MASLOV Boris Maslov - Pindar and The Emergence of Literature-Cambridge University Press (2015)

PINDAR AND THE EMERGENCE OF LITERATURE
Pindar and the Emergence of Literature places Pindar in the context of

the evolution of Archaic Greek poetics. While presenting an in-depth
introduction to diverse aspects of Pindar’s art (authorial metapoetics,
imagery, genre hybridization, religion, social context, and dialect), it
seeks to establish a middle ground between cultural contextualism
and literary history, paying attention both to poetry’s historical
milieu and its uncanny capacity to endure in time. With that meth-
odological objective, the book marshals a new version of Historical
Poetics, drawing both on theorists usually associated with this
approach, such as Alexander Veselovsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Olga
Freidenberg, and on T. S. Eliot, Hans Blumenberg, Fredric Jameson,
and Stephen Greenblatt. The ultimate literary-historical problem
posed by Pindar’s poetics, which this book sets out to solve, is the
transformation of preliterary structures rooted in folk communal art
into elements that still inform our notion of literature.
boris maslov is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at

the University of Chicago. He has published many articles on Ancient
Greek literature and its reception, the comparative history of con-
cepts, and the history of literary theory. He is a coeditor, with Ilya
Kliger, of Persistent Forms: Explorations in Historical Poetics (2015).
PINDAR
AND THE EMERGENCE
OF LITERATURE
BORIS MASLOV
University of Chicago
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© Boris Maslov 2015
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First published 2015
Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Maslov, Boris, 1982–
Pindar and the emergence of literature / Boris Maslov.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-107-11663-4 (Hardback)
1. Pindar–Criticism and interpretation. 2. Literature–Philosophy.
3. Literature and society–Greece. 4. Poetics. I. Title.
pa4276.m27 2015
8840 .01–dc23 2015018957
isbn 978-1-107-11663-4 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
In memory of Nina Borisovna Maslova (1939–1993)
Nicolas Poussin, “Apollo and the Muses on Mount Parnassus” (detail).
Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.
Contents
Acknowledgments page viii

Conventions x
List of abbreviations xi
Introduction: archaeologies of literature 1

1 Authors, forms, and the creation of a literary culture 36
2 Image, metaphor, concept: the semantics of poetic language 117
3 Speech acts, social personas, and poetic veridiction 178
4 Genre hybridity and the literary artifact 246
Epilogue: poetry and immortality 318
Bibliography 326
Subject index 355
Index locorum 362
vii
Acknowledgments
This book owes its inception to my teachers at the University of California

at Berkeley, and its completion to many colleagues, students, and friends
who, on innumerable occasions, contributed advice and criticism. Among
my teachers, I should mention Richard Martin and Mark Griffith, who
waded through my BA thesis, the ill-formed germ of this project; Viktor
Zhivov (1945–2013), who was and remains for me the paradeigma of
philological-historical synthesis; Anna Morpurgo Davies (1937–2014), in
whose seminars I learned that one should first think, and then write; and
Leslie Kurke, who conveyed to me almost everything I know about
Pindar – if I succeeded in making any headway, it was as a result of some
kind of dialectical engagement with her work, observations, and teaching.
The writing of the book was facilitated by a year of leave in 2011–2012,
made possible by a Loeb Classical Library Grant for Sabbatical Subven-
tion, the support of the Division of the Humanities at the University of
Chicago, and the hospitality of the Department of Philosophy, Classics,
History of Art, and Ideas at the University of Oslo. Over the past five
years, the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of
Chicago has provided a most welcoming environment for my work on
Ancient Greek and comparative poetics. I am grateful to graduate students
in my seminars, in particular to Joel Calahan, Monica Felix, Jennifer
Flaherty, and Leon Wash; their interest and feedback helped me think
through the theoretical approach that lies at the core of this study.
It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the input of the Cam-
bridge University Press referees, particularly Michael Silk’s insightful com-
ments that led to major improvements in the entire manuscript, as well as
inspiring conversations and e-mail exchanges I was fortunate to have with
Arkady Bliumbaum about theories of history; with Nina Braginskaia about
Olga Freidenberg; with German Dziebel about kinship terminologies;
with Christopher Faraone about Homer and the elegiac couplet; with
Joe Grim Feinberg about comparative anthropology; with Luba Golburt
viii
Acknowledgments ix
about the poetics of the ode; with David Goldstein about the vocalic /r/;
with Joshua Katz about a handful of etymologies; with Ilya Kliger about
Marxism; with Georgii Levinton about the folkloric image; with Michael
Kunichika about Ungleichzeitigkeit; with Elena Maslova about making
sense; with Timothy Pepper about wacky linguistics; with Haun Saussy
about Jakobson and Bogatyrev; with Joshua Scodel about great literature as
historical evidence; with Victoria Somoff about omniscient narration; and
with Andrea Taddei about Greek prelaw.
Additional thanks are due to Joshua Scodel and Leon Wash for reading
the manuscript at the copy-editing stage and offering numerous helpful
suggestions.
Conventions
I follow the practice of using single quotation marks for meanings of

particular words, reserving double quotation marks for quotes from other
authors. Pindar’s text is quoted from sources identified below under SM,
except for paians, for which Rutherford’s 2001 text is used. For the text of
Bacchylides I use the Teubner edition: Snell, B. (ed.) Bacchylidis Carmina
cum Fragmentis. Leipzig, 1961. By default, the text and fragment
numbering for Sappho and Alcaeus, other melic poets, and elegiac poets
follow the standard editions: LP, PMG and S, and W, respectively. Other
texts are cited from Oxford Classical Text editions, unless noted otherwise.
Translations from all languages are my own, except when cited from
sources for which a translator is identified in the Bibliography. In citing
scholarly works translated from other languages, I provide the date of the
original publication in brackets next to all citations.
x
Abbreviations
The abbreviations of the names and works of Greek and Roman authors
and works referred to in footnotes are those adopted in OCD. When
spelling Greek names and toponyms, I keep the traditional Latinate
versions for generally familiar figures and places (Andromache, Athens),
but use a Hellenized spelling for less familiar ones (Khromios, Orkhome-
nos) as well as in cases where the Latin equivalent might introduce
anachronistic assumptions (Kharites, not Graces), unless that would con-
tradict accepted scholarly practice (hence Muses, not Mousai).
The following abbreviations are used to refer to the texts of Pindar and
Bacchylides:
O.: Olympian; P.: Pythian; N.: Nemean; I.: Isthmian; Pai.: Paian;
Ep.: Epinikion.
The abbreviations used for secondary sources are as follows:
AJP American Journal of Philology
BICS Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
CA Classical Antiquity
CJ Classical Journal
CP Classical Philology
CQ Classical Quarterly
Campbell D. A. Campbell (ed.) Greek Lyric. Vols. i–v. Loeb
Classical Library. Cambridge, MA, 1982–93.
DELG P. Chantraine. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue
grecque. Histoire des mots. Nouv. edn. Paris, 2009.
DELL A. Ernout and A. Meillet. Dictionnaire étymologique de la
langue latine. Histoire des mots. Paris, 2001.
DK H. Diels and W. Kranz (eds.) Die Fragmente der
Vorsokratiker. 3 vols. 2nd edn. Berlin, 1959–60.
Drachmann A. B. Drachmann (ed.) Scholia vetera in Pindari
carmina. 3 vols. Leipzig, 1903–27.
xi
xii List of abbreviations
GRBS Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies
HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
IC Inscriptiones Creticae, opera et consilio F. Halbherr
collectae. 4 vols. Rome.
JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies
Kannicht R. Kannicht (ed.) Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta.
Vol. V. Euripides. Göttingen, 2004.
LP E. Lobel and D. Page (eds.) Poetarum Lesbiorum
Fragmenta. Oxford, 1955.
LSJ H. G. Liddell and R. Scott (eds.) A Greek-English
Lexicon, rev. H. S. Jones. With a revised supplement.
Oxford, 1996.
MH Museum Helveticum
OCD S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (eds.) Oxford Classical
Dictionary, 3rd edn. Oxford, 1999.
OED Oxford English Dictionary Online. November 2013.
www.oed.com/.
PG J. P. Migne (ed.) Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series
Graeca. 161 vols. Paris, 1857–89.
PMG D. L. Page (ed.) Poetae Melici Graeci. Oxford, 1962.
QUCC Quaderni urbinati di cultura classica
RE G. Wissowa, ed. Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft. 70 vols. Stuttgart, 1894–1972.
RhM Rheinisches Museum für Philologie
S D. L. Page (ed.) Supplementum Lyricis Graecis.
Oxford, 1974.
Slater W. J. Slater, Lexicon to Pindar. Berlin, 1969.
SM H. Maehler (ed. post B. Snell) Pindari Carmina cum
Fragmentis. Pars I. Epinicia. Leipzig, 1997; H. Maehler
(ed.) Pindari Carmina cum Fragmentis. Pars II.
Fragmenta. Indices. Leipzig, 1989.
SO Symbolae Osloenses
TAPA Transactions of the American Philological Association
W M. L. West (ed.) Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum
cantati. Oxford, 1971–2.
Introduction: archaeologies of literature
1 “How can Pindar be anything to us?”

The poet and the longue durée
Pindar concludes his Eighth Nemean ode, performed on Aegina to
celebrate the victory of the runner Deinias, with the following lines:
χαίρω δὲ πρόσφορον
ἐν μὲν ἔργῳ κόμπον ἱείς, ἐπαοιδαῖς δ’ ἀνήρ
νώδυνον καί τις κάματον θῆκεν· ἦν γε μὰν ἐπικώμιος ὕμνος
δὴ πάλαι καὶ πρὶν γενέσθαι τὰν Ἀδράστου τάν τε Καδμείων ἔριν.
(N. 8.48–51)
I rejoice in having cast a vaunt that befits the deed – what is more, with sung
incantations it is possible to undo the pain of any toilsome effort. After all, the
festive hymn has existed from days of yore and even before the strife of Adrastus
and the progeny of Cadmus.
These lines encapsulate three fundamental elements in the poetics of
epinikion (victory ode), a late Archaic Greek lyric form represented by
nearly sixty extant poems by Pindar and his contemporary Bacchylides.
First, they posit a functional relation of a statement of praise “befitting” a
particular deed (πρόσφορον ἐν . . . ἔργῳ). Second, by mentioning healing
incantations (ἐπαοιδαῖς δ’), they point out the capacity of poetic perform-
ance to have an effect, psychic or social, on its participants. Finally, they
foreground the antiquity of the literary form Pindar employs, the festive
hymn (ἐπικώμιος ὕμνος).
This passage also invites theoretical reflection, charting three modes of
contextualization, and thus three different approaches to the historical
study of epinikion. The broadest context is supplied by the continuity of
genre in which Pindar’s discursive medium is grounded. The other two
aspects of epinician poetics implicitly identified in the conclusion of
Nemean 8 are the text’s pragmatic anchoring and its social efficacy,
corresponding to two proximate modes of historical contextualization:
1
2 Introduction: archaeologies of literature
at the level of event and at the level of practice. Ideally, the interpretation
of a text should seek to integrate these three levels of historical inquiry.1
While the principal interest of this study is in uncovering the workings
of Pindar’s genre within the longue durée of literary history, to achieve this
goal I build on lower-level, context-oriented analysis. This means that
while my approach is informed by a set of theoretical concerns, it is both
enabled by empirical philological work and, in its method, builds on
insights that, although rarely explicated theoretically, are in practice famil-
iar to many Classical philologists. The chief methodological objective of
this book is to elaborate and test a framework for the study of literary texts,
which could provide a rigorous alternative both to trans-historical, univer-
salizing approaches to literature and to historicist work that, by limiting
itself to the proximate modes of contextualization, often relinquishes an
interest in poetics altogether.
Pindar’s oeuvre is part of a series of poetic acts that extends both back in
time, to the mythical expedition of Adrastus against Thebes, and into the
future, up to our own time. It enters this series, as I see it, not by adhering
to generally valid aesthetic, cognitive, or linguistic principles, but by
employing discourses, practices, and modes of thought that, on the one
hand, were uniquely available to Pindar and his contemporaries and,
on the other, are genealogically related to discourses, practices, and modes
of thought that we recognize as our own. This shared participation in a
historical tradition, in part made possible by literature itself, is the reason
why texts written millennia ago continue to have an effect on us, and,
in particular, to convey something we perceive as truths.2
Shifting the lens back to a more immediate mode of contextualization,
Stephen Greenblatt puts it as follows:
The “life” that literary works seem to possess long after both the death of
the author and the death of the culture for which the author wrote is the
historical consequence, however transformed and refashioned, of the social
energy encoded in those works.3
Greenblatt’s early work, which set the paradigm for New Historicism,
focuses on the generation of “social energy” – a term he intends to evoke
rhetorical energeia – within a particular historically circumscribed culture.
While this study participates in the ongoing investigation of Pindar’s
poetry in the time and place of its composition, it is also interested in
1
On the need to combine different scales of historical analysis, see Tynianov (2002 [1927]); Medvedev
(1978 [1928]); Jameson (1981); Kurke (2013).
2 3
This is the argument of Gadamer (1989 [1960]). Greenblatt (1988: 6).
“How can Pindar be anything to us?” 3
asking how literary texts package “social energy” in ways that make it
persist across cultural milieus and historical periods. In particular, the book
argues, first, that the life of literary texts and literary forms is contingent on
a set of conditions of possibility that pertain to the logic of literature,
analyzed as a historical phenomenon; second, that Pindaric epinikia can
tell us a lot about how this historical phenomenon came about.
How does participation in a tradition define the modes of being and
signification peculiar to literary texts? What can we learn about the
phenomenon of literature at large from its purported beginnings? Is there
any substance to literary history at all, seeing that the texts it comprises
are so ostensibly invested in their own historical moment? The conclusion
of Nemean 8 can offer us some initial insights into these overarching
questions.
First, why does Pindar choose the second expedition against Thebes,
the one undertaken by the so-called Epigonoi, those “born later,” as the
significant event that his genre is claimed to antedate? A scholiast,
commenting on this passage probably sometime in the Hellenistic
period, tells us that Adrastus founded the Nemean Games around the
time of his expedition, to commemorate the death of Archemoros.4
In other words, Pindar claims that poetic praise is older than the very
series of events that includes the occasion for composing Nemean 8. Poetry
is more than a “fitting” reaction to an experience: inasmuch as it instanti-
ates a genre, it is more ancient than the very institutional conditions of that
experience. More speculatively, by placing the origin of festive hymn in
relation to an event known to be an iteration of an earlier mythical episode,
Pindar implicitly comments on the nature of poetic tradition. For a text to
be recognized as literary, it must have a precursor. However confident in
its originality, literature is necessarily “epigonic.”
The self-consciousness with which Pindar’s poetry addresses these
issues suggests a further set of questions. Pindar’s epinikia form the first
substantial corpus of lyric in the Occidental tradition – but can they testify
about a still earlier moment in the constitution of “literature” as we know
it? What significance does the prominent Pindaric “I” – the speaker who
“rejoices” (χαίρω) in the completion of Nemean 8 – assume in this
process? In particular, in what ways does the individual speaker relate to
4
Drachmann 3.148–9. Since Nemean 8 also commemorates the victor’s father, Megas, the origination
of the Nemean Games as a memorial for the dead hero gains particular relevance: both Deinias’s
athletic success and its poetic celebration are reactions to an ancestor’s death. For the structural
significance of this compensatory mechanism in the Panhellenic Games, see Nagy (1990b: 118–42).
I return to this passage in Nemean 8 in the Epilogue.
the communal voicing that is proper to choral hymn? What impact do
practices of socially efficacious speech – such as those current in the
domains of religion and the law – have on the emergent structures of
authorship and literary praxis?
Finally, as already adumbrated earlier, the last lines of Nemean 8 com-
municate a methodological challenge. Pindar’s work can and has been
approached from a variety of scholarly vantage points. The prevalent mode
of inquiry into Pindar’s poetry, which is concerned with its rootedness
in the immediate context of production, rests largely on the premises
of cultural history as it evolved in the 1990s. The other two modes of
contextualization suggested by this passage, however, demand a renewed
effort of theoretical reflection. First, the social efficacy Pindar ascribes to
poetry is achieved with the help of nonpoetic types of communication,
implying a vision of literary history as semiautonomous, as it was originally
put forward in the later work of the Russian Formalist Yuri Tynianov.5
Literature possesses both, an immanent history (the history of tropes,
rhetorical conventions, metrical forms, etc.) and evolves in proximity to
the “neighboring systems” of culture, such as everyday speech, philosophy,
oratory, and cult. (The task of contextualization at the level of practice will
be most relevant to Chapters 3 and 4 of this book.)
The longue durée of literature itself, the deep past of literary forms and
their capacity for persistence and survival, poses a greater hermeneutic
challenge and one that dominates this study. In the rest of the Introduc-
tion, I develop, based on insights from literary theory, anthropology,
and philosophy of history, a method of literary-historical analysis whose
validity, it is hoped, extends beyond the study of Classical literatures.
This book assigns to Pindar a central role in the major transformation
of signifying practices that was underway in Archaic Greece. In part, this
picture is due to the vagaries of reception. Pindar’s victory odes comprise
the largest extant body of texts, except for Homer’s, before the period of
Athenian dominance. The preservation of the Pindaric corpus, on the
other hand, is by no means a historical accident, in the sense in which
the discovery of Bacchylides’ poetry on a papyrus scroll in 1896 was a
stroke of luck. Pindar was unequivocally regarded by the ancients as the
greatest of the nine Archaic lyric (melic) poets, and a similar view prevailed
throughout Europe since the rediscovery of his corpus in Italy in the
5
According to Tynianov (2002 [1927]), the neighboring systems mediate literature’s interaction with
such “distant” systems as economics or politics. Tynianov’s approach is taken further in Jauss (1970).
See also Kurke (2013) on the congeniality of Tynianov’s notion with some aspects of New
Historicism.
fifteenth century until the triumph of privatized poetic expression in the
context of eighteenth-century sentimentalism.6 Pindar’s current exclusion
from the global literary canon is reminiscent of the eclipse of Virgil’s
reputation in the Romantic period, and the history of Pindar’s reception
suggests a likely future resurgence of his poetic significance.
“Wie kann uns Pindar etwas sein?”7 – “How can Pindar be anything
to us?” – for Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, the great German
philologist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this rhet-
orical question was not prompted, as one might think, by the divide that
had come to separate Pindar’s poetry from modern sensibility and poetic
praxis. Rather, it reflected the hesitant stance of a scholar who, committed
as he was to Enlightenment rationalism, perceived in Pindar a force
resistant to the putative dawn of rational thought in fifth-century Athens.
A figure standing at the threshold of the Classical age – the age that
witnessed the rise of radical democracy, imperial expansion within the
Greek world, and the development of science and skepticism – Pindar
appeared to Wilamowitz to be entrenched in a time when power was in
the hands of aristocracies, culture was local and religious, and knowledge
the privilege of poets and priests.8 In ethnic terms, which seem particularly
dated today, Pindar was said to fight for a lost “Dorian” cause in the face
of the imminent “Ionian” triumph.
In his magisterial survey of pre-Classical Greek literature, Early Greek
Poetry and Philosophy, Hermann Fränkel echoes Wilamowitz:
In Pindar’s poetry archaic art reaches its pinnacle . . . Unlike his Athenian
contemporary Aeschylus, Pindar was and remained entirely an archaic
Greek. In those tendencies which during his lifetime powerfully contrib-
uted to the advance of human spirit he took no part at all . . . A pious and
respectful adherent of tradition, he felt himself the chosen voice of the
Greek race when he bore witness to the beliefs and purposes of the age that
was to die with him.9
Today, this grandiose vision of Greek literary history appears both overly
antagonistic and naïvely essentializing. Nevertheless, German idealist
literary history stood at the origin of the historicist strand in Pindaric
6
On Pindar’s reputation in antiquity see Most (1985: 11–19). For an overview of Pindar’s reception in
the early modern period, see Revard (2009).
7
Wilamowitz (1925: 124).
8
His particular version of a historicist approach to Pindar involved a claim that Pindar’s outstanding
piety has a lot to teach us in the modern age; a biographical approach, prominent in his influential
monograph (1922), in part continues the preceding critical tradition that saw the value of Pindar’s
work in his “fanciful” personality. Further on Wilamowitz’s view of Pindar, see Hamilton (2003:
23–35).
9
Fränkel (1975 [1951]: 505–6).
interpretation. From then on, Pindar’s distinction was affirmed not on the
basis of a difference from classical conventions or from the general norm of
poetic language, but for historical reasons specific to late Archaic Greece:
Pindar became a witness to his age and its sociopolitical transformations.
Partly as a result of this shift in perspective, Pindar and his poetics were
largely treated in the twentieth century as phenomena unto themselves.
A radical specialization of the knowledge of Pindar’s poetry is evident even
in Elroy Bundy’s highly influential Studia Pindarica, a book ostensibly
uninterested in history. Bundy read Pindar for ancient encomiastic devices
that were accessible only through scholarly reconstruction.10 In the two
most methodologically important monographs on Pindar published since
Bundy’s, Eveline Krummen demonstrated how intricately the apparently
“secular” genre of Pindar’s victory ode was related to the cult practices of
particular Greek poleis, and Leslie Kurke reconstructed the social context
of Pindar’s victory ode, emphasizing evolving patterns of aristocratic
behavior and symbolism on the threshold of the Classical age.11 More
recently, the works of Giambattista D’Alessio, Bruno Currie, Gregory
Nagy, and Ian Rutherford, among many others, have further contributed
to our understanding of Pindar’s texts as products of and participants in
the cultural practices of his time.
These scholarly advances make it possible to reclaim the Pindaric corpus
for a new kind of literary-historical inquiry, which would return to the
questions of textual poetics in full knowledge of the period’s “cultural
poetics.” One question such an inquiry might ask is, to cite Andrew Ford,
“how a culture recognized distinct poetic and non-poetic discourses
and how these forms were thought to be interrelated.”12 There is, however,
a more particular and formidable challenge in studying Archaic Greek
poetry, deriving from the fact that Archaic Greece witnessed a tectonic
paradigm shift, from a preliterary to a literary culture, which was only
tangentially linked to the shift from orality to literacy.13 This transform-
ation of discourse had long-term, global implications for verbal art and
its cultural significance. For this reason, the inquiry into the creation
10
Bundy’s parallels, ranging from Sappho to Themistius, are viewed as instances of the same rhetorical
device used in Pindar. Since Bundy never poses the problems of diachronic development or genre
specificity within encomiastic rhetoric, he effectively dehistoricizes it. For more on Bundy’s method,
see Chapter 4, Section 1.
11 12
Krummen (1990); Kurke (1991). Ford (2006: 283).
13
A helpful overview of the evidence on the shift from orality to literacy can be found in Thomas
(1992), who emphasizes the incremental nature of the changes.
of a literary culture in Archaic Greece must, ideally, be attentive to
the broadest mode of contextualization.
One way of bestowing this kind of attention on the Pindaric corpus is
suggested by its long history of study and reception. Instead of a precon-
ceived synchronic definition of Pindaric epinikion, one could discern the
different aspects of Pindaric poetics that became visible or were occluded
at different historical moments. To adapt a congenial turn of phrase,
Pindar, like any major poet, is ἄλλοτε ἄλλος – one thing to one age, and
another to another. As long as his readership was not limited to profes-
sional classicists, he was an exorbitant genius careless about the strictures of
poetic form. In the wake of Bundy’s work, he became a master of age-old
rhetorical devices and motifs. To most scholars today, he is a strategist
who places his poetic skills at the service of a demanding and diverse
clientele. For their part, the modern students of Pindaric reception often
see in Pindar a daring poetic experimenter whose verse retained its power
for more than two millennia of Western lyric, evoking responses from
Horace, Cowley, Goethe, and Mandel’shtam.14 Each of these visions
reflects a facet of the Pindaric corpus and reveals different aspects of its
historical relevance. This book takes its inspiration, in part, from reading
Pindar’s texts in this way, calibrating different lenses and angles of vision
afforded by the earlier tradition. The overarching literary-historical frame-
work I propose is, nevertheless, founded not on a historical aesthetics
of reception but on a theory of literary forms.
Ironically, one hundred years after the question “how can Pindar
be anything to us?” was posed, it suggests a response that is fundamentally
in agreement with Wilamowitz’s historicist premise. The achievement of
great poets consists not in manifesting poetry’s putatively unchanging
nature as a timeless mode of engaging with the world, but in the forceful-
ness and inventiveness with which they articulate their own historical
moment using poetic means.15 Such an answer need not, however, lead
us to adopt an antiquarian position that takes an interest in the past for the
past’s sake. Both in its practice and in its reception, art ties together
chronologically distinct “periods” and “epochs.” Indeed, its capacity to
persist in time demands that we make the past part of our own experience.
14
Fitzgerald (1987); Ponzi (1999); Scodel (2001); Sverdlov (2002); Vöhler (2005); Revard (2009); and
contributions to Agócs, Carey, and Rawles (2012b). On modern approaches to the study of Pindaric
reception, see Chapter 1, Section 1.
15
Cf. Veselovsky (1967 [1870]: 35).
Literature in particular educates a “historical sense” that, in the words of
T. S. Eliot, “involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but
of its presence.”16 In this light, a historical insight into the Pindaric
moment assumes a particular significance, since that moment marks a
transformation of verbal art as such, when “literature” became, in many
ways, what we now understand it to be. Pindar’s genius consisted in his
ability to remold the inherited age-old preliterary forms that were still
available to him in ways that would prove compelling to a wide spectrum
of audiences, both contemporaneous and far removed in time. The “social
energy” that Pindar’s poetry has retained for centuries and millennia stems
from the diversity and depth of the strata of meaning and experience that
his poetics succeeded in capturing.
Pindar’s poetics and its historical resonance can only be appreciated
if we see in Pindar a poet who is not “unambiguously backward-looking
and irretrievably archaic,” but instead poised at a moment of transition:
rooted in the past, yet anticipating future literary forms.17 It is not
incidental that Pindar may be approached both from the perspective of
comparative ethnopoetics and with the standards applied to poets who
make ample use of written sources.18 In his lectures on historical method,
Jacob Burckhardt observed, using the language of Hegelian philosophy of
history, that Pindar “might be taken as the dividing line” marking
“the transition of poetry from necessity to choice, from the general to
the individual, from the economy of types to infinite diversity.”19 This is
but one, albeit particularly eloquent, way of defining the momentous shift
from traditional verbal art to literary creativity that Pindaric poetics
instantiates.
The rest of this Introduction considers the notion of “archaeology of
literature” in the two meanings it has in this book. In Section 2, “From
folklore to literature,” I present some initial considerations that justify the
task of uncovering incipient forms of the literary in Archaic Greek poetry.
16
Eliot (1961 [1917]: 14).
17
The quotation comes from Rose (1992: 142); instead, according to Rose, he is “fully enmeshed in the
intellectual, social, artistic, and political developments of the first half of the fifth century” – a thesis
few Pindarists would dispute today. In his Marxist, narrowly historicist reading of Pindar, Rose is
particularly interested in the ways in which Pindar represents the interests of the aristocracy at his
time (1992: 141–84).
18
On Pindar in the light of ethnopoetics, see Wells (2009); Thomas (2011); on Pindar as a “man of
letters,” West (2011). On Pindar’s retention of typologically widespread folkloric motifs in his myths,
see Grant (1968). On Pindar and writing, see Patten (2009: 217–33).
19
Burckhardt (1979 [1871]: 111).
From folklore to literature 9
Section 3, “A stratigraphic poetics,” proposes the method of reading that
this particular task calls for, one that stratifies a literary work into dia-
chronically distinct elements. Both interpretive moves – one pertaining to
the history of literary praxis and the other to the interpretation of a
particular text – owe much to Historical Poetics, an approach to literature
that reaches back to Alexander Veselovsky, who coined the term “historical
poetics” in the 1880s, and that builds on the insights of theorists such as
Mikhail Bakhtin, Hans Robert Jauss, Hans Blumenberg, and Fredric
Jameson.20
In sum, in response both to the challenges of Pindaric interpretation
and to current debates in literary studies, this book offers an exercise in
theoretically informed philology that strives to avoid the pitfalls of both
“normative historicism” and literary-critical aestheticism.21 Those two
positions rest on the notion of literature as a self-evident datum, ever-
present in history (hence aestheticism) and invariably determined by its
immediate context of production (hence “normative historicism”).
Instead, I conceive of the literary as a historically constituted phenomenon
that possesses intrinsic, enduring characteristics. The hypothesis advanced
in this book is that some of these characteristics emerged in Archaic and
early Classical Greece. And it is this process that Pindar’s poetry will be
called upon to illuminate.
2 From folklore to literature

“Literature” is a notably ill-defined category. In modern parlance, it can
refer to the socially valorized body of texts, in contradistinction to
paralittérature or lowbrow fiction; to texts originally composed in writing,
rather than as part of an oral tradition; or to any kind of text, including
popular lore, that displays verbal art in the broadest sense by virtue of a
putative aesthetic quality. Defining the category of literature is particularly
challenging at a time when literary culture itself is in flux. The expansion
of literary studies into cultural history in the late twentieth century is but
one symptom of a crisis in the notion of literature as it crystallized
in European Modernism. The ideal of autotelic literary texture that is
20
See the work collected in Kliger and Maslov (2015b), as well as Historical Poetics: An online resource:
http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/historicalpoetics/.
21
I adopt the term “normative historicism,” which refers to the current dominance of under-theorized
contextualist work on literature, from Hayot (2012).
conjured into being by professionals was made possible by the autonomi-
zation of the aesthetic realm in the second half of the nineteenth century.
That ideal has been increasingly marginalized throughout the later
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries due in large part to the ongoing
media revolution.22
Looking back a century, the new discipline of literary studies that
emerged in the 1910–20s placed the quest for criteria of literariness at the
center of a polemic with philology, which had put the study of languages
and texts at the service of historical research. Literary theory was in many
ways a by-product of Modernism, a relationship evident in the histories of
Russian Formalism, Czech Structuralism, and American New Criticism.
Whether or not twentieth-century literary scholars openly subscribed to
the Modernist cause, they put the autotelic modalities characteristic of
Modernist literature at the center of their work. In the 1910s and 1920s,
Viktor Shklovsky and Roman Jakobson, both close to the Futurist move-
ment, would elevate the self-reflexive qualities of verbal art – “device”
(priem), “defamiliarization” (ostranenie), “the poetic function” – into chief
criteria of literariness (literaturnost’ ).23 In Western Europe and the United
States, the Modernist privileging of literary allusion, irony, ambiguity, and
intertextuality led to the corresponding emphases in literary studies which
crucially informed what Fredric Jameson has described as structuralism’s
“ideology of the text.”24 Our historical moment no longer permits us to
take these assumptions for granted, and this book undertakes to reconsider
theoretical work on literary form that predates, contests, or nuances a
dogmatic version of formalism.25
Most importantly, I depart from the synchronistic vision characterizing
much of twentieth-century literary scholarship in that I approach the
literary as a historical problem. Rather than asserting that certain qualities
of text represent universals of verbal art, I provisionally limit the definition
of “literature” to the “Western” tradition of refined, individually crafted,
and recorded discourse, and inquire into the emergence of that tradition in
22
On historical variation in the concept of literature in general, cf. Silk, Gildenhard, and Barrow
(2014: 278–83). On the autonomization of art in the nineteenth century, see Bourdieu (1996 [1992]);
Williams (1977: 45–54), who points out that in the eighteenth century literature encompassed all
printed works; on the meaning of this term in the Renaissance, see Greenblatt (1997). On
transformation of the media, see, e.g., Ong (1991 [1982]); its impact on literature is discussed in
Benedetti (2005).
23 24
Shklovsky (2012 [1917]); Jakobson (1987 [1960], 2011). Jameson (1975–6).
25
It is a mistake, in particular, to equate Russian Formalism and New Criticism as implying similarly
“text-bound” (Ong 1991 [1982]: 162) hermeneutic modalities. For a view of Russian Formalism as a
participant in the Veselovskian tradition of Historical Poetics, see Chapter 1, Section 1.
an effort to develop a critical insight into such fundamental elements of
literary praxis as individual authorship, ad hoc use of imagery, appropri-
ation of social authority, and genre hybridity.
The rise of literature in the West is generally regarded as a historical fact
that belongs to the province of Classical scholarship.26 According to a
widespread view, however, literature as we know it was a brainchild of
the Hellenistic period, when poetic production came to be characterized
by allusive intertextuality, playful reuse of older occasion-bound genres,
and exclusive reliance on the written medium within a “book culture”
that, in particular, inaugurated the authorial collection of poetry.27 By
contrast, the Archaic and – to a lesser extent – Classical literary cultures
are seen, more often than not, as characterized by a distinctly nonmodern
coexistence of poetry, religion, and society most easily demonstrated by
the primacy of oral performance.28 The current consensus on the historical
roots of literature is thus indebted both to the Modernist privileging
of erudite, self-conscious properties in literary art and to a tendency, dating
back at least to late-eighteenth-century Germany, to archaize the preclas-
sical period of Greek culture.
The Greek literary field of the seventh to mid-fifth centuries, however,
was radically different from preliterary (“folkloric”) systems attested in
traditional societies as well as in industrial and postindustrial societies that
retain popular forms of verbal art. In Archaic Greece, texts circulated in
written form, their composition was often individualized, and there existed
an incipient notion of literary tradition.29 Accordingly, it is to Archaic,
rather than Hellenistic, Greece that we need to turn for a historical
26
On different aspects of the rise of Greek literature out of oral culture, see the contributions to
Kullmann and Reichel (1990) and Nagy (1990: 17–51).
27
See, e.g., Snell (1960 [1946]: 264–80) on Callimachus’s self-reflexive playfulness; Bing (1988: 10–48)
on the importance of writing; Hunter (1997: 247) on the emergence of “what we know as
‘literature’” in the Hellenistic period (cf. Hölscher 1989: 39: “epic becomes literature in the
narrow sense of the word much later, in Hellenism”); Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004: 17–26) on
genre mixing as a characteristic of Hellenistic poetry.
28
Particularly influential for this view are Havelock (1963, 1982) and Herington (1985: 3–76) (on “song
culture”); cf. Gentili (1988: 3–23).
29
For a general introduction to folk or oral poetics (or ethnopoetics), in contradistinction to literature,
see Lord (2000 [1960]); Toporov (1974b); Foley (1991); Finnegan (1992). The difference between the
Ancient Greeks and “the primitives” is sometimes cast in terms of the former having a more
“advanced” mythology, as reflected in the Homeric poems. The latter are indeed notable for a
pattern of expurgation, as in the case of Achilles dragging Hector’s dead body rather than killing him
by dragging him around (a variant of the myth attested in Soph. Ajax 1031 and Eur. Androm. 399);
see Murray (1960: 120–45, esp. 126–7), who explains such modifications by “the progress of a spirit
which, as it loved beauty, hated cruelty and uncleanness” (144). The influence of Near Eastern
written poetry on Archaic Greece was undoubtedly a factor in the creation of a literary culture, but
one whose relative significance is difficult to evaluate.
elucidation of some of the central problems in literary theory, such as
the claims of individual authorship, the workings of the poetic image,
genre conservatism, individual innovation, and literature’s relation to the
social sphere.
In the following chapters, I foreground four aspects of what has come to
constitute the literary in the West and discuss their historical ontology in
Archaic Greece: (1) the principle of individual authorship; (2) the use of ad
hoc, original imagery, particularly as a conceptual tool; (3) extensive
appropriation of social discourses as resources for poetic authority;
and (4) genre hybridization. Within these four domains, I seek to bring
to light the transformation of preliterary structures that tend to inform oral
tradition and socially embedded genres of folklore into constructive prin-
ciples that operate in later periods of Western literary history. I speak of a
historical ontology or of emergence rather than of the “origin,” “inven-
tion,” or “evolution” of the literary to avoid the implications of a singular
moment of origination, of self-willed creation, or of distinct phases in the
later development of these aspects of literary praxis. Instead, I see them as
structurally inherent in literature as a phenomenon undergoing a process
of crystallization in Archaic Greece. These structural characteristics of the
literary were embedded in canonical texts, which sprouted a tradition of
imitation, first in the Classical world and eventually far beyond it. I add
“historical” to “ontology” to stress that, in my view, literature is molded
by history, in particular through differentiation from traditional verbal art
of folklore, rather than rooted in the universals of perception or cognition.
In relation to the literary culture of Archaic Greece, I use the terms
“development” and “evolution” freely, yet without deterministic or teleo-
logical connotations, to refer to processes of systemic change, in the spirit
of Tynianov’s notion of literary evolution that implies a dialectic between
the literary and neighboring cultural orders.30
I will only be able to consider in passing the important question of the
degree to which Ancient Greek literature is anticipated by Near Eastern
precedents.31 As a general point of reference, I cite Sergei Averintsev’s
classic juxtaposition between Near Eastern verbal art and Greek litera-
ture.32 For Averintsev, the rise of philosophical reflection on literature,
which occurred in Greece already with Democritus, implies a phenom-
enological difference between the more socially embedded (albeit not oral)
30 31
Tynianov (2000 [1927]). See Chapter 1, Section 4 for some further discussion.
32
Averintsev (1971: 208–9).
poetic cultures of the Near East and the self-conscious, author-centered
literary practices that developed in Greece.
This study also does not claim to offer a conclusive statement on the rise
of literature in Archaic Greece for at least two reasons: neither the selection
of aspects of the literary to be examined nor the discussion of any particular
topic explored is exhaustive.33 The chief aim of the book lies elsewhere.
I am primarily concerned with establishing the validity and feasibility of
studying literary structures and forms historically, yet in a way that does
not break them into separate histories of form (history of authorship,
history of metaphor, history of a genre, etc.) but treats them as constitutive
elements of literature approached holistically. In terms put forward by
Wlad Godzich and Jeffrey Kittay in their study of the emergence of prose
in the French Middle Ages, I conceive of literature as a distinct “signifying
practice” that supersedes preexistent practices of verbal art. As Godzich and
Kittay note, reconfigurations of signifying practices, along with their
epistemological conditions, bring about changes in the value of verbal
and nonverbal behavior relative to one another, in the prevalent notion
of authority, and in the meaning of truth itself.34 Furthermore, as they
note,
[w]hen a new signifying practice replaces an old one, the replacement is
rarely wholesale. Rather, there is a gradual shift of emphasis. What results in
a new signifying practice often begins as a supplement to the old, so that the
final new signifying practice builds off the former one, possesses many
characteristics of the former, and may even retain the earlier practice (as a
formal whole) within it. A new signifying practice may – perhaps must –
initially pretend to “hold” the old, to contain it. This often makes it difficult
to define exactly when a signifying practice changes, when, for example, the
written dialogue of a play ceases to be the notation of an actual or virtual
performance (understood as such) and begins to be a signifying practice all
its own (e.g., closet dramas, written to be read). On such shifting sands,
periodization becomes a risky business.35
33
Another possible criterion is the development of the discourse of artistic crafted-ness, which
ultimately resulted in the classical notion of the poet as a “maker” (poiêtês) and which Andrew
Ford traces from Simonides to Plato (2004: 93–157). The more general problem of the work of art as
an isolated object of perception, and thus an aesthetic phenomenon, is explored in Porter (2010); cf.
Peponi (2012). Other criteria that deserve to be investigated from this perspective, but are only
treated cursorily in this book, are the uses of narrative and myth, ways of embedding historical
references, different kinds of citation of other texts, and formulaic qualities in the framing of the text
(beginning and end).
34 35
Godzich and Kittay (1987: 3–13). Godzich and Kittay (1987: 7).
In spite of the much richer historical record for the French Middle Ages,
the complexity of the transition from the oral performance culture of the
jongleurs to vernacular prose (initially, often de-rhymed verse) is paralleled
in the heterogeneity of coexistent poetic practices and genres in Archaic
Greece. Within the overarching narrative of the emergence of the literary
out of popular lore, the history of Greek verbal art in the eighth to fifth
century bce contains distinct phases or moments – instances when signi-
fying practices are remapped – that, in some cases, can only be recon-
structed hypothetically.
Most crucially, Archaic Greek poetry, sensu stricto, does not provide
direct evidence of a transition from preliterary to literary structures. The
surviving texts in all genres indicate a degree of artistic elaboration and
originality that exceeds otherwise illuminating parallels from actually
attested oral traditions.36 The Janus-faced nature of the Homeric poems,
which rely on an extended tradition of oral performance yet strongly imply
a self-conscious author-redactor, is a particularly well-known example of
this literary-historical paradox.37 In the case of Archilochus, Theognis, and
Sappho, the likely traditional basis of their work – in iambic, didactic-
gnomic, and love poetry – is similarly concealed by a highly self-conscious
authorial presence. In short, Archaic Greek poetry hints at processes of
transition, without permitting us to compare genuine “oral-popular-folk”
texts with their literary-authorial modifications. Only in the light of
comparative evidence – such as Milman Parry’s and Albert Lord’s work
on South Slavic epic – can Archaic Greek texts be shown to document a
transformation of folk verbal art into what we recognize today as
“literature.”
It is important to keep in mind that, in Archaic Greece, the transpos-
ition of traditional lore did not entail the kind of “folkloric” tag applied in
Romantic and post-Romantic literary adaptations of popular poetry.38
36
The samples of popular lyric poetry that survive (PMG 847–83) suggest a rich generic repertory:
songs associated with agricultural labor, marriage, funeral, and war. For further discussion, see
Lambin (1992) and Yatromanolakis (2009), who stresses the phenomena of “interdiscursivity”
between literary and popular traditions in Archaic lyric. The Homeric and Hesiod epic, although
literary creations, similarly implies a rich popular mythological tradition, probably expressed in
earlier folk heroic lays or sagas. A survey is provided by Pfister (2002).
37
Veselovsky commented on the oscillation between “literary” and “folkloristic” views of Homer as
early as 1870 (see Veselovsky 1967 [1870]: 39–40). Recently, the two positions have been associated
with, respectively, the work of M. L. West and Gregory Nagy. For a similar ambiguity in Hesiod’s
Works and Days, a work both rooted in preliterary genres of speaking and highly artistic in its
structure, likely due to Near Eastern precedents, see Martin (2004).
38
“Folk citation in literature is oriented not toward folklore, but toward a particular conception of
folklore” (Levinton 1975: 80). In later Western literary history, transposition of popular lore, broadly
Instead, folklore shifts into literature in a process that does not permit
their stylistic and sociopolitical differentiation: in the words of Godzich
and Kittay, the new signifying practice at first pretends to contain the
old within it. A further parallel to Archaic Greece can be found in the Arab
tradition of lyric composition, in which some genres entered literary
tradition during the classical period of Arab literature even as they
remained in oral use, particularly among the Bedouin nomads.39 Like
Arabic classical literature, Archaic Greek poetry is remarkable for the
variety of different kinds of texts that attain literary status by being
preserved in writing under the name of individual authors. Olga
Freidenberg, the pioneering inquirer into the popular roots of Archaic
Greek poetics, argues that preliterary forms (and folk “consciousness”),
rather than being assigned to the lower strata of the population, were
actively present in the production of new literary genres.40 As a result,
as Freidenberg put it, “folklore is the basic component of Greek literature,
not a relict-like low genre.”41
From today’s perspective, Freidenberg’s generalized view of the folkloric
substrate appears too schematic. The shift toward literary structures
affected various Archaic Greek genres in different and atypical ways:
the fable retained its association with low classes and prose tales never
entered the literary domain;42 narrative epic was professionalized, due to
the effort of the rhapsodic corporation, fairly early on; lyrical songs existed
in both the literary and (as modern scholars hypothesize) preliterary
realms, with cult choral genres being the first to enter the literary system.
Gregory Nagy correlates the coming into being of a holistic literary system
with the establishment of a Panhellenic poetic culture, generalized from
countless local traditions of song.43 As I argue in Chapter 1, there were,
construed, into literature – from Beowulf to Pushkin’s Songs of Western Slavs – was undertaken on
the basis of an established literary tradition, ultimately derivable from the Greeks. On forms of the
oral tradition’s transition into literature, see Niles (1999).
39
Vasilenko (2010). On the transition from oral to written form in Arabic poetry, see Stetkevych
(2010: 1–69).
40
Freidenberg (1941: 68–9). Freidenberg explains the diversity of literary forms in Archaic Greece by a
rapid shift from tribal to class-centered society, a view that is difficult to substantiate in light of more
recent historical work.
41
Freidenberg (1940: 49). On the lack of an opposition between “fine” and “popular” art in Archaic
and Classical Greece, cf. Peponi (2012: 4), in whose view it implies “a dynamics of cultural
consolidation and integration” whereby “a significant portion of cultural goods – especially in the
realm of mousikē [. . .] – was meant to function in an inclusive, not in an exclusive way.”
42
On fable and the role of the Aesopic corpus in the evolution of prose in Ancient Greece, see Kurke
(2011).
43
Nagy (1990b: 52–115).
in fact, several episodes when broad regional poetic cultures came into
existence in Archaic Greece, and divisions between these cultures subsisted
to the end of the Archaic period. The study of Archaic Greek literary
history demands attention to individual genres, to supra-genres like hex-
ameter poetry and cult lyric, as well as to the literary system as a whole.
In fact, it is precisely the unevenness of the transition from folklore to
literature, with its varying impact on different genres, that allows us to
pursue the criterion of literariness on the historical, rather than theoretical,
plane. In the tradition going back to Veselovsky’s work on the progressive
specialization and professionalization of verbal art, the relative parameter of
authorial self-consciousness has often been regarded as a key to under-
standing the emergence of distinctly literary structures.44 From this per-
spective, the use of writing in the composition of the text versus the
primacy of oral performance – the opposition commonly used for demar-
cating the boundary between preliterary and literary forms – is only
significant insofar as it can be correlated with the more general process
of specialization in the author-function.45 Thus, a dramatic piece intended
for performance or a lyric poem composed without the use of writing may
nevertheless bear all the requisite marks of literariness. Conversely, the lack
of a specialized author-function implies nonliterary modes of text produc-
tion, such as incremental changes in traditional lore or the composition,
within inherited genres, of new texts not intended to carry the author’s
name.
In a classic article on folklore and literature as different “forms of
creativity,” Pyotr Bogatyrev and Roman Jakobson employed the
Saussurean opposition between langue and parole to point to the principle
of individuation that, in literary production, informs the status of both
the text and the author:
From the viewpoint of the performer of a folkloric work, it is a fact of
langue, i.e., an extra-personal fact that exists independently of the per-
former, even if it allows for deformation and the introduction of new poetic
and quotidian material. To the author of a literary work, it is a fact of parole.
It is not given a priori, but it is subject to an individual realization.46
44
Veselovskii (1940 [1899]: 200–382); Steblin-Kamenskii (1984); Averintsev (1986); Meletinskii (1986);
Putilov 1997.
45
The term “author-function” was introduced by Michel Foucault (1984) to refer to a cultural
imperative that some (and not other) discourses attribute authorship to texts; see Chapter 1,
Section 2 for further discussion. I use this term more broadly, allowing for gradient and genre-
specific expectations of individual authorship.
46
Bogatyrev and Jakobson (1982 [1929]: 38). Translation emended.
The principle of individuation in textual production is evident at different
levels, including (most obviously) the notion of a unique recorded text.
This notion is inapplicable to folklore, where, instead, an abstract invariant
(e.g., of a folktale or an epic song) encompasses a multitude of different,
actually attested variants. Georgii Levinton has extended this analysis to
the semantics of the image. In folklore, a particular device – for example,
the comparison of a bridegroom to a falcon – always has the same meaning
of identification, whether it is realized as a metaphor, a simile, a
parallelism, or a plot element (transformation). By contrast, the same
device in a literary text must be interpreted on an individual basis, with
reference to the particular instantiation of its use.47
John Miles Foley speaks of a “traditional referentiality” that is distinctive
to oral verbal art, which prefers “inherent” meanings to “conferred”
meanings:
In the modern literary work of art we place the highest priority on a writer’s
personal manipulation of original or inherited materials, rewarding the
work that strikes out boldly in a new direction by providing a perspective
uniquely its own, memorable because it is new, fresh, or, best of all,
inimitable. In such a case the work is praised for the finesse with which
an author (not a tradition) confers meaning on his or her creation.48
By contrast, a poet who operates in an oral culture deals with meanings
that are “inherent” in the conventional structures he deploys. As a result,
[t]raditional referentiality . . . entails the invoking of a context that is
enormously larger and more echoic than the text or the work itself, that
brings the lifeblood of generations of poems and performances to the
individual performance or text. Each element in the phraseology or narra-
tive thematics stands not simply for that singular instance but for the
plurality and multiformity that are beyond the reach of textualization.49
The function of an image, a scene, or any other formal element is thus
predicated on its status as unique or plural, which is in turn contingent on
whether this element is part of a text (ideally, a written text) or of a
tradition of performance.
While there is an undeniable correlation between literacy and
literariness, I believe that the imperative of singularity or uniqueness has
a broader set of entailments. It is ultimately an index of literature’s
historicity, its participation in the historical series, which contrasts with
folklore’s anchoring in the natural (or naturalized) world. As Georg
47 48 49
Levinton (1975: 76–7). Foley (1991: 8). Foley (1991: 7).
Simmel has remarked, there exists an intimate link between individuation
and historicity: “For quite some time, the character of individualization has
been the criterion employed to distinguish historical knowledge from
natural science. The individualization of an item can be properly under-
stood and assessed only by means of . . . [a] definition of historicity as
location within a specific time-frame.” The source of this individualization,
according to Simmel, cannot be derived from the putative uniqueness of
“the content of the event.” Rather, it attains its historical status by being
assigned “an unambiguously determined location within the total cosmic
process.”50 As I discuss in more detail in Chapter 1, literature’s participa-
tion in historical time is evident in its preoccupation with precedents and
influences, as well as in a consistent linkage of literary and national history.
While individual authorship in general contributes to the centrifugal
tendency of literary semantics, it would be a mistake to regard individu-
ation in literature as a historical constant. The semantics of poetic forms
is more predictable in stylistically uniform historical periods or within
conservative genres. Genredness is always implicitly present in literature,
being retained as a crucial characteristic that it shares with folklore. It may
be regarded as an element of the preexistent signifying practice that was
subsumed by literature, or – to adopt a term whose significance I will
elaborate upon later – it is a structural survival that exists in a constant
productive tension with the principle of textual individuation. In this light,
the ostensible eclipse of genre in modern European literatures marks a
historical moment characterized by the dominance of the principle of
individuation.
Traditional verbal art encompasses disparate types of text (genres),
distinguished by social function and performance context. The rise of
the author-function proceeds unevenly across the spectrum of forms. In
particular, discussing the borderline cases between folklore and literature,
Bogatyrev and Jakobson point out that the process of professionalization
among performers is genre-specific. In the case of “proverbs, jokes, ditties,
certain kinds of ritual and non-ritual song,” the entire collective is “both
producer and consumer.” However, narrative genres such as fairy tales
tend to invite the rise of groups of specialists (not yet professionals) who
“monopolize” textual production.51 Within such groups, it may happen
that a particular body of texts comes to be treated as worthy of preservation
50
Simmel (1980 [1916]: 133–4).
51
Bogatyrev and Jakobson (1982 [1929]: 44). Translation emended.
at all cost. At this point, the poetic work in question is removed from the
domain of collective creativity.52
This process of the emergence of a privileged corpus, which Bogatyrev
and Jakobson illustrate with the Vedas, demonstrates how a fundamental
precedent for literary production comes into existence. As I discuss in
Chapter 1, the composition and fixation of the Homeric poems served,
in Archaic Greece, as such a precedent for the development of authorial
self-consciousness among the composers of lyric.
It is important to keep in mind that folk lyric tends to remain part of the
collective creative process and is most immune to authorial individuation.
For example, as Dmitri Likhachev argues, Russian folk lyrical songs
are couched in the most general terms in order to aid their iteration through
re-performance whereby the embedded experience is relived by new per-
formers.53 The absence of topical markers in lyrical song can be contrasted
with the specificity of praise poems (velichaniia) and laments, which must
include references to the name of the deceased. In this case, the texts are
improvised based on blocks of inherited (formulaic) material, rather than
simply re-performed, yet authorial self-consciousness need not be mani-
fested in any way; indeed, the foregrounding of the author would only be a
distraction for the communal emotion conveyed in these texts.54
Likhachev’s observations make it possible to uncover a Janus-faced
quality in Pindaric epinikion. In this genre, the name of the poet is
occluded, just as it is in the Russian folk velichaniia, but distinct or coded
markers of his persona are often included in the text to indicate that it was
uniquely composed for the occasion. This strategy makes it possible to
satisfy the emerging author-function, more visibly expressed in the “seals”
(sphragides) found in other poetic corpora, while also conforming to the
collective nature of chorally performed lyric.55 (In the context of modern
literary production, embedding a poet’s name in the text would be gratuit-
ous, since editorial practices support the author-function by, for instance,
placing the poet’s name on the book’s cover, not to speak of copyright.)
52
Bogatyrev and Jakobson (1982 [1929]: 45).
53
Likhachev (1962: 80–5). The reverse process, in which a literary text is generalized into an instance of
popular lore, can be observed in the case of Alcaeus fr. 249, transformed into the skolion PMG 891
(Currie 2004: 53–4).
54
Likhachev (1962: 84).
55
Theognis, Hesiod, as well as Sappho (fr. 1) include their names in their poems. On sphragis, see
Chapter 1, Section 7. There is sufficient internal evidence for the view assumed by the majority of
scholars that Pindar’s epinikia were chorally performed (see Mullen [1982]; Carey [1991]; Morgan
[1993]).
Omitting the composer’s name provides but one example of the
folkloric, performance-based features retained within the otherwise
forward-looking poetics of epinikion. The absence of text titles for indi-
vidual epinikia is another obvious token of under-specification inherited
from the poetics of socially embedded song. Ancient editors, rather,
distinguished epinikia by identifying features of the events that occasioned
their composition (name of the victor, his home polis, athletic event).
Other lyric genres, in particular dithyrambs, apparently allowed for texts to
carry titles in the first part of the fifth century.56 Interestingly, poets up to
our own day continue sometimes to leave lyric poems untitled; in this
regard, lyric preserves a memory of preliterary, embedded poetics that has
long been lost in other genres, such as drama or varieties of fictional
narrative.
It has been observed that Pindaric epinikion tends to obscure
its immediate performance context by “overloading” the text with deictic
references to multiple locales which may, at least in some cases, reflect
(p)re-performances at different venues.57 More generally, this overload-
ing may be evidence of the text’s effort to repudiate its narrow Sitz-im-
Leben and further its ambition for an afterlife. Pindar’s notion of such
an afterlife likely included the poem’s preservation in written form and
solo re-performance by members of the commissioning clan, independ-
ent circulation, and the text’s dedication at a shrine.58 As A. D. Morrison
puts it, “Pindar’s victory odes accommodate more than one audience,
and anticipate more than one performance. These poems are not,
and were never meant to be, one-off, never-to-be-repeated shows.”59 In
particular, Pindar’s interest in the undefined “tertiary audience” may
56
Some of Bacchylides’ dithyrambs were apparently titled, as were Simonides’ dithyrambs and
historical elegies (cf. Lowe 2007: 174). The testimony of Herodotus (1.23) may be taken to
indicate that Arion was the first to have titled (ὀνομάσαντα) his dithyrambs. It appears that
Athenian dramatists were giving their own titles to their works “from the 470s at any rate”
(Sommerstein 2010: 11). In general, on the importance of assigning unique titles to literary texts
as a symptom of an emergent literary culture, cf. Miner (1990: 22–3).
57
Nagy (1994: 18–19), who uses the notion of “overload”; Athanassaki (2004: 337–9, but see Morrison
[2007: 93]), Carey (2007: 199–200); Pavlou (2010: 4–5), with an overview of scholarship.
A particularly complicated case is O. 6, which may have been designed for performance both in
Stymphalos and in Syracuse (see Chapter 3, n. 113). For a general survey of the performance venues
of Pindar’s epinikia, see Neumann-Hartmann (2009).
58
On circulation, re-performance, and fifth-century reception of Pindar’s choral lyric: Irigoin (1952:
5–28); Hubbard (2004, 2011); Currie (2004); Morrison (2007, 2012). A scholiast reports that O. 7 was
dedicated “in golden letters” at the temple of Athena Lindia on Rhodes (Drachmann 1903: 195).
59
Morrison (2007: 10); emphasis in the original.
explain his propensity to generalize away from the current occasion.60
These aspirations are clearly at odds with the primacy of oral
performance by a chorus, which epinikion inherits from the embedded
poetics of communal ritual.
A further notable feature that indicates a collision between two kinds of
poetics in Pindar is the so-called encomiastic future, a term describing
statements such as “I will sing” and “I will praise” that seem to refer to the
present moment of performance. D’Alessio recently argued that such
statements are often meant to reveal Pindaric epinikia as being something
other than impromptu performances, since they dramatize “the process of
their creation – their history before the performance – even creating in
some cases a gap between text and performance.”61 The alternative, text-
internal interpretation of these metapoetic futures rests on a notion of
Pindaric “oral subterfuge,” his penchant for representing the odes as
improvised, spontaneous praise.62
More indirectly, we may discern a transitional pattern in what appears
to represent the occasional assignment of grammatical first person to the
victor in Pindaric epinikia.63 Such aberrant usage can be paralleled in
Russian marriage songs, where the bridesmaids singing use the first person
to refer to the bride. As Levinton suggests, this paradoxical assignment of
grammatical person values can be explained in two, not mutually exclusive
ways. The first-person may be reserved for the bride because of her
importance in the ritual situation (as opposed to the specific speech act).
Alternatively, the opposition between the first and second person can be
said to be suspended, so that both are contrasted with the third-person
“they” (the bridegroom and his friends); on the latter account, the singular
“I,” in effect, stands for an inclusive “we.”64 In Pindar’s epinikia, the victor
60
“‘Tertiary audience’, in contradistinction to the audience of the first and second performance, are
those audiences subsequent to the first which are to a significant degree removed in time and/or
space from the original performance of the ode” (Morrison 2007: 20).
61
D’Alessio (2004: 279). Instances of such a disjuncture, as D’Alessio demonstrates with reference to
both Archaic Greek and comparative evidence, can also be found outside self-consciously
authorial lyric.
62
The term “oral subterfuge” belongs to Christopher Carey (1981: 5); cf. also Leslie Kurke’s notion of
“scripted spontaneity” (1991: 112–13, 138). Further on encomiastic futures, see Chapter 3, n. 114. By
the terms “metapoetics” and “metapoetic” I refer to the text commenting on its status as an artifact,
including self-conscious references to the composer of the text, its performance, or any element of
the text’s poetics.
63
P. 8.56–60; P. 9.89–92; N. 4.41; N. 10.39–40; I. 7.37–51. For discussion, see D’Alessio (1994a: 130);
Currie (2013).
64
Levinton (1974: 152–3). For a similar usage in Russian wedding velichaniia, see Levinton (1995:
101–2). For an example of first-third person sliding in an Old Babylonian lament, see Bachvarova
(2008: 25–6).
is also central to the situation, and the celebrants (encompassing the kômos
‘the reveling band’ of the victor’s friends, the victor himself, as well as – at
least notionally – the poet) are grammatically malleable, often denoted by
an inclusive “we” or a singular first-person indefinite.65 The first-person
reference to the victor in Pindar may thus be explained as a folkloric
feature, retained due to the genre’s anchoring in communal oral
performance. Notably, this usage contradicts the expected logic of a
crystallizing literary author-function, evident in the tendency to claim a
monopoly over the grammatical first person.
3 A stratigraphic poetics
In and through its literary-historical argument on Pindar and the emer-
gence of the literary, this book tests a particular vision of literature and
literary study. Straddling the divide between the Archaic and the Classical,
the communal and the individual, the folkloric and the literary, the
Pindaric corpus calls with particular urgency for a method of interpretation
that goes against some widely accepted hermeneutic premises of literary
scholarship. Rather than upholding the putative organic integrity of the
literary artifact, we need to learn to stratify the text, uncovering elements
that point not merely to the immediate context of production and per-
formance but also to the past and future of literary forms. It is no accident
that the problem of unity of particular Pindaric odes was a source of
frustration to generations of Pindarists before being effectively laid aside,
along with other literary-critical concerns, in the context-oriented studies
of the last three decades.66 A Pindaric epinikion often flouts the aesthetic
presumption of a self-contained structure offering itself for contemplation,
much in the way a Walt Whitman poem or a Dostoevsky novel does.
Indeed, some of the most compelling close readings of Pindar poems focus
on sutures within the text, rather than on its artistic unity.67 On the
other hand, Pindaric epinikion is a powerfully coherent form, which was
destined for a fruitful reception as “the Pindaric (ode).” The study
approaches this particular paradox in two steps. First, it undertakes a
65
A.k.a. “general first person” expressing a view that is widely shared. See Bundy (1986 [1962]: 85, on
N. 1.33); Young (1968: 8–19); Carey (1981: 57); D’Alessio (1994a: 128).
66
On the problem of unity in Pindaric scholarship, see Thummer (1968: 1.7–12); Young (1970); and
Patten (2009: 144–86), who opposes the application of an Aristotelian notion of unity to Pindar. Cf.
Silk (2012: 358–9).
67
E.g., Nagy on Olympian 1 (1986, revised in 1990b: 116–35); Kurke on Isthmian 1 (1988) and on Paian
6 (2005); Martin on Pythian 8 (2004).
A stratigraphic poetics 23
stratigraphy of the Pindaric corpus, shifting focus from text to genre
and bracketing the author. Against this background of historical hetero-
geneity, it then becomes possible to appreciate the labor of synthesis, or
poetic synchronization, that produced the literary form instantiated by
Pindar’s poems.
The hermeneutics of stratification that I put forward takes its impetus
from the critical tradition of Historical Poetics. Within this tradition, texts
are viewed as agglomerates that are only partially controlled by the author,
in that they necessarily contain survivals of past cultural forms, reflections
of current sociopolitical and ideological milieus, and incipient elements
that will only be fully realized in the future. In short, this approach aims
at interrogating the literary text as a witness to the nonsynchronous quality
of historical time.68 The size of the Pindaric corpus, whose chronological
span covers about half a century, as well as its placement at a historical
moment of transition, makes it a particularly rewarding object of such
analysis. Yet the method of stratification is in principle applicable to any
text. In fact, one could argue that literary texts, in contradistinction to
other kinds of discourse, present particularly rich reservoirs of historically
variegated experience, due both to the diachronic depth invited by partici-
pation in literary tradition and to the self-consciousness with which that
depth is mined. The following theoretical considerations are thus offered
as a contribution to the ongoing conversation about the historical study of
literature.69
One of the most significant concepts for a poetics of stratification is
“survival,” yet it comes with a tangled and somewhat ambivalent legacy.
When Edward Tylor proposed this term in Primitive Culture (1871), it was
as a semantic calque of the Latin-derived “superstition,” a word incapaci-
tated for scholarly use by its negative connotations as well as its narrow
application to religion.70 It is ironic that Tylor’s concept of “survival”
would similarly come to be rejected within the currently dominant func-
tionalist paradigm in anthropology, from whose perspective it is seen
to index inferior evolutionary forms not fully at home in the present
cultural ecology. For Tylor, however, those precious bits of the past that
persist into the present are to be used for the purposes of reconstructing
a “primitive” past, rather than for charting an evolutionary teleology:
68
This particular vision of Historical Poetics was discussed at the ACLA panel on Historical Poetics in
Boston in 2012 and is put forward in print in Kliger (2012).
69
For interventions that are particularly relevant to the present project, see O’Gorman (2002);
Dimock (2006); Hayot (2012); Kliger (2012); Maslov (2013a); Kliger and Maslov (2015a).
70
Tylor (1920: 1. 72).
“With what vitality the notion of supernatural interference in games of
chance even now survives in Europe is well shown by the still flourishing
arts of gambler’s magic. The folk-lore of our own day continues to teach
that a Good Friday’s egg is to be carried for luck in gaming, and that a turn
of one’s chair will turn one’s fortune.”71 This kind of heuristic is, of course,
not an invention of modern anthropology. Carlo Ginzburg shows that
Thucydides already employed cultural survivals for the task of historical
reconstruction when, for example, he juxtaposed the evidence of old
burials with the contemporary custom of a conservative tribe. Ginzburg
refers to this method of historical inquiry as “archaeological.”72
Alexander Veselovsky’s pioneering work on the historicity of poetic
forms in the 1880s was in part inspired by the explosion of ethnographic
studies on traditional societies, in particular by Tylor’s Primitive Culture.73
The inspiration that Veselovsky drew from empiricist comparative
ethnography – whose global vision presented a sharp contrast to ethno-
centric work on Indo-European comparative mythology – was not limited
to the possibility of reconstructing the earliest stages in the evolution
of verbal art. In particular, Veselovsky detected in Tylor’s concept of
“survival” an essential tool for understanding the coexistence and evolution
of cultural forms.
For Veselovsky, inherited motifs and images enter literary works not as
conscious borrowings, but precisely as the unrecognized patrimony of the
past; their renewed relevance is explained by a “suggestiveness” dictated by
subtle analogies in social conditions.74 On the level of culture as a whole,
Veselovsky’s work on the Russian and Western European Middle Ages led
him to the conclusion that the coexistence of two kinds of culture, popular
and elite – and in particular of two religions, pagan and Christian – is an
essential characteristic of historicity. In this regard, dvoeverie, a term that
properly refers to a coexistence of a residual and a dominant religion,
becomes not an exception, as both the notion of superstition and Tylor’s
“survival” would suggest, but a rule with which any student of culture
must reckon. Dvoeverie is the formula for the historical condition as such.
The recognition of the past’s persistence guides much of Veselovsky’s
work on Historical Poetics. In his 1893 lecture, published under the title
“From the Introduction to Historical Poetics: Questions and Answers,”
he interprets, in the spirit of contemporary ethnography, the Milesian tale
71 72
Tylor (1920: 1. 80). Thuc. 1.6.2; Ginzburg (1999: 45–6).
73
Zhirmunskii (1979 [1940]: 113–28).
74
On suggestiveness, cf. Veselovsky (2015a [1894]: 61–2); cf. Chapter 2, Section 6.
adapted by Apuleius for the inset novella on Psyche and Cupid in the
Metamorphoses as a survival of totem-based prohibition against exogamic
marriage.75 Veselovsky’s interest, however, is not piqued by the ethno-
graphic datum in itself so much as by the view it offers on this plot’s
first reconceptualizing episode, which he compares to its later Christian
interpretation as an allegory of the soul’s yearning for God. In general,
Veselovsky’s use of the term perezhivanie (from pere- ‘over’ and zhit’
‘to live’), whose principal meaning is ‘experience’, to render Tylor’s
“survival” entails a particular theory of the historicity of human experience.
Very much like a folk lyrical song, whose sentiment must be generic in
order for it to survive, individual psychic experience is possible in so far
as it actualizes or recycles inherited cultural forms. In contrast to Tylor,
who detects survivals in practices that are meaningless for the present
community of practitioners, for Veselovsky, the past is rendered relevant
in and through the experiencing individual, whose social and psychic
disposition makes ethical or artistic practices viable, that is, present.
One way of capturing this vision of historical stratification is through a
metaphor of geological sedimentation, which Veselovsky frequently uses to
evoke strata of meaning accumulated during cultural evolution. In this
regard, antecedents for a hermeneutics of stratification should be sought in
German thought. Thus, Friedrich Schlegel in On the Language and
Wisdom of the Indians (1808) asserted that “the distribution of races of
men, like the internal formation of mountains to the geologist, supplies a
portion of our lost historical records, laying before us, as it were, a ground-
plan of history,” which a historian of culture should investigate in the same
way “as the skilled geologist, attentively observing the position of the
various strata of the earth.”76 Schlegel’s philosophical presuppositions,
however, are a far cry from Veselovsky’s. A closer analogue to his method
of Historical Poetics can be found in Burckhardt’s remark that “[c]ountless
elements . . . subsist in the unconscious as an acquisition bequeathed
to mankind perhaps by some forgotten people. An unconscious accumu-
lation of vestiges of culture in peoples and individuals should always
be taken into account.”77
What distinguishes Tylor’s and Veselovsky’s archaeological model from
this geological conceptualization of history is the recognition that survivals
75
Cf. Lang (1884: 62–84).
76
Schlegel (1849 [1808]: 501–2, Book 3, ch. 2). On the significance of this text as well as on different
metaphors for conceptualizing the history of language and culture in the period, see Morpurgo
Davies (1998: 67–88).
77
Burckhardt (1979 [1871]: 94).
are not random relicts left behind by forgotten ancestors, but tokens of a
meaningful preexistent cultural system. This recognition was aided, first
and foremost, by advances in comparative linguistics (as well as, secondar-
ily, comparative mythology), which developed intricate techniques for
reconstructing earlier forms of language on the basis of inherited elements.
Interestingly, Saussure’s distinction between synchrony and diachrony was
a theorization of this structural presumption, in that language was con-
ceived of as a series of diachronically distinct, yet synchronically valid
systems. The privileging of synchrony, with which Saussure’s Cours is
primarily associated and which would characterize structuralism in literary
studies, proved consonant with the functionalist vision of culture that
came to dominate twentieth-century anthropology and occluded the
stratified quality of historical time, thus severing cultural analysis from
historical inquiry. Modern contextualism, while no longer committed to
the structuralist or semiotic theory of culture, remains indebted to this
naive synchronism, since it retains a functionalist tendency and displays
little interest in theory of history.78 Yet however forcefully dominant
cultural or ideological forms strive to colonize the present, the historical
condition, as Tylor and Veselovsky remind us, necessarily lives by more
than the official creed.
Superstitio, or dvoeverie, mark the surplus of meaning, the immensity of
the past that always exceeds the relative poverty of the present. In his work
on the renovation of old plots, Veselovsky recognized the past – and not
the present – as the chief resource for the future, which is thereby rendered
unpredictable rather than linearly determined by a narrative of progress or
decline. The lure of the past is paradoxical: “we are drawn by antiquity’s
apparent finality, in spite of the fact that we ourselves half inhabit it.”79
Survivals are not elements destined to die away, caught by the ethnog-
rapher at the threshold of extinction; they are the seeds of future forms that
will, in fact, outlive the present that had once overlooked them:
These exist in a dark, hidden region of our consciousness, like much that
we’ve undergone and experienced [perezhitoe], apparently forgotten, but
then they suddenly overwhelm us as an inexplicable revelation, as a novelty
that is, at the same time, an outmoded antique, something we cannot fully
account for, because we are often unable to define the essence of the psychic
act that unpredictably renewed in us these old memories. The same holds
78
For a critique of “normative historicism” and the “presentist and dissociative form of historical
thinking” that it induces, see Hayot (2012, quotation on p. 168).
79
Veselovsky (2015a [1894]: 42).
true in the life of literature, both popular and self-consciously artistic: old
images, echoes of images, suddenly appear when a popular-poetic demand
has arisen, in response to an urgent call of the times. In this way popular
legends recur; in this way, in literature, we explain the renewal of some
plots, whereas others are apparently forgotten.80
The quality of being a novelty and an antiquity at the same time consti-
tutes a cultural-historical equivalent of déjà vu, which explains the appeal
of literary forms and fashions that can, at any moment, be regenerated.
This notion of the past is obviously at odds with any vision that imposes a
succession of stages onto the history of culture, one version of which is
represented by orthodox Marxism, although the Marxist approach to
cultural forms as social phenomena is otherwise close to Veselovsky’s.81
Fredric Jameson’s work on genre, in particular since he is openly
indebted to the Russian literary-critical tradition, furnishes an intriguing
complement to Veselovsky’s Historical Poetics. Jameson finds the ultimate
aim of literary interpretation at the level of “the ideology of form,” which
reveals the social origins of different, historically disparate elements in the
text. This presupposition is based on the recognition that
every social formation or historically existing society has in fact consisted in
the overlay and structural coexistence of several modes of production all at
once, including vestiges and survivals of older modes of production, now
relegated to structurally dependent positions within the new, as well as
anticipatory tendencies which are potentially inconsistent with the existing
system but have not yet generated an autonomous space of their own.82
In accord with this vision of historical time, literary texts are “crisscrossed
and intersected by a variety of impulses from contradictory modes of
cultural production.”83 Jameson demands that we “break the reifying habit
of thinking of a given narrative as an object, or as a unified whole, or as a
static structure,” and instead focus on “rifts and discontinuities within the
work.”84 Where Jameson’s analysis falls short is in its extraction of specific
ideological messages that “the sedimented content” of forms such as genres
are postulated to carry. For Jameson,
80
Veselovsky (2015a [1894]: 60).
81
Ernst Bloch, who coined the term Ungleichzeitigkeit “non-synchronicity” in 1932, saw the persistence
of the past into the present as inimical to the leftist project (1977), and his condemnation is echoed
in the contemporary Soviet rhetoric calling for the eradication of peasant and religious “remnants”
(perezhitki). By contrast, Raymond Williams, in a different historical context, revalorizes the
“residual” as potentially harboring values that are oppositional to the “dominant” capitalist order
(1977 [1932]: 121–3).
82 83 84
Jameson (1981: 95). Jameson (1981: 95). Jameson (1981: 45).
in its emergent, strong form a genre is essentially a socio-symbolic message,
or in other terms, that form is immanently and intrinsically an ideology in
its own right. When such forms are reappropriated and refashioned in quite
different social and cultural contexts, this message persists and must be
functionally reckoned into the new form . . . The ideology of the form itself,
thus sedimented, persists into the later, more complex structure as a generic
message which coexists – either as a contradiction or, on the other hand, as
a mediatory or harmonizing mechanism – with elements from later stages.85
In Jameson’s framework, furthermore, the only meaningful message that
can be sedimented qua form is that of social conflict; thus, for example, he
views pastoral as a “folk” element that entered high literature.86 The risks
of narrow sociologism are particularly obvious when one takes into view
cross-cultural borrowing of poetic forms; in this context, they carry covert
ideological “messages” pertaining to regimes of meaning-making that
extend far beyond relations between classes or social groups.
The approach narrowly based on the mode of production proves
unsatisfactory inasmuch as elements of genre do not simply retain their
original sociological content, once they are relegated to the domain of the
(political) unconscious, but instead evolve in time. In other words, Jame-
son underestimates the distorting operations that “antiquity” undergoes as
it is being repeatedly recycled as a “novelty.” Although the moment of a
cultural form’s origination may be correctly identified by the scholar who
constructs its genealogy, the relevance of the original socio-symbolic
message needs to be argued anew for each episode of reappropriation.
The politics of form therefore cannot be taken for granted.
Provisionally depoliticizing Jameson’s term, one might call the resources
out of which humanity, time and again, extracts old cultural forms and
reanimates them the “cultural unconscious.” Among twentieth-century
thinkers, Hans Blumenberg was perhaps the one most attentive to the
workings of the cultural unconscious.87 In an important piece,
“The Distortion of Temporal Perspective,” Blumenberg refers to Tylor’s
85
Jameson (1981: 141).
86
Olga Freidenberg also made use of the notion of formal sedimentation in discussing Pindaric
epinikion. See Chapter 4, Section 3.
87
The recognition of the nonsynchronous quality of historical time in some cases found its way into
the work of other theorists. Thus Victor Turner, overlooking Tylor, cites the art critic Harold
Rosenberg for the view that “the culture of any society at any moment is more like the debris, or
“fall-out,” of past ideological systems, than it is itself a system, a coherent whole” (1974: 14); this
quotation is used by Kurke (1991: 88, 91) in her analysis of the persistence of gift-exchange after the
spread of money and commodity exchange.
notion of survival to dispute Ernst Cassirer’s mystifying view of the
“origin” as that which endows myths with sanctity:
On the contrary, it is the proving of a content over a long period of time
that confers on it the quality that is attributed to the origins . . . Why is
that? It is because what is subject to time’s wearing away and slurring
together can only have survived as a result of a capacity for impressing itself
strongly . . . The confusion between resistance to the effects of time and
‘timelessness’ belongs among the almost metaphysical forms of carelessness:
How glad we would be to find that what has come down to and remained
for us is also what most deserved this, as the truth itself, the ‘ancient truth’.
But it is only undated material of indefinite duration, and its indifference to
the expenditure of time, that parades under the title of immortality.88
There is no immortality, Blumenberg suggests, apart from that permitted
by mechanisms of cultural survival. Yet where Tylor found a mere “Good
Friday’s egg,” Blumenberg discovers a treasure-trove of what is most
valuable in human culture. Moreover, in marked contrast to Veselovsky,
who allows for sudden resurrection of the seemingly irrelevant, Blumen-
berg valorizes the continuity of traditio, the handing down of stories that
are subject to a quasi-Darwinian cultural selection.
As Siegfried Kracauer remarks with regard to Gadamer’s Truth and
Method, the banishing of transcendental assumptions may lead to the
“absolutization” of history, which “hallows historical continuity and sanc-
tifies actual tradition without looking for truth criteria outside.” Even as it
“shuts out the lost causes [and] the unrealized possibilities,” history
becomes “a success story.”89 While this critique may well be applied to
Blumenberg, his politically pointed piece quoted here is, in fact, written
from the position of the losing party. In particular, Blumenberg mounts an
attack on the reigning post-1968 ideology of imagination:
What we find empirically present – and not only in organic nature –
distinguishes itself, in contrast to the accomplishments of imagination, by
the wealth of unexpected material in its forms and modes of behavior. No
imagination could have invented what ethnology and cultural anthropology
have collected in the way of regulations of existence, world interpretations,
forms of life, classifications, ornaments, and insignia. All of this is the
product of a process of selection that has been at work for a long time,
and in that respect, in this analogy to the mechanism of evolution,
approaches the stupendous variety and the convincingness of the forms of
nature itself.90
88 89
Blumenberg (1985 [1979]: 160–1). Kracauer (1995 [1969]: 199).
90
Blumenberg (1985 [1979]: 162).
Ironically, even as he praises the wealth and diversity of inherited cultural
forms, Blumenberg reifies them as inert and passive resources, granting to
human reason and imagination (reason’s naïve self-negation) the power to
annul that precious heritage: “There are moments in which the outcomes
of centuries and millenniums are thoughtlessly sacrificed.”91 Veselovsky’s
account, by contrast, does not allow for exceptions to the workings of
cultural regeneration, although admittedly he does not consider the ques-
tion of how the cultural unconscious is maintained and enriched (or
impoverished).92 Literature, in any case, appears for him to be the privil-
eged domain where the forgotten and the archaic await a redemptive
future. This perception is echoed in Robert von Hallberg’s recent assess-
ment: “Poetic diction consists of faux archaisms. Poetry, archival and
utopian, resurrects forms of expression and conception that might be more
regularly accessible if history’s losers had been winners.”93 One may go a
step further: poetry reminds us of the limitations of a present that pretends
to be history’s arbiter.
One may ask whether Historical Poetics, whose methods were honed
in the analysis of oral and popular lore, has a way of coming to terms with
unique works of art, in which the principle of individuation seems to
take precedence over the workings of genre. These texts often retain their
appeal for centuries, approximating the “limited” immortality of
which Blumenberg speaks. Classics such as Homer’s Iliad or Cervantes’
Don Quixote become survivals, comparable to those ancient rituals,
commented upon by Tylor, that persist as children’s games. Indeed, it
is hardly incidental that such works, with the passage of time, tend to
become perceived as appropriate childhood reading. Yet what explains
the precarious longevity of these individual works? For an answer to
this question, we may turn to one of Mikhail Bakhtin’s last theoretical
statements, his 1970 responses to questions posed by Novyi Mir
magazine.
It is a mistake, Bakhtin contends, to explain the enduring significance
of canonical texts by the author’s individual genius. These texts embed
centuries of popular lore and linguistic practice and, by virtue of this
extensive participation in cultural history, enter what Bakhtin calls
91
Blumenberg (1985 [1979]: 163).
92
Veselovsky, like Blumenberg, displays no interest in how a new form might come about. On this
methodological blind spot, which Veselovsky’s Historical Poetics shares with New Historicism, see
Somoff (2015b).
93
Von Hallberg (2008: 13).
“Great Time.”94 It is this same quality of enduring literary works that
explains their claim to truth, a claim undermined by a contextualist mode
of reading:
Trying to understand and explain a work solely in terms of the conditions
of its epoch alone, solely in terms of the conditions of the most immediate
time, will never enable us to penetrate into its semantic depths . . . The
semantic treasures Shakespeare embedded in his works were created and
collected through centuries and even millennia: they lay hidden in the
language, and not only in the literary language, but also in those strata of
the popular language that before Shakespeare’s time had not entered
literature, in the diverse genres and forms of speech communication, in
the forms of a mighty national culture (primarily carnival forms) that were
shaped through millennia, in theater-spectacle genres (mystery plays, farces,
and so forth), in plots whose roots go back to prehistoric antiquity, and,
finally, to forms of thinking. Shakespeare, like any artist, constructed his
works not out of inanimate elements, not out of bricks, but out of forms
that were already heavily laden with meaning, filled with it.95
Bakhtin’s invitation to read Shakespeare as a distillation of the cultural
longue durée is in part realized in the work of Stephen Greenblatt, who
uncovers “a whole range of powerful energies, rituals, and experiences”
embedded or appropriated within Shakespearean drama.96 To take Bakh-
tin’s insight one step further along a Veselovskian path, one might
hypothesize that the more heterogeneous, the more stratifiable the text,
the deeper its engagement with the past and the more power it has to
endure in history. On the other hand, the task of extricating or unraveling
these historical threads or strata of meaning is more challenging in the case
of acknowledged great works of literature, in part because of the reifying
and essentializing operations that our culture is continually performing on
them, but also due to the synchronizing effects that have to be clarified
with reference to the poetics of each particular author and text.
So against the traditional hermeneutic paradigm that puts the inter-
preter in a position analogous to that of the addressee of a message that
needs to be deciphered or clarified, Historical Poetics proposes a
stratigraphic paradigm of reading. The text is approached as an artifact
94
To analyze the longue durée of American literature, Wai Chee Dimock proposes a similar notion of
“deep time” by which she refers to “a set of longitudinal frames, at once projective and recessional,
with input going both ways, and binding continents and millennia into many loops of relations, a
densely interactive fabric” (2006: 3–4).
95
Bakhtin (1986 [1970]: 3–5).
96
Quotation in Greenblatt (1988: 10). Shakespeare’s manifest genre hybridity was detested in the Neo-
Classical period (cf. Silk, Gildenhard, and Barrow [2014: 277, 284]).
of a past culture that has no unique intention or origin associated with it,
but is instead a multivalent mark of its historical moment. Furthermore, it
contains different layers of sedimentation and is thus also a metaphorical
site of archaeological inquiry. The task of Historical Poetics is to identify
these semantic strata, restoring the full testimony that the text gives about
the pasts and futures contained within itself. (One of these futures is
always the future of the inquirer, for any effort at excavation is driven by
a present interest.) These kinds of textual archaeology have determined the
two most fruitful lines of inquiry within the tradition of Historical Poetics.
First, it is the study of the history of particular forms (e.g., metrical form,
metaphor, the figure of parallelism, chronotope), which aims at relating
literature to other kinds of historical knowledge – that is, at reading it
symptomatically.97 Second, Historical Poetics has focused on the study of
genres or texts that have no unique origin and for that reason call for a
stratifying approach; I have in mind such genres as epics, fairy tales, or
Medieval legends.98
In sum, Historical Poetics views literary forms as sedimented responses
to the social world, perpetuated beyond their moment of origination.
As such, they both enable transhistorical continuity and attest to the
nonsynchronicity of any particular historical “period” or “context.” From
this perspective, literary texts appear as complex, multilayered structures in
which some elements are preserved from the past and other, emergent ones
point forward to the future. By virtue of its standing between different
worlds – Archaic and Classical, communal and individual, folkloric and
literary – Pindar’s epinikia furnish a particularly rewarding test case for
such a hermeneutics. In this way the two kinds of archaeology that this
book pursues – the “Foucauldian” and the Veselovskian – come together.
One investigates the “conditions of possibilities” of literature as a signify-
ing practice as it was constituted in Archaic Greece.99 The other puts
forward the stratifying method inspired by Historical Poetics and
97
E.g., Veselovsky on parallelism (1940 [1898]: 125–199 = 1981: 148–236.); Freidenberg on poetic
figuration (discussed in Chapter 2); Mikhail Gasparov (1999) and Marina Tarlinskaja (1989) on
meter and their historical connotations; Zhirmunsky on rhyme (1970 [1923]); Bakhtin on genre and
the chronotope (1981 [1975]).
98
E.g., Propp on Russian fairy tales (1984 [1928]); Veselovsky on migrating motifs in Medieval legend
(e.g., the studies collected in Veselovskii [2004]); Bakhtin on Rabelais (1984b [1965]).
99
The phrase is used by Michel Foucault in clarifying the object of “archaeology” as a method distinct
from the historical method: “. . . what I am attempting to bring to light is the epistemological field,
the episteme in which knowledge, envisaged apart from all criteria having reference to its rational
value or to its objective forms, grounds its positivity and thereby manifests a history which is not
that of its growing perfection, but rather that of its conditions of possibility” (1970 [1966]: xxii).
congenial theories of literary form. With Pindar as its object, the second
type of archaeology is in service of the first.
In Chapter 1, I propose a new theory of authorship as a function of an
intrinsic literary-historical dynamic, whereby renewal and proliferation of
genres is linked to the transformation of the author-function. Following
two opening sections, in which I present a comparative analysis of the
symbiosis of authors and literary forms, I turn to the constitution of
Archaic Greek literary culture. I first discuss the evolution of the system
of poetic genres in Archaic Greece, focusing on the social and ideological
milieu that favored the differentiation of discursive forms. More tenta-
tively, I then reconstruct the earliest phases in the history of Archaic Greek
poetry based on the evidence of meter and dialect. In Section 5, I focus on
Archaic Greek metapoetics and trace two text-internal manifestations of
authorship: designations of the poet-performer and the invocation of the
Muses, a diegetic frame that represents individual composition through a
trope of divine agency. In the two concluding sections, I turn to Pindaric
epinikion, which displays a transitional, proto-literary author-function.
This author-function is composed of three elements: the authority of
communal voicing, inherited by Pindar’s choral medium from cult song;
the social persona of the poet-composer; and the distinctive diegetic
framing intended to signal a unique authorial stance as well as a unique
genre (or poetic “brand”). It is the merging of these elements that accounts
for the notoriously elusive quality of the Pindaric speaker, discussed in the
concluding section, in which I present a stratigraphy of Pindar’s corpus
based on the quality of the ego and the distribution of epinician motifs.
Chapter 2 focuses attention on Pindar’s poetic practice, in particular, on
his use of imagery. The opening section presents some considerations on
the historically variable relation between the traditional mythological
image, the (unique) poetic image, conventionalized symbol, and allegory.
I then discuss the ambiguous position of Pindar’s figures, which are at once
endowed with the spontaneous, ad hoc quality of poetic imagery, a
tendency to encode concepts rather than experiences, and a proximity to
religious (in particular, personified) ideas. In particular, I argue that
Pindar’s use of the genealogical metaphor, a trope that describes the
relation between concepts through an image of kinship (e.g., “heavenly
waters, the raining children of a cloud”), stands midway between the
Hesiodic (theogonic-mythological) and the Platonic (philosophical-
allegorical) usage. I then consider the structure of Pindaric metaphors
more generally, showing them to be a subtle conceptual mechanism
whereby the vehicle serves to define the semantically deficient tenor.
Symptomatically, among Pindar’s similes, it is the Pindaric ego that most
frequently appears as a tenor. Finally, I present a synoptic reconstruction of
various forms of figuration and their historical relations.
The resources behind the authority of the Pindaric speaker are the
central concern of Chapter 3, in which I argue against a “mimetic” model
of deriving poetic authority from the speaker’s assimilation to a figure of
social authority. My two case studies take up Pindar’s engagement with
mantike ‘divination’ and marturia ‘witnessing’. In the case of mantike,
epinikia and Pindar’s non-epinician cult poetry diverge significantly:
whereas the choral speaker in cult songs can be compared to a mantis
‘seer’, in the epinikia Pindar shuns such assimilation and makes almost no
references to contemporary practices of divination, instead conjuring, in
mythic sections, a vision of legendary (“intuitive”) mantike. In this case,
poetic authority accrues not from a direct claim to religious authority but
from the strategic use of an authoritative social discourse. A similar con-
clusion is suggested by Pindar’s redeployment of a potent cultural notion
regarding a god’s periodic visit to a cult site, divine epidêmia. Turning
to the language of oaths and witnessing, it is possible to discern a depend-
ence on a communal mode of authorization. In Pindar (in contrast
to Bacchylides), marturia is more often employed not in the context of
attesting to the reality of the victory, but rather as a device for projecting
the loyalty of the speaker(s). Pindar thus represents a moment of transition
between two historically distinct paradigms of juridical veridiction – one
based on an archaic form of collective oath-taking by a group of supporters
and the other on the modern notion of incidental witnessing.
The late Archaic victory ode appears to have been the first major
attempt in Greek literary history to merge historical specificity (“actuality”)
and mythical narration, and this task demanded a hitherto unprecedented
effort of mutual calibration of past and present discursive forms. Chapter 4
investigates Pindaric epinikion as a genre that not only hybridizes preex-
istent resources but achieves their poetic synchronization within a new
formal structure. Moreover, the evidence of metapoetics suggests that
Pindar’s work of synthesis was highly self-conscious, in that he often
represents the epinician performance as an artifact composed of different
(musical and thematic) constituents. Based on readings of two epinikia
(Isthmian 2 and Isthmian 8), I discuss the various techniques of
synchronization Pindar employs. I then turn to the diachrony, seeking to
uncover the original formal composition of the victory ode in contradic-
tions that, in spite of Pindar’s labor of poetic synthesis, have remained
unresolved. I conclude with an examination of two genres that enter
epinikion as its ancient patrimony and which therefore are best poised to
illustrate both the presence of the past in poetry and Pindar’s individual
achievement in making this past into a present: hymnos ‘cult (choral) song’
and prooimion ‘the opening statement, (often) a prayer or invocation’.
As I suggest based on the analysis of the peculiar agentive use of hymnos
in Pindar, the folk tradition of choral song that he continues very likely has
a long genealogy, and possibly Indo-European roots.
chapter 1
Authors, forms, and the creation

