M. A. Richter, Catalogue of Greek Sculptures in the MetropolitanMuseum of Art (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), 18,under no. 22.

50. For the picked surface accommodating some form of headgear, seeKnigge, “Ein J€unglingskopf,” 54–55; Brunilde S. Ridgway, “Birds,‘Meniskoi,’ and Head Attributes in Archaic Greece,” American Journalof Archaeology 94 (1990): 593–95; and Stucchi, “La statua marmoreada Mozia,” 11. For the picked surface as representing a real hair-style, see Bell, “The Motya Charioteer,” 12. For meniskoi, see furtherJody Maxmin, “Meniskoi and the Birds,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 95(1975): 175–80.

51. See Bell, “The Motya Charioteer,” 12. The examples cited by Bell are notall conclusive. Some, like the head of Patroklos in the tondo of theSosias Painter’s cup in the Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin(12 n. 70, 42, fig. 27), may represent a skullcap (or pilos) worn under thehelmet, normally made of wool or hair wrought into felt, rather than ashaven scalp. Ridgway, “Birds, ‘Meniskoi,’ and Head Attributes,” seesmost of the sculptural examples listed by Bell as cases where the figurewore a helmet or other forms of headgear.

52. Bell, “The Motya Charioteer,” 13.

53. According to Jerry Podany, senior conservator of antiquities at theJ. Paul Getty Museum, there are traces of pigment, identified as Egyp-tian blue, at a few points on the worked-down surface of the head. At thetime of writing, the nature and extent of this pigment remained to befully analyzed. Rather than representing a covering of paint over theentire surface of the head, the blue pigment was more in the form ofspots here and there, which may well have resulted from whatever wasworn on the head of the figure, or even by material that overlay thestatue when it was toppled over in 397 BCE. I am grateful to JerryPodany for this information.

54. Stampolidis, “Appendix: The Charioteer of Mozia,” 34–35.

55. Bell, “The Motya Charioteer,” 6.

56. The bronze pin on the left side of the head at the back is 2.3 cm longand between 0.3 and 0.5 cm thick; that on the right side at the back is2.1 cm long, with a maximum thickness of 0.5 cm. The hole on the leftside at the front has only slight traces of bronze surviving; that on theright side front preserves a clear remnant of a bronze pin, square/trape-zoidal in section. Both of the better-preserved pins at the back of thehead are broken; both are square or rectangular or trapezoidal in sec-tion; and both taper toward a point, which is not preserved. Both pinsare bent toward the right, the surviving terminal on the pin on the leftbent slightly upward.

57. Falsone, “La scoperta,” 27.

58. Stampolidis, “Appendix: The Charioteer of Mozia,” 36.

59. Ridgway, “Birds, ‘Meniskoi,’ and Head Attributes,” 585–89; see alsoCook, “A Supplementary Note onMeniskoi,” 153–54.

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60. Ridgway, “Birds, ‘Meniskoi,’ and Head Attributes,” also concludes thatthe “meniskoi” mentioned by Aristophanes (Birds, lines 1114–17) as pro-tection against birds may be a pun or an allusion, the meaning of whichescapes us today.

61. Stampolidis, “Appendix: The Charioteer of Mozia,” 36. That whateverwas worn by the youth weighed more heavily at the back of the head isfurther suggested by the placement or angling of the two back holeswith their surviving pins. When the top of the head is looked at fromstraight on, these two pins are not visible (Fig. 16); they only come intoview when the angle takes in the back of the statue (Fig. 14).

62. Arthur Dale Trendall, The Red-Figured Vases of Lucania, Campania andSicily (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 54–55, pl. 24; Paolo Enrico Arias,Max Hirmer, and Brian B. Shefton, A History of 1000 Years of Greek VasePainting (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1962), 387–88, pls. 230–35; Tive-rios, Hellenike Techne, 206–7, 340–42, figs. 191, 192; Martine Denoyelle,“Style individuel, style local, et centres des production: Retour sur lecrat�ere des ‘Karnea,’”M�elanges de l’ �Ecole Francaise de Rome 114 (2002):587–609; Oliver Taplin, Pots and Plays: Interactions between Tragedy andGreek Vase-Painting of the Fourth Century B.C. (Los Angeles: Getty Publica-tions, 2007), 34–35, fig. 15; Martine Denoyelle and Mario Iozzo, Lac�eramique grecque d’ Italie m�eridionale et de Sicile: Productions coloniales etapparent�ees du VIIIe au IIIe si�ecle av. J.-C. (Paris: Picard, 2009), 108–10;and Mary Louise Hart, The Art of Ancient Greek Theater (Los Angeles: GettyPublications, 2010), 15–16 (all with further references).

