[In the excerpt below, Vivante examines action in Pindar's odes as expressing fulfillment of mythic forms rather than individual feats.]

… If … we turn to ancient Greece, we find a very peculiar situation. Right at the beginning of its civilization there is a pervasive mythology whose roots, as Nilsson showed, sink deep into the Mycenaean past. And, what is more, this mythology has a strong hold on literature. The poets drew from it, generally, their material for the portrayal of human action. Whereas in the European Middle Ages historical events were consciously transformed into legends, the reverse process seems to have occurred in early Greece: legends were brought down to a human measure. Recorded memory had receded; but a powerful mythical imagination had reduced into a series of lifelike representations the compact mass of tribal history and religious belief.

How did this happen? We shall never be able to recover the origin and the formative moment of the Greek myths, but we can say something about their relevance to literature. What is mythology in this respect? It is, I would say, a sort of symbolic language, a system of hieroglyphs whereby modes of being and of action are condensed into typical hallowed forms mysteriously removed from the world of everyday life and yet somehow reflecting it. Here are concretions of thought and expression, natural phenomena dramatized into words and acts, actions and events crystallized into phenomena—a whole paradigm of existence laid over existence itself. If mythology were developed into a complete system, it would be tantamount to a real language—having instead of single words clusters of words, each cluster forming a self-contained whole and carrying its own message. It is easy to imagine what strong effect this would have on the mind of a writer: he would have to come to terms with such a system just as we see him coming to terms with single words.

There are mythologies of many kinds—some heavily symbolical, others hardly risen above the sensuous material of magic and superstition, others again quite absorbed into the sphere of a higher religion. Greek mythology appears singular in many ways, above all in the predominance of aesthetic plastic values. I will not deny, of course, that deep moral ideas may be found in Greek myths, but wherever present, they were quite embedded in the sensuous relevance of the image. Heracles, for instance, locked in a life and death struggle with the Nemean lion is far more striking to our imagination than the idea of the hero as a liberator of the world from monsters; Prometheus nailed to his rock far more than his role as a martyr for mankind; the delicately beautiful myth of Demeter, Persephone, and Pluto far more than the symbolism of Winter and Spring. Look at some of the earliest Greek sculpture portraying action—Perseus and Medusa from Selinus, or Heracles and the Erymanthian boar at Paestum: there is no softening, idealizing, narrative interpretation; everything is a feeling of sheer mysterious vitality craving for a shape, for a sensuous form.

Greek myth thus presented itself with a full-blown imagery that embodied all sorts of situations—birth, death, victory, defeat, the winning of a bride, adultery, etc. The absence of a clearly defined moral idea or symbolism left the artist relatively free as to the treatment of factual details, but the sensuous charm cast a spell over his mind, conditioning him to the habit of conceiving action in a mythical form. The myth could be transformed, but the mythical mold remained shutting off the rendering of everyday experience. This is quite different from what happens when the moral symbolism stands supreme, quite different from Dante, for instance: he could not but accept the biblical mythology as an article of faith, but, at the same time, he could admit into his Divine Comedy the people whom he personally knew.

The effect of mythology on literature and art was not, therefore, a mere influence: not the attraction of a model, nor the impact of certain ideas. It went much deeper, affecting the artistic temperament itself. It came as an elusive but compelling power of suggestion, a force that at once constrained and stimulated the imagination. Mythology, says F. Solmsen in his book on Hesiod and Aeschylus, was at once the inspiration and the enemy of Greek Poetry. In some such way, a recurring dream or a distant memory haunts our mind; it baffles and charms us; it is suggestive of familiar and yet mysterious things; we struggle to make some sense out of it; and can never get rid of it.

