Nigel NICHOLSON A Properly Aristocratic Victory: The Charioteer in Pindar Py. 5.

Charioteers were problematic figures for the aristocratic ideology of equestrian competition in the late archaic period. A few owners drove their own chariots, but most employed others, and of these drivers few traces remain. At least 28 memorials for chariot victories survive from the period in sufficient detail, but only four name a charioteer (one of whom is the victor), and few of the other memorials, including sculptural groups, even recognize their presence in the event. In the light of this, Pindar's Pythian 5 is anomalous: nearly a quarter of the ode is devoted to the person who guided the victor's team to victory, Carrhotus.

Lefkowitz ("Pythian V," Hardt 1985: 40) explains Carrhotus' prominence on the grounds that the manner of the victory was especially impressive. In this paper, however, I will argue that the driver's prominence should be explained by the fact that he had an enduring connection to the victor. The silence that dominated memorials for chariot victories was not motivated by the fact that most chariots were driven by other people, but by the fact that they were driven specifically by hired drivers. These professional drivers implicated the aristocratic victors in a mode of exchange that they saw as directly opposed to athletic excellence, and to aristocratic ways more generally. As a relation of the victor who drove not for a wage but as a favor, Carrhotus posed no such problems.

That Carrhotus was a close relation of Arcesilas is stated by the scholia. In particular, one scholion quotes Theotimus who recorded that Carrhotus was the brother of Arcesilas' wife (ad Py. 5.34). There is no need to follow Lefkowitz (1985.40-41) in doubting this evidence. Although there are problems with the scholion's use of the information, Theotimus' account is internally coherent and consistent with Pindar's narrative, and has consequently been widely accepted (e.g. Braswell, Fourth Pythian Ode, 1988.3-4). The fact that Carrhotus' patronymic is given in Py. 5 (unlike Nicomachus' in Is. 2) also suggests he enjoyed a social status unusual for drivers.

As an aristocrat and friend of the owner, Carrhotus was an exceptional charioteer, since the majority of charioteers were most likely hired in this period (Kyle Athletics in Ancient Athens 1987: 160). It was normal for charioteers to be hired in the latter half of the fifth century (Pl. Lysis 208a), and given that victory memorials, gymnastic training, and even athletes themselves were commodified in the early fifth century, it seems likely that drivers were also. The hiring of drivers, like the hiring of poets (Kurke Traffic 1991: 240-56), posed considerable problems for the aristocratic owners, however, since it implicated them in a mode of exchange against which they defined themselves. That the hiring was the problem, and not the simple use of someone else, makes better sense of the development of equestrian athletics. It had probably always been permissible to have someone else drive your chariot (cf. Hom. Il. 11.698-72), so we should be wary of assuming that this practice was problematic per se.

Pindar's trumpeting of Carrhotus in Py. 5 should thus be understood as a claim to an unusual success. It presents the victor, Arcesilas of Cyrene, as able to win without engaging in commodity exchange, and sets up his peripheral kingdom as the real home of aristocratic values.