by Pindar
THE LIFE OF PINDAR
Pindar, the greatest of the lyrical poets of Greece, was a native of Boeotia. He was born at Cynoscephalae, about half a mile to the west of Thebes. He has himself recorded the fact that the date of his birth coincided with the celebration of the Pythian festival at Delphi, a festival that always fell in the third of the four years of the Olympic period. According to the lexicographer Suïdas, the poet was born in the sixty-fifth Olympiad. 01. 65, 3 corresponds to 518 b c., and this date has been widely accepted. The most probable alternative is 01. 64, 3, that is 522 b c. In support of this earlier date, it is urged that all the ancient authorities described the poet as “flourishing,” that is, as being about forty years of age, at the time of the Persian war of 481-479 b c. Had Pindar been born in 518, he would have been only 37 at the beginning, and 39 at the end of the war. Had the date of his birth been 522, he would have been forty in 482, the year preceding the expedition of Xerxes.
The poet was proud of his Theban birth and his Theban training. He was the son of Daïphantus and Cleodicê. From his uncle Scopelînus he learnt to play the flute, an instrument which held an important place in the worship of Apollo at Delphi, and was perfected at Thebes, where it was always more highly esteemed than at Athens. At Athens he was instructed in the technique of lyrical composition by Agathocles and Apollodôrus, and probably also by Lasus of Hermione, who brought the dithyramb to its highest perfection. During his stay in Athens he could hardly have failed to meet his slightly earlier contemporary, Aeschylus, who was born in 525 B.C.
On returning to Thebes, he began his career as a lyrical poet. In his earliest poem he is said to have neglected the use of myths. This neglect was pointed out by the Boeotian poetess, Corinna; whereupon Pindar went to the opposite extreme, and crowded his next composition with a large number of mythological allusions. He soon received from his critic the wise admonition: “One must sow with the hand, and not with the whole sack.” He is said to have subsequently defeated the poetess Myrtis, who was reproached by Corinna for competing with Pindar.
The poet has generally been regarded as claiming descent from the aristocratic family of the Theban Aegeidae. However this maybe, he was connected closely with the Dorians, and was an admirer of the Dorian aristocracy. He was an oligarch, but, “in politics,” he “deemed that the middle state was crowned with more enduring good”; and his objection to “the raging crowd” of Sicilian revolutionaries is consistent with his appreciation of the reasonable democracy of Athens. It was from the powerful family of the Thessalian Aleuadae that he received in 498 his first commission for an epinician ode (P.x).
In September, 490, the Persians were defeated by Athens at Marathon. A few days before the battle, Xenocrates, the younger brother of Thêrôn of Acragas, won the chariot-race in the Pythian games. The official ode was composed by Simonides, then at the height of his fame, while Pindar’s extant poem was a private tribute of admiration for the victor’s son, Thrasybûlus, who probably drove his father’s chariot (P. vi). At the same festival, the prize for flute-playing was won by Midas of Acragas, and was celebrated by Pindar (P. xii). The poet was doubtless present at this Pythian festival.
During the Persian wars he may well have been perplexed by the position of his native city. He alludes to the crisis in the affairs of Thebes, when the oligarchs cast in their lot with the invading Persians. During these years of glory for Greece, and disgrace for Thebes, Pindar composed more odes for Aeginetans than for any others, and he probably resided in Aegina for part of this time. One-fourth of his epinician odes are in honour of athletes from that island. The first of these (N. v), that on Pytlieas, has been assigned to the Nemean games of 489. The earliest of the Olympians (O. xiv) celebrates the winning of the boys’ foot-race in 488 by a native of the old Boeotian city of Orchomenus. In August, 486, Megacles the Alcmeonid, who had been ostracised by Athens a few months earlier, won at Delphi the chariot-race briefly commemorated in the seventh Pythian.
To 485 we may assign the second, and the seventh, of the Nemean Odes. The second Nemean is on the victory in the pancratium won by the Athenian Tîmodêmus; the seventh on that in the boys’ pancratium won by Sôgenês of Aegina. (This had been preceded by the sixth Paean, in which Pindar had given offence to certain Aeginetans by the way in which he had referred to the death of Neoptolemus at Delphi.) Either 484 or 480 may be the date of the contest in the pancratium won by Phylacidas of Aegina (I. vi), and 478 that of similar victories gained by Melissus of Thebes (I. iv), and Cleander of Aegina (I. viii). In 477 the chariot-race at Nemea was won by Melissus, and was briefly commemorated in the third Isthmian, which was made the proëme of the fourth Isthmian written in the same metre in the previous year.
