The Charioteer of Delphi - Characters

Characters

• Nubia’s extraordinary affinity with animals is shown as being something close to telepathic communication; also, this is the second time that someone has taken advantage of her naiveté and her wish to spare others harm (the other being The Pirates of Pompeii).
• However, kindness to animals and to others in general is shown to be a positive trait; Nubia’s bond with Pegasus allows them to overcome their shared fear of fire and save their lives. By contrast, the reader learns from Urbanus that Hierax may have been a good driver, but he was cruel to the horses he drove. It is even implied that the crash that maimed him was partially his fault, when he used his horsewhip on another driver to get him out of the race.
• Scopas’s strange behavior appears to be a form of autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by an inability to socialize and communicate normally with other people, repetitive behavior, and sometimes physical clumsiness. Autism was not diagnosed in Roman times, and so a variety of other explanations are offered, one of which is that Scopas was raised by centaurs rather than humans.
• Among Scopas’s behaviors are:
  • a lack of inflection in his voice;
  • a habit of referring to himself in the third person;
  • an aversion to being touched by other people;
  • a habit of repeatedly knocking his head against something when distressed;
  • a habit of repeating apparent nonsense words to himself to calm or encourage himself;
• Another possible explanation is that Scopas is a feral child – according to Urbanus, Scopas was abandoned as a child and lived in the wild for several years before being taken in by a temple in Greece – and thus has grown up without normal experience with human language and socialization;
• Scopas also appears to be what is now termed an autistic savant – a person who has an amazing natural talent in a certain field or fields despite his other impairments; as Scopas himself says, “Scopas does not understand people, but Scopas understands horses.” Nubia notices that his normal physical awkwardness disappears when he is behind the reins of a chariot: “he drives like Apollo.”