63. Although it is sometimes directly associated with ancient Taras (Ta-ranto)—for example, Irad Malkin,Myth and Territory in the Spartan Medi-terranean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 157—Cegliedel Campo is located in the heart of Apulia, very close to Bari. For otherLucanian red-figure vases found in Ceglie del Campo, see Trendall, TheRed-Figured Vases of Lucania, Campania and Sicily, 781.

64. Trendall, The Red-Figured Vases of Lucania, Campania and Sicily, 54.

65. Ibid., with reference to John Davidson Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 1151.

66. John Davidson Beazley, “Hydria-fragments in Corinth,” Hesperia 24(1955): 315; a similar conclusion is echoed by Trendall (The Red-FiguredVases of Lucania, Campania and Sicily, 55; with further references), whonotes: “The Perseus scene is probably to be associated with a satyr play.. . .which may well have been performed during the Karneian festival,since it is likely that the two rows of pictures on the reverse are con-nected.” Discussion and illustration of the kalathiskos dancers was firstassembled by Arthur Bernard Cook, Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion, vol.3, pt. ii, Appendices and Index (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1940), 996–1003.

67. See Taplin, Pots and Plays, 34–35, fig. 15. Gloria Ferrari notes that it ishighly probable that the scene refers to a satyr play, and she thus con-nects it, however indirectly, to a dramatic performance for Dionysos, butthe iconography is far from clear on this point; see Ferrari, Alcman andthe Cosmos of Sparta (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 136.

68. Ludolf Stephani, “Erkl€arung einiger im Jahre 1864 im s€udlichen Russ-land gefundenen Gegenst€ande,” Compte-rendu de la Commission Imp�erialeArch�eologique pour l’ ann�ee 1865 (St. Petersburg: Imprimerie del’Acad�emie Imp�eriale des Sciences, 1866).

69. Ferrari, Alcman and the Cosmos of Sparta, 128, 135–50.

70. Ibid., 137–40. First of all, Ferrari’s argument that the late HellenisticNeo-Attic reliefs replicate Athenian fifth-century prototypes rests ontheir association with earlier iconography that has little to do with thatof the Taranto krater. Her other argument (147–48), that the Tarantokrater presents a “Spartan festival through an Athenian, or philo-Athe-nian, lens” because the vessel belongs to the earliest South Italian red-figure production that was closely modeled on Attic prototypes, is littlemore than special pleading. Without belaboring the point, we do notknow the identity of the Karneia Painter, and insisting that s/he was“Athenian” is pointless. Moreover, linking the Karneia festival on oneside of the vase with Dionysos on the other is similarly problematic, asfew, if any, red-figure vases are iconographically continuous on bothsides of the vessel.

71. According to Jean-Marc Moret, “Un ancetre du phylact�ere: Le pilierinscrit des vases italiotes,” Revue Arch�eologique, 1979, 3–34, such inscribedpillars on South Italian red-figure vases are a fairly normal conventionthat identifies the cult.

72. Although kalathiskos suggests a “small kalathos” (basket), and may thusseem inappropriate for a headdress this large, the term, according toLiddell et al., A Greek-English Lexicon, s.v. kaλauίsko&, refers to a “kind ofdance.”

73. Cook, Zeus, 997.

74. Ferrari, Alcman and the Cosmos of Sparta, 136. In her overview of kalathis-kos dancers, Ferrari seems to elide the two different types of headdressthat are conventionally referred to as kalathiskos. Although both may

ultimately hark back to a crown of rays, they are not the same, and I amnot convinced that we should regard them as such.

75. See Arias et al., A History of 1000 Years of Greek Vase Painting, 377–80, pl.218; Tiverios, Hellenike Techne, 196–97, 322–33, figs. 179, 180, from Ruvodi Puglia, now in the Museo Nazionale Archeologico, Naples, inv. no.3240. See further Oliver Taplin and Rosie Wyles, eds., The Pronomos Vaseand Its Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

76. The worbeiά or worbeά literally referred to the halter by which a horsewas tied to the manger; the word also referred to a bandage, but came tobe used for the mouth band, normally considered to be of leather, putaround the lips of aulos players or pipers to assist them in regulating thesound; see Liddell et al., A Greek-English Lexicon, s.v. worbeiά.