After the defeat of the invasion of Xerxes, in 479, the poet rejoices in the removal of the intolerable burden, “the stone of Tantalus” that had been hanging over the head of Hellas; he celebrates the battles of Artemisium, Salamis, and Plataea, and hails Athens as “the bulwark of Greece.”
The Olympian festival of 476 marks a most important epoch in the poet’s life. No fewer than five Olympian odes were inspired by victories gained at that festival. The first Olympian celebrates the horse-race won by Hieron of Syracuse; the second and third, the chariot-race won by Thêrôn of Acragas. The prize for the boys’ wrestling-match, carried off in the same year by Hâgêsidâmus of the Western Locri, was promptly eulogised beside the Alpheüs in the eleventh Olympian, and was afterwards commemorated in the tenth, which was performed at the victor’s home in the West.
If the fifth Isthmian, in honour of Phylacidas of Aegina, is as late as 476, it was composed while the poet was still in his native land. It was probably in the autumn of 476 that Pindar left for Sicily. At Acragas he must have taken part in the production of the second and third Olympian odes in honour of the victory in the chariot-race, lately won by Thêrôn. He also wrote an encomium on Thêrôn, and a song for Thêrôn’s nephew, Thrasybûlus. At Syracuse he produced his first Olympian ode in honour of the horse-race won by Hieron’s courser, Pherenîcus, and his first Nemean on the victory in the chariot-race won in the previous year by Chromius, whom Hieron had appointed governor of the newly-founded city of Aetna.
Probably in the spring of 475 Pindar returned to Thebes. It was at Thebes that the chariot of Hieron gained a victory celebrated in the “second Pythian,” conjecturally assigned to 475. The same is the date of the third Nemean, on the victory of Aristocleides, a pancratiast of Aegina.
In 474 Pindar was once more present at Delphi. After the Pythian festival of that year he commemorated in the third Pythian the victories won in the Pythian festivals of 482 and 478 by Hieron’s steed, Pherenîcus, who had since won the Olympic race of 476. He also celebrated in the ninth Pythian the race in full armour won in 474 by Telesicrates of Cyrene, and, in the eleventh, the victory of Thrasydaeus of Thebes in the boys’ footrace. 474 is the conjectural date of the victory in the chariot-race, won at Sicyon by Chromius of Aetna. To the spring of 474 has been assigned the dithyramb in praise of Athens.
The fourth Nemean, on Timasarchus of Aegina, the winner of the boys’ wrestling-match, is assigned to 473. 472 is the probable date of the sixth Olympian, on the mule-chariot-race won by Hâgêsias of Stymphâlus and Syracuse, and also of the twelfth, on the long-race won by Ergoteles of Himera. It was apparently in this year that the Isthmian victory in the chariot-race, achieved in 477 by Xenocratesof Acragas, was privately commemorated by the victor’s son (I. ii).
The victory of Hieron’s chariot in the Pythian games of 470 was celebrated in a splendid ode, the first Pythian. In 468 the wrestling-match at Olympia was won by Epharmostus of Opûs, a Locrian town north of Boeotia (O. ix). In 464 the famous boxer, Diagoras of Rhodes, gained the victory celebrated in the seventh Olympian; and, in the same year, at Olympia, the foot-race and the pentathlum were won on the same day by Xenophon of Corinth, a victory nobly celebrated in the thirteenth Olympian. The success of Alcimidas of Aegina, in the boys’ wr
estling-match, is the theme of the sixth Nemean, assigned to 463, and the same is probably the date of the tenth, on the wrestling-match won by Theaeus of Argos at the local festival of Hêra. 463 is the conjectural date of the second and the ninth Paeans, the former composed for Abdera; the latter, for Thebes, on the occasion of an eclipse of the sun.
The victory in the chariot-race won in 462 by Arcesilas, king of Cyrene, gives occasion to the longest, and one of the finest, of all the odes, the fourth Pythian, which is composed, to propitiate the king, at the request of a Cyrenaean exile. The fifth Pythian was performed at Cyrene, on the return of the victorious charioteer and his horses. Alcimedon of Aegina, the boy-wrestler of 460, is celebrated in the eighth Olympian; another Aeginetan, Deinias, the winner of the foot-race about 459, is lauded in the eighth Nemean; and Herodotus of Thebes, who probably won the chariot-race in 458, is the theme of the first Isthmian, which was soon followed by the fourth Paean, written for the island of Ceôs. A second Theban, Strepsiades, won the pancratium, probably in 456 (I. i).