of a literary culture
The rise of the literary is perhaps most tangibly reflected in the transform-
ation of the structures of authorship and ownership of texts: from
the anonymous to the biographically specific, from the collective to the
individual. The prevalence of choral performance in traditional societies,
established by ethnographers in the late nineteenth century, furnished the
starting point for Veselovsky’s account of the progressive individuation of
the mode of performance and of particular poetic genres.1 This account
was based on a broad synthesis of comparative evidence, and in relation to
Archaic Greece it demands both theoretical finessing and historical speci-
fication. The phenomenon of the literary is not merely a correlate of
individuated performance; it implies a particular cultural attitude toward
the text, its producer, and its long-term reception.
In the canonical narrative of Archaic Greek literary history, it is the age
of lyric that inaugurates the postfolkloric author-function. Pindar’s stand-
ing as novem lyricorum longe princeps – by far the greatest of the nine
Archaic lyricists2 – as well as his close association with choral genres makes
him the ultimate test case for any interpretation of the rise of literary
authorship out of collective poetic praxis.3 The age of lyric, however, bears
witness not only to a multitude of individual authors; it was also a time of
remarkable proliferation of kinds of poetry, when political elegy, theatri-
calized iambs, psychologically nuanced love lyric, camaraderie-inspired
1
The major conclusions of Veselovsky’s Three Сhapters from Historical Poetics (Veselovskii [1899] 1940:
200–382; Italian trans. in Veselovskij 1981: 237–75) are valid in light of more recent anthropological
research (see Meletinskii 1986). For the variety of choral modes of performance (not limited to unison
singing) across world cultures, see Lomax (1962, 1980); Grauer (2006).
2
Quintilian 10.1.61.
3
The preservation of the four books of the epinikia does not necessarily reflect the classical assessment
of Pindar’s oeuvre. In the list of genres for which Pindar was renowned, Horace (Odes 4.2) mentions
dithyrambs and hymns before victory odes. These genres, however, were also intended for choral
performance.
36
Comparative literary history and the lyric 37
drinking songs, and a variety of cult-related poetry all existed side by side.
Authors and forms are intimately related within the emergent phenom-
enon of literature; a literary tradition – in contrast to practices of preliterary
oral performance – implies a distinct mode of historicity that employs
individuality as a marker of inherited discourse, that is, as a way of
anchoring a distinct verbal structure in historical time. For this reason,
the foundational moment of Western literature is not the birth of the
individual. It is a more particular transformation that must be brought to
light: the coming into being of a new kind of signifying practice in which
the individual (author) and the singular (text) become the chief means of
conceiving of tradition.
This chapter presents three consecutive approaches to the dialectic of
author and form in literature. First, in Sections 1 and 2, I put forward a
comparative analysis of the proliferation of genres, followed by a new
theory of literary authority conceived of as a historical phenomenon.
The next three sections address the constitution of the literary field in
Archaic Greece, especially in relation to the different manifestations of the
author-function. Finally, Sections 6 and 7 focus on Pindar, particularly as a
poet of epinikia, and use the foregoing analysis to shed new light on one of
the perennial problems of Pindaric scholarship, the interpretation of
first-person grammar.
1 Comparative literary history and the forms of lyric

In the course of its history, Western poetics has accumulated a large
inventory of genre names that appear to be synonymous and are often
used interchangeably. One such grouping of kindred forms includes
bucolic, eclogue, idyll, and pastoral. Similarly, in the domain of public
varieties of lyric, some of the partially overlapping terms are Pindaric and
Horatian ode, hymn, hymn-ode, encomium, panegyric, susceptaculum, as well
as political, praise, or epideictic poetry. One way to deal with this termino-
logical exuberance is by assuming that these names refer to historically
distinct literary forms that were conflated because of certain common
features. Thus, among properties shared by many “odic” genres, one could
count an expressly political motivation (the text is addressed to or commis-
sioned by an individual or community), a grand – be it nationalistic or
metaphysical – stance that reaches beyond the poem’s immediate occasion,
the use of the high stylistic register, a prominent (“oratorical”) speaking
persona, and reliance on epideixis, the power of verbal description to make
objects visually present.
38 Authors, forms, and the creation of a literary culture
The establishment of such parameters opens the way for typological
comparison between literary forms. A literary-historical account, however,
would have to begin with the recognition that many elements of the odic
genres – including all those listed earlier – originate in Graeco-Roman
antiquity. The profusion of genre designations, however, serves as a
reminder of multiple ruptures in the continuity linking classical and post-
classical forms. More specifically, typological and genealogical consider-
ations are at odds with each other, as odic functions such as epideixis or
oratorical voicing, while deriving from a classical precedent, operate differ-
ently in different kinds of public lyric. It is possible to seek refuge from
these dilemmas in a hermeneutics that relates the text primarily to its
immediate context. Yet, a narrowly construed historicism would overlook
the problem of the profusion of kindred genres altogether. A methodo-
logical conundrum seems inescapable.
I believe that continuity and differentiation of literary forms must be
confronted on their own terms, as a problem of historical change within
literature. Contextualism and traditional accounts of literary conservatism
(whether construed as heritage, citation, or borrowing), while apparently
opposed to each other, are similar in one respect: they fail to provide a
rigorous theory of literary history.
In the wake of structuralism and deconstruction, the challenge of
theorizing literature historically – rather than linguistically, aesthetically,
or sociologically – has been underappreciated.4 Admittedly, literary history
recently began attracting some attention, particularly among scholars
working under the wide banner of “world literature.”5 By and large,
however, the historical gets a short shrift within the kind of comparatism
usually associated with this paradigm.6 In anticipation of new intellectual
impetus, literary history, in practice, remains informed by older
approaches. To assess the spectrum of current methodologies, one may
turn to the studies of the reception of Pindar and the Pindaric ode, which
underwent a certain boom in the 2000s. Within this fairly narrow field,
there persists, first of all, the familiar literary-historical narrative, the story
of Great Writers engaged in disinterested conversations over time and
space.7 A different vision regards literary history as an arena in which
4
Notable exceptions include Jauss (1970); Guillén (1971); Japp (1980). For meta-theoretical accounts
of literary history, see Moisan (1987); Perkins (1992).
5
Dimock (2006); Moretti (1998, 2000); Beecroft (2008); cf. Pettersson (2006).
6
For a critique along these lines, see Kliger (2010). Cf. also Hayot (2012).
7
This approach informs most studies in the afterlife of the Pindaric corpus (on topics such as “Pindar
and Horace,” “Pindar and Hölderlin,” etc.); Vöhler (2005) is a recent example.
writers struggle to overcome their predecessors.8 While in some ways
inverting the traditional notion of literary history, it rests on the same
assumptions (attention is accorded only to major figures) and invites
similar hermeneutics (biographical, psychological, psychoanalytic). Both
the traditional and the contestatory approaches tend to reify analytical
categories into timeless problems of aesthetics confronted by any writer
(art, tradition, poetry, poetic voice, the reader, etc.).9 Finally, a third
approach, rooted in the philological tradition, considers literary history
in relation to the cultural ambience of a particular period and/or nation,
largely foregoing the task of inquiring into the specificity of literary
phenomena.10
The discipline of comparative literature has offered little aid in keeping
theoretically informed literary history afloat. Context-oriented literary
readings, when subjected to comparative synthesis, can only promise what
are essentially typological conclusions. Such conclusions may attain a
certain historical validity if they pertain to a single “period” or “epoch”,
such as the Renaissance, Romanticism, or Modernism.11 Such a limitation
imposed on comparative literary history excludes from its purview any
inquiry that spans different historical periods, or seeks to uncover the
nonsynchronous nature of historical time.12
The study of the literatures of Ancient Greece and Rome in relation to
later European literatures is often legitimated by the notion of the Classical
Tradition.13 The term itself, however, is somewhat misleading because it
carries with it the implication of coexistent alternative “traditions.” It was
8
This approach is much indebted to Harold Bloom’s work (e.g., Bloom 1982), as well as to the quasi-
sociological view of literary praxis as competitive jockeying for symbolic capital.
9
Fitzgerald (1987) seeks to uncover a problematic peculiar to “the Pindaric mode in Pindar, Horace,
Hölderlin, and the English ode,” suggesting that the Pindaric mode is itself one such timeless
category. Hamilton (2003) combines the Bloomian framework with occasional discussion of
cultural ambience.
10
Examples of this approach include Gelzer (1981); Henkel (1981); and Revard (2009).
11
This is what Paul de Man meant when, in his 1966 inaugural lecture for the chair of Comparative
Literature at the University of Zürich entitled “Wordsworth and Hölderlin,” he described
comparative literature as “an attempt at reflection, differentiation, and generalization that rests
upon interpretive comparison” (de Man 1984 [1966]: 48). Within these broadly defined historical
unities, poets may be said to share the same intentions – or, as de Man puts it, “the core of one and
the same problematic” (60). The danger of reducing comparative literature to an ancillary of
intellectual history is particularly obvious here.
12
Note de Man’s own shift from a view of literary texts as vehicles for the philosophical problems of
their “age” to deconstructive analysis of poetic language, i.e., to the application of philosophical
ideas of his own day to all of literature. On the inherent risks of positing self-contained historical
periods, cf. Perkins (1992: 63–71); Hayot (2012: 147–60).
13
E.g., Grafton, Most and Settis (2010). For a recent vindication of this notion in the context of a
polemic with reception studies, see Silk, Gildenhard, and Barrow (2014), esp. 5–13.
only following the rise of the bourgeois state in the nineteenth century
that national literary traditions were recognized as something more than
episodes in the transnational Progress of Poesy initiated by the Greeks,
itself part of the logic of translatio studii. In short, the concept of the
Classical Tradition runs the risk of naturalizing and thus obscuring a
fundamental oddity of Western literatures – their shared historical depth
that reaches back to literatures written in two extinct languages.
What all these approaches share is a tendency to assimilate history of
literature to intellectual history. Yet history of thought, cast as a series
of original contributions by self-conscious individuals, offers no more than
a partial analogue to the dynamics of conservatism and innovation in
literature. More precisely, continuity and proliferation of genres are ill at
ease with the received view of agency in literary praxis; it is for that reason
that they fall outside the scope of aesthetics, contextualist historicism,
period-based comparative inquiry, as well as approaches modeled on
intellectual history.14
For Historical Poetics, genre has been a central concern, not so much
due to its value for writing literary history, but because it was cast as a
paradigmatic manifestation of the historical being of literary (and indeed
of cultural) forms. Veselovsky’s basic methodological assumption – the
idea that poetic forms have a history that is independent of any given
writer – was accepted by members of the OPOYAZ circle (now commonly
referred to as the Russian Formalists).15 The same underlying insight
informs Mikhail Bakhtin’s reflections on “genre memory” in Problems of
Dostoevsky’s Poetics, where he provocatively argues that the dialogic forms
of Dostoevsky’s novels derive, via the Abenteuerroman, from the late
classical genre of spoudogeloion (“the Menippean satire”).16 It is the access
to the longue durée of literary history, with all its attendant risks, that
makes this notion of genre particularly appealing.
On one level, Historical Poetics provides a way of reframing the
question of “influence” – in particular, the “influence” of classical models
14
Veselovsky sought to part with general aesthetics, and aligned literary scholarship closely with the
history of social thought; in English, see Veselovsky (2013 [1863], 1967 [1870]); on the study of
genres, see Veselovsky (2015a [1894]). Tynianov’s studies on literary evolution and genre include
“The Ode as an Oratorical Genre” (2003 [1922–1928]), “The Literary Fact” (2000 [1924]) and “On
Literary Evolution” (2002 [1927]).
15
Some reflections on Veselovsky’s ideas as a common denominator in the methodologies of Bakhtin
and scholars who espoused the “formal method” can be found in Shaitanov (2001) and Maslov
(2013a). OPOYAZ stands for “Society for the Study of Poetic Language” (Obschestvo izucheniia
poeticheskogo iazyka).
16
Bakhtin (1984a [1963]: 109–37).
and texts. In any literary text, there coexist traditional (genre-based) and
innovative (text-specific) elements. Historical Poetics invites us to dwell on
the aspects of form and literary language (meter, dialect, rhetoric, imagery,
thematics) endowed with complex and ever evolving historical connota-
tions, which can only partially be controlled by the author. The text is thus
seen as a repository of the cultural unconscious, rather than as a receptacle
of diverse individual influences mediated by the master-poet. This insight
is, of course, a broadly shared property of European Modernism. In the
domain of literature, T. S. Eliot’s insistence on the primacy of “tradition”
over the “individual talent” is perhaps the most familiar example of this
questioning of individual agency.17 Nor is it incidental that, in this respect,
Historical Poetics goes halfway to meet poststructuralism, which pro-
claimed the death of the author. Roland Barthes’ demonstration of endless
semantic possibilities of a text in S/Z can be compared to Mikhail Gaspar-
ov’s work on thematic associations of different prosodic forms in Russian
lyric, too nuanced to be intentionally pursued by the poet.18
The obvious objection to any approach that privileges genre (tradition,
textuality, etc.) is its unwillingness to confront the reality of innovation,
particularly patent in literature. The stratifying method, which is expli-
cated in the Introduction, replaces the dialectic of tradition and the
individual author with a notion of nonsynchronous copresence of past
(sedimented) and future (emergent) forms. The apparent coincidence
between the categories of the “emergent” and of the “individual,” however,
deserves closer scrutiny. What accounts for the strong intuition that the
“author” forges the future, whereas “tradition” belongs to the past?
As I argue in the next section, authors are often no more than a way of
naming new forms. At the moment a new genre is created, both the author
and tradition become visible in a way they are not in preliterary verbal art,
in which both innovation and self-conscious references to the past tend to
be submerged in an essentially ahistorical continuity of practice. Authors,
in the West, have tended to appropriate the vitality of forms for them-
selves, casting the tradition as a resource, a laboratory, or a playground.
Authors always claim novelty, because they are summoned at the birth
of forms. Moreover, the poets are not mere midwives of forms called forth
by a historical demand, but contribute to their making. It is surely
significant that the notion of poet as a “maker” (poiêtês) emerged in
Ancient Greece. Literature may be said to begin when poets become
17 18
Eliot (1961 [1917]: 13–22). Barthes (1974 [1970]); Gasparov (1999).
conscious of the limited yet indisputably creative role assigned to them in
the life of forms. I return to this set of concerns in Chapter 4.
In the remainder of this section, I offer some observations on the logic
of proliferation of literary forms. In “The problem of speech genres,”
Bakhtin introduces the distinction between primary and secondary
(or ideological ) speech genres; the latter, which tend to depend on writing
and include literary and “scientific” genres, are deemed secondary in part
because they subsume or play upon the primary, spontaneous genres
of verbal interaction (such as greeting, expressing condolences, etc.), as
in the case of the realist novel that mimics multiple everyday social
scripts.19 Bakhtin did not develop this insight into a full-fledged theory
of the evolution of literary genres, nor did he comment on the prominence
of genre distinctions in literature, compared to their relative covertness in
everyday social interaction. In fact, this contrast confirms Roman
Jakobson’s claim that literature constitutes a peculiar, experimental mode
of language use.20 I would locate this peculiarity, however, not only in the
organization of the literary text through the “poetic function,” but also
in the structuring of the literary field itself, which privileges genre
differentiation.
This observation may appear paradoxical to a student of modern litera-
ture, in which literary genres are few and patently related to nonliterary
forms of discourse.21 In part, this modern condition of literature may be
explained by the intensification of the proliferation of forms, which is
in some ways comparable to a similar phenomenon in Archaic Greece.
This resulted in the rearrangement of the functions of author and genre in
favor of the former, individuating principle, whereby new forms (Byron’s
long poem, Tolstoy’s historical novel, etc.) are conceptualized as “authors,”
not as “genres.” Two centuries ago, by contrast, in major European
literatures there existed a whole set of text types, such as – to list only
kinds of lyric with classical provenance – elegy, anthology piece, epigram,
pastoral, and the ode (in its Anacreontic, Horatian, and Pindaric varieties).
19
Bakhtin (1986 [1952–3]). For a discussion of the evolution of genres in Greek literature that reflects
(but also challenges) Bakhtin’s analysis, see Silk (2013).
20
Jakobson (1987 [1960]).
21
Tzvetan Todorov notes that a modern poem is more akin to a prayer than to a historical novel
(which is in turn closer to historiography than to other literary forms), concluding that nowadays
literature is nothing but an ideological abstraction (Todorov 1990 [1978]: 11). Commenting on the
putative disappearance of the phenomenon of genre itself, Fredric Jameson hypothesizes that
“generic contract and institution . . . along with so many other institutions and traditional
practices” has fallen casualty “to the gradual penetration of a market system and a money
economy” (Jameson 1981: 106–7).
In the early nineteenth century, the preservation of a relatively rigid system
of genres in countries like France or Russia (in contrast to Germany and
England) can be related to a stronger hold of Neoclassicism; other literary
traditions, such as that of Italian Renaissance poetry, furnish indigenous
genres whose boundaries are, in some ways, even more rigid than those
demanded by Neoclassicism.22
How do such systems of genres come about? There is no doubt that
some literary genres derive from primary speech genres such as prayer or
lament.23 In other cases, when folklore can be seen to underlie a literary
phenomenon, one may speak of a preliterary genre continued by a literary
one. Importantly, while some preliterary genres are closely related to
primary genres of everyday interaction (lullaby, proverb, or encomium),
such a link is by no means necessary, as shown by epic, folktale, or
aetiological myth.24 In a culture in which a literary field comes into being,
only some preliterary genres become part of it; others may disappear or
subsist in the domain of popular lore (I will refer to such genres as
nonliterary). As for forms that enter the literary field, their preliterary origin
may become obfuscated as they undergo further genre differentiation.
Yet what precisely is the criterion of the literary in a genre? To return to
the earlier mentioned hypothesis, literature as a sphere of language use is
defined by the principle of the proliferation of forms. Literature does not
merely piggyback on the social world, with its multiplicity of pragmatically
distinct frames or scripts, but develops an independent system of genres
that may assume different functions; for instance, it can be mapped
onto sociological hierarchies or convey a spectrum of attitudes to historical
time. Primary speech genres, such as greeting, dinnertime conversation,
prayer, or lament are linearly structured by real-life experience. Similarly,
preliterary secondary genres are generally not treated as analogous or
abstracted into a superordinate common category, a genus proximum.
In fact, any such abstraction would necessarily involve a rudimentary
notion of the literary.
22
On the formation of genres (and the reinvention of classical genres) in the Renaissance, see Fowler
(1982, 2003). On normative systems of genre more generally, see Guillén (1971).
23
The problem of derivation of literary genres from “speech acts” is discussed in Todorov (1990 [1978]:
21–6) in terms of particular types of transformation (such as “narrativization,” “repetition,”
“thematic proliferation,” etc.); thus, he proposes to derive the genre of autobiography, by a
sequence of transformations, from an autobiographical “speech act” (“telling one’s story”); the
novel is explained as arising “from the infinite embedding of speech acts within others,” etc. The
preexistent secondary genres are disregarded. For the recognition that speech genres are constitutive
only for some artistic genres, cf. Medvedev (1978 [1928]: 13).
24
Such secondary preliterary genres are the focus of essays collected in Ben Amos (1976).
To take an example, a bride’s lament and a widow’s lament are prag-
matically distinct social scripts. Once a broader category of lament is
recognized, a poetics of lament, as well as the composition of fictional
laments, become conceivable. In 1814, Vasily Zhukovsky composed his
parodic “A Lament for Pindar (a Real Story)” (Plach’ o Pindare. Byl’ ), in
which a fallacious report that Pindar died at the age of thirty brings an
entire noble household to tears, including “a footman with a broom,”
“a pantryman next to his samovar,” and a groom in the stables. This
parody has many objects: high society, the Byronic image of the poet
(to which Pindar is bizarrely assimilated), the Sentimentalist propensity to
tears, and the Philistine disregard for historical difference exposed in a
worry that Pindar may not have had the time for a deathbed confession.
The verve of this text, however, derives from its ambiguous participation in
the genre of lament. In particular, Zhukovsky welds together the living
folk genre of lamentation and the established literary form of lament for
classical figures such as Adonis and Anacreon. In this regard, Zhukovsky’s
unusual poem is in fact exemplary. While ostensibly removing the senti-
ment from the real-world experience, literature exploits available generic
frames and the associated, socially conditioned psychological states to
deliver a multivalent commentary on history and society.
A literary text is always aware of its participation in a genre (or genres)
precisely because the redeployment of preexistent forms supplies its
chief semantic resource, making possible a nuanced response to unique
historical events that transcend the more or less predictable patterns of
social life.25 Whereas folklore tends to ignore (or naturalize) history,
literature is only conceivable in history; the speed of formal proliferation
may, in fact, be regarded as an index of historical consciousness.26
The quest for a rigorous criterion of the literary, however, calls for a
further distinction. The transfer of motifs between mythological and
25
On the notion of literature as “genred,” see Silverstein (1993: 35). The cognizance of genre can itself
become a marker of “the literary” precisely insofar as generic explicitness is peculiar to literature. Cf.
Derrida (1980: 64): “This can occur in texts that do not, at a given moment, assert themselves to be
literary or poetic. A defense speech or newspaper editorial can indicate by means of a mark, even if it
is not explicitly designated as such, ‘Voilà! I belong, as anyone may remark, to the type of text called
a defense speech or an article of the genre newspaper-editorial.’ The possibility is always there. This
does not constitute a text ipso facto as ‘literature,’ even though such a possibility, always left open
and therefore eternally remarkable, situates perhaps in every text the possibility of its becoming
literature.”
26
On the fundamentally ahistorical nature of folk genres, as compared to literary genres, cf. Jason
(1977: 9–12). Cf. Likhachev’s remark on the poetics of folk lament: “In contrast to the open time of
contemporary lyric, its ‘historicity,’ the artistic present of the lament is a closed one. The lament
narrates a single fate: the fate of a single human being or a family.” (1979: 244).
historical epic or the proximity of different varieties of fairy tale show that
the evolution of preliterary genres may also be driven by an analogical
dynamic. In literature, by contrast, the principle of the genus proximum
involves the yoking together, under a single superordinate category, of
genres that have different provenance. It hybridizes forms that are initially
or ostensibly dissimilar. With reference to the history of the novel, Thomas
Pavel proposes that “later forms of the novel are the result of multiple
attempts to blend these [early modern] subgenres together.”27 Thus, for
example, one of the milestones in the evolution of the modern novel is
Richardson’s Pamela or Virtue Rewarded, which “achieved an unpreced-
ented synthesis of the moral splendor of the idealist novel, the inner
tremors described by the pastoral and the elegiac story, the picaresque’s
closeness to everyday life, and the unity of action perfected in the
novella.”28
From this perspective, each new genre represents a higher-node abstrac-
tion that subsumes more than one preexistent genre. Indeed, as a rule, a
new literary genre incorporates both a preexistent literary genre and a
primary genre, the latter representing an interface between the literary
and the social sphere.29 This dynamic accounts for the profusion of near-
synonyms that I listed in the beginning of this section. The “odic” genres
represent a privileged vehicle for responding to historical events; this may
be the reason why these genres tend to proliferate more than others. For
example, epinikion incorporates the secondary genres of encomium, cult
song, and the primary genre of victory announcement; in other words,
each epinician ode is a text that belongs to all three of these genres. Latin
late antique prose panegyric sutures together the genres of gratiarum actio
and poetic panegyric from Pindar to Statius; the minor genre of Latin
medieval susceptacula builds on the genres of imperial panegyric, liturgical
chant, and so forth.
Bakhtin describes genre’s preexistent constituents as “forms that were
already heavily laden with meaning, filled with it.”30 In other words, these
27
Pavel (2013: 10). Pavel takes his cue from Erwin Rohde’s (1876) analysis of the Greek novel as “the
product of crossbreeding among the late epic, travel stories, and biography.”
28
Pavel (2013: 124). Further on the novel as a synthetic genre comparable to the Pindaric ode, see
Chapter 4, Section 1.
29
For the argument that genre innovation involves elements of “non-art” and pertinent remarks on
Athenian drama, cf. the discussion in Silk (2013: 30–7), based on one of the six “hypothetical laws”
of literary development put forward in Craig (1975 [1972]: 160): “A new genre is likely to piece itself
together out of motifs, styles, means of circulation that had belonged to some medium not thought
of as art proper.” In the case of drama, as Silk stresses, these elements may also be nonverbal.
30
Bakhtin (1986 [1970]: 3–5). I discuss this passage in the Introduction.
forms carry with them certain substantive content, which is only partially
reconstructable from the historical context that gave rise to the new genre.
On the contrary, for a “new” genre – always a synthesis of “old” ones – to
be viable, these elements must have been, initially, perceived as endowed
with the meaning and social potency they had in their original context.
Bakhtin’s notion of genre memory is first and foremost a mechanism of
cultural transmission and continuity, which is distinct from the one
operating in oral tradition.31 Furthermore, as has long been recognized,
literature provides an important vehicle of cultural dissemination: emo-
tions, subjectivities, and political stances are often conveyed from one
country and period to another by imported literary texts and genres.32
The archaeological method, which I discussed in the Introduction, allows
us to disinter a culture’s “unconscious”, which – at least until we have a
plausible typology of cultures – is the only way to explain its specificity
with regard to other cultures.
This, in particular, is the case of lyric poetry, about which Lydia
Ginzburg remarks that “there is no type of verbal art where tradition is
more powerful, retentive, and recalcitrant.”33 Genres of European lyric, in
fact, extend their roots so deeply in the prenational and transnational
historical pasts that it no longer appears paradoxical that lyric has stimu-
lated innumerable transhistorical, essentialist approaches.34 One radical
conclusion that might be drawn from this apparent paradox is that the
forms of subjectivity that lyric promotes, even as they appear to us to be
reflective of human personality as such, are in fact rooted in a history of
literary representation. Even the breakthrough into the depths of the
psyche heralded by the Romantic lyric may be an effect of a redeployment
of inherited devices, which it is a task of literary scholars to bring to light.
The Romantic elevation of the solitary author who breaks with
inherited forms in order to express a unique self is, however, not a
historical fluke, but a problem with which any theory of literary history
must come to grips. Perhaps most radically, Benedetto Croce built his
theory of “kinds” on the Romantic rejection of forms, which resulted in a
31
See Kliger (2015).
32
See, e.g., Veselovsky (2015b [1904]); Ginzburg (1991 [1971] 8–24); Paperno (1988); Lotman (1984
[1975]). Cf. van Gorp and Musarra-Schroeder (2000).
33
Ginzburg (1974: 11). See also Gasparov (2007).
34
Speaking of Greek lyric, Freidenberg remarks: “The lyric has been appallingly modernized [sc. in
modern interpretations] . . . Most damaging is that the very category is considered ahistorical and
universal. It is perceived as subjective feeling (or, in Veselovskii’s terms, emotional excitement), as
each individual’s inner voice or personal experiences and sufferings, identical in all periods and
among all peoples” (1991a [1946]: 5).
Toward a historical ontology of authorship 47
general denial of the historical significance of genres. Croce acknowledged,
nevertheless, that the impulse to innovate and the power of conventions
often end “with a compromise, and the kind is enlarged or accepts beside it
a new kind, like a legitimized bastard, and the compromise lasts, by force
of inertia, until a new work of genius comes to upset again the fixed rule.”35
Beginning with premises that are opposed to those of Historical Poetics,
Croce found himself facing the ultimate enigma of the persistence of forms
(here explained away as inertia). Conversely, the reality of individual
innovation has been a kind of epistemological conundrum for Historical
Poetics.36
Nevertheless, important precedents for a historically grounded theory of
authorship can be found in Alexander Veselovsky’s comparative study of
the evolution of the oral “performer” into the “poet” and Sergei
Averintsev’s work on avtoritet as a transitional form of literary author-
ship.37 It has become a truism that a difference in the author-function
marks a fundamental divide between folklore and literature: whereas the
former eschews individual authorship, the latter celebrates it. Does this
distinction invalidate an approach that posits genre as a shared principle of
folkloric and literary-historical dynamic? I propose to place the individual
author within the ecology of literary forms, seeing it as an element that is
crucial to genre renewal and proliferation. To advance this argument,
however, we first need to see the phenomenon of individual authorship
historically, not as the converse of inherited genre, but as a byproduct of
the transformation of preliterary genres into “literature”, a new kind
of verbal art in which tradition becomes conscious of itself.
2 Toward a historical ontology of authorship

By an inverse logic that often informs historically minded study of culture,
it was the crisis of a certain form of authorship that brought the problem
of the author into the focus of scholarly inquiry. The announcement of
the death of the author, most memorably heralded by Roland Barthes,
has prompted the question “What is – or rather what was – an author?”
35 36
Croce (1921: 55). Somoff (2015b).
37
Veselovskii (1940 [1899]: 317–47); Averintsev (1986: 109–10) (further discussion in Section 2). Note
also Steblin-Kamenskii’s observations on the differences between the lyric speaker found in Skaldic
and in modern poetry: in contrast to Skaldic poetry, the modern literary lyrical ‘I’ involves “a
particular combination of individuation and generality” that can project a notion of authenticity or
“sincerity” even if the speaker does not coincide with the biographical persona of the poet (1984:
216–29, quotation on 229).
One answer to this question was given by Michel Foucault, who pointed
to the historical variability of the “author-function.”38 Hannah Arendt’s
historical analysis of the foundations of political power in “What is
Authority?” was similarly a response to a perceived crisis of authority in
European civilization.39 It may seem paradoxical that no comparably
incisive statements emerged from the field of literary studies, in which
auctoritas is no less at home than in the domain of politics. In spite of the
Modernist celebration of the unconscious, literary scholars, on the whole,
have been reluctant to theorize individual poetic creativity as a historically
distinct mode of textual production, one that has a beginning and a
history – if not necessarily an end in sight.
More recently, moreover, the tide has turned, and a new appreciation
for individual agency has sought to compensate for the earlier emphasis
on structures or epistemes regulating or predetermining the subject.
New Historicism proposed one model for thinking of an individual,
self-fashioning “author” alongside a cultural system that enables such
self-fashioning. The current consensus in literary studies, overall, privileges
the former over the latter. Indeed, since the 1980s “authorship” has been
possibly the most discussed issue that lies at the intersection of literary
history and theory.40 In these works, authorship is, as a rule, historicized,
rather than taken for granted as a byproduct of literary genius, but it is
historicized as a creation of an individual strategically crafting an authorial
stance; literary history thus appears as an endlessly iterated effort at self-
promotion. In a somewhat surprising turn, a culturally dominant utilitar-
ianism has come to supplement the celebration of artistic creativity.
Recent work has nevertheless revealed some profound shifts in the
longue durée of literary authorship. A distinct mode of textual production
and a distinct notion of authorship have been argued to inform the Middle
Ages, the Humanist age, the age of the copyright, and the Romantic
period.41 In the wake of Parry’s and Lord’s work, literary critics working
on Greek literature have become used to acknowledging the importance of
38 39
Foucault (1984). Arendt (1961: 91–142).
40
On authorial self-fashioning in the English Renaissance, see Helgerson (1983); Cheney (1993, 2002);
Loewenstein (2002). Maehler (1963) and Selbmann (1994) instantiate the German scholarship on
authorial self-consciousness (“Dichterberuf ”). Beecroft (2010) similarly focuses on self-referential
descriptions (“scenes of authorship”) in early Greek and Chinese literatures.
41
On the Middle Ages, see Minnis (1984); Wachinger (1991); Kimmelman (1996); on Dante, see Ascoli
(2008), who also provides a useful summary of earlier scholarship on author(ity) in the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance (28–44); on Humanism, see Hobbins (2009); on copyright, see Woodmansee
(1994 [1984]); Rose (1988); on literary professionalism in the eighteenth century, see Griffin (2014:
171–85); on Romanticism, see Leader (1996); on Modernism, see Demoor (2004).
the oral storyteller, at least for the study of the Homeric epic.42 Taking
their cue from Walter Benjamin, scholars of Modernism have repeatedly
spoken of a particular type of human and literary subject, prompted into
being by the experience of European modernity. Literary authorship is also
being investigated as an institutional phenomenon, especially within the
confines of modern European literatures.43
In spite of these important advances, we still lack a theory of literary
authorship that would confront fundamental questions such as: What are
the social and epistemological conditions in which the ascription of the
text to a unique, biographically specific individual becomes a norm?
What is the basis for an authority that stems from – and accrues to –
the individual originator of a literary text? How is this kind of authority –
without which no institution of literary authorship would surely even
be thinkable – related to other kinds of authority existing in the social
sphere? In this and the following chapters, I hope to shed light on these
questions by considering the historical conditions of the emergence of
the literary in Archaic Greece. First, however, I offer some preliminary
theoretical observations.
The general failure to see literary authority as an element of a historically
constituted signifying practice (subtending any individual project of
authorship) has an intrinsic explanation. In the Western world, literary
authority is subject to far greater individualization than in politics, religion,
or law.44 The cult of personality is an inalienable property of literature
and art: literary authority does not even seem to exist as a phenomenon
that can be abstracted from “authorities” such as Shakespeare, Tolstoy, or
Proust. What impedes analysis even more is that a high regard for these
authorities appears to underwrite whatever cultural prestige literature can
claim nowadays. There is nothing to de-essentialize, it may seem, that is
not too precious to the literary scholar’s own sensibility.
In other words, the construction of a historical ontology of literary
authority is hindered by an intrinsic link between literary value and its
individual creator. One way to establish the genesis and the logic of
individuation of literary production is to juxtapose personalized authorship
and a historically antecedent mode of authority, the one found in
42
More recently extended to Ancient Greek prose; see Kurke (2011).
43
See, e.g., Rose (1988); Bourdieu (1996 [1992]); Dobranski (1999).
44
On the “cult of the individual” as a central property of Western literary imagination, see Meltzer
(1994: 2–7). For a polemical response to the debate on the author’s “death,” see Benedetti (2005
[1999]), who upholds the centrality of this category to literature.
traditional verbal art.45 What the history of Ancient Greek literature
teaches us is that the emergence of the author was not a result of a radical
break, or a conflict between the communal and the individual. Rather,
literary authorship was made possible by numerous factors pertaining to
the evolving poetic culture(s) of Archaic Greece, only some of which can
be reconstructed based on the meager evidence available.
Positivistic reasoning may suggest that texts begin to be ascribed to
individual authors at the moment when they begin to be composed by
individuals. As the history of Ancient and Medieval literatures amply
attests, however, it is not the case that any individually crafted text carries
with it the name of the author. Work on oral poetic traditions in different
cultures has revealed the extent to which a given performer may innovate,
without his name being recorded; the same is true of improvised texts that
do not even enter the tradition.46 Furthermore, anonymity cannot be
explained away by reference to illiteracy, as some Medieval cultures based
on the written word also do not assign texts to individual authors.47
A different, systemic explanation needs to be found for the phenomenon.
As Jack Goody writes,
[i]n oral societies a man’s achievement, be it ballad or shrine, tends to get
incorporated (or rejected) in an anonymous fashion. It is not that the
creative element is absent, though its character is different. . . . It is rather
that the individual signature is always getting rubbed out in the process of
generative transmission. And this process affects, though in a different
degree, not merely what in its written form we would call ‘literature’,
but more generally the categories of the understanding and systems of
classification themselves, for a dialectical relationship always exists between
the individual as a creator and the culture as a given.48
Perhaps the most visible manifestation of a culture’s “system of classifica-
tion” is its repertory of genres. In this light, it is to be noted that certain
genres, albeit expressly innovative, forbid the assignment of individual
authorship. Such is the case of the Russian genre of jocular tale, anekdot,
which arose in the context of Soviet urbanism in the first half of the
twentieth century.49 The telling of an anekdot presupposes that the speaker
heard it from someone else; the moment of the text’s origination is
45
As Likhachev remarks, “there is no author in a folkloric text not only because no information about
him is preserved, but because there is no space for him in folklore’s poetics; the author is not
required by the structure of the work” (1979: 237).
46
Lord (2000 [1960]); Bogatyrev (1969); on improvised texts in traditional societies, cf. Veselovskii
(1940 [1899]: 204–6).
47 48 49
E.g., Wachinger (1991). Goody (1977: 27). Shmeleva and Shmelev (2002).
occluded. The fiction that goes by the name of “collective authorship”
is not just the property of popular traditions of yore; it is a powerful
mechanism of authorization. Nor does the contrast between the author-
less and the authored permit positing some kind of developmental gap
between preliterary and literary civilizations. As the case of anekdot dem-
onstrates, the mode of authorization is assigned not by a historically or
culturally prevalent attitude, but by the genre to which the text belongs.
It is all the more significant that literary discourse, as conceived of in the
Western world, comprises genres that enforce individual authorship.
Moreover, it is precisely the ascription of individual authorship that unites
these genres into what we recognize as a literary system.
Individuality lies at the heart of the logic of literature. Yet it would
be naïve to assume that individual authorship makes a text naturally
more authoritative or deserving of being remembered, copied or other-
wise preserved. If anything, the opposite is the case, as an individually
author(iz)ed text would resist modification that would make it appealing
to historically and socially variable audiences. Yet Western theoretical
reflection on authorship from very early on attests to the symptomatic
conflation: to be an author (an auctor) is to have authority. Medieval
Latin dictionaries derived the word auctor from a putative Greek noun
autentim meaning ‘authority’. The fact that no such Greek word exists
makes the cultural effort of locating authority in individual authorship
all the more apparent.50
It may be instructive to consider a parallel from the domain in which
the element of authority is, at it were, present in its purest form: the law.
The ascription of a legal code to an individual author is a phenomenon
that strikes us as archaic: contemporary Western societies, their celebration
of individualism notwithstanding, opt for constitutions and legal codes
that are anonymous.51 Foucault detected a similar, albeit less clear-cut
inversion of the author-function in the evolution of scientific and literary
discourse in the West. According to Foucault’s somewhat simplified
account, in the premodern period, scientific – but not literary – discourse
was regarded as individually authored, and the opposite is true of the
modern period. (In fact, individuation of authorship continues to be
50
Minnis (1984: 10, 219–20), who does not note that the Greek word was a fiction. The confusion
probably originated from a misreading of a rare Greek noun αὐθεντία ‘absolute authority,
restriction’. The Latin word, in fact, derives from augēre ‘to increase, cause to grow’ (DELL 57).
51
As Louis Dumont shows, individualism, while being “the cardinal value of modern societies,”
implies the basic principle of equality (1986 [1983]; quotation on p. 16). The latter is more easily
safeguarded by anonymous legal codes.
important in science, and Medieval literatures allowed for several distinct
varieties of author-function.)52
What makes individual authorship particularly interesting in the context
of archaic law is that it is often fictional: it involves ascription of inherited
proto-legal lore to a mythical originator. This case thus exposes something
fundamental about the nature of authority that derives from an individual,
rather than from community at large. The story about Solon, who left
Athens after having instituted his legal code, hoping in this way to save it
from modification, expresses an essential aspect of this phenomenon.53
An individual may be fallible and noncreditable when alive; absent or
dead, an individual author becomes a structural means that permits the
preservation of a textual corpus. Accordingly, this fiction arises when a
culture is invested in shielding a body of traditional lore from change
that would otherwise accrue to it over time. The individual author, in the
context of law, is – counter-intuitively – no more than a means of
cementing tradition. This device, however, becomes unnecessary in the
age of print, when the typeset written word makes texts ostensibly
inviolable.
Another reason for the decline of individual authorship in legal context
may lie in the method of legitimation. Whereas modern law derives its
authority from the Enlightenment narrative of universal history, archaic
law is rooted in the history of divine participation in human affairs.
The advantage of the fiction of individual authorship lies in its potential
for narrativizing divine intervention. In the Biblical narrative of the origins
of the Mosaic code, the individual serves as a proxy for divine provenance.
A human “author” is called for as a mediator (a “prophet”) that channels
divine authority. It is tempting to see, in this mode of legitimation, the
motivation for individuation of authority in literature. At different
moments in later Western literary tradition, from Horace to Hölderlin, a
claim to quasi-religious expertise or divine inspiration was part of the
author’s metapoetic strategy, or his self-presentation. In the Greek trad-
ition, stories of the Dichterweihe – a divine epiphany that initiated the
individual as an author – are told of Hesiod and Archilochus.54 There is,
52
Foucault’s thesis is critiqued and modified by Chartier (1994 [1992] 25–59); Kimmelman (1996);
Ascoli (2008: 26–8).
53
Plutarch, Solon 25.6.
54
Cf. Kambylis (1965). The Dichterweihe motif is also present in a Hellenistic biography of Pindar,
where he is said to have fallen asleep while hunting on Helikon, and either to have had a bee settle
on his mouth and construct a honeycomb, or to have seen a dream that his mouth was filled
with honey and wax and for this reason to have “turned to poetry” (ἐπὶ ποιητικὴν ἐτράπη
nevertheless, no sufficient evidence for seeing the Greek author as, in
origin, a mediator of divine discourse.55 As I discuss in Chapter 3, poetic
references to divine authority should rather be assigned to a broader
category of literary authority modeled on social authority; such supple-
mentary legitimation may be in demand in periods when literary authority
is undergoing a change and is particularly dependent on an anchor in the
social world.56 Admittedly, some of the earliest named participants in the
Archaic Greek poetic tradition are vaguely linked to religion (Orpheus,
Terpander, Musaeus). The significance of these semi-mythical figures
and of the poetic culture that they may have represented is assessed in
Section 4. At this point, it is sufficient to note that no texts of certain
ancient date are attached to their names.
A very different case is that of “Homer,” as it is indisputable that a large
corpus of exceedingly authoritative poetic texts was in fact associated with
that name throughout the Archaic period. As many Homeric scholars
would agree these days, the Iliad and the Odyssey are the work of two
different master-poets who remolded the preexistent oral epic tradition
into texts of outstanding artistic value. The early fixation of these texts
in writing, at a time when the alphabet was not yet widely used, is the
greatest enigma of Greek literary history. Scholars are divided on whether
writing was used in the composition of the Homeric poems, but it seems
undeniable, given the state of the technology of writing, that they cannot
represent transcripts of a spontaneous oral performance. Whereas it is
certain that at least two individual authors were at work in the composition
of the Iliad and the Odyssey, their names were irrelevant and were not
preserved. Instead, a fictional “Homer” was conjured as the originator of
the texts. The most likely context for “the invention of Homer” was an
effort of the rhapsodic clan of the Homeridai to present the text of the
Homeric poems as a fixed property of theirs. This view is confirmed by
M. L. West’s hypothesis that the name Homêros – otherwise unattested
and atypical of Greek names – represents a backformation from the word
Homêridai, whose ostensible meaning is ‘Homer’s progeny’ and which
lends itself to the likely etymology ‘men of the assembly’.57
Drachmann 1.1). Pindar’s interaction with the bees is projected back to his birth in a painting
described by Philostratus (Imagines 2.12).
55
Maslov (2009: 21–6), with further bibliography.
56
Particularly important in this context is Zhivov (1996), discussing the sacralization of the poet in the
changing culture of eighteenth-century Russia.
57
West (1999).
The case of Homer is overtly similar to that of Moses the lawmaker.
The fiction of individual authorship is intended to introduce stability into
an inherently dynamic tradition. The text as a more or less fixed artifact
apparently preexisted its ascription to an individual author; as I argue in
Section 5, the history of the emergent proto-literary culture, in fact, has left
traces in the Homeric poems. Furthermore, the existence of earlier poets
such as Orpheus must have made the fiction of the individual author of
the Iliad and the Odyssey viable in the first place. Yet it was with Homer
that an actual corpus, widely disseminated in the Greek world, became
associated with a specific individual. By force of analogy with Homer, all
later Greek authors could be thought of as individuals whose texts were
worthy of preservation. Literary authority was from now on generated
from within the literary tradition itself.
In her reflections on authority and tradition, Hannah Arendt remarks
on the uniqueness of the American body politic that insists on the
biographical specificity of the “Founding Fathers”. This individuation of
the authors of the American constitution conjures a historical tradition of
authority reaching back to a moment of political foundation. In Arendt’s
somewhat tendentious account, the American case, which she regards as
being true to the original Roman concept of auctoritas, illustrates the only
proper way to generate authority. What is more important is that author-
ity, for Arendt, is invariably a function of tradition. This observation seems
to hold true of any kind of tradition that is conscious of itself – that is, does
not collapse into practice, custom, or habitus. The recognition that these
kinds of tradition, rather than ruling out individual authorship, depend on
it, is essential for understanding literary authority in the Occident. Indi-
viduality is, in this sense, a cipher for self-reflexive historicity. Before
modern times, the historical past was populated by individuals, rather than
classes, nations, or genes; a tradition that claimed to derive from such a
past could only conceive of itself in terms of human individuals.
It is now possible to offer an answer to the questions posed earlier: what
makes individual authorship a central aspect of literary praxis? Why is
literary authority subject to individuation?
Individuality and, a fortiori, biographical specificity of the author could
only develop in a particular epistemological context. The distinctiveness of
literary discourse lies in a pervasive, obsessive awareness of its own histor-
icity, of its own nature as a trans-national and trans-lingual tradition that
reaches far back into the past. The oral poet, while also in some cases aware
of his predecessors, has a relatively restricted notion of tradition; instead,
he participates in a customary practice, an established genre of verbal art;
and it is, in fact, his or her own anonymity that makes that genre appear as
a continuous poetic praxis deprived of history. In this sense, the oral poet
can be compared to a speaker of a welcome address who may not be aware
of participating in a historically specific tradition of enunciating welcome
addresses. Literary poets, by contrast, perceive themselves primarily as
participants in a tradition, while at the same time being resistant to
subsuming their discourse under a clear-cut genre rubric. In this, literature
is distinct not only from oral tradition, but also from paralittérature, in
which particular works are perfectly at home in the genres of detective
fiction, adventure novel, romance, and so forth.58
To theorize literary authority is to recognize a paradox in literature: it is
a tradition that aims at transcending forms established by tradition. On the
one hand, genre is essential, because it is a token of the tradition into
which poets seek to write their names. But genre, in literature, also
undergoes a “permanent revolution,” since, for literature to retain its
historical quality, the individual author must interrupt the continuity of
genre by reforming it. The basic recipe for such reform was given earlier:
the renewal of the genus proximum through a new hybridization of
inherited forms. What motivates authors is participation in the tradition;
what they, in fact, must do to achieve this – whether consciously or not –
is to disrupt the established workings of form. If we focus on the logic
of literary evolution, the individual author appears as a function of the
process of genre renewal. An individual intervention in the literary trad-
ition, if it is successful, is sedimented as a new genre, which often bears
the name of its inventor, such as the Horatian ode, the Pindaric ode, or the
Petrarchan sonnet.
As I suggested earlier, the proliferation of genres is, first and foremost,
due to literature’s close relation to the neighboring cultural systems of
discourse, in that newly configured literary genres tap into nonliterary
ones. This principle of reconfiguration of preexistent genres – a textual
mode unique to literature – is made possible by individual authorship.
To reach beyond its generic context means to have a unique, individual
origin(ator). A new corpus entering the literary tradition is endowed with a
name vouchsafing its historical uniqueness – the name of the author –
which is at the same time a name for a new form, a hindrance and an aid
for future participants in the tradition.59 “Balzac” or “Tolstoy” – as we use
58
Beebee (1994: 3–7).
59
In her recent investigation of the origins of modern European lyric in the vernacular, which is based
on the study of Western Medieval genre of songbook, Marisa Galvez traces “the transformation
these words today – are only secondarily names of biographical individuals;
much more importantly, they are ciphers for particular varieties of the
novel, genres that are being perpetuated and reformed by later novelists.
In the same way, the words “Theocritus” or “Martial” stand for particular
genres, not unlike “elegy” or “pastoral.”60 More complex cases may also be
cited. It is a token of the multi-tiered quality of any literary system of
genres that authors like Virgil or Ovid, who are associated with several
text-types, can morph into supra-generic unities. For example, Renaissance
poets would pursue a Virgilian “cursus” by moving from bucolics to
didactic and then to military epic.61 The individual author, in this case,
appears to trump genre; in fact, he is transformed into a peculiar textual
unity, an abstracted genus proximum that persists in history precisely as a
generic model that may be iterated.
Extrapolating from Ernst Robert Curtius, one might say that canon-
formation, a process that elevates some authors to the status of “classics,”
is in many ways analogous to the perpetuation of genres.62 In fact, the two
methods of classification – by genre and by author – coexisted in the
history of criticism beginning with Quintilian, with individual “author-
ities” gradually gaining in importance. This dynamic is not peculiar to
literature, but also operates in the theological and juridical domain in
the Western Middle Ages.63 What has been, at least until very recently,
distinctive to “literature” is the coexistence of the functions of genre and
individual authorship. As I suggested in the Introduction, the continued
importance of genre may itself be regarded as a survival retained from
preliterary verbal art. As for individual authorship, it is a token of a
culture’s self-awareness of its verbal resources, of a determination to
of the proper name from a lyric presence to a name as rubric, which functions as a metonymy for
the poet and his or her corpus of lyric texts” (2012: 11). In particular, “names provide a memorial
structure for an archive and grant authority to [a] corpus of lyric poetry” (59). At the same time,
Galvez acknowledges that the very idea of organizing texts under proper names drew “from earlier
medieval collections of sacred writings such as pandect, traditions of saints’ lives, and Saint-
Jerome’s De viris illustribus” (Ibid.).
60
Sergei Averintsev identifies genres and forms that are named after an author (“David’s Psalms,”
“Sapphic stanza,” etc.) as a phenomenon particularly widespread in literary systems that are at an
early stage of transition from folklore (1986: 109–10). He describes this stage as “pre-reflexive
traditionalism” and terms its distinctive mode of literary authorship/authority avtoritet. In his
earlier work (1971: 222–3), he stresses the relative importance of avtoritet in Near Eastern
literatures, citing the titles of the books of the Hebrew Bible. I depart from Averintsev in
regarding literary authorship as more fundamentally implicated in the mechanism of genre
formation.
61
Cheney (1993: 23–76); de Armas (2002). This pattern is distinct from the transformation of Classical
authors into auctores whose citations (auctoritates) carry with them a moral or political authority.
62 63
Curtius (1990 [1948]: 253–56). Quint. Inst. Or. 10.1.128. Curtius (1990 [1948]: 261–8).
identify and objectify forms of discourse, whether it is a means of fixing a
preexistent text or a body of texts, or a way of controlling rapidly prolifer-
ating new forms. It is not unlikely that names get assigned to segments
of preexistent lore at a time when new textual practices arise that are
perceived as a threat to its integrity. The case of Homer may, again,
be instructive. While furnishing a precedent that prompted lyric poets to
think of themselves as authors, Greek epic may have crystallized as a
literary form in the context of Archaic Greece because it was a culture
where an increasingly large number of kinds of texts competed for autho-
rity. One may recall Foucault’s dictum: “the author is the principle of
thrift in the proliferation of meaning.”64
Within the historically evolving dialectic of individual effort and the life
of forms, literature, perhaps to a greater extent than other domains of
human praxis, has empowered particular men and women to participate in
the molding of discourse. This is to say that, however inadequate it may
appear today, old-fashioned literary historiography – populated by indi-
vidual authors who all stand as solitary originators, vying with each other
for greatness and self-consciously aware of each other’s achievements –
conveys an important truth about Western literature. The notion of the
Progress of Poesy, in which an author’s name becomes part of the list of
earlier masters, goes back to Horace’s Odes, and takes us to the origins
of European literature – to Homer, Sappho, Anacreon, Archilochus, and
Pindar. Western literary discourse is, in this sense, a tradition that derives
its authority from a foundation, in accord with the notion of authority
proposed by Arendt. This may, as a matter of fact, be the only property
characterizing the “Western” world for most of its history; it is the literary
(and artistic) tradition going back to the Classics, rather than any particular
religious, political, or “cultural” tradition, that permits us to speak of “the
West” as a unity. Beyond the façade of this tradition, ever-renewed yet
ever-conscious of its past, one detects the incessant hybridization of forms
made possible by individual authorship.
The authority claimed by each participant in a literary tradition has
several facets. Literary originality consists in the revision of genre – should
such a revision prove an illusion, the risk is epigonism – and this kind of
authority only accrues ex post facto, as the new form is either propagated
64
Foucault (1984: 118). What Foucault refers to as the “classificatory function” of authorial name can
also be deemed its generic function: “Such a name permits one to group together a certain number
of texts, define them, differentiate them from and contrast them to others” (1984: 107).
or forgotten.65 This proleptic authority would be impossible without a
retrospective authority that is derived from the tradition itself, that is, from
the awareness that it had generated authority in the past. As Émile
Durkheim remarks in his discussion of the production of religious author-
ity, “time by itself increases and reinforces the sacred character of
things.”66 Institutional structures that appear to organize the literary field
at any historical moment can supply an author with social authority, which
may aid the author’s entrance into the literary tradition. Genuine literary
authority, however, is conditional on the long-term success of the given
corpus as setting a new textual precedent, a nascent genre that may make
its author’s name “aere perennius” (“more lasting than bronze” Horace,
Odes 3.30) – or rather, make it last for as long as the tradition lasts.
The Horatian motto alerts us to one fundamental institutional aspect of
literary tradition: its self-conscious affinity with a political continuity.
Horace asserts that his fame will endure for as long as Rome lasts. Pushkin,
writing in the genre of the Horatian exegi monumentum, similarly relates his
poetic immortality to Russia’s imperial expanse. How does this emphasis on
linguistic or political entities coexist with the transnational and translingual
nature of the Western literary tradition? To answer this question, one
should once again consider the classical basis of this tradition. The notion
of translatio imperii – which permitted most Western cultures to claim, at
different moments in their history, a link to the Roman precedent – is
intimately related to translatio studii, the transfer of knowledge from one
nation to another. By claiming supreme literary authority, a place in the
global “progress of poesy”, the poet is at the same time claiming that this
progress has indeed reached his native land and – obliquely – that the
imperial tradition lives on in the nation to which the poet belongs.67
Literary authority is not only analogous but in fact historically linked to
the tradition of political authority Arendt traces to Rome.68 Yet in the case of
literature – this later rapprochement between politics and poetry notwith-
standing – the tradition’s origins lie not in Rome, but in Ancient Greece.
In the rest of this chapter, I discuss the history of Archaic Greek poetry
from the perspective of the archaeology of literature, that is, in a way that
would reveal the conditions of possibility of this signifying practice.
First and foremost, I analyze Archaic Greek poetry as a literary system in
65
For a genre, “not to endure, not to become, in Ferdinand Braudel’s words, a longue durée, is not to
emerge fully as a genre” (Guillén 1971: 386).
66
Durkheim (2008 [1912]: 277).
67
On the constitution of a national canon of classical authors, see Helgerson (1983); Past (1996).
68
Cf. Ascoli (2008: 22–3).
which genres and authors enter into different kinds of functional relations,
highlighting the different paths traversed by literary forms.69 Apart from
authorial names and personas, I dwell on different aspects of form – mode
of performance, meter, language – that contributed to the construction of
genres and could help us in reconstructing the contours of early Archaic
Greek poetic cultures that have left no direct textual record (Sections 3
and 4). In Section 5, I turn to the evidence of the speakers commenting on
their authorial roles and chart the history of Archaic Greek metapoetics.
Finally, in Sections 6 and 7, I turn to Pindar who synthesized communal,
socially embedded, and individual forms of authorization.
The momentous shift that the author-function underwent in the sev-
enth to fifth centuries bce in Archaic Greece is intimately related to the
proliferation of forms of lyric in that period. In his Entdeckung des Geistes,
Bruno Snell speaks of the rise of the subjective domain in Archaic Greece.
In Snell’s account, it is the age of lyric, coming in the wake of communal
epic, that inaugurates individual authorship. The association of lyric with
the subjective – and hence with the individual, the intimate, the private –
is dependent on one strand within the Romantic theorization of genre, and
on Romantic and post-Romantic lyric practice.70 There is no reason why
we should not regard “lyric” instead as communal and anti-individual.
Such was, in fact, the position taken by Schelling, and it is supported by
ethnographic data on traditional choral lyric; it is also corroborated
by recent work on the ritual and social contexts of Archaic Greek lyric.71
All of this makes it difficult to accept the grand narrative of universal
history on which Snell’s account is based. Yet we still need to explain the
remarkable proliferation of authorial lyric – poems thought to be authored
by an individual poet and featuring a prominent first-person speaker – in
the seventh to fifth centuries, a phenomenon unparalleled in other periods
of Greek history. While in general reliant on the idealist schema he shares
with Snell, Hermann Fränkel proposes a more nuanced account of the rise
69
Cf. Helgerson on the “literary system” structuring authorial roles in late sixteenth-century England
(1983: 2).
70
Snell (1960 [1946]) canonized the version of genre sequence preferred by A. W. Schlegel and Hegel
(epic > lyric > drama), not the one favored by Schelling (lyric > epic > drama); for further
discussion of the triad of genres, see Genette (1992).
71
To avoid the connotations of intimacy that the modern term “lyric” often has, Calame (1998:
esp. 109) proposes to reconceive of Archaic Greek melic, iambic and elegiac verse as “ritual” or
“performative” poetry. While I am in agreement with Calame in substance, I keep the traditional
term “lyric” to refer to this broad category of performed texts, inclusive of elegy and iambus.
Important modern discussions of communal aspect of Archaic Greek lyric include Calame (1997
[1977]); Rösler (1980); Krummen (1990); Kowalzig (2007).
of lyric. He notes that in the Archaic period “lyric was the characteristic
literary form, as heroic epic was for the earlier, and to an even greater
degree than tragedy was for the beginning of the classical age” and then
pauses to ask:
How did it come about that the short song came to be cultivated instead of
the long epic, and what does it signify? Apart from mere difference in
length, the lyric poem does not, like the recitation of a nameless singer,
resort to the past in order to fill leisure hours agreeably with traditional tales
of the olden times, but centers on the personality of the speaker, the time of
delivery, and the particular circumstances of its origin. In a certain sense
lyric stands in the service of the ‘day’ and is ephemeral.72
According to Fränkel, the prominence of the “personality” is part of a new
orientation of literary production in the Archaic period toward the hic-et-
nunc of its performance as well as (one may infer) of its ideological
conditioning. Lyric is “ephemeral”, or composed for the day, because, in
contrast to epic, it is pragmatically anchored in its immediate historical
milieu. In Christopher Carey’s concise formulation, Archaic Greek lyric
contrasts with epic as “small scale poetry focused on the present.”73
Fränkel’s account occludes the fact that the lyric song must have existed
before the age of lyric, in the time of epic’s putative dominance. What
changed in the Archaic period is that lyric became a literary phenomenon;
most obviously, texts began to be written down and to circulate under
their author’s name. More recently, Leslie Kurke has pointed to several
factors that contributed to the flowering of lyric in the Archaic period: the
introduction of alphabetic writing, which made it possible to record lyric
poems composed from the seventh century onward; the ideological func-
tion of ego-statements as formulations of social identity, which formed
the efficient cause for such preservation; the fact that many of these
ego-statements form a “generic mirage” as they are spoken by fictive
72
Fränkel (1975 [1951]: 133). The same emphasis on lyric’s “present-day” interest appears in a more
mechanical evolutionary schema in the Chadwicks’s account in The Growth of Literature: “In the
early history of Greek poetry, taken as a whole, we may conveniently distinguish three chief phases.
The first (I) which we may call ‘Homeric’ consists of the poetry of entertainment, intended
primarily for kings’ courts. The subjects are stories of the Heroic Age and of deities. The second
(II), which we may call ‘Hesiodic’, consists of learned didactic poetry. The subjects are antiquarian,
religious and gnomic. The third (III) which we may call after Archilochos – though he is typical
only of a section of it – consists of poetry which was composed for various purposes, but is not
primarily didactic. The subjects were mainly of present-day interest. Its affinities are in general with
modern literature. The milieu is urban. The society in which the authors lived, and for which they
composed, was that of the city state.” (Chadwick and Chadwick 1968 [1932]: 1. 595)
73
Carey (2000: 166).
personae (projected by a particular ideological position), rather than by real
individuals. In Kurke’s formulation, “the ‘I’ stiffens and takes shape on the
edge of ideological conflict; indeed, it demarcates the lines of social and
political contest.”74
In light of the theoretical considerations advanced earlier, I would
place the emphases somewhat differently. For the literary persona – the
“I” – to take part in an ideological conflict, one must have a literary
system in place in which authority has already been minimally individu-
ated. Moreover, in Archaic Greece, authors and authorial roles multiply
because the literary system is changing rapidly, with new forms renewing
the old ones. One major reason for the increased pace of transformation,
as Kurke suggests, lies in the sociological domain: poetic discourse is used
to voice various ideological positions, reflecting the conflict-ridden fabric
of Archaic Greek society. In other words, forms of discourse grow
responsive to history, inducing processes of renewal and proliferation,
which in turn call, with greater urgency, for individual authorship.
A variety of elegiac verse that expressed the viewpoint of a disgruntled
aristocrat receives the name of “Theognis”; Alcaeus is remembered as the
author who molded traditional lyric forms into a vehicle of a more
aggressive aristocratic stance. In other cases, the new kinds of authorial
lyric respond to historical change in ways that are less obviously socio-
political or more difficult for us to discern. Thus, Stesichorus elaborates a
new synthesis of the epic narrative and the lyric medium; Sappho
transfers popular love lyric to a specific, possibly educational context.75
Once we identify individual authorship as one function, among many, of
the proliferation of literary forms, the rise of lyric in Archaic Greece can
be seen in a new light. The next three sections are an experiment in
literary history that is both a history of individual authors and of genres,
which also seeks to reveal, rather than occlude, distinctively literary
aspects of poetic production by considering it in relation to the
social world.
74
Kurke (2007a: 153). Cf. Michel Foucault’s remark regarding the “plurality of self ” that is endemic to
the “author-function”: “It would be just as wrong to equate the author with the real writer as to
equate him with the fictitious speaker; the author-function is carried out and operates in the scission
itself, in this division and this distance” (1984: 112).
75
On Stesichorus and epic, see Burkert (1987); Stesichorus’s medium was also close to that of
contemporary kitharodes (Power 2010: 234–43). On Sappho and her use of speech genres:
Lardinois (2001).
3 Performance context, genre, and authority in Archaic

