Pindar - The Odes

OXFORD WORLD'S CLASSICS

THE COMPLETE ODES

P indar lived in the Boeotian city of Thebes, about 40 miles north west of Athens. Born in 518 BC (he died some time after 446) and a contemporary of the tragedian Aeschylus, he lived during the Persian Wars and subsequent growth of the Athenian empire, and was ranked in antiquity as Greece's greatest lyric poet. What we know about him is mostly derived from his poetry itself. He is most famous for his epinician or victory odes, composed for winners in the ancient athlet ics festivals and sung to music by a chorus. His patrons included the Sicilian tyrants Hieron I and Theron, Arcesilas IV king of Cyrene, Megacles uncle of Pericles, and a number of other wealthy and powerful families who commissioned odes from him, but he was on particularly friendly terms with victors from the island of Aegina, for whom a quarter of the forty-five surviving odes were written. He wrote many other poems, for both states and individuals, but all of these survive only in fragments.

A nthony V erity was formerly Headmaster of Leeds Grammar School and Master of Dulwich College. In his retirement he acts as an educational consultant. He has translated Theocritus' Idylls for Oxford World's Classics.

S tephen I nstone is an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London.

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OXFORD WORLD'S CLASSICS

PINDAR

The Complete Odes

Translated by

ANTHONY VERITY

With an Introduction and Notes by

STEPHEN INSTONE

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Translation Anthony Verity 2007

Editorial material Stephen Instone 2007

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First published as an Oxford World's Classics paperback 2007

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Pindar.

[Works. English. 2007]

The complete odes / Pindar; translated by Anthony Verity; with an introduction

and notes by Stephen Instone.

p. cm. (Oxford world's classics)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN-13: 978-0-19-280553-9 (alk. paper)

1. Pindar Translations into English. 2. Laudatory poetry, Greek Translations into English.

3. AthleticsGreece Poetry. 4. Games Greece Poetry. I. Verity, Anthony. II. Instone, Stephen. III. Title.

PA4275.E5P3 2007 885'.0109 dc22 2006039673

Typeset by Cepha Imaging Private Ltd., Bangalore, India

Printed in Great Britain

on acid-free paper by

Clays Ltd., St Ives pic

ISBN 978-0-19-280553-9

13579 10 8642

CONTENTS

Pythian

Olympian

Olympian 14

PYTHIANS

Olympian 7

Olympian 8

Olympian 9

Olympian 10

3i

Olympian 11

Olympian 12

Olympian 3

Olympian 4

Olympian 5

Introduction

Vll

Translator's Note

xxii

Select Bibliography

xxiii

Chronology

xxviii

THE ODES

OLYMPIANS

Olympian 1

Pythian 3

Pythian 4

Pythian 5

Pythian 1

Olympian 13

Olympian 6

4i

-I

O'

VI

Contents

Nemean

Isthmian

Nemean io

Nemean

III

Isthmian 3

Isthmian 4

Isthmian 5

Isthmian 6

Isthmian 7

Isthmian 8

Nemean 11

ISTHMIANS

Isthmian 1

Nemean 3

Nemean 4

Nemean 5

Nemean 6

Nemean 7

Nemean 8

Pythian 6

Pythian 7

Pythian 8

Pythian 9

Pythian 10

Pythian 11

Pythian 12

NEMEANS

Nemean 1

N

N

~

O

00 00

-I

Explanatory Notes

Pindar's Odes

The victory ( epinician') odes of Pindar (518-r.438 BC) celebrate athletes victorious in the ancient games. Pindar did not invent this type of poetry the lyric poets Ibycus (sixth century) and Simonides (r. 5 56-466) had composed poems celebrating athletics victors, of which

fragments survive;

Bacchylides, Simonides' nephew and Pindar's

contemporary, also composed them, and thanks to papyrus discover ies fourteen of his victory odes now exist in varying degrees of com

pleteness.

But Pindar perfected the genre and forty-four of his victory

odes survive in their entirety, and, whereas Bacchylides' odes were vir

tually

completely lost until their

rediscovery on papyrus in 1896,

Pindar's odes were handed down through the ages in a continuous manuscript tradition; they alone, therefore, of ancient Greek victory odes were an influence on the form of the ode in Renaissance poetry.

Most, but not all, of the odes follow a typical pattern and contain standard ingredients: direct praise of the victor and his home town, general moralizing, a myth about gods and heroes that has been tailored to be relevant to the victor, something about the performance of the ode and the poet himself. The mythical section is often the main part of the ode, and Pindar liked if possible to draw on myths connected with the victor's home town, some of which may have pre-existed as local stories. He was also influenced, both for myths and moral sen timents, by earlier epic poetry, especially Homer's Iliad, Hesiod (not only his Theogony and Works and Days, which survive in their entirety, but also other now fragmentary Hesiodic poetry, for example Catalogue of Women and Precepts of Chiron) and the body of post-Homeric epic known as the epic cycle'.

Victory odes belong to the genre of Greek poetry known as choral lyric' because they were sung by a chorus of singers to musical accom paniment on a special public occasion. The other type of Greek lyric poetry is the more personal lyric which the poet sang solo to an infor mal gathering, represented by Archilochus, Sappho, and Anacreon for example.