These three lines in Statius’ Thebaid have caused immense difficulty for its readers.Footnote ¹ This is evident not only from the range of the ways in which these lines are rendered across translations of the poem but also from the conspicuous number of explanatory notes that accompany these lines from translators and commentators. Using a combination of visual, intertextual and intratextual evidence, I suggest that many of these readings, including Shackleton Bailey's highly influential Loeb translation, are in fact misleading, and I will offer what I believe to be the most likely meaning behind these difficult lines of Latin. My reading will also provide an insight into Statius’ use of ekphrasis-narrative to create tone and effect.

To set this scene of Pelops in context: these lines are found among a much larger ekphrastic passage describing a grand parade of Argive ancestral images prior to Opheltes’ funeral games.Footnote ² As a whole, the Argive ancestors are ostensibly depicted in various ways that are perceived as heroic or noble by the internal characters who view the artwork; however, these images are consistently undermined by darker associations introduced by the Thebaid's narrator, to which only the external readers are privy.Footnote ³

The main problem regarding these lines lies in identifying which scene from Pelops’ myth is being portrayed on the artwork. Adding to the complexity are the variant versions of the myth, which Statius seems to blend together. The general trends for the myth are as follows: King Oenomaus, fearing a prophecy that he would be killed by his son-in-law, stipulated that his daughter Hippodamia could only be married off to a suitor who could first defeat him in a chariot-race. In these contests, Oenomaus would allow the suitors to race on ahead. Oenomaus’ chariot, piloted by the king's charioteer, Myrtilos, would pursue them, while the king himself (also in the chariot) would spear the suitor. A large number of suitors were killed in this way before Pelops attempted the challenge.Footnote ⁴ Here the myth diverges: either Pelops won the race because Poseidon/Neptune gave him a magic chariot and horses that could outstrip Oenomaus’,Footnote ⁵ and/or, more luridly, Pelops bribed Myrtilos with half his kingdom and one night with Hippodamia to throw the race or to sabotage Oenomaus’ chariot by replacing the axle's linchpins with ones made of wax with the result that the chariot collapsed during the race and killed the king. After the race, Pelops reneged on his end of the deal and murdered Myrtilos by throwing him into the sea from aloft his magical flying chariot. The sea was henceforth known as the Myrtoan Sea.Footnote ⁶

Most interpreters tend to assume that the scene in Theb. 6.283–5 refers to Pelops’ chariot-race against Oenomaus and to the moment in which the king's chariot falls apart. There are certainly valid reasons for this. Oenomaus’ association with chariot-racing casts a shadow over the epic games. The size of the crowd at the funeral games (featuring a chariot-race as its first event) is compared to the crowd which used to attend Oenomaus’ chariot-races (6.254). Moreover, Oenomaus’ son, Hippodamus, happens to be competing in the upcoming chariot-race using his father's very horses (6.347) and re-enacts his father's devastating crash (6.479–84). Indeed, correspondences in the language describing the ekphrasis and Hippodamus’ crash (axe tenet prenso, 6.481) would suggest a parallel scene of chariot-racing between them.Footnote ⁷ I will return to these references below.

However, this reading creates friction with the Latin. In particular, the phrases rotas … natantes and, to a lesser degree, uolucri iam iamque relinquitur axe have proven difficult to interpret. The following table is not intended to be an exhaustive list of the Thebaid's commentaries and translations, but aims at giving a broad indication of the issues which readers have faced in these lines. The increasing length and complexity of the accompanying translators’ notes in more recent translations are particularly telling.