Greek lyric
There are two conceptions of genre that are put to work, and often
combined, in the study of Archaic Greek poetry. One approaches genre
taxonomically by positing a method of classification of texts by means of
unambiguous differentiating criteria, which are then projected backward as
historically relevant generic distinctions. Such an approach was apparently
used by Hellenistic scholars whose editions of Archaic lyric poets are at the
origin of the textual tradition that, in a few lucky cases, has reached our
times. Yet the exact criteria that guided these initial editorial decisions
are by no means obvious.76 The recent debates on the nature of the
notoriously multiform and ill-defined genre of paian have revealed
the impossibility of identifying formal criteria that would apply to all
attested paianes (and to them only).77
The other approach draws attention to the fact that all Archaic poetry
was performed, and suggests that genres, at least in principle, correlate
with performance context.78 Yet this approach cannot provide a panacea
to the problem of defining Archaic Greek genres. Strictly tying genres to
performance contexts would mean their endless multiplication (e.g., were
paianes sung in battle vs. in cult setting generically distinct?) as well as a
76
For the Alexandrian genre classifications see Färber (1936). The notion that they misrepresent
distinctions that were valid in the Archaic period was first formulated by A. E. Harvey (1955), whose
position is perhaps too stringent. Cf. his claim that “the modern division into ‘choral’ and
‘monodic’ [. . .] derives from a passage in Plato, Laws 764 d-e, and is of no particular value” (159
n.3; cf. Lardinois 1996: 156–7).
77
Paian encompasses a bewildering multiplicity of performance occasions (for an early statement to
this effect, see Diehl 1940: 109–12). Lutz Käppel (1992) concludes that performance context does not
provide a sufficient means for defining this genre, but his alternative “socio-psychological”
definition in terms of the Sitz-im-Leben is too broad (1992: 286). For criticism of Käppel (1992),
see D’Alessio (1994b) and Schröder (1999); the latter vindicates the formal approach to the genre.
Ian Rutherford, who on the whole favors the functional approach, blames the “eidographic
indeterminacy” of paian largely on the ancient critical tradition, which put too much emphasis
on formal criteria (2001: 90–108). In contrast to these scholars, Andrew Ford (2006) views paian as
an intrinsically fluid discursive formation organized around the ritualized paian-cry (“considering
paians as structures designed to pronounce paian” [287]). I take Ford’s analysis to imply that paian
was essentially a primary, not a secondary genre (see here on the possibility of applying this
distinction to the corpus of Archaic paians). One particularly vexing case is Bacchylides’ Ode 16
(Zimmermann 1992: 70; Rutherford 2001: 88–9).
78
Perhaps the most eloquent representative of this approach is Bruno Gentili (1988); see also Calame
(1974). Nagy (1990b: 362 n.127): “. . . the very concept of genre becomes necessary only when
the occasion for a given speech-act, that is, for a given poem or song, is lost” (referring to the putative
invention of genre in Hellenistic poetry). The central role of occasion in defining genres in the
Archaic period is widely accepted, see, e.g., Depew and Obbink (2000: 3), adducing this very
quote of Nagy, and Carey (2009a).
Context, genre, and authority in Archaic Greek lyric 63
disregard for existing genre distinctions (e.g., we know that texts of
different genres were performed at symposia). Crucially, “performance
context” is itself a notion that often requires a more specific definition
for which our knowledge of social life in the Archaic period is insufficient.
In fact, given the nature of our evidence, the study of poetic genres may be
a more rewarding starting point for a sociological inquiry into Archaic
Greece than vice versa.
The heuristic value of classifying texts according to their performance
context, in the case of Archaic Greek poetics, is due to its historical
proximity to poetic praxis observed in preliterate societies.79 In other
words, the significance of oral performance represents a survival, rather
than a synchronically valid structure that enforces strict genre-context
correspondence. In this regard, the Archaic Greek literary system does
not differ in principle from those that existed in Republican Rome or in
Renaissance England. In contrast to scholars who date the demise of
the occasion-bound poetics to the Hellenistic period, I believe that the
role of performance context as an anchor of genre is already on the wane
in the Archaic period.80 As Gregory Nagy argues, in a departure from the
hypothesis of the Hellenistic origins of literary genres, Archaic Greek
poetic genres not only compensate “for the destabilization of occasion”
but may be seen as “a formal device to recapture” it. This principle is fully
in evidence in Pindaric epinikion whose abundant references to the
spontaneous celebration following the victory (kômos) are explained by
Nagy as such an evocation of the original occasion.81
In sum, attested Archaic Greek genres can only partially be defined by
reference to their performance context. Notably, some genres such as
threnos and prosodion lend themselves more readily to such an interpret-
ation, due to their greater embeddedness in ritual life. Michael Silk speaks
of some contexts being “determinative” of genre,82 and one might
hypothesize, in light of comparative evidence, that such determining
79
The emergence of a literary system does not entail the disappearance of folk genres, although it may
entail a shrinking of the domain of folklore. Lambin (1992) collects the evidence for Ancient Greek
folk genres, which ranges from almost null (for lullabies) to considerable (for marriage songs). For
further discussion of the extant evidence, see Yatromanolakis (2009), who warns against attaching
evaluative judgments to the dichotomy of literary vs. “popular” poetry.
80
Robert Fowler distinguishes between “(1) purely ‘occasional’ poetry [e.g. “simple folk songs” –
B.M.]; (2) poetry with developed literary characteristics, but still connected in some way with an
occasion; and (3) purely ‘bookish’ or literary genres,” placing Archaic lyric mostly in the second
category (1987: 90). This typology does not capture well such crucial developments as the supra-
genre of choral lyric or the rise of elegy, which I discuss later.
81 82
Nagy (1994: 20). Silk (2013: 19–30).
relation is more likely in the case of discursive forms integrated into
social life. As observed by V. N. Toporov, in folklore, “the more ritualized
the genres,” the easier it is to establish their distinctive features. In
particular, the prominence of the ritual component corresponds to the
significance of “situations in which the given genre is actualized.”83
Apart from performance context, Toporov identifies indigenous
nomenclature as another kind of evidence for differentiating between
genres in a preliterary system. In our case, that means turning to genre
designations found in Archaic texts, rather than in Hellenistic book-titles.
Even within our fragmentary corpus, however, there is little consistency in
genre nomenclature, suggesting that it reflects not a stable, coherent
system, but one that is undergoing change. For example, the proper
Homeric term for epic was klea andrôn ‘lays of men’ (lit. ‘fames or famous
deeds of men’),84 while in the late Archaic and Classical period, when oral
epic was monopolized by the Ionian rhapsodes, this genre was referred
to simply by the name of Homer.85 Furthermore, while in the actual
hexameter corpus we find no single term that would unite the texts written
in this meter, in the Classical period poetry composed in hexameters was
referred to as epê (lit. ‘words’ or ‘utterances’).86 Similarly, no single
common term for poetry composed in elegiac couplets can be found in
Archaic texts. Yet one need not jump to the conclusion that these supra-
genres were not meaningful constituents of the Archaic Greek literary
system. For one still needs to explain why a particular meter and dialect
were chosen for seemingly diverse texts. In other words, these choices
reveal ongoing processes of genre formation that were not necessarily
obvious to those making the choice.
In other cases, the same word could be used both in Archaic texts and in
later taxonomies, but with different import.87 One such case is paian
whose polyvalence must be due in part to semantic broadening: the scope
of its meaning in the Iliad seems narrower than in fifth-century texts.
In this case, the semantic shift corresponds to a transition from a non-
literary (primary) to a literary genre. As A. E. Harvey remarks, “merely to
83
Toporov (1974a: 79).
84
And possibly aoidê as a designation of epic song, as proposed in Ford (1981).
85
For Pindar, as Gildersleeve put it, “Homer was a wide term” (Gildersleeve 1885: 302), as it
encompasses not only the Iliad and the Odyssey but also the poems of the epic cycle (P. 4.277,
N. 7.24–7). On the “preclassical Homer,” see Nagy (2010).
86
See Koller (1972) for a hypothetical reconstruction of the history of the word epos. Ford (1981: 36ff )
provides a detailed critique of this article. Notably, epê in the Archaic period could also be used to
refer to poetry written in elegiac couplets (Bowie 1986: 26–7).
87
Calame (1974: 119–20).
utter the ritual words ἰὴ παιάν or some metrical variation of them – was
‘to sing a paian to Apollo’ . . . and on many of the occasions when
παιανίζειν was customary – before or after the battle, for example – there
may have been nothing more than a rhythmical chanting of the ritual
formula.”88 The paians of Simonides, Pindar, and Bacchylides represent a
literary genre, albeit one that was relatively conservative, which developed
in a professional poetic culture in the late sixth century. A more startling
transition can be observed in the case of dithyrambos, in origin perhaps any
improvised sung prayer addressed to Dionysus. In the fifth century, we
find two very different versions of dithyramb: whereas Pindar’s dithyramboi
appear to evoke nonliterary cult songs in honor of Dionysus, Bacchylides’
look forward to narrative dithyrambs of classical Athens.89
Interestingly, Pindar presents the earliest Greek classification of genres
in a threnos preserved as fr. 128c, which lists five and possibly six kinds of
poetic performance: paians, dithyrambs, marriage songs, and, apparently,
two (or three) varieties of lamentations or dirges. As Claude Calame
observes, all these genres are linked to a god or a hero: paians are associated
with the “children of Leto of the golden distaff,” Apollo and Artemis,
dithyramb with Dionysus, marriage song with Hymenaios, and the two
kinds of dirge with Linos and Ialemos.90 Finally, Orpheus is mentioned
in a broken-off sentence that perhaps refers to a third kind of dirge.
(The special interest taken in the varieties of funereal song is easily
explained by the genre of the fragment in question.) Notably, for Pindar,
personal name serves as the principal means of designating a genre. In most
cases, these are names of the gods who are the objects or the recipients
of songs, not their authors. Indeed, Pindar personifies genres as songs
(ἀοιδαί) that “hymn” the eponymous god or hero (fr. 128c.6). Yet in the
case of the mythical poets Linos and Orpheus, whom Pindar mentions
last, these are also names of the inventor of the genre.91
This Pindaric move anticipates the systematic use of an author’s name
to conceptualize genres, which I discussed in Section 2 in relation to the
88
Harvey (1955: 172).
89
Harvey (1955: 172–4). The opposite process, that of semantic specification, may be observed in the
case of the term hymnos, which, starting in the Classical period, was used to refer to a poem
addressed to a divinity (but apparently excluding paians and dithyrambs), while in Archaic texts it
serves as an unmarked designation for a lyric poem. As I argue in Chapter 4, Section 4, originally
hymnos was an umbrella term for all choral genres.
90
Calame (1998: 101).
91
In P. 4.176, in a genealogical metaphor of authorship, the “much-extolled” Orpheus, the “phorminx-
player,” is called a “father of songs” (φορμιγκτὰς ἀοιδᾶν πατήρ . . . εὐαίνητος Ὀρφεύς). Further
discussion in Chapter 2, Section 4.
modern literary system. One early manifestation of this way of thinking
form – and one most conducive to lyric – is the phenomenon that Gregory
Nagy refers to as the “generic I”. In the Archaic period, the “generic I”
emerges as the principal criterion for genre differentiation, in that a
particular speaking persona becomes associated with a particular form of
lyric discourse. Authors – manifested qua speakers but also often named in
the text – become a tool by which discursive forms assert their identity and
capacity to make sense of the changing world.92 In effect, Archaic lyric
became an arena for ideological contestation in which particular authorial
personae – for example, those of Theognis or Anacreon – could serve as a
convenient platform for voicing a sociopolitical attitude. This could imply
composition of new texts in this or that persona (as in the case of
Theognis) or continued reperformance of texts by an author whose per-
sona the performers embraced.93 In other words, had there not been a
sizable number of aristocrats who were committed to the rhetoric espoused
by Alcaeus, his poems would not have survived until they became part
of the teaching curriculum in the Classical period. Unavoidably, the
proliferation of genres tied to a particular sociopolitical rhetoric compli-
cated the genre-context correspondence. This is especially evident in
the case of the symposium, which served as the performance-context
for several different genres.94 Already by the sixth century, genre was
92
Nagy (1994). On the phenomenon of lyric authorship in Archaic Greece as a function of genre
rather than a reflection of a biographical reality, see, inter alia, Bundy (1986 [1962]) (the self-
presentation of the epinikian speaker as a rhetorical device); Dover (1964: 208–12) (the use of
conventional personas in Archilochus); West (1974a: 26–33) (iambic poets as dramatic personas);
Griffith (1983) (Hesiod as a didactic poet); Nagy (1985) (Theognis as a “cumulative synthesis of
Megarian poetic traditions” [33]); Nagy (1990b: 79–80) (on the “appropriation of a historical person
by the poetic tradition in which that person is composing” in the case of Homer, Hesiod, and
Archilochus); Martin (1992) (Hesiod’s self-presentation as a metanastês); Calame (1995 [1986])
(poetic “I” as a “simulation” that only indirectly refers to the author); Edmunds (1997) (a
summary discussion based mostly on the Theognidea).
93
On the slipperiness of the boundary between enunciator (performer) and author (itself an instance
of “simulated I”) in Archaic melic poetry, see Calame (1995, esp. 3–15).
94
Cf. Silk (2013: 22). Interestingly, in the late Archaic and Classical period the sympotic context
appears to have generated a new nonliterary genre of skolion: a short song, performed to the
accompaniment of an aulos, whose lines could be shared by several symposiasts. Our chief
testimony is the corpus of the so-called Attic skolia, which contains borrowings both from
authorial lyric (Alcaeus, Pindar, Praxilla) and from folk genres such as proverb (paroimia) and
fable (logos). For the classic discussion of this corpus see Reitzenstein (1893: 3–44), who believes that
the impact of authorial lyric is a testimony to the degradation of the genre in the course of the fifth
century (esp. 44). Instead, I would suggest that the nonliterary skolion, at least in the form in which
it is represented by the Attic corpus, could have originally emerged as a supplement to the literary
genre which demanded accompaniment on the lyre and thus was clearly beyond the abilities of an
increasing number of symposiasts (see later in this chapter for a similar argument regarding the rise
determined by the text’s place in social mentality, not in the topography
of everyday or ritual life.
To trace the broader contours of the ideological appropriation of pre-
literary genres in Archaic Greece, I would like to turn to Olga
Freidenberg’s 1936 monograph Poetics of Plot and Genre, a work that was
influential on Bakhtin’s thinking about genre.95 It includes a particularly
lucid formulation of the ideological function of inherited folk genres in
Archaic Greek lyric. Following the Marxist sociohistorical narrative,96
Freidenberg locates the emergence of the new system of genres at the
moment of transition from tribal to class society:
Greek land-holding and trade aristocracy, engaged in the construction of
literature, still stands on folklore’s soil and cultivates the material of the
ancient worldview which it inherited from the tribal period . . . Lyric poetry
is constituted as a result of re-conceptualization and reorganization of
laments and abuse, invectives, invocations and praises; this re-
conceptualization takes place primarily by way of humanization, that is,
by the introduction of social elements that are selected through the prism of
class consciousness. Tyrtaeus’s elegy emerges when it is necessary to incite
aristocratic youth to fight for the power of the military Spartan elite;
Theognis’s elegy ceases to be a gnome-driven lament97 and becomes a
literary genre once this lament is converted by the poet into a weapon of
class enmity; Solon’s elegy and Pindar’s ode serve political, patently class-
oriented interests, etc. . . . Each lyric song is addressed to somebody – not
always a god, but often a man; it still has a traditional anchoring, e.g. a
procession (partheneion) or a symposium (elegies, epigrams, skolia, odes).
Iambic poetry preserves the function of personal abuse, elegy maintains its
gnomic character. Thus the old material of folklore is preserved in the
structure of lyric genres, but, as it penetrates its content, it confronts a new
semantics which contradicts its earlier semantics. This contradiction is the
principle of their operation as ancient literary genres.98
of elegy). Pindar and Bacchylides composed texts that they themselves called skolia, but which later
were subsumed under the rubric of enkomia (Harvey 1955: 162–3).
95
Further discussion of this work can be found in Martin (2015).
96
More specifically, Freidenberg’s model is that of Engels’s On the origins of the family, private
property, and the state (cf. Freidenberg 1941: 65–66). It should be stressed that in accepting
Engels’s schema Freidenberg is following the expectations of Soviet scholarship at the time. On
the other hand, throughout her life Freidenberg showed a great versatility in adapting Soviet-
Marxist dogma to her own broadly evolutionist approach to culture, most clearly evidenced in her
late work Image and Concept that was not intended for immediate publication. Further discussion of
Olga Freidenberg’s theoretical legacy can be found in Chapter 2.
97
There is, in fact, very little evidence to support this view of the original function of elegy. This
problem is discussed later.
98
Freidenberg (1997a [1936]: 259–60); my translation.
While the basic import of this passage is, I believe, correct, Freidenberg’s
overly deterministic language tests the limits of the sociohistorical
approach to Archaic lyric. The passage also raises numerous questions as
to how exactly the “reorganization” – what in German is called the
Umfunktionierung – of the preliterary system of genres proceeded. Particu-
larly valuable is Freidenberg’s insight into the process of “humanization”
of preliterary lyric, whereby it becomes suffused with ideologically pointed
intentions and intonations. By this term, Freidenberg appears to refer to
the molding of distinctive “generic I’s” of Archaic Greek lyric.
In his work from the mid-1990s, Ian Morris elaborated a notion
proposed by Leslie Kurke that the corpus of Archaic Greek poetry can
be divided into two ideological camps; Morris termed them “elitist”
and “middling” based principally on the attitude toward the ideology of
the polis, which the former (represented by Homer, Alcaeus, Sappho,
Anacreon, Theognis) ignores or derides and the latter (represented by
Hesiod, Archilochus, Tyrtaeus, Solon) embraces.99 Furthermore, Kurke
relates the two ideological strands to two performance contexts: sympo-
sium for the “elitist,” and (more tentatively) the agora for the “middling”:
Because Archaic Greece was a ‘song culture’ in which performance was
very much a living part of every aspect of social life, song and poetry figured
in all kinds of contexts – there were (for example) marriage songs, war
songs, harvest songs, grinding songs, and songs to accompany children’s
games. But . . . two very important contexts for the performance of verse
and song were the symposium and the agora or center of the city.100
On this view, the principle of genre-occasion correlation was preserved, in
the minimal form of a structural opposition, as a survival of the song
culture in which performance contexts were much more diverse. This
framework leaves aside many questions that call for further literary-
historical finessing: how do we explain the remarkable diversity of genres
within new socially engaged lyric, which clearly exceeds the binary oppos-
ition of “elitist” versus “middling”? Why does the dividing line posited by
Kurke and Morris cut across genre categories such as elegy and iambic?
Why do some “folk” genres enter the new system of lyric, while others
don’t? Does the re-mapping of preliterary genres proceed differently in the
cases of choral and monodic lyric?
99
Kurke (1992), followed by Morris (1996, 2000: 155–91). Further on the sociopolitics of Archaic
lyric, see Kurke (1999, 2000, 2007a); Hornblower (2009).
100
Kurke (2007a: 147).
In his path-breaking monograph on Proto-Indo-European metrics,
Antoine Meillet put forward a theory, now generally accepted, according
to which Greek melic (i.e., sung) poetry shares some basic metrical units –
“primary cola” as I will be calling them – with the meters used in the Rig-
Veda.101 It stands to reason that the primary cola were preserved over
millennia as part of the popular song culture; indeed, we find the same cola
in the scraps of folk poetry that were preserved from antiquity (and which
postdate Archaic literary sources).102 In Greece, we find the most archaic
types of these cola in melic poetry, which is limited to the elite strand
in the tradition. In their most conservative form, these cola appear in the
two poets from Lesbos, Sappho and Alcaeus; they also provide the basis
for some of the meters of Anacreon and Ibycus, as well as of choral lyric.
The generally accepted explanation refers to a regional peculiarity: on
Lesbos, a poetic culture resistant to newer developments was maintained,
and it influenced poets composing melic poetry in other regions of Greece.
The metrical choices made by these poets would then have nothing to do
with their social standing or aristocratic ideology. In that case, however,
one would expect to find pro-polis, “middling” poetry sung in melic
meters. This is not the case; instead, the principal meter for such poetry
was elegiacs. As a further complication, elegiacs were also used for what is
clearly a version of “elitist” poetry: the Theognidea.
It appears that solo performance of lyric (monody) that employed
primary cola, in the Archaic period, came to necessitate self-
accompaniment on a string instrument and thus called for special training.
For this reason, it was opposed to a more widely spread, innovative
practice of composition in elegiacs, which in all likelihood involved only
rudimentary melody and allowed accompaniment by an aulos player.103
Notably, it was the relatively simple elegiac meter, in contrast to stanzaic
sung meters, that invited the kind of expansion of the original authorial
corpus that we witness in the case of Theognis. The corpora of melic poets
did not undergo comparable changes: these texts were reperformed as part
101
Meillet (1923). The context of Meillet’s work on meter is discussed in Bader (1988); Swiggers (1991).
Roman Jakobson uncovered the same pattern in Slavic byliny (1952), anticipated by Nikolai
Trubetzkoy in his letter to Meillet, published in Swiggers (1991: 206–8); Calvert Watkins has
attempted to extend the same analysis to Old Irish verse, but his argument is not unanimously
accepted (for a summary and further bibliography, see West 1973a; West 2007: 45–58).
102
West (1973a: 165–6). Metrical analysis in West (1982: 146–9, 167). For a critique of the hermetic
hypothesis, which posits an autonomous learned poetic tradition (rather than assuming a more
diffuse popular verbal art), see Chapter 4, Section 5.
103
For general discussion see Bowie (1986: 14), who believes that elegy was sung (yet to a tune that was
“like the couplet’s meter, simple and repeated”) and accompanied by the aulos.
of elite symposia, but apparently no new melic compositions written in the
persona of an earlier poet were produced. Characteristically, the corpus of
the Anacreontea, which belongs to a later, post-Classical period, generalizes
one simple meter from among those used by Anacreon.
The use of the local Lesbian dialect in the case of Alcaeus and Sappho
was an additional obstacle to the expansion of the corpus. The elegiacs,
which used the Ionic dialect whose Panhellenic status was guaranteed by
Homer, allowed for the voicing of one’s views in a less demanding format.
This suggests that the version of the conservative (“elitist”) position found
in the Theognidea was not equivalent to the conservatism of Alcaeus and
his admirers.
These observations point to a likely reason behind the expansion of
the use of the elegiacs: it was a recitative meter fit for immediate engage-
ment with the topic at hand. Notably, there is no evidence for elegy’s
rootedness in a particular performance context. As M. L. West notes,
the body of verse that is now referred to as “elegy” (based on the meter)
“was not known by any collective name because it had no single occasion
or function.”104 Admittedly, the elegiac couplet was later associated with
grief, and, in the Classical period, there existed a word elegos referring
to lamentation. It is conceivable, following West, that when the broader
term elegeion ‘elegiac couplet’ was created in the fifth century bce, it was
because at that time that was the characteristic meter of elegos. Once the
term was created, it was projected back in time to include all poems
written in elegiac couplets. If this reconstruction is correct, the choice of
the metrical form of elegiac couplet that many Archaic poets made had
nothing to do with the preliterary genre of lament, since it is uncertain
whether elegos used elegiac couplets in the earlier period.105
104
West (1974: 7).
105
It is possible that there existed, throughout the Archaic period, a genre called elegos ‘lament, sung to
pipe accompaniment’, although our evidence is meager and late. This is the view adopted by Page
(1936) – followed by Dover (1964: 189); Palmer (1980: 106–7) – whose discussion centers on Eur.
Andr. 103–16, the only passage in which elegiac couplets are employed in extant tragedies. Harvey
(1955: 170–2) finds support for the “threnic” origins of elegy in the gnomic nature of the Archaic
genre of thrênos (opposed to emotional, nonliterary goos ‘lament’; see further Chapter 4, Section 3).
Koller (1963: 126–9) discerns a link between funeral and sympotic ‘elegos’ in the institution of
paradeipnon ‘funeral meal’, but the evidence of Theogn. 1041–2 is too tenuous. Bowie (1986: 22–7)
presents a different interpretation of the evidence, arguing that the word elegos came to mean
‘lament’ by the time of Euripides due to its association with sepulchral inscriptions, but that it
originally signified precisely what we call Greek “elegy” (i.e., poetry written in elegiac couplets). For
further discussion of the ancient terminology see Bartol (1993: 18–30) who in general concurs with
the conclusions of Bowie (1986). See Gerber (1997: 94–6) for further bibliography.
The rise of elegiacs could be due to the search for a “submelic” form that
would obviate the difficulties of complex stanzaic structure, elaborate
melody, and self-accompaniment by the singer.106 By “submelic” I refer to
the category of verse whose performance did not involve elaborate melodic
patterns and complicated musical accompaniment.107 Besides elegiacs, the
iambic meters (which were apparently recited or “chanted”, but not sung)
and dactylic hexameter (which in the Archaic period most likely did not
require musical accompaniment) shared the same “submelic” niche.108
Inscriptions provided one area of competition between the three basic
“submelic” meters. Whereas before circa 560 the only meter used for
inscriptions was the hexameter, later – after a period of competition
with the iambic trimeter – the elegiac couplet gained the upper hand.109
The expansion of the use of the elegiac couplet was clearly triggered by
changes in the literary system as a whole. It appears that in the course of
the sixth century, dactylic hexameter became an inalienable property of
rhapsodic performances and was withdrawn from other contexts, except
for oracular enunciation. Thus, even lengthy historical poems were no
longer composed in the hexameter, but in elegiacs, probably as early as in
the seventh century.110 On the other hand, the close link to the meter of
epic explains the preference for the elegiac couplet over iambics as the
default submelic metrical form: the former, but not the latter, permitted
the incorporation of epic formulae and vocabulary.111 The earliest lyric
author – the seventh-century figure Archilochus – stands close to non-
literary song culture and uses various “epodic” meters, including iamboi
and elegiacs, to convey traditional folk thematics;112 in his elegiac compos-
itions, however, he is obviously relying on the hexameter tradition.
In addition, iambics probably had relatively low social status, whereas
elegiacs could accommodate a wide spectrum of themes. The coexistence
of various genres under the rubric of elegy (didactic, sympotic, political,
106
For an argument that elegiac poetry originally employed ten-line stanzas, see Faraone (2008).
Elegy’s standing as a generally accessible medium could explain the loss of that stanzaic form.
107
Ford (1988) argued that ῥαψῳδία was a technical term for poetic performance that did not involve
musical accompaniment (the use of μέλος), i.e., for what here I call “submelic” genres.
108
Under “iambic,” I include the various epodic meters, excluding the elegiac couplet (for the latter as
an epodic formation see, e.g., Dover 1964: 183; West 1974a: 10; Sicking 1993: 84). Poetry in dactylic
hexameter was recited, not sung; see the discussion in Maslov (2009: 5–9).
109 110
West (1974a: 2, 19). Cf. Mickey (1981: 41). Bowie (1986: 27–34); Kurke (2000: 55–6).
111
The problem of assessing the significance of Homeric diction in elegiac (as well as melic) poetry is
discussed in Fowler (1987: 3–52). West defines elegy as “a popular everyday medium, perhaps
because of its rhythmical simplicity, its suitability for long or short compositions, and the ease with
which the riches of the epic vocabulary could be adapted to it” (1974: 18).
112
For an argument to that effect, based on comparative evidence, see Dover (1964: 199–212).
historical) was motivated by its utility as an “easier” alternative to the
aristocratic appropriation of popular song, instantiated by Sappho and -
Alcaeus, as well as by its close alignment, in both meter and dialect, with
poetry written in hexameter. Accordingly, there is no consistent association
of elegiac couplets with a single occasion, performance context, or ideo-
logical position.
In a sense, the elegiac form is a paradigmatic case of Archaic Greek
literary production, as it directly reacted to the two major stimuli in the
constitution of the new literary system: the priority of epic as a literary
form and the ongoing sociopolitical transformations. While formally
dependent on epic’s meter, elegy could also serve as a discursive platform
for ideological contestation.113 Indeed, poetry composed in elegiac couplets
was most outspokenly political, and it could convey widely divergent
positions – from Tyrtaeus’s militarism to Theognis’s embittered elitism
and Solon’s civic reserve.
In Bakhtin’s terms, Archaic elegy, rather than presenting a literary
version of a folkloric secondary genre, builds on a variety of primary
genres, whose transposition into a metrical medium, while betokening
their ideological significance, does not necessarily entail their subsequent
perpetuation as literary genres. Epigram is an example of a literary genre
that grew out of the Archaic uses of the elegiac meter; its association
with the elegiac couplet in some European languages persisted into the
nineteenth century. By contrast, Tyrtaeus’s military exhortations remained
an ideological speech genre, and their preservation was in all likelihood due
to regular reperformance in Sparta in a military context.114
More certainty is possible in the seemingly more problematic case of the
Theognidea – the corpus attributed to Theognis of Megara of sixth
century bce, but in a significant part composed in later periods. This is
a mature genre of didactic verse, with a distinct sociopolitical tenor; the
authorial persona in this case serves as a primary genre marker: to compose
in the given variety of elegiac poetry means to become “Theognis.”115
Averintsev (1971: 222) observes that the formation of the Theognidea is
113
This characteristic of elegy remained in force in Roman poetry, which transposes the public
concerns of Greek elegy to a more private key. Cf. Kathleen McCarthy’s description of this
“genre’s focus on representing speech as a means by which individuals struggle to make their will
felt in the world” (2010: 440).
114
West (1974a: 11) believes that these texts were performed before battle, yet performance at extended
symposia held after a battle is also conceivable (Bowie 1986: 15–16).
115
This argument is put forward most emphatically by Nagy (1985). Lowell Edmunds (1997) argues
that the so-called “seal” of Theognis, which opens the corpus, is not a marker of poetic individuality
but a sociopolitical statement intended for the future audience, performers, as well as all those who
akin to that of Biblical books such as The Wisdom of Solomon (The Book
of Wisdom), in that both, while in fact being composites that include
contributions by multiple individuals, are structured by a fiction of
single authorship (avtoritet). The reason for this, as Averintsev suggests,
is that the didactic genre is most closely analogous to the wisdom traditions
attested in Near Eastern verbal art:
By contrast, in genres that are truly specific to literature of the Greek type,
such fuzziness of the boundaries of authorship is unthinkable. Indeed, it is
impossible to imagine a Deutero-Sophocles, who would rework Oedipus
Rex in an organic and creative fashion, or a Deutero-Plato who would do
that same to Symposium.116
As I pointed out earlier, sociopolitical identification was a likely motivation
for the survival of a poet’s work through reperformance in the Archaic
period. Beyond lyric, the alignment of a genre (a sum-total of formal
devices) with an “author” (conceived of not as a psychological reality,
but as a symbolic tag) operates as a more general principle both in the
Near Eastern and in Greek literature. A similar development took
place when narrative epic was assigned to Homer and, in the fifth century,
fable became linked to the name of Aesop.117
To reiterate the point advanced earlier, a sign of ultimate success for an
author – indeed, a visible proof of immortality – is to become a genre.
Literary imitation and social identification often merge, as human actors
construct their behavior based on models propagated in literature.118 In the
case of Archaic lyric, the mechanism of “socio-literary” identification is
supplemented by the accumulated authority of a textual corpus that has
survived and been in continuous use over decades and centuries.
Turning to iambics, we confront an (arguably) more straightforward
type of transition from a preliterary to literary genre. Throughout the
Archaic period, iambos preserved its place at the lowest end of the socio-
political hierarchy of poetic genres.119 Indeed, one may even wonder why it
achieved literary status at all. Two possible explanations have been current
in the scholarship, both positing an institutional context in which iambic
would assume the authorial mask of Theognis as “a spokesman of a once and future
aristocracy” (35).
116 117
Averintsev (1971: 222). On avtoritet, see fn. 60. On Aesop and the fable, see West (1984).
118
See fn. 32. On the importance of mimesis/imitation for genre formation, cf. Nagy (1994).
119
See Kurke (2000: 51–4, 2007a: 145–6) and Kurke (2011) for the notion of sociopolitical hierarchy of
genres in Archaic and Classical Greece. Notably, trochaic tetrameter (in contrast to iambic trimeter)
was marked as a somewhat more elevated epodic meter; it is therefore preferred to iambic in more
serious contexts (West 1974a: 34).
abuse could have assumed important social tasks. (It is worth keeping in
mind that all our evidence as to how Archilochus’s or Hipponax’s iambic
poetry was performed is derived from their texts.) Martin West suggests
that the animating force behind the abusive personae of the two principal
exponents of the genre, Archilochus and Hipponax, is anti-aristocratic
ressentiment.120 On this reading, the personae of the iambic poet, as well
as his addressees, are literary conventions, and the iambic poems were
performed, perhaps similarly to mimes, at religious festivals. Some scholars
have proposed that iambic poetry had a more specific context in cult,
which featured carnivalesque reversal and licensed verbal abuse directed at
real individuals.121
In the history of the Greek iambic form there is a further important
episode: its adoption as the principal meter of the spoken parts in Attic
drama. This furnishes a major piece of evidence confirming the ongoing
use of the iambic meter in cultic context. West sees iambics as the default
spoken meter, which, assuming that elegiacs were sung, would leave no
alternative to the Attic dramatists.122 The two most important deploy-
ments of iambic meter – in iambic abuse and in Attic drama – are thus
independent, but both point to the meter’s origin and continued use as
a medium for recited verse, which remained opposed, on the one hand,
to the sung meters that were subject to the aristocratic appropriation
and, on the other, to the submelic dactylic hexameter and elegiac couplet.
The example of iambos suggests that some genres display a greater
continuity with their preliterary past than others. This is particularly true
of those choral genres that are rooted in cult. Within the preliterary system
of genres that predated, and no doubt continued to exist alongside, Archaic
Greek lyric, there existed a variety of choral genres that were strictly
correlated with performance context. Our earliest extant text, the Iliad,
contains numerous references to different types of choral performance,
such as paians (1.473, 22.391), marriage songs (18.493–5), songs performed
by herdsmen (18.525–6), or soldiers in camp (10.13).123 The choral genres of
Archaic (literary) lyric, however, tend to be embedded in cult and ritual,
120
West (1974: 26–7).
121
Brown (1997: 40), with further literature; cf. Carey (2009b: 151). Moreover, Brown proposes that in
Hipponax we find a different kind of iambos, which is on its way to becoming a properly literary,
decontextualized genre (88). For a discussion of the later testimonial evidence regarding the
performance of iamboi, see Bartol (1993: 61–74).
122
“There was no more natural metre for Thespis to adopt, given that he did not want to sing” (West
1974: 34). Note also Solon’s use of iambic meter as a meter of spoken verse, rather than a medium
of verbal abuse.
123
Cf. Davison (1968: xviii); Grinbaum (1973: 12–3); Bowie (1981: 3–4).
which include local cults of particular divinities, as in the case of paians,
or rites of initiation, as in the case of Alcman’s partheneia.
In ancient Greece, cult activities were not an insulated field of religious
devotion; instead, they comprised the most symbolically loaded and struc-
tured domain of social life of a Greek polis. It is not therefore unexpected
that the literary system, a creation of the Archaic period, came to encom-
pass this privileged domain of cultural production while excluding
some typical varieties of folk song such as harvesting or soldiers’ songs.
As I show in the following section, this restriction on the literary genres
of choral lyric goes along with the rejection of local dialects in favor of a
Pan-Hellenic poetic idiom.
The commission of choral poems was represented as an act of the city;
these poems could be dedicated in local shrines and/or reperformed as part
of a recurring festival. The employment of specialists for the organization
of these performances need not have meant that these specialists were
remembered, or referred to themselves as “authors” of the texts; their
position must have been analogous to that of architects or craftsmen
whose names nobody cared to preserve. As seen in the case of Alcman,
by the seventh century bce this was no longer true, at least in some poleis.
While the evidence for the seventh-century Spartan context is poor, with
respect to the sixth and fifth centuries it is possible to draw analogies from
the system of liturgies in classical Athens. The hiring of a “poet” was an
act of the wealthy elite, which bore the costs of ritual life in the polis. It is
no accident that in the sixth and fifth century poets who received commis-
sions to write lyric of these kinds also composed monodic poetry meant
for performance at symposia (encomia and elegies in the case of Simonides,
encomia only in the case of Bacchylides and Pindar). The epinikion, a
choral genre closely linked to the monodic encomium, belonged to the
category of aristocratic genres. The same dynamic of commissioning
authorial lyric likely obtained in the case of such cult-related genres as
paian and dithyramb. In any case, the practice of cities commissioning a
Pan-Hellenically renowned poet to write a paian for its theoroi traveling to
a sacred site appears to imitate the practice of aristocratic patronage that
had existed at tyrant courts; Ibycus and Anacreon worked at Polycrates’
court and the three earlier-mentioned fifth-century poets, as well as
Aeschylus, were invited by Hieron of Syracuse. In this sense, authorial
choral lyric of the sixth and fifth centuries is a development that is itself
contingent on the “elitist” appropriation of monodic genres.
These observations help explain the exclusion of particular genres from
authorial choral lyric: individual poets were commissioned either by the
wealthy or by particular poleis, and in both cases the commission was
linked to the patron’s self-promotion. Inasmuch as wedding ceremonies
were apparently not often used as occasions for civic or elite display in the
early fifth century, we do not find epithalamia in Pindar’s corpus. This
may have been different in sixth-century Lesbos, as suggested by Sappho’s
marriage songs. By contrast, in some poleis, such as Thebes, rituals
involving maiden choruses did provide such an occasion, hence one finds
as many as five books of partheneia reported for the Alexandrian edition
of Pindar.124
To sum up, the phenomenon of literary cult lyric followed on the
precedent of monodic individual authorship. Another important prece-
dent, as suggested in the preceding section, was that of “Homer,” the name
for the most authoritative Archaic Greek poetic corpus. Yet there may
be one more missing piece in the puzzle. So much is suggested by the case
of Alcman, who belonged to the culture of performing kitharodes, which
was quite different from the poetic culture of Pindar’s day. It seems likely,
for example, that Pindar did not travel to all the sites where his specially
commissioned poems were performed; Alcman’s activity was apparently
limited to Sparta. As the evidence of dialect suggests, however, Alcman
and other choral lyricists belonged to the same poetic tradition. The
memory of mythical poets-kitharodes similarly point to the existence of a
vibrant kitharodic culture, in which professional authors-performers were
put in charge of communal cult-embedded song, whose specimens appar-
ently were not preserved in written form. That culture had a rich afterlife
in Classical and post-Classical professional kitharôidia. In the Archaic
period, as Timothy Power shows, there were many points of interaction
as well as competition between the kitharodes, who were first and foremost
expert musicians, and other poetic specialists, such as the rhapsodes and
choral lyricists.125
Pindar’s work exhibits the two defining characteristics of Archaic Greek
genres: the expressly ideological function of monody and elegy, and the
partial anchoring in a performance context that is characteristic of choral
lyric. Is it possible to assess the relative significance of the Homeric,
124
Vita Ambrosiana, which contains the most reliable report on the Alexandrian edition of Pindar
(Irigoin 1952: 35–8; Harvey 1955: 161), mentions two books of partheneia and three books of poems
that only partially qualify as partheneia, with the title (if we read Snell’s emendation: κεχωρισμένον
τῶν παρθενείων) “that which is separated from the partheneia” or (following Drachmann’s reading
κεχωρισμένων παρθενείων) “partheneia which have been separated.” For ideological uses of this
genre, cf. the discussion of fr. 94b in Chapter 3, Section 4.
125
Power (2010: 224–314).
Reconstructing the history of Archaic Greek poetry 77
monodic, and kitharodic precedents for Pindar’s notion of authorship?
This question is at the center of attention in the remainder of this chapter.
As a background to the following discussion, it is important to stress the
unique place of hexameter poetry within the Archaic Greek literary system.
The crucial period in the formation of Homeric and Hesiodic corpora was
the eighth and the seventh centuries, most likely the time when genres of
hexameter verse experienced a significant Near Eastern influence.126 In the
later Archaic period, Homer’s texts were recited at Pan-Hellenic centers by
professional rhapsodes; a similar mode of preservation probably obtained
for Hesiod. We know that new compositions under both names were
produced throughout the Archaic period (Homeric Hymns, fragments
of Ps.-Hesiod), but the extent to which our texts of Homer and Hesiod
were modified in the course of the Archaic period is difficult to assess.
Finally, and most consequentially, both corpora draw on the repository of
oral formulae that were part of a centuries-old oral tradition. In its
relationship to the preliterary system of genres as well as in its mode of
performance, the hexameter corpus differs markedly from other genres
of Archaic poetry. Already in the preliterary period, epic stood apart from
the folk system of genres, as it was the only genre that called for specialist
performers. In this sense, although the evidence of Indo-European metrics
indicates that the tradition of lyric is more ancient than that of hexameter
epic, the latter can be said to be the first literary form to emerge in Ancient
Greece and, in contrast to kitharodic poetry, to leave a textual record.
As such, its impact on the processes of the formation of literary genres
was considerable. Yet, as the evidence presented in the following section
shows, this impact also should not be overestimated, as both monodic and
choral lyric preserved a poetics that was, in many respects, pre-Homeric.
4 Reconstructing the early history of Archaic Greek poetry:

the relevance of meter and dialect
As I have argued in the preceding section, the shaping of Archaic lyric was
largely determined by the transition from a preliterary to a literary culture.
Accordingly, I have paid foremost attention to two issues: the continuing
significance of performance context and new ideological functions of lyric,
which, I argued, are largely responsible for the proliferation of forms in the
Archaic period. Yet the picture that emerges from this discussion has many
blank spots. In particular, an explanation is lacking for dialect preferences
126
The main resource on the Near Eastern influence on Greek poetry is West (1997).
that point to the existence of larger, supra-genre unities: the Ionic dialect
for iambic and elegy, and a Kunstsprache often described as “Doric” for
choral genres. So far I have also kept a distance from metrical preferences,
which similarly suggest affinities cutting across the spectrum of genres.
Although today the evidence of dialect and meter is thought by many
students of Archaic lyric to proffer more questions than answers, I believe
that the goal of a synthetic analysis of Archaic Greek poetry makes it
imperative not to leave this evidence to the discretion of narrow specialists.
In fact, a disregard for factors of literary history, such as patterns of genre
formation, has resulted in some unwarranted conclusions pertaining to the
Archaic Greek system of genres being drawn solely on the basis of dialect
or meter.
To summarize the results of the foregoing discussion, the Archaic Greek
literary system, insofar as it is represented by extant texts, can be viewed
as comprising six most important segments: (1) a hexameter corpus,
performed by professionals and reaching back into the period of oral
composition-in-performance; (2) the aristocratic appropriation of solo
sung (melic) poetry; (3) the innovating “submelic” medium of the elegiacs,
providing a direct platform for ideological contestation; (4) iambic spoken
meters, rooted in cult, and available for appropriation for a variety of
purposes; (5) choral authorial lyric, restricted to cult-related genres; (6) the
epinikion, a synthetic form combining the characteristics of (2) and (5).
From the linguistic point of view, these generic unities can be described
as follows: (1) hexameter poetry uses a dialect amalgam, combining Ionic
and Aeolic dialects; (2) monody uses local dialect (thus Sappho and
Alcaeus use the Aeolic dialect spoken on Lesbos,127 Anacreon uses Ionic,
Korinna uses Boeotian); (3) all poetry written in elegiac couplets has Ionic
coloring; (4) literary iamboi have Ionic coloring, but the iambic trimeter of
Attic drama uses local (Attic-Ionic) dialect; (5, 6) choral poetry uses
an artificial Kunstsprache, which is traditionally characterized as “Doric”;
Alcman uses a heavily Laconized version of this Kunstsprache.
From the point of view of meter, the situation is as follows: (2) monody
uses primary cola that go back to Proto-Indo-European meters; (1, 3)
dactylic hexameter differs radically from the inherited meters in that it
allows substitution of a long syllable for two shorts; the elegiac “couplet”
consists of two (or arguably three) verses, the first of which is a dactylic
127
One needs to allow for Ionic forms due to the influence of hexameter epic, as well as possibly for
archaic forms native to an Aeolic poetic tradition (Bowie 1981). For an overview of the linguistic
aspects of Archaic lyric, see Silk (2014).
hexameter; (4) iamboi make use of iambo-trochaic meters that may be
presumed to go back to Proto-Indo-European, either directly or by deriv-
ation from the primary cola;128 we also find a set of epodic spoken meters
formed from dactylic and iambic elements; (5, 6) choral poetry uses
variations on the primary cola as well as an innovative meter, the so-
called dactylo-epitrite, which is similar to epodic meters in combining
dactylic and iambo-trochaic elements.
In what follows, I first consider the evidence of meter, and then turn to
the Archaic Greek poetic dialects.
Perhaps the most challenging nexus of problems involves the relation
between the dactylic hexameter, the epodic meters, and the dactylo-
epitrite. For both Bruno Snell and M. L. West, the basic unit of analysis
is the hemiepes (– ⏔ – ⏔ –), which corresponds to the segment of the
dactylic hexameter line before the penthemimeral caesura.129 In particular,
Snell argues that the hemiepes was extracted from the hexameter and
deployed in epodic meters, and this deployment provided the precedent
for dactylo-epitrites as well as for other freer combinations of cola begin-
ning with Alcman.130 Snell’s account is based on chronological precedence,
but genre differences make it unlikely that Alcman borrowed metrical
forms from Archilochus.131 Crucially, Snell does not explain why lyric
poets, if they were building on the hexameter, were generally intolerant
of substituting a long for two shorts.132
It thus appears that there existed an older lyric tradition of using dactylic
rhythms that was originally independent of the epic hexameter; this
tradition should also be distinguished from dactylo-epitrites.133 The latter’s
function can perhaps be elucidated from the general patterns of genre
128
For a lucid account of choriambic and iambic closures as components of the PIE octosyllable verse,
see Nagy (1974: 29–43); the foundation had been laid by Meillet (1923: 48–56). West (1973b: 186–7)
analyzes iambic meters as combinations of elements of primary cola. I use conventional metrical
notation: ‘–’ for long (heavy) syllable; ‘ᴗ’ for short (light) syllable; ‘x’ for anceps (either short
or long).
129
West sees the hemiepes as foundational both for the dactylic hexameter and for the dactylo-epitrite
(West 1973b: 188, 1974: 10, 1982: 35, 48, 70). By contrast, Nagy derives the dactylic hexameter,
epodic meters, and the dactylo-epitrite, from the prosodiakon (x – ᴗᴗ – ᴗᴗ –), which he relates to
the primary (Aeolic) cola (Nagy 1990b: 439–64, 1995).
130
Snell (1982: 41–2, 52).
131
Snell (1982: 25, 50). Furthermore, linguistic evidence suggests that the impact of Homeric language
on Alcman was minimal (Maslov 2013b: 18).
132
Snell himself is rightly critical of West’s equation of the hemiepes and D, since it obscures the
most distinctive innovation of the hexameter: the substitution of one long for two shorts (Snell
1982: 52).
133
This tradition was probably continued in tragedy, where lyric dactyls have a “solemn hieratic
sound” (Snell 1982: 29 citing Sophocles fr. 737 P., Aesch. Ag. 104–60, Ar. Nub. 275–90).
formation. In the case of epodic meters, including the elegiac couplet,
the dactylic hexameter can be shown to be the center around which
there developed a variety of new metrical forms, which were more easily
manageable than the inherited cola of melic poetry. Snell points out a
structural resemblance between epodic and dactylo-epitrite meters:
both consist of dactylic and iambo-trochaic units.134 It is also important
to keep in mind that the use of these units was not fixed in the “dactylo-
epitrite” form until the time of the three great poets who composed
authorial choral lyric (Simonides, Bacchylides, and Pindar), and that was
the time of the ascendancy of Homeric epic and Ionian poetic culture
more generally, whose impact can also be observed in the choral Kunst-
sprache.135 These considerations make it a priori likely that of the two
metrical systems used in choral poetry, the dactylo-epitrite was perceived
as more closely aligned both with epic hexameter and with epodic forms.
The alignment of hexameter and the dactylo-epitrites is borne out by
internal evidence: Pindar’s most Homericizing poem, Pythian 4, is com-
posed in dactylo-epitrites, and here the attempt to imitate epic narrative
is unmistakable.136
Furthermore, the distribution of “aeolic” versus dactylo-epitrite meters
across Pindar’s genres demonstrates that the former are strongly preferred
in cult-related genres. Thus, in partheneia and paians, Pindar shuns
dactylo-epitrites.137 Conversely, the dactylo-epitrite is closely associated
with songs addressed to men: it is the meter of skolia, which were later
classified as enkomia ‘songs in praise of mortals’,138 and the only meter
used by Pindar in his extant threnoi. This, again, confirms that the
dactylo-epitrite was a development analogous to epodic meters. Both
belonged to an innovative metrical system serving new experimental poetic
134
Snell (1982: 41–3). The question of whether the “epitrite” element can be considered an instance of
iambo-trochaic rhythm is discussed (and answered in the positive) in Dale (1968: 184–8).
135
On the progressive Ionicization of the choral lyric dialect see Nöthiger (1971).
136
This epicizing quality can be observed on the level of the dialect, as Pythian 4 includes unexpected
Ionicisms (Forssman 1966: 98–100). West suggests a Stesichorean precedent for Pythian 4 (1982:
76); it is possible but not particularly likely. A considerable difference in the frequency of position-
making muta cum liquida exists between Pindar’s dactylo-epitrites (ca. 70 percent make position)
and Aeolic verse (only 50 percent make position) (Nöthiger 1971: 118); this difference is probably
due to the greater degree of conformance to the epic norm in dactylic verse, as in Homer muta cum
liquida almost always make position. This observation weakens the Stesichorean connection, since
in Stesichorus almost half of muta cum liquida fail to make position (Nöthiger 1971: 116).
137
The single exception is Paean 5 whose metrical pattern is more reminiscent of lyric dactyls than of
dactylo-epitrites proper.
138
Harvey (1955: 164 n. 1, 174–5) presents circumstantial evidence for Alcman’s and Anacreon’s skolia
in this meter. Note, however, that Attic drinking songs known as “Attic skolia” use Aeolic meters,
possibly due to their folk provenance.
genres, some of which were divorced from cult.139 In epinikia, as Kiichiro
Itsumi argues, the impact of dactylo-epitrites on the older (aeolic) system
results in unique hybridized metrical patterns.140
More specifically, Pindar’s extensive use of dactylo-epitrites in the
epinikia, as compared to cult-related genres, would betoken a particular
generic subtext of the genre of the victory ode: that of sung solo skolion/
enkomion. In support of this hypothesis, which is taken up in Chapter 4,
I cite another pertinent observation of Bruno Snell: the enkomiologikon,
a rudimentary dactylo-epitrite unit found in Alcman, Anacreon, and
Alcaeus, can be regarded as the kernel of dactylo-epitrite meters used for
the praise of mortals.141
New metrical media served emergent poetic forms, such as spoken or
recited verse that, in contrast to inherited melic cola, allowed easy trans-
position of primary genres and new varieties of sung poetry – in particular,
poetry performed by a chorus but commissioned by individuals. Metrical
innovation consisted in the formation of epodic meters that combined
the dactylic element with iambo-trochaic elements as well as, in the case of
Pindar’s choral poetry, in the amalgamation of primary cola with iambic
elements.
Perhaps the single most ambitious attempt to provide a diachronic
explanation for the different varieties of Archaic Greek lyric based on
metrical evidence was undertaken by Martin West.142 West posits three
distinct traditions, Lesbian (Aeolic), Ionian, and Dorian, which were
segregated during the Dark Ages and whose different characteristics
are in evidence in the surviving texts of Archaic poets “into the second
half of the sixth century.”143 The Aeolic tradition, represented solely
by Sappho and Alcaeus, is the most conservative of the three, since it
139
On the distribution of dactylo-epitrites across genres, see West 1982: 76. Further analysis of dactylo-
epitrites in Pindar can be found in Irigoin 1953, Nagy 1974: 290–301. Pindar also prefers dactylo-
epitrites in his dithyrambs and in the category of poems referred to as “hymnoi”, suggesting that
these genres were more experimental than the cult-embedded paean and partheneion.
140
Itsumi (2009).
141
Snell (1982: 42, 50). There is little doubt that the name enkomiologikon is a Hellenistic invention;
Harvey (1955: 164 n.1) suggests that it could only have been invented after the creation of an
artificial genre category of enkomion ‘song in praise of a mortal’ (further discussion in Chapter 4,
Section 4). As already remarked upon earlier, it is difficult to assess the relative significance of
Stesichorus’s precedent, whose meters (in spite of a much greater emphasis on dactylic elements)
furnish an obvious comparandum for later dactylo-epitrites (Sicking 1993: 151–3, 163).
142
West (1973b) is further developed in West (1982), which remains the most authoritative account of
Greek meter in the English language to date. West’s account is explicitly accepted in Bowie (1981:
28); Trümpy (1986: 147); implicitly in Fowler (1987: 103), “elegy is merely something an Ionian
composed on occasions when he had something to say in poetry.”
143
West (1982: 29).
(1) preserves “the aeolic base” (the opening sequence of two syllables of
unregulated length) and does not adopt the equivalence of two shorts and
one long syllable (observed in hexameter); (2) lacks the common innov-
ations of the two “Southern” traditions (Ionian and Dorian), such as
various dactylic and iambic units and the principle of their juxtaposition.
Further factors serve to differentiate between the two Southern traditions:
the Ionian tradition (represented by Homer, Archilochus, and Hipponax)
shows a strong preference for regularized, symmetrical cola, which leads to
the emergence of the dactylic hexameter as well as a variety of “epodic”
meters (including the elegiac couplet), whereas the “Dorian” tradition
experimented with the length of cola and stanzas.144
West’s schema captures some important facts about the early stages in
the development of poetic forms in Greece. First, Ionia was undoubtedly
the hotbed of innovation in the Archaic period; all poetry written in the
dactylic hexameter and elegiac couplets all over Greece made use of the
Ionic dialect, and this as early as in the seventh century (Tyrtaeus).
Whether or not the elegiac couplet was invented in Ionia is, however,
an entirely different question. West does not distinguish between preliter-
ary and literary genres, and this leads him to confuse the question of the
invention of a given metrical form with that of the influence of a particular
corpus of poetry. This is most evident in the case of iambic poetry.
It cannot be disputed that iambic units (iambic dimeter) were common
to all three regional traditions postulated by West. The fact that only in
Ionia poetry written in iambic meter assumed literary status is due to a
number of social and possibly institutional factors of which we know very
little.145 Based on the evidence of verse inscriptions, discussed later, it
seems very likely that preliterary iambics, as well as elegiacs, were used in
other regions throughout the Archaic period.
In addition to failing to allow for broad geographical diffusion and
lengthy gestation of metrical forms in the preliterary period, West disre-
gards the sociological dimension in the circulation of literary genres. Thus,
the metrical conservatism of the Lesbian corpus is in all likelihood due to
the peculiarity of the aristocratic brand of melic poetry practiced by
Sappho and Alcaeus, whose forms are closer to the relatively simple
metrical patterns of preliterary poetry. It does not follow, for example,
144
West (1982: 186).
145
Note the later formulation by M. L. West: “In Ionia in the 7th and 6th cent. BC the iambos
achieved literary status when Archilochus and others published monologues and songs composed
for festival entertainment etc. . . .” (OCD 741).
that iambic poetry using local dialect was not practiced on Lesbos in their
time, or that the same simple metrical patterns were not found outside
of Lesbos in Sappho’s lifetime.146
Finally, West’s “Dorian” tradition is a misnomer, since it posits an
ethnic determinant where instead one finds a set of poetic conventions.
It is likely that the basic constituent feature of “Dorian” metrics – namely,
the tendency to expand cola and stanzas – is due to its use for choral
performance and, more specifically, for dance. Notably, the metrical
developments West ascribes to the Dorian tradition are quite different
in nature from the presumed achievements of the Ionian tradition: while
the latter predate our sources and may belong to the preliterary period,
the former have to do with experiments undertaken by particular poets
working in the Archaic period. To explain metrical innovations found in
sixth- and fifth-century choral poets by reference to a regional or ethnic
tradition is therefore hardly possible. Instead, our evidence speaks for a
highly developed and recent literary tradition.
This tradition, moreover, cannot be described as “Dorian.” There is no
sufficient reason to regard Ibycus and Stesichorus, whose innovations were
taken further by two Ionian-born poets Simonides and Bacchylides and a
Theban Pindar, as native speakers of Doric.147 Alcman, however, is much
more restrained in his metrical practice, as he is probably following an
epichoric, preliterary tradition of choral song. In spite of his Dorian
credentials, Alcman is the odd man out, as he is also an exception (rather
than the Doric standard) in matters of linguistic usage.
The notion of a separate “Dorian” tradition is the weakest part of West’s
account, which is based on, and gains plausibility due to, the tripartite
division of Greek dialects.148 The view of the language of choral poets
as predominantly or distinctly “Doric” should not be accepted uncritically
in light of its reconsideration in the work of Carlo Pavese and Natan
S. Grinbaum.149 I examine the nature of the poetic dialect of choral lyric
146
So much is suggested by the continued use of Aeolic cola in Greek folklore; see fn. 102.
147
The evidence on the dialects of Himera and Rhegium, the home poleis of Stesichorus and Ibycus
respectively, is far from certain (Nöthiger 1971: 1–3). A. C. Cassio has demonstrated that in the time
of the poets the dialect spoken in these Euboian colonies was Ionic, and that they were Doricized in
a later period (1999: 204–7). West views Eumelos as the earliest representative of the Dorian
tradition, but his only fragment may well be a late forgery (D’Alessio 2009: 137–45).
148
“These regional traditions may be defined initially in terms of dialect. Broadly speaking, the Archaic
Greek poetry known to us is composed in three dialects: (i) Ionic . . . (ii) Lesbian (iii) . . . Doric”
(1973b: 181).
149
Given this extensive scholarly work, West’s reference to just one shared grammatical feature, fem.
participle ending-oisa, which supposedly confirms the commonality of the dialect of his “Dorian
poets,” is rather perplexing: this feature is, in fact, a characteristic of the Lesbian dialect (1973b: 181,
in detail in a different venue.150 The question remains highly debatable and
deserving of further scrutiny. Here I only summarize the most significant,
albeit necessarily tentative conclusions of that study. Choral lyric inherits
an older poetic language, originally not limited to choral genres. Contrary
to the received opinion, West Greek (Doric) played no role in the forma-
tion of that language. As Antoine Meillet long ago pointed out, Greek
choral lyric displays no innovations peculiar to Doric. Instead, its dialect
base is closest to attested Thessalian and Lesbian, and is best characterized
as Northern Greek. Hypothetically, its wider propagation can be linked
to the Lesbian kitharodic culture represented by Terpander and Arion;
that poetic idiom must have been established early enough to allow for a
decisive effect on Alcman. In the sixth to fifth centuries, the language of
choral lyric was increasingly Ionicized, due to the influence of the Ionian
poetic culture, and began to be perceived as an artificial dialect amalgam,
thus opening itself up to occasional influence of other spoken dialects.
Nevertheless, it did retain some conservative, pre-Homeric features, such
as the Common Greek /ā/ and the lack of assibilation (seen in the variant
third-person plural verb ending -onti) until Pindar’s time.
Quite irrespective of the deep origins of the choral Kunstsprache, the
evidence of dialect corroborates the evidence of meter: choral lyric
inherited a conservative linguistic medium that was as old or older than
that of hexameter epic, yet that medium was subject to amalgamation and,
specifically, to Ionic influence.
In the concluding part of this section, I provide a more hypothetical
reconstruction of the older strata of Archaic Greek poetic culture. This
reconstruction is offered as a working hypothesis, an attempt at a synthesis
of available evidence, in full recognition that new data would demand
that the hypothesis be modified or reconsidered. The evidence of meter
and poetic dialect permits the reconstruction of two supra-genres or two
kinds of poetic praxis in Archaic Greece in the period predating extant
texts: that of choral lyric, possibly related to a Northern Greek kitharodic
culture, and that of recited narrative poetry using dactylic hexameter.
The Aeolic substrate of the Ionic dialect of the hexameter epic invites a
theory that the Greek epic tradition and choral lyric developed side by side
in Northern Greece, before the former’s “Homeric” offshoot was
1982: 46). The mistaken view that the ending -oisa is common to Doric dialects, which is shared by
Wilamowitz (1959: 246), is based on the usage of Theocritus, which is likely to reflect the dialect of
Cyrene.
150
Maslov (2013b).
transplanted to Ionic-speaking regions. The reconstruction of a common
ancient Aeolic stage in the development of choral lyric and epic, however,
implies a highly unorthodox model of the interaction of these two genres
in the early Archaic period. Here I test this model against divergent
accounts of the prehistory of hexameter poetry.
In the last several decades, reacting to an earlier consensus that privil-
eged the chronology of surviving literary sources and always put Homer
first, scholars have come to emphasize the primacy of lyric over hexameter
epic. This change of perspective was made possible by Antoine Meillet’s
discovery of a Proto-Indo-European metrical pattern uniting Vedic meters
and the cola used in Archaic Greek lyric.151 In the light of comparative
metrics, which showcased the uniqueness of the Greek dactylic hexameter,
Meillet proposed that it was borrowed from a non-Indo-European-
speaking (“Aegean”) substrate population.152 In the early 1970s,
M. L. West and Gregory Nagy, while accepting Meillet’s derivation of
lyric cola from an Indo-European pattern, returned to the earlier view that
hexameter can be related to other Greek meters.153 The approach that
gained most approval from other scholars is that of Nils Berg, who
critiqued West’s and Nagy’s derivations and presented an alternative theory
deriving the hexameter from a combination of an inherited octosyllabic
colon with its catalectic variant.154 The appeal of this reconstruction derives
from the fact that this sequence is attested in Old Comedy (versus Priapeus),
151
Meillet (1923).
152
Meillet thus refuted the derivations of the hexameter from two smaller units found in other Greek
meters, current in nineteenth-century German scholarship (1923: 66). Notably, Meillet was also
unwilling to relate the complex meters of choral poetry to the Indo-European cola: “La grande
lyrique grecque résulte d’un développement savant, parti surtout d’Asie-Mineure et où des
influences non helléniques sont sans doute intervenues en une large mesure” (74).
153
Thus, M. L. West (1973b) derived the dactylic hexameter from the hemiepes (extended from
reizianum) and paroemiac, endorsing the view of T. Bergk and H. Usener (1974a: 10). See West
(1973a: 169 n.10) for the suggestion that hexameter can be derived from pherecratean + extended
reizianum. Independently of West, Nagy (1974) proposed a different, somewhat less mechanical
scenario: hexameter was to be derived from pherecratean with triple dactylic expansion; this
reconstruction was revisited in Nagy (1979a), which attributes a significant role to the prosodiac.
See also West (1974b) discussing his disagreements with Nagy (1974). The publication of the Lille
Stesichorus in 1976 prompted the speculation that its heavily dactylic meters could represent a
transition point between lyric cola and the dactylic hexameter (e.g., Gentili 1977).
154
Berg (1978). Further discussion of Berg’s hypothesis is presented in Tichy (1981); Berg and Haug
(2000); Haug and Welo (2001). In addition to the scholars mentioned by Berg and Haug (2000: 12
n. 12 )(Tichy, Beekes, Powell, Meier-Brügger), Berg’s reconstruction is favored in Hackstein (2002:
9). Bowie (1981: 23) does not cite Berg (1978), but believes (contra Nagy) that the compound nature
of the dactylic hexameter “seems unavoidable, given the almost universal occurrence of central
caesura.” C. M. K. Sicking reviews the alternative accounts, and in particular rules out Gentili’s
derivation (1993: 71). Further discussion of secondary literature can be found in Magnelli (1995).
which is likely to preserve a folk metrical pattern. The Homeric hexameter,
according to Berg, represents a transformed, “stylistically elevated variant”
of this ancient meter.155
There are thus two different views on the origin of dactylic hexameter.
One projects it back to the first part of the second millennium and
considers the development of the epic metrical medium as largely inde-
pendent of that of lyric. Such is the view of C. J. Ruijgh, who sides with
Meillet and argues against attempts to derive the hexameter from
aeolic cola.156 The second hypothesis derives the hexameter from lyric
cola, and brings to bear on this development the surviving evidence of
Archaic lyric (Stesichorus, Sappho fr. 44). This view is upheld by Bruno
Gentili and Gregory Nagy, who, drawing on the work of Hermann Koller,
look for the origins of Greek epic in kitharodic genres, most importantly
the kitharodic prooimion whose shape is preserved in the later Homeric
Hymns.157 It would thus appear that proponents of this view implicitly
posit hexameter epic as a relatively recent development. Nils Berg and Dag
Haug, in fact, argue for an eight-century date for the transition from an
Aeolic narrative meter to the dactylic hexameter, making this transition
coincide with both the Ionization of the epic dialect and the writing
down of the Iliad.158 This daring hypothesis, while difficult to prove
conclusively, is tempting in that it provides linguistic and metrical correl-
ates to the process of the emergence of Greek epic as a literary phenom-
enon out of a preexistent oral tradition.
The undisputed antiquity of that oral tradition does not imply that it had
to be couched in hexameters.159 The conservation of formulas implies the
155
Berg (1978: 26).
156
Ruijgh (1995: 8, 76, 88). Similarly, A. Hoekstra claimed agnosticism about the prehistory of the
hexameter, and offered detailed criticism of West’s reconstruction (1981).
157
Koller (1956); Gentili (1977, 1988: 14ff ); Nagy (1990b); cf. Schröder (1954: 185). Koller’s theory is
discussed further in Maslov (2009). Fröhder (1994) proposes to derive the solo Homeric Hymns
from choral cultic hymns via the figure of the “Vorsänger” (posited “als konstitutives Element des
Chorhymnus” [20]), yet he does not mention Koller’s work. Power (2010: 209) accepts Koller’s
notion that the Homeric Hymns evolved out of the kitharodic hymnic openings (prooimia), but
notes that Koller failed to take into account the continued vitality of kitharôidia.
158
Berg and Haug (2000); Haug (2002: 145–64). West (1988) follows Ruijgh in positing a pre-
Mycenaean epic tradition in dactylic hexameter, yet maintains that this meter is to be derived
from lyric cola. Nagy links the introduction of the equivalence of a long and two short syllables to
the disappearance of intervocalic /s/ and /y/ and the resulting contraction (Nagy 1974: 49). This
would imply that hexameter developed in the post-Mycenaean period, as Mycenaean partially
preserves intervocalic /y/ (Sihler 1995: 188) and seems to maintain /h/ where there was intervocalic
/s/, as in pa-we-a2 /pharweha/ ‘cloths’.
159
The best-known argument in favor of a pre-Mycenaean hexameter epic is the preservation
of formulae that appear to presuppose a vocalic /r/; as I discuss elsewhere, these formulae are
best approached as a prosodic anomaly (Maslov 2011). In favor of a Mycenaean (and even
existence of a meter used for long heroic narratives, which was in all
likelihood stichic (featuring repetition of identical metrical units) to allow
for composition-in-performance.160 While Archaic lyric almost completely
eschews stichic patterns, there is nothing inconceivable in a stichic meter
based on primary cola, as shown by the example of Slavic epic songs.
Indeed, it is likely that before the invention or the importation of hexam-
eter such a meter did exist among the Greeks. A crucial piece of evidence is
provided by Sappho’s fr. 44, often seen as a specimen of pre-hexameter epic
tradition; its metrical pattern – glyconic with double dactylic expansion – is
quite close to dactylic hexameter (x x – ᴗ ᴗ – ᴗ ᴗ – ᴗ ᴗ – ᴗ –).161
In sum, it is conceivable that both choral lyric and narrative epic
developed in the Northern, Aeolic-speaking part of Greece until as late
as the eighth century, at which point the “Homeric” revolution produced
the great Ionicized poems in dactylic hexameter that we know as the Iliad
and (crafted by a later poet) the Odyssey. Might any further evidence lend
credence to such a reconstruction?
On the view of Bruno Gentili and Gregory Nagy, epic develops from
songs performed by professional singers accompanying themselves on the
lyre. The Homeric text can then be argued to preserve the memory of these
epic kitharodes in the Homeric descriptions of performing aoidoi.
As I argue in the following section, however, we are better advised to
speak of the development of an “aedic aetiology” at a stage in the tradition
that is reflected by the Odyssey; this aetiology can be read as a myth of
origins for the Homeric variety of epic as it became conscious of itself as a
literary genre. Notably, the Iliad, which is more firmly rooted in the oral
tradition, has no trace of the aoidoi.162 The relatively late formation of
pre-Mycenaean) pedigree to Greek epic, see West (1988); Horrocks (1997); Latacz (1998). Against,
see Heubeck (1972: 74–6); Tichy (1981); Meier-Brügger (1992: 93); Berg and Haug (2000); Haug
(2002: 39–69); Hackstein (2002: 5–9).
160
For example, Homer avoids the nominatives θεῖος Ὀδυσσεύς and θεῖος Ἀχιλλεύς for which the
synonymous phrases δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς etc. are used instead, although the corresponding genitive forms
(Ὀδυσσῆος θείοιο etc.) are common (Ruijgh 1995: 81–2). This pattern suggests that these formulae
developed at a time when θεῖος still had an intervocalic /h/ sound (thehiyos can be attributed to
Mycenaean based on the spelling te-i-ja) and thus consisted of a sequence of three light syllables –
something that the dactylic hexameter cannot accommodate. Yet traditional primary cola (and the
meter of Sappho fr. 44) present similarly unwelcoming environments for such sequences. (The loss of
the intervocalic /h/ is post-Mycenaean, but otherwise difficult to date: Lejeune 1972: 91–2; Sihler
1995: 172; cf. fn. 158).
161
This meter is one of the few shared by Sappho and Alcaeus. For its relation to the dactylic
hexameter, see Bowie (1981: 32–9).
162
For comparative studies of the formulae used in the Homeric texts, see, inter alia, Hoekstra (1965,
1981); Janko (1982). For additional syntactic evidence on the relative dating of the Iliad and the
Odyssey, see Nikitina and Maslov (2013: 138–40).
aedic self-consciousness calls for an inquiry into possible reflexes of more
ancient notions of poetic performance.
In this context, it is worth recalling the kitharodic hypothesis proposed
by Hermann Koller, which is foundational for Nagy’s approach to this
issue.163 Koller argued that dactylic hexameter – a meter whose stichic
nature allowed for oral improvisation – was first used for poetic purposes
in solo introductions (prooimia) to choral performances, sung by the
kitharode to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument. The formal
properties of these prooimia are preserved in the shorter Homeric Hymns.
The large-scale epic poems, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, eventually
dispense with musical accompaniment and represent later elaborations of
this narrative poetic form. The Hesiodic poems and the longer Homeric
Hymns, in Koller’s account, represent a middle stage in this development.
Koller’s reconstruction remains unsatisfying because it fails to allow for a
preliterary stage in the evolution of poetic forms. Although published in
1956, Koller’s study betrays no knowledge of Parry’s groundbreaking
work on the orality of the Homeric tradition. Instead, Koller is working
on the assumption of a purely literary nature of Archaic Greek poetic
genres, which he views as developing within a fully professionalized poetic
culture. Once, however, a distinction is drawn between preliterary and
literary deployments of epic narrative, it becomes possible to rescue some
of Koller’s insights. The formal evolution that he traces in the different
genres of hexameter poetry may have less to do with the origins of epic
than with the literary appropriation of a preexisting oral narrative tradition.
It may even be possible to draw more specific contours around this
momentous event in Archaic Greek literary history.
As is widely acknowledged, the Homeric poems cannot represent mere
records of an oral performance, as they betray a level of authorial control
over huge literary structures that remains quite unparalleled in known oral
epics. It is conceivable in this light that the literary appropriation of oral
epic was undertaken by the likes of Terpander and Arion, the great pre-
Homeric poets whose names were handed down by the Greeks. In other
words, an early effort of transposition, as Koller suspected, occurred within
a kitharodic culture, whose participants also experimented with solo ver-
sions of genres such as hymns and theogonies.164 This hypothesis receives
163
Koller (1956); Nagy (1990b: 359–60).
164
[Plut.] De mus. 1132d reports that Terpander created melic transpositions of Homer – could this be
a later attempt to make sense of kitharodic experiments with inherited epic material, one of whose
outcomes is our text of Homer? On this passage from De musica, cf. Nagy (1990b: 89 n. 36).
support from the two-tiered composition of the Homeric dialect, which
shows an Aeolic substrate underneath an Ionic dialect coloring. Further-
more, it is perhaps no accident that the Greeks associated the origin of
their poetic tradition and such shadowy kitharodic figures as Orpheus,
Musaeus, and Thamyris with Northern Greece.
If this tentative reconstruction is accepted, an early creative period of the
evolution of the Greek epic would then be localized in the same ancient
Aeolic poetic culture that appears to have been responsible for the forma-
tion of the dialect of choral lyric.165 This Aeolic kitharodic culture, how-
ever, must be distinguished from the Ionian poetic culture near whose
beginning stands the poet of the Iliad, whereas the “aedic” metapoetics
found in the Odyssey, in turn, postdates the crucial literary-historical
episode in which an oral epic about the Trojan war was transformed
into our Iliad. Such a stratification is also demanded by the arguments
summarized in the following section.
The hypothetical alignment of the Aeolic phase of hexameter epic with
the proto-kitharodic culture of Northern Greece highlights an apparent
paradox: quasi-literary phenomena may predate not only the surviving
textual record, but literacy itself. The same assumption appears to be
necessary to account for the formation of the poetic language inherited
by choral lyric. In both cases, what used to be traditional verbal art was
transposed into the domain of self-conscious experimentation by
professionals, but this did not entail systematic recording of texts that
could be transmitted to posterity. While that “proto-literary” culture was
likely to have been quite different from the literary culture of Archaic
Greece which we can, in part, recognize as our own, it cannot be doubted
that it was a most thriving one, with its influence extending to Ionia.
Almost immediately after the introduction of alphabetic writing, sometime
in the eighth century, an Ionian poet set to work transposing that rich
legacy into the text known to us as the Iliad.
The borrowing of the alphabet by the Greeks was part and parcel of the
ongoing influence of the cultures of the Near East. The scarcity of parallels
to heroic epic notwithstanding, this influence seemed to have been par-
ticularly strong in the domain of recited hexameter poetry, where it
impacted genres (theogony), aspects of representation (the Homeric divine
165
Moreover, the Aeolic stratum is much more significant than Ionic for the formulaic constitution of
the text (Hoekstra 1965), which means that the Ionic phase may be equated with the period in
which the Homeric text was in the hands of Ionic rhapsodes. This is the strongest piece of evidence
in favor of the theory advanced in Berg and Haug (2000).
apparatus), and formal elements (such as epic similes).166 Whereas Greek
literary epic was clearly a product of the interpenetration of native and
foreign developments, strict dating criteria for the Near Eastern influence
are not available. One suggestion has been that it took place in the ninth to
eighth century, in the beginning of the Ionian phase of the evolution of
Greek epic.167 There appears to be no reason, however, why it could not
have taken place in the Aeolic-speaking Asia Minor in the same period,
particularly in light of the direct Near Eastern impact on Greek Aeolic lyric
that continued into the sixth-century.168
5 Metapoetics and the evolution of authorship in Archaic Greece

