Pindar

born probably 518 bc, Cynoscephalae, Boeotia, Greece
died after 446, probably c. 438, Argos

the greatest lyric poet of ancient Greece and the master of epinicia, choral odes celebrating victories achieved in the Pythian, Olympic, Isthmian, and Nemean games.

Early training
Pindar was of noble birth, possibly belonging to a Spartan family, the Aegeids, though the evidence for this is inconclusive. His parents, Daiphantus and Cleodice, survive only as names; his uncle Scopelinus, a skilled aulos player, doubtless helped with Pindar’s early musical training. The family possessed a town house in Thebes (to be spared by express command of Alexander the Great in the general destruction of that city by the Macedonians in 335 bc). Such a background would have given Pindar a ready entrée into aristocratic circles in other Greek cities.

Pindar’s poetry borrowed certain fundamental characteristics from the cultural traditions of his native Boeotia, a region that remained rather at the margins of political and economic trends of the Archaic (c. 650–480) and Classical (c. 450–323) periods. His poetry evinces a conservative attitude of absolute adherence to aristocratic values, a rigorous sense of piety, and a familiarity with the great mythological heritage that descended from the Mycenaean period (c. 16th–12th century bc) and achieved a first systematic presentation, significantly, in the work of Pindar’s Boeotian predecessor Hesiod at the end of the 8th century. Ancient authorities make Pindar the contemporary of the Boeotian poet Corinna, who was supposed to have beaten him in poetic competitions and to have advised him, in reference to his tendency to overuse myth, “to sow with the hand and not with the whole sack.” Pindar was said to have insulted Corinna by calling her a pig.

The ancient biographical tradition reports that as a young man Pindar went to Athens to complete and refine his poetic education. It is unclear whether he studied there with Lasus of Hermione, who had introduced important innovations into the dithyramb, or whether he learned from him at second hand. At any rate, in 497 or 496 Pindar, scarcely more than 20 years of age, won first place in the dithyrambic competition at the Great Dionysia, an event that had been introduced in 508.

Professional career
Seventeen volumes of Pindar’s poetry, comprising almost every genre of choral lyric, were known in antiquity. Only four books of epinicia have survived complete, doubtless because they were chosen by a teacher as a schoolbook in the 2nd century ad. They are supplemented by numerous fragments, and 20th-century finds of papyri have contributed to a deeper understanding of Pindar’s achievement, especially in paeans and dithyrambs.

All the evidence, however, suggests that the epinicia were Pindar’s masterpieces. These are divided as Olympic, Pythian, Isthmian, or Nemean—the games in which the victories he celebrated were held; the epinicia number 44 odes in all. The earliest surviving epinicion (Pythian ode 10) dates from 498, and Pindar already had an assured mastery of his medium when he wrote it. It would have been quite possible for him to evolve into a cosmopolitan artist like Simonides, welcome all over the Greek world and moving easily from city to city. No doubt Pindar visited the Panhellenic festivals, at Delphi (where the Pythian games were held) and Olympia in particular, to absorb the atmosphere of the games and celebrate his victories. He would also have seen in person the homes of the aristocrats and the courts of the tyrants whose triumphs he sang. But in general he preferred to remain loyal to his native land and reside in Thebes; characteristically, Pindar’s standards and values, like his poetry, changed little if at all over the years.

Such patriotism meant sacrifices. Thebes, like Delphi, collaborated with the enemy in the Persian War—though admittedly Thebes had little alternative. But whereas Delphi’s prestige was quickly restored after the retreat of the Persians, Thebes’s defection was not lightly forgiven or forgotten. Athens was to dominate the history of the 5th century, and, for the first two-thirds of it, Athens had very much the better of its long drawn-out quarrel with Thebes. From 457 to 447 bc, Boeotia was virtually an Athenian dependency, and almost everywhere in the region the aristocratic way of life—integral to Pindar’s personality and art alike—was threatened. Politically and economically, the monopolies of power by the noble families were broken. The aristocratic code (summed up in a famous line of Homer, “ever to excel and to surpass other men”) was undermined by the radical rationalism of a new age. Choral lyric itself had little future as a separate art form, and tragedy absorbed into itself what was most vital in the tradition; Pindar had no worthy successors. It is a tribute to the quality of Pindar’s poetry that, although he must have regarded these contemporary cultural and political developments with disdain, or at best with indifference (apart perhaps from his reinterpretation of some of the traditional stories concerning the gods), he was universally respected and accepted as a major creative artist.

