1This paper seeks to bring together a number of themes, in the general context of modes of representing the Greek male body : it focuses on ways in which the cultural practices and social values associated with the complex concept of charis (including the appeal of the body) may have helped to create social cohesion, or an ideal of social cohesion, in Greek cities, ways in which the male bodies and homosexual relationships could be represented positively in public literary genres, especially Pindar’s epinician poetry, and the extent to which such relationships might be represented as reciprocal1. My starting point is the fragment from Pindar’s praise poem (enkomion) for a youth, Theoxenos of Tenedos (Fr. 123).

Xρῆν μὲν κατὰ κιαρὸν ἐρώ-
των δρέπεαθαι, θυμέ, σὺν ἁλικίᾳ ·
τὰς δὲ Θεοξένου ἀκτῖνας πρὸς ὂσσων
μαρμαρυζοίσας δρακείς
ὃς μὴ πόθῳ κυμαίνεται, ἐξ ἀδάμαντος
ἢ σιδάρου κεχάλκευται μέλαναν καρδίαν
ψυζρᾷ φλογί, πρὸς δ᾽ Ἀφροδί-
τας ἀτιμασθεὶς ἑλικογλεφάρου
ἢ περὶ χρήμασι μοχθίζει βιαίως
ἢ γυναικείῳ θράσει
ψυχράν φορεῖται πᾶσαν ὁδὸν θεραπεύων.
Ἀλλ᾽ ἐ’γὼ τὰς ἕκατι κηρὸς ὥς δαχθεὶς ἕλᾳ
ἱρᾶν μελισσᾶν τάκομαι, εὖτ᾽ ἂν ἲδω
παίσων νεόγυιον ἐς ἣβαν ·
ἐν δ᾽ ἂρα καὶ Tενέδῳ
Πειθώ τ᾽ ἒναιεν καὶ Xάρις
υἱὸν Ἁγηςίλα.
At the right time, in youth, one should,
my spirit, pluck one’s loves ;
but whoever, when he has seen the rays flashing bright
from Theoxenos’ eyes,
is not overcome by waves of desire, has a black heart
hard bronzed from adamant or steel
with a cold flame, and dishonoured
by Aphrodite of the bright eyes
may toil compulsively for wealth,
or in service to the boldness
of women may journey only down a cold road.
I at least, for Aphrodite’s sake, melt like the wax
of sacred bees bitten by the sun, whenever I gaze
on the fresh-limbed youth of boys.
It is true then that in Tenedos too
Peitho and Charis live
in the son of Hagesilas.
(Pindar, Fr. 123.)

2The poem belongs to the genre named elsewhere by Pindar as « songs for boys », (hymnoi paideioi), and described as poems written readily by poets in earlier times without a fee, whereas now the Muse demands to be paid (Isthmian, 2.1-3, see below) ; Bacchylides calls them hymnoi paidikoi in the paian for Apollo Pythaieus at Asine (Fr. 22+4 Maehler, 78-80) : « the streets teem with lovely symposia and songs for boys glow out », παιδικοὶ ὕμνοι φλέγονται. Such poems are most likely to have been composed for symposia, but, as this fragment suggests, they might be heard in public as the party travelled in a komos through the streets, and they may even have been composed for more public dinners on festive occasions. According to the scholia to Pindar, Isthmian, 2.1-3, poems in this genre were also composed by Ibycos (see esp. Fr. 282C, 287, 288), and by Alcaeus and Anacreon2.

3This praise of Theoxenos presents explicitly and emphatically the view that normal men of any age are powerfully aroused by the display of such exceptional male beauty3. While there is an appropriate age for the active pursuit of such a passion, the desire is said to be so powerful that a man of any age would have to be in some way bizarre or deviant, cold-hearted, dishonoured by Aphrodite, bent compulsively on money-making, or the cold pursuit of women4, not to have swelling waves of longing (a delicate allusion to male arousal ?). We find here then a very strong version of what may be seen as the first and most widely accepted thesis of Dover’s Greek Homosexuality, that Greeks can easily assume that all men, of any age, responded to the gaze of beautiful youths with very strong physical desire for their bodies5.

4The claim that « in Tenedos Charis and Peitho dwell in Theoxenos son of Hagesilas » identifies these two personifications as the powers or deities especially responsible for the superhuman attractiveness of beautiful youths and the winning impact they make6. Few would now follow those ancient traditions which assert that Theoxenos of Tenedos was a significant love in Pindar’s life, at whose knees in a gymnasion the old poet died a god-sent and wonderfully happy death (Athenaeus, 601D ; Valerius Maximus, 9.12 ; Suda, s.v. Pindar). It is preferable to explore some implications of the claims that « Charis and Peitho live » in youths of such melting loveliness7.

5Charis here suggests both his beauty and its effect on men, the radiance, charm and sexual allure knowingly – if modestly – given off from his eyes to those of the gazers (« seeing the rays flashing bright from the boy’s eyes », ἀκτῖνας πρὸς ὄσσων μαρμαρυζοίσας δρακείς)8 ; one can compare the prose description of the overwhelming impact of Autolykos’ radiant beauty on all sympotai at the start of Xenophon’s Symposium (1.8-10), to which text I shall return. In an attempt to sketch how this heavily eroticised charis (and its personification Charis) interacts with other reciprocal elements in the concept and also with the use of charis and the verb charizesthai in relation to the relationships of attractive boys with their lovers, I shall consider some other love poems, offer a modification of current views of how these relationships are represented in discussions of the ethics of « pederasty » in Xenophon and Plato, and finally explore how these ideas are explored in Pindar’s epinicians, in the contexts of gymnasia, contests at the local and Panhellenic games, and subsequent victory celebrations.