Now, insofar as a myth portrays action, it implies important relations between the actors of that action. These relations, in order to be intelligible, must bear a human contents; but at the same time a myth also posits mysterious, divine forces. The human inevitably yields to the superhuman. Here lies a basic contradiction. It thus happened that the Greek poets, at least those that still speak most clearly to us, were deeply involved in a great struggle to humanize the myths or at least to naturalize them in the world of feeling and thought. Right at the beginning Homer achieved this task most effectively and beautifully, passing over the many oddities of myth, eliciting out of the mythical material all that could accrue to his theme, engrossed as he was upon a certain action that moved from its dramatic beginning to its dramatic end. After Homer, Hesiod and even more the tragedians grappled with the moral and theological difficulties of myth, extracting from it, each in his own particular way, a certain plan or a certain action. The myth was thus attuned to the requirements of a philosophical and poetic thought: for instance, in the figure of Prometheus in Hesiod and Aeschylus. Other poets, however, accepted the myths more or less as they stood in their traditional form, captured as they were by the sensuous mythical imagery. Foremost among them appears Pindar. If he does sometimes alter certain uncanny features of a myth, he does so out of a pious concern, not out of any creative need to humanize the material from within and resolve its inherent complexities. He simply declares that a certain story is not true, as when about Tantalus treating the gods to a banquet made up of the flesh of his son Pelops he says ("First Olympian"):

No, I will never say that any of the gods is a cannibal;
ill fare those who have evil tongues.

In the same spirit, he mentions cursorily or does not mention at all those myths that absorbed the mind of the tragedians—Oedipus, the House of Atreus, Prometheus … His mindrested at ease upon those in which the action seemed to take place in its own right, as a force of nature, unimpeded by problems of individual responsibility.

Let us look more closely at these two different imaginative approaches.

If—as it is in Homer—the myth is to be transformed into terms of human action, the first condition is to see it objectively, as an event that might have developed otherwise or not have taken place at all. It must not be taken for granted, but rendered with a sense of that relativity which is inherent in any process. It must be dramatized, seen as the effect of feelings that have their own variable reality. That is to say, it must as much as possible be severed from the primitive mold which held together the imagery in a powerful but opaque symbolism.

If, on the other hand—as in Pindar—the myth is rendered qua myth, in its primitive force, the human action as a characterizing experience falls into the background. Here each material element is just as relevant. The skin of the Nemean lion, for instance, or Jason's sandal, or the bridle of the horse Pegasus: such objects are imbued with power, are signs, terms of reference, essential to the heroes and their actions. Through them the action follows its course, quite sunk into an inevitable pattern. The poet is thus presented with a series of focal points which exert their own spell. Rather than discourse, we have imagery; rather than a real story, a revelation or consummation. Myth must have been originally just this: not a story about a certain action or event, but an action or event embedded into a certain form—rehearsed or expressed in language, as a prophecy or a celebration or a message.

If now we turn to the Odes of Pindar, we shall find evidence of what we may call the mythical representation of action. Pindar never lets the action develop into moods and passions that have their own immediate justification. There is no such scene, for instance, as that between Paris and Helen in the third book of the Iliad. Even Simonides and Bacchylides leave far greater room for a certain pathos. No, for Pindar the action is far more important than its actors, it is a divine fulfillment taking place outside the domain of individual responsibilities.

Let us take the "Fourth Pythian," the longest Ode, the one that presents action at its fullest. It is addressed to Arkesilas king of Cyrene, winner at the chariot race in 462 B.C., descendant of Battus, founder of the city, who was in turn descended from Euphamus, one of the Argonauts. On the meandering journey of the Argonauts from Colchis, he received, in Libya, from a god, the gift of a clod of earth that predestined him to the colonization of that land. Thus the whole story of the Argonauts with the heroic action of Jason is introduced as a prelude to a future destiny. It is Medea that predicts this destiny right at the beginning of the poem.

Battus, we are told, was prompted by the oracle of Delphi to found Cyrene

so that he might summon up to fulfillment
…. the word of Medea
once spoken at Thera,
the word which Aietes' spirited daughter
breathed forth from her immortal mouth….