77. Beazley, “Hydria-fragments in Corinth,” 315; Cook, Zeus, 997; and forfurther discussion on whether this figure is a girl or a young man, seeMargarete Bieber, “Die Herkunft des tragischen Kost€ums,” Jahrbuch desdeutschen arch€aologischen Instituts 32 (1917): 55 n. 2; and No€el Moon,“Some Early South Italian Vase-Painters,” Annual of the British School atAthens 11 (1929): 31. Most subsequent scholars have been content to fol-low Beazley’s interpretation, which was penned in 1955; see, for exam-ple, Arias et al., A History of 1000 Years of Greek Vase Painting, 388; WalterBurkert, Greek Religion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,1985), 234; Malkin,Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean, 157;Noel Robertson, “The Religious Criterion in Greek Ethnicity: The Dor-ians and the Festival Carneia,” American Journal of Ancient History, n.s., 1,no. 2 (2002): 5–74, esp. 57–58; H. Alan Shapiro, “Dances for Apollo atSparta: Hyakinthia, Karneia, Gymnopaidiai,” in Thesaurus Cultus et Ri-tuum Antiquorum, vol. 2 (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2004), 323;and see Trendall, The Red-Figured Vases of Lucania, Campania and Sicily,55, for further references.

78. Cook, Zeus, 997; and Beazley, “Hydria-fragments in Corinth,” 315.

79. Cook, Zeus, 996–1003; for a more recent listing, see Ferrari, Alcman andthe Cosmos of Sparta, 149 n. 72.

80. For example, Cook, Zeus, 998–99, figs. 808, 809; see further ArthurDale Trendall and Alexander Cambitoglou, The Red-Figured Vases ofApulia, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 16, no. 57; andArthur Dale Trendall, Red Figure Vases of South Italy and Sicily: AHandbook (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989), 46, fig. 38 (Victoriaand Albert Museum, London, inv. no. 4803.1901). There is also theLucanian bell krater in the Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen,Berlin (inv. no. 4520), depicting a flute player, a naked kalathiskosdancer, and Artemis, for which see Trendall, The Red-Figured Vases ofLucania, Campania and Sicily, 78, no. 398; with an illustration inBruno Schr€oder, “Die Vatikanische Wettlaeuferin,” Mitteilungen desKaiserlich Deutschen Arch€aologischen Instituts, R€omische Abteilung 24(1909): 109–20, esp. 119, fig. 6.

81. For which see Cook, Zeus, 997, fig. 807; Trendall, The Red-Figured Vases ofLucania, Campania and Sicily, 105, no. 548, Leiden RSx 4, with a height of16 in. [40.6 cm]); Ferrari, Alcman and the Cosmos of Sparta, pl. 23, datingto about 400–380 BCE. The figure on yet another red-figure krater illus-trated by Cook (Zeus, 1001, fig. 811) shows a female (her breasts clearlyrendered) wearing a kalathiskos and short chiton, but she is not adancer, at least not in the scene as depicted, but is rather attending to ayoung male reclining on a kline (couch or bed), her arm raised, adjust-ing a bronze stand or small table; Trendall, The Red-Figured Vases of Luca-nia, Campania and Sicily, 90, no. 446 (200), refers to the headdress as a“basket crown.”

82. Ferrari, Alcman and the Cosmos of Sparta, 149.

83. Arthur Dale Trendall, Phlyax Vases, 2nd ed., Bulletin of the Institute forClassical Studies, London, suppl. 19 (London: Institute for Classical Stud-ies, 1967), 36, no. 48; idem, The Red-Figured Vases of Paestum (London:British School at Rome, 1987), 68, pl. 22c–d, no. 2/26 (attributed toAsteas); Cook, Zeus, 1000, fig. 810; also Robert Manuel Cook, GreekPainted Pottery, 2nd ed. [London: Methuen, 1972], pl. 55B). The comiccharacter on this vase is clearly a kalathiskos dancer, as opposed to acomic actor with a kalathos or basket supported on his head (for exam-ple, Trendall, The Red-Figured Vases of Paestum, 124, pl. 72a–b, no. 2/173,or 163, pl. 107e–f, no. 2/306).

84. Otto Benndorf and George Niemann, Das Heroon von Gj€olbaschi-Trysa(Vienna: A. Holzhausen, 1889); and Cook, Zeus, 1002, fig. 812. For fullerphotographic documentation, see Wolfgang Oberleitner, Das Heroonvon Trysa, ein lykisches F€urstengrab des 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr., ZabernsBildb€ande zur Arch€aologie, vol. 18 (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1994);for a complete account of the various expeditions to Trysa and the storyof how the monument made its way to Vienna, see Hubert D. Szemethy,Die Erwerbungsgeschichte des Heroons von Trysa, Wiener Forschungen zurArch€aologie, vol. 9 (Vienna: Phoibos Verlag, 2005); for a general over-view of the settlement and architecture of the site, see Thomas Mark-steiner, Trysa: Eine zentrallykische Niederlassung im Wandel der Zeit;Siedlungs-, arkitektur-, und kunstgeschichtliche Studien zur KulturlandschaftLykien (Vienna: Phoibos Verlag, 2002).