6In general the best approach to identifying a unified or coherent picture of the concept of charis is to focus on the combination of the ideas of both reciprocity and pleasure, and to locate individual instances of charis at some point or other (or at more than one) of a positive, mutually reinforcing, chain of shared pleasures, benefactions, gratitude and rewards9 ; similar patterns link the roles of the Charites in reciprocal and pleasurable activities (for example marriages, symposia, festivities) and their roles in cult where they may be taken to be providing endorsement for all practices of social and economic reciprocity10. Where, as often, the shared goodwill is simultaneous, and the pleasure highlighted, there can normally be felt as well the assumption or implication of social relationships which should continue. I would argue that this element of continued reciprocity should be applied to the erotic charis of love and sex, the charis of « beauty » or « charm » attached to, displayed by, or divinely shed upon a beautiful and desirable individual (such as Theoxenos or Autolykos), as well as to the epinician charis in shared choreia, music, dancing and singing ; and it is a good first step to observe how in these descriptions such radiating beauty has a powerful and persuasively positive effect, creating both desire and the impressions of good will in all those on whom it impacts.

7One poem from the mostly pederastic book II of the Theognid corpus, where the poet claims to respond more than the rest to such a beautiful youth, shows how a sympotic poet can play with these different nuances of erotic and reciprocal charis.

Kypris has given you such charis himeroessa,
and your shape (eidos) is upsetting to all the young men,
listen to my words and put my charis in your thumos,
knowing love is hard for a man to bear.
(Theognis, 1319-22.)

8The boy’s charis himeroessa, his appeal to the desire of others, disturbs all young men. The poet claims that his desire for the boy is more painful than that of the rest of his admirers, and deserves – for his extra suffering, presumably – that the boy acknowledge and accept in his thumos his lover’s charis. This second charis conveys perhaps both the pleasures of sexual gratification the lover is hoping for and also the continuing benevolence of the lover’s affection and concern. The hope is that the boy will « put this charis in his heart », thereby accepting that the lover will show gratitude for an affectionate response and continuing to do him favours in return (thus, as in other examples, mutual charis is linked with mutual aidos)11. In this way, the poem plays with the reinforcing powers of at least three different aspects of charis – the appeal of beauty and charm, sexual responses and pleasures, and continuing affection and favours. Such connected forms of Charis appear in a number of other poems in these pederastic Theognidea : in one, the charis involved in relations with boys is declared infinitely superior to those with women (1367-8) ; in another a boy who fails to give a proper return (amoibe) shows that there is no charis in him in exchange for good things, and the poet, despite often « benefiting him », receives no aidos back (1263-6).

9These poems are naturally not at all explicit on the sexual pleasures involved in such relationships, and in particular whether any mutuality of pleasure, within the limits of aidos, could be expected, which might fall under the label of a shared charis. But there are some hints, which perhaps have not been explored. Those boys who treat their would-be benefactors « unjustly » and do not show them aidos may be described as margoi, or said to display margosyne, to be as arrogant as kites and a source of shame to their friends (1271-4, 1299-1304 – though the poet in this second poem still wants the boy to grant him « this charis »). Margosyne indicates excessive or improper desires, often sexual desires12, and may then here suggest the boys have sexual desire for other(s) than the poet lover, rather than some other desire. More interesting is another poem :

Boy, you who have tamed my feelings, listen to me ; I shall not tell
a story that is not persuasive (apeithe) to your heart, nor without charis.
Come, have the patience to understand my words ; there is no necessity
to perform an act which is not pleasing (katathumion) to your spirit.
(Theognis, 1235-8.)

10With this one can compare a couplet which insists that it is kalon for the boy to show the faithful lover aidos, and grant him charis, and it is not shameful for the poet lover to ask for this gift (1327-34)13. We seem to have hints here that the noble and respectful lover will not request anything that does not sound attractive, that lacks peitho (οὔ τοι ἀπειθῆ) or charis (οὐδ᾽ ἂχαριν), nor demand anything that is not pleasing (καταθύμιον) or is shameful ; one may well take this as a suggestion that whatever sexual acts are requested will be neither painful nor degrading, and might even be found pleasurable.

11Another Pindaric fragment, cited like the fragment for Timoxenos by Athenaeus (601C) to demonstrate that Pindar was « not moderately erotikos »(οὐ μετρίως ἐρωτικός), is also interestingly ambiguous :

Eἲη καὶ ἐρᾶν καὶ ἒρωτι
χαρίζεσθαι κατὰ καιρόν ·
μὴ πρεσβυτέραν ἀριθμοῦ[
δίωκε, θυμέ, πρᾶξιν.
May it be for me to desire (eran) and to share charis
in love in the right season ;
my spirit (thumos), do not pursue an action older
than the number (of years ?).
(Pindar, Fr. 127.)

12This seems to be advice to operate in the game of love at the right time of life, and not to go on too long (but is the poet here speaking as a lover or a beloved ?) ; but exactly what « share charis in love » (ἒρωτι χαρίζεσθαι) implies is not so clear. Calame interprets this as « to desire is already to abandon oneself to Eros and respond to him », evading any question of a reciprocity between the lovers ; MacLachlan, more plausibly I think, suggests this views love as « mutual charis-experience, when it observes the convention of kairos14 ». This fragment too then may suggest some mutuality or sharing in satisfaction or gratification, and thus raises a question, which it is naturally too reticent to answer, of what pleasures, what charis of the body, if any, should be supposed to be available to boys in respectable relationships characterised by aidos and sophrosyne.