It will be noticed that not only does Medea predict, but her prophecy is so rendered that it seems to bring about the future event. Pindar loves such a notion. In "Pythian 5," we read that lions fled away before Battus "so that the oracle might not go unfulfilled for the lord of Cyrene."In a fragment of "Paean 8" we read something about "a word that will accomplish its task in justice." Such an expression as "words brought to fulfillment" is typically Pindaric, compare "Olympian 7"; "Olympian 1." The relevance of all this to my point is clear. The action is visualized as an outcome—a preconceived event, something present in the mind that prophesies or utters a revelation. The passage I have quoted from "Pythian 4" is characteristic. The image of Medea stands out impressively on the strength of her utterance.

Let us continue our reading of the Ode in the same spirit. The Argonauts are in the island of Thera, on their return journey. Medea foretells how a descendant of Euphamus will found a glorious city, Cyrene. We might expect her to rehearse future facts, like a deus ex machina in Euripides. But no; the action of men founding a city is a matter of no interest to Pindar. What concerns him is the foundation as an outcome prodigiously inscribed in some sign, in some portent; and the speech of Medea dwells mostly upon that mysterious clod of earth given to Euphamus:

That omen will bring it to pass
That Thera one day become
a mother of cities—
that omen, that gift, that clod of earth
from the hands of a god in semblance of man;
Euphamus received it as he sprang down from the prow
at the mouth of the Lake Tritonian;

and for the portent's sake
Zeus son of Cronos rang out with thunder.
The moment it was when we hung up aloft
the bronze-jawed anchor, swift Argo's bridle.
For twelve whole days before that,
from the banks of Ocean across desert strands,
had we carried the sea-faring timber,
dragging it on with our arts.
Then the lonely god came upon us,
taking the bright face of a man beloved and revered.
With friendly words he began,
such words as invite you to stay, to take food,
as guests just arrived in the land.
But no, sweet return was the reason
preventing our stay.

…..

He understood why we hasted; and all of a sudden
he seized of the soil what fell to his hand,
wishing the earth as his gift.
Euphamus refused not; he jumped on the shore,
and pressing hand against hand
he received the clod possessed of a daemon.
But—I am told—of an evening,
away was it washed from the ship,
away in the midst of the brine,
driven on by the drifts of the sea.
I did urge the seamen to watch it,
each man in his turn;
but they forgot; and so is it that now,
out of season,
the seed of vast Libya is thrown
On the shores of this island.

Medea then explains the complications entailed by this loss: it is as if the extraordinary wanderings of the clod and its final rest foreshadowed the migration of men and their settlement.

What stands out above all is the picture of the god picking up the clod of earth and Euphamus receiving it. It is quite central, a term of reference to past and future; but, in point of human action, it is something quite trifling—nothing but the handing of a clod. All the more we admire the way in which Pindar has set it in high relief. Each movement, in its suddenness and decisiveness, seems sustained by fate; and Zeus sanctions it with his thunder. Here we have then a scene which is essentially mythical—poor in its human contents, but suggestively symbolical and impressive in its plastic vigor.

I shall pass now to the account of the Argonauts in quest of the Golden Fleece, which comes naturally a little after Medea's speech. Here again the mythical spirit overshadows the rendering of action in the human sense. See how the narrative begins:

What first movement of sea-journey encompassed them?
What peril bound them with strong bolts of steel?

"What first movement of sea-journey encompassed them?" The Greek is τίς γἀρ ἁρχα δέξατо νᾀυτιλίᾳ̑ς; This is difficult to translate. In default of anything better I have tried to do it literally. Sandys has: "Tell me what was it that first befell them in their seafaring." Lattimore: "What then was the beginning of their adventure?" Burton: "What motive for the voyage welcomed them?" Sandys and Lattimore seem too matter-of-fact; Burton seems to solve the difficulty rather blandly. The words are untranslatable unless we find an equivalent image. For archa is in Greek at the same time "beginning," "cause," "principle," "rule." Conceived as it is by Pindar, the archa or "beginning" appears as an active force which, in its first movement, "receives," that is to say "takes over," "encompasses," "drags on with it," the participants in the expedition—this much, at least, seems implied by the verb dexato.

