The Greek lyric poet Pindar composed to celebrate Victory at all four Panhellenic Games. Of his fourteen Olympian Odes, glorifying victors at the Ancient Olympic Games, the First was positioned at the beginning of the collection by Aristophanes of Byzantium since it included praise for the games as well as of Pelops, who first competed at ancient Elis (the polis or city-state in which the festival was later staged).
Poetry
The ode begins with a
priamel, where the rival distinctions of water and gold are introduced as a foil to the true prize, the celebration of victory in song.
,
Pindar returns in the final lines to the mutual dependency of victory and poetry, where "song needs deeds to celebrate, and success needs songs to make the areta last".
Through his association with victors, the poet hopes to be "famed in
sophia among Greeks everywhere" (lines 115-6).
Yet a fragment of
Eupolis suggests Pindar's hopes were frustrated, his compositions soon "condemned to silence by the boorishness of the masses".
Pelops
At the heart of the ode is Pindar's "refashioning" of the
Greek mythology of
Pelops, king of Pisa, son of
Tantalus, father of
Thyestes and
Atreus, and hero after whom the
Peloponnese or "Isle of Pelops" is named.
Pindar rejects the common version of the myth, wherein Tantalus violates the reciprocity of the feast and serves up his dismembered son Pelops to the gods (lines 48-52); Pelops' shoulder is of gleaming ivory (line 35) since
Demeter, in mourning for
Persephone, unsuspectingly ate that part.
Instead Pindar has Pelops disappear because he is carried off by
Poseidon.
After his "erotic ", Pelops appeals to Poseidon for help, "if the loving gifts of Cyprian
Aphrodite result in any gratitude" (lines 75-76);
the god grants him a golden chariot and horses with untiring wings (line 87); with these Pelops defeats
Oenomaus in a race and wins the hand of his daughter Hippodameia, avoiding the fate of death previously meted out upon a series of vanquished suitors.
In Homo Necans, Walter Burkert reads in these myths a reflection of the sacrificial rites at Olympia.
Patronage
According to
Maurice Bowra, the main purpose of the poem is "Pindar's first attempt to deal seriously with the problems of
kingship", and especially "the relations of kings with
Twelve Olympians".
Hieron, "Pindar's greatest patron" and honorand in four odes and a now-fragmentary ,
is likened to a
king, as he "sways the sceptre of the law in sheep-rich Sicily" (lines 12-13).
Pindar incorporates the ideology of
xenia or hospitality into his ode, setting it in the context of a choral performance around Hieron's table, to the strains of the
phorminx (lines 15-18).
Yet the poet keeps his distance; the central mythological episode is concerned with
chariot racing, a more prestigious competition than the single horse race;
and Pindar warns Hieron that there are
Hubris to human ambition (line 114).
English translations
-
, translated into English verse by Ambrose Philips (1748)
-
, translated into English verse by C. A. Wheelwright (1846)
-
, translated into English prose by Ernest Myers (1874)
See also
-
Ode 5 by Bacchylides (celebrating the same victory)
-
Curse of the Atreids
-
Greek hero cult
-
Nine lyric poets
-
Kleos
-
Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 222
Further reading
External links