13Current orthodoxy, repeated very many times in the last 25 years, is that the normal moral protocols were that the boy did not enjoy the sex or reach orgasm in whatever sexual acts even good and respectful lovers performed with them, however much they may have felt affection and trust for their lovers. An asymmetry or non-reciprocity in terms of sexual desire and enjoyment is thus supposed to coexist with a reciprocity of friendship and trust. Many with good reason question whether in actual instances youths at the height of their sexual activity would not be sexually responsive and readily aroused to orgasm when lovers of whom they were fond were having sex with them (whatever the type of sex, intercrural, anal or whatever)15. But I have become persuaded that some of the philosophical texts which have been taken to set out these strict protocols have been misread ; rather than asserting that good boys should or do feel no sexual pleasure with their lovers, they hint that they may, while insisting that infinitely greater pleasures are to be found in the passion of the reciprocal pursuit of higher learning and moral development.

14One text above all has played a strikingly important role in establishing the orthodox view, Sokrates’ speech in Xenophon’s Symposium, and specifically 8.21-3. It offers a vivid portrait of a boyfriend who does not share reciprocal sexual pleasures with a lover as a woman does (οὐδὲ γὰρ ὁ παὶς κοινωνεῖ τῶν ἐν τοῖς ἀφροδισίοις εὐφροσυνῶν)16, but stays aloof, himself sober, watching his lover drunk with sexual desire (Aphrodite). Most scholars have taken this as a generalised portrayal applicable to all types of homosexual relationships17. But O. Thomsen has made a convincing case for reinterpreting this text18. In this section Sokrates is concentrating on the emotional gulf which exists in a relationship between a lover who is only interested in the boy’s body, and the boy who feels he is being used as if he were a whore : in such a case the boy feels no desire. Thomsen argues that the explanatory clause does not introduce a generalisation about the sexual experience of « the boy » in all types of relationships, but merely explains why in this sort of case « the boy » does not love the selfish lover in return. The clause, that is, applies only to boys who know they are not loved for their souls, but only for their bodies. The continuation seems to make this interpretation the more plausible : in paragraph 22 something « unpleasant » (chalepos) is said not to happen with those who love boys for their « character » (tropoi), but in the shameful relations « many unholy things » (polla kai anhosia) take place, which again seems a delicate allusion to forcible sexual acts which produce pain and may be thought improper.

15Further arguments support the view that Xenophon’s « Sokrates » was unlikely to claim here or anywhere in his speech that no boys got any pleasure from these forms of sex. In general, Aristotle (Nikomachean Ethics, 1148b15-49a20), and Ps. Aristotle (Problems, 4.26) clearly took a different view : both suggest that either « nature » or prolongued exposure to anal sex when young can create a lasting and insatiable taste for it, and as Davidson has argued, the expressions of hostility in comedy, Plato and elsewhere to figures labelled kinaidoi or euryproktoi often imply not that they accept « passivity » and suffer a permanent distention of the anus, but that they come to crave this and many other forms of sexual pleasures19. Earlier in Sokrates’ speech, Xenophon praises the noble or « Ouranian » form of love exemplified at the party by Kallias and Autolykos, and is, as Hermogenes slyly points out (8.12), combining an attempt to win his favour (χαριζόμενος) with instruction for the improvement of his character20. The relationship was, as indicated here (8.7), well known in Athens. It was apparently subjected to crude mockery in one of Eupolis’ plays, the Autolykos of 420 (soon after the very probable dramatic date of the party, the Panathenaia of 422)21 ; in the Symposium it appears as a respectable, responsive and loving relationship between the pair. It seems to me that a contemporary reader would be unlikely to believe that the relationship was currently without sexual expression, though he would certainly not expect any details to be given in such a text ; if so, it would surely be impossible for him to suppose that if they did so indulge, Autolykos, who, it is implied, « loves Kallias in return » (antiphilein, 8.16-17, and compare his gaze at 8.42) could respond with the cold hatred of the boy in 8.21. It seems less likely that such a reader would suppose that no sexual acts had yet occurred and that Sokrates is to be thought as urging that the pair should not proceed to them22 ; rather he is to be taken as urging that they show restraint in future23. Sokrates’ main purpose here of course is to argue that in a good relationship spiritual pleasures are more intense than the physical ; and Xenophon’s to display Sokrates as a teacher who worked to minimise or remove altogether the danger of excessive bodily indulgence or sexual exploitation.

16This, like all moralising texts on this topic, is inexplicit and obfuscatory, but there are further hints of sexually charged mutual passion. Thomsen emphasises the heavy emphasis on eros philias, the passion for their mutual affection, the intensity of the love and returned love ; this love (stergein) is stated to allow for both physical and spiritual elements, and when the physical side is satiated and wanes, as it will, the spiritual gets ever stronger :

Ἡ δὲ τῆς ψυχῆς φιλία διὰ τὸ ἁγνὴ εἶναι καὶ ἁκορεστέρα ἐστίν, οὐ μέντοι ὥς γ᾽ ἂν τις οἰηθείη, διὰ τοῦτο καὶ ἀνεπαφροδιτοτέρα, ἀλλὰ σαφῶς καὶ ἀποτελεῖται ἡ εὐχὴ ἐν ᾗ αἰτούμεθα τὴν θεὸν ἐπαφρόδιτα καὶ ἒπη καὶ ἒργα διδόναι.
The friendship of the soul because it is pure is all the less given to satiety, and is certainly not, as one might have thought, for that reason any less full of the pleasures of Aphrodite, but clearly that prayer which we make to the goddess is fulfilled, in which we requests that she grant us both words and deeds that are full of her pleasures.
(Xenophon, Symposium, 8.15.)