Authors and forms, as I suggested in Section 2, are inextricably linked in
any literary culture, and particularly so in one that evolves out of folklore.
In Sections 3 and 4, I undertook a close examination of the complex
network of relations between different literary forms in Archaic Greece,
supplementing the evidence of performance context and ideological
function with the history of meter and poetic language. In this section,
I return to authorship, considering it no longer as an epiphenomenon of
genre, but as a conceptual structure that can leave direct traces in poetic
texts. Different notions of being an author can, first of all, become
sedimented as culturally accepted terms for the creator or the solo per-
former of the text; a difference in terminology may thus reflect important
genre distinctions. Another kind of evidence that I use to chart the history
of authorship in Archaic Greece is that of diegetic framing, or ways in
which speakers thematize or make explicit their presence behind the text.
Diegetic frames may be common to poets working in the same or kindred
genres, or they may be distinctive of the individual poet. While it is only
this last use of diegetic framing that can be said to be a marker of a literary
culture, the task of reconstructing the earliest (and often hypothetical)
166
On the Near Eastern parallels to the Homeric representation of the gods, which is generally alien to
Greek cult practice, see Burkert (1992: 88–106); West (1997: 177–90). On parallels to Homeric
similes, see West (1997: 217–19, 242–52). On possible comparanda for “historical epic,” see West
(1977: 68–78); see also Bachvarova (2005) on the Song of Release and the assembly scene in Iliad 1;
the latter may, however, have a hymnic, rather than heroic epic provenance, as argued in Faraone
(2015).
167
West (1988: 169–72).
168
On Asiatic elements in Sappho, which seem to betoken a significant impact of the cultures of Asia
Minor on sixth-century Lesbos, see Watkins (2007). For Near Eastern influence on Greek lyric in
general, see West (1997: 495–543).
The evolution of authorship in Archaic Greece 91
phases of Greek poetry call for close attention to the metapoetic
dimension.
In his Three Chapters from Historical Poetics, Veselovsky traces the ways
in which the figure of the performer (singer) acting within a choral group is
transformed into that of the individuated composer (poet).169 While no
ethnographic data on how such a transition occurred is available from
Archaic Greece, Veselovsky’s general insight is confirmed by the history of
Greek terms for the poet-performer.170 It is widely believed that the term
aoidos (literally, ‘singer’) was the proper term equivalent to the Classical
poiêtês (literally, ‘maker’), whose meaning approximates that of the modern
‘poet’. In fact, the story is more complicated. Lyric poets never referred to
themselves as aoidoi; the uses of this word in Pindar should be construed
as referring to the choral performer, not the poet. That designation is
limited to the tradition of hexameter verse, and even within that tradition,
it is restricted to its later phase, represented for us by the Odyssey and the
Homeric Hymns. The fact that this particular notion of creative performer
did not spread to lyric is a reminder of the rigidity of genre boundaries
within the Archaic Greek literary system.
Hypothetically, on the evidence of word formation, I reconstruct two
earlier moments in the history of Greek specialists in verbal art: thespiaoidos
‘the singer of things divine’ and epaoidos ‘singer of both songs and
incantations’. Whereas the former appears to reflect the episode of the
merging of the oracular and poetic uses of the hexameter (as described by
Koller and attested for us by Hesiod’s Theogony), the latter might be
related to the Northern Greek proto-kitharodic culture, on the basis of
the hints at the merging of magic and poetic praxis.171 In keeping with the
proposition advanced in Section 2, new concepts of poet-performer appear
to correspond to new genres. Thus, in reverse chronological order, aoidos
reflects the self-presentation of the performers in the established tradition
of hexameter poetry; these are the emergent rhapsodes. Thespiaoidos
appears to be a likely name for the poet of theogonies. Finally, the self-
designation epaoidos could be very tentatively assigned to the ancient
kitharodes whose memory is preserved in the stories about Orpheus,
Thamyris, and Arion.
169
Veselovskii (1940 [1899]: 317–47).
170
This and the following paragraph summarize the reconstruction advanced, based mostly on the
evidence of compound formation, in Maslov (2009).
171
Burkert (1962: 40); Entralgo (1970: 43ff.); Maslov (2009: 29).
Arguably, the crystallization of an explicit notion of solo performance,
as differentiated from choral (or non-distinct solo/choral) performance,
was essential to the transition from a preliterary to a literary system of
discourse. The speaker who insistently identifies him or herself as an
independent performer of a text is already halfway toward the recognition
that she or he may be the text’s composer. Of course, a solo singer who
excels in performance, be it of folk songs or evolving oral epic, does not
equal a poet – that is, a self-conscious composer of new texts. Yet it is
precisely the domain of singing that furnishes a distinctive Archaic Greek
concept of specialist in verbal art. Paradoxically, this pattern of self-
designation was restricted to a submelic system of Archaic Greek poetry,
the one associated with composition in dactylic hexameter. Inverting
the phrase of Gregory Nagy, it is an example of “the epic possession of a
lyric past.”
Intuitively, it is clear why the concept of poet as solo singer did not
spread to those genres that were actually performed by singers (solo or
choral). Here the poet-composer looked for a different criterion for distin-
guishing himself from the performers. In Pindar, there is a variety of means
for signaling the status of the text as specially composed; those include
complex diegetic framing, self-designation as a sophos ‘wise or skilled man’,
covert references to a biographically specific individual (the Theban prov-
enance of the poem), and even, as I argue in Chapter 2, the employment of
the first person as a tenor in metaphors.172
In contrast to the history of the concept of poet-performer, it is less
obvious how diegetic framing pertains to the processes of individuation
of the author-function. I use this term to refer to the visible marks of the
presence of the author as a mediating instance in discourse. Yet “diegesis” –
the Greek term for narration – is much more at home in discussions of
epic than lyric, which is traditionally viewed as dependent on mimesis: the
lyric author is expected to speak in a direct, unmediated way. In spite of
this widespread view, however, in Archaic Greek lyric, diegetic frames have
an important role to play, in particular in marking the distance between
preliterary and literary forms.
The casual way in which Plato introduces the distinction between
mimesis and diegesis to disparage the use of direct speech in Homer,
172
Sophia as a general term for poetic craft was available before Pindar. Cf. Calame (2004: 425), who
cites Ibycus fr. S 151.23 Page-Davies, Hom. Hymn to Hermes 4.482–6, Solon fr. 1.52–3. Silk notes the
tendency on the part of the commentators to stress the semantic component of “skill” at the
expense of “wisdom” (Silk 2000: 46, n.11).
and in this way to obviate the emotional contagion of contemporary
rhapsodic performances, would not have suggested to his original audience
the incalculable uses to which this distinction was to be put in later
reflections on literature.173 In the Poetics, Aristotle uses the opposition
between impersonation and storytelling in his typology of literary genres,
while providing his own, more precise terms: acted (dramatic) versus
reported (narrative).174 Performed epic combines the two, but tends
toward the latter; tragedy and comedy are entirely dramatic; an example
of pure narrative for Aristotle is, I would contend, dithyramb – an
extended choral song on a mythical topic.175
Elaborating on this distinction, one can contrast two models of text
production, and two corresponding modes of writing as epitomized by
drama and narrative. The mimetic mode, ideally, posits the text as a script
of a sequence of verbal acts that take place in real time. Dramatic illusion
hinges on the capacity of the text, whether performed or not, to project a
mimesis of an event that is either historical/mythical (as in the case of
tragedy) or simultaneous with life off-stage (as in the case of comedy).176
In this mode, interventions by a commenting author are strictly controlled.
They can occur in Old Comedy when the chorus adopts the persona of the
author (in parabaseis); this choral ventriloquism is likely to be indebted to
the precedent of authorial choral lyric. In contrast, the diegetic mode
depends on authorial mediation. The evidential status of the text may
vary: the events can be claimed to have been witnessed by the speaker,
reported to him by someone else, dreamed or fantasized.
While I believe that the development of set diegetic devices is a process
concomitant with the formation of individual authorship, there is of
course no one-to-one correspondence between the use of a diegetic frame
and the “literariness” of a text. For example, a folk text, like any real-life
utterance, can be introduced by a diegetic frame that has no metapoetic
connotations (e.g., “I heard John say ‘I am here’”). In the absence of a
173
Plato, Rep. 392c-395. Prominent examples of far-reaching theoretical deployments of mimesis are
Auerbach (2003 [1946]) and Miner (1990). For further discussion of Plato’s and Aristotle’s usage,
see Calame (1998: 97–100).
174
Poetics 1448a. This move allowed Aristotle to reserve mimesis for a general theory of literature. In
later European poetics, this term was generally used in the Aristotelian, not Platonic sense.
175
Aristotle gives no examples of pure narrative mode, but dithyramb and nomos are mentioned at
1447b. On the other hand, if we follow Plato in positing a “dramatic” aspect for any use of direct
speech, an example of uncontaminated narrative would be difficult to find.
176
In Old Comedy, characters on stage are able to address the audience precisely because the events
taking place on stage are thought to be taking place in real time, as they are being watched. In this
sense there is no rupture of the dramatic illusion (cf. Silk 2000: 91). French Neoclassical drama strove
to observe the principle of the dramatic illusion with even greater rigidity than Greek drama.
diegetic frame, a quote becomes or approximates a mimesis of another’s
speech, that is, it involves rudimentary role-playing (e.g., “‘I am here’”
[spoken with John’s intonation]).177 This, in particular, is what one would
expect to find in a secondary genre that operates with personas; Greek
iambic poetry furnishes an example of literary production that eschews
diegetic framing.
In those genres that do not involve dramatic illusion and pose as a real-
world utterance diegetic framing can assume an important function
of signaling the “literariness” of the text. This, of course, is particularly
significant when literary genres have to assert their difference from
their non-literary analogues. Consider a popular Spartan soldier song
(PMG 856):
ἄγετ’, ὦ Σπάρτας εὐάνδρου
κοῦροι πατέρων πολιητᾶν,
λαιᾶι μὲν ἴτυν προβάλεσθε,
δόρυ δ’ εὐτόλμως πάλλοντες,
μὴ φειδόμενοι τᾶς ζωᾶς
οὐ γὰρ πάτριον τᾶι Σπάρται.
Come, sons of citizen fathers of well-manned Sparta, with the left hand put
forward your shield, shaking the spear courageously, not sparing your life: for this
is not hereditary for Sparta.
This text could have been performed either at a symposium or on the
march, in which case the level of elocution and the level of narration would
coincide. In any case, the text has no diegetic framing, and thus bears no
traces of authorial mediation. Claude Calame, who first applied the
distinction between elocution and narration to Archaic Greek poetry,
focused his attention on the figure of the Muse as a means of the narrator’s
self-presentation.178 I would argue that the wide and diverse use of the
metapoetics of the Muses in Archaic Greek literary lyric betokens the effort
of professional poets to separate their production from texts like this
Spartan marching song as well as from the texts authored by other poets.
In this case, professionalization of mousikê, which demanded that each text
bear a stamp of singularity, may appear to be an important driving force
177
This distinction can also be conceived of in terms of the distinction between reportive and reflexive
calibration, put forward in Silverstein (1993). For an application of Silverstein’s categories to genre
theory, see Maslov (2015).
178
Calame (1995 [1986], esp. 3–57). While I acknowledge Calame’s work as an important methodological
precedent, in this book I approach Archaic Greek poetry not in light of a universal grammar of
narration but as instantiating historically specific kinds of diegetic frames.
for the progressive individuation of poetic production.179 We should keep
in mind, however, that this kind of professionalism was, to begin with,
enabled by a literary culture that favored individual authorship and
abhorred anonymity.
Conversely, the absence of diegetic framing does not entail that the text
cannot be literary. Thus, the preserved texts of Sappho and Alcaeus tend
not to have diegetic frames. To cite another borderline case, a line of
Sappho (fr. 128), which in all likelihood represents the beginning of a
poem, “Come hither now, tender Kharites and lovely-haired Muses”
(δεῦτέ νυν ἄβραι Χάριτες καλλίκομοί τε Μοῖσαι), can be described both
as a ritual invocation and as a diegetic frame. This ambiguity is in part due
to our inability, in the absence of context, to assess the metapoetic
significance of this line.
The emergence of, and changes in, diegetic framing may have different
motivations in different genres and historical periods. For example, an
early nineteenth century novella can begin with a description of the
narrator discovering a manuscript or a letter; here a diegetic frame is called
for by an epistemological problem of fictional narrative (for how else
would the narrator know the inner thoughts of his characters?). With the
arrival of the realist omniscient narrator, this epistemological uncertainty
disappears, marking an important development in the history of the
novel.180 The author’s preface, or the name of the author on the title page
of a modern book, are also examples of historically variable diegetic frames.
Over the course of the nineteenth century, the proportion of publications
that carried the name of the author versus anonymous books changed,
as the identity of the author “became the foremost marketing strategy.”181
Diegetic frames can thus have manifold functions, ranging from a
response to a semiotic instability of the text, which demands an apologia
or an explicit statement on the source of information, to seemingly
gratuitous foregrounding of the text’s author. The two extremes might
be historically linked: what begins as a need to authenticate a doubtful
instance of discourse may result in a device of authorial self-promotion.
A literary text and its author exist in a perfect symbiosis: the author-
function is activated in a text that moves beyond the established domain
179
Simonides, according to a scholion on Pindar’s I. 2 (Drachmann 3.214, 9a), was the first poet to
charge fees. On Pindar’s participation in the increasingly professionalized and innovatory culture of
musical composition see Porter (2007) (on Pindar and Lasus) and Prauscello (2012).
180
This particular development is compellingly traced in Somoff (2015a). On hierarchies of authority
in narrative discourse, see Voloshinov (1973 [1929]); Cohn (1978); Banfield (1982).
181
Demoor (2004: 15).
of discourse, but then assumes a life of its own. Following the hypothesis
advanced earlier in this chapter, a departure from the conventions and
expectations of discourse that amounts to the appearance of a new genre
comes to be regarded as being due to an author’s intervention.
This mechanism, in particular, may explain the fate of the Pindaric
speaker, whose life began as a correlate of the new, synthetic form of
epinikion. It was later, in the course of reception of the Pindaric corpus,
that it took on psychological traits.
New diegetic frames develop as a result of genre mutation, and later are
available for reuse as metapoetic devices whose association with a particular
preexistent form makes them into an effective means of authorization. For
centuries, Western lyric has made use of older metapoetic diegetic frames
(the appeal to the Muse, the notion of poet as singer, topoi of inspiration
and afflatus, etc.), because the process of proliferation or renovation of
literary forms entails an accumulation of metapoetic devices.182
Elsewhere, I have undertaken a close consideration of the chief diegetic
device of Archaic Greek poetry, the invocation of the Muses.183 The
tentative sequence of poetic forms suggested by this evidence confirms
some aspects of the reconstruction of the early history of Archaic Greek
metapoetics based on the analysis of compounds of aoidos. First, the
evidence points to the priority of the Muses as a choral group of nymph-
like creatures; in origin, they seem to have been associated with preliterary
communal song. Further modifications of this diegetic device correspond
to particular genre mutations: the distinctiveness of the ways of appealing
to the Muse(s), in the absence of an explicit author-function, develops
into a mechanism of differentiation between newly emerging forms of
discourse. For example, one variant of this diegetic frame is the request for
specific information, introduced by the formula Ἔσπετε νῦν μοι “Tell me
now” and attested in the Iliad and in Hesiod.184 This device can be linked
to the genre of catalogue poetry and to the introduction of Mnemosyne
as the mother of the Muses. It is also possible to tentatively correlate
182
This tradition can be contrasted with a different kind of lyric, exemplified by early Roman elegy,
which is composed with minimal metapoetic reflection, as mimetic pieces imitating real-life speech
acts. Lyric poetry of this kind periodically enters the literary system as a result of an infusion from
folklore, as in the case of the French Romantic poet Pierre-Jean de Béranger.
183
Maslov (Forthcoming).
184
The full-line formula is Ἔσπετε νῦν μοι Μοῦσαι Ὀλύμπια δώματ’ ἔχουσαι ‘Now tell me, Muses
who hold Olympian dwellings’, usually followed by another half-line formula ‘who was the first [to
do something]’ or ‘how this first happened’ (Il. 2.484, also 2.491, ὅς τις δὴ πρῶτος 11.218, 14.508,
ὅππως δὴ πρῶτον 16.112). This usage – although not the exact formula – is also found in Hesiod’s
Theogony, in the beginning of the theogonic catalogue proper (114–15, 965–7).
Pindar’s three author-functions 97
the Hesiodic Muses with the figure of thespiaoidos. Another example of a
genre-specific diegetic frame is the address to a “clear-voiced” (λίγεια)
Muse, frequent in extant fragments of early choral lyric and, secondarily,
in the Homeric Hymns.185 A separate development takes place within the
hexameter corpus. Whereas in the Iliad the Muses appear in the plural, in
the Odyssey the singular Muse metamorphoses into the performer’s per-
sonal inspiring divinity, a crucial element of the aedic self-consciousness.186
By contrast, a distinct “prooimial” appeal to the singular Muse – most
likely due to the influence of choral lyric – is found in the Homeric Hymns,
as well as in the opening lines of the Iliad and the Odyssey; however
familiar, these passages, I submit, belong to a late phase in the evolution
of Archaic Greek metapoetics.
Bringing together various kinds of evidence presented earlier, one can
chart three phases in the development of Archaic Greek metapoetics.
The first phase builds on the assumption of a common Northern Greek
homeland of the two main poetic dialects of Archaic poetry and is
corroborated by the Northern provenance of the Muses. The magico-
religious associations of some of the semi-mythical kitharodes suggest a
very tentative ascription to this phase of the proto-term for solo performer,
epaoidos. The association between oracular and poetic speech, elaborated
by Hermann Koller, points to a distinct episode in the evolution of poetic
self-consciousness when the performers of hexameter verse referred to
themselves as thespiaoidoi (the conventions of catalogue verse can only
provisionally be linked to this stage). Finally, the notion of aoidos emerged
as a result of further professionalization of solo performance, most likely
within an Ionic milieu.
6 Pindar’s three author-functions

In Sections 1–3 of this chapter, I sought to locate the modus operandi of
literary authority in the interplay between individual author, genre, and
tradition. The paradoxical logic of literary traditionalism, comprising an
endless series of moments of foundation, makes it clear that individual
authorship is not just a social strategy but an intrinsic element of literary
evolution. I argued, moreover, that the proliferation of lyric authors in the
185
Alcman frr. 14a1, 28.1.1 (adverb λίγ’), cf. also fr. 30.1, Stes. 63.1, 101.1, Pind. Pai. 14.32; Hom. Hymn
to Mother of the Gods 14.2, to Dioscuri 17.1, to Hephaestus 20.1. This combination also occurs in later
hexameter poetry; see Od. 24.62, Hes. Scutum 206.
186
Another metapoetic notion that belongs to the late phase of the hexameter tradition is the term
οἴμη ‘path of song’; see further discussion in Maslov (Forthcoming).
Archaic period is a byproduct of the proliferation of forms, which entered
into new relations with history and became vehicles of particular ideo-
logical stances. The exploratory reconstruction of early phases of Archaic
Greek poetics, presented in Sections 4 and 5, then suggested that incipient
forms of the literary, including the differentiation between genres, can
evolve by means other than the name of the individual author. These
means include professional self-designations, diegetic frames, preferences
for particular metrical patterns, and poetic dialects.
In Section 3, I pointed to three specific factors that contributed to the
rise of personalized authorship in Archaic Greece. First, it is the precedent
of “Homer,” an author invented to interrupt the oral tradition. Second,
these are the vague memories of named professional kitharodes. While
these figures have no reliable texts attached to their names, impeding any
firm conclusions, it is nevertheless possible to conjecture that the special-
ization of the kitharode – what Hermann Koller described as his stepping
out of the chorus – was a result of a dynamic that Veselovsky saw as
intrinsic to choral performance: the leader of the chorus (koryphaios or
khorêgos) is often expected to initiate the performance and involve the
choral group in a dialogue. Gregory Nagy has pointed to a similar mech-
anism of individualization in Archaic Greek chorality.187 Finally, I touched
upon another possible motivation behind the rise of individual authorship
in Archaic Greece: the inherent singularity of poetic commissions elicited
from monodic poets. In this context, Gregory Nagy’s remarks on political
tyranny as a model for literary authorship offer a promising starting point:
Pindar and his contemporaries, figures like Simonides and Bacchylides,
made their own breakthroughs as individuals, as historically verifiable
persons whom we may call authors, by virtue of being protégés of powerful
families of tyrants or quasityrants who forged their individuality through
such public media as poetry itself.188
The Archaic age was the age of tyrants – idiosyncratic figures who claim
the support of the demos, are generally opposed to the local aristocracy,
and prone to self-aggrandizing activities. In Nagy’s view, the individual
187
“Like the polis, the chorus is a mechanism of rotating deindividualization and individualization,
where the member of the chorus can move up from the status of egalitarianism in the aggregate, the
chorus, into the status of leadership in the hierarchy, the status of the khorêgos ‘chorus leader’,
thereafter potentially rotating back down into the status of membership in the aggregate” (Nagy
1990b: 411).
188
Nagy (1990b: 174). For a similar intuition, cf.: “Auch wenn sie nicht Herrscher sind, atmen die
Menschen Pindars ein gewaltiges Ichgefühl. So ist auch der Dichter davon geschwellt” (Fränkel
1927: 44).
poet emerges as a correlate of the obsessively self-centered tyrant. This
argument, as I discuss earlier, finds oblique support in the evidence of
Pindar, who espouses a more patently individual poetic persona in odes
addressed to prominent aristocrats. It is doubtful, however, whether the
poet-tyrant symbiosis by itself can provide a sufficient explanation for
the rise of individual authorship, as many early lyricists do not appear to
have worked for individual patrons. Rather, we need to allow for multiple
sociopolitical and cultural factors that conspired to create a literary culture
founded on the principle of individuation.
Pindar’s epinikion belongs to a transitional point in the history of
Western literature, and for that reason involves a distinctive configuration
of author-functions that combines archaic and innovative elements.189
This genre bridges the performance-oriented poetics of communal song
and self-conscious, authorial verbal art. The two kinds of poetics corres-
pond to the indefinite (collective, third-person) and the individual
(biographically specific) modes of authorization. In other words, whereas
a folkloric text can generally be prefaced with they say, a literary text is
marked for a unique origin. This imperative of singularity, in Pindar’s case,
is directly elicited by socioeconomic aspects of the commissioning and
production of epinikion, which was a costly undertaking, demanding that
the text be and appear specially crafted for the occasion. In addition to
these two modes of authorization, I would point to a third one, which uses
diegetic frames to assign the text to a fictional outside agent. Thus, the
invocation of the Muse(s) authorizes the text as issuing from a source that
is neither communal nor biographically specific, but rather regimented by
an author-specific text type (“genre”) to which only some performers/
authors can claim access.
The deployment of the third kind of author-function, inasmuch as it is
favored by the professionalization of literary production, marks a distinct
stage in the emergence of individual authorship. Since the communal
medium prevented the use of full sphragis (the “signature” motif, involving
the author’s name), Greek choral lyricists developed diegetic frames that
could be recognized as uniquely theirs. Characteristically, the metapoetics
of the Muses in Pindar is quite different from that of Bacchylides: Pindar
frequently mentions an unnamed Muse as an aid in poetic composition,
189
Following Richard Helgerson, one might speak of different “configurations of what Michel
Foucault has called ‘author-functions’” emerging in different literary systems (1983: 3). Discussing
a different moment of transition, Helgerson notes the emergent quality of authorship in late
sixteenth-century England: “Rather than being a settled and stable structure, perpetuated by
education and the rules of society, the system of authorial roles was only emerging” (2).
whereas Bacchylides, being in general more vague about the Muses’ exact
contribution, refers specifically to Kleio and (particularly) Ourania who
thus serve as markers of his poetic “brand.”190
Thus, the three constitutive elements of literary authority in Pindar
are: (1) references to the received phatis ‘oral tradition’ in mythic
sections; (2) sphragis-like elements, which tend to appear in the later
parts of the ode, suggesting a pattern common to melic poetry (reflected
in the theory of the Terpandrian nomos); (3) tropes of self-generated or
divinely-sanctioned discourse. I would like to illustrate the operation
of these elements in two Pindaric epinikia, which occupy opposite
positions in the spectrum reaching from communal cult poetry to
self-consciously metapoetic literary composition: Pythian 11 and
Olympian 1.
Pythian 11 is a poem for a Theban victor, and, like another Theban
commission, Isthmian 7, it does not differentiate between the poet-
composer and the choral voice. In both these texts, the Pindaric speaker
embraces the “middling” ideology, stresses his modest civic aspirations
(P. 11.50–7, I. 7.39–44), and, in P. 11.52, emphatically rejects “a tyrant’s
lot” (αἶσαν τυραννίδων).191 Both poems begin with long proems that
list mythical events and cult figures that are distinctive to Thebes; to use
an image from I. 7.16–17, these poems seek to awaken the city’s
“sleeping ancient grace.” Moreover, P. 11 is explicitly embedded in a
cultic context, and even specifies the time of the performance, “early
evening” (l. 10). The poem recounts the myth of Orestes, in an empath-
etic manner that reinforces its veracity (ll. 22, 35). At one point, the
speaker is in doubt as to the exact motivation of Clytemnestra;
unusually for Pindar, this hesitation serves to psychologize the mythical
agent (ll. 22–5).192 In the “break-off ” formula that interrupts the narra-
tive, the chorus is rendered present by virtue of being addressed in the
vocative plural:
190
There are ten mentions of individual named Muses in the extant odes of Bacchylides (out of 10
total): 3.3, 4.8, 5.13, 5.176, 6.10, 16.3, 12.2, 12.43, 13.195, and 19.3. By contrast, Pindar includes names
of the Muses only 4 times (out of 71 total): O. 10.14, I. 2.7, N. 3.83, and Pai. 7a.7. On different
aspects of Pindar’s metapoetics, see also Gianotti (1975: 41–127); Auger (1987); Goldhill (1991:
128–66); Loscalzo (2003). For the metapoetic significance of the Muses in Bacchylides see Stenger
(2004: 330–2).
191
For a classic discussion of the “middling” topos, see Young (1968: 5–19). For the lack of emphasis on
the individual speaker in the Theban odes, cf. D’Alessio (1994a: 130). To avoid any presumption as
to whether the poet or the chorus is speaking, I use the term “Pindaric speaker” to refer to what
other scholars denote as “the Pindaric ego”, “the Pindaric I,” or Pindar’s “first-person.”
192
For a detailed analysis of the myth of P. 11 in relation to Aeschylus’s Oresteia, see Kurke (2013).
ἦρ’ ὦ φίλοι, κατ᾿ ἀμευσίπορον τρίοδον ἐδινάθην,
ὀρθὰν κέλευθον ἰὼν τὸ πρίν· ἤ μέ τις ἄνεμος ἔξω πλόου
ἔβαλεν, ὡς ὅτ’ ἄκατον ἐνναλίαν;
Μοῖσα, τὸ δὲ τεόν, εἰ μισθοῖο συνέθευ παρέχειν
φωνὰν ὑπάργυρον, ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλᾳ ταρασσέμεν
ἢ πατρὶ Πυθονίκῳ
τό γέ νυν ἢ Θρασυδᾴῳ,
τῶν εὐφροσύνα τε καὶ δόξ’ ἐπιφλέγει.
Have I, friends, been confused at a path-changing crossroads, while previously
I was going the right way? Or rather has the wind thrown me off course, like a sea
vessel? Muse, your job – if you have contracted for pay to furnish your silvered
voice – is to keep [your voice] moving, now for the father Pythonikos, now for
Thrasydaos, whose victory celebration and glory are ablaze.
The passage is surprising for the modern reader. Pindar is not concerned to
conceal the fact of a commission. Quite on the contrary, the mention of
the contract is strategic as it announces the professional nature of the poem
at hand: it is more than a communal hymn for Theban divinities, a
familiar genre evoked in the opening triad. Rather, it is a piece specially
composed for two particular individuals. These lines constitute the only
moment in the poem when the extra-communal aspect of the poem is
foregrounded. This is achieved by a metapoetic move, the mention of
Pindar’s personalized Muse.
One might investigate further the precise nature of the speaker in the
quoted passage. Does the address to “friends” by a speaker in the singular
imply a distinct poetic voice addressing the chorus? Or rather does the
overt similarity of this passage to the self-reflecting statements by choruses
of Attic tragedy indicate that the chorus is enacting an interior conversa-
tion, or even addressing the audience?193
In this context, it is important to stress that the use of first-person
singular forms need not indicate a single speaker. As Maarit Kaimio shows,
Greek lyric and dramatic chorus as a rule uses the singular form of the first
person, whereas the plural is reserved for marked contexts such as collective
prayer.194 Ancient Greek choreuts, by and large, lack choral self-
consciousness: each is speaking for himself, albeit in unison with others.
193
According to a recent commentator, the address is uttered by Pindar the poet and “probably aimed
at the Theban audience” (Finglass 2007: 109–10, quotation on 110). Such extradiegetic reference in
choral lyric is hard to parallel, whereas the chorus addresses itself in N. 2.24, I. 8.1. On choral “self-
referentiality” in Greek tragedy see Henrichs (1994–1995). On “auto-referentiality” in different
genres of Greek poetry see Calame (2004).
194
Kaimio (1970, esp. 32–6).
Table 1 Singular versus plural first-person verb forms in Pindar and Aeschylusa
Pindar
Present ind. Aor. ind. Aor. subj. Fut. ind. Imp. ind. Perf. ind.
Sing. 163 81 22 1 37 4 9
Plur. 45 24 1=N. 7.4 4 11 0 0
(gnom. aor.)
Aeschylus (choral passages)
Present ind. Aor. ind. Aor. subj. Fut. ind. Imp. ind. Perf. ind.
Sing. 233 109 38 16 20 6 14

Plur. 39 14 5 (3=Eum.) 3 6 1 4
a
Based on searches in the Philologic database maintained by Helma Dik: https://sites.
google.com/site/philologic3/.
Notably, Pindar uses more plural first person forms than Aeschylus,
who never uses the chorus as poet’s mouthpiece (Table 1).
What is the utility of Pindar’s plural first-person forms, if they are not
meant to mark choral enunciation? In answering this question, we might
observe that Pindar never uses plural indicative forms in past tenses or
in the perfect (the one exception, N. 7.4, is a gnomic aorist) and that
he uses proportionately more plural forms in the present and aorist
subjunctive (both tenses can refer to the time of speaking) than
Aeschylus. This distribution suggests that Pindar exploits the plural
forms to create a communal voice that could potentially draw in the
audience; since in the past tense this effect is not achievable, only singular
forms are used.195 We may conclude that in P. 11.38, the singular ἐδινάθην
‘I was confused’ is the only form that Pindaric usage allows for. In light
of the evidence for intra-diegetic self-addressing in Pindar, the speaker
must be classified as choral.
In contrast to Pythian 11, Olympian 1, commissioned by the Sicilian
tyrant Hieron to honor his victory in the Olympic horse race, employs a
195
On some further effects that the plural “I” can have in Pindar, see Neumann-Hartmann (2005). For
the notion that the inclusive “we” has the function of drawing in the audience, cf. Goldhill
(1991: 145).
strongly individual voice, identifiable as that of the poet.196 It opens with
an extended metapoetic passage, in which the speaker addresses his own
“dear heart” as he contemplates celebrating the Olympic contest and then
appears to call on himself to take a “Dorian lyre from the peg” to sing the
praises of Hieron. The speaker’s professional status is confirmed by refer-
ences to “wise men” and “men,” for which an inclusive “we” is used and
who are said often to perform at Hieron’s table (ll. 9–17). The poem
concludes with an expression of hope for a chariot victory for Hieron, and
a final signature motif:
ἐμοὶ μὲν ὦν
Μοῖσα καρτερώτατον βέλος ἀλκᾷ τρέφει·
ϯ ἄλλοισι δ’ ἄλλοι μεγάλοι· τὸ δ’ ἔσχατον κορυφοῦται
βασιλεῦσι. μηκέτι πάπταινε πόρσιον.
εἴη σέ τε τοῦτον ὑψοῦ χρόνον πατεῖν,
ἐμέ τε τοσσάδε νικαφόροις
ὁμιλεῖν πρόφαντον σοφίᾳ καθ’ Ἕλλανας ἐόντα παντᾷ. (ll. 111–116)
For me the Muse is nourishing with force a most powerful missile. Different men
are great in different things [?], but the highest peak is crowned by kings. Look no
further. May it be that you walk on high during this time, and that I keep
company so much [so long as I live?] with the victors, as I am renowned for sophia
everywhere among the Hellenes.
The speaker’s sophia, “wisdom,” points back to the wise men in the
opening of the poem, yet now an exclusive claim for poetic expertise is
advanced. In spite of the poet’s palpable presence, however, the author
Pindar is never named, nor is his Theban origin specified. Instead, his
special compositional effort is represented by the same personalized Muse
we encountered in Pythian 11. Here she is already at work on a poem for
Hieron’s hypothetical future chariot victory. What used to be a diegetic
frame – the invocation of the Muses – in Pindar is converted into a
distinctive, author-specific metapoetic device.
Much scholarship on Olympian 1 has focused on its unusual narra-
tive section, in which the speaker openly rejects the traditional myth as
impious and offers an alternative, innovative version.197 The negative
posture of the speaker with respect to inherited lore is more emphatic
than in similar passages in the Pindaric corpus.198 Even more forceful
196
The peculiarity of O. 1 has even led one defender of the choral performance hypothesis,
Giambattista D’Alessio, to allow for its solo performance (D’Alessio 1994a: 117 n. 2).
197
See Köhnken (1974); Gerber (1982: 54–7); Nagy (1986, revised in 1990b: 116–35). For a summary of
general evidence on Pindar as a self-conscious innovator, see Bowra (1964a: 193–6).
198
O. 13.91, N. 5.14–18, N. 7.21, I. 5.51.
than the exclamatory ἀφίσταμαι ‘I stay away’ in line 52 is the way the
mythical narrative is interrupted earlier in the poem:
τοῦ μεγασθενὴς ἐράσσατο Γαιάοχος
Ποσειδάν, ἐπεί νιν καθαροῦ λέβητος ἔξελε Κλωθώ,
ἐλέφαντι φαίδιμον ὦμον κεκαδμένον.
ἦ θαύματα πολλά, καί πού τι καὶ βροτῶν
φάτις ὑπὲρ τὸν ἀλαθῆ λόγον
δεδαιδαλμένοι ψεύδεσι ποικίλοις ἐξαπατῶντι μῦθοι. (ll. 25–9)
Pelops . . . whom Earth-holding Poseidon fell in love with, after Klotho took him
out of the pure cauldron, adorned with ivory with respect to his gleaming
shoulder. . . Many wonders indeed! In a certain way the talk of mortals also
[goes] beyond the true account, [and] false stories, embellished by variegated
lies, deceive.
In a gesture of “scripted spontaneity,” the speaker begins to narrate the
received myth, but stops when reaching an ostensibly shocking detail.199
The alternative account, which Pindar then proceeds to give, omits the
boiling of Pelops’s body, as well as its subsequent reconstitution and the
replacement of a shoulder, negligently consumed by mourning Demeter.
The description of Pelops “adorned with ivory,” in spite of its imagistic
vividness, is, in fact, “a lie,” which the audience is invited to reject ex post
facto. The syntactic parallelism between “myths embellished with lies” and
Pelops’s body “adorned with ivory,” both notions being expressed by
perfect passive participles, is unmistakable.
In Olympian 1, Pindar is thus seeking to assert an authorial stance even
within the mythic narrative – the domain of traditional storytelling, of
“what men say” (phatis). This is not to imply that Pindar’s opposition to
the myth in this poem is a mere show of personal piety, although it does
partake of the tendency, observed in the late Archaic period, to “ethicize”
traditional myths.200 Behind the argument on the truth of the myth of
Pelops, one detects a competition between the emergent individual author
and the authority that resides in oral tradition.201
In its rejection of the authority of tradition, Olympian 1 stands in a
remarkable contrast with Pythian 11, and indeed with the general approach
199
The term “scripted spontaneity” was put forward to describe Pindar’s rhetoric in Kurke (1991).
200
Against the view that Pindar’s personal piety is involved, see Gerber (1982: 70–1, 89). Further
discussion in Chapter 2, Section 1.
201
By questioning the truth behind Pelops’s “ivory shoulder,” Pindar is possibly contradicting not
only the myth but also the ostensible reality of cult: Pausanias reports that an object purported to
be that shoulder was on display in Olympia in his time (Paus. 5.13.6 with Nagy 1986: 80).
Qui parle? Stratifying the corpus of epinikia 105
to myth in Pindaric and Bacchylidean epinikia. One particularly telling
difference between the two poems consists in the use of the motif of evil-
speaking neighbors, which occurs in both mythical narratives, but with
opposite effects. In Pythian 11.28, the mention of “slanderous citizens”
implies that Clytemnestra’s adultery had become public knowledge, thus
prompting her to murder Agamemnon; the motif thus reinforces the
received narrative. In Olympian 1, by contrast, it is invoked to explain
the origins of the false-speaking and evil-minded myth about the eating of
Pelops; here the motif undermines the traditional myth.
In contrast to the view of Pindar’s epinikia as a uniform corpus
informed by a prevalent encomiastic rhetoric, I propose to approach it
as a transitional genre that looks both backward and forward in time,
reflecting the profound transformation that Greek literary culture was
undergoing at the threshold of the Classical period. As I argued in the
Introduction, the task of historical interpretation puts the unity of
the artistic structure under pressure, as it seeks to reveal traces and strata
of disparate literary and social forms. Such an approach demands that we
learn to stratify the Pindaric corpus, before approaching any particular
Pindar poem. Once the criteria for historical stratification are in place,
we can assess the proper socio-symbolic value of elements distributed
across the corpus. Paradoxically, it is in this way, by atomizing the texture
of his work, that it becomes possible to unlock Pindar from the bounds of
his own historical milieu and restore him to the longue durée of literary and
cultural history.
7 Qui parle? Stratifying the corpus of epinikia

In the past two decades, the nature of the Pindaric speaker has been hotly
debated by scholars. The current consensus is that first-person forms in
Pindar can refer both to the poet and to the chorus, but it is also possible
that in some contexts they can refer to the victor; whether or not the
reference can change within a single poem is disputed.202 The paradox
of the Pindaric speaker – at once effusive and elusive – is not exhausted by
the problem of reference. As Leslie Kurke remarks,
202
The debate owes its inception to Lefkowitz (1963, 1991), who held that in epinikia the first-person
invariably refers to the poet; for balanced assessments, see Bremer (1990) and D’Alessio (1994a).
Calame (2009) prefers to speak of indiscriminate “polyphonic” voicing in Pindar’s epinikia
(esp. 21). On the victor as speaker see Currie (2013) and the discussion in the Introduction,
Section 2.
In all of Archaic poetry, there is no more prominent and assertive “I” than
that of Pindar’s epinikia. But this “I” is prominent precisely because it does
the work of mediating and finessing the divergent interests and claims of
individual and community, elitist and middling values, and for this reason,
there is no more mercurial and unstable “I” than that of the epinikia.203
In other words, we cannot solve the problem of the Pindaric first person
unless we are attentive to the social and ideological tasks of particular
epinikia.
Recent scholarship on Pindar, much of it focused on his work outside
of the genre of epinikion, has restored the chorus to its proper signifi-
cance. The emphasis on chorality – as opposed to the poet’s individual
voice – has led some scholars to regard the chorus as the principal speaker
in the epinikia.204 As the previous discussion has shown, it is indeed a
mistake to take a preexistent notion of the authoritative poet for granted
in Pindar. On the other hand, an assimilation of epinikion to communal
cult song would be no less misguided. Instead, we need to work out
parameters that would permit us to diagnose conservative and innovative
elements in late Archaic Greek choral poetics, those that hearken back
to its communal past and those that point to the individuation of the
author-function.
No systematic inquiry into such parameters has yet been undertaken.
The challenge lies in the uniqueness of the epinician genre in this regard.
In Attic tragedy the chorus never speaks for the poet. Nor does that
generally happen in non-epinician choral lyric.205 In Aristophanic comed-
ies, the chorus only unambiguously speaks qua poet in the parabasis. In
Pindaric epinikion, abstracted as a unitary form, however, no clear-cut
rules on the functions of the first person seem to hold.
I submit that it is in fact possible to offer an overall explanation for the
variation in the choral versus individuated qualities of the Pindaric speaker.
Such an explanation calls for a typology of subforms of epinikion; the
resulting types, however, do not represent hard-and-fast rubrics but instead
reflect an evolving set of conventions that have different provenance and
divergent social and ideological vectors. Pindar’s extant epinikia cover the
span of more than half a century; they were commissioned by different
kinds of patrons, and the poet was often charged with very specific tasks.
203
Kurke (2007a: 158).
204
Anzai (1994); Burnett (2005); Currie (2005); differently, see Morrison (2007).
205
Pindar’s paeans furnish a possible exception to this principle, as they may allow for the poet as
speaker; see D’Alessio (1994a: 125–26); Kurke (2005).
Following on attempts at internal chronology based on style that failed to
create a positive consensus, Elroy Bundy’s Studia Pindarica aided in
promoting a view of Pindar’s work as stylistically uniform and informed
by a dominant encomiastic intent. More recent studies have shown,
however, that sub-genres within epinikia – such as poems composed for
immediate performance at the site of the victory, poems that unite a cultic
function with an epinician one, “sympotic” epinikia – can be singled out;
most recently, Catherine Morgan has put forward a typology of epinikia
based on several criteria, including, most importantly, the type of com-
mission.206 I would like to introduce a diachronic dimension into the way
we conceive of epinikion’s basic conventions. In other words, I hypothe-
size that different kinds of epinician song may reflect different moments in
the development of the genre. It must be stressed, however, that the theory
offered here gains its credibility, to a large extent, from its explanatory
potential. It is, first and foremost, a heuristic tool.
The corpora of both Pindar and his contemporary Bacchylides can be
divided into three general classes, based on (1) the historical information
on the addressee and performance and (2) the use (or avoidance) of
particular motifs. Motifs cluster in particular classes of poems, but their
echoes or “reflexes” are occasionally found outside their primary class,
displaying the continuous quality of the distribution. Some poems, signifi-
cantly, fall in between classes, revealing a highly unusual rhetoric; such is
the case of Pythian 5, a poem with a prominent chorus yet addressed to a
hereditary king. Nevertheless, strong correlations between the three classes
and the properties of the speaker emerge.207
The first class includes 10 poems addressed to tyrants and their associ-
ates, aristocratic clans with aspirations for the highest political power, and a
hereditary king. These poems include P. 10, Pindar’s first dated poem
(498), addressed to the Thessalian clan of Aleuadai, P. 4, the poem for
Arkesilas, king of Cyrene, and most importantly, commissions by
members of the Sicilian clan of the Deinomenidai and the Emmenidai,
as well as their associates: Hieron (O. 1, P. 1, P. 2, P. 3), Theron (O. 2),
Xenokrates, Theron’s brother (P. 6, I. 2); Hagesias, Hieron’s protégé
(O. 6). (On O. 3, for Theron, and P. 5, for Arkesilas, see later in this
206
Gelzer (1985) (on poems performed at the Panhellenic sanctuaries, pace Eckerman 2012); Krummen
(1990) (on local cult occasions); Clay (1999) (on “sympotic” epinikia); Morgan (2007) (typology of
patrons). I discuss the subgenres within epinikion further in Chapter 4.
207
I count 44 Pindaric epinikia in total, but also refer for comparison to I. 9, a fragment, and N. 11,
written for a prutaneia appointment, as well as to epinikia by Bacchylides.
section.) In the corpus of Bacchylides, Odes 3, 4 (performed at the site of
the victory), 5, and perhaps 13 belong to the same class.
These poems share a number of elements that are either not present in
other epinikia or present in a modified form. They contain the most
prominent markers of the speaker as individual poet. I identify the
following characteristic features of this class of epinikia:
(1) Poetic signature (sphragis), placed at the end of the poem, as an
envoi; it can take the form of an assertion, a wish for the perpetu-
ation of Pindar’s poetic renown (O. 1.115, O. 6.105; B. 3.96), or a
statement regarding his association with the “nobility” (P. 2.96,
P. 10.64–6; B. 5.195–200); cf. also (a reflex?) in B. 13.221–230;208
(2) Biographical positioning of the poet as a native of his city
(O. 6.84–7, P. 2.3–4, P. 4.299 [ambiguous]); B. 3.96 [ambiguous];
B. 5.9–16, cf. B. 4.7–8;
(3) Speaker compared to an eagle (O. 2.86–8; B. 5.15–30; cf. P. 2.50;
displaced onto the victor in P. 5.111–12, cf. N. 3.80–2);
(4) The community of sophoi/sunetoi to which the speaker belongs
(O. 1.9; O. 2.86, P. 5.12,107; cf. P. 10.22; a reflex in I. 5.28–9);
(5) Sophia/mousikê partaken of by the laudandus (O. 1.15, P. 4.295,
P. 5.114, P. 6.49; B. 3.71, B. 5.3–5; a reflex in I. 7.23);
(6) The sympotic chronotope (O. 1.16–18, P. 4.294, reflex in N. 9.48);
the notion of ‘blessed hearth’ (makaira hestia) (O. 1.10, P. 5.10–11;
reflex in N. 1.19–22);
(7) The notion of individual ‘guest-friendship’ (xenia, philia) relationship
between the poet and the patron (P. 10.64, I. 2.48; cf. O. 1.103,
P. 3.68–9, cf. philia in P. 4.1, P. 10.66; B. 5.11; B. 13.224–5);209
(8) The role of the conveyer of the epinikion (khorodidaskalos?), who is
addressed in the concluding part of the poem (Aineas in O. 6.88,
Nikasippos in I. 2.47);
(9) The disjuncture between the chorus and the poet sharply formu-
lated (P. 10.55–7, B. 5.14–15, reflex: N. 3.11–12);
208
On this convention, see Kranz (1961: 16–17, on Terpander and the kitharodic nomos, and 35–6, on
Pindar and Bacchylides); Calame (2004: 423–7).
209
The statement ‘I am a xenos” in N. 7.61, a poem that elsewhere displays a choral speaker and which
I accordingly assign to the group of civic poems that display a predominantly or solely choral
character, may either be regarded as an aberrant reflex of this topos or (a reading I favor)
interpreted in the extended meaning, attested elsewhere in Pindar (O. 4.4, P. 4.233, P. 11.16) and
warranted by immediate context, “I am a friend, I am favorably disposed.” In favor of the speaker
as poet, see D’Alessio (1994a: 133); Currie (2005: 343): “Pindar’s Theban identity comes through in
the first person”. Cf. Burnett (2005: 196): “the poet/chorus self-described as ‘guest-friend’ of this
house”.
(10) Allusions to political power held by the honoree(s) (O. 1.113–14,
O. 2.7, P. 1.85–6, P. 2.87–96, P. 3.85–6, P. 5.15–19, 117–24,
P. 10.71–2; B. 3.11–12, 70).
Pythian 3, an “epistle” addressed to sickly Hieron, is an unusual poem in
many respects, but it adjoins to this class, both due to its addressee and to
the apparent evocation of the poet-composer in lines 77–9.
I propose to refer to this class of epinikia as dynast odes as they all are
addressed to patrons with claims to highest power. Indirect evidence
suggests that epinikion originated under the patronage of tyrants who
came from the margins of the Greek world.210 For this reason it is
probable, although far from certain, that epinikia, at first, were performed
as monodies; in this case, the sympotic chronotope, most memorably
articulated in the beginning of O. 1, would represent a memory of the
genre’s earlier history.211 The later history of epinikion included the
following two developments:
(1) Tyrants experimented in merging the celebration of their athletic
victories with public religious festivals, perhaps thus legitimating self-
glorification through choral performance, which would otherwise
be reserved for cult occasions. In such contexts, the poet was called
upon to combine the rhetoric of civic community with the praise of
the individual, as in O. 3 and P. 5. In these poems, the centrality
of the cult function led to the total occlusion of the individual poet-
composer, whereas some elements of tyrant praise could stay in place.
P. 5, a poem with a purely choral subject, displays many elements of
the dynast odes, such as the eagle topos, a notion of sunetoi, and
praise for the honoree’s proficiency in mousikê. (Borrowing a term
from historical linguistics, I refer to such residual elements of a
diachronically antecedent form as “reflexes.”) O. 3, a poem for
Theron’s chariot victory but linked to the celebration of the Theox-
enia festival in Akragas, is dominated by an extended myth (13–34)
and does not carry direct markers of dynast odes, except that the
Emmenidai, in an apparent displacement of the xenia motif,
are praised for honoring the Dioskuroi with more “hospitable tables”
than any other mortal (39–40: πλείσταισι βροτῶν ξεινίαις τραπέ-
ζαις). In an apparent envoi gesture, the last lines focus attention on
the speaker (44–5), while suggesting a humble civic attitude toward
210
Further discussion in Chapter 4, Section 3.
211
Gregory Nagy refers to such retentions by the term “diachronic skewing” (1990b: 21).
the extremes of achievement displayed by Theron. Finally, the poem
includes the mention of water and gold as supreme attributes (42),
found in two other dynast poems (O. 1.1 and B. 3.85–7, but note the
same coupling in O. 2.72–3); the likeness of the aristocratic mind to
gold has the same structural function of establishing a dynast’s
natural superiority in P. 10.67–8.
(2) Aristocratic families from mainland Greece, including in rare cases
even democratic poleis such as Athens, took over the practice of
commemorating their victories in choral performances. The appeal of
this borrowing is conveyed by Pindar in N. 4.83–5: “hymn of good
deeds makes a man equal in destiny to kings” (ὕμνος δὲ τῶν ἀγαθῶν
ἐργμάτων βασιλεῦσιν ἰσοδαίμονα τεύχει / φῶτα). The expansion of
the pool of patrons led to the creation of a different subgenre in
which the choral voice of the citizens either coexisted with or (more
commonly) dominated the voice of the poet-composer.
The two poems commissioned by Khromios, Hieron’s associate in Aetna,
instantiate this dynamic, whereby the address to a relatively minor figure
goes along with the occlusion of the poet-composer. N. 9 is a poem that
concludes with the speaker uttering a wish to celebrate the victory “with
the Kharites,” that is, in a choral performance (N. 9.54–5); formally, this
wish assumes the same position as the poetic signature in the dynast odes,
but it is a mere echo of that motif. N. 1, also for Khromios, displays a
purely choral subject, deictically specified (19) and employing a “middling”
rhetoric (30–3). We find what appears to be a residual reference to a
remarkable meal; the speaker, however, is waiting at the threshold. One
more poem commissioned by a victor from Akragas, P. 12, has none of
these conventions.
The second grouping includes fifteen poems for aristocratic victors that
stand closest to the dynast odes, but are more reserved, or oblique, in their
rhetoric. These include O. 3 for Theron of Akragas, O. 7 for Diagoras in
Rhodes, O. 9 for Epharmostos of Opous, O. 10 and O. 11 for Hagesidamos
of the Epizephyrian Locris; O. 13 for Xenophon of Corinth, P. 8 for
Aristomenes of Aegina, N. 3 for Aristokleidas of Aegina, N. 4 for Timasar-
khos of Aegina, N. 5 for Pytheas of Aegina, N. 9 for Khromios of Aitna, I. 1
for Herodotus of Thebes, I. 5 and 6 for Phylakidas of Aegina, and I. 8 for
Kleandros of Aegina. In the corpus of Bacchyides, Odes 9 and 12 (both
fragmentary) may be ascribed to this class.
In these texts, Pindar’s own voice is not prominent, but an effort is
made to mark the poem as issuing from an individual poet-composer. As a
result, this sub-type of epinikia – which I refer to as intermediate odes – use
images that reveal the agency of the speaker qua craftsman and outsider
(rather than as friend and as insider). This category of epinikia is perhaps
most distinctively Pindaric because it relies heavily on his characteristic
diegetic frames, such as the arrival motif and metapoetic prooimia.
The following motifs belong to the intermediate odes:
(1) The speaker is an agent who “sends” the poem (O. 7.8, O. 9.25,
N. 3.76–80; this motif is also found in the epistle-like dynast poem,
P. 2.68) or “arrives” as an apparent outsider (O. 9.82, I. 5.20–1,
I. 6.21, 57; cf. B. 5.9–16);
(2) The use of complex images that disarticulate the poet-composer and
choral performers: O. 3.3–6, O. 13.49 (ἐγὼ δὲ ἴδιος ἐν κοινῷ σταλείς
“I, an individual on communal business”); I. 6.74–5 (discussed later
in this section); I. 8.5,16. N. 3.11–12 comes closest to the poet/chorus
disjuncture found in the dynast odes;
(3) Metapoetic prooimia, dealing with the circumstances of composition
(O. 10.1–8, also line 85; N. 3.1–5, N. 5.1–3, I. 1.1–10);
(4) The poem appears to give an outsider’s perspective on the city:
O. 10.97 (κλυτὸν ἔθνος Λοκρῶν), O. 11.15, O. 13.1–4, I. 5.21–2;
(5) The praise for cultivation of mousikê applied to the entire polis
(O. 10.14, O. 11.18, P. 8.21–28, N. 7.9; cf. I. 9.7–8 and
Pai. 6.181–3212), representing a likely transposition of a similar motif
found in dynast poems.
Some poems that I assign to the intermediate category stand close to the
dynast odes. Thus N. 3 includes the eagle image (80–1), and the same
image seems to reappear, in the plural, in N. 5.20–1.213 I. 6 includes an
adaptation of the poetic signature motif, yet in a modified form that
makes it more amenable to the choral medium: πίσω σφε Δίρκας ἁγνὸν
ὕδωρ “I will give them Dirce’s pure water to drink” (74). This statement
can be taken to mean that the choral subject is “giving the victor the
water of Dirce to drink”: the brand marker is there, but the poet-
composer’s presence is occluded (cf. I. 8.5,16 for a similar device). By
contrast, N. 5 and I. 1, although they include a metapoetic opening, are
otherwise purely choral poems. I. 5 is also close to the choral ideal, except
for the arrival motif, which seems to mark the poet’s presence. P. 8,
Pindar’s late masterpiece, presents a synthesis of different motifs: Aegina
is described as “dear mother” (98), as well as praised for its mousikê (21);
212 213
Fogelmark (1972: 126). On the eagle image in Pindar, see Pfeijffer (1999a: 305–17).
ambiguous poet/chorus disjuncture (29–31) is followed by an ambiguous
first-person statement (58–60).
Finally, nineteen poems can be assigned to the class of civic epinikia:
O. 4 and O. 5 for Psaumis of Camarina, O. 8 for Alkimedon of Aegina,
O. 12 for Ergoteles of Himera, O. 14 for Asopikhos of Orkhomenos,
P. 5 for Arkesilas of Cyrene (but see earlier), P. 7 for Megakles of Athens,
P. 9 for Telesikrates of Cyrene, P. 11 for Thrasudaios of Thebes, P. 12 for
Midas of Akragas, N. 1 for Khromios of Aitna (but see earlier), N. 2 for
Timodemos (the Acharnian) of Athens, N. 6 for Alkimidas of Aegina, N. 7
for Sogenes of Aegina, N. 8 for Deinias of Aegina, N. 10 for Theaios
of Argos, I. 3 and I. 4 for Melissos of Thebes, and I. 7 for Strepsiades of
Thebes. Bacchylides’ Odes 1, 2, and 6 belong to this type. Notably, all of
Pindar’s Theban poems except I. 1 fall in this class.214
There are elements that unite the intermediate and the civic odes, such
as the prominence of the victory catalogue (O. 7.80–7, O. 9.82–99,
O. 13.30–46, 98–113, P. 9.90–103, N. 6.17–22; cf. O. 10.60–75). Kharis
and especially (plural) Kharites are used to index choral performance
(O. 7.11; also O. 14, P. 9.3, N. 4.7, I. 3.8, I. 5.21–2; cf. B. 9.1–2).215
Anomalous first-person, perhaps to be identified as the victor, does not
occur in the dynast poems, but occurs in N. 4.41, N. 10.39–40, P. 8.56–60,
P. 9.89–92, I. 7.37–51.216 In the intermediate and civic odes, we also
encounter figurations of the poetic speaker as karuks ‘herald’ (N. 4.74; this
poem is also unusual in that it includes a potential poet-composer’s ego
in line 80), angelos ‘messenger’ (N. 6.57), tamias ‘steward’ (I. 6.57–8;
cf. I. 9.7–8). Another structural element shared by these two classes of
Pindaric epinikia is the praise of the trainer, placed at the poem’s conclu-
sion in N. 4.91–6, N. 5.48–9, N. 6.65–6, I. 5.59–61 (closer to the end of the
poem: O. 8.54–66). The placement is significant, as it iconically stands for
the lesser significance of the figure mentioned last (which distinguishes this
convention from the praise of Phintis in O. 6.22 and of Karrotos in
P. 5.26–54).217
Turning to the evidence of meter, it is noteworthy that poems built on
simple aeolic cola do not occur among the dynast odes. Such poems
214
For the civic quality of Pindar’s Theban odes, see D’Alessio (1994a: 130).
215
For this convention, cf. N. 5.54 (note that choral performance adds such luster to the victory that it
is mentioned in the victory catalogue; cf. N. 10.26), N. 6.37–8, I. 6.62–4. Cf. B. 1.151.
216
Introduction, Section 2 and n. 202.
217
Note Pindar’s preference for placing “names and invocations in the opening of the ode, a stylistic
trait that is common in choral lyric” (Fogelmark 1972: 99). On the anomaly represented by Phintis,
see Nicholson (2005: 82–94).
predominate in the civic class (P. 7, N. 2, N. 7; I. 7); two more occur
among the intermediate odes (O. 9, P. 8). Otherwise, Pindar’s preference
in the epinikia is for dactylo-epitrites and for complex meters that modify
aeolic cola, sometimes beyond recognition. As discussed in Section 4, there
are strong reasons to posit a correlation between simple aeolic meters and
communal cult song.218
The motifs characteristic of the civic odes in particular are:
(1) A prooimion referring to local cults (P. 11, I. 7) or more generally to
the divine realm (N. 6, N. 7, N. 8; cf. P. 8 for a more overtly
allegorical opening);
(2) The speaker’s self-description as a moderate citizen (P. 11.53,
N. 7.65–7, N. 8.35–9, cf. N. 11.15–16, I. 7.40–8, B. 1.160–74);
(3) A vocative form addressed to a plural group (N. 2.24, P. 11.38, cf.
I. 8.1; B. 13.190);
(4) The civic perspective on the polis (e.g., N. 7.85, I. 7.37);
(5) Descriptions of the speaker’s physical actions/gestures (N. 1.19–22,
N. 5.21, N. 8.13–15, 19).
It is noteworthy that the two Pindaric poems addressed to an Athenian
victor belong to the civic category; both center on the polis (P. 7.9–11,
N. 2.8,24) and have extended victory catalogues (P. 7.13–17, N. 2.9–10,
17–24). The avoidance of the dynast-odes material in P. 7, commissioned
by the Alcmeonid Megakles, as well as the very fact that Athenian victors
seemed rarely to have used Pindar’s services, is most likely reflective of
restrictions on elite self-display in democratic Athens.
This exposition of epinikian motifs and their distribution across
the surviving corpora of Pindar and Bacchylides aid in ascertaining the
nature of the Pindaric speaker by revealing a diachronic trend that suggests
the following historical hypothesis. Epinikion is a poetic form originally
favored by tyrants and aristocratic clans at the periphery of Greece; as such,
it initially employed a strong individual poetic voice. Only after it had
merged with communal cult song did the genre develop features that
are characteristically Pindaric. In the history of Archaic Greek lyric, Pindar
as an individual author has come to represent a genre that hybridizes
various forms of elite self-aggrandizement, communal cult song, and civic
(“middling”) sentiment. To an extent, Pindaric epinikion may thus be said
218
Note, furthermore, that dactylo-epitrites are less likely to be employed in simple poems performed
at the site of the games (O. 11 vs. P. 6, O. 14, P. 7, O. 4, N. 2) and in strophic poems which were
probably performed by a processing chorus (P. 12 vs. O. 14, N. 2, P. 6, N. 4).
to transcend the oppositions that dominated the evolution of the Greek
literary system in the Archaic period.219 Curiously, however, Pindar does
not demonstrate a neat progression from collective (ch)orality to literary
individuality; these components are present, but in a form that is, so to
speak, diachronically inverted.
In light of the stratifying analysis undertaken in the two preceding
sections, the apparent homogeneity of the corpus of Pindar’s epinikia
can, perhaps for the first time, be appreciated as a token of his artistic
achievement. In the context of late Archaic Greece, torn by ideological
conflicts, the creation of a new superordinate category of lyric, which from
then on could be received as the “Pindaric ode,” was a highly implausible
feat. The overcoming of differences that divided Pindar’s contemporaries,
who yearned for different kinds of future and cherished different kinds of
past, occurs within the emergent literary order, whereby the discursive
forms embraced by various classes and ideological groupings as their own
are synchronized within what Bakhtin called the “Great time” of literary
history. This sublation of history is equivalent to what, in a different
critical idiom, might be described as its aesthetic redemption: historical
experience persists in the new mode of historicity afforded by literary
tradition.
The theory of genre formation I put forward makes it possible to define
with greater clarity the kind of sedimentation that is distinctive to litera-
ture. Genre memory does not convey conceptual structures over time
intact; it is a complex process of reconfiguration, in which preservation
of past forms is only possible insofar as they repeatedly enter into new
unions with the present. Moreover, the preservation and continued circu-
lation of texts from preceding epochs makes it possible for an author to
reach back into the past to encompass a seemingly “dead” form in a new
synthesis. Such selective regeneration of forms that subsist in the cultural
unconscious is enabled by an existing tradition of genred literary discourse.
“Pindar” is a name assigned to a corpus of texts by the editors who
collected both the epinikia and the poet’s work in other genres. In the case
of the victory ode, however, the author’s name has a genre-defining
function. For example, the dubious standing of Olympian 5, suspected
by many modern scholars to be a work of a contemporary imitator,
219
Contrast a Marxist perspective on Pindar’s politics of form in Rose (1992: 163): “At the level of
language and meter, Pindar represents the culmination of a specifically aristocratic appropriation of
the new possibilities opened by literacy.” For a critique of Rose’s analysis of Pindar in terms of a
binary opposition of “aristocratic” and “democratic” elements in late Archaic Greek culture, see
Thomas (2007: 142–150).
does not impugn its place in the book of Pindar’s Olympian odes because
it conforms perfectly to the expectations the rest of the corpus generates.220
I consider the genre constitution of the Pindaric epinikion in greater detail
in Chapter 4, but the analysis presented earlier invites some preliminary
conclusions. Pindar’s work on genre was shaped not only by changing
practices of athletic commemoration and commissioning but also by
restrictions on what is possible or conceivable within his poetic medium.
Pindar inherits the poetic language of choral lyric – and along with it, the
legacy of folk communal song as well as, very likely, its particular profes-
sional transmutation in a preceding poetic (kitharodic) culture, which he
seeks to harness to new poetic ends. Pindar’s metrical choices – between
dactylo-epitrites, simple and amalgamated aeolic – are suggestive of simi-
larly heterogeneous impulses.
The stratification of Pindar’s epinikion can be extended to the author-
function. The communal mode of authorization, a property of traditional
verbal art, enters into a contradiction with the incipient form of individu-
ated author-function, derived from the demands of tyrant commissions
and the Homeric precedent. Furthermore, epinikion, possibly originating
as a monodic form, in Pindar’s time employed the choral medium, which
complicated the use of full-name sphragides as a way of marking the text’s
singularity. As a result of the clash between these two types of poetic
praxis, Pindar assigns a central role to the transitional author-function that
relegates authority to an external agent, the Muse, and employs extensive
diegetic framing.
At the end of the Archaic period, Greek literary culture had assumed
many of the aspects of the signifying practice that would characterize
literature in the West thereafter. Most visibly, it is a notion of tradition
extending back to the founding figures and texts from the Greek canon
(Homer, Hesiod, and the lyric poets), who retained their standing as genre
markers for the majority of types of literary discourse that would be subject
to endless proliferation and hybridization from then on: military epic
(Homer’s Iliad), narratives focusing on adventures (peregrinations, forma-
tion) of a single hero (Homer’s Odyssey), didactic epic (Hesiod’s Works and
Days), mythological (religious, allegorical) epic (Hesiod’s Theogony), iamb
and satire (Archilochus), varieties of erotic poetry (Sappho), poetry
centering on ephemeral pleasures (Anacreon), didactic lyric (Theognis),
epigram (Archaic elegiac poets), encomium and panegyric (Pindar). It is
not, however, just a repertory of texts and genres that Archaic Greece
220
For a summary of this debate, see Mader (1990: 109–13).
bequeathed to the later tradition. As I have sought to show, a confluence of
interrelated factors operating during the Archaic period brought about an
unmistakable transformation of preliterary discourse into a literary culture
founded on the principle of individual authorship. No doubt, similar
developments can be observed in other traditions of verbal art that are
typologically akin to Occidental literature (Chinese, Indian, Arabic). It is
to be hoped that further work will reveal similarities and divergences
between these traditions, thus clarifying the extent to which literary
phenomena, which cross-culturally tend to individuate authors and texts,
may claim a universal basis. It is, in any case, only by the laborious path of
empirical investigation that we may arrive at a viable synthesis that might
open theoretical vistas beyond Historical Poetics.
chapter 2
Image, metaphor, concept: the semantics