Psaumis of Camarina won the chariot-race in 452, and the mule-race, probably in 448; these two victories are sung in the fourth and fifth Olympians.
Among the latest of the odes is the eighth Pythian, on the victory gained in 446 by the boy-wrestler, Aristomenes of Aegina. The same is the conjectural date of the eleventh Nemean, an installation ode in honour of Aristagoras, the president of the council of Tenedos. He is probably the elder brother of Theoxenus of Tenedos, a favourite of Pindar, in whose praise he wrote a poem, and in whose arms he died at Argos. The poet is said to have attained the age of eighty. If so, the date of his death would be either 442 or 438, according as we accept the date 522 or 518 as the date of his birth.
His daughters conveyed his ashes to Thebes; and, nearly eight centuries later, his countryman, Pausanias, tells us of the site of the poet’s tomb, and adds some of the legends relating to his life: —
Passing by the right of the stadium of Iolaüs (outside the Proetidian gate), you come to a hippodrome in which is the tomb of Pindar. In his youth he was once walking to Thespiae in the heat of noon-day, and, in his weariness, he laid him down a little way above the road. While he was asleep, bees flew to him, and placed honey on his lips. Such was the beginning of his career of song.
When his fame was spread abroad from one end of Greece to the other, the Pythian priestess... bade the Delphians give to Pindar an equal share of all the first-fruits they offered to Apollo. It is said, too, that, in his old age, there was vouchsafed to him a vision in a dream. As he slept, Proserpine stood beside him and said that, of all the deities, she alone had not been hymned by him, but that, nevertheless, he should make a song on her also, when he was come to her. Before ten days were out, Pindar had paid the debt of nature.... Crossing the Dirce we come to the ruins of Pindar’s house, and to a sanctuary of Mother Dindymene dedicated by Pindar. At Delphi, not far from the hearth where Neoptolemus was slain, stands the chair of Pindar. It is of iron, and they say that, whenever Pindar came to Delphi, he used to sit on it and sing his songs to Apollo.
Pindar was a devout adherent of the national religion of Greece, and his Paeans give proof of his close connexion with the worship of Apollo at Delphi. Reverence for the gods is a prominent characteristic of his work. “From the gods are all the means of human excellences.”
“It is the god that granteth all fulfilment to men’s hopes; he bendeth the necks of the proud, and giveth to others a glory that knoweth no eld.” The poet rejoices in recounting the old heroic legends, especially when they are connected with Castor and Pollux, or Heracles, or the Aeacidae. “My heart cannot taste of song without telling of the Aeacidae.” But he resolutely refuses to ascribe to the gods any conduct which would be deemed unseemly if tried by a human standard. If a legend tells that, when the gods feasted with Tantalus, they ate the flesh of his son Pelops, Pindar refuses to represent the gods as cannibals. “It is seemly,” he says, “to speak fair things of deities.”
“To revile the gods is a hateful effort of the poet’s skill.”
I. THE STYLE OF PINDAR
Writing in Rome in the age of Augustus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, after quoting a dithyramb of Pindar, expresses an opinion, which (he says) will be accepted by all readers of literary taste: —
“These lines are vigorous, weighty and dignified, and are marked by much severity of style. Though rugged, they are not unpleasantly so, and though harsh to the ear, are only so in due measure. They are slow in their rhythm, and present broad effects of harmony; and they exhibit, not the showy and decorative prettiness of our own day, but the severe beauty of a distant past.”
In the same age, Horace describes Pindar as inimitable. He is “like a river rushing down from the mountains and overflowing its banks.”
“He is worthy of Apollo’s bay, whether he rolls down new words through daring dithyrambs”; or “sings of gods and kings,” or of “those whom the palm of Elis makes denizens of heaven”; or “laments some youthful hero, and exalts to the stars his prow ess, his courage, and his golden virtue.”
“A mighty breeze” (he adds) “uplifts the Swan of Dirce.”