17This sentence involves the recognition that in noble, « Ouranian » relationships the physical expressions do contain Aphrodite’s pleasures (ἀνεπαφροδοτότερα almost equals « no less sexually satisfying »), and that these sexual expressions are mutually satisfying, though, it is argued, they are less satisfying and lasting than the mutual love and affection based on intellectual companionship. If this is right, there seems only a small gap between Sokrates’ views here and Xenophon’s own views elsewhere, which have recently been convincingly explored in detail by Hindley24. The clearest text elsewhere is in the Hiero where the remarkably modest tyrant explains that for a lover’s desire for boys to be properly satisfied, he has to believe he is loved in return – ἀντιφιλεῖσθαι :

Παρὰ δὲ παιδικῶν βουλομένων ἣδισται οἶμαι αἱ χάριτές εἰσιν. Eὐθὺς γὰρ παρὰ τοῦ ἀντιφιλοῦντος ἡδεῖαι μὲν αἱ ἀντιβέψεις, ἡδειαι δὲ αἱ ἐρωτήσεις, ἡδεῖαι δὲ αἱ ἀποκρίσεις, ἣδισται δὲ καὶ ἐπαφροδιτόταται αἱ μάχαι τε καὶ ἒριδες.
It is only from willing boyfriends that the pleasurable returns (charites) are the sweetest : immediately from one who loves one back come the sweet return glances, sweet questions, sweet responses, and, the sweetest and most full of Aphrodite, the fights and contests.

18On the other hand, to take the boy by force is not « full of Aphrodite », not sexually satisfying, but more like piracy :

Tὸ δὲ οὗ ἂν ἐρᾷ τις τούτῳ ἣδεσθαι ἀνιωνένῳ καὶ φιλοῦντα μισεῖσθαι καὶ ἅπτεσθαι ἀχθομένου, πῶς οὐχὶ τοῦτο ἢδη δυσχερὲς τὸ πάθημα καὶ οἰκτρόν ;
To take pleasure, in relation to the person one loves, in his feeling pain, one who hates you when kissed, is unhappy when touched, how can this not be an unpleasant and pitiable experience ?
(Xenophon, Hiero, 1.34-36.)

19This suggests, slightly more explicitly, that when the lover is considerate, and love and affection are returned, the boy is happy to allow the sex, and engages with enthusiasm in mutual glances and erotic conversations and « wrestlings » ; the alternative picture of « piratical » force, of pain (of rough anal sex ?)25, loathing and distaste, is close that that of Symposium, 8.21. It is thus a further advantage of Thomsen’s reinterpretation that it brings Sokrates’ views in the Symposium closer to those attributed to the kindly tyrant in his Hiero, while preserving a significant difference of course in Sokrates’ considerable emphasis on the diminution of the physical pleasures, and development of an even more mutually satisfying and durable passionate affection.

20There can also, as Thomsen argues, be seen an essential similarity between the views of Xenophon’s Sokrates and Plato’s especially in the Phaedros26. In the sustained analogy of the struggles of the « two horses and the charioteer » in the souls of lovers, while the purest lovers manage to make the transitions into the mutually most satisfying forms of love and philosophy without any physical expression, some philosophically serious pairs who are also philotimoi, full of self-esteem and drive, may in the intensity of their mutual love slip into physical expression, and the boy is in such a case explicitly said to experience intense love and physical pleasures (Phaedros, 255). This has of course been noted many times. While Calame seems to believe that the picture here is compatible both with his interpretation of Xenophon, Symposium, 8 and with the view of a complete asymmetry of desire and pleasure, as in both texts the beloved is still held to be incapable of erotic love or desire, and his response, antiphilein, remains one of « mutual trust », Halperin hails it as a « clean break with the conventional ethos of Athenian pederasty27 ». Halperin is right to see a recognition of a genuinely sexual response, but he exaggerates its innovative nature ; it may be seen rather as a little more explicit28.

21One may conclude then that no classical text asserts positively that no boys get pleasure from sex with their lovers, though a very strong asymmetry in desire is acknowledged. Boys who respect their lovers are said to « love them in return » (antiphilein) or to share the « desire for affection » (eros philias) rather than feel erotic desire (eros) as such ; respectful lovers who claim they cared more for the person or the soul than the body also benefit from the greater responsiveness from the partner, whose affection would naturally find physical expression29. While neither Xenophon’s nor Plato’s Sokrates denies that boys get any pleasure from sex with their lovers, they both claim that these pleasures are much less intense and exciting than the non-sexual pleasures when these are fully experienced30.

