A Sampling of Comments on Pindar Olympian 4: Highlighting Thalia As One of the Three ‘Graces’
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A sampling of comments on Pindar Olympian 4: highlighting Thalia as one of the three ‘Graces’ The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Nagy, Gregory. 2021.03.06. "A sampling of comments on Pindar Olympian 14: highlighting Thalia as one of the three ‘Graces’." Classical Inquiries. http://nrs.harvard.edu/ urn-3:hul.eresource:Classical_Inquiries. Published Version https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/a-sampling-of- comments-on-pindar-olympian-14-thalia/ Citable link https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37367193 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Classical Inquiries Editors: Angelia Hanhardt and Keith Stone Consultant for Images: Jill Curry Robbins Online Consultant: Noel Spencer About Classical Inquiries (CI ) is an online, rapid-publication project of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies, devoted to sharing some of the latest thinking on the ancient world with researchers and the general public. While articles archived in DASH represent the original Classical Inquiries posts, CI is intended to be an evolving project, providing a platform for public dialogue between authors and readers. 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Citing Articles from Classical Inquiries To cite an article from Classical Inquiries, use the author’s name, the date, the title of the article, and the following persistent identifer: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.eresource:Classical_Inquiries. For example: Nagy, G. 2019.01.31. “Homo Ludens at Play with the Songs of Sappho: Experiments in Comparative Reception Teory, Part Four.” Classical Inquiries. http://nrs.harvard.edu/ urn-3:hul.eresource:Classical_Inquiries. A sampling of comments on Pindar Olympian 14: highlighting Thalia as one of the three ‘Graces’ Gregory Nagy MARCH 6, 2021 | By Gregory Nagy 2021.03.06 | By Gregory Nagy §0. The three ‘Graces’ or Khárites, personications of kháris, a noun often translated in a generalizing way as ‘grace’, are reverently addressed in a victory ode of Pindar, Olympian 14, as presiding goddesses of the city of Orkhomenos in Boeotia, named Erkhomenós (feminine gender) in the local dialect (Ἐρχομενοῦ, line 3). A young man named Asōpikhos (line 17), a native son of this city, is the victorious athlete whose Olympian victory is celebrated in Pindar’s ode, and he is gured in the song as a special protégé of the three goddesses presiding over Orkhomenos, who are literally the basíleiai or ‘queens’ of this city (line 3). The supreme status of the three Khárites or ‘Graces’ (line 4) of Orkhomenos is armed by their genealogy: these goddesses are children of Zeus himself (lines 12, 14–15). Also, the city over which they preside is their own ‘seat-of-honor’ (hédrā, line 2), and, as ‘presiders’, they are entitled to pre-eminent seating (I note the word thronoi at line 11) right next to another pre-eminent child of Zeus, the god Apollo himself (lines 10–11). These three queenly goddesses are named, and I transliterate their names here as we nd them articulated in the blended Doric-Aeolic dialect of Pindaric diction: Aglaíā (Ἀγλαΐα), Euphrosúnā (Εὐφροϲύνα), and Thalíā (Θαλία) at lines 13, 14, and 15 of Pindar’s song. The name of one of these ‘Graces’, Thalia, is also attested as the name of one of the nine Muses as we nd them listed in the Hesiodic Theogony, lines 77–79. The name of that other Thalia, listed at line 77 as the third of the nine Muses, is articulated as Tháleia (Θάλεια) in the Ionian poetic dialect of Hesiodic diction. In what follows, I will argue that the convergence of identities for this goddess Thalia, as both ‘Grace’ and ‘Muse’, reveals an old pattern of poetic celebration that goes back to an era when ‘Graces’ and ‘Muses’ were as yet undierentiated. Or, to put it another way, the three Graces were once upon a time just as ‘musical’ as the Muses themselves. South Corridor, Second floor. Mural depicting one of the three graces, Thalia (Music), by Frank Weston Benson. Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C. Image via Wikimedia Commons. §1. The ‘musical’ nature of the Graces is evident, right from the start, in the way they are situated by Pindar’s words. As divine queens of Orkhomenos, they share the royal seat of honor with the divine Apollo, who is universally recognized in Pindar’s era as the leader of the Muses in the choral singing and dancing of thοse goddesses. When I say ‘choral’ here and everywhere else, I mean of course the dancing as well as the singing that traditionally takes place in ancient Greek choral performance as signaled by the word khorós, which means ‘group of singers- and-dancers’, unlike chorus in English and in other modern languages that have restricted the semantic range of this imported ancient word to mean, more simply, ‘group of singers’. And the ‘musical’ role of the Graces as an idealized group of singers-and-dancers is made explicit in Pindar’s Olympian 14, where the choral singing-and-dancing of the gods themselves, who are the idealizing models for all choral performance, is actually regulated by the three Graces: as we read in the words of Pindar (lines 7–8): οὐδὲ γὰρ θεοὶ ϲεμνᾶν Χαρίτων ἄτερ | κοιρανέοντι χορούϲ ‘not even the gods can do without the sacred Graces [Khárites] in presiding-over ensembles of song-and-dance [khoroí]’. For more on singing and dancing by the gods themselves as an idealized model for human choral performance, I cite a most telling expression, θείου χοροῦ, in Plato Phaedrus 247a; commentary in Nagy PasP p. 56). Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898), The Three Graces, 1885. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Image via Wikimedia Commons. §2. The choral nature of the Muses as an idealized ensemble of singers-dancers is evident in their “speaking-names”: as we review the Hesiodic grouping of nine Muses in the Theogony, for example, the names Melpoménē (Μελπομένη) at line 77 and Terpsikhórē (Τερψιχόρη) at line 78 stand out. From what we have already seen about the semantics of khorós, the meaning of Terpsikhórē is obvious: her speaking name means ‘she who gets/gives pleasure by way of khoroí’. In the case of Melpoménē, the meaning is less obvious, until we consider the fact that the verb mélpein (also middle voice mélpesthai) means not simply ‘sing’, as it is sometimes translated, but rather ‘sing-and-dance-in-a-khorós’ (Nagy MoM 4§15; PH 12§29 p. 350 and p. 351n64; also HC 2§75). These names of two of the Muses are relevant to the epithets that describe two of the Graces in Pindar’s Olympian 14: Euphrosúnā (Εὐφροϲύνα) is addressed as philēsí-molpos (φιληϲίμολπε) ‘lover of song-and-dance’ at line 14 while Thalíā (Θαλία) is addressed as erasí-molpos (ἐραϲίμολπε) ‘aroused with desire for song-and-dance’ at line 16. §3. These epithets of the Graces show that these goddesses are choral personalities, just like the Muses. And even the poet of Olympian 14, Pindar himself, refers to himself here as a choral personality in his own right. In his persona as a praise-poet—who is the “laudator”—he prays especially to the Third Grace, called Thalia, to look favorably at the kômos or ‘ensemble of revelers’ that is celebrating the victorious athlete who must be praised—who is the “laudandus” —and, in so praying, the poet describes this ensemble of celebrating revelers or kômos as ‘stepping lightly’, that is, dancing gracefully, while the poet describes his own role as ‘singing’, having personally arrived to participate in a choral celebration. This celebration is pictured as singing and dancing by the whole ensemble, since the overall performance is supervised by Thalia herself as a choral personality. I quote the words of Pindar (lines 15–18): Θαλία τε | ἐραϲίμολπε, ἰδοῖϲα τόνδε κῶμον ἐπ᾿ εὐμενεῖ τύχᾳ | κοῦφα βιβῶντα· Λυδῷ γὰρ Ἀϲώπιχον ἐν τρόπῳ | ἐν μελέταιϲ τ᾿ ἀείδων ἔμολον ‘and [I invoke you too to hear my prayer,] you, O Thalia, aroused with desire for song-and-dance, looking upon this ensemble-of-revelers [kômos] stepping lightly, in response to genuinely powerful fortune. The song of Asōpikhos, practicing it in the Lydian mode, singing it, I have arrived.’ §4. In the victory odes of Pindar, as also of Bacchylides, the choral singing-and-dancing of male revelers celebrating the athletic victory of a comrade is conventionally expressed by way of the word kômos, but the model for such celebration is the choral singing-and-dancing of beautiful goddesses, and their ensemble is described in wording that overtly pictures a khorós— as here in Pindar’s Olympian 14, line 8. I nd a comparable example in Ode 13 of Bacchylides, where the verb mélpein at line 94 and also later, at line 190, refers to the choral singing and dancing of local nymphs whose performance is pictured as an idealized model for the choral singing and dancing of male revelers, expressed by way of the word kômos at line 74 (Nagy 2011:186–187).