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For the PINDAR military bunker in London, please see the PINDAR section of Military citadels under London
Ancient Greek poet Pindar, marble Roman copy of Greek fifth century BC original - Palazzo Nuovo
Ancient Greek poet Pindar, marble Roman copy of Greek fifth century BC original - Palazzo Nuovo

Pindar (pronounced /ˈpɪndɚ/) (or Pindarus, Greek: Πίνδαρος) (probably born 522 BC in Cynoscephalae, a village in Boeotia; died 443 BC in Argos), was a Greek lyric poet.

Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, Pindar is the one whose work is best preserved, and some critics since antiquity have regarded him as the greatest.[1]

Contents

Biography

Pindar was born at 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 Medean 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 and its colonies.

Pindar travelled throughout the Greek world to attend to his patrons. From his writings, it appears that he traveled to the court of Hieron in Sicily, probably in 476, at the time he wrote the first three Olympian Odes for victories of Hieron 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 his success in the city. Out of the 45 odes, 11 are written for Aeginians, which makes it likely that he visited the powerful island of Aegina.

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.

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 pæans 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. 45 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. His patrons included: Hieron of Syracuse, Theron of Acragas, and Arcesilas of Cyrene.

The oldest extant Pindarian ode, the Xth 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 spans is generally seen as from 480 to 460. His last extant ode is probably the VIIIth Pythian Ode, usually dated from 446 (when he was 72), and 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, i.e., to the elder nobility whose supposed date went back to the days of the founder Cadmus. Traces of these traditions in his work may also provide important information on his relationships with his contemporaries.

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:[2]

  • 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 - "songs of praise"
  • 1 book of threnoi - "laments"
  • 4 books of epinikia - "victory odes"

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

An 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"[3] and it may be suggested that in modern times, too, Pindar is more respected than read.

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."[4] Two of Pindar's most famous victory odes are Olympian 1 and Pythian 1.

Some of Pindar's poetry touches on pederastic themes. Among these are his Olympian Odes I and IX, as well as his encomium to the eromenos Theoxenus (fragment 123 Snell-Maehler), 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)[5]

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 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 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, meticulous, and laborious. Preparatory labour of a somewhat severe and complex kind was, indeed, indispensable for the Greek lyric poet of that age.

Chronology of his Victory Odes

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 (?)

References

  1. ^ Quintilian 10.1.61; cf. Pseudo-Longinus 33.5.
  2. ^ M.M. Willcock: Pindar: Victory Odes (p. 3). Cambridge UP, 1995.
  3. ^ Noted in Deipnosophistae, epitome of book I.
  4. ^ Lucas, F. L.. Greek Poetry for Everyman. Macmillan Company, New York, p. 262. 
  5. ^ "1.85-1.87 Pindar". Homosexuality in Greece and Rome: a sourcebook of basic documents in translation. Retrieved on 2006-05-20.

Further reading

  • Bundy, Elroy L. [1962] (2006). Studia Pindarica (PDF), digital version, Berkeley, California: Department of Classics, University of California, Berkeley. 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.

Sources

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Nine Lyric Poets · Ancient Greek Literature
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