The Motya Youth

It is a truth universally acknowledged that he is a Motyan Youth. Other than that…is anyone’s guess.

And everyone has made a guess. Since this statue was excavated in 1979 by the University of Palermo, Sicily, it has seized the attention and the imagination of its academic and popular audience with its virtuosity, personality, and endless mysteries.

It was found buried in the ruins of the Punic city of Motya, settled and inhabited by Carthaginians from modern day Tunisia, but it is fashioned in an undeniably Greek style—curious, as it was buried by the Sicilian Greek tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse when he razed Motya to the ground in 397 BCE. Dated by art historians to right in between the Late Archaic and Early Classical periods of Greek art, it is in every sense unconforming. From the top of his head to the hem of his chiton, the youth is a peerless product of uniquely Sicilian cultural interactions.

There are over twenty distinct interpretations which have been provided by scholars to explain his extraordinary qualities, a few of which will be explored in detail in this overview—but first, a deep dive into ancient Greek statuary.

Just slightly over life-size (1.81 m), the Motya Youth is a free-standing statue and a monument to the genius of the unknown sculptor. The broad jaw and prominent eyelids belong to the Late Archaic period, which ended in 480 BCE, though the particular execution of the mouth and cheeks and their soft expression (a half-smile?) suggest that the sculpture modeled it partly after an individual. On the other hand, the diaphanous xystis, it’s exquisitely rendered draping, is characteristically Early Classical. Below are two comparable pieces, the first the kouros of Aristodikos, a Late Archaic statue whose head and features are practically identical to the Motya Youth’s—note the snailshell curls around his face and the contrasting smooth, plain crown of his head. The second is a detail from the Ludovisi throne, and depicts Aphrodite being clothed by two handmaids in chitons rendered in a Classical style very similar to the Motya Youth’s.

While we are able to confidently date individual characteristics of the statue, it is much more difficult to explain their function and significance regarding his identity. The cut of Motya Youth’s chiton is almost appropriate for a charioteer or other athlete, but why such arrestingly thin fabric? His sexuality is surprising if we take into consideration contemporary depictions of athletes, like the Delphic charioteer below. Considering the spectacle and allure of his body, why is his head done in such an outdated, Archaic style? What induced him to sport the medieval tonsure cut? Upon close inspection, he is crowned with a collection of holes—what could their purpose be, and could it explain the lackluster execution of the top of his head?

According to the charioteer hypothesis (which is popular enough that the statue is often called, presumptively, the Motya Charioteer), the statue represents a victorious athlete, most likely a Greek Sicilian who travelled west to mainland Greece and won a Panhellenic game like the Olympic games. Classicist Malcolm Bell discovered a striking similarity between the Motya Youth’s light and revealing xystides with the high chest band and depictions of charioteers on Syracusan tetradrachmae from the 5th century (see below). The strange hairstyle and holes in the statue’s head could have been explained by a victor’s wreath, with which he is crowning himself with his missing right hand in self-congratulation—Bell connected this movement to another contemporary example, a relief of a kouros from Sounion (second image).

Bell found an explanation for the sexuality of the figure in the contemporary work of the victory poet Pindar. In his praise poems, which were commissioned by the wealthy victors of the most prestigious Panhellenic games, athletic youths are often praised with special affection and admiration. While this statue was being produced, Pindar was writing odes to Sicilian tyrants in praise of their own victories, but he would frequently give their charioteers some limelight. His poem Isthmian 2 was written in honor of Xenokrates of Akragas’s chariot race victory at the sanctuary of Poseidon but praises two youthful athletes who may have driven the chariot for the king.

Thrasyboulos, the son of Xenokrates, was a particular friend of Pindar’s, and an object of his personal admiration, or Nikomachos, a charioteer for both Theron and Xenokrates, who was famous in his own right, could very well have commissioned a statue like the Motya Youth. Both Pindar and the artist of the Motya Youth portray an athlete in the bloom of youth, a tribute to the male form and sexuality. His downturned, averted gaze has been interpreted as an attempt to make the viewer focus on what he would have worn on his head, or as a modest pose from a figure who is self-consciously the object of admiration. It is possible either that the charioteers were interested in immortalizing themselves in stone or that the sculptor and Pindar were simply drinking in the same spirit of the times, and the Motya Youth was a characteristically provocative ideal of athletic victor.