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85. See Benndorf and Niemann, Das Heroon von Gj€olbaschi-Trysa, 236; seefurther Oberleitner, Das Heroon von Trysa, 22. Ferrari, Alcman and the Cos-mos of Sparta, 149, asserts that the figures on the portal are clearly male.

86. See especially Oberleitner, Das Heroon von Trysa, 8–9, fig. 8; 14, fig. 17;22, fig. 29.

87. For fuller description, see Benndorf and Niemann, Das Heroon vonGj€olbaschi-Trysa, 56–72.

88. The drapery on the kalathiskos dancer, if at rest, on the Taranto kraterwould fall somewhere between the upper shin and ankle of the figure.

89. See especially Benndorf and Niemann, Das Heroon von Gj€olbaschi-Trysa,58, 72–96, esp. 95–96, pl. 6.

90. For the most recent discussion of the chronology of the monument, seeOberleitner, Das Heroon von Trysa, 56–61.

91. See Benndorf and Niemann, Das Heroon von Gj€olbaschi-Trysa, pls. XX,XXI; and Oberleitner, Das Heroon von Trysa, 50–52, figs. 105–6, 109–11.

92. Benndorf and Niemann, Das Heroon von Gj€olbaschi-Trysa, 175–80.

93. This is most clearly seen in the photographs published in Oberleitner,Das Heroon von Trysa, 50–52, esp. figs. 105–6, 109–11.

94. Beazley, “Hydria-fragments in Corinth,” 315.

95. Ferrari, Alcman and the Cosmos of Sparta, 150.

96. A stone kalathiskos is highly unlikely. A metal kalathiskos is possible, butthere is no evidence for this. It is even possible that the headdress wasmade of more perishable materials. What is clear is that the kalathiskoiworn by the dancers at the Karneia festival must have been light enoughto be worn by the dancing youths. It is possible, therefore, that the kala-thiskos worn by the Motya Youth may have been replaced at varioustimes, perhaps even annually? All this, however, remains highlyspeculative.

97. Stampolidis, “Appendix: The Charioteer of Mozia,” 34–35.

98. Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen, Thera: Untersuchungen, Vermessungenund Ausgrabungen in den Jahren 1895–1902, vol. 1 (Berlin: GeorgeReimer, 1899), esp. 151–53; for the inscriptions, see idem, InscriptionesGraecae, vol. 12, Inscriptiones Insularum Aegaei, fasc. 3, Inscriptiones Symes,Teutlussae, Teli, Nisyri, Astypalaeae, Anaphes, Therae et Therasiae, Pholegan-dri, Cimoli, Meli (Berlin: George Reimer, 1898), 127–28; see also idem,Inscriptiones Graecae, vol. 12, fasc. 3, Supplement: Inscriptiones InsularumAegaei (Berlin: George Reimer, 1904); the most recent overview of theinscriptions is by Alessandra Inglese, Thera arcaica: Le iscrizioni rupestridell’ agora degli dei, Themata 1 (Rome: Edizioni Tored, 2008); for discus-sion of some of the inscriptions, see Erich Bethe, “Die dorische Knaben-liebe—ihre Ethik und ihre Idee,” Rheinisches Museum f€ur Philologie 62(1907): 438–75, esp. 450; Albert Moll, Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften(Leipzig: Vogel, 1921), 385; and see further Kenneth Dover, Greek Homo-sexuality (London: Duckworth, 1978), 123.

99. Hiller von Gaertringen, Inscriptiones Graecae (1898), 127, no. 537; andInglese, Thera arcaica, 221–25, no. 30; 472–74, figs. 17–20.

100. Hiller von Gaertringen, Inscriptiones Graecae (1898), 126, no. 536; andInglese, Thera arcaica, 217–20, no. 29; 468–71, figs. 11–16.

101. Hiller von Gaertringen, Inscriptiones Graecae (1898), 127, no. 538b; andInglese, Thera arcaica, 226–29, no. 31; 475–77, figs. 21–24. In addition tothese three inscriptions, there are several more that refer to individualyoung men as “good” or “best,” as well as many more with individualnames only. There is also a later fragment of a cinerary vase with theinscription “Karnea”; see Hiller von Gaertringen, ibid., 167, no. 845.