of poetic language
1 Pindar and the comparative history of poetic image

In his reflections on François Villon, dating to 1912, Osip Mandel’shtam
comments on periodic revolutions in poetic imagery that overturn long-
standing conventions. He compares Villon to Verlaine: whereas the latter
“shattered the serres chaudes of Symbolism,” the former “challenged the
mighty rhetorical school, which may well be regarded as the Symbolism of
the fifteenth century.” The poetic practice confronted by Villon was
dominated by allegories, cerebral constructs such as Love, Danger, Enmity,
and Perfidy, which Mandel’shtam associates particularly with the Roman
de la rose: “Medieval poetry endowed these apparitions with astral bodies as
it were, and tenderly watched over the artificial atmosphere required to
support their delicate existence.”1
Mandel’shtam’s own poetics was similarly directed against the conven-
tionalization of the image in Russian Symbolism. In his own Acmeist
manifesto “On the Nature of the Word” (1922), he writes:
Let’s take for example a rose and the sun, a dove and a girl. To the
Symbolists, none of these images is interesting in itself: the rose is a likeness
of the sun, the sun is a likeness of a rose, a dove – of a girl, and a girl – of a
dove. Images are gutted like scarecrows, disemboweled and packed with
foreign content . . . Nothing is real, genuine . . . Eternal winking . . . the
rose nods to the girl, the girl to the rose.2
In Symbolism, Mandel’shtam identifies a particular configuration of
image, metaphor, and concept, which he deems intrinsically unpoetic,
indeed not true to lived reality. If symbol is a conventionalized metaphor,
then allegory, which is metaphor exploited for a conceptual end, marks a
further degradation of the image. Lest it become a barren abstraction like
1
Mandelstam (1979 [1912]: 53) = Mandel’shtam (2009–2011: 2.13).
2
Mandelstam (1979 [1922]: 128) = Mandel’shtam (2009–11: 2.76–7).
117
118 Image, metaphor, concept
those that oppressed Medieval French poetry, Mandel’stham contends, the
image must remain rooted in the object.
Arguably, Mandel’shtam’s historical optics is distorting. The return to
the pristine image that would signify directly, without the appeal to reason
or established conventions of discourse, is one of the major aspirations of
much of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western lyric. In 1816,
Coleridge contrasted “allegory,” which is “but a translation of abstract
notions into a picture-language,” with “symbol,” which “always partakes of
the reality which it renders intelligible,” and praised the symbolism of the
Bible, which is free from “the hollowness of abstractions.”3 Symbolism as a
poetic movement itself yearned for potent images that would bypass
discursive or conceptual mediation. In 1898, Yeats lamented the fact that
in England, due to the influence of The Faery Queen and The Pilgrim’s
Progress, “Allegory has overtopped Symbolism, and for a time has over-
whelmed it in its own downfall.” For Yeats, symbols allow poetry to
“entangle . . . a part of the Divine Essence.” They may be “emotional” or
“intellectual,” “personal” or “traditional”4 – in short, symbols are images at
their most effective.5 While to Mandel’shtam, by 1912, Symbolist imagery
had lost its appeal, in his call to re-embed poetic discourse in actual objects
he carried on the quest for the purity of poetic meaning initiated by
the Romantics. Similarly to Mandel’shtam, T. S. Eliot would, a decade
later, speak against the inflation of poetic language, pitting the “metaphys-
ical” poets for whom experience and poetic expression were inextricably
linked against Milton and Dryden who chose to perfect diction per se.6
In fact, according to Eliot, from the seventeenth century to Tennyson, the
history of English verse was marked by “the disintegration of the intellect,
the further separation of sound, image and thought.”7 As Villon in
3
White (1953: 25). In contrast to Mandel’shtam, Coleridge assumes that true symbols, such as those
found in the Bible, do not lose their force, but “always communicate identically” (in Coleridge’s
Greek, symbol is “ἀεὶ ταυτηγόρικον”); they are marked “by the translucence of the eternal through
and in the temporal.” For a discussion of Coleridge’s notion of the symbol, see Knights (1960).
4
Yeats (1903 [1898]: 234, [1900]: 251).
5
Yeats (1903 [1898]: 230). Thus, he remarks that “metaphors are not profound enough to be moving,
when they are not symbols, and when they are symbols they are the most perfect” ([1900]: 242).
6
Eliot (1961 [1921]: 288–90). Eliot is aware of the historicity of figuration. While noting that “[t]he
very word ‘allegory’ is enough to condemn anything, to many people,” it is not to be rejected, at least
not in the case of Dante’s Vita Nuova, as “[a]llegory itself may be only a mode of expression of a
mind passionately eager to find order and significance in the world – though it may find order or set
order in ways which we have come to neglect” (1996 [1926]: 98).
7
Eliot (1996 [1926]: 175).
Pindar and the comparative history of poetic image 119
Mandel’shtam, Donne in Eliot serves as an implicit model for how
contemporary verse should be written.
The quest for semantic immanence of poetic discourse was linked to
idealist strands in the philosophy of history and of language that conjured a
time before expression and denotation were differentiated. The rejection of
the conventional often went hand in hand with the celebration of the
archaic, conceived of as a period of mythopoesis, or mythmaking. Through
images mediated by poetry yet claiming the immediacy of myth, poets as
different as Friedrich Hölderlin, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Boris Pasternak
sought to restore a religious potency to verse. In the perspective of the
literary-historical longue durée, this kind of poetics itself can be seen as a
symptom of a fragmented age, when conceptual thought, religious belief,
and poetic discourse have come to occupy different spheres of existence.
The vector of the transformation of poetic image to which Pindar
attests is different from, and perhaps opposite to the one valorized by
Yeats and Mandel’shtam. While falling far short of the conventionality of
abstract allegorism, Pindar’s poetics inaugurates the conceptualization
of poetic image. Here we glimpse metaphors endowed with the force of
a concept, yet (ostensibly) retaining the spontaneity and directness of a
poetic image. The Pindaric moment is both historically unique and open
to iteration, as the long story of the reception of epinikia shows.
What I attempt to describe in this chapter is not a teleology that begins
with the primitive mind and ends with the “Greek” (sc. Western) one, but
one particularly consequential episode in the history of poetic language.
To understand the historical conditions that gave rise to the Pindaric
image, we must remember that, before the rise of philosophy, the task of
conceiving of the world was pursued, first and foremost, within the medium
of poetry.8 Abstract concepts were not rigorously defined, interrelated by
logic, or organized into a philosophical system; instead, they were con-
strued as actors and cast (“hypostasized”) into what we would call personi-
fications. The setting in which these concepts interacted was provided by
“myth” – yet that was myth before the rise of philosophically inflected
theology. In other words, it was not a mythological doctrine but a malle-
able medium of thought, which was subject to innovation and change that
were conceptual in their nature and effects. In sum, image and concept in
Archaic Greek poetry were closely intertwined. In Pindar, abstract con-
cepts operate as complex images, and images take on conceptual functions.
8
Cf. Finley (1955: 16–17): “The clear fact in any case remains that, before Socrates, the Greeks received
from the poets alone their central interpretation of reality.”
According to Eliot, for “a perfect art” – exemplified by poets like Dante
and Donne – “to arise, there must be a kind of co-operation between
philosophy and poetry.”9 This cooperation ensures that poetic “emotion”
is allowed to mediate between sensuality and intellect. Pindar, in his own
way, meets Eliot’s condition, yet not due to a synergy between philosophy
and poetry but due to their being as yet not differentiated.
In my approach to the historicity of the image and its transformation
into concept, I follow the lead of Olga Freidenberg, who explored that
transition in Ancient Greek literature. In Freidenberg’s highly idiosyn-
cratic account, poetic metaphor is located midway between mythological
image and philosophical concept, or to be more precise, metaphor
develops from the former and is a precondition for the latter.10 In folkloric
poetics, imagery is traditional and common to a genre (epic, marriage
songs, laments); in emergent literary discourse, it is subjected to self-
conscious redeployment in the interest of semantic effects specific to a
particular text or passage. The personification of the Litai ‘Prayers of
Repentance’ (Il. 9.502–12), evoked by Phoenix in his appeal to Achilles
where they are described as daughters of Zeus, is an excellent example of
such local, concept-oriented use of imagery, which, notably, stands out in
the Iliad.11 The metaphor of kinship here serves to convey the importance
of paying heed to Agamemnon’s approaches. There appears to be nothing
conventional in the Homeric Litai, and the distance that separates
them from the allegorical “apparitions” detested by Mandel’shtam should
not be underestimated.12
According to Freidenberg, poetic metaphor – singular, ad hoc use of an
image on the basis of analogy – arises at the moment folklore becomes
literature. Moreover, the analogical principle, which is inherent in meta-
phor and involves the conceptual operation of abstracting a quality away
from an object, anticipates the generalizing concepts as they appear in
philosophy.13 Recently, Richard Martin, vindicating Freidenberg’s
approach, focused on the distance that separates the mythological and the
9
Eliot (1996 [1926]: 222).
10
See Freidenberg (1991, 1997). The work was completed in 1954, and published posthumously in
1978. An excellent introduction to Freidenberg’s intellectual background (including Cassirer’s
influence) can be found in Perlina (2002).
11 12
Cf. Yamagata (2005). This is overlooked in Stafford (2000: 231).
13
For an introduction into the theory of metaphor in the context of classics, see Silk (2003). Cf. Silk’s
definition of metaphor: “a deviantly used word or sequence of words whose adequate explication
(sc. explanation by paraphrase or expansion) into non-deviant usage involves overt analogy,
comparison, or simile” (2003: 124).
poetic in Pindar.14 In a complementary fashion, I concentrate on the ways
in which, in Pindar, the poetic points forward to the philosophical. In
particular, I am interested in how images – and, in particular, metaphors –
are put to work as conceptual tools or made to serve a particular (meta)
poetic function. The main objective of this chapter will be to discern
the ways in which Pindar subjects images, many of them traditional
(and indeed mythological), to new uses. Due to the complexity of tasks
that poetry served in Archaic Greece, Pindar’s inflection of inherited
imagery very often entailed more conceptual input and less phenomenal
immediacy, more intellection and less intuition – quite unlike the strivings
of much modern European lyric. This perhaps underappreciated quality of
Pindar’s poetic language may well account for the decline of his reputation
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the interests of the larger
argument of this book, however, a close scrutiny of the shifting semantics of
poetic expression will make it possible to gauge, from yet another angle of
vision, the distance that separates the literary from the preliterary in Pindar.
In the first half of the twentieth century, many Hellenists in Germany
emphasized that concepts found in Archaic Greek poetry differ fundamen-
tally from concepts as they are used by Plato and, a fortiori, by Aristotle.
In particular, the imagistic quality of Pindar’s concepts – and most
patently, of personified abstractions for which he was seen to have a
particular penchant – was frequently cited. In spite of their rootedness in
the largely discredited tradition of Geistesgeschichte, those discussions
nevertheless retain a significant value for constructing a historical poetics
of the image in Archaic Greece. The main challenge in extracting this value
from those works lies in the way in which they freely move between
Pindar’s imagery, symbolism, religion, moral views, and use of myth.
In one of the most in-depth discussions of Pindar’s concepts, Hans
Strohm remarks that Archaic Greek poets, whose work predates the
“discursive” mode proper to philosophical thought, “move not from
one concept to another as they write, but rather turn an ‘idea’ to all sides
and, in the process, unfold the entire wealth of relations of a single
archaic concept.”15 Thus, the archaic Begriff has a peculiar plasticity or a
“pregnant” quality, which from the standpoint of discursive thought may
give it a “primitive” character, but from the viewpoint of art endows it
14
Martin (2015).
15
“ . . . schreiben ja nicht von Begriff zu Begriff vor, sondern wenden jeweils eine ‘Idee’ nach allen
Seiten und entfalten dabei den ganzen Beziehungsreichtum des archaischen Einzelbegriffs” (Strohm
1944: 11). Thummer (1957, esp. 8), follows Strohm (1944) in discussing separate religious concepts in
Pindar.
with “a unique advantage.”16 This polyvalence (“Freizügigkeit”) of the
archaic concept is a crucial aspect of Greek poetic language, and notions
such as “metaphor” or “personification” provide only an outsider’s descrip-
tion of it.17 Strohm stresses the neutrality, the “Doppel-natur”, of archaic
concepts, which remain undetermined with respect to the moral values
of the good and the evil, similarly to poetic images but unlike later
philosophical and theological concepts.18 Pindar, for Strohm, is the chief
representative of this peculiar, poetic mode of conceptual thought.
Other scholars emphasized the forward-looking rather than the archaic
properties of Pindar’s imagery. Franz Dornseiff speaks of the transitional
quality of Pindar’s genealogical metaphors, which describe one concept as
a blood relative of another: they “often already fade toward allegory. It is
this shimmering quality that makes for the charm of much Greek
poetry.”19 Pindar’s post-archaic placement is emphasized by Dornseiff ’s
dismissive take on the opening of O. 13 as “almost heraldry and emblem-
composition of the 17th c.”20 Similarly interested in Pindar’s departures
from the archaic mythologism, Wilhelm Nestle points out that some of
Pindar’s hypostasized concepts, such as Khronos, Nomos, and Theia, have
parallels in the Orphic cosmology, but not in Hesiod.21 These and other
parallels to early Greek philosophy suggest that Pindar stands “on the
border of two time periods.”22
Wilamowitz also acknowledges Pindar’s detachment from the mythical:
Pindar’s genealogical metaphors imply “togetherness” but no “mythic
procreation.” Such metaphorical usage, according to Wilamowitz, is “not
a poetic figure,” as it betokens a distinctively Greek view of divinity
for which Pindar bears witness.23 Finally, Otfried Becker takes the celebra-
tion of the Pindaric image-cum-concept to a new, ecstatic pitch. Pindar
possessed “Plato’s ability to grasp thoughts that in themselves have such
fullness and intensity that they begin to operate directly – an ability to see
ideas.”24 To rephrase this statement in more reserved terms, Pindar’s
religious abstractions anticipate Plato’s Ideas, marking the boundary
16 17 18
Strohm (1944: 12, 40). Strohm (1944: 45). Strohm (1944: 13–32).
19
“Eben dieses Schillernde macht einen Reiz vieler griechischer Dichtungen aus” (Dornseiff 1921: 51).
20
Dornseiff (1921: 51).
21
Nestle (1940: 163–5). Cf. fr. 209 for Pindar’s engagement with the physiologoi. See also Cole (1983:
25–6).
22 23
Nestle (1940: 165). Wilamowitz (1931–1932: 2.131); see also Wilamowitz (1908, esp. 329–32).
24
“Es ist die platonische Fähigkeit, Gedanken zu fassen, die in sich so gefüllt und gespannt sind, daß
sie unmittelbar zu wirken beginnen, die Fähigkeit, Ideen zu erschauen” (Becker 1940: 50). This is a
posthumous publication: Becker died in the battle of Warsaw in 1939.
between both these authors and Aristotle who uses concepts to delimit and
specify, as is proper to analytic thought.
In the second half of the twentieth century, the topic of Pindar’s
peculiar use of concepts was taken up by some Pindarists outside
Germany.25 Most extensively, John Finley in 1955 contrasted Pindar with
French Symbolist poets, remarking that mythical characters and divinized
abstractions, for Pindar, “are his natural way of stating the relationships
and meanings of life.” Finley also attempted to establish the origin of
“symbolic thought” in Homer, who in this respect differs from “the rank
jungle of primitive folk tale,” and to trace its development in Pindar
and Aeschylus. In particular, Pindar is credited for being “more fully
aware than Homer that these [legendary figures and divinized abstractions]
comprise an ideal world.”26 In this respect, Pindar anticipates both
Aeschylus and the philosophical tradition.
The search for valid differentia in the use of concepts in folklore,
Homer, Pindar, and the Athenian classics may thus be said to have ended
inconclusively. Moreover, up until the linguistic turn in the humanities,
Pindaric scholarship favored a biographical approach and the conflation
of art and personality particularly impeded a constructive discussion of
transitional qualities in Pindar’s concept formation, since it was often
mixed up with Pindar’s putative religious views.27 In a forceful reaction
to this biographical paradigm, there followed a period of largely form-
oriented work, much of it inspired by Elroy Bundy’s Studia Pindarica,
which emphasized conventional elements in Pindar’s diction. More
recently, Pindar scholars have again turned to religion, yet in a way quite
opposite to the earlier biographical criticism. The current emphasis is on
uncovering the ways in which Pindar’s poetry is implicated in established
25
Charles Segal puts an emphasis on the concrete, nonconceptual nature of Pindar’s poetry, in which
abstract nouns “verge toward, though not quite reach” personification; cf.: “In Pindar’s mythopoeic
mind, almost nothing is entirely abstract. The boundaries between the personal and the non-
personal are extremely fluid.” (Segal 1967: 438). Thomas Hubbard sets out to explore, with reference
to Pindar, “the significance of polarity and analogy for archaic Greek thought” (“as opposed to the
syllogistic structures and subordination of Aristotelian and post-Aristotelian logic” [1985.5]), but
largely jettisons historical and poetic categories in favor of structural analysis of basic binary
oppositions.
26
Finley (1955: 5, 15, 19).
27
Notable examples of work that foregrounds Pindar as a historical individual are Wilamowitz (1922);
Bowra (1964a); the biographical approach also informs much of the older commentarial tradition on
Pindar’s epinician odes. A high regard for Pindar’s personal religiosity derives from the ancient
tradition: “he was not only a fine poet, but also a man loved by the gods” (ἦν δὲ οὐ μόνον εὐφυὴς
ποιητὴς, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἄνθρωπος θεοφιλής), says one Hellenistic life, and another deems him “most
pious” (εὐσεβέστατος) (Drachmann 1.2, 5).
Greek religious practices, in particular, in the operation of local and
Panhellenic cults. Accordingly, more attention is now accorded to Pindar’s
extant fragments in cult-related genres such as paian or partheneion.28
It should be acknowledged, however, that epinikia, while only margin-
ally relevant to traditional cults, display innovative features that are
obviously relevant to the history of Greek religion; in order to bring them
to light, however, we need to be attentive to the particularities of Pindar’s
language. Back in 1927, Hermann Fränkel, the luminary of German
Classical Geistesgeschichte, spoke of Pindar’s religion as both a biographical
and a historical phenomenon, but favored the former over the latter.
In particular, Fränkel posits the familiar figure of a “pious” Pindar –
inspired by “a joyous zeal for a purer conception of the divine” – based
on passages in which the poet rejects inherited myths: O. 1.28–52,
O. 9.35–8, N. 7.20–30, 102–4.29 As I argued in the previous chapter, in
Olympian 1 the revision of the traditional myth is related to the realign-
ment of communal and individual author-functions. The same argument
can be extended to N. 7.20–30, where Pindar is directly opposing the
accounts of the heroic age found in epic poetry.
It cannot be disputed that Pindar’s reluctance to tell problematic myths
to the end is “largely conventional.”30 This epinician convention, however,
is at the same time a fact of the history of religious ideas. Pindar’s
ostensible censoring of inherited mythology marks the loss of the neutral-
ity of the mythological image. It is, in this sense, a token of the process
that finds parallels in early Greek philosophy and which Nestle terms
“the moralization of myth” (“Ethisierung des Mythos”).31 I would suggest
that the genre of epinikion, inasmuch as it is relatively recent and to a lesser
extent embedded in cult, accommodates the expression of more “modern”
views than other choral genres. This difference, I believe, can help us
explain one of the most challenging cruces in Pindaric interpretation:
Pindar’s apparently apologetic stance in his version of the killing of
Neoptolemos in Nemean 7 as contrasted with the account given in
Paian 6. Whereas the paian contains a more violent form of the myth,
28
Recent work on epinician odes from this perspective includes Burnett (2005); Currie (2005);
Kowalzig (2007); the foundation for the study of epinikion in the context of local cult(s) was laid
by Krummen (1990). Important recent work on non-epinician genres includes Rutherford (2001);
Kurke (2005); D’Alessio (2009).
29 30
Fränkel (1927: 54). Gerber (1982: 88), citing O. 13.91, N. 5.14–18, I. 5.51; frr. 81.2–3 and 180.2.
31
Nestle (1940: 157–62). This moralizing stance goes along with anti-Homeric rebukes in N. 7.21,
Xenophanes B11, B12 DK; cf. fr. 1.22 W and Heraclitus B40 DK, B42. Further discussion in Maslov
(2009: 14). The processes of moralization and psychologization mark a movement away from the
neutrality of the mythological image, cf. Freidenberg (2008 [1943]: 112–15).
in which Neoptolemos first kills Priam at the altar and then is slain by a
vengeful Apollo, Nemean 7 presents a modernized, “moralized” version, in
which the hero perishes, to Delphians’ grief, during a mere scuffle.32 As in
Olympian 1, in which Pindar demonstrably refuses to ascribe cannibalism
to the gods, in Nemean 7 he exonerates both the god and the Aeginetan
hero of gruesome murder. In both cases, the moralizing impulse to update
traditional myths is coordinated with the rise of the individuated author-
function. It is not coincidental that Nemean 7 concludes by foregrounding
the speaker who, as he appears to reject the other variant of the myth,
proclaims: “my heart will affirm that it has never dragged Neoptolemos
down by unchanging words” (τὸ δ’ ἐμὸν οὔ ποτε φάσει κέαρ ἀτρόποισι
Νεοπτόλεμον ἑλκύσαι ἔπεσι). These words in particular have given rise to
the speculation that Pindar apologizes to the Aeginetans for the indecorous
treatment of Neoptolemos in Paian 6. Following Glenn Most, I would
rather suggest that this conclusion dramatizes the power of the Pindaric
speaker to remold inherited lore: words of the tradition (epê) are not
“unchangeable,” but can be recast to the author’s liking.33
Fränkel appears to have perceived a historical link between the “moral-
ization” of mythology in Pindar and the emergence of an abstract notion of
divinity (“Allgemein-Göttliche”), which does not coincide with a single
traditional divinity. He detected this new concept of the divine in Pindar’s
use of the words theos ‘god’ and theoi ‘gods’ in reference to the “divine
realm” or “divine principle.”34 This generalization runs counter to cult-
based religion in which the divinity resident in one temple is distinct from
the (in some cases homonymous) divinity resident in another temple.35
The Panhellenization of Greek religious practices first resulted in the
emergence of “Apollo” as a single divinity, which often superseded local
divinities with whom Apollo was identified. The emergence of the abstrac-
tion of “divinity” marked the next phase in this process. As the gods lost
their peculiar characteristics as extra-terrestrial beings, they were increas-
ingly expected to conform to notions of proper and improper conduct, of
good and evil, and so forth, which were current in popular morality.
The more abstract the divinity, the more humanity it assumes.
Fränkel perspicaciously regarded Pindar’s elevation of Theia, which
in Hesiod is an insignificant figure with a blank name “the divine,” to
32
Pai. 6.109–20, N. 7.40–7. For further discussion of Nemean 7, see Chapter 3, Section 4.
33 34
Most (1985: 205–9). Fränkel (1927: 55–8).
35
Burkert (1985 [1977]: 119–20); Price (1999: 19–25). Note how, in the Ion, Euripides evokes the naïve
religiosity of the protagonist when he speaks of his father as “Phoebus, the one of this temple”
(Φοίβου τοῦ κατὰ ναόν, line 140).
the addressee in the grand opening of Isthmian 5 as emblematic of the
rise of an abstract notion of divinity.36 Lewis Farnell echoes Fränkel’s
judgment when he notes, citing Wordsworth, that the “extraordinary
invocation and poetic exegesis of Theia” shows a “sense of something
‘far more deeply interfused’ than Apollo could ever be: a divine potency
inherent in the bright radiance of gold, in the glitter and thrill of racing
ships and chariots”:37
Μᾶτερ Ἀελίου πολυώνυμε Θεία,
σέο ἕκατι καὶ μεγασθενῆ νόμισαν
χρυσὸν ἄνθρωποι περιώσιον ἄλλων·
καὶ γὰρ ἐριζόμεναι
νᾶες ἐν πόντῳ καὶ <ὑφ’> ἅρμασιν ἵπποι
διὰ τεάν, ὤνασσα, τιμὰν ὠκυδινάτοις ἐν ἁμίλλαισι θαυμασταὶ πέλονται,
ἔν τ’ ἀγωνίοις ἀέθλοισι ποθεινόν
κλέος ἔπραξεν, ὅντιν’ ἀθρόοι στέφανοι
χερσὶ νικάσαντ’ ἀνέδησαν ἔθειραν
ἢ ταχυτᾶτι ποδῶν.
Mother of Helios [Sun], Theia [the Divine one] of many names, it is because of
you that people regard gold, which is of great strength, to be above other things.
And it is due to your honor, lady, that rival ships at sea and horses under chariots
are wondered at in their quick-whirling struggles, and [because of you that]
whosever hair many crowns bind because he was victorious with his hands or in
swiftness of feet achieves the desirable glory in contests. (I. 5.1–10)
In this passage, the “divine,” hypostasized as a female figure, stands not as
the ultimate limit of human aspirations or as a foil against which the
uncertainty of human affairs is manifested – the two notions familiar
from Ancient Greek poetry and, in fact, attested later in the same poem
(14–16, 52). Instead, “the Divine one” becomes the ultimate raison d’être
and the driving force behind the dynamic of all human existence.
This conceptual innovation is achieved through imagery. First, by means
of a genealogical metaphor, Theia is cast as the “mother,” that is, the
originating instance, of the sun. Helios is not only the visible primum
movens of the universe; due to the sun’s shining quality, it is also a
metonym of gold, the highest prized possession among mortals. Gold
as the quintessence of excellence is thus established in the “divine” order.
Rather than being a conventional value standard, it is an image anchored
36
Fränkel (1927: 63). Fränkel (1975 [1951]: 487): “[n]owhere else has Pindar advanced so far towards a
Platonic conception of ideas as in this address to Theia.”
37
Farnell (1932: 467).
in the physically perceptible object, the sun, which is linked to an
abstract notion of divinity by the image of kinship. This powerful
essentializing construction does not produce a mythic narrative, nor does
it depend on one. It is a conceptual operation that deploys “religious”
and “poetic” categories in ways that do not admit of easy separation.
Contestatory activities – between ships, horses, and athletes – that fill
the catalogue in lines 4–10 are represented as the principal mode of human
participation in the divinely-sponsored world. How is it relevant to the
opening cluster of images? Athletes in Archaic Greece, at least as they are
represented in Pindar, are not motivated by material benefit; rather, they
dispense their wealth to take part in the contest. In other words, gold is put
into circulation to make competition possible. In view of this, the glory
bestowed by victory – that is, by exceeding others – is more than a token
of divine goodwill, it is a conceptual parallel to the most valued object of
all, gold, which exceeds any other object because it is the true image of the
divine. The tangible existence of an object that is essentially superior to all
other objects animates and legitimates human contestation. A world in
which superiority in contest is meaningless, for Pindar, would be as
unthinkable as a world in which gold is worthless.
The image of gold in the opening of Isthmian 5 derives its far-
reaching conceptual, meaning-making force from being, on the one
hand, rooted in the physical world and, on the other, associated with
an abstract notion of the divine. The Pindaric image is not merely a
“poetic figure,” but a concept caught at the moment of crystallization.
Gods, in Pindar, often become concepts structured like images. For
example, Pindar uses the names Haphaistos for fire (P. 1.25, P. 3.40),
Ares for “violence” (P. 11.36), and Aphrodite for “love” (O. 6.35). This
metonymic deployment of the gods whose personality is well estab-
lished in Greek cult points forward to Attic tragedy and suggests an
interest in exploiting the divinity’s potential as an imagistic concept.38
A similar pattern is observed by Fränkel; in Pindar, animals serve as
“Sinnbilde,” expressions of inherent qualities: the lion stands for might,
the fox for craftiness, and the eagle for the swoop.39 Fränkel’s explan-
ation, which refers to pantheist animism inherent in primitive religions
and to children’s psychology, overlooks a more general phenomenon.40
38
On this kind of usage, particularly prominent in Attic tragedy, see Pötscher (1959).
39 40
Fränkel (1927: 42–3). Fränkel (1927: 59–63).
For this Pindaric usage is the converse of another, more familiar one:
the personification of abstract concepts.41
The Greek pantheon, as Hesiod’s Theogony shows, is populated by
abstract concepts that appear to us to be gods without cults. This is
explained by a strong link between concept formation and religion: a
concept, once endowed with agentive characteristics and thus personified,
is automatically thought of as a divinity. Predictably for his time, Bowra
explains the prevalence of personifications in Pindar by the poet’s religious
beliefs: “[Pindar] felt that the traditional myths did not account for
everything that he thought divine, and that behind or above or around
the gods were abstract powers which had almost the strength and the
appeal of actual divinity.”42 In contrast to Bowra, I would rather speak of a
cultural peculiarity in the way concepts operated in Archaic Greece:
although exceedingly difficult to localize in the divine realm (“behind or
above or around”), a personification of an abstract concept simply cannot
be conceived of in any way except as a divinity.43 Both patterns – the use of
divine names and animals as metonymies for abstractions and the personi-
fication of abstract concepts – point to a destabilization of the conceptual
domain that traditionally was dominated by personal divinities: actual gods
become abstract nouns, and abstract nouns that are not divinities are
personified.
This is not a proper place to reflect on the reasons behind that desta-
bilization, which is obviously locked in a cause-and-effect problematic with
the rise of “rationality” in Ancient Greece. Most scholars of Greek litera-
ture and religion have come to distrust the simplistic opposition between
the mythical and postmythical (“logical”) stages in the development of
Greek culture.44 In the words of Claude Calame, however, “it is a
41
Stafford (2000) investigates the intersections between poetic personifications of abstract concepts
and religious cult in the sixth through fourth centuries bce. On Archaic Greek personifications in
the context of the Near East and the Aegean, see Burkert (2005). For a theoretically astute discussion
of varieties of literary personification, see Paxson (1994).
42
Bowra (1964a: 84–5).
43
On personification in Greek religion, see Burkert (1985 [1977] 184–7), who in particular discusses
O. 12 as an anticipation of the rise of importance of Tykhê in the Classical and Hellenistic periods.
44
The canonical formulation of this doctrine can be found in Nestle (1940), whose perspective is that
of a historian of philosophy. It has been pointed out that the actual Greek usage of the words mythos
and logos goes ill with Nestle’s teleological account (Calame 2003: 2–27; Lincoln 1996); although
intrinsically interesting, these observations are only laterally relevant, inasmuch as Nestle’s narrative
in fact operates with the “etic” categories of myth and logic. For a rare example of explicit polemical
engagement, see Fowler (1987: 3–13), who presents a reconsideration of the views held by what he
calls the “Fränkel-Snell school” from the position of normative historicism and common sense,
arguing that the German scholars exaggerate changes in the Greek mentalité (to this effect see also
Dover 1964: 196–9). See also Calame (1999), a study that points to one fruitful way of revising the
persistent paradigm, at its foundation difficult to disprove.”45 As I discuss
at the end of Section 3, I believe that what is sometimes referred to as the
Fränkel-Snell school approach to Greek literature is in many respects
misguided. Where they saw a triumphant revolution of the human spirit,
I would speak of reversible processes of transformation. On the other
hand, discussion of paradigm shifts in the history of Archaic and Classical
Greek culture, in one form or another, is unavoidable. Comparative
evidence from traditional cultures furnishes ample parallels to Greek
myths, oral epic, and ritually embedded verbal genres, but starts failing
us as we approach phenomena such as analytic historiography, post-
Socratic philosophy, or Attic drama. A priori, so many original develop-
ments in various domains of cultural production would imply large-scale
changes in how the Greeks made sense of the world, what kinds or modes
of explanation they privileged, and which tools they constructed or reused
to arrive at explanations that appeared viable to them.
For an inquiry into these changes, the Pindaric corpus, inasmuch as it
straddles the border between the Archaic and the Classical period, has
unique advantages. Most pertinently, Pindar’s epinikia attest to a meta-
morphosis of the traditional structure of the image, which anticipates
future, more abstract or “logical” uses of images qua concepts. This
transitional moment was also ripe with poetic potential that Pindar capit-
alized on. One notable aspect of Pindar’s verbal art that was largely
bypassed within the Bundyist rhetorical framework is the idiosyncratic
use of metaphors and condensed similes in which the vehicle dominates –
and conceptually molds – the tenor.46
“Fränkel-Snell” approach to Greek literary history. Much more usual is a tacit assumption that
grand narratives of literary history grounded in idealist philosophy are outdated (or out of fashion),
combined with a preference for the methodological paradigms of positivism or contextualism.
Interesting in the context of the demise of Geistesgeschichte is Seaford (2004), an account of the
“early Greek mind” that assigns primary significance to monetization; here, in a reductively
materialist fashion, phenomena like pre-Socratic philosophy and “tragic individualism” are
explained as resulting from the spread of coinage.
45
Calame (2003: 6). The continued vitality of this narrative, especially in discussions of the rise of
Greek philosophy, is evident from the volumes edited by Mattéi (1990) and Buxton (1999). For a
recent return to Snell’s hypothesis within a “neo-Whorfian” framework, see Jeremiah (2012). In a
recent contribution to an analogous debate in art history, Barbara Borg, building on the opposition
between the mythical (symbolic) and the rational (allegorical), considers “visual representations with
regard to their semantic structure in the context of ancient modes of thought and expression” (Borg
2002: 34).
46
Metaphor and imagery in Pindar is an established topic of research, and one that has recently
attracted renewed attention: Goram (1859); Dornseiff (1921: 54–75); Bowra (1964a: 239–77); Steiner
(1986); Patten (2009); Lattmann (2010). My approach, which emphasizes the conceptual utility of
Pindaric metaphor, is close to that put forward in Kurke (1991), who assumes that “the poet
incorporated various cultural symbols and thereby transmitted a coherent message to his audience
In what follows, I begin with a contrastive analysis of genealogical
metaphor in Hesiod, Pindar, and Plato (Section 2). I then provide intel-
lectual background to Olga Freidenberg’s pioneering yet largely neglected
work on genealogical structures and metaphor in Ancient Greek literature
(Section 3), before presenting a reading of selected passages in Pindar that
illustrate his use of genealogical metaphor, poised (as it were) between
the image and the concept (Section 4). In the last two sections, I turn to
more general aspects of Pindar’s figurative language, relating his tenor-
vehicle structure to the constitution of the speaker, and commenting
on how Pindaric metaphor relates to Homeric simile and folk parallelism.
2 The evolution of the genealogical metaphor:

Hesiod, Pindar, Plato
My focus in the following three sections is on the trope that links concepts
through fictional kinship, which I refer to as genealogical metaphor. Its uses
in modern literature – “Ignorance is the parent of fear” (Moby Dick, ch. 3)
or “Architecture, the mother of ruins” (Joseph Brodsky, “Architecture,”
1993) – often suggest rhetorical affectation, due largely to its association
with Graeco-Roman literatures. Yet genealogical metaphors are attested
across world languages, in which kinship morphemes (denoting ‘mother’,
‘father’, ‘child’) often assume grammatical functions, such as diminutive,
augmentative, and “originative.”47 In the case of Archaic Greece, this trope
can be approached both as a poetic device and as a distinctive feature
of ancient religious thought, which conceptualized the world in terms of
genealogical structures. In fact, even as genealogy remained fundamental
to Ancient Greek religion as a conceptual tool, genealogical metaphor
evolved as a literary form. This evolution cannot be considered apart
from the development of the analytic mode of concept formation that
would, in particular, prove integral to the practices of philosophia from
Plato onward. The objective of the following analysis is to attempt to
locate this development within the structure of the image.
I begin by discussing three examples of genealogical metaphor that
belong to different genres, and are suggestive of a historical pattern. The
first two – from Hesiod’s Theogony and Plato’s Symposium – are much
through his imagery” (11); Kurke (1999) extends this method of reading imagery to all of Archaic
Greek culture.
47
Matisoff (1992). For a survey of extended (“classificatory”) uses of kinship terms in Pindar, see
Longo (1991).
The evolution of the genealogical metaphor 131
more familiar than the third one, which comes from Pindar’s Olympian 13
and, at least chronologically, provides a bridge between them. The juxta-
position with the Hesiodic (mythopoeic) and the Platonic (philosophical)
usage, as I will argue, evinces Pindar’s distinctive literary use of the
genealogical metaphor.48
Hesiod, Theogony, lines 211–2549
Νὺξ δ’ ἔτεκε στυγερόν τε Μόρον καὶ Κῆρα μέλαιναν
καὶ Θάνατον, τέκε δ’ Ὕπνον, ἔτικτε δὲ φῦλον Ὀνείρων.
δεύτερον αὖ Μῶμον καὶ Ὀιζὺν ἀλγινόεσσαν
οὔ τινι κοιμηθεῖσα θεῶν τέκε Νὺξ ἐρεβεννή,
Ἑσπερίδας θ’, αἷς μῆλα πέρην κλυτοῦ Ὡκεανοῖο
χρύσεα καλὰ μέλουσι φέροντά τε δένδρεα καρπόν·
καὶ Μοίρας καὶ Κῆρας ἐγείνατο νηλεοποίνους,
Κλωθώ τε Λάχεσίν τε καὶ Ἄτροπον, αἵ τε βροτοῖσι
γεινομένοισι διδοῦσιν ἔχειν ἀγαθόν τε κακόν τε,
αἵ τ’ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε παραιβασίας ἐφέπουσιν,
οὐδέ ποτε λήγουσι θεαὶ δεινοῖο χόλοιο,
πρίν γ’ ἀπὸ τῷ δώωσι κακὴν ὄπιν, ὅστις ἁμάρτῃ.
τίκτε δὲ καὶ Νέμεσιν, πῆμα θνητοῖσι βροτοῖσι
Νὺξ ὀλοή· μετὰ τὴν δ’ Ἀπάτην τέκε καὶ Φιλότητα
Γῆράς τ’ οὐλόμενον, καὶ Ἔριν τέκε καρτερόθυμον.
Night gave birth to hateful Doom and black Fate and Death, she also bore Sleep
and she bore the race of Dreams. Then, not having lain with anyone, murky
Night, a goddess, bore Reproach and painful Distress, and [she bore] the Hesper-
idai who guard the golden beautiful apples and fruit-bearing trees beyond glorious
Ocean. And [she bore] the Fates and ruthlessly punishing Destinies: Clôthô,
Lachesis and Atropos, who give mortals when they are born both good and bad,
and who attend to transgressions of both men and gods. Nor do the goddesses ever
cease from terrible anger, until they give an evil vengeance to whoever commits a
sin. And deadly Night also bore Nemesis, a sorrow to the mortals, and after that,
Deceit and Friendship, and baneful Old Age, and strongly-minded Strife.
In the catalog of Night’s progeny, occupying 14 lines in the Theogony,
alongside characters who are familiar as divinities, such as the Moirai
48
Pindar’s special fondness for “family figures” is noted by Gildersleeve (1885: 193, ad O. 8.1).
Genealogy “used to convey close relationships between concepts” is a common feature of
personifications (Stafford 2000: 10). Farnell points out Pindar’s “proneness to the personification
of abstract ideas or of immaterial common nouns” (1932: 467; see also a list of personification and
discussion on 467–8). Bowra discusses personification (hypostatization) in Pindar as “a very ancient
instrument of thought, used in pre-scientific times to convey through an easily understandable
means intimate relations between one thing and another” (1964a: 198).
49
The text follows West’s 1966 edition, but I omit brackets around lines 218–9.
“Fates” or Nemesis “Divine Wrath,” we encounter abstract nouns of
whose cult or mythic correlates we are ignorant, such as Philotês “Friend-
ship” and Gêras “Old Age.” Moreover, the order in which Night’s children
are listed is more enigmatic than usual in Hesiod. Nor is it immediately
obvious why Philotês or the Hesperidai receive this particular genealogical
treatment.
Clearly, genealogy here is used as a conceptual tool: the relationship of
parentage is meant to signal an association between concepts or ideas;
the relevance of these ideas to religious practice is a secondary issue.50
Indeed, in some cases, the very personification of a concept appears to be
contingent on the image of natural birth projected by the metaphor of
parenthood. The theogonic catalog of Night’s progeny puts forward not
a systematic doctrine, but a mishmash of concepts interlinked by genea-
logical metaphors.
Genealogical metaphor employs lineage or kinship as an image to
represent a different kind of relation – one that today we would describe
in terms of association, conjunction, production, or causality. Crucially,
I do not mean to imply that these specific abstract operations were
expressed by metaphorical means; it appears, on the contrary, that the
image of kinship contains the associative and would-be logical relations
within it. For the rhapsodes performing Hesiod and very likely for many
other speakers of Greek in the Archaic period, this image was a common
way of signaling underdetermined ties between abstract concepts.51
Notably, Hesiod modifies the basic structure of the genealogical meta-
phor in order to convey most effectively the kind of conceptual link
intended. For example, the vehicle of the metaphor is at once asserted
and called into question when Night is said to be a single parent; this
suggests flexibility in the construction of metaphor that allows the poet to
stress Night’s primordial nature.52 Furthermore, the “siblings” who appear
within one segment of discourse are clearly meant to belong together.
Whereas in other contexts, conceptual groupings are separated by a change
50
Cf. Burkert (2005: 14–20).
51
An instance of genealogical metaphor in early Greek philosophy is Heraclitus, fr. 53 DK: Πόλεμος
πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι “War is the father of all” (Dornseiff 1921: 52 compares Pindar’s fr. 169). Cf.
the same figure in Greek proverbs and quasi-proverbial wisdom: Γαστὴρ παχεῖα λεπτὸν οὐ τίκτει
νόον “A fat belly does not engender a slender mind” (Arsenius, Apophthegmata 5.22a), Ὕβριν τε
τίκτει πλοῦτος, οὐ φειδὼ βίου “It is wealth that engenders violence, not sparing way of life”
(Stob. 4.31c.55; cf. Eur. fr. 438 Nauck = Arsenius, Apophthegmata 17.47a); Βραχεῖα τέρψις ἡδονῆς
τίκτει λύπην “A short enjoyment of pleasure engenders pain” (Mantissa proverbiorum 1.38).
52
In a different context, Night bears Aithêr and Day from a union with Erebus (Theog. 123–5).
of a spouse, in the case of Night, who is a sole parent, these divisions
depend exclusively on syntactic arrangement.
In other words, proximate (“sibling”) concepts are associated not just
with their “parent,” but also with each other. No such association, it
appears, is to be posited for siblings who come from different segments
of the genealogy. For example, in the catalog of the progeny of the Night,
Philotês ‘Friendship’ goes closely with Apatê ‘Deceit’, but is apparently
not linked to the Moirai ‘Fates’, who are listed several lines earlier. The
nature of this intersibling association also varies. Thanatos ‘Death’ is
linked to Hypnos ‘Sleep’ due to the similarity of their outward effects,
and their brotherhood is indeed traditional (Il. 14.231, 16.672). Not so the
relationship between Apatê ‘Deceit’ and Philotês ‘Friendship’, which
are listed in the immediate proximity to Gêras ‘Old Age’ and Eris ‘Strife’,
suggesting a distinctly Hesiodic account of the human condition. In this
case, the poet employs a genealogical metaphor to indicate a specific
thematic nexus.53
After this cursory reading of an illustrative passage from Hesiod’s The-
ogony, let us turn, for the sake of comparison, to a familiar Platonic locus.
Plato, Symposium, 203b-c
ἡ οὖν Πενία ἐπιβουλεύουσα διὰ τὴν αὑτῆς ἀπορίαν παιδίον ποιήσασθαι ἐκ
τοῦ Πόρου, κατακλίνεταί τε παρ’ αὐτῷ καὶ ἐκύησε τὸν Ἔρωτα. διὸ δὴ καὶ
τῆς Ἀφροδίτης ἀκόλουθος καὶ θεράπων γέγονεν ὁ Ἔρως, γεννηθεὶς ἐν τοῖς
ἐκείνης γενεθλίοις, καὶ ἅμα φύσει ἐραστὴς ὢν περὶ τὸ καλὸν καὶ τῆς
Ἀφροδίτης καλῆς οὔσης. ἅτε οὖν Πόρου καὶ Πενίας ὑὸς ὢν ὁ Ἔρως ἐν
τοιαύτῃ τύχῃ καθέστηκεν.
Penia/Poverty, scheming to make a child for herself from Poros/Resource
due to her own resourcelessness, lies down next to him and she begot Eros/
Love. On account of this Eros was born as a follower and servant of
Aphrodite, having been conceived during the celebration of her birth, and
in his nature he is a lover of the beautiful (since Aphrodite is also beautiful).
So, being a son of Poros and Penia, Eros was established in such a fortune.
53
M. L. West disregards this syntagmatic mechanism in his list of “the different kinds of logic” present
in the account of Night’s progeny: “Day follows Night, comes out from her”; Death and Night “are
of like nature”; “Sleep is the brother of Death . . . and is practised at night”; Dreams “come at night”;
“Cavil, Pain, Nemesis, Age, Strife . . . are dark and dreadful”; “the Hesperides live in the far west”
where Night lives; Moirai and Keres have an “affinity with Death”; “Deceit and Sex are practised at
night” (West 1966: 35–6.). I am inclined to take Philotês to refer to “to affection toward φιλοί” both
in light of the thematic nexus of which it is part, and because otherwise Philotês would duplicate
Eros (note that φιλία “friendship” does not occur in Homer, Hesiod or Pindar). Accordingly,
I would not restrict the meaning of Apatê as West does in his commentary on line 224. On this
passage, cf. Stafford (2000: 76–7).
The story of the birth of Eros in Plato’s Symposium is doubly framed as
Diotima’s discourse recounted by Socrates to the symposiasts (I leave aside
the multiple narrative framings of the story of the symposium itself ).
The use of Eros’s genealogy as a conceptual instrument is quite overt;
indeed, it borders on allegory, which – in light of the discussion in the
following section – may be said to presuppose developed analytic thought.
Plato is interested not merely in a diffuse, metonymic linkage by associ-
ation, but in a well-articulated combination of attributes and abstract
notions: Aphrodite’s attribute, beauty, is abstracted into an object pursued
by her son. This link, which could be left implicit in a poetic theogony,
is foregrounded in a philosophical exposition. Furthermore, poverty as an
attribute of the hungry Penia is hypostasized to “resourcelessness” as a
more general, abstract notion.
The passage is also interesting in that it illustrates the process whereby a
genealogical metaphor is converted into a theogonic myth, a fictitious
narrative whose purpose is, in this case, not cosmological or aetiological
but instead, one might say, simply logical. Rather than explaining the origin
of things, it seeks to place a concept in relation to other concepts and define
it by substituting images for logical operators. In the case of the myth of the
birth of Eros, the task of conceptualization involves not only the question of
who the parents of Eros are, but also the time and place, and other
circumstances of his conception: it took place at the celebration of the
birth of Aphrodite, without consent of one of the parents, and as a result of
crafting. All these details are intended to contribute to the definition of
the concept being “born” in and through the myth. Whereas the construc-
tion of a myth based on genealogical metaphor is a self-conscious intellec-
tual exercise in Plato, a similar mechanism can be posited for the more
spontaneous process of generation of cosmogonic and theogonic myths.
As is being acknowledged with increasing readiness in recent scholar-
ship, myths form an irreducible part of the exposition of Plato’s
philosophy.54 Plato’s use of myth is a clear token of philosophy’s origins
in epistemic mechanisms that are more “primitive,” that is, more anthro-
pologically widespread. As Leslie Kurke notes, alluding to Wordsworth,
“philosophy is born trailing clouds of glory from the uncanny or other-
worldly realm of prephilosophical sophia.”55 Compared to other Platonic
54
See, e.g., Morgan (2000); Edmonds (2004, esp. 161–70); and the relevant contributions in Boys-
Stones and Haubold (2010). Plato’s use of genealogy for concept formation is discussed in
Couloubaritsis (1990, 1995).
55
Kurke (2006: 22).
myths, which trade in the esoteric, Diotima’s genealogy of Eros is in fact
unusual in how easily myth translates into concept. This easy transfer of a
philosophical idea into a narrative appears to be due to the prominence of
the underlying genealogical metaphor.
In contrast to both Hesiod’s Theogony and Plato’s myth of the birth of
Eros, Pindar displays no interest in narrative expansion of genealogical
metaphors: thirty-one instances of this trope occur in Pindar’s corpus,
and none of them is integral to the myths Pindar includes in his texts (see
Section 4). Pindar’s corpus demands that genealogical metaphor be exam-
ined independently of mythic narrative, the form theogonies usually
assume. Indeed, Pindar demonstrates how genealogical metaphor,
employed in a self-conscious fashion, can become a means of sense making
(semeiosis) that does not partake of narration. In pointing forward to the
potential of bare conceptuality, Pindar outstrips pre-Socratic and some
strands of post-Socratic philosophy, with their preference for cosmogonic
narratives.
In other respects, Pindar’s usage is analogous to Hesiod’s and Plato’s.
First, like Plato, Pindar is not constructing a coherent theogonic system.
When it is possible to speak of such a system being operative in Pindar, it
is the one familiar from Hesiod. This can be observed in the following
passage:
Pindar, Olympian 13.6–10
τὰν ὀλβίαν Κόρινθον . . . ἐν τᾷ γὰρ Εὐνομία ναίει κασιγνήτα τε, βάθρον
πολίων ἀσφαλές,
Δίκα καὶ ὁμότροφος Εἰρήνα, τάμι’ ἀνδράσι πλούτου,
χρύσεαι παῖδες εὐβούλου Θέμιτος·
ἐθέλοντι δ’ ἀλέξειν
Ὕβριν, Κόρου ματέρα θρασύμυθον.
[I will give recognition] to rich Corinth . . . in which Eunomia resides and her
sister Dika, the steadfast foundation of cities, and Eirêna, reared alongside with
them, the stewardess of wealth for men – the golden children of well-counseling
Themis. They are willing to ward off Hybris, the insolent mother of Koros.
In this passage, which I consider in more detail in Section 4, the three
daughters of Themis ‘Divine Right’ that are said to reside in Korinth –
Eunomia ‘Good Order’, Dika ‘Justice’, and Eirêna ‘Peace’ – are the three
Horai ‘Seasons’, listed in the same order as children of Themis in Hesiod’s
Theogony 901–2.
While freely drawing on the Hesiodic system, Pindar uses genealogical
metaphors to convey the intended meaning locally, within a particular
context, and that meaning is not extendable to other contexts. For
example, Hamera ‘Day’ is described as “Sun’s child” in Olympian 2.32
(ἡσύχιμον ἁμέραν . . . παῖδ’ ἀελίου), but this genealogy has no active
implications for the other passage in this poem where Day and Sun are
mentioned (line 62), not to speak of their mentions in other epinician
odes. Furthermore, in partial contrast to Hesiod’s and similarly to Plato’s
usage, genealogical metaphors in Pindar, especially those that are his
original creations, do not presuppose any religious practice. Too little
survives of earlier Archaic lyric to permit a comparative assessment, but
it is important to note that genealogical metaphors occur in the extant
fragments of Alcman (seventh century bce), suggesting that Pindar
inherited a device well-established in choral lyric.56 A motivation behind
Pindar’s penchant for this trope must nevertheless be sought within his
own poetics. In Section 4, I focus on the self-conscious and often covertly
ideological uses to which this device is put in Pindar’s poetry.
First, however, I consider the theoretical underpinnings and cultural-
historical relevance that such an inquiry into the semantics of poetic form
could have.
3 Herder, Cassirer, and Freidenberg on myth and metaphor

While genealogical metaphor is an important generative mechanism of
theogonic and cosmogonic myths, in Pindar it is disjoined from myth, and
put in service of the formation of abstract concepts. It appears that
metaphor can enter into historically specific productive relationship with
both myth and concept. In this section, I turn to the rich intellectual
tradition that sought to scrutinize this relationship, more often than not on
purely theoretical grounds. My particular interest is in the strand of that
tradition that leads up to Freidenberg’s far-reaching analysis of Ancient
Greek literature.
Nowadays, myth and metaphor are as a rule kept apart in scholarship on
classical literatures. Myth belongs, first and foremost, to the study of
ancient religions; joined in an uneasy union with cult, myth is believed
to supply the foundation, the ideological backbone, of traditional society.
Admittedly, myths may be creatively reworked by poets, but their very
ubiquity in poetic texts is seen as a token of the myths’ overall cultural
significance. Metaphor, on the other hand, belongs to the province of
56
Fr. 57: Dew as the daughter of Zeus and Moon; fr. 64: Tykha as “the sister of Good Order and
Persuasion and the daughter of Forethought.”
Herder, Cassirer, and Freidenberg on myth and metaphor 137
literary scholarship; it is (it would appear) a universal property of poetic
language, and as such it has little, if anything, to tell us about the history of
culture. These formulations may come across as crude simplifications, but
I believe that they reflect a real intellectual rift between the study of
religion and literary scholarship within Classics.
Several theoretical and intellectual developments have contributed to
this rift. For example, the differentiation between the syntagmatic and the
paradigmatic, propagated in literary theory by Roman Jakobson, supports
a view of myth and metaphor as unrelated phenomena: whereas myth, in
accord with its etymology, is regarded as a quintessentially narrative form,
metaphor, which constitutes a vivid, momentary conceptual leap,57
becomes the prerogative of nonnarrative forms, such as lyric. More gener-
ally, the autonomy that literary studies have achieved in the twentieth
century led to a break with the study of religion and mythology, which
previously, and particularly in Germany, were linked to poetry as epiphe-
nomena of the human Geist. Furthermore, the currently prevalent pos-
ition, deriving from Malinowskian functionalism, regards myths not as
cognitive mechanisms, products of (mytho)poetic activity, or components
of a religious system, but as isolated stories that perform ideological work
within their immediate context of circulation. Finally, although the
emphasis on metaphor as a crucial element of language and cognition
has brought about some broadly minded theoretical approaches, these
rarely succeed in effecting a nontrivial link to society or history.58
Casting a retrospective glance at classical philology of the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, one obtains a very different perspective on
this nexus of problems. Indeed, at that time myth and metaphor were
closely intertwined within a variety of approaches, which assumed a unity
of what was called preconceptual thought.
The most influential formulation of the opposition between “mythos”
and “logos,” which pits imagination, storytelling, poetry, and religion
against reason, abstract ideas, prose, and science, belongs to the German
intellectual tradition.59 And it is primarily as a result of the Sentimentalist
57
Cf. Silk (2003: 134–9).
58
The best-known approach to metaphor and cognition is that of George Lakoff (beginning with
Lakoff 1987). Rhetorical analysis of tropes was also reanimated within deconstructionism, the
approach inspiring Patten’s recent work on Pindar (2009). Perhaps most productively, Hans
Blumenberg has pointed to the persistence of metaphors in the history of ideas; see Blumenberg
(2010 [1960]) and, for a recent fruitful application of Blumenberg’s paradigm, see Hadot (2006).
59
What follows is necessarily a very selective and fragmentary account, as I am only pursuing the
intellectual strand that led to Olga Fredeinberg’s work on Archaic Greece. Other figures who made
important contributions to theorization of myth as a distinct mode of thought are Giambattista
and Romantic response to Enlightenment that the “mythical” came to
fascinate Germany’s best minds. Herder wrote that mythology has a
lot to teach us about the “clever and lazy way of substituting images
for those things it does not want to capture or hold on to as ideas.”60
Once the transition from “image” to “idea” was accepted as a fact of
human history, the question arose: How did it happen?
In his Treatise on the Origin of Language (1772), Herder posited personi-
fication as the mechanism behind the rise of religious ideas and the
emergence of nouns in language, effectively identifying these two pro-
cesses. Humanity at first had at its disposal only predicates, which arose as
imitations of natural sounds; the noun was invented as a name for the
supernatural:
Since the whole of nature resounds, there is nothing more natural for a
sensuous human being than that it lives, it speaks, it acts. That savage saw
the high tree with its splendid crown and admired. The crown rustled! That
is the work of divinity! The savage falls down and prays to it! Behold there
the history of the sensuous human being, the obscure link, how nouns arise
from the verbs – and the easiest step to abstraction! 61
In particular, it is the grammatical category of gender that, for Herder,
attests to a primitive stage of language when “everything became human,
personified into woman or man – everywhere gods.”62 At that time,
language and mythology were one: “a resounding pantheon, a meeting
hall of both genders.”63
The priority of verbs over nouns, inasmuch as it indicated a sensuous
rather than a rational agency, was meant to buttress Herder’s main
polemical point on the human, rather than divine origin of language. This
thesis finds further confirmation in Herder’s observation that abstract
notions – which would have been basic to language, had God been its
author – evolve through metaphorical transposition.64 As the putative
Vico, Christian Heyne, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. For other accounts of the
development of a notion of myth in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Detienne
(1981) and Most (1999).
60
“Fragment of an Essay on Mythology”; quotation from Herder (1993: 80).
61
“Treatise on the Origin of Language,” section 3; quotation from Herder (2002: 101, italics in
original).
62
As a token of the far-reaching impact of the idealist tradition on German scholarship, it may be
interesting to note that this argument implicitly underlies Wilamowitz’s linkage of grammatical
gender and poetic personification (1908: 332).
63
Herder (2002: 101).
64
Herder (2002: 118–21). Cf.: “Was God so poor in ideas and words that he had to resort to such
confusing word usage? Or was he such a lover of hyperboles, of outlandish metaphors, that he
imprinted this spirit into the very basic-roots of his language?” (114).
prevalence of metaphors in the lexicon of more “ancient,” “Oriental”
languages indicates, it is through improper, transposed nomination that
abstract concepts arise: assuming that the primitive humans only had
referential nouns at their disposal, a nonreferential object could only be
denoted through extended, expressive usage. Metaphor is revealed as a
crucial stepping-stone to concept.
Continuing Herder’s line of thought, which placed language first, Max
Müller sought for the origins of myth. He asserted that mythological
notions arise from the search for a semantic motivation behind homo-
nyms. Müller’s Paradebeispiel is the Greek word daphnê ‘laurel’, which he
related to the Sanskrit word Ahanā ‘dawn’. In this way, he derived the
aetiological myth of Apollo pursuing Daphne, who escapes by turning
into a laurel tree, from a hypothetical nature myth of Sun pursuing Dawn;
the conflation of Daphne with laurel is a result of linguistic confusion
and the oblivion of the original meaning of the word.65 Müller’s theory has
long been an object of ridicule, and his interpretation of the Apollo-
Daphne myth, in particular, cannot stand since modern Indo-European
etymology precludes a connection between Greek daphnê and Sanskrit
áhan-. Nevertheless, Müller’s view that lexical confusion can generate
cultural notions was borne out in the work of Benjamin Whorf. In this
context, we may also recall a counterintuitive suggestion made by the
distinguished Indo-Europeanist Manu Leumann that poetic metaphor
originates in the observation of how everyday language changes: coexist-
ence of different meanings of one word (diachronically emergent poly-
semy) becomes a model for self-willed semantic transfer (poetic
metaphor).66
A figure central to the formulation of a more sympathetic theory of
myth was Ernst Cassirer. Regarding mythical thought as a form of ideation
distinct from logical thought yet closely tied to language, Cassirer, on the
one hand, hearkens back to Herder in evoking a time before the divide
between expression and denotation and, on the other, builds on Hermann
Usener’s work on the history of religious notions. In particular, Cassirer
argued that nomination and myth both derive from “intensive compres-
sion,” whereby thought “is captivated and enthralled by the intuition
65
Müller (2002 [1871]: 157).
66
Leumann (1959 [1927], esp. 294). Interestingly, Müller spoke of the opposite process, whereby
what used to be a poetic metaphor becomes literalized (2002: 298–9). For further discussion, see
Section 6.
which suddenly confronts it”; the “focusing of all forces on a single point is
the prerequisite of all mythical thinking and mythical formulation.”67
In contrast to the Malinowskian view of myth as a story created “to
fulfill a certain sociological function,”68 Usener and Cassirer regarded
myth, generated from an imagistic core, as the principal means of making
sense of the world available to the “primitive mind.” True to the German
idealist tradition, which explained religion by reference to individual
consciousness rather than to social utility, Usener believed that the basic
form of a religious concept is that of a “momentary god” prompted by an
impression that is an intimation of a different, non-everyday realm. In this
sense, Cassirer places metaphor at the origin of “the simplest mythical
form,” which “can arise only by virtue of a transformation which removes a
certain impression from the realm of the ordinary, the everyday and
profane, and lifts it to the level of the ‘holy’, the sphere of mythico-
religious ‘significance’.”69 Once again, the metaphor is endowed with a
key evolutionary role, yet this time, it aids in the formation of myths rather
than abstract concepts, as in Herder. For both Herder and Cassirer,
however, the emergence of basic religious notions is made possible by
semantic transposition effected by “metaphor.”
We do not need to delve into the murky land of the Ur and commit
ourselves to any conclusions on the origins of language or religion to
appreciate the link between the naming of religious entities, the formation
of elementary myths, and the role that metaphor plays as a cognitive device
that is conceptual (or proto-conceptual) in nature.
The significance of the idealist tradition of thinking about myth and
metaphor for the study of Archaic and Classical Greece is most clearly
evinced by the work of Olga Freidenberg. Perhaps most indebted to
Cassirer, Freidenberg’s Image and Concept draws attention to several
aspects of Greek literature that make it typologically unique. First, it is
the inordinate significance of mythical or folklore-based material in texts
that have very little to do with folklore as it is usually understood; this,
according to Freidenberg, suggests that literature, uniquely in Ancient
Greece, evolved spontaneously out of preliterary structures. Second,
Freidenberg regards literature as a midwife of “philosophy,” in that forms
67
Cassirer (1953 [1925]: 33).
68
Malinowski (1992 [1948]: 125). Note the way in which the Enlightenment rhetoric that opposed
religious fancy on the ground of rationality, reversed by the Romantics and the ensuing German
intellectual tradition, returns, in functionalism, to claim that religious fancy itself is but a disguise
for a form of rationality.
69
Cassirer (1953 [1925]: 87–8).
of ideation proper to literature, such as metaphor, prepared the way for the
logical, concept-oriented system that would emerge as the paragon of
rationality. Thus, the journey still takes us from mythos to logos, yet it
does so via poetic metaphor, that is via artistically licensed forms of
figuration.
The basic assumption of Image and Concept, namely that poetic figur-
ation is a direct antecedent to structures of meaning proper to conceptual
thought, is inspired by Aleksandr Potebnya’s groundbreaking work on
archaic imagery. In particular, Potebnya distinguishes between two cogni-
tive mechanisms that lead “from image to meaning,” both of which
can potentially employ metonymic or metaphoric means. In one case,
“the image is approached as objective and for that reason is entirely carried
over into the meaning, serving as the ground for further inferences
about the qualities of the signified”; this mode of thought Potebnya calls
“the mythical” (and its products, “myths broadly construed”). In the
second kind of ideation, which he deems poetical, the image “is regarded
only as a subjective means for the transition to meaning and is not used
for any further inferences.” Poetic ideation involves “a differentiation
between the relatively subjective and the relatively objective content of a
thought” and generates “scientific thought,” which “is not feasible in the
conditions of the domination of the former [mythical] mode of cognition.”
These distinctions, according to Potebnya, “must be drawn before any
further analysis of tropes, since they reveal that the quality of the trope
is itself subject to change.”70 Freidenberg owes to Potebnya not only the
recognition of the historically contingent quality of figuration, but also her
view of poetry as a mediator between myth and philosophy.
The transition from “image” to “metaphor” is the focus of Freidenberg’s
Lectures on the Introduction to a Theory of Ancient Folklore (1939–1943).
The objective of this work is to formulate the quality of the image at its
earliest phase of evolution, when meaning can only exist in an imagistic
form. As Potebnya notes, “for poetic ideation proper, a trope is always a
leap from the image to meaning. This leap, however, is alleviated by
a cognitive habit – yet how could that habit come about? Only due to
the fact that originally the distance between image and meaning was quite
small.”71 It is this epoch of the dominance of image as a semantic
structure – the epoch preceding the rise of poetic metaphor – that
Freidenberg’s Lectures set out to explore. To penetrate the mythopoeic
foundations of Greek culture, the work puts forward a proto-structuralist
70 71
Potebnia (1905: 406). Potebnia (1905: 407).
approach, which Freidenberg termed semantics or semantic paleontology.72
Taking her cue from Cassirer, Freidenberg believed that the mythopoeic
stage is marked by an inability to differentiate between subject and object
and by an absolute lack of conceptual operations:
Mythological images are the form in which the surrounding world is
perceived, a form that historically antecedes conceptual consciousness. . . .
Mythological schools held that myths are allegories . . . ‘Table’ is not an
allegory of the sky, but the sky itself – herein lies the distinctiveness of the
mythopoeic thought. In church symbolism, a ‘table’ (‘communion-table’) is
an allegory of heaven. One must pause to appreciate the difference between
the two eras of thought: in order to become an allegory of heaven, the table
must no longer be a [synthetic] object-and-nature; nature and objects must
have already become differentiated and opposed to each other. Only then
could the reverse process of their semantic unification in the form of an
allegory occur. Put briefly, an allegory is a product of conceptual thought,
which is capable of abstracting attributes of phenomena and subjecting
them to analytic-synthetic consideration.73
The mythical consciousness “is concrete, unarticulated [or unified –BM],
and imagistic.”74 Causality is conceived differently from the modern formal-
logical notion of cause-and-effect. It is best made sense of as metonymy.75
Striving to conceive of a formal analogue of “the merging of the subject
and the object” within the primitive consciousness, which resulted in
potential identity of each and every thing, Freidenberg argued that
the “multiplicity” of the objective world was nevertheless reflected in the
“complex content of archaic ritual,” which combined different sub-images
that all referred to the central mythical image; this argument elucidates the
recursive, agglomerated structure of ancient mythical narratives.
Freidenberg referred to these sub-images as “mythological metaphors,”
because in them she saw the origin of the later literary metaphors.76
72
I provide a detailed exposition of the relevant aspects of Freidenberg’s theory in Maslov (2012a). On
Freidenberg as a precursor to structuralism and semiotics, see Lotman (1974 [1973]). The following
translations are my own.
73 74
Freidenberg (2008 [1943]: 67–8). Freidenberg (2008 [1943]: 27).
75
“For the primitive thought, the cause of one phenomenon lay in a contiguous phenomenon. As a
result, there emerged a chain of causes and effects in the shape of a circle, a continuous, locked line,
in which each member was both a cause and an effect. This notion of causality evoked a conception
of the surrounding world as permanence in flux: for the primitive humans, all that exists appeared to
be static, but that stasis had for them its phases” (Freidenberg 2008 [1943]: 28). Characteristically,
Freidenberg is more radical than Nestle in the roughly contemporary Vom Mythos zum Logos, who
believed that mythical thought has a concept of causality, but applies it “noch rein willkürlich und
unkritisch” (1940: 2).
76
Freidenberg (2008 [1943]: 29).
Myths result spontaneously from concatenations of several mythological
metaphors that constitute a single central image; such metaphors consti-
tute the myth’s “parts” or “motifs.”77 This hypothesis brings Freidenberg
to the radical view that “[p]rimitive myth has just one kind of content – a
cosmogony, inextricably linked to eschatology.”78
Freidenberg held that myths about heroes are a more primitive, and a
much more occluded, form of cosmogonic myth than systematic theogo-
nies. Within the evolution of forms, Hesiod is thus placed between Homer
and philosophical genealogies:
The image of sons who kill the father and fathers killing a son or a daughter
(thus Agamemnon, in a contiguous myth, kills Iphigeneia), that image of
alternating kosmoi, their destruction and births, is later liberated from heroic
metaphors and enters epic as a system of genealogies and theogonies. Thus
we observe the three lines of the future epic formulations of one and the
same myth: in the heroic epic of Homer and the authors of the Epic Cycle,
it consists in commemoration, in the posthumous glorification of heroes-
warriors; in Hesiod, in the form of Theogony, where a cosmogony and an
eschatology encompasses not only heroes, but also gods and cosmic elem-
ents; in Greek philosophy, in purely cosmogonic systems, in which cosmic
powers alone participate.79
The view of Hesiod as a figure marking a transition from archaic myth to
rationalizing explanation of the cosmos is supported by another observa-
tion. The Homeric world reflects an early notion of divinity, in which
divine characters mingle and coexist with nondivine (and can even be
overpowered by them); it includes fantastic, polymorphic figures that arise
as a result of the merging of receding mythologism and emergent realism.80
By contrast, Hesiod is preoccupied with drawing boundaries between the
divine, the heroic, and the mortal conditions, and he is comfortable with
abstract cosmic principles and personifications of concepts.
Freidenberg’s Lectures posit genealogical linkage as a basic proto-
conceptual operator. Joined with the central argument of Image and
Concept, this insight can clarify the evolution of genealogical metaphor in
Ancient Greek literature. Poetic-metaphorical transpositions of the mytho-
logical image of kinship prepare the way for the emergence of abstract
concepts. While Hesiod’s Theogony is notably adroit in its genealogical
connections, these are still part of an overarching mythic-aetiological
77
Freidenberg (2008 [1943]: 40, 73).
78
A fuller illustration of Freidenberg’s theory of Greek myth in English can be found in a 1946 piece
entitled “The Oresteia in the Odyssey” (Freidenberg 2015 [1946]).
79 80
Freidenberg (2008 [1943]: 81–2). Freidenberg (2008 [1943]: 154–9).
narrative. In Pindar, this function is no longer present; instead, genealogy
becomes a tool for concept formation. On the other hand, Pindar is not
using extended allegories, as these, according to Freidenberg, presuppose
established habits of analytic thought.81
Finally, a note is due on where Freidenberg departs from German
classical scholarship in the Mythos-zum-Logos tradition. While inspired
by Cassirer’s work, Freidenberg’s approach was formulated in the intellec-
tual climate of Soviet Marxism. It is materialist in that it foregrounds the
mutual dependence of artistic, religious, and ideological forms and social
history. For Freidenberg, poetry is a sediment, rather than an expression,
of the history of consciousness, which is in turn conditioned by phases of
societal evolution. Freidenberg’s German contemporaries, by contrast,
tended to regard poetry as a mirror of individual self-consciousness
and its evolution. For Hermann Fränkel, the intellectual distinctiveness
of Archaic Greece is reflected in the authorial style of its poets. Bruno
Snell, whose Entdeckung des Geistes applies the Hegelian teleology to
Ancient Greek literary history, related the invention of “rationality”
to the discovery of the individual in literary sources, while also following
closely on the tradition of identifying epic, lyric, and drama with three
stages in the evolution of Greek consciousness: from objectivity to sub-
jectivity to their triumphant synthesis.82 By contrast, Freidenberg’s version
of Historical Poetics shares with Veselovsky’s a resistance to the Hegelian
account of world history, as well as to a view of genres as essentially
expressive of time periods.
Theoretical study of metaphor may have a lot to gain from a historically
grounded approach to literary form. As we saw, Cassirer ascribes to
metaphor an elevating effect: for him, metaphor lifts the everyday object
81
Perhaps the closest analogue to allegory in Pindar is the extended description of Hesykhia holding
the keys in Pythian 8.1–12, his last datable poem, but even here no one-to-one correspondence
between attributes and concepts obtains. Note that in the history of Archaic and Classical Greek art
the debate has focused on the transition from the symbolic to the allegorical representation. The
former involves a compression of meaning and expression, whereas the latter artificially segregates
the two; thus, allegory is widely seen as an invention of the philosophical age or a result of the
deterioration of the mythopoeic faculty (see Borg 2002: 13–35). Forms of discourse such as oracular
discourse or representation of humans as animals, which are occasionally discussed under the rubric
of allegory (cf. Silk 1974: 122–4), are best approached as derivative from folkloric parallelism (see
Section 6).
82
Fränkel (1968); Snell (1960 [1946]). On this genre progression, see Chapter 1, n. 70. The association
of science and prose was also taken for granted in the grand Mythos-zum-Logos narrative. Wilhelm
von Humboldt aligns prose with the conceptual (rather than the imaginative) type of intellectuality;
scientific discourse, whose purpose lies “in the precision in the separating and fixing of concepts,”
demands prose (1999 [1836]: 173).
to the sphere of what he terms “mythico-religious significance.”83 In
addition to a Neo-Platonic tinge, such a position depends on the rhetorical
view of metaphor as an amplifying device; both are at home in post-
Renaissance lyric, yet they have little to do with figuration in Archaic
Greek poetry. As is well known, in Homer similes serve to link the heroic
age to the world of the everyday; in this sense, the figure operates as a
lowering, rather than an elevating device.84 For example, Freidenberg
comments on the simile embedded in the description of Hephaestus
fighting the waters of Xanthos with fire in Book 21 of the Iliad, where
an event with cosmic repercussions is
clarified with the aid of the image of a boiling cooking vessel, where pork is
cooked! It is clear that a stronger impression is being interpreted with a
weaker one, and the former not only does not need the latter, but is
weakened by it, if one were to speak from the position of formal logic.
Yet on the artistic plane the image does not pale from such a comparison
but is enriched, because there are now two dimensions rather than one. The
realism of the explaining member of the simile represents a new form – and
one just as strong – of the mythic aspect of the member that is being
explained.85
The representation of the everyday, for Freidenberg, is not a self-evident
given borrowed from actual experience and then appended to the myth-
ical. It is itself a transposition of the mythical, its new aspect. Thus
construed, “realism,” furthermore, although it is sprouted by mythopoi-
esis, depends on categories distinctive to conceptual thought.86 Archaic
lyric, as Freidenberg argued, “marks a shift in the perception of the world
83
Cf.: “[m]yth, like metaphor, contributes to the construction of the particular world in which Pindar
sets his victors, where poet and athlete mix freely with gods and heroes, and cross the everyday
boundaries of space and time” (Steiner 1986: 137). Indeed, inasmuch as Pindaric epinikion seeks to
appropriate the mythical world for encomiastic tasks, it appears to allude to the earliest kind of
mythology, as Freidenberg saw it, where the boundaries between gods and mortals are moot. Yet we
must be aware that this is most likely a pseudo-archaic gesture, not a survival of a primitive
worldview. Elsewhere in her discussion of metaphor in Pindar, Steiner uses idealist language,
referring to the poetry’s participation in “a Platonic world of fundamental being” (151),
metaphor’s creation of “a special ground where poets encounter their divine counterparts” and “a
ladder which the poet and his subjects may travel” (154), and citing Heidegger’s notion of poetry as
evocation of full being.
84
On different aspects of the Homeric simile, see Fränkel (1921); Moulton (1977); Freidenberg (1991b
[1946]); Redfield (1975: 186–92); Wofford (1992: 29–80) and discussion in Section 6.
85
Il. 21.362–5. Freidenberg (1991b [1946]: 30); translation amended.
86
Freidenberg (1991b [1946]: 34); translation amended: “Conceptual thought, as it recycles tradition,
invents nothing, yet everything that enters its orbit is radically transformed, because it is not a
mythopoeic but realistic consciousness that engenders it. One should not construe realism as
description of everyday life. The treatment of the everyday is not the factor, but the result of
realistic consciousness. Realism is revealed in a concept of time as duration and a process. This is no
on the path from imagistic to conceptual thought, from mythological to
realistic Weltanschauung.”87
In Pindar, the myth and the work of figuration are largely separated.
Tenors and vehicles of metaphors or condensed similes do not belong to
separate levels of “significance” or decorum. Pindar’s metaphors strive, first
and foremost, for conceptual lucidity that is aided by imagistic vividness.
For example, the comparison of an athlete who competes at his home polis
to a rooster that only “fights within” (O. 12.14), whose seeming indecor-
ousness gives trouble to modern commentators, should be construed, quite
simply, as a sharply formulated analogy.88 One may also recall the com-
parison of the poetic speaker to a cork floating over the surface of the water
with one part of it laboring under the water, and the other part remaining
unsoaked (P. 2.79–80). Both the realistic elaboration and the lowly register
of the metaphor’s vehicle go ill together with Cassirer’s intuitions.89
Yet this latter image is not due to Pindar’s eccentricity; it recurs in
Aeschylus (Choe. 505–7). I return to this passage, as well as to the general
problem of the conventionality of Pindaric metaphors, in Section 5. First,
however, I take a close look at Pindar’s uses of the genealogical metaphor,
the chief device of conceptual thought in the prephilosophical age.
4 Pindar’s genealogies
Based on their function, as well as their relation to the history of the
device, I distinguish three kinds of genealogical metaphor in Pindar.
(a) Those that recast traditional genealogical ties, often introducing a
new emphasis that integrates the image into the texture of the poem
(eight in total). Aside from two (O. 13.10, fr. 122.4), they all appear to
longer the mythological spatial and static time. Space is no longer enclosed and flat but stereoscopic.
The ties of origination assume the so-called causal character. Finally, the transition from the
perception of a unique concreteness toward the abstract and generalized is accomplished, as a
result of which the object is separated from the subject, the active from the passive. A simile is
spontaneously produced by such a realistic consciousness with its conceptual thought.”
87
Freidenberg (1991a [1946]: 6); translation amended. For further discussion, see Section 6.
88
Cf. Gildersleeve (1885: 226); Silk (2007: 189). The ideological underpinning of this passage is
analyzed in Kurke (1991: 25–6).
89
A similar language informs T. S. Eliot’s definition of his transhistorical category of “metaphysical
poetry” as one that “elevates sense for a moment to regions ordinarily attainable by abstract thought,
or on the other hand clothes the abstract, for a moment, with all the painful delight of flesh” (1996
[1926]: 55). Eliot asserts that such poetry “finds no place in the ancient world,” overlooking both the
Pindaric precedent to the Romantic poetics of momentary illumination (see Maslov 2012c) and
Pindar’s interest in abstractions.
Pindar’s genealogies 147
presuppose the Hesiodic system (O. 13.6–8, O. 9.14–16, O. 14.13–16,
N. 6.1–4, N. 7.1–4, N. 11.1).
(b) Isolated genealogical metaphors that are not attested before Pindar
(thirteen in total). Five convey the concept of production or caus-
ation (O. 2.17, O. 2.32, O. 7.70, O. 11.2, P. 5.27–9, N. 9.52); three
involve a distinctively Pindaric metapoetic notion of the ego as child
of a locale (P. 8.98, I. 1.1, Pai. 6.12); other such metaphors occur at
(fr. 78.1, fr. 33c.3, N. 1.4, fr. 222.1);
(c) genealogical metaphors serving to promote and flesh out abstract
concepts that constitute epinician Grundbegriffe (ten in total), such
as Angelia (O. 8.81), Alatheia (O. 10.3–6), Hêsykhia (P. 8.1–4);
Tykha (O. 12.2, fr. 4). Five have immediate metapoetic connotations,
such as Mnamosyna (Pai. 7b.15, with the Hesiodic genealogy as
daughter of Ouranos), aoidai ‘songs’ (P. 4.176, N. 4.3), and the
Muse (N. 3.1; cf. N. 3.10).
In what follows, I only discuss a few illustrative examples.
Rather than serving the task of surface elaboration, metaphor in Pindar
has, fundamentally, a cognitive role: the image is used to supply infor-
mation that is conceptually relevant. To approach Pindar’s metaphors
merely as artifacts of his imaginative genius is to miss the fact that Pindar’s
poetics antedates the emergence of a nonpoetic language of abstract
thought.90 Before Aristotle, no poetic figure was exempt from conceptual
or ideological functions. This applies a fortiori to the period of such
intensive sociopolitical contestation as the late Archaic period.
To illustrate this point, let me return to the passage from Olympian 13
(lines 6–10) quoted at the end of Section 2 and representing a clear case of
a traditional genealogy revisited:
[I will give recognition] to rich Corinth . . . in which Eunomia resides and
her sister Dika, the steadfast foundation of cities, and Eirêna, reared
alongside with them, the stewardess of wealth for men – the golden children
of well-counseling Themis. They are willing to ward off Hybris, the inso-
lent mother of Koros.
What motivates the modification of the received genealogy in this particu-
lar instance?91 To begin with, it is notable that Pindar chooses not to
designate the three divinities as Horai in lines 6–8 that describe the
90
Cf. Martin (2015).
91
In fact, the transformation of the Horai from natural to social abstractions in Hesiod may itself
represent a departure from the original mythological image (Burkert 2005: 17–18).
political constitution of Corinth; instead, their generic name is withheld
until line 17, where it is used to underscore an association with the benign
cyclical operation of the world under the sponsorship of Zeus, who
elsewhere in Pindar is the father of the Horai (cf. O. 4.1). Instead, in lines
6–8, Eunomia “Good Order”, Dika “Justice”, and Eirêna “Peace” are
supplied with epithets that serve to draw attention to their political
role in maintaining Corinth’s conservative oligarchic governance: Dika
“Justice” stands as the “unshakeable foundation” (βάθρον ἀσφαλές) of
the status quo, whereas wealth is “distributed” by Eirêna “Peace” (τάμι’
ἀνδράσι πλούτου), that is, in a way that keeps social protest at bay. The
epithet “golden”, which in Pindar often marks supernaturally endowed
creatures, serves to connect all three to the highest value-metal, conven-
tionally aligned in Archaic Greece with aristocracy.92 The beginning of
Olympian 13 thus skillfully adapts a traditional genealogical relationship to
encode a particular sociopolitical content.93
In lines 9–10, the three divine agents are said to “be willing to ward off
Hybris ‘Violence’, the insolent mother of Koros ‘Surfeit’” (ἐθέλοντι δ’
ἀλέξειν / Ὕβριν, Κόρου ματέρα θρασύμυθον). This particular genealogical
metaphor, although unparalleled in Hesiod, is nevertheless rooted in the
preceding tradition. Curiously, Pindar reverses the parentage recorded in
an elegiac couplet attested twice, in slightly different form, in Solon and in
the Theognidea. The context in Solon, quoted in Ath. Pol. 11, is more
extensive: the demos should follow the leaders, for “Koros engenders
Hybris when great prosperity attends on a base man or one whose mind
is not set up right” (fr. 6.3–4 W: τίκτει τοι κόρος ὕβριν, ὅταν κακῷ ὄλβος
ἕπηται / ἀνθρώπῳ καὶ ὅτῳ μὴ νόος ἄρτιος ᾖ). In the Theognidea, the
intended sociopolitical message of the metaphor is also unmistakable, since
the ill-wittedness of the recipient of olbos is paralleled by his low birth
(kakia).94 Aristotle’s version of this proverb includes two genealogical
92
Among the animates, Pindar applies the adjective to the horses of the gods (O. 1.41, O. 8.51,
fr. 30.2), the eagles of Zeus (P. 4.4), the mythical statue-like Kêlêdones (Pai. 8.70); half-personified
Nika (I. 2.26), as well as the Nereiads (N. 5.7) and the Muse (I. 8.5). On the aristocratic associations
of gold, see Kurke (1999: 50). See also the discussion of the opening of Isthmian 5 in Section 1.
93
The same genealogical nexus is used in praise of the oligarchic constitution of the Lokrian Opus:
κλεινᾶς ἐξ Ὀπόεντος . . . ἃν Θέμις θυγάτηρ τέ οἱ σώτειρα λέλογχεν / μεγαλόδοξος Εὐνομία (O.
9.14–16). A fragment from Pindar’s hymns (fr. 30) shows that Pindar could give a very different
treatment to the same theogonic nexus: in that fragment, the Horai are more straightforwardly
linked to the Olympian order and carry the epithets ‘with fillets of gold’, ‘of beautiful fruit’, and
‘truthful’ (χρυσάμπυκας ἀγλαοκάρπους . . . ἀλαθέας Ὥρας).
94
Theognis 153–4: δῆμος δ’ ὧδ’ ἂν ἄριστα σὺν ἡγεμόνεσσιν ἕποιτο / μήτε λίην ἀνεθεὶς μήτε
βιαζόμενος· / τίκτει γὰρ κόρος ὕβριν, ὅταν πολὺς ὄλβος ἕπηται / ἀνθρώποις ὁπόσοις μὴ νόος
ἄρτιος ᾖ.
metaphors: “Koros engenders Hybris, Lack of Paideia joined with Power
bear Folly” (fr. 57 R.: τίκτει γάρ, ὥσπερ φησὶν ἡ παροιμία, κόρος μὲν
ὕβριν, ἀπαιδευσία δὲ μετ’ ἐξουσίας ἄνοιαν).95
Pindar’s rearrangement of the two concepts, Koros and Hybris, into an
opposite genealogical relationship is licensed by an ideological nuance
distinguishing the genres of Archaic Greek elegy and epinikion.96 The
epinikion is less concerned than the Theognidea with defending the rule of
the aristocracy against an onslaught of the demos; according to the
epinician ideology, such a rule is validated by nature and needs no
supplementary conceptual buttressing. Instead, Pindar’s concern is with
the risks intrinsic to the sociopolitical status quo. Koros is one of Pindar’s
preferred terms for describing an anomalous condition that in individual
cases devalues, or at worst cancels out, the aristocratic olbos ‘prosperity’.
Perhaps the best-known example of such a dynamic occurs in the myth of
Olympian 1, where Tantalus “was unable to digest his great olbos and
received a monstrous ruin (atê) because of koros” (55–6). Elsewhere repre-
sented as having a blunting (ἀμβλύνει P. 1.82) or a generally irritating effect
(κνίσῃ P. 8.32), the detrimental work of koros is also grounded in Pindaric
psychology: “even honey and sweet flowers of Aphrodite have koros”
(N. 7.52).97 On the metapoetic level, koros represents an excess of praise,
again a risk endemic to the encomiastic task (O. 2.95, P. 8.21). Koros can be
described as olbos mismanaged; Pindaric logic thus regards it as a resulting
condition; by contrast, hybris is an action or individual disposition that
triggers that condition. It seems fair to conclude that the inversion of the
traditional genealogical metaphor, whereby the tedium of excess is engen-
dered by improper speech or behavior, rather than vice versa, is logical
within Pindar’s conceptual world.98
Let us now survey those of Pindar’s genealogical metaphors that are
likely to represent his own innovations, as this category best illustrates their
use as a tool for concept formation. In Pindar, genealogical metaphors are
95
Cf. Macarius Chrysokephalus, Paroemiae 8.27; Michael Apostolius, Collectio paroemiarum 16.65.
96
Even though this rearrangement is paralleled once, in an oracle quoted in Herodotus 8.77, it was
unusual enough for a Pindar scholiast to designate it as wrong (οὐκ ὀρθῶς . . . λέγει). Another, less
informed scholiast later added a quotation from “Homer” (in fact, Theog. 153) (Drachmann 1.359).
97
On the semantics of κνίζειν in Pindar, cf. Silk (1998: 41–2, 52).
98
Cf. the conclusion reached by Hubbard: “Hybris and Koros are to be seen as the personified
consequences of originally legitimate appetites which have not been properly restrained . . .
unrestrained pursuit of any goal may result in surfeit and disgust. Pindar appropriately modifies
the economic determinism implied by Koros as mother of Hybris into a more sophisticated moral
calculus” (1986: 36–7). For further discussion of related Archaic Greek genealogical metaphors, see
Schmiel (1989–90: 343–6), with bibliography.
used for a variety of conceptual relations that range from a vaguely
attributive association to a concrete notion of production. For example,
the notion of production predominates in the image of “heavenly waters,
rainy children of a cloud” (οὐρανίων ὑδάτων, ὀμβρίων παίδων νεφέλας
O.11.2). One might rather speak of causation with respect to the kenning-
like paraphrase “vine’s child” referring to wine (νωμάτω φιάλαισι βιατὰν
ἀμπέλου παῖδ’ N. 9.52).99 “Alala, the daughter of War” (κλῦθ’ Ἀλαλὰ
πολέμου θύγατερ fr. 78.1) is still more difficult to categorize in modern
terms: War may be said to produce the war cry, but it may be more precise
to see the latter as a synecdoche of the former. Here the metonymic
principle of contiguity enters a genealogical metaphor. In the case of
fragment 222, which describes gold as “the child of Zeus” (Διὸς παῖς
ὁ χρυσός fr. 222.1), the genealogical image operates almost as an epithet-
like superlative attribute. In all these cases, however, the metaphor forges a
conceptually salient link between two phenomena, whereby parentage
stands for priority and/or superiority.
The following pair of examples point to Pindar’s own sensitivity to the
degree of metaphoricity implied in the genealogical image. In Olympian
2.32, “peaceful day” is described as the child of Sun “Helios” (ἡσύχιμον
ἁμέραν . . . παῖδ’ ἀελίου). In Olympian 7, by contrast, Pindar makes a
special effort to foreground the meaning of production that the genea-
logical metaphor is intended to carry when he describes Sun “Helios” as
“the birth-giving father of sharp rays” (ὀξειᾶν ὁ γενέθλιος ἀκτίνων πατήρ
O. 7.70). At the other, most metaphorical, end of the spectrum, the
paternal status stands for little more than the highest form of authority,
as in “Time, the father of all” (Χρόνος ὁ πάντων πατήρ O. 2.17).100 Pindar
is aware that the metaphor of fatherhood, when overused, can lose its
vividness, so he enlivens it by either downplaying the meaning of produc-
tion (Khronos as father of all) or by adding an epithet that supplements the
vehicle (Helios as birth-giving father of rays). When applied to locales,
the effect of the metaphor is to signal a privileged association: Delos is “the
daughter of the sea” (πόντου θύγατερ fr. 33c.3), because it is a small island;
Ortygia is “the sister of Delos” due to an association with Artemis
(Ὀρτυγία, δέμνιον Ἀρτέμιδος, Δάλου κασιγνήτα N. 1.4).
99
Vine is described as wine’s mother in Aesch. Pers. 614–15.
100
Another god with a claim to parenthood who is not Zeus in O. 2 is Kronos: πάτηρ [μέγας] . . .
πόσις ὁ . . . Ῥέας (O. 2.76). It is possible that Khronos and Kronos are conflated in this text, as they
are, in fact, in Orphic philosophy (Nestle 1940: 163). On Khronos in Pindar, cf. Farnell (1932: 464).
In general, in his genealogical metaphors Pindar uses feminine kinship
terms much more often than masculine ones: θυγάτηρ ‘daughter’ (10),
ἀδελφεά ‘sister’ (1), κασιγνήτα ‘sister’ (1), μάτηρ ‘mother’ (11); among the
male analogues, only πατήρ ‘father’ (4) is used metaphorically; παῖς ‘child’
is applied six times to feminine entities and three times to masculine
and neuter entities. The reason behind the distribution is the preponder-
ance of feminine-gendered abstract nouns in Greek; in the long run, that
also explains why in the later Western tradition allegorical figures tend to
be female.101 A similar preference for “matrilinear” genealogies in Hesiod
suggests an influence of the grammar of the language on the actual content
of the theogony.102
Perhaps the single most baroque genealogical metaphor in Pindar occurs
in Pythian 5, where Prophasis “Excuse” is introduced as “the daughter of
the late-thinking Epimatheus”: Κάρρωτον . . . ὃς οὐ τὰν Ἐπιμαθέος ἄγων /
ὀψινόου θυγατέρα Πρόφασιν βαττιδᾶν / ἀφίκετο δόμους θεμισκρεόντων
(P. 5.27–9). While appearing to be merely ornamental, this image attests to
Pindar’s persistent interest in concept-oriented imagery. The personifica-
tion is related to the text’s encomiastic function, as it forms part of an
elaborate litotes praising Karrotos for joining the celebration on time.
The genealogical metaphor is carefully justified with the redundant epithet
ὀψινόου ‘late thinking’, which refreshes in the minds of the audience the
etymology of the name Epimatheos ‘one who thinks after’; its strategic,
hyperbatic placement next to the daughter Prophasis contributes to the
effect produced by this conceptual image.
The genealogical metaphors discussed earlier can be viewed as occa-
sional innovations that, perhaps with the exception of the images involving
the speaker, do not belong to the deep syntax of the epinician genre. The
third category of Pindar’s genealogical metaphors comprises concepts that
constitute the focal points of the work of conceptualization in Pindar’s
epinician odes. These include Angelia ‘[Victory] Announcement’, Alatheia
‘Truth’, Hêsykhia ‘Peace’, and metapoetic notions such as the song and
the Muse.103
101
Stafford (2000: 27–35). Burkert notes that the preponderance of feminine-gendered nouns for
abstractions is characteristic of both Indo-European and Semitic languages (2005: 4).
102
Such a preference is noted in West (1966: 34–5).
103
Hesykhia and Angelia in Pindar are the subjects of two important PhD theses: Bundy (1954) and
Nash (1990 [1976]); on Hesykhia, cf. Kirschkowski (2009: 299–304). Interestingly, genealogical
metaphors that serve to foreground important epinician concepts are also prominent in
Bacchylides: the Day (on which the Olympic contest was held) is “the daughter of Khronos and
Night” in Ep. 7.1–2, Nika is the daughter of Kronos (based on a supplement) and of Styx in Ep.
11.1–9 (this hypostasized Nika also appears in Ep. 12.5 and 13.59).
For the purpose of illustration, I focus here on one such concept, Tykha
“(Good) Fortune”.104 According to earlier treatments, Tykha is but a
minor nymph, one of the many daughters of Tethys and Okeanos
(Hes. Theog. 360), or one of the Nereids (Hom. Hymn Dem. 420). By
contrast, Pindar elevates Fortune to a remarkably high standing within the
epinician conceptual “pantheon.” The word, attested nineteen times,
expresses, overall, the ultimate dependence of human aspirations on divine
goodwill.105 In addition to Pindar’s own evidence for the importance of
this concept, Pausanias asserts that Pindar regarded “Tykha as one of the
Moirai, and the strongest one.”106 This alternative genealogy underlies the
image that opens Olympian 12:
Λίσσομαι, παῖ Ζηνὸς Ἐλευθερίου,
Ἱμέραν εὐρυσθενέ’ ἀμφιπόλει, σώτειρα Τύχα.
τὶν γὰρ ἐν πόντῳ κυβερνῶνται θοαί
νᾶες, ἐν χέρσῳ τε λαιψηροὶ πόλεμοι
κἀγοραὶ βουλαφόροι.
I beseech you, child of Zeus Eleutherios, guard Himera, render her mighty,
saviour Fortune (Tykha), for it is by you that in the sea swift ships are steered,
and on land rapid wars and council-bearing assemblies.
This short poem, unusually for Pindar, focuses on the elaboration of a
single thought, the significance of Tykha to human affairs. Bundy
describes this type of concept formation in Pindar as a “hypostatization
of aspects of success,” which may assume a unifying function in particular
poems.107 O. 12 was commissioned on the occasion of a Pythian victory of
Ergoteles, a political exile from Knossos who appeared to have prospered in
his new homeland, Himera.108 The poem lacks a mythical inset narrative,
so it is the story of the laudandus (honoree) that becomes an exemplum
104
This noun has an unusually broad meaning in Greek; note the basic definition given in LSJ (s.v.):
“an act [of a god].” Cf. on Pindaric usage: “The evidence indicates that Pindar’s teleological vision
did not entertain the notion of mere chance; for him τύχα is the particular manifestation of divine
workings” (Race 2004: 377). For a discussion of this concept, see Strohm, who describes it as a
“Situation-Begriff ” or a modal concept representing an “Aktionsart” of divine power (1944: 34–5).
105
Hypostasized: O. 12.2, frr. 38, 39, 40, 41; also frequent in adverbial phrases, which indicate the
presence of “luck”: σὺν . . . τύχᾳ (P. 2.56, N. 4.7, N. 5.48, N. 6.24, I. 8.67); ἐπὶ τύχᾳ (O. 14.16);
τύχᾳ (N. 10.25, P. 8.53). It is instructive to compare the frequency of Pindar’s other favorite abstract
nouns: Alatheia (nine times; of which two are hypost.), Hesykhia (nine times; of which two are
hypost.) Kleos (eighteen times), Tima (thirty-two), Areta (seventy-six); the last three, interestingly,
are never hypostasized. A special case is presented by Kharis (thirty-five times; of which four are
hypost.), given the reality of the goddesses Kharites “Graces” (thirty times).
106
Paus. 7.26.8 = Pind. fr. 41; cf. Arch. fr. 16, where Tykha and Moira are already aligned.
107
Hora in N. 8, Theia in I. 5, Eleithuia in N. 7 (Bundy 1986 [1962]: 36).
108
On the historical context of the poem, see Barrett (1973).
illustrating the gnomic wisdom about the centrality and inscrutability of
Tykha. The rhetorical effect of this is that maxims on Fortune – which fall
within the expected range of epinician wisdom – are addressed to the
laudandus not as precepts but as observations. As a result, the tone of
quasi-metaphysical reflection on the operation and/or interaction of the
human and the divine realms, which elsewhere in Pindar is limited to
prooimia, dominates the entire poem, making it one of the most unitary
pieces among Pindar’s epinician odes.109
Pindar often ascribes athletic success to a particular divinity.110 By
contrast, personification of an abstract concept appears to have constituted
an innovative poetic strategy. An abstract concept, such as Fortune, cannot
receive prayers or be placated, nor is it meant to be an object of cult or
belief. In Olympian 12, the inherited form of the hymn, nevertheless,
makes it the recipient of the opening prayer.111 Employing the formal
recourses of cult-embedded religion, Pindar, as often, puts forward an
ideological schema that conceptualizes the world in a way that is both
original and calculated to appear compelling to his audience.
Olympian 12 illustrates the conceptual efficacy of Pindaric personifica-
tions, as Fortune can “explain” not only the athletic successes of the
laudandus, but also his peregrinations from Crete to Sicily, the general
unpredictability of human fortune, and – most importantly – recent
history: the liberation of Himera from the rule of the Deinomenidai.112
The latter link is buttressed by Zeus’s epithet Eleutherios ‘Of Freedom’,
whose daughter Fortune becomes, as well as the guardian-role that she is
called upon to assume with respect to Himera.113 The figure of Fortune in
O. 12 attests to the immense poetic and cognitive utility of a genealogical
image on the verge of becoming a concept. It is the remarkable polyva-
lence, made possible by its diachronically transitional nature, that permits
it to serve at once all the principal functions of Pindaric epinikion: hymnic,
gnomic, “metaphysical,” encomiastic, and (socio)political. To use a phrase
109
For a literary-critical approach to O. 12 as one of Pindar’s “most homogeneous, and most
intensively organized” odes, see Silk (2007). For prooimial “metaphysics” cf. P. 1, N. 4, N. 6,
N. 8. For a somewhat different take on the lack of myth in O. 12, see Becker (1940, esp. 49).
110
E.g., P. 2.7–8, P. 10.11, I. 3.4–5.
111
Pace Hamilton (1984: 264): “All man can do is pray to Tyche.”
112
For a recent reading of the poem that stresses the structuring role of Tykha, see Race (2004).
113
The epithet may reflect an actual cult of Zeus of Freedom established in Himera for this political
occasion, as argued by Barrett (1973), who, however, acknowledges that “we cannot infer a cult from
the invocation” (34); cf. Silk (2007: 182). Curiously, the use of the epithet, an unorthodox genealogy
of Fortune, and Pindaric syntax conspired to generate the faulty inference, preserved by one of the
scholiasts (O. 12.1b), that the implied child of Zeus is Eirêna (one of the Horai).
of Franz Dornseiff, in Pindar “[d]er Ausdruck schillert” (“the expressive
form shimmers”), caught between the concrete and the abstract, the
mythical and the conceptual, the inanimate and the personified.114
A distinct category of Pindaric genealogical images serves to define
metapoetic concepts. In N. 3, the Muse is “our mother,” whom the
speaker beseeches to come to Aegina, where “young men, the builders
of sweet-speaking revels [kômoi], await a voice” that comes from her (σέθεν
ὄπα μαιόμενοι). This genealogy endows the speaker with a divine lineage.
Indeed, in the following lines, attesting to one of Pindar’s marked disjunc-
tions between the poet-composer and the choreuts, the Muse – who, we
imagine, has indeed arrived, yielding to the opening request – is called
upon to begin a hymn for Zeus but is referred to, in the vocative, simply as
“daughter”:
ἄρχε δ’ οὐρανοῦ πολυνεφέλα κρέοντι, θύγατερ,
δόκιμον ὕμνον· ἐγὼ δὲ κείνων τέ νιν ὀάροις
λύρᾳ τε κοινάσομαι.
Begin, daughter, an acceptable hymn for the one who rules the much-clouded
heaven, and I will make it common both to the voices of those [young men] and
to the lyre.
The syntactic foregrounding of the kinship status of the Muse, combined
with the opening address, suggests that the speaker is related to Zeus by
direct descent. Such a metapoetic move belongs firmly in Pindar’s profes-
sional rhetoric, in which the personal Muse plays a central role.115
Yet Nemean 3 goes far beyond this: it presents a detailed account of the
production of epinician performance, which takes the song (ἀοιδά, ὕμνος)
through four levels of crafting or authorship. Zeus stands at the origin of
both the metapoetic lineage and of the hymn itself, since he represents its
theme and addressee (lines 10–11, 65–6). The Muse supplies the “voice”
(ὄψ 5), whereas the poet’s contribution comes from his “crafting mind”
(μῆτις 9), instrumental in making the hymn, issuing from the Muse,
“common” (κοινάσομαι 11) to the performers and the lyre (τέκτονες κώμων
νεανίαι, λύρα).116 The function of the first-person speaker, which here
appears to represent the poet’s voice being ventriloquized by the chorus, is
twofold, both a more abstract and a more technical one: the speaker
“beseeches” the Muse, that is, effects a link to the divine realm, and
114 115
Dornseiff (1921: 52). See Chapter 1, Section 6.
116
In P. 10.56 it is the poet’s voice that is to be “poured out” (προχεόντων) by the choreuts.
Pindar’s tenors and vehicles 155
arranges the actual performance, bringing the divinely sponsored/authored
hymn to its realization.
These four levels of epinician performance (Zeus-Muse-poet-choreuts),
inasmuch as they are correlated with the metaphors of descent extending
from Zeus to the Muse and to the poet, obliquely suggest a formative,
quasi-paternal stance of the poet with respect to the youthful performers
(νεανίαι). In fact, Pindar uses the image of paternity to conceptualize
authorship in the case of Orpheus, “the father of songs” (ἀοιδᾶν πατήρ
P. 4. 176). In partial contrast, in N. 4.3 “the wise songs” (σοφαί . . . ἀοιδαί)
are described as “the daughters of the Muses.” The lack of mythological
consistency in these images only foregrounds the overarching intent to
forge a firm conceptual link between poetic production, individual poet-
composer, and divine agency. The two Pindaric author-functions that so
often work in synergy to supplant the traditional authority of folkloric
phatis are here inextricable.
5 Pindar’s tenors and vehicles