Pindar’s early poems have almost all been lost; it is probable, however, that what gave him a growing reputation beyond the borders of Boeotia were hymns in honour of the gods. Pindar was born at the time of the Pythian festival, and from his youth he had a close connection with the Pythian priesthood, which served the oracular shrine of Apollo at Delphi. Pindar and his descendants, indeed, enjoyed special privileges at Delphi, where his memory was cherished in later times and where an iron chair, in which it was said he had sat to sing, was exhibited. The first commissions for epinicia came mostly from aristocratic connections: the Aleuads in Thessaly (Pythian ode 10; 498 bc), the Alcmaeonids in Athens (Pythian ode 7; 486), and, above all, the Aeacids of the island of Aegina (the series begins with paean 6, dating from 490, and continues with Nemean ode 7). Progress in winning recognition seems to have been steady, if slow.

A significant breakthrough came when Pindar established a link with the court of Theron of Acragas through the tyrant’s brother Xenocrates, whose chariot won the Pythian contest (Pythian odes 6 and 12, composed for the victory of the aulete Midas in musical competitions; 490). But the Persian invasion of Greece came before the promise of this new connection could be fulfilled. Pindar faced a crisis of divided loyalties, torn between a sense of solidarity with the aristocracy of Boeotia, who followed a pro-Persian policy, and a growing appreciation of Spartan and Athenian heroic resistance. Pindar was first and foremost a Theban, and he stood by his friends, many of whom paid for their policy with their lives. But it was Simonides, not Pindar, who wrote the poems of rejoicing at Greece’s victories and of mourning for its glorious dead.

It took Pindar some years to reestablish himself; fortunately, his friends in Aegina were staunch (Isthmian ode 8; 478). It is virtually certain that he visited Sicily in 476–474 and was made welcome at the courts of Theron of Acragas and Hieron I of Syracuse. They were to elicit much of his greatest poetry, and it was through these connections that Pindar’s reputation spread throughout the Greek world and commissions flowed in from the mainland, the islands, and also from the remoter outposts of Hellenism. Promising new contacts were made with the royal houses of Macedon and Cyrene (Alexander of Macedon, fragment 120; Arcesilas of Cyrene, Pythian odes 4 and 5; 462 bc).

Theron and Hieron respected and admired Pindar, but his aristocratic temper made him dangerously outspoken. Diplomatic tact and finesse were not among his qualities, and his adroit rivals, Simonides and Bacchylides, were more pliant and adaptable (Bacchylides, not Pindar, celebrated Hieron’s Olympic victory in the chariot race in 468). Echoes of Pindar’s bitter resentment sound in his poetry. So too Pindar’s intervention on behalf of Damophilus, a noble exile from Cyrene (Pythian ode 4), seems to have been taken amiss, and he was not invited to commemorate Arcesilas’s triumph at Olympia in 460. Nevertheless, these were the years of supreme achievement, and Pindar found a growing demand for his poetry and a growing appreciation of his skill. His debt to Athens was amply paid in a famous tribute (fragment 76) that the Athenians never tired of citing, one that earned the poet special honours in that city (and, according to ancient tradition, a fine at Thebes). It was probably in this period that Pindar married.

The subsequent decade of Athenian domination in central Greece coincided with a period when Delphi was controlled by Phocis in northern Greece. These were dark years for Pindar, and his poetic output dwindled. But he continued to celebrate Theban victories (Isthmian odes 1 and 7), and he found inspiration in the achievements of his Aeacid friends of Aegina, though their days of nominal independence were clearly numbered (Isthmian odes 5 and 6 and Nemean odes 3–8; all celebrate Aeginetan successes). Pindar’s last extant poem (Pythian ode 8) appropriately commemorates an Aeacid victory. The last datable epinicion is from 446 bc. According to the ancient biographical tradition, Pindar died in Argos at age 80, in the arms of a handsome boy, Theoxenus, whose name appears in a fragment of an encomium the poet dedicated to him.

Poetry
The figure of the poet assumed a new role in the 6th and 5th centuries bc under the influence of the city-based economy, which was encouraged by colonial expansion and by the possibilities of trade opened up with the circulation of money. The poet achieved a higher social position in connection with his role as praiser of rulers and communities; the poet and the subject of the poem became connected by a precise relationship of commission and remuneration. Money could buy a place in posterity, and the notion that poetry mediated between the memorable achievement and the deserved glory is a recurrent motif in epinician poetry—especially in Pindar’s epinicia, where the consciousness of his own poetic talent assumes an attitude of vigorous pride. The poet’s songs spread their legacy ever further through the community and into the future; in that way, Pindar argued, poems were superior to the other popular medium of praise, the statue, which transmitted its message only to those who could see it.