102. Jan Bremmer, “An Enigmatic Indo-European Rite: Pederasty,” Arethusa13 (1980): 279–98, esp. 283.

103. The interpretation of the inscriptions as testimony to sacred sexual actswas first proposed by Hiller von Gaertringen, Thera, and supported bymany others, from Bethe, “Die dorische Knabenliebe,” 450, to Vern L.Bullough, Sexual Variance in Society and History (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1976), 100–101; Ernest Borneman, Lexicon der Liebe: Mate-rialien zur Sexualwissenschaft (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978), 601; Harald Pat-zer, Die griechische Knabenliebe (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1982), 84–87;and Bernard Sergent, L’homosexualit�e dans la mythologie grecque (Paris:Payot, 1984), 141. For the opposing view, see, among others, HenriIr�en�ee Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. G. Lamb (Lon-don: Sheed and Ward, 1956), 376; Dover, Greek Homosexuality, 123; andBremmer, “An Enigmatic Indo-European Rite,” 283.

104. See, among others, Elizabeth M. Craik, The Dorian Aegean (London:Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), 159–60; and Sarah P. Morris, Daidalosand the Origins of Greek Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992),136–39.

105. It also argues against Ferrari’s Athenocentric model, which sees the ear-liest representations of such dancers as Athenian; see Ferrari, Alcmanand the Cosmos of Sparta, 135–50.

106. Robertson, “The Religious Criterion in Greek Ethnicity,” 49–50.

107. See Paul Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History 1300–362 B.C.,2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2002), 111; for the dating of Terpander,see George L. Huxley, Early Sparta (London: Faber and Faber, 1962), 43.

108. Burkert, Greek Religion, 263. For the Gymnopaidiai, see Felix B€olte,“Lakonischen Festen,” Rheinisches Museum f€ur Philologie 78 (1929): 124–30. For further details of those responsible for the Karneia, see Arnold J.Toynbee, “The Growth of Sparta,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 33 (1913):255; and George Thomson, “The Greek Calendar,” Journal of HellenicStudies 63 (1943): 64.

109. For the imitation of the military life, see, most recently, Robert Parker,On Greek Religion (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2011), 200.

110. Robert Parker, “Spartan Religion,” in Classical Sparta: Techniques behindHer Success, ed. Anton Powell (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,1989), 146.

111. Ibid., 149–50.

112. For the Karneia, see, among others, SamWide, Lakonische Kulte (Leipzig:B. G. Teubner, 1893), 73–87; Martin P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste von reli-gi€oser Bedeutung, mit Ausschluss der attischen (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner,1906), 118–29; Lewis Richard Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, vol. 4(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), 259–61; B€olte, “Lakonischen Festen,”141–43; Henri Jeanmaire, Couroi e cour�etes: Essai sur l’�education spartiate etsur les rites d’ adolescence dans l’ antiquit�e hell�enique (Lille: Biblioth�equeUniversitaire, 1939), 524–26; Walter Friedrich Otto, Das Wort der Antike(Stuttgart: E. Klett, 1962), 76–84; Angelo Brelich, Paides e parthenoi, Incu-nabula Graeca 36 (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1969), 148–54; Mar-gherita Guarducci, “I culti della Laconia,” in Problemi di storia e culturaSpartana, ed. Eugenio Lanzillotta (Rome: Giorgio Bretschneider, 1984),95–96; Burkert, Greek Religion, 234–36; and Parker, “Spartan Religion,”142–72, esp. 142–51.

113. Thomson, “The Greek Calendar,” 64; see also Toynbee, “The Growth ofSparta,” 255; and Burkert, Greek Religion, 234.

114. Burkert, Greek Religion, 234.

115. Ibid.

116. Parker, On Greek Religion, 202.

117. Ibid., 214; and Burkert, Greek Religion, 234–35.

118. Parker, On Greek Religion, 214. Burkert, Greek Religion, 235, refers to a Kar-neia runner who was honored in an inscription from Knidos, whileanother runner from Thera boasted that he was the first to provide agreat banquet after the race. For the grimmer undertones of the chasingdown of the runner—a wild animal or “Wild Man” or “Wild Bear”—seeBurkert, Greek Religion, 235 (with references); see further Wide, Lakoni-sche Kulte, 76–81.

119. As stated in Athenaios, Deipnosophistai 4.141f.; see further Huxley, EarlySparta, 124 n. 313; and Parker, On Greek Religion, 173 n. 7.

120. Nicolas Richter, “Les Karneia de Sparte (et la date de la bataille de Sa-lamine),” in Sparta and Laconia, from Prehistory to Pre-Modern: Proceedings ofthe Conference Held in Sparta, Organised by the British School at Athens, theUniversity of Nottingham, the 5th Ephoreia of Prehistoric and Classical Antiqui-ties and the 5th Ephoreia of Byzantine Antiquities, 17–20 March 2005, BritishSchool at Athens Studies 16, ed. W. G. Cavanagh, C. Gallou, and M.Georgiadis (London: British School at Athens, 2009), 213–23, notesthree primary activities celebrated at the festival of Apollo Karneios: theimitation of military life (213–14), fertility (214–15), and the variouscontests, especially the singing (215–16).

