Ancient Greek Lyrics

Pindaros (Pindar)

The Greek Period 140 Pindaros (Pindar) The prince of choral poets was born in 518 bce at Kynoskephalai in Boiotia, of an aristocratic family. He was educated in his craft chiefly at Athens. In the course of his career he established connections with leading families in many parts of the Greek world. (The relationship between poet and patron during this period, remarks Hermann Fränkel, should be understood within the tradition of the exchange of gifts by guest-friends, rather than treated as a sheerly commercial link.) He went to Sicily in 476 bce and was welcomed both by Hieron of Syracuse and by Theron of Akragas. At least from this time onward Pindar found himself on occasion in competition with Simonides and Bakchylides, and was not always the winner: Bakchylides was commissioned instead of Pindar to write an epinikion for Hieron in 468. Pindar died at eighty in 438 bce. The works of Pindar comprised seventeen books, including nearly all choral genres. Only the four books of his epinikian odes have survived in substantial completeness, but the fragments of others fill some eighty pages in Bowra’s edition. The style of Pindar is dense and highly personal, blended from several dialects. His viewpoint is that of an aristocratic conservative, both in religion and politics. The epinikion for Pindar is above all a religious celebration of the glories of god and hero, and (as it were incidentally) their reflection in the achievements of his aristocratic contemporaries. Pindar has had deeper influence on subsequent literature than any other Greek lyric poet. The modern ode at its greatest is chiefly the descendant of Pindar. But, as Bowra says, “He was capable . . . at times, of a sublimity to which there is no parallel.” A delight to strangers and loved by friends, Pindar was servant of the sweet-voiced Muses. Plato In lyric poetry would you prefer to be Bakchylides rather than Pindar? And in tragedy Ion of Chios rather than— Sophokles? It is true that Bakchylides and Ion are faultless and entirely elegant writers of the polished school, while 141 pindaros (pindar) Pindar and Sophokles, although at time they burn everything before them as it were in their swift career, are often extinguished unaccountably and fail most lamentably. But would anyone in his sense regard all the compositions of Ion put together as an equivalent for the single play of the Oidipous [or all the works of Bakchylides as equal to a single ode of Pindar’s?] “Longinus,” On the Sublime Whoever labors to be Pindar’s equal, Iulus, mounts on wings that are fastened with wax, Daidalos-fashion, and will give his name to glittering water. As a river roars down a mountain, swollen by showers of rain, spilling over its banks, so Pindar rages and the deep of his voice pours ever onward, worthy of the laurel sacred to Apollo, whither he is tumbling freshly minted words through frenzied hymns, carried along on meters free and unruly . . . Horace, Odes Of the nine lyric poets Pindar is by far the greatest, 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, characteristics which, as Horace rightly held, make him inimitable. Quintilian Pindar lies in the earth, this Pierian trumpet, strong forger of pure hymns, whose song when heard made one think a swarm of bees had come from the Muses to fashion it in the chamber of Kadmos’ bride, Harmony. Antipatros of Sidon, Palatine Anthology It was during the quadrennial festival [Pythian games] with its procession of oxen that, as a well-loved child, I was first wrapped in swaddling clothes. Pindar, Fragment The Greek Period 142 A chosen herald of wise speech, I was raised by the Muses for Hellas. I am proud that my race and my home are in Thebes, a city of chariots. Pindar, Dithyramb for Thebes Eclipse God has in his power to make dazzling unmixed light spring from the somber depths of evening. He can also enclose the white explosion of day under the gloom of black clouds. Singing Dance* Follow the curving line of melody, and in contest dance frenetically to imitate the Amyklian hound or a wild unbroken horse. And move your body as a hound flies across the windy plain of Dotia to kill a horned deer who, in desperate dance, bobs her head...