Pythian 6.14-27
In these lines, P.6.14–27, Thrasyboulos is pictured as a charioteer for his father Xenokrates; in the lines that follow, P.6.28–51, the chariot team of Xenokrates is linked with the chariot team of Nestor, who is rescued by his charioteer son Antilokhos. At a later point in the comments here, I will be translating those lines literally. As we will see at the end of those lines, at P.6.50–51, the picturing of Thrasyboulos as a charioteer is repeated and enhanced: the young man is described in those lines as someone who is most pleasing to Poseidon in that god’s function as lord of chariot racing. The earlier picturing of Thrasyboulos at P.6.14–27 as a charioteer is reconstructed in an incisive article by Malcolm Bell (1995) on the basis of a comparison he makes with a gesture made by the marble statue known as the Motya Charioteer. Bell (1995:9) argues persuasively that the Motya Charioteer is pictured in the act of placing a garland of victory on his head:
“The position of the missing right forearm and hand should therefore be associated with the four bronze nails in the cranium, the placement of which in a tilted plane shows that they were intended to hold in place a circular object around the head at the point of its greatest diameter. This missing object can best be explained as a wreath, held or touched by the raised right hand.”
Motya charioteer. From this angle, we can see most clearly the gesture of raising the right hand. Image via Wikimedia Commons.,_Winning_at_the_ancient_Games,_British_Museum_(7642744838).jpg){kind=link}
Bell (again, 1995:9) goes on to argue that the same gesture is pictured in the verbal art of Pindar at P.6.19: σύ τοι σχεθών νιν ἐπὶ δεξιὰ χειρός. The wording here can be interpreted this way: ‘but you [= Thrasyboulos], holding it [νιν] in your right hand’, where the pronoun νιν would refer to a garland of victory that is indicated earlier at P.6.17 by way of the wording εὔδοξον ἅρματι νίκαν ‘glorious victory-by-chariot’. In the light of Bell’s explanation, I now distance myself from the interpretation I preferred in PH 208 = 7§10, where I took the pronoun νιν as referring to the father of Thrasyboulos, indicated earlier at P.6.15 by way of the wording πατρὶ τεῷ ‘your father’: thus ‘but you [= Thrasyboulos], keeping him [νιν] at your right hand’, as if the charioteer were standing together with his father on the platform of the chariot. (Elsewhere too in Pindaric diction, νιν can refer to an inanimate antecedent, as for example at P.4.109, P.4.242, P.5.6, P.9.80). In sum, I now agree with Bell’s argument that the verbal art of Pindar shows Thrasyboulos in the act of crowning himself with a garland of victory—just as the Motya charioteer is crowning himself. I should add, however, that Bell refrains from arguing that the marble statue of the Motya charioteer is a representation of Thrasyboulos himself.