The Mozia Youth: A statue keeps its secrets

The interpretation of ‘unique’ ancient artworks of high quality is a fascinating, but at times also quite frustrating task. Two fundamental scholarly virtues are required, very good knowledge of the object and its wider context as well as a certain inventiveness or even intellectual boldness, in short, eruditio and divinatio. Erudition is needed to free unparalleled works from their isolated place within art history, and inventiveness is a prerequisite in any attempt to develop theories about identification and intention. The so-called Mozia Youth (or Motya Youth) certainly belongs to this category of ancient works: a splendid life size marble statue, found in 1979 on the tiny island of Mozia in Western Sicily in a remarkable good state of preservation. Theory after theory has been presented on the correct identification of the figure and on the intention of the commissioner, and still none were able to find general acceptance or at least to gain the status of being the most plausible one.


Beside the physical facts of the Youth, there basically are only two things that are generally accepted: That the workmanship is Greek and that it was found in a Punic context. Mozia, situated near the westernmost tip of Sicily, was a Punic (or Phoenician) military stronghold and commercial centre. The destruction of the island by the troops of Dionysios I of Syracuse in 397 almost certainly brought an end to the ancient life of the statue in question. Everything else is disputed. While some archaeologists prefer much

Volute krater by the so-called Karneia Painter, Greek workshop in Southern Italy (Lucanian), ca. 400 B.C.	The Mozia Youth, ca. 470 B.C.,    reconstruction by John K. Papadopoulos (drawing: Anne Hooton)

later dates, a majority of scholars (including myself) advocate a date soon after 480, i.e. not later than 460 because of the very articulated contrapposto and because of the type of the plissée-like garment. But the most difficult point is the question of the identity and, consequently, of the motivation behind the erection of the statue (given that it was not part of a sculptural group). Is the figure represented Greek or Punic? And if the Youth is a Greek, is it a charioteer, Daedalus, a seer?

Now, John K. Papadopoulos has contributed his share to the discussion (The Motya Youth: Apollo Karneios, Art, and Tyranny in the Greek West, Art Bulletin 96, 2014, 395–423). Close observation of the statue and in particular of its head apparently paved the way for a heureka experience in the library. On the name piece of the so-called Karneia Painter, a Lucanian vase painter active in the years around 400 B.C., several participants of a ceremony honoring Apollon Karneios (inscription) are depicted. One male figure merits special attention as two or even three important details seem to go together with the Mozia Youth: the left hand rests on the hip, the upper right arm is in a horizontal position – and he carries an enormous kalathos – or flat basket – on his head. This is exactly, according to Papadopoulos, how we have to reconstruct the Sicilian statue whose head is ‘shaven’ for the largest part of its surface with two or three rows of curly locks running along the front and the neck. Since a participant of a certain cult ritual is not an obvious subject for an up-market marble statue Papadopoulos offers a detailed account of the importance of this cult for the foundation of Doric colonies and also develops a scenario – rightly called a pure speculation – about the identity of the man: Gelon, ruler of Syracuse and victorious general in the legendary battle against the Phoenicians near Himera. The Punics, then, may have transferred the statue to Mozia when the tide had turned at the end of the fifth century.

The comparison undoubtedly has a certain suggestive quality. Nevertheless, the reconstruction, I think, doesn’t work, and this is for two reasons (minor points are left aside). Firstly, the physical reconstruction. Papadopoulos emphasizes “the idiosyncratic treatment of the head” as crucial for the understanding of the whole composition. But his astonishing solution to this question, then, is presented rather hastily (p. 408). No word about the intermediate element that is needed to place the kalathos on the head of the 

Head of the Mozia Youth (photomontage: Klaus Junker)

Youth. A reconstruction drawing of the side view would have made the problem immediately obvious: The roughly picked surface of the head is much too large to be understood as an area that was prepared for the application of an interface. The late archaic karyatid statues at Delphi give a good idea of such a construction and they can demonstrate how an elaborate hair style and an object carried on the head go together. Besides, statues and reliefs with partially picked surfaces of the head in order to combine marble with some sort of attachment in metal or another material are a relatively common phenomenon in the late archaic and early classical periods; it has been thoroughly investigated by Thomas Schäfer (Gepickt und versteckt. Zur Bedeutung und Funktion aufgerauhter Oberflächen in der spätarchaischen und frühklassischen Plastik, Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 111, 1996, 25–74; a study that escaped Papadopoulos‘ attention). Therefore there is no reason to look for a particular explanation for the relevant features of the Mozia Youth. Schäfer cautiously explains the evidence, including the five holes and/or metal attachments of different sizes, and opts for an helmet of unknown form (p. 44).

Secondly, the motif. The nude kalathos dancer on the Lucanian krater belongs to a figure type that emerges only in the course of the fifth century (see my paper in the volume on the Pronomos Krater, edited by Oliver Taplin and Rosie Wyles, Oxford 2010; see Papadopoulos, note 75): Typical for this type are participants of a ritual or members of a theatre chorus who are shown not while performing the ritual or the play itself but just standing around, before or after the event, or as if having a break during a rehearsal. That makes sense in a multi-figured scene where the informal character allows to display a variety of actors and the richness of their requisites. But it is very unlikely that the motif was chosen in the first part of the fifth century for an imposing marble figure whoever this statue might represent.

The article is a good read. The author takes his readers on a long journey, not only to Mozia but also to other places in Sicily, in the Greek mainland and in North Africa, to rituals of Apollon Karneios and of other gods and to the battle of Himera where Gelon and Theron liberated the Greeks from the barbarian threat – their Phoenician adversary Hamilkar is probably still the best candidate for the identification of the statue (I favor a lectura Punica and I doubt, contrary to Papadopoulos, that Greek workshops had any qualms about working for the enemy, cf. p. 414). But it is exactly the entertaining quality of this trip through the alleged political and cultural context of the Mozia Youth that I am not happy with. There are so many “if’s” on this meandering journey towards the meaning of the statue, concerning the main facts as well as the circumstantial evidence, that I have my doubts if this kind of philological Classical Archaeology adds anything to our understanding of the issue under discussion.