About 88 A.D. Quintilian tells us that “of lyric poetry Pindar is the peerless master, in grandeur, in maxims, in figures of speech, and in the full stream of eloquence.”
Our own poet, Gray, in his ode on the Progress of Poesy, has sung of the “pride,” and the “ample pinion,”
“That the Theban eagle bear Sailing with supreme dominion Through the azure deep of air.”
Pindar’s style is marked by a constant and habitual use of metaphor. To describe the furthest limits of human achievement, he borrows metaphors from the remotest bounds of travel or navigation, the “pillars of Heracles” in the West, the Phâsis and the Nile in the East, and the Hyperboreans beyond the North. The victor’s merits are “countless as the sand.” Olympia is the “crown,” or the “flower” of festivals; it is peerless as water, bright as gold, and brilliant as the sun.
His similes for poetic effort are apt to be drawn from the language of the particular form of athletic skill which he is commemorating, whether it be the chariot-race, or leaping, or throwing the javelin. He has “many swift arrows in his quiver”; he approaches the holy hill of Elis with “shafts from the Muses’ bow.” The poet’s tidings bear abroad the victor’s fame “faster than gallant steed or winged ship”; “sounding the praise of valour,” the poet will “mount the flower-crowned prow.” His province is “the choice garden of the Graces” ; he tills the field of the Graces, or of Aphrodite. For a digression he finds an image in the parting of the ways between Thebes and Delphi. But his metaphors are sometimes mixed, as when he bids his Muse “stay the oar and drop the anchor,”
“for the bright wing of his songs darts, like a bee, from flower to flower.” He fancies he has on his lips a whetstone, which “woos his willing soul with the breath of fair-flowing strains.” He also compares the skilful trainer to the whetstone, “the grinding stone which gives an edge to bronze.”
In describing his art, he resorts to familiar and even homely comparisons. Poets are “the cunning builders of song.” An ode is sent across the sea “like Tyrian merchandise.” The poet’s mind is a register of promised songs, in which a particular debt can be searched out; praise that has been long deferred may be paid with interest.
The trainer, entrusted with the words and the music of the ode, is “a scroll-wand of the Muses,” “a mixing-bowl of song.” Among homely metaphors we have that of the shoe:—” let him know that in this sandal he hath his foot” ; and that of the seamy side:—”ills can be borne by the noble, when they have turned the fair side outward.” The poet compares himself to “a cork that floats above the net, and is undipped in the brine.” An inglorious youth has “hidden his young life in a hole” or is a “chanticleer that only fights at home.” The victor in a boys’ wrestling-match has “put off from him upon the bodies” of his defeated rivals “the loathsome r
eturn, and the taunting tongue, and the slinking path.” Lastly, by an image derived from the action of running water on the basements of buildings, a city is described as “sinking into a deep gulf of ruin.”
The metaphors and similes of Pindar are, in fact, derived from many sources. From common life, as from awakening and thirst, from a debt, or a drug, or a spell; from the wine-cup, and the mixing-bowl, the physician, or the pilot. Or, again, from the natural world, as from flowers and trees, root and fruit, gardens and ploughed fields, nectar and honey; from the bee; the cock, the crow, and the eagle; the fox, the wolf, and the lion; from a star, from light and flame, winds and waters, breeze and calm, fountain and flood, wave and shingle, sailing and steering. Or from the arts, such as weaving or forging, or cunning workmanship in gold and ivory and white coral; gates, or nails, or keys; the wheel or the whetstone; a foundation, a flight of stairs, a bulwark, a pillar or tower. Lastly, from manly exercises, from the chariot, or the chase, or from wrestling, or from flinging javelins, or shooting arrows.
One of his main characteristics is splendour of language, as in the opening of the first Olympian: “Peerless is water, and gold is the gleaming crown of lordly wealth.... Look not for any star in the lonely heavens that shall rival the gladdening radiance of the sun, or any place of festival more glorious than Olympia.” In the sixth Olympian the new-born babe is “hidden in the boundless brake, with its dainty form steeped in the golden and deep purple light of pansies.” This splendour includes swiftness of transition from image to image, from thought to thought. “The blossom of these hymns of praise flitteth, like a bee, from theme to theme.”
Another characteristic is the dexterous way in which the poet links the athletic life of the present with the martial exploits of the heroic past. The athletes of the day have their earliest exemplars in the mythical heroes, in Heracles, in Telamon and Ajax, in Peleus and Achilles.