The genealogical metaphor is not the only imagistic means Pindar uses to
articulate the position of the speaker. In this section, I extend my analysis
to include the trope of comparison, or condensed simile. Similes employ
an explicit grammar of comparison, that is, syntactic constructions
rendered in English with as or like.117 They suggest a calculated poetic
effort of transfer of meaning from one semantic domain to another – in
I. A. Richards’s established terminology, from the domain of vehicle to the
domain of tenor. Inasmuch as my interest is in Pindar’s use of imagery for
conceptual ends, condensed similes present particularly rich material. They
suggest different ways in which tropes can be employed as devices of
conceptualization.
Inasmuch as a simile always signals a semantic disjunction between the
tenor and the vehicle, it can be contrasted with predication. For example,
in some often-cited contexts the Pindaric ego is said to be a messenger of
117
In terms of Silk (1974), I limit my attention to “explicit imagery”: “Simile, as explicit imagery
generally, normally spells out what the ‘real’ subject is being likened to” (1974: 127). As discussed
here, the analysis of metaphorical usage, by contrast, demands a clear differentiation between
conventionalized extended usage (dead metaphors), usage marked as poetic, and (ideally) usage that
is original to the given text (cf. Taillardat 1962: 15–24; Silk 1974: 27–56); this necessitates a grasp on
the lexicon of the language that is not always feasible in the case of a classical tongue. For a more
inclusive approach to Pindar’s imagery, see Silk (1974), who places Pindar in relation to other Greek
poets (particularly, Theognis and Aeschylus), and Hutchinson (2012), who focuses on the poet’s
preferences for particular tenors and vehicles.
the Muses or their “porte-parole” (prophatas); it is never, however, com-
pared to a prophatas. By contrast, there are passages in Pindar in which the
speaker is likened to a mantis ‘seer’. In the former case, the designation is
informed by the contemporary linguistic usage of prophatas (‘spokesman’
rather than ‘prophet’); the latter case is an instance of self-conscious
appropriation of a distinct kind of social authority.118
The kind of figuration that I am not treating here can be further
illustrated with the following passage from Olympian 13:
ἐμὲ δ’ εὐθὺν ἀκόντων
ἱέντα ῥόμβον παρὰ σκοπὸν οὐ χρή
τὰ πολλὰ βέλεα καρτύνειν χεροῖν.
Μοίσαις γὰρ ἀγλαοθρόνοις ἑκών
Ὀλιγαιθίδαισίν τ’ ἔβαν ἐπίκουρος (O. 13.93–7)
For me it is not fitting to grasp with both my hands these many missiles, when
casting the straight-going circling of javelins past the mark. For I have arrived [as] a
helper to the splendidly enthroned Muses and the Oligaithidai.
For a modern reader, this passage is metaphorical throughout. Yet Pindar’s
poetic language does not enforce a figurative reading. A metaphorical con-
strual of lines 93–4 would supply a missing tenor – for example, “poetic
utterances” for τὰ πολλὰ βέλεα ‘the many missiles’. An alternative approach
would be to attach, based on parallel usage, an extended meaning ‘poetic
invention’ to τὰ βέλεα.119 This interpretative strategy would imply that this
word, as it is used here, is already conventionalized: rather than furnishing a
poetic image, it is a naturalized metaphor, a convention on its way to
becoming a “symbol.” A similar dilemma is present in ll. 96–7, which refer
to the speaker as “a helper to the Muses and the Oligaithidai.” Whether or
not the noun ἐπίκουρος ‘helper, ally’ is to be interpreted figuratively is moot:
it is metaphorical to us, but in light of adjectival usage ‘being of help to
someone’ it was probably quite unmarked for Pindar’s original audience.120
It is a priori more likely that tropes marked by an equivalent of
English as or like were not yet conventionalized.121 In what follows,
118
The speaker as a prophatas: Pai. 6.6, fr. 150; the speaker compared to a mantis: fr. 75.13, fr. 94a.5–6.
Further discussion in Chapter 3, Section 2.
119
O. 1.111–12, O. 2.83, O. 9.8. The definition of βέλος in Slater 92 places these four passages under the
metonymic extended meaning (‘of poetry’). For a discussion of the operation of metaphor in this
passage, see Silk (1974: 134–5).
120
O. 1.110, Il. 21.431, Hom. Hymn to Hermes 4.97; cf. LSJ s.v., II.
121
Beyond this generalization, it should be noted that similes, as will become obvious in the course of
the discussion, are also often traditional and thus in no way unexpected. Also, conventionalized and
“paradoxical” usage can enter into various forms of “interaction” (Silk 1974: 85–137).
I speak of para-doxical metaphors in this etymological sense: these are
images that contravene the expectation, doxa, marking off the “construc-
tion zone” within Pindar’s poetic language. Furthermore, in contrast to the
ὡς-ὥς (‘as . . . thus’) of the extended Homeric simile that tends to reassert
the familiar boundaries between war and peace, culture and nature, and so
forth, explicit grammatical markers of comparison in Pindar highlight a
daring tropological experiment.122
Pindar uses an extremely wide array of comparative constructions. Most
likely unique among Ancient Greek authors, he employs as many as ten
different markers of comparison, most of which reflect fine-grained seman-
tic, syntactic or stylistic nuances: ὡς (two instances: O. 10.16–19, O.
13.49–52), postpositive ὥς (five instances: O. 2.86–8, P. 2.79–80, I.
4.41–2, fr. 94b.5–6, fr. 123), ὥσπερ (three instances: O. 7.77–80, P.
1.90–2, I. 6.47–8,), ὡς ὅτε (five instances: O. 6.1–3, P. 11.37–40, N.
8.40–3, N. 9.16–17, I. 6.1–3), ὡσείτε (two instances: P. 1.42–5,
P. 4.111–15), ὥτε [=ὧτε=ὥστε] (ten instances: O. 10.85–7, P. 4.64–5, P.
10.53–4, N. 6.26–8, N. 7.61–3, 70–2, 93–4, I. 4.18–19, fr. 75.12123, fr.
215.5–7), ἅτε (seven instances: O. 1.1–2, O. 12.13–16, P. 2.79–80, N.
7.104–5, I. 6.49–51, Pai. 6.12–15, fr. 241); in addition, ὅπως (Pai. 12.14),
ὡς εἴ τις (O. 7.1), and οἷον (P. 5.113) each occur once.124
The grammar of comparison offers an unusual perspective on Pindar’s
place in Greek literary history. The most striking feature of the Pindaric
usage is his avoidance of the simple ὡς, otherwise the default comparative
construction in classical Greek and the only one used by, for example,
Sappho and Alcaeus. The two instances of ὡς in the Pindaric corpus are
anomalous. In one case, the relation implied in the comparison is,
uniquely, correlative rather than metaphorical,125 whereas in the other case
the ὡς-phrase specifies a superlative (Σίσυφον . . . πυκνότατον παλάμαις
ὡς θεόν O. 13.52). It appears that ὡς in Pindar has a syntactic rather than a
tropological function.126
By contrast, Pindar’s use of postpositive ὥς, frequent in Homeric
similes, is reserved for straightforward, one-to-one object comparisons that
122
On the semantics of ὡς as that of apparent identity, cf. Freidenberg (2008 [1954]: 317) = Freidenberg
(1997: 53). See also the works cited in fn. 84.
123
Text restored by van Groningen (1955).
124
There are thirty-seven instances in total. I regard fr. 104b as non-Pindaric.
125
πύκτας δ’ ἐν Ὀλυμπιάδι νικῶν / Ἴλᾳ φερέτω χάριν / Ἁγησίδαμος, ὡς / Ἀχιλεῖ Πάτροκλος “Let
Hagesidamos, victorious in the Olympic Games as a boxer, bring the grace to Ilas [the trainer], as
Achilles to Patroclus” (O. 10.16–19).
126
Citing this Pindaric use of ὡς θεόν and the English expressions good as gold and plain as a pikestaff,
Silk notes that, alongside “dead metaphors,” there also exist “dead” similes (1974: 50).
have an epic tinge. Apart from fr. 94b.5–6, where the choreut is compared
to a mantis, in all four instances, people are compared to either birds
(ravens) or inanimate objects with characteristic behavior (cork, wax, the
morning star). The only instance of ὅπως (Pai. 12.14), which is also
postpositive, is analogous to these: Apollo and Artemis are compared to
the sun. Note that, being one of the few instances of a comparative
construction in Pindar’s surviving non-epinician choral poetry, this par-
ticular simile is perhaps the most traditional one of all attested in Pindar;
it is discussed in more detail later.
The particle ὥσπερ, also infrequent, preserves in Pindar its function as
an emphatic form of ὡς. The disjunctive force of ὥσπερ is more pro-
nounced, and serves to juxtapose entities that do not lend themselves to
comparison easily. At I. 6.47–8, Heracles, in a mantic fit and using highly
convoluted syntax, likens the physical might of Telamon’s as-yet-unborn
child to the lion skin that envelops Heracles’ own body.127 In the case of
P. 1.90–2, where Hieron is addressed as a steersman,128 ὥσπερ marks the
paradoxical quality of the assimilation of Sicilian tyrant to the figure of
a steersman. Finally, the phrase that occurs at O. 7.77–80 – to honor a
mortal ὥσπερ θεόν ‘just like a god’ – is apparently a settled post-Homeric
expression, called forth by the semantic inflation of the earlier ὡς θεόν ‘like
a god’.129
Pindar’s use of ὡς ὅτε and ὡσείτε are both more frequent and more
characteristic. Both these conjunctions tend to introduce clauses; in cases
of a missing verb, the reader was probably expected to supply it from the
context (P. 11.37–40; N. 9.16–17). The entities compared are events rather
than objects. As for ὡσείτε and ὡς εἴ τις, the constructions introduce an
analogy with an action that is hypothetical, or intentionally feigned by the
actors, as in P. 4.111–15. In all these cases, the vehicle is original, and the
resulting image is a self-consciously unique poetic artifact. In some cases,
127
τὸν (παῖδα) μὲν ἄρρηκτον φυάν, ὥσπερ τόδε δέρμα με νῦν περιπλανᾶται / θηρός, ὃν πάμπρωτον
ἀέθλων κτεῖνά ποτ’ ἐν Νεμέᾳ “[make] the son unbreakable with respect to his body, just like this
very skin [that] now surrounds me, the one of the beast I killed once in Nemea as the very first of
my prizes” (I. 6.47–8).
128
ἐξίει δ’ ὥσπερ κυβερνάτας ἀνήρ / ἱστίον ἀνεμόεν “Loose the sail to be filled with wind, just like a
steersman” (P. 1.90–2). Some manuscripts have ὥστε (ὥσπερ is adopted by editors metri causa).
129
ὥσπερ θεόν: Soph. Phil. 657; Arist. Vesp. 571. In Homer, however, ὥς τε is used with θεός thrice, in
the Iliad, with reference to gods (Il. 3.381, 18.518, 20.444); in the Odyssey, twice with reference to
mortals (Odysseus addressing Athena in disguise at 13.231; the singer Terpes supplicating Odysseus
at 22.349); postpositive ὡς is also available for this meaning, e.g. Il. 5.78. For the Tlepolemos’s
honors see Farnell (1932: 56). Cf. an exact parallel in Isocrates, Evagoras 194c, on the charismatic
quality of an aristocratic leader. The same simile is also widely attested in Near Eastern literatures
(West 1997: 242–3).
the effect of the image introduced by the comparative conjunction is to
enliven an implicit, conventionalized simile, to make it more tangible:
ἦρ’ ὦ φίλοι, κατ’ ἀμευσίπορον τρίοδον ἐδινάθην,
ὀρθὰν κέλευθον ἰὼν
τὸ πρίν· ἤ μέ τις ἄνεμος ἔξω πλόου
ἔβαλεν, ὡς ὅτ’ ἄκατον ἐνναλίαν; (P. 11.38–40)
Have I, friends, been confused at a path-changing crossroads, while previously
I was going the right way? Or rather has the wind thrown me off course, like a sea
vessel?
Strictly speaking, the phrase “like a sea vessel” or perhaps “as it happens to
sea vessels” contributes nothing to the image of a wind throwing someone
off course. Although nothing in extant Greek usage suggests that the
phrase “throw off course” was a naturalized metaphor, the supplement
serves to enhance its imagistic quality.130 By mentioning the ship, the poet
insists that the image is not oblivious to the object that serves as its
motivation.
The two most common and distinctive Pindaric comparative markers
are ὥτε and ἅτε. The former introduces an extended nominal phrase that is
usually integrated into the main sentence, in contrast to both ὥς and ὡς
ὅτε, which introduce a syntactically distinct phrase or clause. In other
cases, the syntactic connection is looser, and it is in this area that ὥτε
borders on ἅτε.131 The latter particle is applied very broadly and in most
cases is best rendered into English as in the manner of. Hence Pindar’s
preference for it: ἅτε is used for comparing ideas or situations rather than
objects or events, particularly when the projected equivalence is tenuous;
in some cases, even syntactic cohesiveness is imperiled (P. 2.79–80;
N. 7.104–5). On the whole, the two comparative constructions display
the most characteristic aspects of Pindaric similes.
The interlocking of the vehicle and the tenor, which in a simile are
both made explicit, provides the operating mechanism of any metaphor.
More specifically, there is often a semantic “leakage” from the domain of
the vehicle to the domain of the tenor. In tropological terms, this semantic
interference can be thought of as a metonymic association that holds the
two domains together. In Pindar, similes tend to depend on a more or less
ad hoc link between the tenor and the vehicle, and that link is often forged
through a process of metonymic expansion of the vehicle domain.
130
On similes following and buttressing a metaphor, see Silk (1974: 128, and cf. 235–6).
131
Introducing a participle at N. 6.26–30; a dative circumstantial clause at P. 4.64–5.
Metonymic expansion establishes the tertium comparationis – an impro-
vised ground for comparison – which would otherwise be wanting.132
Consider the following example:
ἔστι μοι
πατρίδ’ ἀρχαίαν κτενὶ Πιερίδ[ων
ὥ]στε χαίταν παρθένου ξανθ[ᾶς ἀγάλλειν (fr. 215.5–7)
For me it is [fitting] to adorn my ancient fatherland with a brushing comb of the
Muses like the hair of a blond maiden.
As far as we can tell, nothing in the Greek poetic tradition implies a
connection between “the ancient fatherland” (tenor) and “the hair of
a blond maiden” (vehicle). What makes this ad hoc juxtaposition into a
functional figure is “the brushing comb of the Muses” – a concept that
evokes, metonymically, the vehicle domain. Pindar’s fondness for con-
structions with ὡς ὅτε and ὡσείτε is due to their potential to accommodate
bold comparisons through extensive interlocking of the tenor and the
vehicle of the metaphor; compare, for example:
Θάλλοντος ἀνδρῶν ὡς ὅτε συμποσίου
δεύτερον κρατῆρα Μοισαίων μελέων
κίρναμεν Λάμπωνος εὐαέθλου γενεᾶς ὕπερ (I. 6.1–3)
As when a symposium is in its bloom, we mix a second crater of Muses’ songs on
behalf of Lampon’s lineage, successful in contests.
Since no straightforward object equivalence obtains, the comparison
between wine and a poem is retroactively reconstructed from the scattered
metonymic reflexes of its vehicle image, the drinking at a symposium.
What calls for metonymic expansion is precisely the innovative nature
of Pindaric figures. By contrast, non-paradoxical metaphors that have
become naturalized in a literary tradition do not demand metonymic
supplementation. Consider Alcman’s First Partheneion in which the
speaker compares Agido to the sun: ἐγὼν δ’ ἀείδω Ἀγιδῶς τὸ φῶς· ὁρῶ
ϝ’ ὥτ’ ἄλιον, ὅνπερ ἇμιν ᾿Αγιδὼ μαρτύρεται φαίνην “I sing the brilliance
of Agido: I see her as the sun, which Agido is confirming as a witness to be
bright” (fr. 1.39–43). The metaphor is, of course, entirely traditional and as
expected as the use of τὸ φῶς ‘brilliance’ to refer to a girl’s beauty; the same
goes for the following comparison of Hagesikhora with a prize-bearing
horse (fr. 1.45–9). There is no need for establishing a tertium comparationis
via semantic expansion of the vehicle since the use of τὸ φῶς and the
132
Cf. Silk (1974: 85–91).
metaphor of the sun are already conventionalized. The description of the
birth of Apollo and Artemis in Paian 12 presents an interesting counterpart
to Alcman’s passage:
ἔλαμψαν δ’ ἀελίου δέμας ὅπω̣[ς
ἀγλαὸν ἐς φάος ἰόντες δίδυμοι
παῖδες (Pai. 12.14)
The twins shone forth as the body of the sun, as they were going into bright light.
Even though the image itself is familiar, Pindar’s penchant for paradoxical
metaphors is fully in evidence here.133 The gods are compared to the very
essence, the body, of the sun rather than to its attribute (brilliance),
whereas the verb ἔλαμψαν and the phrase ἀγλαὸν ἐς φάος, both tokens
of the metonymic expansion of the vehicle, transform the scene into a
depiction of the bringing forth of light itself. Pindar is mobilizing a fairly
conventional trope to animate a religious ideology that connects Apollo to
the sun and light.
In some cases metonymic expansion seems to go out of control and,
instead of bridging the tenor and the vehicle, produces independent images:
ἅτε γὰρ ἐννάλιον πόνον ἐχοίσας βαθύν
σκευᾶς ἑτέρας, ἀβάπτιστος εἶμι φελ-
λὸς ὣς ὑπὲρ ἕρκος ἅλμας (P. 2.79–80)
As when the other part of the tackle is laboring deep in the sea, I go unsoaked like
a cork above the surface of the sea.
As already mentioned, the cork simile (φελλὸς ὣς) was not as unusual as it
would appear today, as it also occurs in Aeschylus.134 The genitive absolute
gives it additional vividness, but fails to supply a functional vehicle.
The lack of syntactic cohesion stands as a symptom of the disintegration
of the simile: the vehicle assumes a life of its own, sprouting a preparatory
image of ship tackle half concealed by water that anticipates the image
of floating cork. Notably, at least in one instance in the Pindaric corpus
(N. 7.104–5),135 ἅτε introduces an idea that does not constitute a valid
133
On Pindar’s imagery of light, see Hutchinson (2012: 279–80).
134
Choephoroi 505–7: παῖδες γὰρ ἀνδρὶ κληδόνες σωτήριοι / θανόντι, φελλοὶ δ’ ὣς ἄγουσι δίκτυον /
τὸν ἐκ βυθοῦ κλωστῆρα σῴζοντες λίνου “for a dead man children are salvific tidings, and like corks
they draw up from the depth the net rescuing the flaxen line.” For a discussion of this parallel, see
Garvie (1986: 183).
135
ταὐτὰ δὲ τρὶς τετράκι τ’ ἀμπολεῖν / ἀπορία τελέθει, τέκνοισι ἅτε μαψυλάκας ‘Διὸς Κόρινθος’ “to
repeat the same things three or four times means to be at a loss, like that chattering ‘Zeus the
Corinthian’ among children” (N. 7.104–5).
vehicle. Constructions with ἅτε thus mark a limit, a ne plus ultra of
Pindar’s experiment of yoking together the unlike into a similitude.
Pindaric ἅτε does not conjure up a straightforward equivalence of two
objects or events. Instead, it tends to introduce vehicles that have a
qualifying or delimiting force. This point is relevant for the interpretation
of the following passage in Paian 6:
ἤτορι δὲ φίλῳ παῖς ἅτε ματέρι κεδνᾷ
πειθόμενος κατέβαν στεφάνων
καὶ θαλιᾶν τροφὸν ἄλσος Ἀ-
πόλλωνος . . . (Pai. 6.12–15)
As a child obeying his dear mother in one’s heart I have come down to the grove
of Apollo which nourishes crowns and festivities.
Some scholars prefer to take ἤτορι δὲ φίλῳ as strictly parallel to ματέρι
κεδνᾷ (“obeying one’s heart as a child obeys his dear mother”), yet the fact
that Pindar does not use this comparative construction to project an object
equivalence supports the interpretation of ἤτορι δὲ φίλῳ as an accompany-
ing dative phrase (“in/with one’s heart”).136
Such semantically pliable use of ἅτε informs the image that occurs in the
opening of Olympian 1:
Ἄριστον μὲν ὕδωρ, ὁ δὲ χρυσὸς αἰθόμενον πῦρ
ἅτε διαπρέπει νυκτὶ μεγάνορος ἔξοχα πλούτου·
As mentioned earlier, ἅτε evokes not an object-equivalence but a selective
affinity: “Water is the best, and the gold – like a blazing fire – [is]
conspicuous in the night – exceeding valiant wealth.” The peculiarity of
this construction derives from the unusual position of ἅτε. Normal Pin-
daric usage would demand that it either precede the phrase αἰθόμενον πῦρ
‘blazing fire’ or follow, as a regular postposition, the participle αἰθόμενον.
Its delayed placement is most likely due to prosodic considerations. The
first line is composed of a glyconic and a pherecratean, a canonical unit in
aeolic meter, within which “gold” and “blazing fire” are sutured together
almost like a subject and a predicate.
When ἅτε reveals the paratactic juxtaposition to be a simile, the image
of blazing fire focuses attention on a particular attribute of gold – its
shining brilliance – that is said to exceed the concept that gold commonly
represents as a substance (wealth). The elusive simile that opens Olympian
136
In favor of object equivalence, see Rutherford (2001: 308). For further discussion see Kurke (2005:
106), whose reading I accept, and the works cited therein.
1 rests on the peculiar force of ἅτε, which serves to focus on just one,
unexpected aspect of the tenor with the result of undermining its familiar
totality. In a sense, here the image (blazing fire) eclipses the concept (gold
as wealth), affirming the power of poetic discourse to transform the realia it
represents.
More generally, ἅτε derives its force from its basic adverbial meaning
(“in the manner of ”). In some cases, it is in fact best construed as an
adverb, not as a comparative construction. A case in point is the passage at
I. 6.49–51 where the phrase ἅτε μάντις ἀνήρ goes closely with the participle
φωνήσαις ‘raising his voice’ and can be rendered into English as ‘speaking
up in the manner of a mantis.’137 In sum, the utility of ἅτε, the most
characteristic Pindaric comparative conjunction, derives from the wide
spectrum of its functions, ranging from the purely adverbial “in the
manner of ” to the most elusive figurative associations.138
The paradoxical quality of Pindaric images, their apparent resistance
to conventionalization, directly contributes to the conceptual work
they perform. The tenor of a metaphor is always implicitly molded
by the vehicle. In a simile, this conceptual mechanism is made explicit.
For this reason, the discussion of Pindar’s tenors and vehicles cannot be
completed at the level of poetic form. As Stephen Greenblatt remarks, we
should resist reading into earlier historical periods “the modern notion –
not wholly adequate even for our own period in which art has far more
autonomy – that poetic technique is developed entirely for its own sake
out of a disinterested aesthetic concern for form and apart from personal
interests and the general interests of the culture as a whole.”139 In other
words, it is imperative to consider the tasks to which Pindar’s paradoxical
figures are put in his texts, as well as the ways in which these tasks were
conditioned by his historical moment. It would be even more short-
sighted, however, to see a narrowly utilitarian agenda behind a shift
137
This meaning of φωνήσαις (Forssman 1966: 82) is in line with the Homeric usage (Il. 1.201, 2.7,
4.284 etc.). The verb φωνέω (-άω) in Pindar always refers to potent, amplified speech acts, in
particular (twice) to prophetic utterances: O. 13.67 (Pallas addressing Glaukos in his sleep); P. 4.163
(of prophetic voice in sleep); N. 10.76 (Polydeukes’ efficacious appeal to Zeus to divide immortality
between himself and Kastor); cf. also the use of the adjective φωνάεις of either poetic (O. 2.85;
O. 9.2) or divine speech (I. 4.40).
138
Note, e.g., O. 12.13–16, discussed in Section 1: υἱὲ Φιλάνορος, ἤτοι καὶ τεά κεν ἐνδομάχας ἅτ’
ἀλέκτωρ συγγόνῳ παρ’ ἑστίᾳ / ἀκλεὴς τιμὰ κατεφυλλορόησε(ν) ποδῶν, / εἰ μὴ στάσις ἀντιάνειρα
Κνωσίας σ’ ἄμερσε πάτρας “Son of Philanor, indeed the honor of your feet would have lost its
leaves and remained without glory, like a rooster who fights within at its congenital hearth, had not
stasis that sets men against men [on ἀντιάνειρα, cf. Silk 2007: 191–2] deprived you of your Knossian
fatherland.”
139
Greenblatt (1980: 136).
in the practices of figuration. Literary forms are mediated responses to
the historical longue durée that tend to outlive their moment of origin-
ation. In Pindar’s poetics, we first encounter formal elements that would
have a long afterlife indeed: the generic panegyrical persona poised
between the individual and the collective, the Muse as poet’s personal
affiliate, the tropes of heurêsis and polyporia, self-professed irrelevance,
and scripted spontaneity. Pindar’s bold condensed similes belong to the
same category.
To look beyond a particular poetic form, therefore, is not only to look
out for ideology. Such an expansion of perspective can also entail a
renewed attention to the history of poetic forms, which may coincide
with or contravene the history of ideological forms. The evidence of
Pindar’s tenors and vehicles does not permit foregone, simplistic conclu-
sions that functionalism often invites. Whether or not one endorses
Bundy’s claim that everything in a Pindar poem has a purpose in
the larger project of praise, such an encomiastic intent should not be
conceived of reductively. The evidence of Pindar’s similes is a case
in point. Their distribution displays a preoccupation with the speaker
rather than the addressee, thus suggesting a much more subtle rhetoric
than praise for praise’s sake. As Giambattista D’Alessio points out, in
Pindar “the praising subject is as prominent as the praised object and
praise itself is worked out through a reciprocal definition of both
elements.”140
Among the tenors of thirty-three Pindaric similes,141 twenty-six fall
into one of five categories: the speaker, poetic production, the laudandus,
the gods, and the heroes. The laudandus is figured in a metaphor
three times; his attributes (ἀρετά or φάμα) and family, four times. The
gods are the tenors in only one simile. By contrast, the speaker,
the poem, and poetic production contribute fifteen tenors; nine of these
fall to the speaker.142 It appears that the principal object of figuration,
that which most calls for conceptualization through imagistic means, is
the Pindaric ego (see Table 2).
In any simile, the tenor-vehicle structure is a site of semeiôsis or meaning
making. The meaning produced may be entirely traditional (as in folkloric
140
D’Alessio (1994a: 117).
141
Omitted from consideration altogether are those uses of the comparative construction that do not
yield a tenor-vehicle structure: O. 10.16–19, P. 2.79, N. 7.104–5, fr. 241.
142
A preference for poetry as the “target domain” is similarly observed for Pindar’s imagery at large in
Hutchinson (2012: 284–5). The validity of this conclusion is buttressed by the fact that it was
reached independently on the basis of two sets of data.
Table 2 The tenor-vehicle structure of Pindar’s similes.
Tenor The Laudandus, his excellence

speaker, his Poetry, poem, and fame*, his children** Other; specified in
Vehicle tongue* glory* and hearth** Gods Heroes <. . .> T
Athletics P. 1.43, 3
N. 6.26,
N. 7.71*
Seafaring P. 11.40 P. 1.91 (helmsman) 2
mantis ‘seer’ fr. 94b.5–6, I. 6.51(?) 3
fr. 75.12
birds/animals O. 12.13 (rooster) O. 2.86 <learners>; 3
I. 6.47–8 <a man’s
nature>
165
Vegetation N. 8.40–3*, P. 4.64**, 3

I. 4.19**
Symposium I. 6.1, O. 7.1 2
kinship (child) Pai. 6.12 O. 10.86 2
Light I. 4.42* Pai. 12.14 O. 1.2 <gold> 3
God O. 7.79, 2
O. 13.52
bees/wax/ P. 2.80 P. 10.54 (bee), 5
architecture/ (cork) fr. 123 O. 6.2 (hall),
streams of water/ (wax) N. 7.62 (water)*
cork
Other P. 5.113 N. 7.93, N. 9.16, 5
P. 4.112, fr. 215.7
TOTAL 9 6 7 1 3 7 33
lyric song), or its novelty may reside in the extent of elaboration of
the vehicle and its placement within the narrative (as in Homeric similes).
By contrast, Pindar uses a carefully calibrated arsenal of comparative
constructions to select elements from the vehicle domain that endow the
tenor with a particular meaning. One way of approaching Pindaric similes
is in terms of semantic deficit. As the numbers in Table 2 suggest, the
poetic work of meaning making through figuration is performed, first and
foremost, in the interest of the speaker. The Pindaric ego receives most of
the semantic import, since it often serves as a tenor and never as a vehicle.
Thus, the poetic speaker operates like a semiotic “black hole”: it cannot be
named, but only compared to other objects. The multivalent, as yet ill-
defined quality of the literary author is not only complemented, but in fact
directly corroborated, by an innovative use of imagery that is distinctly
post-folkloric precisely inasmuch as it is concept-oriented.
By contrast, the laudandus, the gods, and the heroes appear to represent
entities that are conceptually more or less well defined. It is evident not
only from the number of times they appear as tenors, but from the
traditional quality of the similes they elicit: comparisons to vegetation,
especially for the honoree’s family, or to light, as well as the formulaic “like
a god,” which is only applied in Pindar to mythical heroes. By contrast, the
speaker and poetic craft prompt vehicles that are memorably Pindaric,
stemming from the domain of athletics, symposium, and architecture. Also
among these are two passages that compare the speaker to a mantis ‘seer’.
The kind of conceptual appropriation observed in the latter case exceeds
the problem of figuration, and is considered in Chapter 3, as a case of
transfer of social authority to poetic discourse.
6 The birth of poetic metaphor

Poetic metaphor involves a unique, ad hoc use of an image or a word in an
unfamiliar context and, what comes to the same thing, with an unfamiliar
meaning. In this regard it stands in a sharp contrast to the conventional-
ized figurative structures that are inherited within particular genres or
traditions of poetic diction. The “symbolic” representations that tend to
become sedimented within poetic movements can be subject to a critique
such as Mandel’shtam’s precisely because they are seen to contradict the
spontaneous quality of poetic image making.143 Poetic metaphor is also
to be distinguished from extended lexical meaning, which represents a
143
See Section 1.
The birth of poetic metaphor 167
fundamental element of human language.144 For example, cross-
linguistically, temporal relations are often construed in spatial terms.
Furthermore, as Antoine Meillet has observed long ago, culturally privil-
eged domains (war, agriculture, or music) tend to furnish words that are
then used in extended meanings in other contexts.145 Poetic metaphor,
as I discuss later, may contribute to these processes of semantic transfer,
but it is expected to go beyond them, in one way or another.
Intuitively, the imagistic potential of a metaphor – its power to generate
an image – is in direct proportion to its originality, while the routinization
of an extended meaning leads to semantic bleaching. Whether or not this
dichotomy applies to the workings of image in preliterary verbal art, and
how the folkloric uses of figuration may have influenced those found in
Archaic Greek poetry, are questions that I would like to pose in this
section, without expecting to be able to solve them in any conclusive
fashion. Rather, my main objective is to establish the viability of the
genealogical study of varieties of figuration, as this is by no means taken
for granted in contemporary scholarship.146
In an article on “psychological parallelism” in world folklore and litera-
ture, dating back to 1898, Veselovsky discusses the many functions of this
figure in genres such as incantation, riddle, and lyric song.147 This classic
piece exerted a profound influence on Victor Shklovsky’s and Roman
Jakobson’s theories of literary (and specifically poetic) form.148 Since this
text is not available in English translation, I here present a brief summary
of its main arguments.
Folk parallelism generally involves syntactic and often rhythmic align-
ment of two elements, but omits explicit markers of comparison. In lyric
song, Veselovsky points out, such syntactic parallelism gives rise to incipi-
ent forms of rhyming, as in the following example from German folklore:
Dass im Tannwald finster ist,
Das macht das Holz,
Dass mein Schatz finster ist,
Das macht der Stolz.149
144
See Silk (1974: 28–56) on the inherent difficulties and possible criteria for distinguishing between
“dead” bleached metaphors and live metaphors used in poetry.
145
Meillet (1906).
146
For an example of explicit, a priori rejection of such a genealogical approach see Paxson (1994:
10–11).
147
Veselovskii (1940 [1898]: 125–99) = Veselovskij (1981: 148–236).
148
Maslov (2013a, esp. 107–12, 117); Merrill (2012: 14–60) (on the influence on Shklovsky). Cf. also Silk
(2003:135–9) on the importance of parallelism to Jakobson’s theory of metaphor and poetic function.
149
Veselovskii (1940 [1898]: 141).
The gloominess of fir forest is due to wood.
The gloominess of my darling is due to pride.
Veselovsky further argues that, in folklore, one of the members of an
inherited parallelism can be suppressed. What used to be a juxtaposition
of two images – a bridegroom and a bride, juxtaposed to a falcon and a jay
or a nightingale – becomes a short, one-member formula, in which a
falcon pursues a smaller bird. Such formulae contribute to culturally
persistent symbolism, as they inculcate
a permanent identification, nourished by an age-long tradition of song. This
principle of tradition distinguishes a symbol from an artificially selected
allegorical image: the latter can be precise, yet it cannot be expanded to reach
a new suggestiveness, because it does not rest on the basis of those echoes
between nature and humanity on which parallelism of folk poetry is con-
structed. Should such echoes emerge or should an allegorical formula begin to
circulate within popular tradition, it can approach the liveliness of a symbol.
The history of Christian symbolism provides such examples.
A symbol is expandable as a word is expandable for new revelations of
thought. A falcon assaults a bird and carries her off, yet this animal image is
illuminated by the rays of human relations that are cast by the other,
omitted member of the analogy.150
As Veselovsky suggests, one remnant of such archaic parallelism in Ancient
Greek literature is Anacreon’s address to a girl consistently represented as a
“Thracian filly.”151 One can easily imagine such a metaphor becoming
ingrained in the language, similarly to such lexemes for ‘beloved’ in modern
languages as German Schatz ‘treasure’, Russian zolottse ‘little gold’, English
honey, and so forth. Poetry may contribute to the routinization of such
extended meanings. Veselovsky describes the kennings and, more tentatively,
the conventionalized metaphors in the Rig Veda as results of this development,
whereby an implied parallelism is sedimented as a fixed expression: “the wind
tears the sails, a wolf tears its prey, hence the wind is ‘a wolf of the winds’.”152
While psychological parallelism as it operates in folk poetry may aid in
the formation of linguistic metaphors, some “symbols,” or conventional-
ized metaphors, persist in the poetic register without spreading into
common linguistic usage. Comparisons of a girl to a rose or to the sun
150
Veselovskii (1940 [1898]: 179).
151
Veselovskii (1940 [1898]: 179). Anacreon fr. 72, cf. fr. 77; also Alcman fr. 1.45–9. For a discussion of
this metaphor in Ancient Greek poetry and myth, see Calame (1997 [1977]: 238–44).
152
Veselovskii (1940 [1898]: 184). Similes also spring from such primitive parallelisms, but Veselovsky
declines to pass judgment on their chronological priority with respect to metaphor (Veselovskii
1940 [1898]: 189).
serve as markers of poetic style, or one might say, of poetic “argot,” in the
same way as other extended usages may be characteristic of other socially
circumscribed sublanguages.153 Only some such comparisons, however,
stand the chance of long-term survival.154
Poetic metaphors proper, those that are underdetermined by tradition,
represent a different category. In contrast to both one-member parallel-
isms and linguistic metaphors, in literary texts metaphor tends to overtly
express an element of the tenor instead of simply replacing it by the
vehicle. To give the simplest example, cited by Aristotle, Empedocles
describes old age as “the evening or sunset of life” (ἑσπέραν βίου ἢ
δυσμὰς βίου).155 To call old age “evening” or “sunset” plain and simple
would imply the conventionalization (or else illegibility) of the image.
On the other hand, poetry often reanimates bleached linguistic meta-
phors. To draw an example discussed by Veselovsky, if a village may be
conventionally described, in German, as “stretching over” a certain
territory, in Hölderlin it does so “comfortably.” The addition of a single
adverb personifies the village and generates a powerful image that builds
on a preexistent linguistic metaphor: “Streckt das Dörflein bequem über
die Wiesen sich aus” (‘A little village comfortably stretches itself
across the meadows’).156
153
For example: in Russian criminal argot, a safe is referred to as medved’ ‘bear’, hence “to take a bear
by the paw” means ‘to force a safe’; in Russian sailors’ argot, a bollard is called golova botsmana ‘the
boatswain’s head’; in Australian military slang, snake means ‘sergeant’; in British military slang,
swan can refer to “an apparently aimless journey” (OED).
154
Commenting on some of the oddly archaic animal similes in Homer and in the Rig Veda,
Veselovsky concludes: “A hero like an ass, a song like a cow’s mooing, etc. – all of this is far
removed from our perception of the world, and is not to our taste. The material for comparison has
narrowed down and become restricted to the selection suggested by the changes in the everyday life,
by the separation of artistic poetry from popular one, the preferences of fashion, contingency of
cross-cultural intersections. Who could say, for example, why a rose and a nightingale have stayed
on the top of our aesthetic demands, and for how long they will continue to do so? Similes
underwent the same process as the formulae of parallelism, which both arose in popular song and
were forgotten, whereas a few survived and became sedimented into the fixed shapes of a symbol
that is both definite and, at the same time, broadly suggestive. A new selection may make a different
choice; it would restore what was forgotten, remove what once was liked yet lost its suggestive
quality; and it would give place to new formations.” (Veselovskii 1940 [1898]: 194). In “The
Symbolism of Poetry,” Yeats uses a similar language of suggestion in relation to symbol:
“innumerable . . . meanings, which are held to one another by the bondage of subtle suggestion”
(1903 [1900]: 250). On the neo-Classical distaste for “vulgar” similes in Homer see Silk, Gildenhard,
and Barrow (2014: 160).
155
Poetics 1457b.
156
Veselovskii (1940 [1898]: 127) has “vergnügt” in place of “bequem.” For further examples of
“interaction” between conventionalized and poetic metaphors, see Taillardat (1962: 8, 15–24);
Silk (1974: 85–137). More radically, Manu Leumann proposed that poetic metaphor arose based
on the poets’ observation of processes of semantic change in language (Leumann 1959 [1927]: 294;
see Section 3).
In Veselovsky’s view, poetry’s capacity to enliven dead metaphors
indicates the fallaciousness of the view, widespread in the late nineteenth
century, that “detects in poetic images a product of decomposition of
primary animistic juxtapositions, sedimented in linguistic metaphors and
in myths.”157 Instead, Veselovsky argues, the process of formation of new
metaphors continues into the modern world, and poetry is an active
participant in this process:
The language of poetry continues the psychological process that began on
prehistoric paths. It both takes advantage of the images contained in
language and myth, their metaphors and symbols, but also creates new
ones in their likeness. The tie between myth, language, and poetry lies not
so much in the unity of tradition, as in the unity of the psychological
device, that of arte renovata forma dicendi [‘a form of speaking that is
renewed by art’] (Quint. 9.1.14)158
Interestingly, Quintilian defines the “figura” as a “form of speech made new
in some way (arte aliqua novata forma dicendi).” Veselovsky’s citation of this
phrase is thus itself a renovation, which stresses the regenerating potential of
verbal art. The idea is undoubtedly much indebted to Romanticism.
In Defence of Poetry (1821), Shelley speaks of the “vitally metaphorical”
language of the first poets whose work must be carried on by later
generations for otherwise “language will be dead to all the nobler purposes
of human intercourse.”159 Yet, rather than deriving from a primeval unity
of poetry, language, and myth, for Veselovsky this potential has a psycho-
logical or a cognitive basis. This departure from the Herderian tradition is
inspired by Veselovsky’s Berlin teacher Heymann Steinthal, whose other
student, Wilhelm Wundt, is regarded as a founder of modern psychology.
Indeed, Veselovsky’s work on the historical poetics of figuration sharply
poses a dilemma: if metaphor is grounded in universal cognitive
mechanisms, what accounts for its varied employment in literary history
and the distribution of kindred yet diverse forms of comparison, such as
simile, symbol, and allegory? Closer to the concerns of this chapter, does
poetic metaphor, as we understand it today, have a historical origin that
“Pindar’s tendency to violent metaphor” might shed light on?160
Within Greek literary history, most thinking on the history of figurative
language has focused on the relation of the Homeric simile to metaphor,
157 158 159

Veselovskii (1940 [1898]: 129). Veselovskii (1940 [1898]: 133). Winstanley (1911: 7).
160
Quotation from Farnell (1932: 207).
which is known to be “largely absent” from the Homeric poems.161 In his
seminal account, Hermann Fränkel opposes the “modernizing” tendency
to reinterpret similes as metaphors by positing a tertium comparationis.
The two members of a Homeric simile need not have a common ground.
Instead, they present an often jarring, yet invariably suggestive juxtapos-
ition of images, which Fränkel relates to the primitive mentality that
detects a shared essence in overtly similar phenomena. This principle of
identification might be most obviously present in Homeric comparisons
that seem to describe actual moments of transformations of divinities into
birds.162 Addressing similes more broadly, Paolo Vivante speaks of an
“existential identity” rather than “some literal point of resemblance.”163
It is as if the purpose of the simile were simply to emphasize the basic nature
of the event itself. We are not told that failing Gorgythion was like a
drooping poppy; nor is the poet trying to depict a heroic image by making
it more convincing through analogies drawn from nature. . . . The images
compared stand, therefore, independently of one another – a drooping
poppy, a drooping head, both enacting the same momentous event.164
For Fränkel, the juxtaposition achieved by the Homeric simile is not a
mere “Kunstmittel,” but a tool of cognition;165 for Vivante, it is a marker
of a distinctive “Homeric imagination” that grounds human action in the
natural world. What is important for us is that the operation of this figure
is, in a principled way, different from that of poetic metaphor or from
simile as it is employed in later poets.166 The Homeric simile enacts the
logic of traditional referentiality; it is effective in any local context but it is,
as a rule, not adapted to that context.
On the other hand, in Homer, and particularly in the Iliad, similes
appear in an “extended” form that marks a clear departure from the
folkloric parallelism. While these elaborate, narrativized similes are most
distinctive of the Homeric style, they coexist with – and very likely are
161
The formulation is from Silk (2004: 51), on the Iliad.
162
E.g. Il. 14.290–1, Il. 15.237, Od. 22.240. For a recent discussion see Buxton (2004: 142–3).
163
Vivante (1970: 84). Cf. Silk (2004: 52): “the characteristic focus on action means that we respond
not to specifiable points of comparison, single or multiple, but to an overall equivalence.”
164
Vivante (1970: 81).
165
Fränkel (1921: 110). Cf. Finley (1955: 41): “Homer catches his matchless variety of things, each
complete in itself and owning its moment of entire attention. The simile is the medium of such a
mind, since it compares two things, each of which is grasped separately and fully.”
166
Vivante’s contrast between Homer’s and Vergil’s use of simile is particularly instructive: “Virgil
introduces a principle of human abstraction into the objects portrayed, whereas the Homeric
similes stress a natural movement or a mode of being which is essentially the same in man and in
any animate object – a parallelism which brings out some identical disposition or elemental quality
quite apart from the requirements of a particular characterization.” (Vivante 1970: 83).
diachronically preceded by – shorter comparisons (Kurzvergleich).
As Fränkel notes, in different thematic areas,
the [Homeric] similes by themselves arrange themselves into trees at whose
top stands a shortened comparison [Kurzvergleich] such as “he walked like a
lion” or “he struck him like a lion strikes a cow” or “the army approached,
dark as a thunder cloud.” Similes developed from such simple construc-
tions. In order to unite them with narration, the old joining element “as
black as”, “as swift as”, etc., was retained, yet the extended, modified
contents [of a simile] was not justified at the level of expression. One hoped
to be understood in any case. The language was not conversant with
abstractions, and the task of expressing in a few words precisely, yet without
pedantry, the gist of the comparison, would have been hopelessly difficult
even for the most perfect linguistic means.167
Whereas folk “psychological parallelism” never loses sight of the tenor,
the expansion of the vehicle domain, which is a characteristic of Homeric
similes, represents a development that is particularly fitting for epic
narrative.168 The starting point for such elaboration, the Kurzvergleich,
is not unlike the short comparisons that are so amply attested in Pindar.
It is indeed plausible that the Homeric simile developed out of the
condensed simile of lyric, which Pindar preserves in its un-narrativized
as well as nonformulaic shape. The variety of comparative constructions,
in particular, is suggestive of an original flexibility simile had in Pindar.
Pindar’s condensed similes, however, should not be regarded as
an archaism. They represent an innovation on the inherited form of
Kurzvergleich, such as “he walked like a lion.” The path of innovation is,
however, quite different from that taken by extended epic similes,
and perhaps more likely to result in poetic metaphor, a trope that in
Pindar, in contrast to Homer, is quite abundantly represented. Instead of
a parallel structure in which an elaborate and vivid vehicle stands next
to an explicit tenor, what we find in Pindar is a tendency for the vehicle
to mingle with the tenor, in some cases even replacing it altogether.
In addition to the opening of I. 6, discussed in the preceding section,
consider the first lines of Olympian 6:169
167
Fränkel (1921: 111–12). For further discussion, see Moulton (1977: 20–49, esp. 28, n.16).
168
Long similes are virtually unattested in Indo-European poetics outside of Greek, but some
instances are cited by M. L. West from Near Eastern literatures (West 1997: 217–19; West 2007:
95). There is thus a distant possibility that the device of extended simile (but not particular similes)
was borrowed by Greek epic from kindred Near Eastern genres.
169
The most elaborate vehicle in Pindar is found in the opening of O. 7.1–6, where, however, due to
the tenor being withheld until line 7, as well as to the hypothetical modality of ὡς εἴ τις ‘as if one’,
the opening image operates differently from the Homeric simile, which sharply foregrounds the
Χρυσέας ὑποστάσαντες εὐτειχεῖ προθύρῳ θαλάμου
κίονας ὡς ὅτε θαητὸν μέγαρον
πάξομεν· ἀρχομένου δ’ ἔργου πρόσωπον
χρὴ θέμεν τηλαυγές.
Having placed golden columns underneath the broad-walled porch of a chamber,
as when we build a marvellous hall: when beginning a work, one must make its
face/façade far-conspicuous.
This passage describes the beginning of a poetic composition through the
image of construction. The only representative of the suppressed tenor,
however, is the tense, the so-called encomiastic future, of “we will build”
(πάξομεν), which clarifies that it is the present, poetic ‘work’ that is being
referred to. This verbal form sits uneasily next to ὡς ὅτε ‘as when’, which,
it appears, contrary to normal syntax, must be taken with the participial
clause. In this case, the “simile” would operate in the domain of the
participle, whereas the main verb, along with “a marvellous hall” (θαητὸν
μέγαρον), would need to be classified as a following “metaphor” represent-
ing the poem. As Farnell observes, “this complex form of sentence blends
simile and metaphor in a way characteristic of Pindar.”170
In the opening of O. 6 a Kurzvergleich invites extensive imagistic
elaboration, which makes the tenor accessible only through metaphoric
means. Parallelism is resolutely left behind. Another typical example comes
from Pindar’s earliest datable poem, Pythian 10, where the break-off from
the myth is described as follows:
κώπαν σχάσον, ταχὺ δ’ ἄγκυραν ἔρεισον χθονί
πρῴραθε, χοιράδος ἄλκαρ πέτρας.
Hold the oar and quickly plant the anchor in the ground, from the prow, as a
defense against a rock that is like a hog’s back. (P. 10.51–2)
The cessation of the narrative is metaphorically rendered as the end of a sea
journey. A traditional maritime metaphor is pursued with unexpected
detail, whereby the planting of an anchor assumes the additional concep-
tual function of preserving the ship of the ongoing performance intact.171
In a tropological mise en abyme, the risky low reef, itself part of an
imaginatively continued vehicle, is compared to a hog’s back.172
vehicle. In contrast, the toasting image in O. 7 projects a vision of epinician commission as

embedded in (rather than likened to) a xenia relationship that morphs into that of kinship acquired
through marriage.
170
Farnell (1932: 40, citing P. 1.44).
171
On maritime metaphors for poetic composition in Greek, see Nünlist (1998: 265–76).
172
Cf. Slater 547.
An original metaphor arrives as an improvised appendage to a traditional
image. Moreover, in contrast to the Homeric procedure, the tenor is
not juxtaposed to the vehicle, but left entirely implicit.173 The Pindaric
move thus seems analogous to the omission of one member of the folkloric
parallelism as described by Veselovsky (cf. his definition of poetic meta-
phor: “one-member parallelism, into which some images or relations of the
omitted member are transferred”174).
Similarly to Fränkel, Freidenberg viewed simile and metaphor as two
distinct moments in the history of figuration, but went further by expressly
linking metaphor to Archaic Greek lyric. As she surmised, lyric “arises in the
processes of metaphorization, as a stage in the universal history of human
cognition, when the image takes on the function of a concept for the first
time.”175 For Freidenberg, “poetic metaphor is an image in the function of a
concept.”176 Yet, unlike modern poetry, Archaic Greek lyric remains com-
mitted to traditional imagery, which Freidenberg, perhaps too readily,
describes as mythological.177 For example, when “Ibycus or Sappho meta-
phorically convey love in the form of fire or heat,” that is due to a conven-
tional association. Similarly conventional is the folk one-member parallelism
in Sappho fr. 105a, where the girl is described as an apple. (Here Freidenberg
is closely following Veselovsky.) By contrast, modern lyric “removes the
conventional semantics.” Freidenberg illustrates this point with Pasternak’s
comparison of the artist’s oblivion of the world at the moment of creation
with a half-empty glass left on the table. I cite stanzas five and six, which are
preceded by a figurative description of the poet’s throat as a crucible:
What does he care for honor, fame,
and for his place under the sun,
when the molten metal’s flame
binds his many words into one?
He’ll feed this fire his worldly junk,
his friendships and his conscious mind.
The water glass remains undrunk,
the world obscured, life undefined.178
173
Cf. Vivante on Il. 8.306–8, “what is so striking in the Homeric words is the full realization, from
beginning to end, of an identical, significant movement in two such different, lifelike images”
(1970: 81).
174 175
Veselovskii (1940 [1898]: 182). Freidenberg (1991a [1946]: 6); translation amended.
176
Freidenberg (1991a [1946]: 13).
177
In particular, in her remarks on figuration in Pindar, Freidenberg overlooks its innovative quality,
stressing that Pindar uses “not metaphors, but archaized mythological images” (2008: 331 = 1997: 68).
178
Translation by Lev Blumenfeld. The prose translation of these two stanzas from Pasternak’s “The
artist” (“Khudozhnik”): “What good is honor, glory, his station in life and his fame, in the moment
Что ему почет и слава,
Место в мире и молва
В миг, когда дыханьем сплава
В слово сплочены слова?
Он на это мебель стопит,
Дружбу, разум, совесть, быт.
На столе стакан не допит,
Век не дожит, свет забыт.
Here “metaphor and the actual meaning are torn asunder.”179 In other
words, the link between the tenor and the vehicle is not buttressed by
convention or mythological identification. Instead, it is forged ad hoc, as
part of the imagistic and conceptual work of the particular poem. Archaic
Greek lyric thus stands midway between the mythopoeic similitudes of epic
and the spontaneous, conceptually driven metaphors of modern lyric.180
The progress from mythological identification to the free play of inde-
pendent images, as it is envisioned by Freidenberg, is only part of the story
of metaphor. Semantic predictability can also be the endpoint of the
development of poetic metaphor when it becomes a symbol or perhaps is
routinized as an extended meaning of a word in general use. Poetic
expression can thus be seen to function similarly in Homeric poetry and
in forms of literary verse marked by highly sedimented diction. In
“The Traditional Metaphor in Homer” (1933), Milman Parry juxtaposed
images that circulate in popular lore and “fixed” images in literature. Parry
argued that the rare metaphors that are observed in Homer – such as
“shepherd of the people” or “the seed of fire” – gain their significance not
from their immediate context of use but from the overall system of
Homeric diction.181 While fixed metaphors are particularly at home in an
oral tradition, stylistically determined phrases, such as “watery plain” or
“watery deep” for the sea, are also found in Dryden or Pope. With a
when the breath of the molten metal binds many words into one? For this he’ll set fire to his
furniture, friendship, the mind, conscience, and his material life. A glass on the table remains half-
full, his life unlived, the world forgotten.”
179
Freidenberg (1991a [1946]: 14).
180
Freidenberg (1991a [1946]: 14). In contrast to Fränkel and in my view implausibly, Freidenberg
posits the extended simile as an antecedent of short comparison, thus drawing a straight line of
evolution from epic to lyric. (I would instead regard the extended simile as epic’s innovation.) This
does not, however, impugn her observations on Kurzvergleich in lyric: “conceptual in essence, it still
uses the means of direct identification of one meaning to another, in contrast to metaphor, which
already has overcome this identification.”
181
When considered by themselves, the Homeric metaphors “are not at all what they are in their place
in the poems. There the way they are used and their use over and over have given them a sense
which is utterly lost when they are torn from the poetry” (Parry 1971 [1933]: 367).
sentiment that echoes T. S. Eliot’s contemporary essays, Parry states that
such consecrated phrases are used “with less thought for what they said and
more for the sake of their correctness.”182 The supposition that oral
formulas are somehow vacated of meaning is one of the chief reasons
why the oral-formulaic approach has generated so much opposition among
Homerists, and it stands in a notable contrast with Veselovsky’s and
Freidenberg’s notion of the infinite semantic richness or suggestiveness
of the mythological image or symbol.183
Beyond the faulty dichotomies of poetry and formula, or of meaning
and convention, the history of Greek literature invites a historical account
of figuration that would be attentive to its many varieties and their
different semantic potential. In conclusion, I would like to return to
another of Parry’s observations. Aristotle’s Poetics contains a surprising
assertion that epic (the “heroic meter”) is favorable to metaphorai –
Aristotle’s term that encompasses a variety of semantic transpositions,
including metaphors and some kinds of metonymy.184 This, Parry notes,
jars with the consensus among modern scholars that metaphors in Homer
are a marginal phenomenon. Parry suggested that Aristotle had in mind
contemporary epic poetry, of which only short quotations survive, such as
the following lines from Choerilus, preserved by Athenaeus, in which a
defeated Persian drinks from a broken cup:185
χερσὶν δ’ ὄλβον ἔχω κύλικος τρύφος ἀμφὶς ἐαγός,
ἀνδρῶν δαιτυμόνων ναυάγιον, οἷα τε πολλὰ
πνεῦμα Διωνύσοιο πρὸς ὕβριος ἔκβαλεν ἄκτας.
I hold in my hands my fortune, the shard of a cup broken in twain, a timber from
a shipwreck of banqueters, such as the gale of Dionysus often casts on the coast of
hybris.
182
Parry (1971 [1933]: 368–9). See Section 1.
183
In a characteristic corrective to Parry, Vivante (1970: 79) insists that Homer’s diction is “not a dead,
stereotyped series of formulae, but recurring words and phrases possessing a poetic function” (80).
For further criticism of Parry and “Parryism,” see Vivante (1982: 137–8, 164–91). Against the
assumption of a universally valid poetic function, Parry perceptively reads literary form as a
historical document: “The men of that time were agreed that certain words and phrases were
more noble than others. We must not then condemn the language of their poetry before we have
condemned their entire way of life, since their fixed diction, of which we have taken the fixed
metaphor as an example, is a valid and finished sign of their common outlook” (1971 [1933]: 370).
Parry’s explanation for the preference for fixed diction combines historicism and aestheticism, as he
ascribes to it “a kind of charm” and “pleasure” that are historically conditioned.
184
Aristotle, Poetics 1459b34. At 1459a10 Aristotle notes that metaphorai are particularly at home in
iambics, while also “of use” in epic. For Aristotle’s use of metaphora, which is considerably broader
than modern metaphor, see Brooke-Rose (1965: 3–5); Silk (2003: 116–19).
185
Athenaeus 11.464a; Parry (1971 [1933]: 366). I have modified Parry’s translation.
Here metaphors sprout within the established vehicle domain in a fashion
that is anticipated by Pindar’s imagistic constructions such as the one in
P. 10.51–2. What appears quite un-Pindaric, however, is the phrase “the
coast of hybris” which, in conclusion of a tropic sequence, shifts the image
to the level of abstract personification. Hybris here has no imagistic
quality; it is imported as a ready-made concept.
The dilemma of cognitive universalism and historicism in the study of
figuration cannot be resolved in aprioristic terms. Any such debate must be
conducted with reference to the particulars of the given literary-historical
episode. Poetic metaphor was not born once, and even its emergence in
Archaic Greece may plausibly be linked to different, possibly interrelated
processes, such as the spontaneous evolution of folkloric one-member
parallelism and authorial experimentation with inherited condensed
similes.186 Given the meagerness of our evidence, it is important to exercise
caution in drawing conclusions. What seems certain, however, is that the
Pindaric corpus, extensive and innovative as it is, contains a key to under-
standing the history of poetic metaphor in Archaic Greece. Epinikion’s
proximity to the folkloric poetics of one-member parallelism may well
account for the tendency to omit the tenor, bringing simile closer to meta-
phor, while Pindar’s inventive use of images qua individual concept-oriented
meanings effectively forestalls their conventionalization as “symbols.” These,
at the very least, appear to be the two factors that have contributed to the
power as well as to the historical peculiarity of Pindar’s poetic semantics.
186
In other poetic traditions, other kinds of distinctions between types of figuration can be drawn. For
example, scholarship on classical Arabic poetry distinguishes between the perhaps more archaic
“analogy” and the short comparison. An example of the former is the image of inescapable “fate’s
talons,” which likens an attack by a beast to destiny’s workings. The latter could be illustrated by
the image of “flowers instead of eyes,” whereby the eye is compared to a flower. In terms of the
present discussion, the “analogy” could be aligned with one-member parallelism on its way to
becoming a metaphor, whereas “comparison” would correspond more closely to “fixed metaphors.”
For discussion, see Heinrichs (1977) and Kudelin (2007, esp. 157–65).
chapter 3
Speech acts, social personas, and poetic veridiction
1 Mimesis and veridiction: from social to poetic authority