Erasmo di Valvasone's influential translation (the Thebaid's first translation accompanied by a commentary)Footnote ⁸ contains conspicuous additions to the Latin text, which make clear his interpretation of this scene as part of Pelops’ chariot-race with Oenomaus. First, he inserts Oenomaus’ tomb into the scene, then develops Pelops’ epithet of victor by making it passive and applying it to Oenomaus instead (‘che vinto giacque’). Moreover, Myrtilos’ actions are made to unambiguously refer to the moment when he sabotages the chariot (‘che non inchiova l'asse’), with the intention that the wheels fall off (‘perché restin le rote’), which results in the image of Pelops’ overtaking chariot (‘e'l carro passe’). Thus Valvasone's version of this ekphrastic scene displays a range of episodic snapshots all from the mythic chariot-race, not only during the race (Pelops in the passing chariot) but also before (Myrtilos’ tampering) and after (Oenomaus’ tomb) the race.

Barth, in his monumental seventeenth-century commentary of Statius’ works, defers his own understanding of the scene to Lactantius (Lutatius) Placidus’ late antique commentary and to verses from Claudian's De Raptu Proserpinae and Sidonius’ panegyric of Anthemius. These quotations about how Pelops won the chariot-race declare Barth's firm belief that the ekphrasis depicts the chariot-race. However, his use of Lactantius is selective; the original commentator had offered two parts of the myth in response to Statius’ lines: 1) Oenomaus’ defeat in the chariot-race; 2) Pelops’ murder of Myrtilos.Footnote ⁹ As we will see, this second mythical scene has been supressed or discounted in favour of the first in most of the later scholarly traditions.

The two eighteenth-century translations by the Italian cardinal Cornelio Bentivoglio and William Lillington Lewis follow Valvasone's and Barth's interpretations of the scene. Although they do not add Oenomaus to their translations as Valvasone did, they too render the rotas … natantes in such a way that they refer explicitly to the sabotaged wheels of the chariot shared by Oenomaus and Myrtilos during the race against Pelops (Bentivoglio's ‘nel corso | le false ruote’; Lewis's ‘unpinn'd the Chariot-Wheels’).

Most of the more recent interpreters attempt to keep to more literal translations of the Latin, sometimes even taking pains to maintain the linguistic ambiguity in Statius’ Latin; none the less, it is clear that they are in line with the earlier readings of this scene. The participle natantes has proven difficult to make sense of, with most translators taking it as some sort of ‘wobbling’ movement of the wheels as they fall away from Oenomaus’ chariot (Fortgens; Lesueur; Melville; Shackleton Bailey; Ross; Joyce; Pavan).Footnote ¹⁰ However, this reading raises some questions with the logistics of the scene. Why would Myrtilos need to ‘grasp’ (prensat) the wheels? This seems like an unnecessary action given that in other versions of the myth the wax linchpins simply fall apart in the course of the race without any additional handling. If they are indeed in the act of falling apart (natantes), grasping them seems counter-intuitive. Lesueur's suggestion that Myrtilos intends to directly grab the wheels to create a sharp brake which will cause the axle to snap, while ingenious, seems unlikely if Myrtilos had any intention of keeping his hands attached to his body.Footnote ¹¹ Likewise, Pavan's suggestion that Myrtilos was trying to hold the chariot together after Pelops had sabotaged it is implausible, given the demands on the reader to interpret the scene in a way that contradicts all extant versions of the myth without prompting.Footnote ¹²

In her second note on these lines, Joyce takes a slightly different angle on natantes, reading it as a deliberate pun that engages with the mythic tradition by conflating the chariot-race with another part of Pelops’ myth—his murder of Myrtilos by throwing the charioteer into the sea. Although he sees it as Statius’ own mistaken confusion (‘wool-gathering’) over the elements of the myth, Shackleton Bailey comes to a similar, albeit rather illogical, conclusion about the scene as a whole. He seems to suggest not only that Statius has mixed up Pelops’ and Myrtilos/Oenomaus’ respective chariots but also that the absence of Oenomaus in Statius’ ekphrasis means that the poet has mixed up the death scenes of Myrtilos and Oenomaus. His consternation is a clear example of the dangers of a reader imposing their own expectations of what a scene should depict without engaging more closely with the Latin text.

