Life

Pindar (PIHN-dur) composed elaborate and complex odes sung to musical accompaniment of lyres and pipes (reed instruments) and danced by choruses. Of his seventeen books of poems collected in the Hellenistic period, only four books containing forty-five epinician (victory) odes have been preserved in manuscript. These books, however, have established Pindar’s fame as the greatest Greek lyric poet. In these poems, Pindar praises athletic victors throughout Greece, from powerful rulers such as Hieron I of Syracuse, Theron of Acragas, and Arcesilas of Cyrene to boys just beginning their athletic careers.

Varying in length from nineteen to nearly three hundred verses, the odes contain aphoristic reflections on life, brief mythological narratives, advice, prayers to gods, and praise of hard-won achievement. The odes are composed of stanzas called strophes, antistrophes, and epodes. These three stanzas make up triads, each of which is metrically identical in its poem. Pindar’s style is grand, with abundant use of metaphor; his language is extremely complex and notoriously difficult to translate.

Influence

The Roman authors Horace and Quintilian acknowledged Pindar’s greatness. After the Renaissance, the “Pindaric” ode became synonymous with any grand-style, serious poem. Imitators include French poet Pierre de Ronsard, English playwright Ben Jonson, English poet and playwright Abraham Cowley, French poet Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, and English poet Thomas Gray.

Further Reading:

Carne-Ross, D. S. Pindar. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985. A brief work addressed to the general reader, with a short but useful bibliography.

Crotty, Kevin. Song and Action: The Victory Odes of Pindar. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. Devoted to individual examinations of the performances of the odes for which Pindar is most remembered. Includes notes, bibliography, and index.

Finley, Moses I. The Ancient Greeks. New York: Penguin, 1991. Gives brief but interesting and useful information on Simonides, Bacchylides, and Pindar.

Grant, Mary A. Folktale and Hero-Tale Motifs in the Odes of Pindar. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1967. Straightforward account of the subject, with an index of motifs and an index of mythological characters.

Hamilton, Edith. The Greek Way. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. An excellent short book on the Greek way of life; devotes a chapter to Pindar. Bridges scholarship and general readership. Includes seven pages of references, especially to works of ancient Greek writers.

Highet, Gilbert. The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. The best work available on the Greco-Roman influences on Western literature. Lengthy discussion—perhaps the most accessible anywhere for general readers—on Pindar’s poetical forms and on his direct influences on poetry. Extensive notes in lieu of a comprehensive bibliography.

Kurke, Leslie. The Traffic in Praise: Pindar and the Politics of Social Economy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991. Kurke studies the poems in terms of their social dimensions: the influences of the society on the poetry.

Pindar. Pindar. Edited and translated by William H. Race. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997. Translation of all the surviving odes. Contains a preface on Pindar and his poetry.

Nagy, Gregory. Pindar’s Homer: Lyric Possession of an Epic Past. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Pindar’s work is a centerpiece in this detailed study of allusion in form and content in late archaic lyric poetry.

Newman, John K., and Frances Stickney Newman. Pindar’s Art: Its Tradition and Aims. Munich: Weidmann, 1984. After a review of major interpreters, the Newmans provide a close and technical study of the vocabulary and structure of Pindar’s poems, especially his use of repetition and elements of the comic.

Race, William H. Pindar. Boston: Twayne, 1986. Comprehensive in biography, criticism, and bibliography. For both scholarly and general audiences.

Race, William H. Style and Rhetoric in Pindar’s Odes. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990. A technical study of the rhetorical aspects and elements of the odes, and the purposes for Pindar’s uses of them.

Rutherford, Ian. Pindar’s Paeans: A Reading of the Fragments with a Survey of the Genre. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. The paean, or sacred hymn to Apollo, had a central place in the song-dance culture of classical Greece. The most celebrated examples of the genre in antiquity were Pindar’s paeans. Rutherford offers a comprehensive reevaluation of the poems.