The emergence of literary categories – of the individual author, of the
image, or of genre – was a part of a dynamic that put traditional verbal art
in a new relation to history and social change. In Archaic Greece, texts
responded to the historical world, rife with ideological contestation, rather
than to society and its institutions – such as birth, love, separation,
marriage, death – reified into stable, timeless entities. Poetry was no longer
a commentary or a verbal aid to action or relaxation, it was a self-conscious
participant in the social world. Communal verbal art, however, could not
furnish an adequate ground for such engagement. The newly acquired,
interventionist disposition of poetic discourse toward the social sphere
meant that ways of speaking currently in the domains of politics, religion,
or law were merged or intertwined within it in ways that could not be
predicted from a poetic text’s immediate social embedding. From now on,
the extraliterary became the chief resource for literature’s unremitting
quest for formal renewal.1
This kind of interpenetration of poetry and society should be rigorously
distinguished from the elements of primitive coexistence of social functions.
Such elements can be found, as survivals, often self-consciously cultivated, in
much later poetic texts. For example, the use of musical imagery in genres of
lyric that were never meant to be sung or to involve musical accompaniment
is a rudiment of the ancient symbiosis of music and poetry. It is a survival
1
Greenblatt (1988) posits the “appropriation,” alongside “purchase” and “symbolic acquisition,” of the
nonliterary as one of the main processes whereby literature is able to accumulate the “social energy”
that allows it to outlive its own time (esp. 1988: 9–11). Mimesis is therefore “always accompanied by –
indeed always produced by – negotiation and exchange” (12). For further discussion of the
integration of nonliterary discursive forms as a part of genre renewal, see Chapter 1, Section 1.
Important observations on the lack of literary self-consciousness in early Archaic poets, who instead
base their authority exclusively on the immediate social context for which their production was
destined, are presented in Rösler (1980, esp. 56–91).
178
Mimesis and veridiction: from social to poetic authority 179
that can be regenerated, as happened in the Romantic Lieder culture, or
sedimented as stylistic flourishes, such as Virgil’s pretense to “sing” the arms
of Aeneas or references to a lyre in eighteenth-century European lyric.
In Pindar, the metapoetic use of images of healing may similarly be seen
as a survival of an older Greek poetics that combined song and incantation.2
Such survivals notwithstanding, the hermeneutic strategy of positing a
primitive nondifferentiation of functions should be used with caution.
Marcel Detienne’s argument for an original identity of the political, poetic,
and religious modes of truth telling in Archaic Greece is one example of a
hypothesis that explains everything while clarifying little.3 More particularly,
in what follows I dispute the widespread view that Pindar’s claim on the
“prophetic” discourse is a feature of inherited poetic hieratism. Instead,
I argue that Pindar’s use of the language of divination is an example of
self-conscious appropriation of extrapoetic material.
This chapter investigates the ways in which Pindar’s emergent literary
authority draws on the resources of the social world of his time. This
question brings me back to the problem of lyric authorship, yet now
I approach it from a different angle. In the first chapter, my task was to
disentangle traditional communal modes of assertion from those that
betoken a self-conscious individual poetic voice, stratifying the Pindaric
epinikion in accord with a fundamental insight of Historical Poetics: each
text contains diachronic survivals of older forms, as well as germs of new
forms whose full manifestation it only anticipates. Accordingly, I sought to
place Pindar in the history of the poetic speaker in Archaic Greece, con-
sidered as a self-contained narrative.
Once the general outline of this narrative is established, questions of a
different order can be posed. What does it mean for a literary text,
deprived of an anchor in habitual practices of communal lyric, to operate
as an enunciated discourse – implying a speaker, an addressee, and a specific
context of utterance? If an individual “author” is indeed a necessary
property of literary discourse, prompted into being by the proliferation
of literary forms, is the “authority” claimed by this figure in some sense
analogous to other kinds of social authority? How are the “author” and the
“speaker” related in different literary genres, and in particular in lyric?
Inasmuch as the construct of an authoritative speaker is found to be
operative, how precisely is it constituted at the moment of transition from
folklore to literature, when a distinct literary authority is only coming
into being?
2 3
Chapter 1, Section 5. Detienne (1996 [1967]).
180 Speech acts, social personas, and poetic veridiction
Pindar puts to work a variety of extrapoetic stances that aid in the
construction of the speaking voice—that, in itself, is not unique to Pindar
or his historical moment. The openness to nonliterary genres of discourse
is intrinsic to literature. Pindaric evidence furnishes a particularly promis-
ing case study, however, in that it displays lucidly, at its moment of
emergence, a property that would come to be an essential characteristic
of lyric: its ability to model the utterance on social scripts, to instantiate
social acts while transcending their immediate instrumentality, and
thereby to draw on the illocutionary authority of the performative while,
in reality, failing to enact it. A poetic epistle is a not a fictional letter; it is a
“real” letter as well as something more, a text that claims an authority
rooted in literary tradition. Similarly, a love poem, while exceeding its
primary-genre analogue, derives its force from potentially being an
instance, rather than a mere representation, of a confession of emotion.
The power of lyric to a great extent depends on the way in which it recasts
extraliterary discursive frames and taps into the authority that they
generate.4
In this and the following chapter, I consider social and discursive forms
that we are in a position to identify, based on nonliterary evidence, as
cultural institutions of late Archaic Greece. These institutions can then be
seen to be subject to appropriation and remolding within Pindar’s lyric
medium. In Chapter 3, I discuss two extrapoetic modes of truth telling, the
vatic and the proto-juridical, focusing on the processes of poetic transpos-
ition of social authority that inheres in speaking personas and speech acts.
Chapter 4, by contrast, deals with the ways in which Pindaric epinikion
builds on forms that are already objectified or sedimented as literary or
speech genres. Whereas a mode of utterance such as vatic truth telling
entails a definite social persona and a set of social (religious) functions, a
reference to a preexistent genre need not have a direct effect on the image
of the speaker. Instead, genre hybridity contributes to the literary quality
of the text as a polyvalent, nonsynchronous semantic aggregate, which
cannot be paralleled in the social world.
The modeling of literary authority on social authority is thus only
one aspect of the constitution of poetic or literary discourse. Conversely,
the space occupied by poetic speakers is only partially defined by literary
4
In this respect, I depart from the general assumption of Robert von Hallberg’s highly stimulating
account of lyric authority: “Autonomy is poetry’s special aspiration: an independence from politics,
philosophy, history, or theology, so that poetic value does not depend upon political conformity,
logical argumentation, historical accuracy, or religious faith” (2008: 10). In my view, what makes
lyric “power” distinctive is that it thrives on deflected social authority.
history conceived of as an immanent process. The lyrical “I” operates
within discursive frames that are culturally conditioned and undergo
their independent evolution within the “neighboring systems” or
“proximate series” of cultural-historical phenomena.5 The very idea
of authoritative discourse is, of course, subject to historical variation.
Furthermore, there are different varieties of authoritative speech within a
single culture, as well as different and competing notions of veridiction.6
Truthful discourse may be equated with sincerity, practical effect, access
to esoteric knowledge, or objective reportage. Depending on genre,
historical milieu, or a given text’s agenda, poetry’s claim to authority
may variously employ these and other modes of veridiction.
My focus on social practices and their correspondent modalities of
authority will entail frequent and extensive references to Greek cultural
history. To appreciate the ways in which Pindar remolds extraneous
discourses into elements of poetic discourse, it is first necessary to see
clearly the divisions between fields of experience, social praxis, and lan-
guage use as they existed in Pindar’s time. In Archaic Greece, the literary as
a separate domain of socially consequential discourse comes into existence
before our eyes. To define the historical contingencies that informed
Pindar’s poetics, we need to keep in mind a greater dependence of incipi-
ent forms of literature on various nonliterary cultural series.
There is a general issue of method that is especially relevant to the
following discussion, but intrinsic to any work on phenomena that lie at a
historical or cultural distance from the scholar. On the one hand, terms
such as “authority” or “author-function” (as well as “discourse,” “literary,”
“social,” “poetic,” etc.) are abstractions that represent modern impositions
on Greek texts. These are “etic” categories of analysis, as contrasted with
“emic” categories that operate within the culture being studied. A reference
to social or poetic authority rests on the assumption that any text that was
effective as a social fact carries within it an implicit self-legitimating
account, permitting us to stipulate an authority that informs it. If the text
is framed as enunciated by a speaker, this authority is channeled by a
(personalized) instance of discourse that is implicated in the origination of
that text. On the other hand, the meaning that these terms assume should
be inflected with reference to historically specific phenomena of power
5
Tynianov (2002 [1927]); see Chapter 1, Section 1. The notion of interlinked “series” (riad) of cultural-
historical phenomena is introduced in Veselovsky (1967 [1870]).
6
I borrow the concept of veridiction from Kliger (2011), who applies it to the notions of truth telling
in the nineteenth-century realist novel.
and authority that are reconstructed by historians of Archaic Greek cul-
ture. In other words, a pre-given theoretical concept must be reanimated as
a historical concept. Indeed, the heuristic validity of any literary-critical
concept depends on such ongoing reanimation.
Furthermore, an investigation that sets itself the task of understanding
cultural change, that is, of grasping the evolution of cultural forms, faces an
additional challenge. An exact correspondence between the concept
employed as a scholarly tool and the native (emic) construal of a phenom-
enon would imply a perfect fit between the subject and the object of study,
denying a historical (or cultural) distance between them. By contrast,
an approximation to native usage, a kind of conceptual asymptote, can
highlight the need for inquiring into the historical instability of the
phenomenon, its potential for change and metamorphosis. Would-be emic
categories thus are essential heuristic devices for many kinds of context-
specific investigation, and they figure prominently in this study, often
spelled in non-Latinate form (hymnos, marturia, epidêmia, etc.). Given
our necessarily deficient knowledge of the ancient world, however, it
should be stressed that the appeal to native categories that results in a kind
of conceptual reification of an ancient lexeme is an illusion, which carries
with it the risk of uncritical importation of theoretical content.7 In sum, to
be useful for a historian interested in the longue durée, the concept must be
neither a theoretical preconception, nor an exact reflection of a particular
indigenous usage, but a historically grounded generalization.
It is with these caveats in mind that I propose to approach the problem
of convertibility of social and poetic (or literary) authority. Returning to
literature’s relation to history, I stress a fundamental disjunction between
social discourse – for example, the discourse of religious celebration – and
the literary discourse. Whereas the former results in a social fact, the latter
aims at becoming what may be called a historical fact. Whether or not it
explicitly thematizes its relation to the past and future, literary discourse is
constituted as a mode of utterance that claims to be relevant in and
through history. This makes the literary similar to the political and, more
generally, marks the dependence of a literary tradition on a perception of
cultural or national continuity that becomes a precondition of historical
consciousness.8
7
It is not incidental that the foregrounding of the emic has coincided with the dominance of theory-
driven contextualism that puts into doubt any narrative of cultural change and continuity. On
“emic” categories in the study of Ancient Greece, see Dougherty and Kurke (2003).
8
I have in mind Hannah Arendt’s notion of the political construed as the domain of historical
consequential action. See Chapter 1, Section 2.
Literature’s participation in the historical also dictates the imperative of
individuality in literary praxis. The perception of history as the domain in
which individuals leave their unique mark is a familiar Western conceit,
which originates in Greek antiquity.9 Pindar’s poetry is already privy to
this understanding of history. For this reason, a reading of Pindar’s
epinikia as mere transpositions of socially embedded forms of discourse
into a poetic medium is bound to be unsatisfying. The poet enters the
scene because a cult song performed at a festival must be reconstituted as
an artifact that has both a unique pertinence to its context of production
and a value that will outlast this context. Precisely this double function
of the literary text is at stake when social authority inherent in culturally
embedded practices is reforged as a new kind of authority that inhabits the
domain of the historical.10
The issue of convertibility of social authority into poetic authority
touches on a more general problem of lyric as mimesis.11 Does lyric poetry
depend on the imitation of everyday, socially embedded discourse? Or is
it instead constructed on principles that differ from those that structure
social reality, in which poetry circulates but which it presumes to
transcend?
The modern tradition of aesthetics is founded on Baumgarten’s
“heterocosmic” principle that separates the social world and the plane of
literary creativity. In a notable departure from this tradition, Veselovsky’s
Historical Poetics, and Russian Formalists in its wake, have sought to
correlate a literary work with its social functionality. Literature interacts
with proximate cultural-historical phenomena; for instance, for Tynianov,
an ode is not really an ode, unless it has an oratorical function.12
9
On the rise of the heroic paradigm of history, see Averintsev (1973), who points out that tyrants and
artists were the principal objects of Hellenistic biographies.
10
By a reverse process, literary authority becomes deployable as social authority. We might imagine
Alcaeus’s social authority as an aristocrat to be supplemented by his poetic authority; Solon’s
political authority was also likely aided by his compositional efforts. In Pindar’s case, by contrast,
poetic praxis most probably was the principal resource for his social standing. For a nuanced analysis
of poetics as a source of social authority, see Oliensis (1998).
11
I have in mind the classical notion of mimesis as a commitment to “depicting and illuminating a
world that is (partly) accessible and knowable outside art, and by whose norms art can therefore,
within limits, be tested and judged” (Halliwell 2002: 5).
12
Tynianov (2003 [1922–1928]). In this respect, the tradition of Historical Poetics is closer to the
practice of historical-philological explication du texte as exemplified by Leo Spitzer than to the kind
of close reading favored by the New Critics. Cf. Leo Spitzer’s well-known polemic against the New
Critics (1955). Further discussion of this methodological division can be found in Kliger and Maslov
(2015a).
In lyric, mimesis can encompass different kinds of modeling of poetic
forms on social scripts. Consider hymn and pastoral, two genres whose
origins have often been related to a real-world precedent. Whether or not
Theocritus’s bucolic was a transposition of a folk genre of musical contest
between shepherds, the pastoral chronotope was retained as a distinctive
property of the genre, both classical and vernacular. While ostensibly
engaged in a mimesis of plain social interaction, the pastoral removes that
interaction from the actual world into an ideal, mythologized space and
time. The effect of pastoral mimesis, most evident in Virgil’s Eclogues,
derives from a tension between an artificial, idyllic setting, and a politically
pertinent action.13
In the case of hymns, Greek literary history seems to point to a
progression from poems that are primarily prayers (such as the shorter
Homeric Hymns) to texts that have little, if anything, to do with prayer as
a social act (such as Callimachus’s hymns).14 The narrative of decontex-
tualization of the hymn, however, overlooks an important consideration.
Already in Archaic Greece, there are texts, such as Sappho 1, whose status
as either a literary stylization of prayer or an actual prayer is moot. The
uncertainty is not due to our historical ignorance. Rather, it is intrinsic to
much classical and postclassical poetry that employs or alludes to the form
of prayer. Here the tension is between an ever-relevant discursive frame
(renewed and revised within the proximate series of religious practice)
and the poetic logic specific to the text. A hymn-like text may be, at the
same time, an instantiation of an age-old poetic form and a seemingly
unmediated mimesis of an actual utterance. A pastoral, by contrast, uses
a sedimented, overly fictional mimetic frame, which it populates with
historically variable agents and sensibilities.
As discussed in Chapter 1, Section 3, subgenres or varieties of Archaic
Greek lyric differ in the extent to which they can be analyzed as being
modeled on a particular primary speech genre. A historical elegy by
Simonides differs in this regard from a marriage song by Sappho: while
the latter is a transposition of a preliterary form, no such presumption is
possible in the former case. Pindaric epinikion, as I argue in extenso in the
following chapter, is a hybrid of genres that cannot be reduced to a single
model. Moreover, considered alongside the extant corpus of Bacchylides,
Pindar’s work is radically open-ended and heterogeneous, often putting its
13
Payne (2007) discusses the Theocritean pastoral’s interest in constructing “fictional worlds,” but
does not approach it as a property distinctive to the genre.
14
Koller (1956); García (2002).
constructive principle on display. This self-reflexivity is thus not due
solely to Pindar’s placement at a transitional moment in the history of
literary forms. One might say that Pindar made a virtue out of necessity,
by artistically exploiting the instability of forms that was the characteristic
of his time. Pindar’s penchant for the “baring of the device,” however,
proved to be a detriment for his reception in the post-Romantic period,
with its mystique of the organic unity of the work of art.
Mimesis of socially embedded speech acts in Pindar is episodic. Rather
than modeling the entire poem on a single kind of speech act, Pindar
employs such mimesis variously in different passages where poetic author-
ity is constructed qua social authority. The two social domains that are
the focus of this chapter – proto-law (marturia) and divination (mantikê) –
comprise a variety of practices that entail potent, but also contested modes
of veridiction; as such, they both contribute to poetic authority and carry
certain risks. The juxtaposition of marturia and mantikê complicates the
view of Pindar as a poet of avowedly transcendent aspirations as well as the
notion of epinikion as a genre firmly rooted in social reality.
With respect to both marturia and mantikê, a preliminary exercise
of cultural-historical stratification is in order, because various practices of
asseveration and divination are treated differently in Pindar and Bacchy-
lides, as well as in epinikion as contrasted with cult-related poetry. It is
primarily in the genre of epinikion that Pindar and Bacchylides are
engaged in the construction of an innovative poetic persona, but the two
poets make different choices: whereas Bacchylides appears to embrace a
more individuated model of poetic authority, downplaying the communal
aspect of performance, Pindar develops a diffuse kind of poetic subjectivity
that encompasses and builds on modalities of authority that are proper to
the chorus. In his non-epinician poetry, by contrast, Pindar employs social
mimesis in ways that are often more direct, and is less invested in the
authority of the poet-composer.
A culturally specific notion of truth telling is very often implicated in
the construction of authority. In the ancient world, important manifest-
ations of truth telling have to do with sincerity that derives from personal
loyalty, access to esoteric knowledge (differently configured, depending
on whether it is the knowledge of the past, the knowledge of the future, or
an insight into an extra-mundane reality), vivid evocation of an event, as
well as conformance to reality. In what follows, veridiction is thus a
historical concept that captures these aspects of authoritative speech, which
often appeal to a notion of genuineness (etumos, etêtumos), plausibility
or faithfulness (pistos), precision (atrekeia), and access to the past
(alêthês, alêtheia); it excludes the kinds of utterance that we may deem
authoritative on the strength of their perlocutionary force, such as a
command or a mythos (‘authoritative speech act’).15 The latter kinds of
speech, in a sense, exploit a pregiven authority; a veridictory utterance, by
contrast, constructs an authoritative speaker even as it is being produced,
by virtue of an inherent quality of discourse.
In 1927, Hermann Fränkel described the functions of the Pindaric
speaker as follows:
With the utterances (Mahnungen) of the poet, who perceives himself as a
wise man, a teacher, and a prophet, there is sometimes combined a purely
lyrical, personal enunciation of that which moves his [Pindar’s] heart.16
Fränkel’s formulation may sound like an archaism in the wake of Elroy
Bundy’s work, whose emphasis on the primacy of an encomiastic
intentionality in epinikion had a major impact on Pindaric scholarship
in the ensuing decades.17 For Bundy, the speaker in Pindar is first and
foremost a laudator, “the one who praises,” addressing (directly or
obliquely) the laudandus, ‘the honoree’. Allusions to other kinds of social
authority are no more than the laudator’s tactical moves, themselves part
of the larger encomiastic strategy. The Pindaric speaker, thus defined,
is an attribute of the genre of epinikion, which Bundy equates with
encomium.18 As I argue in Chapter 4, this view of genre in Pindar is
simplistic (and indeed ahistorical), and the approach deriving the poetic
speaker holistically from a single substrand of Pindaric epinikion is to be
rejected. More generally, Bundy’s functionalism, while in line with a
major, post-idealist turn in the study of literature, decisively restricts
Pindar’s poetry to its social function as praise. It overlooks the distinction
between the text as a social versus a historical fact, a distinction that, as
I have argued, is essential to theorizing the literary.
In contrast with this well-established view of Pindaric epinikion,
Fränkel’s formulation reflects a view of the Pindaric speaker widely shared
in the pre-Bundy era, and identifies various modalities of social authority
that serve as resources for Pindar’s poetic authority. Curiously, Fränkel
keeps the three relevant kinds of social authority (“a wise man,”
15
On this meaning of mythos in Homer, see Martin (1989). On truth in Archaic Greek in general, see
Cole (1983) and Section 6 in this chapter. Pindar’s use of alatheia and related lexemes is explored in
Komornicka (1972).
16 17
Fränkel (1927: 40). Bundy (1986 [1962]).
18
Cf. Silk (2012: 351–2) for a polemic with Bundy’s reductionism from a literary-critical quarter.
Further discussion of Bundy’s rhetorical approach to Pindar can be found in Chapter 4, Section 1.
“a teacher,” and “a prophet”) distinct from the spontaneous (“purely
lyrical”) personal voice of Pindar, the man. This disjunction is purely
hypothetical, and is motivated by the need to account for Pindar’s eccen-
tric persona, not typical for encomiastic poetry in general nor for
Bacchylides in particular.19 I would argue that the assertive presence of
the individual voice in Pindar is an effect of an adventurously innovative
poetics of Pindaric epinikion. Pindar’s literary individuality, which is
symptomatically present (among other things) in the eccentricities of the
speaking voice, is a reflection of the newly acquired status of the text
as an artifact whose craftedness serves as a guarantee of its uniqueness.
This uniqueness finds a correlate in the singularity of the poetic voice.
Moreover, it is often the case in Pindar that a strongly marked individual
poetic voice is called forth at the moments of juncture, filling the rift
between sections that reflect the text’s many orientations.
Of the three kinds of social authority Fränkel identifies, wisdom and
prophecy seem most tangible; the reference to a special didactic authority
is due to the prominence in Pindaric epinikia of gnomic (proverbial)
material, which is, in fact, part of the communal lore. As I argued in
Chapter 1, Section 7, Pindar’s references to poetic sophia ‘wisdom’ are
almost entirely restricted to the dynast odes; this kind of social authority is
associated with esoteric enunciation. In the Archaic period, sophia refers to
superior expertise in any domain of social practice.20 It thus constitutes the
most broadly defined resource for individuated authoritative discourse.
The discourse of prophecy, by contrast, points not backward, but forward
in literary history. In Chapter 1, Section 2, I offered some criticism of the
assumption that poetic and prophetic (or mantic) authority are closely
aligned in the Archaic period. Regarding the significance of that alignment
in the later literary-critical tradition, three factors appear to be the most
significant. Most recently, the reconstruction of a proto-Indo-European
poetics, necessarily heavily reliant on Indic material, has led many scholars
to posit an inherited hieratic concept of the poet in Archaic Greece. In the
following chapter, I offer some comments on what I call the hermetic
hypothesis in the work on Indo-European poetics; in my view, it is unlikely
19
Notably, this contrast is lost within the Bundyist paradigm, which assumes a unitary encomiastic
genre. The originality of Bacchylides, however, is not to be depreciated. As Pindar’s younger
contemporary, he is working with a well-established epinician poetics, yet even within that
poetics, one finds innovative elements, such as extensive treatment of myth. Bacchylides’ major
innovation, however, seems to be his dithyrambs which approach the narrative dithyrambs
composed in classical Athens.
20
Kerferd (1976); Kurke (2011: 95–124).
that a notion of poet-priest could have been preserved from as early as the
time of the proto-Indo-European. Second, Plato in the Ion posited poiêtikê
and mantikê as kindred instances of divinely inspired frenzy. As
I demonstrate below, however, the notion of inspired mantikê emphasized
by Plato is of minor significance for Pindar; the value of Platonic analysis for
understanding early fifth-century poetic praxis is, in general, marred by
philosophy’s own project of denigrating poetic sophia, which it sought to
align with the irrational (mantikê) and the merely fabricated (poiêtikê).21
Finally, the long-standing association of poetry and prophecy in West-
ern poetics is due, first and foremost, to the vatic poetics of Horace’s Odes.
Positing a Horatian priestly persona for Pindar is particularly appealing
because Horace’s notion of the poet as a sacerdos Musarum seems, at least
in part, to be inspired by Pindar.22 Beyond classical antiquity, these ways
of figuring poetic authority persist as metapoetic sediments. In addition to
the Horatian precedent, one should keep in mind the figure of the Old
Testament David, at once a poet and a prophet.23 One may well surmise
that one reason why Pindar was the only Greek lyric poet to survive in
direct manuscript tradition throughout Byzantine history was precisely the
Pindaric speaker, much more akin to the grand persona of David’s Psalms
than to ephemeral and all-too-human voices of other archaic lyric poets.
No wonder that the Pindaric speaker, read as the sublime poet, corrobor-
ated the post-Renaissance idea of the poet conveyed by Goethe’s parallel-
ism: “Sag, Poete, Sag, Prophete” (“Tell me, poet, tell me, prophet”).24
2 “A prophet of the Muses”? Delimiting Pindar’s mantic poetics

Ancient Greek divination (mantikê) encompasses a wide variety of mantic
practices.25 In particular, the central role accorded in literary sources, such
21
Archaic Greek poetry is assimilated to “prophecy” in Dodds (1951: 81–2); Detienne (1996 [1967]);
Nagy (1990a). Contra: Tigerstedt (1970); Murray (1981); Maslov (2009: 21–6).
22
On Horace’s engagement with Pindar, see Highbarger (1935); Kennedy (1975); Feeney (1993);
Harrison (1995). In the context of Horace’s vatic stance, see Snell (1960 [1946] 302–6); Fraenkel
(1957: 426, fn.2); on Odes 4.9, cf. Sage (1994: 567, fn. 6). On the vatic stance in Horace (and in
Virgil) in general, see Putnam (1986). A quasi-sacralization of Pindar was underway in the
Hellenistic period, as attested by Philostratus, Imag. 2.12 (see also Chapter 1, n. 54 and n. 88
below).
23
As a further confirmation of this conflation, David’s psalms are regularly referred to as epinikia in
the Byzantine period.
24
On the impact of Pindar’s epinikia on early modern hymn and religious poetry, see Revard (2001).
On Pindar and Goethe, see Henkel (1981); Ponzi (1999). On the Romantic reception of prophetic
poetics, see Balfour (2002).
25
Bremmer (1996); Dillery (2005); Flower (2008); Griffith (2009).
Delimiting Pindar’s mantic poetics 189
as Herodotus and Attic tragedy, to the oracular shrine of the Pythian
Apollo in Delphi may be deceptive. The Delphic oracle was indeed the
most authoritative religious institution in Archaic and Classical Greece,
but for the majority of the Greeks it had little practical significance. Very
few would undertake a journey to consult it on their private matters.26
Most importantly, however, the needs for mantic expertise were too many
and too mundane; they were served by numerous manteis ‘diviners’, either
stationed at local shrines, hired for a particular set of tasks (e.g., maintained
by a rich house or accompanying an army on a campaign) or earning their
living by traveling around. With regard to their religious authority and
probable social prestige, the three types of manteis can be ranked in the
following order: manteis at sanctuaries > hired professionals > vagrant
manteis. All three were in direct or indirect competition with each other,
and none had the absolute authority of a Tiresias. The general attitude
toward the figure of mantis was that of practical need, not religious awe.
Furthermore, as we know from the existence of four mantic clans (the
Melampodidai, the Iamidai, the Clytiadai, and the Telliadai), mantis was
often a hereditary occupation. Affiliation with one of the four clans gave
the seer a special claim to expertise that distinguished him from his myriad
competitors.27 There also existed in the fifth century bce khrêsmologoi
(interpreters of oracles), who could similarly be referred to as manteis, and
exêgêtai (interpreters of sacred law) – both these professions had lower
social repute than institutionalized manteis.28
Most commonly, the task of a historical Greek mantis, in any specific
inquiry, was to supply a yes-or-no answer, and in determining whether or
not an omen is auspicious, he had specific procedures to follow. According
to Michael Flower, from at least the last quarter of the sixth century
onwards, examination of entrails of sacrificial animals (extispicy) was
“the primary expertise of the Greek seer.”29 Other kinds of sacrificial
divination included observing the flow of the victim’s blood and the way
it fell (used in sphagia, or battle-line divination) and examination of flames
from sacrifices (empiromancy). It is well known that sacrificial divination
26
Not to mention the costs that they would incur, it was difficult enough to gain access to the shrine,
especially if we believe the later accounts that the oracle operated only one day in a month, nine
months a year. For Delphi, Amandry (1950) remains fundamental, but see also Fontenrose (1978), a
shorter piece by Price (1985), and a view from Classical Athens in Bowden (2005).
27
The three clans mentioned last came from Elis in the Peloponnese, and the Iamidai shared the
stewardship of Zeus’s oracle in Olympia with the Clytiadai (Flower 2008: 40).
28
For a concise typology of manteis, see Griffith (2009: 475–82). On khrêsmologoi and manteis, see
Fontenrose (1978: 153); Dillery (2005).
29
Flower (2008: 25).
does not appear in Homer: Calchas practices ornithoscopy, or bird divin-
ation.30 By contrast, as Flower notes, “bird signs play only a minor role in
historical texts.” Although interpretation of bird signs must have retained
its importance throughout antiquity (if only at the level of non-expert
observation), augury seems to have been marked, in contrast to sacrificial
divination, as a mantic practice belonging to the heroic age.31
In addition to the procedures involved in technical mantikê, historical
seers could also be called upon, on occasion, to give an interpretation to
a teras, an event that defies – and therefore demands – explication, be it a
dream or a rare natural phenomenon. It is important to note that the logic
of teratoscopy implies a somewhat different dynamic of divine communi-
cation: indications of divine favor, or of lack thereof, rather than being
determined by humans in a given situation (with a predetermined object of
inquiry, e.g., “whether or not the army should advance”), arrive
unprompted, and what needs to be determined is not only their meaning
but also the context to which this meaning applies. For example, in
particular circumstances a fight between birds could be interpreted as a
teras, and the seer could take the risk of giving it a fuller explication.32 On
the whole, “the symbolic value” of a teras is created by “the coincidence of
an extraordinary incident and a significant moment.”33
A survey of Pindar’s corpus in light of this historical evidence yields
several observations. First, with the exception of the Delphic oracle, refer-
ences to contemporary mantic practices in the epinikia are rare; they are
always directly motivated by the content of the given poem and never linked
to the Pindaric speaker. This suggests that the figure of the historical seer was
not directly employed in the poetics of the Pindaric epinikia as a resource
that would enhance poetic authority. The proems of two epinikia, Olym-
pian 8 and Pythian 11, contain references to manteis located at two cult
centers: Zeus’s shrine at Olympia and the Theban Ismenion. Notably,
30
“Sacrificing seers” (μάντιες θυοσκόοι) are mentioned at Il. 24.221 as possible religious specialists who
might dissuade Priam from visiting the Achaean camp. Their authority is rejected by Priam who
emphasizes that he has confronted the divine (Iris, Zeus’s messenger) in person. A similar distrust
toward human manteis can be observed in Agamemnon’s rebukes to Calchas (cf. Griffith 2009:
480). The same conflict as the one played out at the narrative level in the Iliad can be detected
behind Pindar’s avoidance of technical mantikê.
31
The recently discovered collection attributed to Posidippus contains ten epigrams dealing with bird
augury, within a thematic set of fifteen poems on omens (Oiônoskopika). This surprising focus is due
to Hellenistic archaizing. See Baumbach and Trampedach (2004).
32
Flower (2008: 154) notes that the fighting of birds was an unequivocally bad portent, citing Od.
2.146–76; Aes. PV 488–92; Soph. Ant. 998–1004; Plut. Alex.73.2.
33
Baumbach and Trampedach (2004: 138).
Pindar seeks to identify mantic knowledge with a specific location: Olympia
is called “the master of truth” (O. 8.2 δέσποιν’ ἀλαθείας), whereas the
Ismenion is described as “the true seat of seers” (P. 11.6 ἀλαθὲς μαντίων
θῶκον). Similarly to the Delphic oracle, which was firmly rooted in a sacred
locale, these formulations are intended to foreground the institutional nature
of “licit” mantikê and implicitly obviate claims to religious authority by
much more numerous manteis who were not attached to religious centers.
In the case of Olympia, Pindar, unusually, specifies the kind of divination
employed: it is empiromancy, examination of flames from sacrifices (O. 8.2
ἵνα μάντιες ἄνδρες ἐμπύροις τεκμαιρόμενοι παραπειρῶνται Διὸς ἀργικεραύ-
νου), a relatively rare divinatory procedure. The description of the Iamid
Agesias in the beginning of Olympian 6, line 5, as “the steward at a mantic
altar” (βωμῷ μαντείῳ ταμίας) also refers to this practice.
Apart from references to the Delphic oracle, these are the only references
to historical mantic practices.34 Pindaric mentions are thus limited to the
most authoritative type of manteis, those associated with particular shrines;
other, less spectacular and less authoritative mantic figures, not to mention
khrêsmologoi or exêgêtai, do not occur in the Pindaric corpus. Moreover, all
Pindaric seers, whose divinatory acts are represented in the epinikia, are
mythical characters that belong to the age of heroes predating the Trojan
war.35 In keeping with the Homeric tradition, none of these manteis
practice sacrificial divination. Thus, extispicy, the most common mantic
practice in Pindar’s time, is never mentioned in his surviving corpus.36
The nature of Pindaric references to mantic practices shows that the
historically tangible figure of a seer who uses technical divination could not
serve as a model for the Pindaric speaker as a professional poet. The poet
would have nothing to gain from assimilating himself directly to a mantis,
seeing that the seer’s claim to truth in the fifth century bce was so
contested and his access to the divine so clearly incomplete.37
By contrast, representations of teratoscopy in the heroic age, found in the
mythic sections of the epinikia, project a capacity of poetic discourse – as a
34
I exclude the obscure passage at P. 8.56–60, which may contain another reference to contemporary
divination; in any case, even if it is historical, the mantic consultation takes place at a shrine.
I discuss this passage later in this section.
35
The only exception is Kassandra, mentioned at P. 11.33, but, apart from mentioning her pitiful role
in the myth of Agamemnon’s slaughter, Pindar displays no interest in this figure.
36
Cf. Athanassaki (1990: 25–7) on the contrast between the “technical” notion of divination,
associated with Prometheus in Prometheus Bound, and Pindar’s absolute mantikê (“hearing the
voice that knows no lies” O. 6.66–67).
37
On the negative cultural attitude to seers in the fifth century, cf. Bremmer (1996: 105) (with
bibliography).
reporting medium, not as an analogue of mantic discourse – to represent the
human interaction with the divine. Against the foil of actual mantic practices
familiar to contemporary Greeks, the immediate and complete success of
such interaction as represented in Pindar’s myths could not but appear
miraculous. Teratoscopy becomes a token of the mythic reality that, rather
than being continued in the contemporary world, can only be reanimated in
a poetic medium. The relation of poetic and religious knowledge is inverse:
the very fact that these mantic acts are no longer feasible buttresses Pindar’s
claim to vivid reenactment of the heroic world.
Let us look more closely at the four extended descriptions of a mantis at
work, which occur in the mythic sections of the epinikia. These scenes
suggest a complicated pragmatics of teratoscopy (see Table 3), encompass-
ing the seer, an addressee (who may but need not be the inquirer), a
context that clarifies the domain to which the teras should apply, the
actual teras to be interpreted, and an explication of its meaning (which
may be replaced by mere acceptance, if either the context or the teras itself
determine its meaning sufficiently).
Notably, the “context,” an element observed in three complete scenes of
divination out of four, amounts to an act of prompting on the part of a
mantis, which is immediately rewarded with a good omen. In these cases, the
mantis demonstrates an ability to communicate with the gods that was lost
after the heroic age: heroes’ ability to successfully invoke the gods is a more
fitting comparandum for these scenes than contemporary mantic practices.38
Moreover, in three of the four scenes, the mantis goes far beyond a yes-no
answer, and produces an extended interpretation of the teras.
As with the avoidance of sacrificial divination, Pindar seeks to mark the
distance that separates mythical teraskopoi from the real-world manteis of
his time. For example, Mopsus is a military seer accompanying the
Argonauts on their campaign; in this regard, his role is analogous to both
that of Calchas in the Iliad and that of contemporary military seers.
In order to downplay the latter association, Pindar includes an apparently
gratuitous specification: he was a seer “prophesying by bird omens and
lot-casting” (μάντις ὀρνίχεσσι καὶ κλάροισι θεοπροπέων), and so, by
implication, not one practicing the examination of entrails, extispicy.39
38
E.g., Thetis responding to Achilles in Hom. Il. 1.357–61; Poseidon to Pelops in O. 1.86–7; Apollo to
Iamos in O. 6.61–3; Zeus to Minos in Bacch. 17.67–71.
39
P. 4.190–1. In Pindar, both mythic expeditions against Thebes are preceded by bird signs (or omens)
that are disregarded when inauspicious and embraced when favorable, but which are in any case
truthful (ἐς ἑπταπύλους Θήβας ἄγαγον στρατὸν ἀνδρῶν αἰσιᾶν οὐ κατ᾿ ὀρνίχων ὁδόν N. 9.19; νῦν
ἀρείονος ἐνέχεται ὄρνιχος ἀγγελίᾳ Ἄδραστος ἥρως P. 8.50).
Table 3 Divination in Pindar’s epinikia
Mantis Addressee Context Teras Explication
N. 1.60 Teiresias Amphitrion the infant Heracles future exploits of Heracles

smothering the
serpents
I. 6.51 Heraclesa Telamon prayer for the birth appearance of an [acceptance of the omen;] the name of
φωνήσαις ἅτε of a son eagle Ajax (> aietos)
μάντις ἀνήρ
P. 4.190 Mopsus Jason as the toast and prayer for thunder and lightning acceptance of the good omen
leader of the divine benevolence
193
expedition
O. 13.73 the Corinthian Bellerophon incubation at Athena’s Athena’s appearance acceptance of Athena’s commands; the
seer Polyidos shrine as advised by in a dream foundation of the temple of Athena
Polyidos Hippia
INCOMPLETE SCENES OF DIVINATION
O. 8.37 Apollo (not Aiakos the prodigy of three the sack of Troy by Aiakos’s
called a mantis) snakes descendants
P. 8.39 Amphiareus “a snake on the future fate of Adrastos
Alkmaion’s shield” as
a quasi-teras?
a
On this passage, see Chapter 2, n. 137.
Most importantly, the prophecies of the Pindaric manteis are not only
known to have come to pass, but also clear and unambiguous, however
mysterious and obscure the terata may be. Even Apollo, interpreting the
teras of the three snakes during the building of the walls of Troy, the
murky language of his Delphic prophecies notwithstanding, speaks
“lucidly” (sapha O. 8.46).40 The abilities of Pindaric mythical manteis
belong to the rubric of “intuitive” – in contrast to both “technical” and
“ecstatic” – divination, which, to the Greeks of the fifth century, appears to
be an entirely mythic phenomenon.41
Similarly to technical divination, Pindar displays little interest in
inspired, or ecstatic divination (mantikê entheos). As far as we can tell, in
the fifth century, mediumistic possession was restricted to a few oracular
shrines and far less common than technical divination. The tradition of
privileging mantic possession over mantic craft was inaugurated by Plato,
whose purpose was hardly an accurate description of current practices. As
Michael Flower points out,
Plato was being consciously provocative in challenging the prevalent con-
cept of divination in Greek culture. By limiting the validity of divination to
the small group of female prophets who underwent mediumistic/spirit
possession, he thereby undermined the self-representation and claim to
authority of those seers who did not enter into ecstatic states of altered
consciousness.42
In Phaedrus 244, Plato derives the word mantis from mania ‘madness,
frenzy’, and this etymology is accepted by most modern scholars.43 Aside
from linguistic difficulties posed by this etymology, there is no linguistic
evidence for the association of manteis and frenzy in Archaic literary
sources.44 Based on the analysis of Homeric usage, Michel Casevitz has
40
Cf. Gildersleeve (1885: 197). Amphiareus also sees “clearly” (saphes) at P. 8.45.
41
As noted by Flower (2008: 91), intuitive prophetic insight was regarded by the Greeks as capable of
being transmitted by divine delegation or through parentage, from one seer to another. Both
principles are present in Iamos in O. 6, the quintessential mythical seer in Pindar. Cf.: “Apollo,
through his gift of seercraft, enables the mortal to share, albeit on a smaller scale and to a lesser
degree, in the type of knowledge that the gods themselves possess” (Flower 2008: 91).
42
Flower (2008: 85). Cf. Casevitz (1992: 12–14).
43
DELG 641, with Papanastassiou (1994: 2.25) and Frisk (1960: 2.173); Roth (1982: 9–18); Dillery
(2005: 169); cf. Nagy (1990a: 60). Flower defines mantis as “one who is in a special mental state”
(2008: 23). Rohde (1972 [1893]: 311, n. 41) and Wilamowitz (1931–2: 1.40, n. 2) discern the
implausibility of this etymological linkage. Beekes (2010: 903), closely following DELG, accepts
the traditional explanation, but notes that it is “a bit doubtful” as it leaves the vocalism unexplained.
44
On linguistic complications of the traditional etymology, see Casevitz (1992: 14–15), who also shows
that Hdt. 4.79, cited by Frisk (1960: 2.173), DELG 641, and Beekes (2010: 903), has in fact nothing
to do with mantikê.
argued that a mantis is the one who reveals or decodes, rather than one
gripped by frenzy, and proposed to derive the word from the verb μηνύω
(Dor. μάνυω) ‘to announce, reveal’. In his general survey of mantikê
from the Archaic to the Classical period, Jan Bremmer accepts Casevitz’s
etymology.45 Casevitz’s argument also fits the Pindaric evidence well.
Tellingly, despite the general penchant of choral lyric for etymological
puns, Pindar never associates mantic utterances – the proper sphere of
Apollo – with mania/mainomai words, which are reserved for the realm
of Aphrodite and Dionysus.46 Even female speakers – Medeia in Pythian
4, Themis in Isthmian 8, and the Pythia elsewhere – are not “possessed,”
and their speech is not specially marked as opaque or frenzied; indeed,
compared to Kassandra’s in Agamemnon, it is crystal clear.
What then is the nature of mantic authority in Pindaric epinikion, if it
stems neither from technical expertise nor from possession by a god? It
appears that the Pindaric mythical manteis derive their capacity from the
very world they inhabit, from their proximity to the heroes and the gods.
Thus, Teiresias is Amphitrion’s “neighbor” (N. 1.60), Heracles is himself
able to perform as a mantis, and even Apollo shows off his mantic skills at
interpreting an especially obscure teras. Polyidos, the Corinthian seer
advising Bellerophontas in his negotiations with Athena, also has mythic
credentials: his son, Eukhenor, is reported to have perished at Troy. No
wonder that Pindar’s favorite mantic figure is Amphiareus, both a hero and
a seer from the clan of Melampodidai, who in Pythian 8 even utters a
posthumous prophecy.47 There is also a Pindaric word, which, similarly to
the character of Amphiareus, partakes both of heroic might and of mantic
quality: ζαμενής ‘having a lot of strength’, used both of heroes and of those
‘inspired, esp. of those with prophetic gifts’, such as Medea and Chiron.48
An excess of menos, commonly observed in the heroic age, brings along
with it a mantic ability.
45
Bremmer (1996: 98). An etymological link to μανύω was already put forward by Rohde (1972 [1893]:
311, n. 41).
46
It is possible that the verb μανύω is associated with the mantic utterance in O. 6.52. Not
unexpectedly, Euripides plays on the words mania and mantikê in Bacchae 298–9, where
Dionysus’s supernatural abilities are in question. This passage cannot be used as evidence on the
actual etymology of mantis (pace Roth 1982: 10).
47
P. 8.44–55. Amphiareus’s prophecy may be considered to be an example of opaque prophesy, but it
is due to the speaker’s “riddling” (αἰνίξατο) rather than to his being in a trance. Amphiareus is “good
both as a seer and as a fighter with his spear” (ἀμφότερον μάντιν τ’ ἀγαθὸν καὶ δουρὶ μάρνασθαι
O. 6.17). Note a similar pairing in fr. 231 τόλμα τέ μιν ζαμενὴς καὶ σύνεσις πρόσκοπος ἐσάωσεν,
which includes the characteristic use of ζαμενής.
48
Slater 218; Medea in P. 4.10, Chiron in P. 9.38.
Pindaric mantikê is thus rooted in the heroic age and resolutely removed
from the contemporary world. A similar strategy seems to be at work in the
notoriously obscure passage at P. 8.55–60, where the speaker professes to
have encountered Amphiareus’s son, Alkmaion, the speaker’s “neighbor
and a guardian of his possessions” (cf. N. 1.60), as he was on his way to
Delphi. Ostensibly, the passage implies that a consultation, most probably
involving manteis, at a certain unattested shrine of Alkmaion took place.49
If we adopt the latter interpretation, this is the only description, however
elliptical, of a mantic consultation occurring in the historical world; yet,
characteristically for Pindar’s approach to mantikê, the authority of the
prophesy received (left unspecified) is grounded in the grand receding
background of myth as the shrine is referred to as “Alkmaion” in person,
and as we watch Alkmaion through the eyes of his father Amphaireus
prophesying from the grave.
In Pindar, manteis derive their knowledge from being, as it were, partly
divine themselves: they are usually separated from the gods only by a few
generations. A similar pattern can be discerned in Olympian 6. Iamos is
born of Apollo, as the latter declares through the Delphic oracle (lines
49–51), and he communicates with Apollo directly in the fashion of a hero
(lines 62–3). The treasure of mantosunê bestowed on Iamus accordingly
permits him “to hear a voice that knows no lies”; it is a gift of intuitive
divination. Whatever mantic authority the Iamids (including Hagesias,
the addressee of the poem) can claim for themselves, it is predicated on
that original divine gift and the genealogical link to Apollo. Pindar is
careful enough not to say that contemporary Iamids still have the capacity
of intuitive divination. Yet the principle of anchoring mantic authority in
myth and sacred institutions is shared by Pindar and the mantic clans such
as the Iamids. The same principles inform Pindar’s representation of Pytho
and the Delphic oracle, which I discuss in the next section.
In spite of a widespread view that the Pindaric persona is in some sense
“prophetic,”50 there is not a single passage in the whole corpus of Pindaric
epinikia where the speaker compares himself to a seer (mantis) or a prophet
49
For a summary of earlier scholarship, which is divided on whether the speaker is the poet or the
victor, see Burnett (2005: 231, n. 22). In favor of the victor as a speaker, see also Currie (2013: 260–3).
An often-overlooked interpretation is that of Stoddart (1980: 40–1), who reads the passage as a
figurative description of the speaker’s arrival at a particular theme, in which case it cannot be taken
as a reference to contemporary mantikê. Carne-Ross is close to Stoddart’s position in suggesting that
the scene of the journey is a “rhetorical or symbolical” representation of “the transition back to the
victor” (1985: 180).
50
E.g., Wilamowitz (1931–32: 2.127) (Pindar as “der Prophet des Pythiers”); Duchemin (1955);
Athanassaki (1990).
at a shrine. While most references to mantikê occur in the mythic narra-
tives, there are three passages in Pindar’s fragments where the speaker
places himself (and, at least in one case, herself ) in direct relation to the
mantic discourse.
One is the widely cited fragment 150, where the speaker calls on the Muse:
μαντεύεο, Μοῖσα, προφατεύσω δ’ ἐγώ (fr. 150)
Muse, be a seer, and I will be a prophatas (‘prophet/promulgator’).
The procedure of delegated discourse implied in this line is clearly
evocative of the kind of oracular consultation in place at Delphi, which
involved the distinct functions of mantis and prophatas: the Pythia
serves as a conduit of the divine voice, whereas oracle officials (the
“promulgators”) announce to the inquirer the response, packaged into
dactylic hexameters. Yet the question of the identity of the speaker in
fr. 150, or of the implied religious expertise, remains open, as we lack
context, and parallels, for this fragment. The passage may belong to
Pindar’s cult-related poetry, in which case the speaker is most likely to
be the chorus. There is also an intriguing possibility that the fragment
comes from the lost sections of I. 9.51
As discussed in Chapter 1, Section 6, the emergent author-function in
Pindar is heavily buttressed by tropes of self-generated or divinely-sanctioned
discourse, most importantly by diegetic frames involving the Muse(s). In
this light, fr. 150 can be read as an instance of this rhetoric of delegation. In
any case, it does not claim mantic authority for the poet. I return to fr. 150
after considering the two other passages in Pindar, both from cult poetry, in
which the speaker is compared to a mantis. In a partheneion (a cult song for
a maiden chorus), the speaker announces that she will act as a “mantis who
attends the temple” (μάντις ὡς τελέσσω ἱεραπόλος fr. 94a.5–6). The
papyrus, our only testimony to this poem, is lacunose, so we lack context
for understanding the act or the intention of the speaker. What is certainly
present, however, is an overt comparison of a choral subject to a shrine
functionary, who acts in accord with a prescribed ritual or duty.
Another instance of direct transposition of the authority of a mantis
through the figure of simile occurs in the most Dionysiacal of Pindaric
51
We believe that we have an almost complete collection of Pindar’s epinikia, and the ascription of the
poem to the solo encomia, which in general shun grand rhetoric, seems unlikely. Snell-Maehler’s
hypothetical assignment of fr. 150 to I. 9. is based on metrical considerations (which are not
particularly compelling), as well as the fact that it is quoted by Eustathius of Thessalonike, who
had access to the complete book of the Isthmians.
dithyrambs, fragment 75. We owe the preservation of this extensive
fragment to its citation as an example of “severe style” (austêra harmonia)
by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (De compositione verborum 22).
Δεῦτ’ ἐν χορόν, Ὀλύμπιοι,
ἐπί τε κλυτὰν πέμπετε χάριν, θεοί,
πολύβατον οἵ τ’ ἄστεος ὀμφαλὸν θυόεντ’ ἐν ταῖς ἱεραῖς ᾿Αθάναις
οἰχνεῖτε πανδαίδαλόν τ’ εὐκλέ’ ἀγοράν·
ἰοδέτων λάχετε στεφάνων τᾶν τ’ ἐαριδρόπων ἀοιδᾶν,
Διόθεν τέ με σὺν ἀγλαΐᾳ
ἴδετε πορευθέντ’ ἀοιδᾶν δεύτερον
ἐπὶ τὸν κισσοδαῆ θεόν,
τὸν βρόμιον, τὸν Ἐριβόαν τε βροτοὶ καλέομεν,
γόνον ὑπάτων μὲν πατέρων μελπόμεν<οι>
γυναικῶν τε Καδμεϊᾶν {Σεμέλην}.
ἐναργέα τ’ ἔμ’ ὥτε μάντιν οὐ λανθάνει
φοινικοεάνων ὁπότ’ οἰχθέντος Ὡρᾶν θαλάμου
εὔοδμον ἐπάγοισι ἔαρ φυτὰ νεκτάρεα.
τότε βάλλεται, τότ’ ἐπ’ ἀμβρόταν χθόν’ ἐραταί
ἴων φόβαι, ῥόδα τε κόμαισι μείγνυται,
ἀχεῖ τ’ ὀμφαὶ μελέων σὺν αὐλοῖς,
οἰχνεῖ τε Σεμέλαν ἑλικάμπυκα χοροί. (fr. 75)
Come hither to the chorus, Olympians, and send upon [it] your glorious favor,
gods, who approach the much-frequented incense-smoking navel of the city in
holy Athens and its resplendent and famous agora. Receive as your allotment
violet-bound crowns and songs that are plucked in spring, and see me being sped
together with the festivity of songs from Zeus to the next one, the ivy-knowing
god, whom we mortals address as Bromios or the Loud-Shouting one, celebrating
with song and dance the offspring of the most lofty fathers and Kadmeian women.
And clear [signs] do not escape me [who am] like a mantis whenever, the chamber
of the crimson-robed Horai having been opened, nectar-bearing plants bring
sweet-smelling spring. Then upon the immortal earth, then are hurled lovely
leaves of violets, and roses are mixed into the hair, the sounds of songs echo with
the reed-pipes, and the choruses approach Semele, wreathed with a circlet.
This poem is highly atypical in the extant Pindaric corpus in its direct
evocation of communal festivity, in which the natural world merges with
the social world, and the divine realm is perfectly synchronized with the
actions of human worshippers. In lines 16–7, the foliage and the hair of
the celebrants literally become one thing: the nouns phobê and komê are
regularly used of both, in poetic discourse in particular.52 Note also the use
52
φόβη: (hair) Aesch. Ch. 188, Soph. El. 449; (foliage) Soph. Ant. 419, Eur. Alc. 172, Bacch. 684,
fr. 540.5 Kannicht. κόμη : (hair) Il. 22.406, Od. 6.231, Eur. Bacch. 695; (foliage) Od. 23.195,
of the same verb oikhneô ‘to approach’ in relation to the gods and the
choruses in lines 4 and 18. Beyond semantics, the collapsing of the consti-
tutive boundaries of everyday experience finds its expression at the level of
form. Unusually for Pindar, the meter is so irregular as to defy schematiza-
tion. Furthermore, the imitation of the frenzied drive of the procession
results in a breakdown of the syntactic order: the last line is an instance of
the so-called schema Pindaricum which is known to be associated “with the
dithyramb and its Dionysiac qualities.”53
Even though stylistic exuberance might be seen as typical of Pindar’s
torrential genius,54 a passage of such intensity finds no parallel in Pindar’s
epinikia. Here we catch a rare glimpse of Pindar as a master of cult song
that is archaic and, very likely, self-consciously archaizing.55 Curiously, the
comparison with a mantis in line 13 apparently fell prey to the (carefully
scripted) verbal chaos; as it is preserved in the manuscript tradition of
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the line is nonsensical and has prompted at
least ten emendations. In 1932, Farnell concluded that it was “the most
corrupt phrase in the fragment, of which no restoration is likely to be
satisfying.”56 Defying this pessimistic prediction, in 1955, B. A. van Gron-
ingen advanced a reading that has since been accepted: ἐναργέα τ’ ἔμ’ ὥτε
μάντιν οὐ λανθάνει “and clear [signs?] do not escape me as a seer.”57 While
the emendation itself, if not entirely secure, seems compelling, I would
disagree with van Groningen’s interpretation of the resulting text,
according to which it promotes a vatic idea of the poet.58 The comparison
with a mantis stands out not only for its directness, but also for the
surprising humbleness of its implications: the speaker’s divinatory intu-
ition is limited to the perception of the arrival of spring. This is not a grand
claim of a “gottbegnadete Dichter.”59 Rather, it is a testimony to an ethos
of religious celebration dominated by a communal subjectivity. The
Cratin. 296, Babr. 88.3. For a reconstruction of how ritual action in fr. 75 is mapped on the
Athenian urban space, see Neer and Kurke (2014).
53
Silk (1998: 32), citing Pind. frr. 70b.12–13, 78.2–3, and Eur. Hipp. 1255. In a schema Pindaricum, the
subject is a non-neuter noun in the plural, but the verb is in the singular; in fact, as Silk
demonstrates, this rubric subsumes a variety of different constructions (32–3). On the effect of
this usage in fr. 75 cf. Neer and Kurke (2014: 577).
54
Both by Dionysius and by Horace in Odes 4.2. On the reception of Pindar in the German Sturm-
und-Drang period, see Schmidt (1984); Maslov (2012c).
55
A demonstrably archaic syntactic feature is the use of en with the accusative, placed emphatically in
the first line (Nikitina and Maslov 2013: 135).
56 57
Farnell (1932: 417). Groningen (1955: 192).
58
Groningen: “manifesta insignia veris appropinquantis me poetam eundem vatem minime fallunt”
(1955: 192).
59
Dornseiff (1921: 1).
speaker’s figurative participation in mantikê is based on the assumption
that mantikê itself is a form of intuition into the natural world. Spring-time
makes each and every one mantis-like, but only in the very restricted sense
of a visceral anticipation of spring. No claim of special expertise is
detectable here.
We are now in a position to return to fragment 150, where the speaker
describes him or herself as a “promulgator” of the Muse’s mantic utter-
ance. I propose to read this line not as the poet’s self-aggrandizing claim,
but either as a humble assertion of a chorus member or as a subtle use of
the rhetoric of delegation by an emergent literary author. In both cases,
the speaker posits the Muse as the origin of discourse, and limits his or her
role to that of a mere enunciator. The description can be paralleled by the
opening of Nemean 3, in which the speaker begs the Muse to arrive at
the island of Aegina, where “by the water of Asopos young men, builders
of sweet-speaking choral revelries await [you], desiring your voice” (ὕδατι
γάρ / μένοντ’ ἐπ’ Ἀσωπίῳ μελιγαρύων τέκτονες / κώμων νεανίαι, σέθεν
ὄπα μαιόμενοι 5). In N. 3, the choreuts desire a voice “from the Muse.” In
much the same way, in fr. 151, “the announcer” speaks with a voice coming
from the seer, the Muse.
As has long been recognized, prophatas need not be a technical term in
the Archaic period.60 In N. 9.50, a crater filled with wine is termed
“a sweet announcer of the revelry.” In Bacchylides’ Ode 10.28, the spokes-
men announcing the victorious athlete at the Isthmian Games are
described as prophatai. There are, however, two passages that closely
parallel fragment 150, in that the poetic speaker is described as a prophatas
of the Muses. One occurs in an epinikion by Bacchylides (Ep. 9.3: Μουσᾶν
γε ἰοβλεφάρων θεῖος προφ[άτ]ας “a divine spokesman of the violet-eyed
Muses”), the other in Pindar’s Paian 6.1–6 (ἐν ζαθέῳ με δέξαι χρόνῳ
ἀοίδιμον Πιερίδων προφάταν “accept me, a singing spokesman of the
Pierian [Muses], in a holy time”). In both cases the reference is ambiguous
between the individual and the communal voice.
A prophatas, in Archaic Greece, is never a prophet in the abstract – a
figure of religious authority who has access to divine knowledge, compar-
able to a mantis. Instead, the word is invariably accompanied by a genitive
that clarifies the source of the discourse being “promulgated.” Even when
prophatas is used next to mantis to refer to the mythical figures Teiresias
(N. 1.60) and Teneros (Pai. 9.42), it always comes with a qualifying
genitive: Teiresias is a prophatas of Zeus, whereas Teneros is a prophatas
60
Fascher (1927, esp. 11–13) on Pindar.
Divine epidêmia as a model for poetic presence 201
of divine ordinances (themites). The most a poetic speaker claims is that she
or he is a prophatas of the Muses. This is not a case of appropriation of
religious authority, but an improvised metapoetic term that marks the
professionalization of poetic discourse. Poetry is being recognized, for the
first time, as a kind of discourse that is distinct from other uses of language.
A distinct ontology, for the Greeks, implies a special kind of origin in the
divine realm. Without a doubt, poets operate in the realm of mousikê
‘song-and-dance’, which is overseen by the eponymous deities, the Muses,
but their role is more specific. They are specialists in the verbal aspect of
mousikê. To express this particular concept, Greek choral poets utilized the
notion of prophatas, one who speaks on behalf of others. To be a poet is to
be a spokesman of the Muses, Μουσᾶν προφάτας, in the same way as
Teiresias is a spokesman of Zeus, or the Delphic priests are the spokesmen
of the Pythia.
3 Divine epidêmia as a model for poetic presence

