The Odes of Pindar, Including the Principal Fragments
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1,*' 00 'i' y^ rt »X >l%i Mt uS--f't ^9) THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY EDITED BY T. E. PAGE, LiTT.D., and W. H. D. ROUfSE, Lttt.D. THE ODES OF PINDAR SILVER COINS OF SICILY- FROM ORIGINALS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. YJI3I8 lO 8ZI03 flJT/Jlr ^ ' ! . I i_ / \ 1 PJaDAK HE PRrNCIPAL FRAGMENTS we no bsieos cnhumeO rfqiOvX .-r^ft : (£1 v .0) lari T snnfioMsO lo gixirrr*'! . rr v .01 sis! \TrH AN IK [TN SANDYS. Lirr.D.. FH A . .i < ^lLii9i (tal^sa owj .a^t .atr^noA \o •to«A'M»TV)Wtte'\ ^ :008 iii .VS.) .(Ui bar. U .0) eiqm £ s«w uisJnsA bwt3»<^Ifsi T|.f«rfmq 519W iOfi H .'\ .9«rD*rT.' /S<l i*^ '-r ill^jjfln n),;.jrti'>K> 9«j} ni m- SILVER COINS OF SICILY ?«i-,M, ,.„.-.„. .., V, >.. 0.. head of ri-: - ^ : i i)ans (0. v\2): liev. Nyniph Camarina seated on swan, iioating on her lake (0. v 11). Psaumis of Camarina was a victor at Olympia (0. iv and v). 'mo/i of Acragas. Obv. two eagles rending a hare lii SOf): Rev. Victory driving a quadriga. Theron of Acragas was a victor at Olympia (0. ii and iil). suggestedJ IP eagle and the dolphin of P. ii SOf were proliably oy thn r.^o-les and dolphins on the folns of Acragas and Syracuse. surrounded 'n^cadrdi^imon Of Syracuse. Obr. bead of Victory C) Victory^ by dolphins: Rev. quadriga of horses, crowned hy Hieron Of Syracuse wa^ v.. •„,-„. - inJl^e^CgV||;gUuBia^J3| THE ODES OF PINDAR INCLUDING THE PRINCIPAL FRAGMENTS WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY SIR JOHN SANDYS, Lttt.D., F.B.A. FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE AND PUBLIC (JRATOR IN' THK UNIVERSITY OF CAMBKIDGE HON. LiTT.D., Dublin; hon. ll.d., Edinburgh akd athens LONDON : WILLIAM HEINEMANN NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO. 6G0800 CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCmON THE OLYMPIAN ODES 1 THE PYTHIAN ODES 151 THE NEMKAN ODES ' 313 THE ISTHMIAN ODES 435 FRAGMENTS 509 INDEX 615 — INTRODUCTION I. The Life of Pindar Pindar, the greatest of the lyrical poets of Greece, was a native of Boeotia. He was born at Cynos- cephalae, 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 Suidas, the f)oet was born in the sixty -fifth OljTnpiad. Ol. 65, 3 corresponds to 518 B.C., and this date has been widely accepted."^ The most probable alternative is Ol. 64, 3, that is 522 b.c.^ In support of this earlier date, it is urged that all the aiPcient 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 bom 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 » Frag. 193 (205). - e.g. by Christ, Wilamowitz, and Schroder. ' Accepted by Boeckh and Caspar. ; INTRODUCTION been 522, he would have been fort}'^ 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 Daiphantus and Cleodice. From his uncle Scopelinus 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 com- position by Agathocles and Apollodorus, and probably also by Lasus of Hermione, who brought the dithy- ramb 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 ^ Gaspar, Chronologie Pindarique, Bruxelles, 1900, p. 15 f. The uncertainty between the dates 522 and 518 for the birth of Pindar is due to the corresponding uncertainty between 586 and 582 as the beginning of the Pythian era. If Pindar was born at the 17th Pythiad, the date of his birth would be 522, if we reckon from 586 ; or 518, if we reckon from 582. The latter of the two dates for the Pythian era is now known to be right, and this is a presumption in favour of 518 as the date of the poet's birth. ^ Frag. 198^ LIFE OF PINDAR limber of mythological allusions.^ He soon received ' roni 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 com- peting with Pindar.^ The poet has generally been regarded as claiming descent from the aristocratic family of the Theban Aegeidae.* However this may be, 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 revolution- aries^ is consistent with his appreciation of the reason- able 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 Theron 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 * Frag. 29 (5). ^ Plutarch, De gloria Athenitnsmm, c. 4. ' /iffKpoixai Sc Kal \iyvpav MvprlS' Iwvya, 8t( /Savck <pvff' c/Sa Tlivhapot ror' tpiv. Corinna, Frag. 21 Bergk ; Smyth's Greek Mdic Potts, pp. 69, 339. * Cp. note on P. v 75 '' P. xi 53. « P. ii 86. ^ P. vii 1. INTRODUCTION a private tribute of admiration for the victor's son, Thrasybulus, 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 oi athletes from that island. The first of these {N. v), that on Pytheas, has been assigned to the Nemean games of 489. The earliest of the Olympians (0. 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 Timodemus ; the seventh on that in the boys' pan- 1 Frag. 109 (228), quoted by Polybius, iv 31. LIFE OF PINDAR cratium won by Sogenes 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 (/. vi), and 478 that of similar victories gained by Melissus of Thebes (/. iv), and Oleander of Aegina (/. viii). In 477 the chariot-race at Xemea was won by Melissus, Jind was briefly commemorated in the third Isthmian, which was made the proeme 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 hang- ^ ing 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 impor- tant ejK)ch in the poet's life. Xo 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 Theron of Acragas. The prize for the boys' wrestling-match, carried off in the same year by Hagesidamus of the Western Locri, was promptly eulogised beside the Alpheiis in ' /. \Tii 10. '" Frag. 77 (196). » /. v 49. * P. i 77. ' Frag. 76 (46). INTRODUCTION the eleventh Olympian, and was afterwards commem- orated in the tenth, which was performed at the victor's hoilie in the West.