Right in the opening words the action is thus visualized in its totality, as a destiny. Pindar does not invoke the Muse to open up the avenues of memory. Nor does he lead us in medias res. Facts with their pertinent human motives hardly interest him at all. What haunts him is an action which speeds to its great conclusion.

The way in which the expedition of the Argonauts is told fits in with this opening. It is preceded by premonitions and oracles. First, Pelias, king of Iolcus, must beware of the "one-sandaled" man at the risk of his life; and Jason, his nephew, with just one sandal, appears before him asserting the claims to the kingdom. Secondly, the same Pelias is troubled by the ghost of his ancestor Phrixus who demands the recovery of the Golden Fleece, seconded by the Delphian oracle; Pelias will yield to Jason's claims, if he sets out on this quest. Jason accepts. The enterprise is thus seen as the fulfillment of a destiny. Now these preliminaries must have been handed down in the traditional myth; but Pindar makes the most of them. The interviews of Jason with Pelias and his kin, fraught with a sense of things to come, run for about a hundred lines; they are longer than the account of the expedition itself. Just as in the episode of Euphamus and the clod of earth, the anticipation of the outcome appears more important than the factual developments.

But it is in the actual rendering of the journey that the mythical touch appears most revealing and original. Take first the assembly of the heroes about to sail. They are not prompted by any overriding personal issue, but:

Hera it was that inflamed them
with a sweet all-persuasive desire
for the ship Argo,
1est any remain with his mother at home
unnerved in a life of ease—
that each one, along with the others,
should, even in death,
find a charm, a release for his strength.

Here is a sort of collective passion, "a sweet all-persuasive desire for the ship Argos"—an emotion which is very intense, and yet quite irrational, narrowly limited in its aim. What we would like to imagine as the infinite longings of restless youth is nothing but an elixir: pharmakon is the Greek word, which literally means "drug." This is subtly mythical in the very mode of expression. The action follows as an effect rather than an initiative.

The vicissitides of the journey are mentioned most cursorily. What stands out instead is Jason's prayer, preceding the departure:

Again, the prefiguring stands foremost; the utterance, in this case, is laid over the concrete world of experience. Pindar would rather evoke winds and waves in a prayer than render them in their actual movement as Homer so often does.

The only adventure mentioned in the journey is the passage through the Symplegades, the Scylla and Charybdis of the Bosporus:

speeding now into deep danger
they prayed the God lord of ships
for escape from the relentless movement
of the Clashing Rocks—
two of them, creatures alive
that rolled more swiftly
than the rows of deep-roaring winds;
but that sailing of demigods
now reduced them to a standstill.

It is the prayer, once more, that comes first. There is only prayer and fulfillment; nothing about the human reaction to the danger. The episode is turned into an aetiological myth.

In Colchis at last, the love of Medea and Jason is an essential development. Pindar understands this love as the effect of a charm embodied in a magic bird, the Iynx, or wryneck, sent by Aphrodite:

Then was it that first
the Queen of sharpest arrows,
the goddess of Cyprus,
did bring the dappled wryneck
fast bound to a four-spoked wheel—
a maddening bird among men;
and she taught Jason the incantations of prayer,
to rid Medea of all her filial devotions,
so that Hellas be for her a passion,
burning her mind and driving her on with the whip of Seduction.

As in the other instances, things are bodied forth in advance rather than represented as they are: we have here the incantations, not the acts, of love. Moreover, narrowed down as it is into a charm rather than interpreted as an emanation of the goddess, this love gains in effectiveness what it loses in depth. It is a mythical force working its way. What follows—the action of Jason in recovering the fleece and sailing back—is very brief. With Medea's arts everything becomes easy, each movement of Jason coming as a manifestation of power without effort. So the story draws full circle, sweeping back to the point of Medea's initial speech.