The epinicion form, which in Simonides’ hands seems to have evolved into a relatively simple poem of rejoicing enhanced by touches of realism and humour, was assimilated by Pindar to the religious hymn. The praise and worship of the god whose festival is being celebrated set the tone, and thanksgiving is an integral part of the structure. A second constituent element is the myth, impressionistically treated in a series of short sharply visualized scenes and meant to link the glorious present to the yet more glorious past and to give a new dimension to the transient moment of victory. Pindar used stories from the epic tradition or the local oral tradition, choosing the episode most appropriate to the ceremony for which he was composing and then explicitly connecting the person, the family, and the city or divinity to be celebrated. He emphasized the heroic achievement most relevant to the occasion while omitting other aspects and episodes of the story. A third element is the aphoristic moralizing, often in Pindar resulting in passages of extreme beauty, even sublimity. Aphorisms link the present reality with the mythic narrative and repeatedly stress the dangers of excessive pride in achievement. The emotional impulse stems from the aristocratic ideal of self-assertion, competition, and leadership—an ideal expressing itself most finely in battle but also finding fulfillment in athletic contests, in which the palm goes to superior physique and morale, believed to derive from superior birth and the favour of the gods.

Pindar’s metrical range is exceptionally wide, with no two poems being identical in metre, and he controls difficult and involuted techniques with consummate professional mastery. His dialect is literary and eclectic, with Boeotian elements; the vocabulary is enriched, poetic, and highly personal. Each poem is fused into a unity by the fire of Pindar’s poetic inspiration, by a sweep and soar of imagination that give his poetry power and magnificence, and by the shaping and controlling discipline of a fastidious art expressed in an intensely personal style.

One distinctive trait in Pindar’s poetry is the piling up of disparate topics, with unexpected and sudden transitions; these at first seem to be unmotivated digressions, apparently unconnected. Such episodes, which came to be known misleadingly as “Pindaric flights,” are rapid associations of ideas, sometimes expressed very concisely, which when carefully examined are shown to be intelligible. The more enduring difficulty of interpreting Pindar derives from the fact that his poetry was composed for special occasions and is rich with references to persons, places, mythical figures, and historical events that were known to the original audience but are obscure for modern readers. Nonetheless, careful evaluation of the ancient testimonies can provide useful indications.

Delphic religious teaching found in Pindar a ready pupil, and he constantly spiritualized his material, turning away from the cruder traditional stories of the gods, avoiding the mundane details of the contest, and striving to catch the fleeting radiance that plays about the moment of supreme endeavour when a man transcends his own limitations of physique and character and so proves worthy of his birth and ancestry. Delphi also profoundly influenced his style, which is frequently cryptic and oracular. He regarded himself as the Muse’s prophet.

Pindar’s fellow Boeotian Hesiod, although very different from Pindar in background and temperament, shared with him a deep religiosity, a groping toward something more profound and satisfying than contemporary cults could offer, a fondness for abrupt and violent transitions in thought and mood, and a forthright pungency of speech. A somewhat muted epitaph preserved in the Greek Anthology (7, 35) describes Pindar as the servant of the Muses, welcomed by strangers and beloved by his fellow citizens.

Pindar’s odes make great demands on the modern reader, and it is only in recent times that his art has begun to be appreciated for what it is. (The so-called Pindaric ode has had a long and distinguished history in English literature, but it derives from an almost total misunderstanding and misapprehension of Pindar’s own style and technique.) Even so, much essential evidence is missing. The musical settings that he composed to accompany his words are lost forever, though in view of the quality of the poetry it is probable that the words dominated the setting (as must have been the case in most Greek lyric). It is therefore impossible to re-create even in the imagination the approximate sound of a Pindaric ode or indeed to reconstruct visually the appearance and constitution of the choir: how many participated, what range of voices was employed, whether the singers were static, moved in procession, or danced—these are questions that cannot now be answered. Nor is it possible to picture at all clearly the festive occasion that was the background for the poetry. Yet efforts to understand the odes are rewarded by at least a glimpse of the poet behind them. The aristocratic society and standards, which meant everything to Pindar, were dead or dying. But in his art he re-created them, giving them new and permanent existence and value.

The tradition of Greek choral lyric culminated with the odes of Pindar. These are not easy to evaluate and appreciate, but it is still more difficult to comprehend and assess the poet who composed them. Even to his contemporaries, Pindar must have seemed an aloof and somewhat enigmatic figure. A modern reader needs a sympathetic insight into the nature and traditions of Greek aristocratic society to begin to understand how Pindar’s subject matter—victory in an athletic contest or in a chariot race—could inspire poetry characterized by high seriousness and deep feeling. Pindar cannot, indeed, speak across the centuries with the directness of Homeric epic poetry or Sophoclean tragedy, but he does create, with disciplined mastery of a sophisticated and complex art form, a choral lyric of unsurpassed splendour and sustained nobility.

Donald Ernest Wilson Wormell
Ed.