However, many of the problems can be resolved if we accept that this scene does not really refer to the chariot-race but rather to the murder of Myrtilos. To my knowledge, this reading is conveyed only in Poynton's translation and more recently suggested in an article by Lovatt who sums up this scene among her analysis of the ekphrasis as a whole by stating: ‘Pelops is driving across the sea in his winged chariot.’Footnote ¹³ This interpretation is supported by both the textual traditions and the material evidence.

In some accounts, Neptune's horses were not just supernaturally swift but even had the capability of running over water and flight. I believe that the Pelops scene in this collection of images follows a version of the myth that we find also represented in Euripides’ Orestes (987–97):Footnote ¹⁴

The distressed Electra relates the curse that has befallen her family as a consequence of Pelops’ actions. Her words allude to the horses’ ability to fly (ποτανὸν … δίωγμα πώλων) and cross the sea (πελάγεσι διεδίφρευσε).

Moreover, the influence of visual artwork on Statius’ poetic descriptions across his corpus has been well recognized.Footnote ¹⁶ Accordingly, a version of this scene can also be found portrayed on a lekythos from Capua, dating to the second half of the fourth century b.c.Footnote ¹⁷ The lekythos shows Pelops and Hippodamia in the chariot riding over the waters and Myrtilos being ejected from the chariot into the sea, while an Erinys watches from above.

If this is the scene being described in the ekphrasis, it would resolve all of the linguistic and logical difficulties of Shackleton Bailey and the other translators who want to read the chariot-race into the scene. It would explain why there is no mention of Oenomaus in the ekphrasis—not because Statius has conflated his death with Myrtilos’, but because Oenomaus is simply not present at Myrtilos’ death. It would also mean that we can read the rotas … natantes not as ‘wobbling wheels’ but literally as ‘swimming wheels’, as they skim the surface of the water.Footnote ¹⁸ Likewise, the phrase uolucri … axe should also be read literally as a ‘flying axle’.

The supernatural abilities of the chariot are reinforced by the reminder that it is a gift from Neptune (Neptunia … | … lora), who has long been associated in literature with the ability to skim over water: Homer's Poseidon flies or skims over the waves in his chariot so quickly that the axle does not get wet (τοὶ δὲ πέτοντο | ῥίμφα μάλ᾽, οὐδ᾽ ὑπένερθε διαίνετο χάλκεος ἄξων, Il. 13.29–30); similarly, Virgil's Neptune guides his chariot over the sea and into the air in language that perhaps influences Statius’ Myrtilos (Aen. 1.154–6):

Elsewhere, even mortals, like Pelops, who are associated with Poseidon/Neptune can exhibit the same supernatural ability, such as Hippomenes (proles Neptunia) who seems to be able to run over the sea and ears of wheat because of his swiftness: posse putes illos sicco freta radere passu | et segetis canae stantes percurrere aristas (Ov. Met. 10.654–5). Therefore, the mythical representations and literary traditions support the reading of this scene as the death of Myrtilos instead of the chariot-race.

In addition, this would help solve a slight temporal awkwardness in the sentence. Although it is well known that the literary nature of ekphrasis does allow for some temporal flexibility (in the same scene, for example, iam iamque indicates that the static image is presently playing out),Footnote ¹⁹ it would be logistically smoother for Pelops to be victor, if this represents a later part of the myth, after he has actually won the race. In such a reading, Pelops’ epithet of victor would not need to be proleptic.