22Interestingly, both writers illustrate this point by a similar use of the standard mythological paradigm for noble pederasty, Ganymede and Zeus. Xenophon’s Sokrates privileges his form of the love of boys by the argument that Zeus offered greater rewards to his boyfriend Ganymede, as he did to his sons Herakles and the Dioskouroi, than to his many female loves ; he employs a highly tendentious and probably not very serious etymology of the youth’s name from ganumai and medea, interpreted as « ideas » (rather than genitals), to support the view that « gods and heroes valued affection for the soul more highly than the use of the body » ; this, however, is not quite the same as saying that Zeus had no interest at all in Ganymede’s body (as Kallias and the others are struck by Autolykos’ body), and does not engage with the question of whether Ganymede may have got some pleasure from their exchanges. In the Phaedros passage, Sokrates offers a more sophisticated account of the emotional transference or « sublimation » from the sexual to the spiritual : the « spring of that stream which Zeus, in love with Ganymede, named “desire” » is what flows through the lover and from his eyes into his soul, and thence back into the eyes and soul of the beloved (255b-c)31.

23Bearing in mind this somewhat revised account of classical Greek views on erotic reciprocity, we may return to Pindar’s epinician world, where the triumphs of the naked athletes in Panhellenic and local games are praised as exemplars of the purest achievements of male arete. The peculiar tradition of Greek athletic nudity must be the starting point, aspects of which are treated admirably in the papers in this volume by P. Brulé and Chr. Vendries. The perception of Thucydides (1.6) and Plato (Republic, 452c) that it was a Greek innovation must be right, even if they both seem to give a misleading impression of the date of its introduction (« not long ago32 »). Whether or not one holds (as I am tempted to do) that homosexual relations and nude displays had occurred widely across Greece as part of ritualised and secretive « rites de passage », the public athletic nudity of the sixth century onwards was without doubt inseparably linked to the spread of the open culture of gymnastic training and the public legitimation and presentation of idealised homosexual love in archaic societies ; it must therefore be seen as sexually charged33. In such a culture, the muscular, bronzed, naked bodies of the athletes on view must have had a powerful erotic appeal to a great many (I would argue to the majority) of the spectators. Athletes are often described in Pindar as bright (lamproi) and gleaming like statues34, their bodies well oiled and increasingly sweaty as well (cf. Bacchylides, 10.23-5, where the victor in the distance race drenches the spectators’ cloaks with his oil)35. Explicit sexual arousal was avoided among the competitors ; athletes who were not confident that « self-control » or the natural processes of the retraction of genitals when concentrating on the athletic effort would do the job might resort to ligatures of the penis (kunodesme)36. The frequent presentation on vases of athletes – or satyrs – tying ligatures plays with the possibility of inappropriate display, and thereby reveals the sexualised nature of the nude figure37. The athletes, no doubt, did not, like lap-dancers or ancient exotic dancers, draw the viewers’ gaze shamelessly to their erogenous parts with their eyes ; but as the naked contestants twisted and turned their bodies in the discus and javelin, or strained and stretched, grappled, bent forward, and fell down in the combat events, it seems inescapable that a good many male and female spectators found the sights exciting, and very probably responded with collective sounds and gestures of approval. The erotic delight of the audience at these sights was legitimised and defined by publicly accepted criteria of the masculinity which was useful to the community, and sanctified by being declared the gift of deities such as Aphrodite, Charis or Peitho. Even so, the tension between aesthetic and moral admiration of a body’s quality and the erotic arousal it inspires can give rise to humour, as in this example from a fragment of New Comedy38 :

A young man was playing ball,
… ? sixteen or seventeen years of age,
from Kos ; the island seems to produce gods.
When he cast his eye on the seated watchers,
receiving the ball or giving it, as one
we were all shouting out…
What great rhythm, what character, what discipline,
there was in everything he seemed to do or say.
The perfection of beauty, gentlemen, I’ve never
before heard or seen such charis.
I’d have been taken much worse, if I’d stayed
any longer ; as it is I don’t feel at all well.
(Damoxenos, Fr. 3 K-A.)

24This captures amusingly the movement from a response of shared acclamation at the discipline and skill of a boy dancer whose perfect and godlike beauty and knowing look at the audience are summed up as « such charis », to the overwhelmingly erotic effect on the speaker, delicately conveyed by his feeling « not at all well ».

25The qualities listed here – control of rhythm, disciplined order and the presentation of good character – fit the general criteria of the good body, which rationalise and legitimise naked displays of beauty and excellence in terms of the public good that is served and the reputation to the performers’ city thereby enhanced. Very similar criteria for judgement were applied to nude statues39, to naked contestants in athletics and dancing40, and to the most erotically admired youths. The list of physical and moral qualities applied to Autolykos the pankratiast in Xenophon’s Symposium comprise his kallos, combined with aidos and sophrosyne (1.8), which attracts the gaze of all like a beacon in the night, and his strength, endurance, courage and control (rhome, karteria, andreia and sophrosyne : 8.8). Aristotle’s presentation of the standard views of ideal male bodies precisely combines athletic and aesthetic criteria : the body best fitted for the contests in running and in strength is « delightful to see with the pleasure it gives » ; the best all-round body is the pentathlete’s, good for speed and fighting as well as lovely ; and for the adult the best body is that best suited for war, which it is also attractive (Rhetoric, 1361bff)41.