121. Huxley, Early Sparta, 99 n. 34; see further B€olte, “Lakonischen Festen,”143, who sees in this a genuine tradition from the period of the Dorianmigration.

122. This is a point well made by Parker, “Spartan Religion,” 151, whom Iparaphrase.

123. Ibid. The Athenians also gathered in the theater to watch choirs of boys;for example, the City Dionysia included ten dithyrambic performancesby boys. See also Jack Winkler, “The Ephebes’ Song: Tragoidia andPolis,” Representations 11 (1985): 26–62, for a theory of choral perfor-mance by boys at the heart of Attic tragedy.

124. See especially Michael Pettersson, Cults of Apollo at Sparta: The Hyakin-thia, the Gymnopaidiai and the Karneia (Stockholm: Swedish Institute atAthens, 1992); see also Harald Popp, Die Einwirkung von Vorzeichen,Opfern und Festen auf die Kriegf€uhrung der Griechen im 5. und 4. Jahrhundertsv. Chr. (W€urzburg: Konrad Triltsch, 1957), 75–125. For the Hyakinthia,see further Nicholas Richer, “Les Hyakinthies de Sparte,” Revue des�Etudes Anciennes 106 (2004): 389–419; for the Gymnopaidiai, see idem,“Les Gymnop�edies de Sparte,” Ktema 30 (2005): 237–62.

125. Parker, “Spartan Religion,” 148–49. For dancing and initiation inAthens, see Winkler, “The Ephebes’ Song,” esp. 41–53.

126. Nilsson, Griechische Feste, 118–19; and Burkert, Greek Religion, 234.

127. See especially Popp, Die Einwirkung von Vorzeichen, 75–106. See also Thu-cydides 5.75 for the importance of the Karneia among the Spartans and

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their allies, including the aftermath of the Argos and Epidauros conflict.For the Argive invasion of Epidauros, see further Ferrari, Alcman and theCosmos of Sparta, 132–33.

128. For Marathon, see Herodotus 6.106; for Thermopylai, see 7.206, and8.72 for the aftermath of Thermopylai; see further Jules Labarbe, “Unt�emoignage capital de Polyen sur la bataille des Thermopyles,” Bulletinde Correspondance Hell�enique 78 (1954): 1–21; and Burkert, Greek Religion,234.

129. See Robertson, “The Religious Criterion in Greek Ethnicity,” 36, withreferences; see also Pettersson, Cults of Apollo at Sparta, 58.

130. Robertson, “The Religious Criterion in Greek Ethnicity,” 5–7.

131. As Burkert, Greek Religion, 234, rightly notes, the exact date of the monthcan no longer be ascertained. By looking at the fragmentary evidencepreserved for Cyrene, Thera, and Sparta, Burkert concludes that “wearrive at the 7th to the 15th Karneios, so that the festival ends with thefull moon.” See further Richter, “Les Karneia de Sparte,” 219–21.

132. For an overview of the Spartan calendar, see Alan Edouard Samuel,Greek and Roman Chronology: Calendars and Years in Classical Antiquity,Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 1, pt. 7 (Munich: C. H. Beck,1972), 92–94; and Catherine Tr€umpy, Untersuchungen zu den altgriechi-schen Monatsnamen und Monatsfolgen (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1997), 135–39.

133. Ferrari, Alcman and the Cosmos of Sparta, 130–35; the relevant passages inThucydides are 5.53–55, 5.75.5, 5.76.1. For Ferrari, the Spartan Karneiawas celebrated at a plenilune and had something to do with the grapevintage. She concludes that it took place after the heliacal rising of Ark-touros, asserting, “That this event precedes by a few days the autumnalequinox, around September 21, allows one to calculate that its occur-rence in the seventh century BCE fell roughly between September 15and September 18” (134–35).

134. Ferrari, Alcman and the Cosmos of Sparta, 147.

135. Robertson, “The Religious Criterion in Greek Ethnicity,” 6.

136. See Thucydides 5.54, 5.75; Pausanias 3.13.4, 3.26.7; see also Herodotus7.206, 8.72; and Robertson, “The Religious Criterion in Greek Ethni-city,” 15.

137. See Pettersson, Cults of Apollo at Sparta, 60.

138. Robertson, “The Religious Criterion in Greek Ethnicity,” 42.

139. Malkin,Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean, 157.

140. Ibid., 143. For Cyrene and the role of Apollo Karneios, see also Irad Mal-kin, A Small Greek World: Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2011), 57, 106.