One further argument supporting my suggestion is an intertextual one. The scene-by-scene presentation of Adrastus’ ancestors in Statius’ ekphrastic description mimics the series of scenes from the Trojan War on Juno's temple in the first ekphrasis of the Aeneid. One panel, depicting another chariot-scene, is of particular interest (Aen. 1.474–8):

The intertextual allusion is evident from Statius’ reuse of Virgilian language, including the phrase parte alia to introduce his own chariot-scene. An examination of how Statius has reworked Virgil's scene gives a clearer indication of the relative positioning of Pelops and Myrtilos. Virgil's scene depicts the death of Troilus at Achilles’ hands. The boy's corpse is being dragged along the ground pathetically, still grasping the reins: lora tenens (Aen. 1.477), a phrase which Statius’ narrator echoes, but re-appropriates for the victor in his scene, as he describes Pelops’ handling of Neptune's reins (Neptunia tendit | lora). Accordingly, the image of the boy's body being dragged and still clinging to the chariot in the Virgilian scene offers a general outline for the ekphrasis in Statius. The image is thus to be understood as follows: Myrtilos is cast out of the chariot into the sea; he attempts to cling to the chariot in his desperation (hence prensatque rotas auriga natantes | Myrtilos); then he watches as Pelops’ flying chariot speeds away, leaving him stranded in the sea (et uolucri iam iamque relinquitur axe).

The switch from the narrator's overarching perspective to the personal viewpoint of Myrtilos is in keeping with Statius’ style, and finds precedent in the first ekphrasis of the Thebaid, depicting Jupiter's kidnapping of Ganymede (by means of an eagle) on Adrastus’ patera (Theb. 1.548–51):

Though reversing what is static and what is moving away, the earlier image evokes a similar idea: part of the ekphrastic description unfolds almost as if from the present perspective of the artwork's subject. For Ganymede, Gargara and Troy recede into the distance; for Myrtilos, it is Pelops’ chariot that moves further away (et uolucri iam iamque relinquitur axe). In both instances, the reader ‘sees’ the artwork through the eyes of its subject, while being kept as a distinct observer by the third-person narration at the same time.Footnote ²⁰ In the Pelops ekphrasis, this sharp shift from the celebratory observation of the victorious Pelops as ancestor of the Argive people to the rather more sombre perspective of the doomed and isolated Myrtilos in the sea would create a bitter note in keeping with the darker associations in the wider parade of ancestral images.

In conclusion, the problems commonly associated with reading lines 6.283–5 of Statius’ Thebaid as the chariot-race between Pelops and Oenomaus and all the creative, but flawed, engineering required to resolve these issues make it unlikely that the race is the scene depicted in the ekphrasis. It would be much simpler to view the scene as the murder of Myrtilos over the Myrtoan sea, and to take the words natantes and uolucri as literal descriptions of Pelops’ magical chariot. This would fit the material and literary evidence better and, of course, Statius’ own Latin.

However, I would like to propose one more suggestion about Statius’ narrative technique. It is clear from the history of scholarship on these lines that Pelops’ chariot-race with Oenomaus inevitably bleeds into the reader's interpretation of this ekphrastic scene and, as I indicated earlier, there are some good justifications for this. I suggest that this ambiguous, bifocal perspective of the ekphrastic description complements the rupture between the external reader's unsettling perspective of the artwork and the celebratory perspective intended for the internal viewers. It allows Statius to make use of the differences between verbal and visual art to portray Pelops in the act of committing the transgressive murder of Myrtilos, while simultaneously allowing the shadow of the chariot-race to add further sinister overtones to the ekphrasis. For example, although they depict different scenarios, the linguistic similarities between the ekphrasis and Hippodamus’ crash (indicated above) prompt a comparison between, on the one hand, the race (and crash) of Chromis and Hippodamus and, on the other, the race (and crash) of Pelops and Oenomaus. Once Chromis has caused Hippodamus to crash and tumble from his chariot, Oenomaus’ human-eating horses attempt to turn upon their master. Chromis chooses to give up on his chances of victory in the race by stopping his own course to pull the flesh-eating horses away and save his rival competitor, which gains him the collective approval of the audience (collaudatus abisset, 6.490). In the ethically topsy-turvy world of the Thebaid, winning, as Pelops does, is associated with sinning, while Chromis gains the moral victory by losing. This reading enriches our understanding of Statius’ narrative technique in ekphrasis to effect unsettling changes of tone for his readers and thus shows how he guides their emotional response to the scene.