26Pindar often mentions the remarkable and desirable beauty of victorious boys and youths. Steiner’s careful elaboration of the parallels between his descriptions of these bronzed and fit bodies and the sculptures created to represent them has been enhanced by O’Sullivan’s demonstration that Pindar uses such comparisons competitively, to emphasise the superiority of his portraits in song to the products of the sculptors in terms both of geographical mobility and permanence42. Good examples where Pindar suggests that these god-like objects excite desire in potential male lovers and brides include the boy wrestler Alkimedon of Aegina (Olympian, 8.19-21), « kalos to gaze on, and in his action he did not shame his form », and the pankratiast Strepsiades of Thebes « awesome in strength and shapely to look at, and he brings out his excellence not to shame his natural talent » (Isthmian, 7.21-4). In the earliest of his epinicians (Pythian, 10.56-60), for the boy racer Hippokleas of Thessaly, Pindar hopes that « with my songs I will establish him as ever more marvellous (thaetos) for his crowns among his age-mates and elders, and the object of interest (melema) for girls about to marry », thus neatly expressing the idea that the performance of the praise poem (the charis of the poet, the gift of the Charites and Muses), heightens the divine beauty or charis of the athlete43. It may even create it : at the end of Isthmian, 4, where the pankratiast Melissos of Thebes was small and not much to look at, though tough and wily like Herakles when he wrestled Antaios, the poet will conduct the komos for him and his coach Orseas « drizzling delightful charis on them » (τερπνᾶν ἐπιστάζων χάριν, 70-72)44

27The epinician poet naturally does not purport to express « his own desire » as he might in a paidikos hymnos such as that for Theoxenos. But in a few epinicia he alludes to this and other genres and plays with the generic contrasts. The clearest cases are Isthmian, 2, mentioned earlier, and Pythian, 6, both unusual « quasi-epinicians », not focused on an individual victory. Isthmian, 2, combines a post-mortem summary of the victories and splendid hospitality of the tyrant Xenokrates of Agragas with an invitation to his son Thrasyboulos to carry on his work ; it also looks for approval from him for a wide circulation of this song, with hints at future commissions. Pindar starts with a contrast between the older poets (such as Alkaios, Ibykos and Anakreon) who readily produced honey-sounding paideioi hymnoi at any boy who was kalos ; this was, as we saw earlier, still a live genre, to which Pindar contributed (Fr. 127), as he claims in Fr. 124 to be sending off a collection of poems of this type suitable for the symposium to this same Thrasyboulos of Agragas. Here he claims that today’s poet (like himself), in the climate of money before everything (chremata chremat’ aner), expects silver. This stance has been much discussed recently, as the poet evidently plays with different genres and the conditions of their production, modelled on the distinction between a friendship between noble lovers and cash arrangements. The poet seems to be having it all ways, as Nicholson has well argued45. By praising earlier alternative models, he adopts a regretful pose, suggesting to the son Thrasyboulos that he is in the market for poetic commissions for his likely future victories while simultaneously indicating that he fully accepts the need for recompense ; on the other hand, adopting the pose of the older lover and friend, he flatters Thrasyboulos by hinting, through the reference to the paidikoi hymnoi, that he would merit such a song devoted to his beauty, as much as had the previous recipients ; and the praise of the father’s generosity suggests that the son too should proceed to show comparable kindness and hospitality both to his xenoi, his foreign friends, and to his own people as had his father46. Similarly in Pythian, 6, also for Thrasyboulos of Agrigas, we may detect a comparable combination of praise of the family, hopes and advice for the son, and delicate erotic play. Kurke has well demonstrated how this poem mixes the genres of epinikion and parainesis/hypothekai (advice to the young)47, but I think she may be wrong to exclude also elements of the paidikos hymnos, as in Isthmian, 248. It is true as she observes that Thrasyboulos’ physical attractiveness is not explicitly singled out for praise, but the references at the start of the poem invoking the spheres of « Aphrodite and the Charites » (1-3) and the phrases at the end praising his « general brilliance » (aglaia – also one of the Charites), which matched that of his uncle, and his « plucking his youth not unjustly or arrogantly », may plausibly be taken to include an allusion to the charis which is exhibited in physical beauty and the kindly and responsive treatment of any lovers as well as his generally hospitable and fair behaviour49. The last phrase of the poem, « his mind, sweet to share company with his fellow-drinkers, requites the pierced labour of bees », highlights the charis most pertinent for the poet ; as Kurke argues, the phrase hints that Thrasyboulos appreciates and rewards Pindar’s poems at the feasts with his fellow symposiasts – at which, as will be recalled, they might well perform extracts from Pindar’s medley of sympotic and no doubt erotic songs (Fr. 128)50.

28An extended look at one poem will best demonstrate how Pindar can weave the beauty of the victor’s body into a poem filled with many other types of reciprocal charis. Olympian, 10, performed in 476 BC for the victory in the boys’ boxing by Hagesidamos from Lokroi Epizephyrioi, has four uses of charis, and one of charma, which interact together to reveal the mutually reinforcing powers of the beauty of the victor « radiant » in his triumph, the emotions he inspires, and the epinician poem itself.

29Pindar starts by acknowledging he has missed the deadline for delivery of his song51, and needs to be saved by the Muse and Truth from the charge of damaging his xenos, and from the growing sense of shame as the debt was increasing in time ; but the debt will now be repaid with interest, and « as the wave washes over the rolling pebble we shall pay a common rendering to/for a friendly charis » (κοίνον λόγον φιλίαν τείσαμεν ες χάριν, 10-12)52. The general area of charis here is the reciprocal and close bond between the poet and the client and his friends : the song is described as a settling of accounts (logos) which is also a poem telling a story of wide general interest ; and the friendly charis includes a reference to the return gift, the song with its charm and beauty, the gratitude of the client and indeed the full reciprocal relationship fully restored53.