A different hypothesis is that the Motyan Youth represents a Kalasthiskos Dancer. These dancers would perform at the festival of Apollo Karneios. This festival was associated with the city of Sparta and with Doric cities in general. The festival included groups of boys and girls dancing competitively in front of older men, with some of the dancers wearing a kalasthiskos- a basket shaped headdress that likely symbolized rays of the sun or stars. There appears to be some level of gender ambiguity in the way the youths would dress, with one academic source claiming the dancers were “youths playing girls playing stars.” The Karneian festival was particularly important for Western Doric colonies like those in Sicily, as it was used in some fashion to determine if and when citizens should undertake a new colony. In this way, the festival in these new poleis became something akin to a ritual celebrating the founding of the colony.

There is lots of support for this hypothesis. First of all, there are examples of Kalasthiskos Dancers wearing similar chitons to the one depicted on the Motya Youth. Additionally, the five holes found in the top of the statue’s head can bear unusually large amounts of weight- to the extent that on display the Motya Youth has been supported by these holes. This, combined with the rough surface texture of the head, indicates a large headdress of some kind- larger than the victor’s wreath proposed in the charioteer hypothesis. This supposed large headdress could be the large Kalasthiskos worn by the dancers. Furthermore, the pose of the figure is similar to that of the depictions we have of the Kalasthiskos Dancers. The inherent sexuality of the figure is also explained by this hypothesis, given the dancers’ audience of older men.

Going further with the Kalasthiskos Dancer hypothesis, there are some guesses as to who exactly this figure represents, one of which will be discussed here. In the year 480 BCE the tyrant Gelon led Syracuse to victory over the invading Carthaginian forces at the Battle of Himera. That very same year, Athens defeated the Persians at the Battle of Salamis. Both of these events have been linked to the beginning of the classical period of Greek art. Given that the statue has been dated to the same time period, ignoring these events would be foolish.

After the Battle of Himera, Gelon held an assembly of the Syracusans, each of whom was told to come armed. Gelon himself attended the assembly unarmed and clad only in a cloak, a position of vulnerability. This was done to downplay Gelon’s place as a tyrant and emphasize his popular support. The historian Aelian states in his Varia Historia that there was a statue erected of Gelon in the Temple of Sicilian Hera portraying him as unarmed. A separate passage in the same source states that Syracuse built a statue of Gelon in a tunic with a belt. Whether these two statues are in fact the very same is a matter of debate. What is important, however, is that there is historical precedent for depictions of Gelon unarmed in a tunic. Portraying Gelon in this manner might have served to add insult to injury to the defeated Carthaginians.

It is worth noting that there is no concrete evidence for this claim. It is based largely on conjecture and as such should be taken with a heavy grain of salt.

The statue can be found in its forever home in the Giuseppe Whitaker Museum on Motya (called Mozia in modern Italian). It is a triumphant story for an ancient artifact, having been found by an academic institution and almost immediately placed in a museum practically on the site of its provenance—no burglary, illegal sale, or private ownership has entered into its history since Dionysius’s raid on the island just under 2,500 years ago.
It visited the British Museum in 2012 during the Olympic and Paralympic Games under the guise of the charioteer, as a monument to the ancient legacy of the games and to victory.

Bell, Malcolm. 1995. “The Motya Charioteer and Pindar’s ‘Isthmian 2.’” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 40: 1-42.

Dixon, Andrew Graham. “The Motya Charioteer comes to London: the most tantalizing marble statue in the world.” Telegraph. 9 August 2012. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/9461513/The-Motya-Charioteer-comes-to-London-the-most-tantalising-marble-sculpture-in-the-world.html Retrieved 8 April 2024.

Giammellaro, A. Spanò. 1990. “La statua marmorea di Mozia: un aggiornamento della questione.” Sicilia Archeologica 23: 19-37.

 Marconi, Clemente. 2014. “The Mozia Charioteer: A Revision,” in Amalia Avramidou and Denise Demetriou (eds.), Approaching the Ancient Artifact: Representation, Narrative, and Function (Berlin: De Gruyter), 435-47.

Museo G. Whitaker. “Collection.” Retrieved 7 April 2024.
Papadopoulis, John. 2014. “The Motya Youth: Apollo Karneios, Art, and Tyranny in the Greek West.” The Art Bulletin, 96 no. 4: 395-423.

 Pindar. 1997. “Isthmian 2,” “Olympian 1,” Pindar. G. P. Goold (ed.), Cambridge: Harvard University Press.