The "Fourth Pythian Ode" is characteristic of Pindar. In all the other Odes—in those, at least, which present the narrative-mythical part most fully—we find the same imaginative principle: the actual narrative is preceded or accompanied by a vision of the myth as a whole, whether the vision be contained in a prophecy, or a prayer, or a dream, or some kind of message.

Sometimes the action itself is quite contained in the preceding vision, and then the poet simply tells us that it actually took place. So, in the "First Olympian," Pelops prays Poseidon for the winning of Hippodameia giving details of that dangerous suit; and the actual exploit, interesting as it is, follows in one brief line. Or, in the "Sixth Olympian," the future of Iamos as a seer and his establishment in Olympia is all contained in his prayer to Poseidon and in the Delphic oracle; there is little about his actual achievement.

Elsewhere the action grows out of the vision at some length. In "Olympian 13" the exploits of Bellerophon with Pegasus are fore shadowed in the dream in which Athena appears to him. In "Pythian 9" the consummation of Apollo's love for Cyrene is accounted for beforehand in Cheiron's prediction. In "Isthmian 8" the marriage of Peleus and Thetis and the birth of Achilles are traced beforehand in the designs of fate and the conversations of the gods. In other instances the happening itself is surrounded with an atmosphere of prophecy—as the birth of Iamos in "Olympian 6," that of Heracles in "Nemean 1," that of Ajax in "Isthmian 6." Or it is a principle of divine retribution which is enforced like an oracle, as in the plight of Coronis in "Pythian 3." In "Nemean 10" the Dioscuri fight with the sons of Aphareus; but it is a sense of their alternate immortality which occasions the story, opening it and concluding it.

In the Odes which I have mentioned the action is not really told, but delivered, accounted for. It does not take the form of a straight narrative, nor of an apologue. It is not described, but molded into the pattern of its delivery, in the way in which a certain act is stated in an oath or a promise.

Such a mythical view of events was perfectly fitted to Pindar's mind. What struck him was the wholeness, the culmination of achievement. Word and phrases which mean consummation, crowning touch, acme, summit, abound in his poetry…. Everything must be presented in a sort of finality and fullness. Now a myth aims precisely at this. Take again the toils of Heracles as an example. They are not really actions, but in the Greek word that describes them, athloi—that is to say, tests only carried out in view of the outcome. A sense of the outcome precedes the beginning itself. The ups and downs of action are minimized. Pindar, in this sense, is quite mythical—not because he goes into fantastic details, but because he stresses a sense of mysterious and powerful destination even in the simplest deeds, and subordinates to it everything else. This appears not only in the general pattern, but in the details of the representation. Look, for instance, at the way situations are dramatized through dialogue: the characters hardly ever talk to one another about an immediate issue or about mutual feelings, but their conversation turns to some future event which by far transcends the present—as in the case of Pelias and Jason in "Pythian 4." But the dialogue is most often left out. The implications of this are clearest in the love scenes. Pindar's women—Evadne, Cyrene, Coronis—do not speak at all. They are lovely fruits to be plucked and enjoyed for the sake of a secret destiny; and all feelings, all unspoken words are gathered in the divine imagery of Aphrodite and desire.