30After some swift praise of the Lokrians for their « strictness » (atrekeia)54, and also for their courageous and successful resistance to Herakles, he asks the victor Hagesidamos to show charis to his coach and friend Ilas, as Patroklos did to Achilles, since effective training is needed to enable a natural talent to win massive fame. Here the choice of Patroklos and Achilles as the model for athlete and coach suggests – perhaps more strongly than would the more predictable model of Cheiron and Achilles – that an erotic relationship may be delicately hinted at as a model of a charis relationship between coach and athlete55. What form this charis should take is not made explicit, though one might think of some public recognition and share in the celebrations, and perhaps also a share in the material rewards available to victors, as well as (continued) erotic gratification.

31Few, it is then said, attain without such hard work the joy of the triumph, which is here described not as a charis but as « a charma, a light (phaos) for life above all deeds », a visible pleasure shared by Ilas and Hagesidamos and deserved as a return for their efforts. The main « myth » which follows recalls Herakles’ founding of the Olympic games and the names of the earliest victors, and it ends with a similar image of delightful light (eraton phaos), of the moon in the evening, « as the temenos sang with the delightful festivities » (thaliai – again, Thalia one of the Charites) « in the manner of the enkomion ». In this way Pindar gives the aition of his epinician genre : « Following these ancient beginnings I shall now sing a charis named for the noble victory (ἐπωνυμίαν χάριν νίκας ἀγερώχου) in honour of the thunder and lightening of Zeus » (73-81). Thus the epinikion cunningly alluded to is called a charis, which here conveys at once the gift in payment of the obligation, the song which is the form the gift takes, and the delight and the light it brings to the occasion. The swelling song, though late, is then said to be a necessary completion of the victory, and as vital and as welcome as the birth of a son, however late, to a man with property to leave, warming his mind with philotes56 ; similarly the song gives permanence and geographical spread to the fame of the victory, so that he does not go to his death with only brief delight for his toils. The sweetsounding lyre and pipe sprinkle charis and wide fame from the Muses : here the charis that is the delightful and lasting gift of the poem enhances the radiance and charis of the beautiful victor by preserving it and spreading it abroad57. The point is that Pindar’s poems could bestow lasting fame either by further dissemination and reperformances or by preservation in written form58.

32Then the final epode links together once more the poem and erotic beauty (97-106) :

Ἐγὼ δὲ συνεφαπτόμενος σπουδᾷ, κγυτὸν ἒθνος
∧οκρῶν ἀμφέπεσαν, μέλιτι
εὐάνορα πόλιν καταβρέχων ·
παῖδ᾽ ἐρατὸν <δ᾽> Ἀρχεστράτου αἲνησα,
τὸν εῖδον κρατέοντα χερὸς ἀλκᾷ
βωμὸν παρ᾽ Ὀλύμπιον
κεῖνον κατὰ χρόνον
ἰδέᾳ τε καλόν
ὣρᾳ τε κεκραμένον, ἅ ποτε
ἀναιδέα Ґανυμήδει θάνατον
ἂλαλκε σὺν Kυπρογεννεῖ.
I have taken my part with enthusiasm, and embraced
the famous race of Lokrians, pouring
honey over the city of good men ;
and I have praised the lovely son of Archestratos,
whom I saw winning by his strength of hand
by the Olympian altar
at that time
beautiful in shape
and mingled with that youthful loveliness which once
averted shameless death from Ganymede
with the aid of the Cyprian born (Aphrodite).

33Lokroi produces men who are both brave warriors and beautiful in form, and the beauty of this desirable victor matched that of Ganymede. At this climax of the poem, then, the erotic power of Hagesidamos’ divinely perfect body, itself a form of charis, is compared to that of Ganymede, and is as worthy as his of achieving immortality59. Zeus, with Aphrodite’s help, immortalised Ganymede to enjoy his beauty for ever ; Pindar offers as his (delayed) charis to Hagesidamos the immortality and wide fame of the song. It is disputed whether an erotic motivation for Zeus’ employment of Ganymede as a wine-pourer is already implied in the Iliad (20.231-5)60 ; but subsequent (not much later) references to the relationship (Homeric hymn to Aphrodite, 202-8 ; Ibykos 289P and Theognis, 1341-50) put it significantly on a par with Dawn and Tithonos and Aphrodite and Anchises, and at Olympian, 1.40-45, Zeus’ use of Ganymede is unambiguously, if still euphemistically, stated (« for this purpose »)61. Here in Olympian 10, the introduction of Ganymede confirms the erotic appeal of the victor’s body, and adds a divine sanction to it ; it also goes a long way to confirm that we should see an allusion to homosexual ties in the parallel drawn earlier in the poem between the victor and trainer and Achilles and Patroklos62.

34Pindar, then, especially when spreading his charis on the triumphs of boys and youths, often assumes an appreciation in athletic audiences of the divine and sexually arousing charis of their naked bodies in action, and claims that his honey-sweet songs performed either at the games’ sites or on the athletes’ return gave added radiance (charis) to their glory and beauty. One may then question in greater detail how these sexually charged sights and themes were received. One should first consider the social composition of those who attended the games and the subsequent celebrations. There is a widely held, but hotly contested, view that competitors for the games were in the fifth century, at least, drawn increasingly from wider social backgrounds than the traditional elites, especially in the cheaper events and from small, and/or more democratic, cities who may have invested publicly in attracting and training athletes63. However that may be, the spectators were highly unlikely to be predominantly either mostly from the elites, or restricted to athletic experts, their relations and friends. Estimates vary for the numbers the stadia and hippodromes at Olympia and the other Panhellenic venues could hold at different periods, but they are clearly mass audiences, perhaps between 20 000 and 50 000 (many of whom travelled considerable distances). Venues for local games, such as the Athenian Agora for most events of the Panathenaia (until the later fourth century BC), could probably accommodate at least as many people as the equally popular theatres64. Audiences must have included a far broader representation from the communities, who approved or acquiesced in granting successful athletes considerable honours and wealth, often for life, though how far the seriously poor were able to attend the Panhellenic games may well be doubted.

