Pindar

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Contents 1 Biography 2 Works 2.1 Choral works 2.2 Victory odes 3 References 4 Further reading 5 Sources 6 External links

Pindar (pronounced /ˈpɪndɑr/), Pindarus in Latin and Πίνδαρος in Greek (ca. 522–443 BC), was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, Pindar is the one whose work is best preserved. Quintilian described him as "by far the greatest of the nine lyric poets, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich exuberance of his language and matter, and his rolling flood of eloquence".^[1]

[edit] Biography

Pindar was born in Cynoscephalae, a village in Boeotia. He was the son of Daiphantus and Cleodice. Pindar was married to Megacleia. They had two daughters, Eumetis and Protomache, and a son, Daiphantus. Pindar is said to have died at Argos, at the age of seventy-nine, in 443 BC.

During the Greco–Persian Wars in 490 and 480, Pindar’s personal and professional life may have been difficult. He was most likely related to individuals and groups who sided with Persia during the conflict. Thebes was occupied by Xerxes' general, Mardonius, until he was defeated and killed at the Battle of Plataea (479), along with many Theban aristocrats who had sided with Persia. However, Pindar’s career doesn't seem to have suffered much by this association. Soon after the war, his reputation spread throughout the Greek world.

Pindar travelled throughout the Greek world to attend to his patrons. From his writings, it appears that he traveled to the court of Hiero I of Syracuse, probably in 476, at the time he wrote the first three Olympian Odes for victories of Hiero and Theron. Pindar also visited the cities of Delphi and Athens, where he may have written one or two dithyrambs to be sung at the Great Dionysiae, of which only fragments are extant. A reference in Isocrates' Antidosis (166), records Pindar's success in the city. Out of the 45 odes, 11 are written for Aeginetans, which makes it likely that he visited the powerful island of Aegina. He became proxenos of Athenians^[2] and Molossians^[3][4]

Pindar's house in Thebes was spared by Alexander the Great in recognition of the complimentary works he composed about and for his ancestor, king Alexander I of Macedon.^[5]

[edit] Works

Pindar is one of the most famous Greek poets, one of the few whose works are still extant in sizeable part. Pindar wrote choral works such as paeans and other hymns for religious festivals. Most of his writings were in honor of notable personages and victory odes in honor of winners at various games. Forty-five victory odes are still fully extant, grouped in four books based on the games in which the celebrated winner had competed : Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian and Nemean. In addition to Hiero of Syracuse, other known patrons included Theron of Acragas, and Arcesilas of Cyrene.

The oldest extant Pindarian ode, the Tenth Pythian Ode, celebrates the victory of the Thessalian Hippocleas in the double-stadium race in 498, when the poet was only 20. However, the peak of his literary activity is generally seen as from 480 to 460. His last extant ode is probably the Eighth Pythian Ode, usually dated to 446 (when he was 72), which was written to celebrate the victory of an Aeginian wrestler, Aristomenes.

Family traditions appear to have left their impression on his poetry. The clan of the Aegidae–tracing their line from the hero Aegeus–belonged to the Cadmean element of Thebes, that is, to the elder nobility who traced their descent from the days of the legendary city founder, Cadmus. Traces of these traditions in his work may also provide important information on his relationships with his contemporaries.

The Athenian comic playwright 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"^[6] and it may be suggested that in modern times, too, Pindar is more respected than read.

[edit] Choral works

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:^[7]

• 1 book of humnoi - "hymns"
• 1 book of paianes - "paeans"
• 2 books of dithuramboi - "dithyrhambs"
• 2 books of prosodia - "preludes"
• 3 books of parthenia - "songs for maidens"
• 2 books of huporchemata - "songs to support dancing"
• 1 book of enkomia - "songs of praise"
• 1 book of threnoi - "laments"
• 4 books of epinikia - "victory odes"

Of this vast and varied corpus, only the epinikia — odes written to commemorate athletic victories — survive in complete form; the rest survive only by quotations in other ancient authors or from papyrus scraps unearthed in Egypt.

This section is written like a personal reflection or essay and may require cleanup. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (June 2009)

Pindar is to be conceived as standing within the circle of those families^{[citation needed]} for whom the heroic myths were domestic records. He had a personal link^{[citation needed]} with the cultural memories which everywhere were most cherished by Dorians, no less than with those which appealed to those 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 as panhellenic as the Olympian Games.

Pindar is said to have received lessons in aulos-playing from one Scopelinus at Thebes, and afterward, 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 that the lyricist was required to temper into a harmonious whole. The facts that stand out from these meagre traditions are that Pindar was precocious, meticulous, and laborious. Preparatory labour of a somewhat severe and complex kind was, indeed, indispensable for the Greek lyric poet of that age.

[edit] Victory odes

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 among the athletic victor, his illustrious ancestors, and the myths of deities 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."^[8] Two of Pindar's most famous victory odes are Olympian 1 and Pythian 1.

Modern editors (e.g. Snell and Maehler in their Teubner edition), have assigned dates, securely or tentatively, to Pindar's victory odes, based on ancient sources and other grounds (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 BCE: Olympian Odes 4 (?), 5 (?)
• 454 BC: Isthmian Odes 7 (?)
• 446 BC: Pythian Odes 8; Nemean Odes 11 (?)
• 444 BC: Nemean Odes 10 (?)

[edit] References

This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (June 2009)

[edit] Further reading

• Bundy, Elroy L. (2006) [1962] (PDF). Studia Pindarica (digital version ed.). Berkeley, California: Department of Classics, University of California, Berkeley. http://repositories.cdlib.org/ucbclassics/bundy/. Retrieved on 2007-02-12. 
• Barrett, W. S., Greek Lyric, Tragedy, and Textual Criticism: Collected Papers, edited for publication by M. L. West (Oxford & New York, 2007): papers dealing with Pindar, Stesichorus, Bacchylides and Euripides
• Race, W. H. Pindar. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.

[edit] Sources

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Pindar

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pindar

• Works by Pindar at Project Gutenberg
• Selected odes, marked up to show selected rhetorical and poetic devices
• Olympian 1, read aloud in Greek, with text and English translation provided
• Pythian 3, translated by Frank J. Nisetich
• Pindar by Gregory Crane, in the Perseus Encyclopedia
• Pindar's Life by Basil L. Gildersleeve, in Pindar: The Olympian and Pythian Odes
• SORGLL: Pindar, Olympian Odes, I, 1-64; read by William Mullen

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