Now this mythical conception leads to a certain form of narrative style. As the action is first viewed in its completion, we find it ordered in a pattern that seems to contradict the ordinary time sequence of experience. It is as if the story started from the end. So we are shown Cyrene landing with Apollo in Libya before we are shown thenfirst encounter; and then again the flight to Libya is mentioned. We thus have a circular motion: end-beginning-end. This is known as ring composition, thanks to L. Illig who dealt with it in his book on Pindar's narrative form. It is now common knowledge. But scholars seem to look at it simply in terms of style. Burton points out that through this type of composition "the outlines of the story are sketched at the beginning in such a way as to arouse curiosity about the details." H. and A. Thornton, in their book Time and Style, treat the whole subject as part of the appositional mode of expression. Van Groningen points to the same form of composition as something peculiar to archaic Greek. I should like to stress, instead, the mythical implications. There is something inevitable, predetermined, in a myth. The premises project over the outcome, and the outcome is somehow given in the premises. The dénouement is known in advance. It is so even in Homer and the tragedians; though they spiritualized the myths, the material skeleton remained: that is why their transitions and developments are so full of human tension—as if the spirit of each passage labored against a superimposed pattern. But in Pindar there is no such break. The actions he portrays hardly rise above the basic mythical element into a sphere of their own. They are manifestations rather than individual exertions. They necessarily proceed by fits and starts, propelled by the same force that spells out the beginning and the end. Their movement is wayward and predetermined at the same time. The various stages are really shifts of position revolving around the same center. The mythopoeic spirit presents itself in a cyclical form.

The so-called ring composition, I imply, characterizes a mythical view of action. But let us look at it in itself and by itself, outside any historical frame of reference. Let us abandon, therefore, the technical term Ring-composition. What is the meaning of it in general terms? It is that an action is viewed as an outcome rather than as a development from beginning to end. The feeling for the outcome stirs the mind to inquire after the beginning and quickly survey the actual course of action, returning to the outcome. We have a sort of circular movement, as in Pindar's myths.

Now such a notion is certainly not confined to Pindar or to certain archaic poets. It is deeply familiar to us. It is quite natural. It lies in our reaction to the announcement of any calamity or good fortune. What first looms to our mind's eye is, for instance, the image of someone triumphant or dead, a blessing or a curse; and only later do we inquire into how and why it happened, when we reassess the outcome with a clearer mind. This attitude is reflected in the newspapers: there are the headlines, then the subtitles, then the whole story. The same is true about many films, plays, novels, especially when the plot is all-important. Though they do not set forth the outcome in advance, yet it runs through them as a driving motive right from the beginning. In a thriller, for instance, is not the key to the whole situation an overriding point of interest, prepossessing to the author's mind? We are tempted to read the last pages, we might even read the book backwards.

Now I call all this mythical in a particular sense. A newspaper headline—just like a myth in Pindar—presents the action as an outcome, as a blessing or a curse. It leaves no room for contemplation. It renders nothing for its own sake. No act, no word, is given the full worth of its own spontaneous significance. As we read, we are surprised, baffled, curious; we are induced to admire or to reprove. In each case, the actuality of the event escapes us. We are given a message which we take for granted: something mythical—that is to say, crystallized, hypostatized, claiming recognition on the strength of what it purports and not through the transparency of its realization or identity.

Opposed to the mythical, I would say, is the representation of an action from beginning to end in its own inherent and intimate unity. Aristotle expounded it in his Poetics, dwelling on Homer and on Tragedy. We have here a poetic unity, not the impenetrable wholeness of myth. The stress falls on the process rather than on brute facts. Beginning and ending become the indispensable terms of an inner development, not landmarks of fate imposed from without. Such are the climax and anticlimax in the wrath of Achilles, but not, say, in the forebodings of Pelias. It follows that in a poem like the Iliad our mind rests upon inner themes rather than upon a certain pattern of events—upon Achilles' feeling of mortality rather than upon the doom that willed him to die young.

The action poetically conceived, rendered in the inner motives that span its development and sustain its unity, followed through its creative phases from beginning to end—this is what I would oppose to the mythical action, the action viewed as a compact uncontroversial event, powerful perhaps and mysterious, but taken for granted, whether brought about by divine agencies as the ancients believed or by a mechanical concatenation of factors, as we tend to believe today. I would say that the former conception—let me call it the poetical conception—is the rarer one, though at first sight it might appear the simpler and easier one. All too frequently do we lose sight of the delicate existential thread, and yield to the superstructures of myth, whatever that myth may be.