35Secondly, some recent research has emphasised that while the festive settings for the performance of Pindaric and other epinicia could be private parties attended by rich competitors, family and friends, they could also be larger-scale civic affairs (daites, eranoi, thaliai), and the poems were often given subsequent performances65. The language of the epinicians constantly implies that the pleasures experienced in the activities of singing, dancing and feasting unite all five parties involved in the celebration : the victor, his family, his wider network of friends, the chorus and musicians, and the audience ; like many other choral performances, epincians and the reintegration of the victorious athlete into his community they celebrated were often seen as significant occasions working to create harmony and dispel stasis across the cities of Greece (while of course the political ambitions of victors could at times bring seriously disruption)66. This reintegration has been fruitfully studied in recent years, but there has been a tendency, especially in L. Kurke’s work, to operate with excessively stark dichotomies between sets of « aristocratic » and « non-aristocratic » values, and to associate the values of charis, gift-exchange and reciprocity exclusively with the elites, who were supposedly hostile to commerce and the cash economy ; this often leads her in my view to exaggerate the elitist exclusivity of Pindaric settings (e.g. in her analysis of Olympian, 7) and unnecessarily to detect hints of conflict or unease between city and individual or family67. There seems to me little reason to doubt that Pindar’s appeals to the multiple charites of shared pleasures were aimed at all his hearers, and that his poems often sought to recall and to recreate a sense of harmony and shared pleasure at these major religious and social events, connecting his (mostly) rich clients with the rest of the community68.

36If, then, large crowds watched the games, and more than a small circle of athletes, families and friends often saw the performances of the epinicians, I think we should suppose that the great majority both of the spectators at the games and these present at the public victory parties were susceptible to the delights of the beautiful bodies, and prepared to see these delights recalled, and the sexual pleasures their lovers or wives might be enjoying or come to enjoy hinted at with proper delicacy in these songs. This argument runs counter to a trend in recent scholarship which maintains that non-elites remained largely excluded from gymnastic participation and preserved a predominantly hostile attitude to homosexual love and relationships throughout the classical period69. I have argued against this view elsewhere on various grounds70. In our time, admiration and vicarious approval of their pleasures, sexual or luxurious, is found frequently enough in popular responses to film stars, footballers and athletes, coexisting with envy and hostility to their excesses ; the pleasure and pride taken by the Greek cities in their successful athletes, and by parents and family in their public acclaim, is strongly suggested by the huge financial and honorific rewards on offer. Occasional objections to such honours from a Xenophanes or a character in Euripides’ Autolykos perhaps had little effect71. Perhaps the most striking attestation of the continued popular enjoyment in the beauty and success of athletic stars is the fact that in c. 345 Aeschines attributes the following views to an supposed « opponent » but then assumes that all will agree with them :

It would seem to him to be very bizarre, if you, when you are about to have children, all pray that your unborn sons may be fair and noble in appearance and worthy of the city, yet those that have been born, in whom the city may well take pride, if they are exceptional in beauty and youthful charm and if they arouse the desires of some men and become the objects of fights because of erotic passion, you are then to disenfranchise such men, on the persuasion of Aeschines.
(Aeschines, 1.134.)

37Aeschines did not have to agree, but he in fact does strongly support it, in order to fix elsewhere the boundaries of decent behaviour which Timarchos overstepped. For these and many other reasons we should suppose that most non-elites in the audiences, in the fifth and fourth centuries or earlier responded erotically to the bodies on display, had little or no moral objections to pederastic relationships in general, and readily accepted allusions to their use in praise poetry.

38Pindar can then weave different elements in the complex concept of charis into a web which integrates the god-given beauty and talent of the young, fit, athletic victor ; the reciprocal favours and respect which have (allegedly) created harmonious relations between the victor, his family, and the wider networks of kindred and community ; the celebrations and banquets, which may also unite the community and are graced by the production and performance of the epinician song ; and the underlying reciprocal relations between poet and his patrons which produce this and other such songs. The divine nature of all these aspects of charis imparts to them all a powerful legitimacy in the eyes of performers and audiences of these songs alike ; inclusion in this nexus of reciprocity of the spectacular and homoerotically appealing beauty and radiance of those victors who possessed it, and even of the occasional hints of the special friendships which they may stimulate (modelled on that of the gods, Zeus and Ganymede, or Poseidon and Pelops), extends this legitimacy to the erotic appeal of the athletes and the gazers’ response to it. The praise of the youth, and the objectification of his gaze in the regular description of charis and eros radiating out from the eyes, must also have helped to persuade the youths of the appropriateness of their mutedly coquettish behaviour, and, following doubtless applause and admiration of the spectators, invited them to seek and enjoy again the adulation and admiration of the audience at the epinician party, and inclined them to accept offers of reciprocal pleasures with their lovers, officially at least, those who operated with consideration and within the limits of public propriety. Finally, the praise of these pursuits in epinicians as in other poetry supports the view that the general attitudes of most people to them were far from hostile, but were positive or ambiguous.