Pindar
Pindar (or
Pindarus) (
522 BC –
443 BC), perhaps the greatest of the
nine lyric poets of
ancient Greece, was born at
Cynoscephalae, a village in
Thebes. He was the son of
Daiphantus and
Cleodice. The traditions of his family have left their impression on his poetry, and are not without importance for a correct estimate of his relation to his contemporaries. The clan of the
Aegidae – tracing their line from the hero
Aegeus – belonged to the
Cadmean element of Thebes, i.e., to the elder
nobility whose supposed date went back to the days of the founder Cadmus.
Employing himself by writing choral works in praise of notable personages, events and princes, his house in Thebes was spared by
Alexander the Great in recognition of the complimentary works composed for king
Alexander I of Macedon.
Pindar composed choral songs of several types. According to a
Late Antique biographer, these works were grouped into seventeen books by scholars at the
Library of Alexandria. They were, by genre:
* 1 book of
humnoi "
hymns"
* 1 book of
paianes "
paeans"
* 2 books of
dithuramboi "
dithyrhambs"
* 2 book of
prosodia "preludes"
* 3 books of
parthenia "songs for maidens"
* 2 book of
huporchemata "songs to support dancing"
* 1 book of
enkomia "praise-songs"
* 1 book of
threnoi "laments"
* 4 books of
epinikia "victory odes"
Of this vast and varied corpus, only the victory odes survive in complete form; a Roman comic writer, Eupolis, is said to have remarked that the poems of Pindar "are already reduced to silence by the disinclination of the multitude for elegant learning"
[Noted in Deipnosophistae, epitome of book I.] and it may be suggested that in modern times, too, Pindar is more respected than read. The rest are known to us only by quotations in other ancient authors or
papyrus scraps unearthed in
Egypt.
The victory odes were composed for aristocratic victors in the four most prominent
athletic festivals in early
Classical Greece: the
Olympian,
Pythian,
Isthmian and
Nemean Games. Rich and
allusive in style, they are packed with dense parallels between the athletic victor, his illustrious ancestors, and the myths of gods and heroes underlying the athletic festival. But "Pindar's power does not lie in the pedigrees of ... athletes, ... or the misbehavior of minor deities. It lies in a splendour of phrase and imagery that suggests the gold and purple of a sunset sky."
Two of Pindar's most famous victory odes are Olympian 1 and Pythian 1.
In keeping with the Theban pedagogic tradition, a good part of his poetry touches on
pederastic themes. Among these are his Olympian Odes I and IX, as well as his paean to the
eromenos Theoxenus, a
skolion thought to have been dedicated to Pindar's own beloved, but now believed to have been commissioned by Theoxenus' lover. (Hubbard, Thomas K.
Pindar, Theoxenus, and the Homoerotic Eye)
Pindar is to be conceived, then, as standing within the circle of those families for whom the heroic myths were domestic records. He had a personal link with the memories which everywhere were most cherished by
Dorians, no less than with those which appealed to men of "Cadmean" or of
Achaean stock. And the wide ramifications of the Aegidae throughout
Hellas rendered it peculiarly fitting that a member of that illustrious clan should celebrate the glories of many cities in verse which was truly
Panhellenic.
Pindar is said to have received lessons in
aulos-playing from one
Scopelinus at Thebes, and afterwards to have studied at
Athens under the musicians
Apollodorus (or
Agathocles) and
Lasus of Hermione. Several passages in Pindar's extant
odes glance at the long technical development of Greek
lyric poetry before his time, and at the various elements of art which the lyricist was required to temper into a harmonious whole. The facts that stand out from these meagre traditions are that Pindar was precocious and laborious. Preparatory labour of a somewhat severe and complex kind was, indeed, indispensable for the Greek lyric poet of that age.
Pindar's wife's name was
Megacleia, and he had a son named Daiphantus and two daughters,
Eumetis and
Protomache. He is said to have died at
Argos, at the age of seventy-nine, in 443 BC.
Modern editors, based on ancient sources and other grounds, have assigned dates, securely or tentatively, to Pindar's victory odes. (Doubt is indicated by a question mark immediately following the number of an ode in the list below.) The result is a fairly clear chronological outline of Pindar's career as an epinician poet:
*
498 BC:
Pythian Odes 10
*
490 BC:
Pythian Odes 6, 12
*
488 BC:
Olympian Odes 14 (?)
*
485 BC:
Nemean Odes 2 (?), 7 (?)
*
483 BC:
Nemean Odes 5 (?)
*
486 BC:
Pythian Odes 7
*
480 BC:
Isthmian Odes 6
*
478 BC:
Isthmian Odes 5 (?);
Isthmian Odes 8
*
476 BC:
Olympian Odes 1, 2, 3, 11;
Nemean Odes 1 (?)
*
475 BC:
Pythian Odes 2 (?);
Nemean Odes 3 (?)
*
474 BC:
Olympian Odes 10 (?);
Pythian Odes 3 (?), 9, 11;
Nemean Odes 9 (?)
*
474/
473 BC:
Isthmian Odes 3/4 (?)
*
473 BC:
Nemean Odes 4 (?)
*
470 BC:
Pythian Odes 1;
Isthmian Odes 2 (?)
*
468 BC:
Olympian Odes 6
*
466 BC:
Olympian Odes 9, 12
*
465 BC:
Nemean Odes 6 (?)
*
464 BC:
Olympian Odes 7, 13
*
462 BC:
Pythian Odes 4
*
462/
461 BC:
Pythian Odes 5
*
460 BC:
Olympian Odes 8
*
459 BC:
Nemean Odes 8 (?)
*
458 BC:
Isthmian Odes 1 (?)
*
460 BC or
456 BC:
Olympian Odes 4 (?), 5 (?)
*
454 BC:
Isthmian Odes 7 (?)
*
446 BC:
Pythian Odes 8;
Nemean Odes 11 (?)
*
444 BC:
Nemean Odes 10 (?)
*
Pindar (Perseus Encyclopedia entry by Gregory Crane)*
Pindar's first Olympian Ode, read aloud in Greek, English translation provided*
Pindar's First Olympian Ode - Greek and Translation*
Odes of Pindar*
Free ebook of Pindar at
Project Gutenberg**
Extant Odes of Pindar from Gutenberg translated by Ernest Myers*
'Pindar's Life' in: Gildersleeve, Basil. Pindar: The Olympian and Pythian Odes*
Carrie Shea, The Poetry of Praise: Pindar's Epinician Odes*
Selected Odes of Pindar marked up to show selected rhetorical and poetic devices
*
Example of Pindar's Poems*
Pindar