141. Malkin,Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean, 149.

142. See especially Malkin, A Small Greek World, 176–77, with n. 15.

143. Ibid., 97–118, esp. 97; see further Irad Malkin, “Apollo Archegetes andSicily,” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 3rd ser., 16, no. 4(1986): 959–72, esp. 971, where in seeking for the reasons why the firstcolonists of Sicily would erect an altar of Apollo Archegetes, Malkinstresses the maritime functions of the deity, for he was Delphinios, thegod of shores, the god of embarkation on ships, the preserver of ships,and also the god of happy landing or disembarkation. For Theokles/Thoukles, see Thomas J. Dunbabin, The Western Greeks: The History ofSicily and South Italy from the Foundation of the Greek Colonies to 480 B.C.(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), 8–10; and Lilian H. Jeffery, The LocalScripts of Archaic Greece: A Study of the Origin of the Greek Alphabet and ItsDevelopment from the Eighth to the Fifth Century B.C., rev. ed., with a supple-ment by Alan W. Johnston (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 241.

144. Malkin,Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean, 145.

145. Ibid., xviii, Map 1.

146. Ibid., 67–114 (Thera, Melos, Kythera, Crete, Knidos), 212–13 (Knidos),219–35 (Herakleia Trachinia).

147. Ibid., 115–42.

148. Dunbabin, The Western Greeks, 29, with reference to the ancient literarysources.

149. Ibid., 31; and Giulio Giannelli, Culti e miti della Magna Grecia: Contributoalla storia pi�u antica delle colonie greche in occidente (Florence: Sansoni,1963).

150. Malkin,Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean, 63; for Kroton andLokroi Epizephyrioi, see further John K. Papadopoulos, “Magna Achaia:Akhaian Late Geometric and Archaic Pottery in South Italy and Sicily,”Hesperia 70 (2001): 415, 421–22.

151. Malkin,Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean, esp. 169–91; seealso 4–7, 49–57, 143–68, 192–218. For the foundation decree of Cyrene,and for the circumstances of the colony—sent out in a time of famineon Thera, where the increasing number of people had become toomany for the land of the mother city to support—see Alexander John

Graham, Colony and Mother City in Ancient Greece, 2nd ed. (Chicago: AresPublishers, 1983), 40–68, esp. 41.

152. Malkin,Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean, 174.

153. Ibid., 197–203.

154. For Herakles in the west, see especially Friedrich Prinz, Gr€undungsmythenund Sagenchronologie, Zetemata, Monographien zur klassischen Alter-tumswissenschaft 72 (Munich: C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung,1979), 149–51, and see also 206–313 for the return of the sons ofHerakles.

155. Malkin,Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean, 203, and 203–18for the story of Dorieus and the land of Eryx.

156. Ibid., 211.

157. Diodorus Siculus 4.22.6, 4.83.1–4.

158. Diodorus Siculus 5.9; Dunbabin, The Western Greeks, 328–32; and Malkin,Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean, 211–13.

159. Dunbabin, The Western Greeks, 328.

160. For Akragas, see Jeffery, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece, 274; and, morerecently, Gianfranco Adornato, “Phalaris: Literary Myth or HistoricalReality? Reassessing Archaic Akragas,” American Journal of Archaeology 116(2012): 483–506; for Gela, see Dunbabin, The Western Greeks, 20, 64–66,104–5, 112–21; and Jeffery, 272–74.

161. For Himera, see Dunbabin, The Western Greeks, 20, 56, 141–43; and Jef-fery, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece, 245–47.

162. On the death of Hippokrates of Gela, traditionally in 491–490 BCE,Gelon was left as the guardian of Hippokrates’s sons, but he staged acoup and established himself as tyrant. In 485 BCE he became tyrant ofSyracuse, having set up his brother, Hieron, as the ruler of Gela; seeDunbabin, The Western Greeks, 410–34.

163. Ibid., 423–26.

164. Ibid., 425.

165. Ibid., 426.

166. Ibid., 428.

167. Andrew Stewart, “The Persian Invasions of Greece and the Beginning ofthe Classical Style: Part 1, The Stratigraphy, Chronology, and Signifi-cance of the Acropolis Deposits,” American Journal of Archaeology 112(2008): 377–412; and idem, “The Persian and Carthaginian Invasions,”581–615.

168. Stewart, “The Persian and Carthaginian Invasions.” It is important tonote that this was not the first sculptural group of the tyrannicides;Kleisthenes commissioned the sculptor Antenor to produce a bronzegroup of Harmodios and Aristogeiton at the very end of the sixth cen-tury BCE; see Martin Robertson, A History of Greek Art (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1975), 185; and see, further, below.