I am opposing, at this point, the terms "mythical" and "poetical," though I realize that the values they describe may overlap in the work of the same poet, and even within the same phrase. Poetry, I would say, apprehends the object directly, rendering it in a transparent imagery; while myth visualizes it in a certain function which it imputes to it a priori. Homer's "rose-fingered Morn" or Aeschylus' "numberless laughter of the sea," I would say, are no more mythical than Keats' "night's starred face"; but when Pindar calls rain "pitiless host born of the thundering cloud" ("Pythian 6"), I find in the expression a mythical strain. It is that myth endows objects with powers and properties which must be taken literally and are unrelieved by any idealizing metaphorical touch. This also applies to the treatment of action. In myth the rhythms of life are sacrificed to the downright sweep of what happens; there is no room for those solitary individual acts upon which Homer shed so much light with his similes.

Myths, however, are ultimately suggestive of life; and the mythical action, in its compact bulk, may well be awesome and inspiring. But the poetry that grows out of it contains an alien element; it has to rely for its effect upon preconceived notions of power. Pindar, at his best, recovers the poetic moment of a mythical action; and yet, at a certain point, the mythical mold arrests the poetic development—as, for instance, in the lovely passages about Apollo and Cyrene, whom the god ("Pythian 9")

carried away from the wind-echoing folds of mount Pelion,
a wild virgin enclosed in his chariot of gold,
and made her the queen of a land rich in sheep, rich in fruit,
to dwell in the blossoming root of the earth's third portion.

There she received them—Aphrodite of the silver feet,
laying her hand on the god-built chariot
with the lightest touch;
and upon their sweet bedding she shed
a spell of desire and coyness.

To appreciate this we must be attuned to the religion of Aphrodite, to the mythical imagery, to that massive sweep and that delicate touch. But what of Cyrene herself, what of Apollo? The heart-beat of experience is silenced in one magic movement, one gesture.

Whoever wishes to get a glimpse of the myth-making process must turn to Pindar. He naturally transforms even contemporary events into myths. "Pythian 1," for instance, is a sort of hymn to harmony under the sway of Zeus whereby Typhon and all monsters are for ever defeated; then, later on in the Ode, we find Hieron, tyrant of Syracuse, and his victory over Carthaginians and Etruscans. Myth and history are thus presented on the same level. This is not done by way of similes, but by letting the tide of myth sweep up to the present. What about Hieron, the person, the cruel tyrant? In "Olympian 1" we find him.

wielding the scepter of justice,
plucking all the blossoms of virtue,
rejoicing in the high strains of music.

It is the same with Pindar's victorious athletes. We hardly see them as persons; they rather appear as statues. And what about their action? Their athletic exploits were well suited to Pindar's mode of representation. Here were actions carried out in the contemporary scene but quite removed from ordinary human experience—shows of strength wholly converging towards success in a sacred atmosphere: all human complexities stolidly simplified in a present myth. Pindar does sometimes extract poetry from the figure of a young athlete, as in a famous passage of "Pythian 8":

A newly won splendid thing in his hands,
in the luxuriance of youth,
spurred by great hope,
he rides on the wings of his strength,
with thoughts that rise above fortune.
Brief is joy's growth: the purpose shifts,
and down is it dashed to the ground.
Ephemeral creatures, what are we? What are we not?
The dream of a shadow.
But if a flash descends from heaven,
a clear light rests upon men and life is sweet.

… These lines could be applied to life in general, and not only to an athlete. They have a clear resonance. And yet Pindar cannot help treating experience mythically, even outside the heroic age. That hope, that strength, that virtue, that light are conceived as external agencies, as presences that enshroud all particular feature; and they prevent us from getting closer to that young man, to that image of youth. Myth intervenes in the very paths of perception. Reality shimmers a moment and disappears.