I.

Introduction

Pindar (518-438 bc), Greek poet, who is generally regarded as the greatest lyric poet in Greek literature.

II.

Life

Pindar was born in 518 bc in Cynoscephalae, near Thebes, of a distinguished aristocratic family, the Aegeidae. Pindar's wide geographical range, aristocratic tone, and truly Panhellenic spirit can probably be attributed, at least in part, to his family's influence throughout Greece.

He is said to have studied with the Boeotian poet Corinna and to have been defeated by her in a poetic contest, whereupon she advised the youthful poet “to sow with the hand, not with the whole sack,” a reference to his excessive employment of mythological ornament in his early work. In later years, Pindar traveled widely to all parts of the Greek world, and his national reputation brought him numerous commissions. He spent two years in Sicily at the invitation of Hiero I, king of Syracuse, and he composed paeans or encomia for Hiero and other kings and for the noblest Greek families.

No other Greek poet so adequately expressed the underlying spiritual unity preserved by the common language and religion and by the tradition of the great Panhellenic games. So great was Pindar's fame in later years that Alexander the Great, when he sacked Thebes in 335 bc, spared the house of Pindar.

III.

Works

Pindar represents the culmination of the Greek choral lyric, composed to be sung to a musical accompaniment by choruses of young people, as distinguished from the personal lyric, to be sung or chanted by a single voice. Pindar composed hymns to the gods, dithyrambs, processional odes, dancing songs, dirges, and encomia, but only fragments of these have survived. His extant works, believed to be about one-fourth of his total production, are 44 epinician, or triumphal, odes, composed in honor of the victors at the four great national games, the Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean. They display the intricate structure, the lofty moral sentiment, and the deeply religious feeling for which the Greek choral lyric was noted.

Pindar's regular procedure in praising the victors at the games was to insert into the central portion of the poem a myth, either expressing the dominant mood of the occasion or connecting the victorious hero with the mythical past. He shows the Greek myths in transition from their treatment by the epic poets to the forms they assumed in Attic tragedy. Pindar also introduces into his odes numerous moral and religious reflections, and he proclaims the immortality of the soul and a future judgment.