169. Falsone, “La scoperta”; and Bell, “The Motya Charioteer,” 1–2.

170. Palagia, “The Motya Youth.”

171. Diodorus Siculus 11.26.5–6.

172. See, among others, Dunbabin, The Western Greeks, 427. Polyainos, forexample, in his Strategemata 1.27.1, notes that Gelon was elected strategosautokrator: commander-in-chief.

173. Aelian, Varia historia 6.11.

174. The two stories, by Diodorus Siculus and Aelian, are clearly doublets ofeach other, but there are interesting, if nuanced, differences in the con-text of the respective accounts as given. This is not the place to unpackthe philological aspects of these two passages.

175. The celebrated acrolithic (limestone and marble) cult statue of a deityformerly in the J. Paul Getty Museum and now in the Museo Archeolo-gico di Aidone in Sicily, and often referred to as Aphrodite—mosthyperbolically in Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino, Chasing Aphrodite:The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’ s Richest Museum (Boston:Houghton Mifflin, 2011)—is a classic example of this type of sculpture.The deity has sometimes been identified as Demeter or her daughter,Persephone, but there are uncertainties with all of these interpretationsbecause what was worn on her head and what was held in heroutstretched right hand remain unknown. Given the lack ofattributes, any identification would be a guess. For the statue, seeMarion True, The J. Paul Getty Museum: Handbook of the AntiquitiesCollection (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2002), 104–5; the fullestdiscussion of the identification of the goddess is Clemente Marconi,“L’identificazione della ‘Dea’ di Morgantina,” Prospettiva: Rivista diStoria dell’Arte Antica e Moderna 141–42 (2011): 2–31; Clement Bellargues for Hera, in the J. Paul Getty Museum, “Workshop on theCult Statue of a Goddess,” 2007, http://www.getty.edu/museum/symposia/workshop_goddess.html.

176. It is important to note that both Himera and Akragas were in Theron’ssphere of influence in the 470s, when relations between Theron and

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Gelon were not always rosy, to say the least. In many respects, Gelawould seem a more likely venue, being in Gelon’s sphere of influence aswell as where he grew up, so a commemoration there honoring his vic-tory at Himera would be appropriate.

177. Antenor’s tyrannicides must date to the period after 510 BCE but beforeXerxes’s sack of Athens in 480 BCE, when the Persians carried off thestatues to Persepolis. Most scholars date the group to 510/509 BCE;see, for example, Carol C. Mattusch, Greek Bronze Statuary: From the Begin-nings through the Fifth Century BC (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,1988), 88–89. Antenor’s group was ultimately returned to Athens,some 150 years later, either by Alexander the Great or his successor,Seleucus; see Robertson, A History of Greek Art, 185; for the tyrannicidesmore generally, see Carol C. Mattusch, Classical Bronzes: The Art and Craftof Greek and Roman Statuary (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996),58–62.

178. Stewart (“The Persian and Carthaginian Invasions of 480 B.C.E.”)dated down the start of the Classical style in Sicily to about 465, andalthough this remains controversial, numerous scholars haveaccepted it. As a result of Stewart’s new chronology, the MotyaYouth cannot predate the late 460s, whereas Gelon died in 478/477BCE. However, determining with precision any stylistic date in thisperiod remains difficult.

179. It is possible that it was among the treasures of Syracuse that were plun-dered by Verres, against whom Cicero so eloquently spoke in the VerrineOrations 2.21.

180. Pausanias 6.9.4–5. Ironically, Pausanias, for reasons difficult to fathom,considers this statue to be not of Gelon the Sicilian tyrant but ofanother, more or less contemporary Gelon, whose father also happenedto be named Deinomenes!

181. See, among others, Brian Caven, Dionysius I: War-lord of Sicily (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1990).

182. Diodorus Siculus 13.90.3–4, emphasis mine. According to Cicero,Against Verres 2.4.33, sec. 73, the bull of Phalaris was returned to Akragasfollowing the Third Punic War; see further Adornato, “Phalaris.”

183. Caven, Dionysius I. Himilkar failed to relieve Motya in time, his shipsbeing driven off by Greek catapults, but the following year he managedto drive Dionysios back to Syracuse.

184. Athenaios, Deipnosophistai 14.629.

185. Theophrastos, in Athenaios, Deipnosophistai 1.22c; and Kathryn A. Mor-gan, “A Prolegomenon to Performance in the West,” in Theater outsideAthens: Drama in Greek Sicily and South Italy, ed. Kathryn Bosher(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 38.

186. Athenaios, Deipnosophistai 14.629.

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