The evidence of Pindar’s texts refutes a direct association between mantic
and poetic authority. Pindar abstains from comparing the individual poet
with a seer and seemingly makes an effort to disassociate the mantikê of the
heroic age from contemporary divinatory practices. On the other hand,
Pindaric authority in the epinikia thrives on the evocation of mythical acts
of divination. Admittedly, what is at issue is access to the mythical past,
not an ability to make predictions about the future. Yet the distance
bridged by poetic discourse is emphasized by the effectiveness of human-
divine interaction, vividly reenacted for Pindar’s audience at moments of
divination. In this section, I discuss another strategy that allows Pindar to
tap into mantic authority without claiming mantic ability or status. As
with heroic teratoscopy, this strategy involves poetic appropriation of a
mode of divine presence that is perceived as enabling mantic communi-
cation: periodic visitations of the Pythian Apollo to his Delphic shrine. As
this is a phenomenon of cult, as well as of myth, the assessment of its uses
in Pindar demands some background discussion.
In accord with the general pattern observed in the previous section,
Pindar grounds the authority of the Delphic oracle in the sacrality of the
locale whose history reaches back to the heroic age and a divine founda-
tion. Particularly in the paians composed for the Delphians, Pytho is
valorized as an island of the mythical world. In Paian 8, the narrative of
the four consecutive Delphic temples brings the audience back to the
original structure of wax and feathers, which was whiffed away by the
wind to the land of the Hyperboreans, followed by the spectacular temple
built of bronze by Athena and Hephaistos and featuring magical singers,
Kêlêdones, on its roof. If there is a locale in the historical world where the
divine is palpably present, Pindar suggests, it is Delphi. To the same effect,
Pindar insists on a genealogical link of the Delphians with Apollo (fr. 192),
and even appears to describe the whole population of Delphi as Apolline
manteis.61 This surprising notion is, in fact, in keeping with Pindar’s
tendency, evident from fr. 94a.5–6 and fr. 75.14, to reserve explicit com-
parison with manteis for collectives engaged in ritual action, rather than for
the individual poetic speaker.
A more nuanced strategy for forging poetic authority through evocation
of a mantic practice is employed in two epinikia, Pythian 4 and Pythian 10,
which make reference to the pattern of the god’s intermittent presence
(epidêmia) and absence (apodêmia) from his cult center. The notion of
divine presence, seen as a precondition for both ritual and poetic activity,
implies a subtle link between poetic discourse and divine utterance.
Ostensibly, the language of epidêmia evokes the present of the ritual, not
the past of the myth. On closer inspection, however, the ritual itself is
revealed as a half-mythic phenomenon. Accordingly, the transposition of
divine presence onto poetic “presence” in Pindar depends on a carefully
orchestrated conflation of a ritual-mythical and a poetic space-and-time.
Authority is being conjured through the use of a culturally potent
chronotope.
The earliest piece of evidence for Apollo’s epidêmia at Delphi is
Alcaeus’s paian recounting an aition of its genre.62 The text casts all poetic
activity at Delphi as a reenactment of the festivity that accompanied
Apollo’s original arrival from the Hyperboreans, where he was thought
to reside during the winter months. The text survives only in a free prose
rendition by Himerius, a fourth-century rhetorician famous for his florid
“Asianic” style:
ἦν μὲν οὖν θέρος καὶ τοῦ θέρους τὸ μέσον αὐτό, ὅτε ἐξ ῾Υπερβορέων
᾿Αλκαῖος ἄγει τὸν ᾿Απόλλωνα· ὅθεν δὴ θέρους ἐκλάμποντος καὶ ἐπιδημοῦν-
τος ᾿Απόλλωνος θερινόν τι καὶ ἡ λύρα περὶ τὸν θεὸν ἁβρύνεται. ᾄδουσι μὲν
ἀηδόνες αὐτῷ ὁποῖον εἰκὸς ᾆσαι παρ᾿ ᾿Αλκαίῳ τὰς ὄρνιθας· ᾄδουσι δὲ καὶ
χελιδόνες καὶ τέττιγες, οὐ τὴν ἑαυτῶν τύχην τὴν ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἀγγέλου-
σαι, ἀλλὰ πάντα τὰ μέλη κατὰ θεοῦ φθεγγόμεναι· ῥεῖ καὶ ἀργυροῖς ἡ
61
I make a case for this construal of the phrase κλυτοὶ μάντιες (Pai. 8.1) and the epithet κλυτόμαντι
(Pai. 6.2) in Maslov (2006).
62
Alc. fr.307c. I cite the text of Himerius (Or. 48.11) from Colonna (1951: 200–1).
Κασταλία κατὰ ποίησιν νάμασι, καὶ Κηφισὸς μέγας αἴρεται πορφύρων τοῖς
κύμασι, τὸν ᾿Ενιπέα τοῦ ῾Ομήρου μιμούμενος. βιάζεται μὲν γὰρ ᾿Αλκαῖος
ὁμοίως ῾Ομήρῳ ποιῆσαι καὶ ὕδωρ θεῶν ἐπιδημίαν αἰσθέσθαι δυνάμενον.
It was summer then, indeed the very midsummer, when Alcaeus is bringing
Apollo from the Hyperboreans: and since the summer is shining bright and
Apollo is present (ἐπιδημοῦντος), the lyre also grows wanton in the
summer-time fashion in the proximity of the god. Nightingales sing to
him in such a way as birds are likely to sing in Alcaeus; swallows and cicadas
sing too, not proclaiming their own fortune among men but uttering all the
songs down upon the god. And Castalia flows with silvery streams,
according to poetic custom, and Cephisus rises high, swelling with its waves
in imitation of Homer’s Enipeus. For Alcaeus, following Homer, tries hard
to make even water capable of perceiving divine epidêmia.
Nature’s ability to perceive divine presence (θεῶν ἐπιδημίαν αἰσθέσθαι) in
Alcaeus, as recounted by Himerius, is an example of what might be called
the sponte sua imagery, usually associated in classical sources with the
mythical Golden age.63 The presence of the god creates an aura that
transforms and often animates the surrounding space. In fr. 104b, attrib-
uted to Pindar, the presence of Apollo Galaxios, a Boeotian divinity, makes
milk so abundant that no vessels can hold it.64
I propose to distinguish epidêmia from epiphany, at least on two
counts.65 First, epiphany designates visual, often momentary, appearance
of a deity to an individual or a group, who, in Archaic sources, tend to
react with apprehension; by contrast, epidêmia refers to a god’s lengthy
stay, often tacit but always socially significant and beneficent. It does not
63
For the “sponte sua” topos, see Hesiod, WD 117, Ovid Metam. 90, Verg. Ecl. 4.45, Lucr. 2.1158. For
the silvery streams of Kastalia, cf. Eur. Ion 95 etc. For the cicadas, cf. in the first place a close parallel
to the description of midsummer in Alcaeus fr. 347, cited by Proclus with reference to Hesiod WD
582–8. Richard Martin (1992: 22–3) argues that the latter analogy is generic: both poems draw on the
folk tradition of “calendar-songs” (equivalent to Russian koliadki). As Denys Page notes, “the only
mention of Enipeus in the Epic (Od. λ 238) does not readily lend itself to such a comparison” (1955:
245, n. 1).
64
The image is clearly related to the widespread “milk and honey” motif (Eur. Bacch. 142; Plato, Ion
534a; for a fuller list, see Derrett 1984: 180–1), on which see Usener (1902). Himerios, exhibiting a
consistent interest in the imagery of divine presence, echoes this notion in an elaborate passage
modeled (most likely) on Plato’s Ion 534a: the soil produces milk and honey, rivers flow with nectar,
flowers bloom etc. (Or. 46. 6 [Colonna 1951: 187]). Given the strong association of this cluster of
images with Dionysus, some scholars have argued that it is Dionysus, rather than Apollo, that is
meant in fr. 104b (cf. Francis 1972: 34, n. 4). The attribution of fr. 104b to Pindar is disputed
(Francis 1972: 41).
65
The principal meaning of the corresponding verb is “being at one’s home or among one’s people”
(LSJ). The occurrences of this cluster of words from Homer to Demosthenes are briefly considered
in Williams (1978: 25). Discussions of this institution are scarce (cf. Meiser 1904: 28–31, Gärtringen
in RE 11.57).
bring with it the trauma of being confronted with the larger-than-life
physical presence of a divinity (as in the Homeric Hymns to Aphrodite
and Apollo) or the suspicion that the god may be active in disguise (as in
the Homeric Hymns to Dionysus and Demeter). Second, epiphany
belongs to the level of myth, and is subject to narration but not immediate
perception, whereas epidêmia is an attribute of cultic practice and, first of
all, a ritual experience. In metapoetics, the two kinds of divine presence
also receive different treatment. While epiphany is part of the scenes of
poetic initiation (Dichterweihe), epidêmia lies at the origin of the topos
of an inspiring visitation that enables poetic composition.66
What is particularly significant for the problem of the constitution
of poetic authority in Archaic Greece is the way in which Alcaeus (as
mediated by Himerius) relates divine presence and poetic production. The
excitement of the birds’ song, by the force of aetiology, inspires all later
human paians. Further evidence for the mapping of poetic and divine
presence comes from Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae. The relevant pas-
sage occurs in the prologue when Euripides and Mnesilochus witness a
slave of Agathon “about to make an offering for [success in] poetic
composition” (προθυσόμενος τῆς ποιήσεως 38). The slave’s speech starts
with a favete linguis announcement:
εὔφημος πᾶς ἔστω λαός,
στόμα συγκλῄσας· ἐπιδημεῖ γὰρ
θίασος Μουσῶν ἔνδον μελάθρων
τῶν δεσποσύνων μελοποιῶν (39–42)
May everyone maintain ritual silence, closing their mouth: for the band of the
Muses is present (ἐπιδημεῖ) in the house of the master, engaged in the crafting of
songs.
The passage testifies both to the solemnly religious connotations of ἐπι-
δημεῖ ‘is present’ and to the particular beneficent effect of the Muses’
quasi-cultic presence. Perhaps due to the association between Apollo and
the Muses, the matrix of cult presence is here appropriated for a different
kind of activity: not communal ritual action, but solitary poetic
composition.
66
On Dichterweihe, see Chapter 1, n. 54. This section can only offer preliminary observations on
the way in which Greek epidêmia evolved into the notion of poetic inspiration as divine visitation.
The history of this topos in later Western literatures encompasses such notions as the Muse’s
intimate stay with the lucubrating Romantic poet and the homecoming of the monarch as a form of
epidêmia that enables odic writing.
The later reception of this topos was wide-ranging.67 Among the
Hellenistic poets, Callimachus was particularly fond of using the words
from the ἐπιδημ-cluster to refer to a god’s cult presence.68 The Hymn to
Apollo begins as a transcription of an actual experience of the cletic rite at
Apollo’s Delphic temple, thus merging epiphany and epidêmia. The
opening abounds in deictic forms and verbs of visual perception (οὐχ
ὁράᾳς; 4; φαείνεται 9; ἴδῃ 10; ὀψόμεθ᾿ 11). Callimachus also links the festive
happening to a choral performance (οἱ δὲ νέοι μολπήν τε καὶ ἐς χορὸν
ἐντύνασθε 8):
μήτε σιωπηλὴν κίθαριν μήτ᾿ ἄψοφον ἴχνος
τοῦ Φοίβου τοὺς παῖδας ἔχειν ἐπιδημήσαντος.69
And may neither the lyre in the hands of the youth be silent
nor their footstep be noiseless, now that Phoebus is present (epidêmêsas).
The aorist aspect of the participle suggests that, at this point in the
narrative, Apollo’s presence has already been achieved. Similarly to Aris-
tophanes (and very likely Alcaeus), Callimachus conceives of poetry as an
attribute of epidêmia. In giving a fictional, expansive account of ritual
presence, however, Callimachus is closer to the archaizing tendency of
Himerius.
Callimachus’s imaginative approach to Apolline poetics is a reminder
that the precise functions of this institution in Delphic ritual practice are
difficult to recover. None of the many sources that refer to Apollo’s
migration in connection to his Delphic cult provides enough support to
maintain that epidêmia had any relevance to the operation of the oracle. In
fact, Lewis Farnell denies that Apollo’s commuting to and from the
Hyperboreans influenced the practice of divination at Delphi in the
Archaic period.70 Admittedly, Plutarch speaks of a correlation between
Apollo’s presence and Delphic oracular consultations, at least in some
initial period of Delphic history.71 It is also possible that the springtime
67
For a notion of a divinity resident (incola) in his temple cf. Hor. Odes 1.16.5–6, Grattius Faliscus
437. The later history of this notion involves political, religious, and poetic conceptualizations of
imperial adventus and Christian parousia.
68
The stem appears in the Aetia (3.1.26), in the Hymn to Artemis (226), and in the Hymn to Apollo.
69
Ll. 11–12. Callimachus’s text follows Pfeiffer (1953).
70
“The limitation of seasons when the deity was willing to give counsel had obviously nothing to do
with his ἀποδημίαι and ἐπιδημίαι, his periodical departures from Delphi and his return: we must
merely understand that on certain days he was especially favorable, and his most sacred day at
Delphi as elsewhere was the seventh, which we may suppose to have been the day of the monthly
divination.” (Farnell 1907: 186). Contrast: “Denn wenn der Gott in der Fremde weilt, vermag
Pythia nicht zu weissagen” (Schmidt 1908: 90).
71
Plut. Aetia Romana et Graeca 292e-f.
Delphic celebration of the birthday of Apollo is the θεοφάνια mentioned
by Herodotus (1.51), and that it was correlated with the opening of the
Oracle.72 This festivity was soon followed by the θεοξένια, which is known
to have featured paian performances.73 By the late Archaic period, how-
ever, oracular consultation certainly took place more often than once a
year, and there is no direct evidence that it was restricted during the winter
months.74
Given the evidence we possess, it is likely that the mythology of Apollo’s
migration had no influence on Delphic ritual practice in Pindar’s time, even
though in popular consciousness this mythology retained an association with
the relative authenticity of prophetic utterance.75 In other words, Apollo’s
migration was possibly a ritual anachronism already in the late Archaic
period, a myth of ritual presence open to literary use. Pindar’s Pythian
4 and Pythian 10 present two cases of such an appropriation.
In Pythian 4, the entire long myth of the poem is defined by the
economy of Apollo’s presence: it was Apollo who granted Arkesilas the
Pythian victory (66), and it was his prophetic utterance that first bestowed
the kingship of Cyrene on Polymnestus (60), the progenitor of Battus, and
then demanded that Battus found a colony in Libya (6).76 In addition,
the appearance of Jason at Iolcus is staged as Apollo’s epiphany; this is the
first guess of the amazed inhabitants of the city (87). It is, furthermore,
the Delphic oracle that forces Pelias to yield the throne to the newly
arrived inheritor (163). The three interventions by the Delphic oracle are
made possible by the Pythia, spontaneously pouring forth Apollo’s voice
72
Schmidt (1908: 86–7). This was first argued by Mommsen (1878: 282) who would also contend that
it was easier to obtain an oracular response on Apollo’s birthday (288); this suggestion is reasserted
by Gärtringen in RE 11.56 and Meiser (1904: 31).
73
Farnell (1907: 292); Rutherford (2001: 28). Dithyrambs were performed during the winter months,
as Dionysus was thought to replace Apollo at Delphi during that time.
74
Our knowledge is scarcer on the Delian practices surrounding Apollo’s residence. According to
Menander Rhetor (336 Spengel), the genre of apopemptic hymns – the opposite of cletic (τοῖς
κλητικοῖς ὑπεναντίοι), as he terms it – was practiced on the occasion of Apollo’s departure from
Delos (Russell and Wilson 1981: 12) and such songs included “a prayer for return and a second visit”
(13). According to Herodotus, Apollo’s residence at his shrine in Patara in Lycia was conceived of as
the god’s cohabitation with a female seer (promantis) who was locked in the temple together with
the god during nights, a practice Herodotus compares with those in the main temple at Babylon
and in Egyptian Thebes (1.181–2).
75
The scholiast on Callimachus (Pfeiffer 1953: 49) describes the association of Apollo’s epidêmia with
correctness of prophecies as a “superstition” (θειασμός). The letters of Procopius of Gaza attest to the
fact that the Delphians’ excitement regarding Apollo’s arrival from the Hyperboreans eventually
became a locus communis (Ep. 16.3, 65.9 Garzya-Loenertz).
76
See Athanassaki (2009) for a survey of Pindar’s uses of Apollo and the Delphic oracle in epinikia
(436–9 on P. 4).
(αὐτομάτῳ κελάδῳ “in automatic utterance”).77 As the opening strophe of
the poem makes clear, the Pythia’s “automatism” is due to the enabling
presence of the god:
Σάμερον μὲν χρή σε παρ᾿ ἀνδρὶ φίλῳ
στᾶμεν, εὐίππου βασιλῆι Κυράνας, ὄφρα κωμάζοντι σὺν ᾿Αρκεσίλᾳ,
Μοῖσα, Λατοίδαισιν ὀφειλόμενον Πυθῶνί τ᾿ αὔξῃς οὖρον ὕμνων,
ἔνθα ποτὲ χρυσέων Διὸς αἰετῶν πάρεδρος
οὐκ ἀποδάμου ᾿Απόλλωνος τυχόντος ἱέρεα
χρῆσεν οἰκιστῆρα Βάττον καρποφόρου Λιβύας, ἱεράν
νᾶσον ὡς ἤδη λιπὼν κτίσσειεν εὐάρματον
πόλιν ἐν ἀργεννόεντι μαστῷ (P. 4.1–8)
Today, Muse, you must stand by the dear man, the king of Cyrene that is famed
for horses, so that together with Arkesilas, celebrating his victory revel, you may
strengthen the favoring breeze of songs due to the children of Leto and to Pytho,
where once, when Apollo was not out of town (apodamos), the priestess, an
associate of the golden eagles of Zeus, prophesied Battus to be the founder of
fruit-bearing Libya, in order that he, having left behind the holy island, might
build the city of fine chariots on a white hill.
The occasion of the poem, Arkesilas’s victory, is apparently subordinated
to the quasi-paianic task of praising the children of Leto and Pytho. This
gesture of deference, in fact, conceals the displacement of Apollo’s author-
ity onto poetic discourse. First, an unmistakable analogy is established
between Apollo, whose presence is linked to oracular utterance, and the
Muse whose attendance (παρ᾿ ἀνδρὶ φίλῳ στᾶμεν) is required for epinician
performance. In O. 3.4, Pindar applies the same phrasing, used in Homer
of divinities “standing by” and helping the heroes, to the Muse’s aid
in poetic composition.78 In contrast to Apollo who happens to be there
(τυχόντος 5), the Muse’s participation is a duty imposed on her by the
speaker. The authority of the poet who bids the Muse to be present is
assimilated to that of the ritual occasion itself. In a way, the parallelism of
Apollo and the Muse as subjects of ritual speech partially incapacitates – in
the interest of Pindar’s commanding presence – Apollo in his role as a
Mousagetas. It is not Apollo who is the leader of the Muses, but the
Pindaric speaker.79
77
The Greek τὸ αὐτόματον is equivalent to the Latin sponte sua; see n. 63.
78
Il. 10.279, 10.290, 21.231, 23.783, Od. 13.301.
79
In O. 9.5, Pindar applies to the Muses Apollo’s characteristic epithet “far-shooting” (ἑκαταβόλων
Μοισᾶν). On Pindar’s own identification with Apollo through bow imagery, see Duchemin
(1955: 25).
On the level of narrative, the Pythia’s utterance mirrors an antecedent
prophecy, as it calls on Battos to fulfill the epos given by Medea seventeen
generations earlier. Medea’s direct speech, in fact, comprises the bulk of
the first part of the ode (13–56). The Pythia’s discourse, enabled by the
god’s presence, stands chronologically in between and anchors two other
authoritative utterances structuring the poem, that of Medea and that of
the Muse.
Pindar places Apollo’s particular epidêmia in half-historical, half-mythic
time, eight generations into the past (65). The fact that Apollo’s residence
is specially marked as a precondition of the Pythia’s prophecy may suggest
that Pindar thought of this institution as one that recently went out of use.
Earlier commentators have sought to place Pindar’s reference in the
historical reality of late Archaic Greece.80 To reconcile the passage with a
view that epidêmia was not relevant for oracular consultation in Pindar’s
time, Farnell even ascribes it to the poet’s personal misconception.81 In my
view, the allusion to epidêmia in Pythian 4 has a motivation specific to the
poem. This text is as much about delegation and contestation of authority,
illustrated by the myth of Pelias and Jason, as about cross-cutting temporal
planes through acts of prospection (Medea) and retrospection (the Muse
and the speaker). The institution of Apollo’s truth-generating presence
offers an implicit model for other kinds of authoritative utterance, a
mythical fons et origo of poetic authority. A more particular poetic task
that this allusion might have has recently been pointed out by Michael
Silk: the adjective apo-damou appears to echo Damo-philos, the name of
the exiled (and thus absent) Cyrenean aristocrat on whose behalf Pindar
intercedes in the last triad of the poem.82
The other Pindaric epinikion that exploits the notion of epidêmia is
Pythian 10. Here the utility of divine presence for constructing a poetic
chronotope is more obvious, yet the poem is more circumspect in its
evocation of oracular veridiction. The myth of the poem brings before
the audience’s imagination that which cannot be seen, although, in con-
trast to the heroic world, it is imputed still to exist: the fabulous land of the
Hyperboreans where Apollo is known to spend his time away from Delphi.
80
Mommsen (1878: 117) Mezger (1880: 206–7). Cf. Rohde (1972 [1893]: 311, n. 55).
81
“Pindar’s phrase might suggest that the Greeks never consulted the oracle when Apollo was
supposed to be away. There were taboo-days when it was impossible to consult it, but these did
not correspond to the ἀποδημίαι and ἐπιδημίαι of the god, whatever Pindar may have thought.”
(Farnell 1932: 150; italics added).
82
Silk (2012: 359). This point is strengthened by the fact that οὐκ ἀποδάμου and Δαμοφίλου are in the
same metrical position in the strophe of the the first and last triads.
The poem is dated to 498 and is likely to be the earliest surviving
specimen of Pindar’s art. Its opening presents an elaborate preparation for
the mythic section, in that Pindar repeatedly stresses the powers of Pytho
and of Apollo in person. First, the speaker mentions Pytho as one of the
three agents that call on him (ἀπύει, 4) to initiate the celebration, bringing
to the victor the glorious voice of men as a revel (ἀγαγεῖν ἐπικωμίαν
ἀνδρῶν κλυτὰν ὄπα 6). The prosopopoeia of the victory’s locale also
implies an intimate connection with Apollo as both the author and the
spectator of the epinician revel. This connection is initially drawn by a
subtle allusion in Pindar’s recasting of the victory announcement:
στρατῷ τ᾿ ἀμφικτιόνων ὁ Παρνάσσιος αὐτὸν μυχός
διαυλοδρομᾶν ὕπατον παίδων ἀνέειπεν. (P. 10.8–9)
The Parnassian glen has proclaimed him to the host of those who dwell around as
the best of the boys who ran the double course.
The voice of “the Parnassian glen” (ὁ Παρνάσσιος μυχός) is not only tuned
to the presence of Apollo; as the following lines confirm, it also mediates
his will. Significantly, μυχός can refer to ‘the inner part of the temple’
where the divinity resides, as in P. 5.68–9, where Apollo is said to “frequent
the mantic μυχός” (μυχόν τ᾿ ἀμφέπει μαντήιον).83 By using this word,
Pindar appears to assimilate the oracular seat of Apollo to the Parnassian
landscape, while also endowing the victory announcement with a mantic
authority.
More particularly, as the lines immediately following (10–11) reveal, this
tropological maneuvering prepares Apollo’s entrance into the text:
῎Απολλον, γλυκὺ δ᾿ ἀνθρώπων τέλος ἀρχά τε δαίμονος ὀρνύντος αὔξεται
ὁ μέν που τεοῖς τε μήδεσι τοῦτ᾿ ἔπραξεν (P. 10.10–11)
Apollo, the end and the beginning grows sweet for mortals, should a god incite it:
this one [the victor], so it seems, has accomplished this [deed] through your
devising.
Given the preceding identification of Apollo’s voice with that of the locale,
one may read this apostrophe to the god as an escalation of the personifi-
cation of Parnassus. The work of figuration makes it possible to represent
Apollo as a spatial presence that provides a palpable ambience for poetic
performance. There may also be an additional effect to the staging of
Apollo’s presence as a prosopopoeia, rather than via a straightforward cultic
83
For this meaning, cf. Eur. Ion 229, Aesch. Eum. 180.
invocation of a deity. Pindar is reducing Apolline presence to an illusion,
maintained by the poet with a view to the poem’s narrative and performa-
tive tasks.84
What use does the text make of this fiction of presence, now that it is
there to be manipulated? The poem seeks to create a spatial homonymy
between the first part of the mythic section, which offers a glimpse at the
continuous revel of the Hyperboreans, and the festivity taking place, hic et
nunc, in the honor of the victor and his clan. In a few lines, the poem takes
the audience along the “wondrous road” that separates the real world from
the otherwise unreachable space where Apollo’s presence is complete:
ναυσὶ δ’ οὔτε πεζὸς ἰών <κεν> εὕροις
ἐς ῾Υπερβορέων ἀγῶνα θαυμαστὰν ὁδόν.
παρ᾿ οἷς ποτε Περσεὺς ἐδαίσατο λαγέτας,
δώματ᾿ ἐσελθών,
κλειτὰς ὄνων ἑκατόμβας ἐπιτόσσαις θεῷ
ῥέζοντας· ὧν θαλίαις ἔμπεδον
εὐφαμίαις τε μάλιστ᾿ ᾿Απόλλων
χαίρει, γελᾷ θ᾿ ὁρῶν ὕβριν ὀρθίαν κνωδάλων. (P. 10.29–36)
Neither on ships, nor on foot would you find the wondrous road to the assembly
of the Hyperboreans. Among them, Perseus, the leader of the people, was once
feasted, entering their dwelling and happening upon them as they were offering
the renowned hecatombs of donkeys to the god. Apollo continuously takes the
greatest pleasure in their festivities and their praises, and he laughs seeing the erect
outrage of the beasts.
The tropological experiment undertaken in the opening triad has effect-
ively installed Apollo in the text and provided for a radical spatial substi-
tution in the narrative section. First, the presence of Apollo in the land of
the Hyperboreans, that is, his absence from the human world, is converted
into an enhanced ritual presence, featuring the paradoxical, scandalous
sacrifice of the donkeys. This ritual presence is then projected back on the
here and now of the ongoing epinician performance.
Apollo’s stay with the Hyperboreans is no longer a temporal comple-
ment to his residence as an oracular deity at Delphi. By stressing the
continuous nature of the Hyperborean revelry (ἔμπεδον), Pindar pretends
to overlook Apollo’s periodic trips to Delphi. The superlative “most of all”
(μάλιστ᾿) in any case makes it clear that no paians sung at Delphi could
84
Paul de Man interprets prosopopoeia as “the fiction of an apostrophe to an absent, deceased, or
voiceless entity, which posits the possibility of the latter’s reply and confers upon it the power of
speech” (1984: 75–6).
achieve a divine presence comparable to the one at display in the poem.
Ritual presence is rejected in favor of a mythologized presence available for
poetic use.
Apollo is not just a beneficent deity presiding over the Pythian Games,
but implicitly a spectator of the ongoing performance. The predicates χαίρει
and γελᾷ θ᾿ ὁρῶν (36) describe Apollo’s participation in the assembly of the
Hyperboreans, as well as in the present celebration – a benevolent deity
watchful yet unseen, both delighting in and inspiring the revelry. The locus
classicus for the import of this divine gaze is the passage in the Delian
segment of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (146–64) describing the celebration
that is part of the Apolline cult at Delos.85 Building on an analysis of this
passage, Steven Lonsdale has drawn attention to the importance of
divine “hypothetical spectators” for Greek choral performances.86
The notion of Apollo’s presence that Pindar puts forward in Pythian
10 at the same time borrows and departs from the ideology of Apollo’s
epidêmia at Delphi. In fact, Pindar’s poetic appropriation of this religious
concept results in a still more far-reaching reconceptualization: the exclu-
sion of Apollo. The description of the revel of the Hyperboreans, following
immediately upon the mention of the god’s benevolent gaze (36), articu-
lates this development:
Μοῖσα δ᾿ οὐκ ἀποδαμεῖ
τρόποις ἐπὶ σφετέροισι· παντᾷ δὲ χοροὶ παρθένων
λυρᾶν τε βοαὶ καναχαὶ τ᾿ αὐλῶν δονέονται·
δάφνᾳ τε χρυσέᾳ κόμας ἀναδήσαντες εἰλαπινάζοισιν εὐφρόνως. (P. 10.37–40)
The Muse is never out of town (apodamos) because of their ways, but everywhere
choruses of maidens, screams of lyres, and clangs of flutes are stirred around. And
they revel on merrily, their hair wreathed with golden bay.
The substitution of the Muse for Apollo as the deity whose presence
enables poetic composition and performance is paralleled in Aristophanes’
Thesmophoriazusae and, more obliquely, in Pythian 4. All these passages
suggest that divine presence construed as a precondition for poetic utter-
ance, on an initial analogy with oracular utterance, is being divorced from
the mythology of Apollo. Pythian 10 records a transitional stage in this
85
One striking parallel between P. 10 and the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo is the transfigured state
of the revelers who appear immortal and ageless (P. 10.41–2; Hom. Hymn to Apollo 3.151); this
“curieux écho” is mentioned by Duchemin (1955: 113, n. 2).
86
These spectators are described by “the formula ἐπιτέρπονται θυμόν plus the verb of seeing, ὁράω”
(Lonsdale 1995: 30), as “divine pleasure is shared by and reflected in the glow of human spectators.
This shared pleasure is expressed in the Delian passage by the word χάρις.”
process: the new kind of specifically poetic presence, the presence of the
Muses, is still attached to Apollo the Mousagetas, who is removed from the
mundane worries of Delphic cult and apparently uninterested in paianic
invocations. For their part, the Muses are certainly not interested in leaving
the land of the newly forged literary mythology; they are emphatically
never “out of town.”
The notion of the Muses’ presence, as it is found in Pindar and
Aristophanes, points forward to a reconceptualization of epidêmia as poetic
inspiration, mysteriously induced by a divine visitation that is beyond the
poet’s control. In contrast to the notion of poetic inspiration familiar from
Romantic and post-Romantic lyric, in Pindar the epidêmia of the Muse is
not a one-on-one encounter. Instead, it retains the connotations of a
socially consequential, communal phenomenon. In the description of the
Hyperboreans in P. 10, the quintessential poetic chronotope is a space of
mass revelry, conceived of as a ritual. The emergent literary discourse taps
into this fiction of collective festivity, while in fact moving away from the
reality of ritually embedded performance. In Pindar, a new kind of truth,
no longer contingent on cult-mediated divine utterance, is in the making.
4 Three meanings of witnessing in Ancient Greece

The juridical or prejuridical discourse has not claimed much attention in
the studies of Archaic Greek choral poetry. This relative lack of attention is
striking, seeing that elements of what Louis Gernet, in his seminal work,
has defined as “prelaw” are quite prominent in the texts of both Pindar and
Bacchylides.87 It is, in fact, paradoxical that the notion of Pindar as a
mantis, a seer or a “prophet,” is much more familiar than the notion of
Pindar as a martus ‘witness’ (as this word is usually translated).88 While
there are no prophetic or mantic utterances in epinikia in programmatic or
metapoetic sections that use the first person, such contexts are rich in
references to witnessing and oath taking. While we are accustomed to
regarding a claim to supernatural knowledge as being intimately linked
87
Gernet defines prelaw as follows: “Before coming to constitute an independent technique, law is
pre-molded in certain traditional procedures in which gestures and verba have a force that one
cannot yet call juridical, as they lack specialization of time and space, personnel, and means of
operation. Their meaning and effects, however, are analogous to those that would make themselves
visible in actual law.” (Gernet 1979 [1955]: 2).
88
On Pindar as a mantis (e.g.): Duchemin (1955); Kambylis (1965: 12–13); Athanassaki (1990). For a
curious early confusion between a mantic and a proto-juridical persona in Pindar note μάντις
written supra lineam next to μάρτυς at N. 7.49 in Vat. Gr. 1312, one of our only two sources for the
text of N. 7. I discuss this passage below.
Three meanings of witnessing in Ancient Greece 213
to poetic authority, representations of oath taking in Pindar are assigned to
the same category as, for example, athletic metaphors. To most readers,
these are merely incidental flourishes that are so plentiful in Pindar.
Closer attention to Pindar’s use of prelaw as a counterpoint to his use of
mantikê provides a fresh perspective on the Pindaric speaker, its powers
and its affectations. In particular, the privileging of the mantic mode of
veridiction betokens an entrenched bias in the way Pindaric poetics has
been approached. This bias, which goes back to antiquity, is biographical
in origin, and consists in assigning first-person statements in Pindar’s
choral lyric to a distinctive individual voice of the poet, rather than to a
malleable enunciative position that is proper to the genre’s medium: choral
performance of an individually composed text.
As discussed in Chapter 1, in Pindar the poet-composer and the chorus
share the first-person grammar. This fundamental issue can be recast as the
question of how the choral medium furthers, impedes, or is otherwise
implicated in the formulation of an authoritative, assertive stance that is
quite unmistakable in Pindar. In this and the following sections, I argue
that the language of witnessing and oath taking is a device that is, so to
speak, preadapted for the choral medium. Pindar’s poetics of marturia thus
serves an individual, innovative project of the poet Pindar, yet it does not
use the poet qua speaker. Instead, it employs choral voicing to appropriate,
to a poetic end, the authority of a socially embedded speech act. Notably,
Bacchylides uses the prejuridical language in a way that is recognizably
different. Less interested in employing the choral voice, he relies on
poetically stylized, rather than culturally current, elements of prelaw.
In the only extensive discussion of marturia in Pindar, Robert Stoddart
argues that a distinction between two kinds of martures is relevant to
Pindaric usage: gezogene Zeugen, or “summoned witnesses,” and Eideshel-
fer, “oath helpers.”89 Both have little to do with the modern notion of
witness, that of an incidental Tatzeuge, “witness of the deed.” Thus, the
so-called “summoned witnesses” were present at a ritual or legal procedure
and expected later on, if requested, to attest to the fact of its having taken
place. This practice, expressed in the Classical period by the middle voice
of marturomai, was entrenched in Greek culture; the notion of calling on
the god to be a witness is an extension of the same social convention. It is
likely that the legal notion of incidental witness emerged on the basis of the
paradigm of the summoned witness. In both cases, the veridictory claim is
epistemic: it is predicated on a concrete piece of knowledge preserved in
89
Stoddart (1990 [1980]: 29–49).
personal memory. As a survey of pre-Pindaric usage shows, Homer and
Hesiod only mention summoned witnesses; that is the only meaning of
martus that they know.90 There is at least one extended usage in the
hexametric corpus that indicates how the idea of summoned witness could
be generalized to that of incidental witness. In Il. 2.302, Odysseus describes
the Greek soldiers present at the omen in Aulis as marturoi. Their very
presence “there and then” qualifies them as knowledgeable agents.
Eideshelfer or “oath helpers,” by contrast, operate on an entirely
different principle. Louis Gernet points to the fact that, in the Archaic
period, the oath of the plaintiff was expected to be supported through
the ritual of coniuratio involving a number of co-swearers. In such
contexts, the usual rendition of Greek martus as “witness” is misleading.91
Recent work on Attic law has demonstrated a continuing, albeit residual
relevance of the notion of partisan witness even in the fourth century
BCE.92 Gernet summarizes the differences between an oath helper and a
witness in the modern sense, already in evidence in Attic classical law,
as follows:
Coswearers were not even minimally certain guarantors of “truth” or
informants concerning a past deed. Their functions included neither role;
most often they had no knowledge concerning the deed. No intellectual-
izing interpretation can account for the essential character of this func-
tion, one that was to be collective or, more precisely, “of community.”
Conjuration is an affirmation of solidarity that is validated in justice by
90
Notably, in the hexametric corpus the plural marturoi (epic form) prevails over the singular (9 to 2),
suggesting that summoned witnesses, similarly to co-swearers, typically constituted a group. Il. 1.338
(Achilles spontaneously recruits Talthubios and Eurubates, the heralds dispatched by Agamemnon
to fetch Briseis, as marturoi of the unjust deed), Il. 3.280 (the gods are summoned by Agamemnon
as marturoi and guardians of the horkia pista before the oath taking preceding the battle between
Menelaos and Paris), Il. 14.274, Il. 22.255 (Hector attempting to summon the gods as marturoi in an
agreement with Achilles); Od. 14.393 (the gods are marturoi over a bargain between Odysseus and
Eunomaos), Od. 16.423; Hes. WD 371, Scutum 20; Hom. Hymn. to Hermes 372. An interesting
extended use occurs in Od. 1.273, where Athena suggests that the gods serve as marturoi of
Telemachus’s muthos spoken to the suitors.
91
Etymologically, the English word means ‘one who knows.’ On coniuratio, see Meister (1908). The
classical (and modern) notion of a witness is exemplified by a definition given by Demosthenes:
whoever can attest to “the actions one knows and was present at” (ἃ ἂν εἰδῇ τις καὶ οἷς ἂν
παραγένηται πραττομένοις Or. 46.6). In Rhet. 1376a, Aristotle draws a distinction between
μάρτυρες περὶ ἤθους and περὶ πράγματος.
92
See Humphreys (1985) on the appearance of family members as witnesses in Athenian court. For
further bibliography and an overview, see Thür (2005), who notes that, in Classical Athens, “the
witness, without being questioned, merely confirmed a statement formulated by one of the two
litigants” and regards this practice as a remnant of the older procedure in which the witness came as
an (oath) helper to one of the parties (165). Cf. Rubinstein (2000, esp. 70–5) on sunêgores ‘fellow-
speakers’, who also seem to take over the role of partisan supporters.
the religious force that the oath confers on it. Law specifies the situations
in which conjuration is to have effect, and its effect is invariably
absolute.93
Co-swearers, usually drawn from the litigant’s family, were not expected to
report on facts. Rather, they were partisans willing to take an oath, and
thus risk the evil will of the gods, on behalf of the defendant. Moreover,
what they supplied was not mere “character evidence.”94 The most obvious
difference from the modern procedure consisted in the perception of
the co-swearers as a group of committed supporters of the plaintiff. One
of the important results of Stoddart’s discussion is his demonstration of the
homology between metaphors of military succour (epikouria, boatheia)
favored by Pindar and mentions of marturia. As the history of the verb
βοηθέω suggests, those who “ran at a cry” and offered immediate succor
are those who would later “help” one of their own in the court of law.95 In
light of this juncture, as well as the evidence of the Attic orators, Eideshelfer
emerge as allies in a quasi-military encounter between the litigants. As
phrased in the code of Gortyn, which is roughly contemporary with
Pindar’s work, “the victory goes to the party which has more people
swearing oaths” (νικε̃ν δ’ ὅτερά κ’ οἱ π[λίες ὀ]μόσοντι).96
Stoddart has demonstrated that in Pindar martus, at least in some
cases, refers to co-swearer and that the modern notion of witness is
generally alien to his usage.97 On the other hand, Stoddart did not
always clarify how the distinction between the two kinds of martus
applies to Pindaric evidence, and his interpretation of particular passages
is not always conclusive.98 In what follows, I consider Pindar’s uses of
93
Gernet (1981 [1968]: 223–4).
94
Gernet (1981 [1968]: 192): “neither ‘witnesses to the truth’ nor ‘witnesses to credibility,’ the
co-swearers, by their collective willingness, are not affirming a fact but are rendering a decision
concerning the ‘law’. That is, if they are numerous enough, they assure the ‘victory’ of the familial
party they represent.”
95 96
Cf. Latte (1931: 38–9). IC IV 81.15–16.
97
The institution of co-swearing is likely attested in Solon, fr. 36.3, where the verb συμμαρτυρέω ‘to
bear witness in support of another’ (LSJ) is used. Otherwise, there is no literary evidence before
Pindar showing that martus could refer to co-swearer, rather than summoned witness. In the corpus
of Archaic lyric and elegy martures are otherwise only mentioned in contexts that are too
fragmentary to allow for any conclusions (Arch. fr. 248; Theog. 1226; Hipp. fr. 79.17?).
98
Stoddart’s discussion has been mostly overlooked. Most argues that marturia in Pindar always
presupposes the presence at the event (1985: 177). According to Louise Pratt, the use of legal
terminology in epinikia conjures a context where “alatheia resembles ‘the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth’ provided by sworn eyewitnesses” (1993: 118). Bonnie MacLachlan
wonders why Pindar swears oaths “in front of people who may themselves have been eye-
witnesses to the event and need no verification” (2007: 91). Patten asserts that “witnesses in
Pindar are always eyewitnesses” (2009: 130).
marturia as a resource for poetic authority, a task that will necessitate
close analysis of relevant passages.
The language of oaths and witnessing in Pindar strongly evokes a notion
of solidarity between the speaker and the laudandus (or the laudandi).
Viewed as an oath helper, the Pindaric martus is the one who confirms the
victor’s achievement by an authoritative speech act, rather than one who
testifies to the mere fact of the victory having taken place. As an affirm-
ation of a social tie, the rhetoric of marturia is thus akin to the rhetoric of
xenia or philia, ‘(guest-)friendship’, a familiar stance of the Pindaric
speaker. Yet I would argue for an important difference between the two
notions: while the position of a xenos is generally assumed by the individual
speaker, the Theban poet Pindar, the position of a martus presupposes a
culturally-conditioned semantic structure that is more effectively claimed
by the choreuts.99
It is self-evident that the semantic structure of coniuratio, or collective
oath taking, is particularly well suited for the choral medium. As a member
of the co-swearing group, the figure of martus is most advantageously
conceived of as plural. As Stoddart points out, “[t]he required number of
[oath] helpers varied according to the seriousness of the case, but the
complement was twelve, whom the litigant himself chose, usually from
his family.”100 This number appears to be close to the likely size of a chorus
in the Archaic period; a passage in Alcman’s First Partheneion seems to
mention ten performers instead of the usual eleven (fr. 1.98–9).101
If Pindaric martures are indeed oath helpers, the common assumption102
here that the diction of witnessing marks Pindar’s highly individualized
poetic voice must be put aside. A more probable hypothesis is that the
speakers who assimilate themselves to martures are (first and foremost) the
choreuts: each of them speaks on his or her own behalf, yet their utterance
assumes its meaning only in the communal aspect, as a collective coniur-
atio. This view is corroborated by one of the more substantial fragments of
99
In contrast to the language of xenia/philia, which is concentrated in the dynast odes, marturia is
relevant to all three subtypes of epinikion discussed in Chapter 1, Section 7.
100
Stoddart (1990 [1980]: 29). According to Meister (1908: 577, passim), for the legal institution of
coniuratio to be viable, the number of co-swearers necessary to assure its “absolute” efficacy must
have been preset in the case of each particular crime.
101
It is suggestive that, in Aesch. Eum. 318, the chorus of the Erinyes describe themselves as μάρτυρες
ὀρθαὶ τοῖσι θανοῦσιν ‘upright partisan supporters of the dead’. Further on the size of Ancient Greek
choruses, which varied across the Greek world and across the spectrum of genres and occasions, see
Herington (1985: 186); Carey (2007: 205–6).
102
Tugendhat (1960: 39); von der Mühll (1964: 56–7); Stoddart (1990 [1980]: 450; Pratt (1993: 118);
MacLachlan (2007: 101).
Pindar’s cult poetry, fr. 94b, a partheneion for the Theban Daphephoria,
performed by a processing chorus of girls.
πιστὰ δ᾿ Ἀγασικλέει μάρτυς ἤλυθον ἐς χορόν
ἐσλοῖς τε γονεῦσιν
ἀμφὶ προξενίαισι· τίμαθεν γὰρ τὰ πάλαι τὰ νῦν τ᾿ ἀμφικτιόνεσσιν
ἵππων τ᾿ ὠκυπόδων πο ̣[λυγνώτοις ἐπὶ νίκαις,
αἷς ἐν ἀϊόνεσσιν Ὀγχη[στοῦ κλυ]τᾶς, ταῖς δὲ ναὸν Ἰτωνίας α· [ . . . . . . ]α
χαίταν στεφάνοις ἐκόσμηθεν ἔν τε Πίσᾳ πε· ριπ· [ (fr. 94b.38–49)
I have come into the chorus as a faithful martus for Agasiklees and his noble kin
for their services as proxenoi. For both of old and now they have been honored by
their neighbors on account of the well-known victories of [their] swift-footed
horses – on the shores of famous Onkhestos, at the temple of Itonia, and at Pisa
their hair was adorned with crowns.
The speaker is clearly marked as a choreut by the feminine adjective
πιστά. What she bears witness to is denoted by the vague prepositional
phrase “on account of their acts of proxenia” (ἀμφὶ προξενίαισι). The lack
of specificity suggests that it is the reputation of the clan, rather than a
specific act of hospitality, that is at issue. The emphasis is clearly not on
factual knowledge, but on the speaker’s show of support for the family of
Agasiklees. This is in keeping with the interpretation of pista martus as an
Eideshelfer.
One may further conjecture that the diction of coniuratio would be
especially apt in a civic poem, one of whose ideological tasks is to mitigate
the distinction of the aristocratic clan represented by the central figure of
the Daphnephoria, the laurel-bearing boy Agasiklees. The young women
performing in the chorus were Thebans. If we recall that co-swearers were
often members of the family of the litigant, the assimilation of the
performers to martures for the kin of Agasiklees enforces the sense of
community within the polis.103 Enunciated by the choreuts in the course
of the cultic procession, this designation invites onlooking citizens to
imagine themselves as relations of the influential clan to which Agasiklees
belongs, thus bridging the gap between citizens and the aristocratic elite.
Turning from this rather sketchy sociological reading to the rhetorical
structure of the passage, one notes that the arrival of self-proclaimed
103
For the complex work of ideological negotiation in fr. 94b, see Kurke (2007b). Further on the
Daphnephoria, see Kowalzig (2007: 377–83). It is uncertain how the self-appellation as martus
might be interpreted from the viewpoint of women’s legal status at Thebes. Judging by the
evidence of Classical Athens, women in general were represented by their male kyrioi in legal
contexts (Gould 1980: 43–6), although they could in some contexts take oaths (Dem. Or. 40.11).
Eideshelfer in the form of a female chorus in line 38 is followed by a causal
γάρ-clause describing the athletic achievements of the family of Agasiklees.
The mention of marturia or oath giving occurs in proximity to the victory
catalogue, as is often the case in epinikia.104 This seems to be a device used
to consolidate discursive authority at the moment of reporting the athletic
successes of the laudandus. As fr. 94b suggests, this authority is channeled
through the medium of choral subjects, rather than the voice of the
individual poet. The “social technique” of coniuratio demands a homoph-
onous ritual performance by numerous individuals; as a poetic device, it
invites a choral subjectivity.105
One might object that, in spite of the prominence of the victory
catalogue in fr. 94b, the argument in favor of reading martus as ‘co-
swearer’ cannot simply be transferred to Pindar’s usage in the epinikia,
where the word may have a different force. It is nevertheless possible to
make a case for a distinctly choral voicing, and thus an echo of coniuratio,
in several passages involving martures and oaths in the epinikia. On the
other hand, some passages suggest the relevance of the post-Archaic,
epistemic notion of witnessing, which shifts emphasis away from parti-
sanship and loyalty. In this case, the Pindaric corpus, which covers about
half a century, can be viewed as preserving traces of diachronically
distinct manifestations of a single social institution. Once again, Pindar
emerges as a guide to a key transitional moment in the history of Ancient
Greek culture.
I begin by surveying the passages in which Pindar uses the word martus
not in relation to the speaker, but in an obviously extended meaning.
There is no easy way to determine which of the two basic meanings,
“epistemic” or “partisan,” is at play in any given passage. One notable
grammatical fact about Pindar’s usage, however, is his preference for the
plural over the singular. The word occurs seven times in Pindar, and unless
reference is made to a specific person or the speaker (O. 4.3, N. 7.49,
fr. 94b.39), it is used in the plural.
The mythic section of Pythian 12 deals with Athena’s invention of the
aulos, as well as of the “many-headed auletic nomos” (κεφαλᾶν πολλᾶν
νόμον), which
104
O. 13.83, O. 13.108, N. 11.24; Bacch. 8.17–25. In its juridical logic, the sentence as a whole mirrors
the description of the moment of victory in Bacchylides’ Odes 5 and 8 discussed in the last section
of this Chapter.
105
The phrase “social technique” is borrowed from Gernet (1981 [1968]: 222).
λεπτοῦ διανισόμενον χαλκοῦ θαμὰ καὶ δονάκων,
τοὶ παρὰ καλλίχορον ναίοισι πόλιν Χαρίτων
Καφισίδος ἐν τεμένει, πιστοὶ χορευτᾶν μάρτυρες (P. 12.23–7)
passes often through the delicate bronze [i.e. mouthpiece] and the reeds, which
dwell beside the city of the Kharites [Orkhomenos], in the precinct of Kephisis [the
eponymous nymph of the Beotian river Kephisos], trusty martures of the choreuts.
The reeds used in constructing auloi are not merely present at the choral
performances; they are, literally, the vocal supporters of the chorus. The
immediate proximity of this image to the mention of the choreuts (the
only occurrence of the word χορευτάς in Pindar) is also suggestive, as it
invites us to think of the members of the chorus, by analogy, as a collective
of martures.
The other use of the set phrase pistoi martures appears near the end of
Pythian 1, in the most elaborate exhortatory passage Pindar addresses to the
Sicilian tyrant Hieron. Beginning with an imagistic imperative calling on
Hieron “to forge his tongue on an anvil that lacks lies,” Pindar continues:
εἴ τι καὶ φλαῦρον παραιθύσσει, μέγα τοι φέρεται
πὰρ σέθεν. πολλῶν ταμίας ἐσσί· πολλοὶ
μάρτυρες ἀμφοτέροις πιστοί· (P. 1.87–8)106
Even if a small spark flies out, it rushes as a great [mass] coming from you.
You are a dispenser of many things. Many are the trusty martures to both.
As this passage makes clear, a pistos martus, for Pindar, refers not to a
reliable witness, but to a loyal supporter. In other words, pistis ‘faith’
pertains not to the objectivity of the testimony, but to the expectation of
support that is based on a close tie with the person concerned. Accord-
ingly, I read the statement πολλοὶ μάρτυρες ἀμφοτέροις πιστοί as follows:
“many are those who, inasmuch as they are his beneficiaries, are eager to
attest both to Hieron’s truthful administration of justice and to him being
a dispenser of many things.”
The most compressed Pindaric use of marturia occurs in the beginning
of the second triad of Olympian 1, where two responses to wonders
(thaumata) are contrasted. Rumor that goes beyond truth, combined with
deceiving stories (muthoi) embellished by variegated lies, is rejected in favor
of a different disposition, which Pindar strongly valorizes:
Χάρις δ’, ἅπερ ἅπαντα τεύχει τὰ μείλιχα θνατοῖς,
ἐπιφέροισα τιμὰν καὶ ἄπιστον ἐμήσατο πιστόν
106
Construing ἀμφοτέροις as for both “good and bad” (Gildersleeve 1885: 251) or “for true or false”
(Farnell 1932: 116) is difficult in light of the positive connotations of martus elsewhere in Pindar.
ἔμμεναι τὸ πολλάκις·
ἁμέραι δ’ ἐπίλοιποι
μάρτυρες σοφώτατοι. (O. 1.30–4)
Kharis/Grace, the very one who furnishes all that is gentle to mortals, bringing
upon them honor and contriving an unbelievable thing often to be believable.
Days to come are the wisest martures.
The key to the interpretation of these lines lies in Pindar’s notion of time.
Future, as it was conceived by the Greeks, is moving toward us, but
remains unknown inasmuch as we are facing the past.107 Hence the
wisdom of the future days (σοφώτατοι), which partake of an exclusive
knowledge, sophia, already in existence, yet inaccessible at any present
moment.108 The boldly personified succession of the days to come emerges
as an endless array of co-swearers who can confirm the unchanging truth
behind the inscrutable operation of Kharis. On the other hand, the
unmistakable emphasis on knowledge suggests an epistemic modality,
which may betoken a modernized notion of martus. The objective use of
the adjectives apiston and piston to refer to what is (not) believable in the
beginning of the quoted passage also points to a concern with truth
construed as conformance to reality.
The difficulty of assigning Pindaric usage to one or the other paradigm
of witnessing can be illustrated by a passage in Isthmian 5, where Pindar
describes a recent historical event, the battle of Salamis:
πολλὰ μὲν ἀρτιεπής
γλῶσσά μοι τοξεύματ’ ἔχει περὶ κείνων
κελαδέσαι· καὶ νῦν ἐν Ἄρει μαρτυρήσαι κεν πόλις Αἴαντος ὀρθωθεῖσα ναύταις
ἐν πολυφθόρῳ Σαλαμὶς Διὸς ὄμβρῳ
ἀναρίθμων ἀνδρῶν χαλαζάεντι φόνῳ.
ἀλλ’ ὅμως καύχαμα κατάβρεχε σιγᾷ· (I. 5.46–51)
My clear-speaking tongue has many arrows to sing about those [the Aeginetans].
Now also the city of Ajax, Salamis, would be a martus in Ares [=in matters of war],
having been put straight by the [Aeginetan] sailors in the many-ruining storm of
Zeus, thick as hail, the slaughter of innumerable men. But nevertheless steep the
boasting in silence.
107
Further on temporality in Pindar, see Maslov (2012c: 358–61).
108
The basic force of the passage can be derived from the Greek notion (Solon fr. 36.3, Hyper.
Epitaph. 1; cf. Gerber (1982: 68); Verdenius 1988: 21) comparable to the modern notion of “time will
show.” Elsewhere (O. 10.53–5), Pindar deems Khronos “the only one who stands as a proof of the
true alatheia,” inasmuch as he was the original summoned witness at the foundation of the
Olympic Games.
Salamis is not mentioned as an indifferent party, who happens to witness
the battle that bears its name. She performs this function as a beneficiary
who received help from the Aeginetans earlier, “having been put straight”
by them. The place is almost an ally involved in action. Accordingly, the
statement of the martus is emphatic, it is compared to a boast, which need
not be overt, and hence must be “steeped in silence.” Salamis is called
upon as an oath helper to the speaker.
On the other hand, elsewhere, when Pindar describes a locale as a
martus, it is as a gezogene Zeuge. In the victory catalogue in O. 13, when
listing the locales of particular victories, the altar of Zeus Lykaios stands as
a metaphorical summoned witness for the athletic victories of the
Oligaithidai:
[ . . . ] ὅσα τ’ Ἀρκάσιν ϯ ἀνάσσων
μαρτυρήσει Λυκαίου βωμὸς ἄναξ· (O. 13.107–8)
And as to the number of victories among the Arcadians, the altar of Lykaios that
lords over [?] them will bear witness.
Thanks to its placement, the altar can attest to the victories at the games.
Similarly, in Olympian 9.98–9, the tomb of Iolaos and Eleusis are said to be
sundikoi – literally, supporters in a legal context – for the victories that the
laudandus, Epharmostos, held at the Iolaia, the local Theban contest (σύνδι-
κος δ’αὐτῷ Ἰολάου / τύμβος ἐνναλία τ’ Ἐλευσὶς ἀγλαΐαισιν). This passage is
particularly suggestive in that a plurality of legal supporters is cited; the two
locales, properly summoned witnesses, seem to be marshalled as partisan
witnesses for the victor. It also sheds light on the juridical meaning of
sundikos.109 The word memorably occurs in Pindar in Pythian 1, where the
lyre is described as Ἀπόλλωνος καὶ ἰοπλοκάμων σύνδικον Μοισᾶν κτέανον, a
phrase that most likely should be translated “a possession of Apollo and the
Muses that is their partisan supporter (σύνδικον κτέανον).”110
For a locale as a summoned witness, one could compare N. 3.23, where
Heracles installs the Pillars as “famous martures of his extreme sea-voyage”
(ναυτιλίας ἐσχάτας μάρτυρας κλυτάς); in other words, they will confirm
109
Judging from its etymological meaning ‘sharing in a lawsuit’ and its use in the classical period to
refer to a legal representative of a polis, the original meaning of sundikos was most likely ‘a partisan
supporter, a co-swearer’ (whereas the original meaning of martus was restricted to summoned
witness, as suggested by the evidence of Homer and Hesiod). The Aeschylean evidence seems to
corroborate this hypothesis (Suppl. 726, Eum. 761).
110
Thus Fennell (1893: 145–6). The currently accepted translation of sundikos as “rightful” (Fränkel
1975 [1951]: 456, n.26; Farnell 1932: 107, Slater 480) is unparalleled, as well as vacuous in the context.
For a similar prelegal function of a musical instrument, cf. P. 12.23–7.
that he had indeed travelled that far. In I. 2.18, Apollo poses as a resident
witness, as he is cited for having “seen” the victor winning in Krisa. Finally,
in Simonides’ famous epigram for the Spartans who died at Thermopylai
(fr. 26), Leonidas (as a resident of his tomb) is said to be a martus to the
fact that the sacred precinct contains an in-dwelling glory of Hellas. In
light of these parallels, Salamis’s marturia in Isthmian 5 seems to merge
two archaic notions, that of a partisan oath helper and that of a summoned
witness.
Pindaric epinikia contain two passages where the speaker describes
himself as a martus (O. 4.3, O. 6.20), and three more where he swears
an oath (O. 2.92, O. 13.99, N. 11.24). As I discussed in Chapter 1, Section 7,
in the majority of his epinikia Pindar made an effort not to relinquish the
ego entirely to the chorus; after all, it is his composition of the poem, the
Theban Pindaric brand, that makes it into a valuable, specially crafted
artifact. Nevetheless, the evidence of the Partheneion fr. 94b and of the
epinician passages discussed above strongly suggests that when the Pindaric
speaker claims to swear an oath or to arrive as a martus, the reference is,
first and foremost, to the practice of coniuratio, implying a collective rather
than strictly individuated voicing. In fact, the semantic structure of con-
iuratio is paradigmatic for the poetics of the Pindaric ego, as it allows the
poet both to stand next to the choreuts as one of the co-swearers, perhaps
even to pose as the most significant one, and to disappear entirely
behind them.
Olympian 6 contains a particularly illustrative instance of a Pindaric
oath. The poem is dedicated to a mule-cart victory of Hagesias, Hieron’s
protégé and general, who is described in the poem as a cofounder of
Syracuse as well as a holder of an official mantic position at the shrine of
Zeus at Olympia. In the first triad, Hagesias is said to “encounter envy-less
citizens in pleasant songs” (7) and is deemed “a master of the kômos” (18),
that is of the ongoing choral performance.111 This rhetoric of civic partici-
pation appears to belong to the citizens of Stymphalos who in all likeli-
hood comprised the chorus.112 The triad concludes with a brief mythic
narrative, in which the speaker quotes Adrastos’s saying about Amphiareus,
who was “good both as a mantis and in fighting with a spear” (ἀμφότερον
111
Consistently with Pindar’s usage, epinician celebrants constitute a kômos, not a khoros. See
Chapter 4, Section 1 for further discussion.
112
It is possible that the poem was designed to have two performances, at Stymphalos in Arcadia and at
Syracuse, as suggested by Mullen (1982: 26); Hutchinson (2001: 424). Most scholars assume
performance at Stymphalos. Calame argues for Syracuse, taking references to travel
metaphorically (2009, 2012: 307–14).
μάντιν τ’ ἀγαθὸν καὶ δουρὶ μάρνασθαι) and, returning to the current
occasion, declares:
τὸ καί
ἀνδρὶ κώμου δεσπότᾳ πάρεστι Συρακοσίῳ.
οὔτε δύσηρις ἐὼν οὔτ’ ὦν φιλόνικος ἄγαν,
καὶ μέγαν ὅρκον ὀμόσσαις τοῦτό γε οἱ σαφέως
μαρτυρήσω· μελίφθογγοι δ’ ἐπιτρέψοντι Μοῖσαι. (O. 6.17–21)
That is also true of the Syracusan man, who is the master of the kômos [=Hagesias].
Neither being contentious nor indeed too fond of success, and having sworn a great
oath, this at any rate I (will) clearly testify for him; the Muses of the sweet voice (will)
entrust it to me.
The use of the so-called encomiastic future, both in the statement of the
Pindaric speaker and in the reference to the action of the Muses, suggests
that both are to be located in the moment of poetic performance. These
are poetic acts, equivalent to acts of praise, usually put in the encomiastic
future.113 Furthermore, Stoddart’s interpretation of the Pindaric speaker
in this passage as an Eideshelfer is confirmed by the dative οἱ ‘for him’,
paralleling Ἀγασικλέει in fr. 94b.38. Stoddart construes the action of
the Muses in the same vein: “when the Muses approve the oath
(ἐπιτρέψοντι), they increase the number of Eideshelfer and strengthen
Hagesias’s case.”114 The tradition of translating ἐπιτρέψοντι as ‘they
approve’ or ‘they allow’115 in this passage has no justification in attested
Greek; nor does this verb anywhere have the technical meaning ‘testify as
a witness’. In Pindar twice, and generally in Archaic and Classical texts,
it means ‘to entrust, to charge with’.116
113
The view of encomiastic future as a kind of a performative, conventionally equivalent to the present
of the performance was proposed by Bundy (1986 [1962]: 20–2). Slater (1969) explained this
convention by Pindar’s formulation of the song “roughly for a time, when his chorus is arriving
at the place where they are to sing, but at a moment before the song is to be sung” (88). Further
discussions of Pindar’s use of the future are offered in Pellicia (1995: 317–41) and in Pfeijffer (1999b),
who renames encomiastic futures “fictional futures.” Taking his cue from Slater, D’Alessio argues
that Pindaric futures often mark a separation between the moment of composition and
performance, whereby “the very gap between composition and performance is dramatized”
(2004: 279).
114
Stoddart (1990 [1980]: 46).
115
E.g., Fennell (1893: 64); Gildersleeve (1885: 175); Slater 190. The scholiast’s comment is more
attentive to the disjuncture between the Muses and the poet: “it is appropriate that he asks from the
Muses to be charged [with this], since he knows it is not fitting for a praise poet to swear”
(Drachmann 1.161).
116
O. 3.36, Pai. 9.46. For a lacking indirect object, cf. Xen. An. 6.5.11 where the verb means
‘to command’. Note the imagistic responsion at the end of the second triad, where Apollo is in
the position of the Muses, and Eleithyia and Moirai are the analogue of the poet (τᾷ [Εὐάδνᾳ] μὲν ὁ
χρυσοκόμας πραΰμητίν τ’ Ελείθυιαν παρέστασ’ ἔν τε Μοίρας) (41–2).
The scenario according to which the speaker and the Muses share the
position of Eideshelfer may also be questioned in light of parallel passages.
In Pindar, the Muses do not come as helpers to the victor; rather, the
speaker receives the help of the Muses or comes to help them. For
example, the speaker may arrive in the chariot of the Muses (O. 9.80–4),
the Muse keeps his arrows for him as he looks for the path to assist the
laudandus (epikouros hodos) (O. 1.110–12), or the speaker may arrive as an
aid to the Muses as well as to the clan being celebrated (O. 13.93–7).
The role of the speaker as a mediator between the Muses and the laudan-
dus suggests that, in Olympian 6.21, the Muses delegate their authority to
the speaker, rather than stand as martures themselves. The structure of
mediation is akin to the one I analyzed above with regard to the self-
fashioning of the poetic speaker as a “spokesman of the Muses.” A clear-cut
distinction between a divine personification of poetic craft and a commit-
ted social agent reveals a certain literalism in Pindar’s use of coniuratio. It is
a reference to a living prejuridical institution, not a poeticized image of
such an institution. The choreut can take an oath, but not the Muse.
The notion of the delegated authority of the Muses does not imply
that the speaker must be the poet Pindar. As shown by the evidence
of Alcman’s and Pindar’s non-epinician poetry, the choreuts can claim
a direct relationship with the Muses bypassing the poet.117 The
“middling” rhetoric employed by the speaker (“Neither being conten-
tious nor indeed too fond of success”), which elsewhere appears in Pindar
only in civic epinikia,118 suggests that the words are spoken in the persona
of the average citizen, not the individual poet. Yet, showcasing the
malleability of the Pindaric speaker, this persona does not remain
unchanged throughout this long poem. Following an extended mythic
narrative, O. 6 includes a reference to individual poetic craftsmanship
(85–90). The end of the poem reveals a complicated performance scen-
ario, apparently involving a chorus of Stymphalian citizens travelling to
Syracuse, and the foregrounding of the poet’s individual voice, mediating
between the two communities, seems particularly opportune at that
moment.119
As the case of Olympian 6 demonstrates, a single poem may encompass
the rhetoric of poetic individuality and a reference to communal coniuratio
that goes along with a choral subjectivity. Olympian 2, a poem notable for
117 118
D’Alessio (1994a, esp. 119). Chapter 1, Section 7.
119
This point is inspired by a similar argument regarding what appears to be an abnormal poetic ego in
Paian 6 advanced by Leslie Kurke (2005).
its myth of the underworld, insists on a notion of esoteric knowledge
accessible only to the sunetoi ‘those who understand’ (85). In spite of that,
Pindar reverts to the proto-juridicial modality of veridiction to praise in
superlative terms the laudandus, Hieron’s brother Theron:
ἐπί τοι
Ἀκράγαντι τανύσαις
αὐδάσομαι ἐνόρκιον λόγον ἀλαθεῖ νόῳ,
τεκεῖν μή τιν’ ἑκατόν γε ἐτέων πόλιν
φίλοις ἄνδρα μᾶλλον
εὐεργέταν πραπίσιν ἀφθονέστερόν τε χέρα
Θήρωνος. (O. 2.91–5)
Taking aim at Akragas, I shall speak an oath-bound utterance with truthful mind,
that no city in a hundred years has produced a man more beneficent to friends in
his wits and more generous in his hand than Theron.
Such affirmations of the patron’s uniqueness seem to have been proper to
the tyrant poems.120 Pindar’s reiteration of the truthfulness of the state-
ment (“oath-bound . . . truthful”) may seem excessive or gratuitous, were it
not implicated in the discourse of veridiction as personal loyalty that the
social technique of coniuratio brings to light. This reading is confirmed by
the militaristic image of the poet aiming a bow at a target that precedes
these lines (89–90).
Another poem that engages with marturia is Olympian 13, written for
Xenophon of Corinth. The poem is remarkable for the prominence
accorded to the victory catalogue. The laudandus won at many local games,
as many as sixty times; indeed, the speaker twice mentions confusion or
uncertainty with regard to the number of victories (lines 44, 113). In the
extended metapoetic passage that opens the last triad of the poem, we find
an unusual concatenation of prejuridical notions:
ἐμὲ δ’ εὐθὺν ἀκόντων
ἱέντα ῥόμβον παρὰ σκοπὸν οὐ χρή
τὰ πολλὰ βέλεα καρτύνειν χεροῖν.
Μοίσαις γὰρ ἀγλαοθρόνοις ἑκών
Ὀλιγαιθίδαισίν τ’ ἔβαν ἐπίκουρος.
Ἰσθμοῖ τά τ’ ἐν Νεμέᾳ παύρῳ ἔπει θήσω φανέρ’ ἀθρό’, ἀλαθής τέ μοι
ἔξορκος ἐπέσσεται ἑξηκοντάκι δὴ ἀμφοτέρωθεν
ἁδύγλωσσος βοὰ κάρυκος ἐσλοῦ. (O. 13.93–100)
120
Kurke (1991: 224) notes that “superlative vaunts” are more frequent in tyrant odes. Cf. O. 1.103–5,
O. 2. 93–4, P. 1.49, P. 2.60 as well as the Bacchylidean asseverations discussed in the following
section. For the term “superlative vaunt,” see Race (1987: 138–42).
As I throw a straight whirling of darts, I must not hurl these many weapons with
both hands beside the target. For I came as a willing aid [epikouros] for the
splendidly-throned Muses as well as the Oligaithidai. I will make evident the
plentiful [victories] at Isthmus and at Nemea in a brief saying, and the sweetly-
tongued cry of the good herald [sounding] sixty times from both sides will be
added as a true exhorkos for me.
The speaker arrives as a supporter (epikouros) of the clan of the victor, but
must limit himself to mentioning the Isthmian and Nemean victories “in a
brief report” (παύρῳ ἔπει). As a supplement, the cry of the heralds at the
site of the victories is cited, a true exhorkos for the speaker. The meaning of
the hapax ἔξορκος must be elucidated with reference to the verb ἐξόμ-
νυσθαι ‘swear oneself out of a task or an office’.121 The Pindaric speaker
announces that the herald cries make his own detailing of the victories
unnecessary. A notion of coniuratio, in which both the speaking epikouros
and the multitude of heralds participate, is very likely implicated in
this usage.
One implication of this formulation is an initial separation between
poetic and social veridiction: the poetic speaker is in a position to make the
victories (which he has not personally witnessed) “plainly seen as a group”
(θήσω φανέρ’ ἀθρό’), but appeals to the announcement of each particular
herald for further veridictory support. In this respect, the passage delimits
the convertibility of poetic and social authority. What coniuratio seems to
make possible, however, is a tentative juncture of these two modalities of
authority. Finally, I would mention a passage in which the speaker swears
that, in his opinion (ἐμὰν δόξαν), the laudandus would have been success-
ful at the Olympic and Pythian Games, had he competed (N. 11.24). It
may seem far-fetched to assume that this oath implies the act of communal
coniuratio, but it certainly indicates partisan support that issues from the
communal solidarity projected by that (purely choral) poem. I conclude
that coniuratio is most likely implicated in the construction of Pindar’s
poetic authority, even as it may in some cases be combined with two other
notions of witnessing attested for Archaic Greece.
121
Wilamowitz (1922: 370, n.2). The common reading, reflected in Slater (‘under oath’) and LSJ
(‘bound by oath’), is ad-hoc and excessive with reference to the herald’s cry. Stoddart argues that the
force of this Pindaric usage is that the multiple summonses by the heralds “make testimony
impossible” for the speaker (1990 [1980]: 48). Contra Stoddart, however, the passage should not
be tied too rigidly to Athenian law, especially since in that context “[t]he exōmosia should not be
understood as an excuse of not knowing, but rather as a negative assertion, denying the content of
the testimony” (Thür 2006: 163; cf. 157). On exômosia in prelaw, see Gernet (1981 [1968]: 224–5).
There is one more passage in which most commentators discern an
identification of the poet and martus. It occurs in one of the most
notoriously difficult sequences in Pindar’s epinikia, Nemean 7.33ff. To
appreciate the pertinence of this passage to the problem of poetic author-
ity in Pindar, we need to delve deeper into the hermeneutic dilemmas
besetting Nemean 7. In the opening section of the poem, the speaker
launches an attack on Homer, who “was not able to see the truth”
(alatheia ll. 24–5) and so gave an exaggerated account of Odysseus’s
peregrinations and assigned an unfair death to Ajax, one of Pindar’s
favorite heroes.122 Having first defended the reputation of Ajax, the
speaker evokes the god who makes the logos of the dead men prosper,
and announces that he has arrived as an “ally”:
τιμὰ δὲ γίνεται
ὧν θεὸς ἁβρὸν αὔξει λόγον τεθνακότων.
βοαθοῶν τοι παρὰ μέγαν ὀμφαλὸν εὐρυκόλπου
μόλον χθονός. ἐν Πυθίοισι δὲ δαπέδοις
κεῖται Πριάμου πόλιν Νεοπτόλεμος ἐπεὶ πράθεν,
τᾷ καὶ Δαναοὶ πόνησαν· ὁ δ’ ἀποπλέων
Σκύρου μὲν ἅμαρτε, πλαγχθέντες δ’ εἰς Ἐφύραν ἵκοντο.
Μολοσσίᾳ δ’ ἐμβασίλευεν ὀλίγον
χρόνον· ἀτὰρ γένος αἰεὶ φέρει
τοῦτό οἱ γέρας. (N. 7.32–40)
. . . There is honor, however, for those whose story god makes prosper splendidly,
after they have died. It is as an aid (boathoôn) that I have come to the great navel of
the broad-bosomed earth. In the Pythian plain lies Neoptolemos, after he sacked
the city of Priam, where the Danaoi toiled.123 Sailing off, he missed Scyros, and
having gone astray they arrived at Ephyra. He became a king in Molossia for a
short time; but his progeny has this prize of his for ever.
The crux of the passage are lines 33–4, where manuscripts preserve the
form ἔμολε(ν) ‘he has come’, whereas the scholiast mentions the variant
ἔμολον ‘I/they have come’. Neither is metrically admissable, suggesting
that the unaugmented forms μόλον and μόλε(ν) were both current as
textual variants in antiquity.124 The most widely accepted reading, which
construes Neoptolemos as the subject of μόλε(ν), has notable drawbacks.
Apart from introducing the syntactic difficulty of the delayed mention of
the subject, it makes the shift to the myth of Neoptolemus quite sudden
122
Narrated in Ilias Parva (test. 2 Allen = schol. to Ar. Eq. 1056). Cf. Od. 11.543–64.
123
I leave the emphatic καί untranslated (cf. Slater 259).
124
Farnell (1932: 291), followed by Carey (1981: 149).
and Pindar’s meaning perplexing: it is unclear in what sense Neoptolemos
offers succour to the Delphic shrine.125 Farnell, who first proposed this
reading, justifies the defensive tone of “verily Neoptolemus came with
helpful not hostile intentions” by the apology theory, which, as I discuss
below, is hardly tenable.126
Stoddart construes these lines differently, and in a more assertive spirit.
Opting for first-person reference, he takes the Pindaric speaker to be the
“ally,” who – using a common Pindaric conceit of poetic travel – arrives at
Delphi to protect the reputation of Neoptolemos.127 In light of Stoddart’s
discussion of poetic boetheia in Pindar, I concur with him that the speaker
in these lines is akin to an oath helper. I would add to this interpretation
that the co-swearer is not primarily the poet hitting a theme, but the choral
performer reaching a topic. Nemean 7 is a poem for an Aeginetan victor,
and it was in all likelihood performed on Aegina by a local chorus. It is in
the capacity of Neoptolemos’s compatriot that the speaker metaphorically
comes to Delphi to defend the account of his undeserved death, and his
good name. Throughout the poem, the voice is recognizably that of the
civic community. Lines 84–6, where Aiakos is called the “ruler of my
renowned city,” unequivocally identify the speaker as an Aeginetan.128 In
sum, I believe that μόλον was Pindar’s text, but it was corrupted to ἔμολε(ν)
when the convention of poetic boetheia was no longer understood. The
grammatically challenging reading with Neoptolemus as the subject
seemed preferable to a semantically impenetrable text with a first-person
or a third-person plural verb.
Neoptolemos had to die, the account of Nemean 7 asserts, because it
was proper to install “one of the ruling Aiakidai” at Delphi as a themiskopos
‘overseer of justice’ of the (theoxenic) processions of heroes (44–7). The
word themiskopos is a hapax in all of extant Greek, a rarum called upon to
do special work in this passage: Neoptolemos, an “Aiakid,” is represented
here first and foremost as a descendent of Aiakos, a man renowned for his
125
This reading is accepted by Farnell (1932: 291–5); Thummer (1957: 106); Köhnken (1971: 67); Carey
(1981: 148–51); Burnett (2005: 192); Currie (2005: 309–11). Neoptolemos is bringing the spoils to
Delphi (l. 41), but that hardly constitutes an act of boetheia. The reading adopted by Maehler in the
Teubner text assumes a Delphic institution of boathooi ‘the Helpers’, for which there is no evidence.
The most detailed account of earlier scholarship on these lines can be found in Most (1986), who
himself proposes to emend τοι to τῷ and punctuate after βοαθοῶν, construing the latter with θεός.
126
Farnell (1932: 294).
127
Stoddart (1990 [1980]: 32–42). Wilamowitz (1922: 162), Segal (1967: 446–8) and Lloyd-Jones (1973:
133) are similarly in favor of reading μόλον. For the appropriateness of aorist tense in the context of
arrival-motif, cf. Carey (1981: 150).
128
The manuscript reading ἐμᾷ ‘my’ (“which yields no sense,” Bury 1890: 141) has been emended away
in different ways by generations of scholars, to allow the speaker to be the poet.
justice, one of the three judges in Hades. It appears that the use of
themiskopos serves implicitly to contradict a different account, which
happens to be preserved in Pindar’s Paian 6.112–16. According to that
account, Neoptolemos suffered a death in Delphi at the hands of Apollo,
on account of his own violence, particularly his killing of Priam at the altar
in Troy.129
Since antiquity, the version of the myth contained in Nemean 7 has
often been read as Pindar’s apology for Paian 6, intended for the Aegine-
tans. There are strong reasons to doubt this theory, apart from the
biographical fallacy that it espouses.130 First, Neoptolemos is a hero with
a very broad spectrum of moral associations; his character in Sophocles’
Philoctetes, for example, is univocally positive. Finding two competing
accounts of his death in the corpus of Pindar is not that surprising,
and these accounts need not be related. Furthermore, as I suggested in
Chapter 2, Section 1, epinikia generally espouse a modern “ethicized”
approach to traditional myths, in contrast with the conception of the
mythical exhibited in communal cult poetry. Finally, a consistently Aegi-
netan identity of the choral subject in N. 7 makes direct access to the
apologetic views of the poet Pindar very difficult.131
This is not to deny that the poem exhibits a marked concern to provide
a proper account of Neoptolemos’s death. That an act of succour for
Neoptolemos is indeed central to the task of the poem is confirmed by
an unusual ending where the speaker declares that his “heart will
affirm that it has never dragged Neoptolemos down by unchanging words”
129
Cf. Paus. 1.13.9 (the Pythia ordering the Delphians to kill Neoptolemos), 10.7.1 and Strabo 9.3.9.
(Neoptolemos attacking Delphi for booty). “No version of the myth is able to disguise that
Neoptolemos came to Delphi as Apollo’s greatest enemy” (Kowalzig 2007: 199). For further
discussion of ancient testimonies on Neoptolemos at Delphi, see Konrat Ziegler in RE 2454–60.
130
Against the “apology theory,” accepted by Lloyd-Jones (1973: 133–6); Carey (1981: 133–6);
Rutherford (2001: 321–3); D’Alessio (2004: 136–8) as well as all scholars of the pre-Second World
War generation from Wilamowitz to H. Fränkel, see the arguments presented in Tugendhat
(1960); Slater (1969: 91–4, 1977: 203–7); Köhnken (1971: 37–86); Burnett (2005: 185–7). Most
detailed are Köhnken’s, who, in particular, explains the different treatment of the myth in the two
texts by a difference in audiences (71–2); similarly: Erbse (1999: 24); Athanassaki (2009: 420–2).
The closest parallel is O. 13, a poem commissioned by a Corinthian, in which the death of the
Corinthian hero Bellerophon is demonstratively omitted (91), although it is presented as a
paradigmatic case of hybris punished in I. 7.44–7. For a detailed assessment of scholarship on
the apology theory, see Kurke (2005: 93–4, n.37).
131
Taking the speaker to be the Theban Pindar is highly problematic, as it both contradicts line 85, and
demands that δαμόταις in line 65 be taken to refer to the Thebans, which is not supported by the
text; ξεῖνος in line 61 means simply ‘friend’, not ‘foreign guest-friend’, see Chapter 1, n. 209. Farnell
discerns that the usual meaning “I am his guest” would make the statement “irrelevant,” but
suggests an unlikely technical reading that relies on the assumption of a biographical ego:“I am the
official πρόξενος of the Aeginetans.”
(τὸ δ’ ἐμὸν οὔ ποτε φάσει κέαρ ἀτρόποισι Νεοπτόλεμον ἑλκύσαι ἔπεσι
102–3).132 Glenn Most reads the conclusion of Nemean 7 as a celebration
of Pindar’s inventive retelling of accepted negative myths – such as the
traditional myth of Neoptolemos’s death at Delphi – conveyed in
“unchanging words” by other poets (and by Pindar himself in Paian 6).133
One may still ask why Pindar is so emphatic about rewriting the story
of Neoptolemos in Nemean 7. In line with the argument recently
advanced by Bruno Currie, I would explain this self-consciously innova-
tive rhetoric by the competing claims of Molossia and Aegina on the
figure of Neoptolemos.134 The poem provides internal clues on the
sources of that concern: the mention of the Molossian kingship of
Neoptolemos, who, as the text stresses, left a ruling dynasty there
(39–40). This reading also allows us to make sense of the seemingly
out-of-place comment in lines 64–7:
ἐὼν δ’ ἐγγὺς Ἀχαιὸς οὐ μέμφεται μ᾿ ἀνήρ
Ἰονίας ὑπὲρ ἁλὸς οἰκέων, καὶ προξενίᾳ πέποιθ᾿, ἔν τε δαμόταις
ὄμματι δέρκομαι λαμπρόν, οὐχ ὑπερβαλών,
βίαια πάντ’ ἐκ ποδὸς ἐρύσαις·
When nearby, the Achaean man who dwells over the Ionian sea does not blame
me. I trust in proxeny, and among the fellow townsmen my gaze is bright, nor do
I act overbearingly, and I push all violence away.
The geographical description makes it clear that the “Achaean man” is a
Molossian, and the passage signals a strong concern with inter-polis links.
This in itself suggests that Pindar needed to provide an account of
Neoptolemos’s travels and death acceptable for both parties involved.135
An unusual task is approached with the apparatus of epinician conven-
tions. By way of the stock-in-trade merism of foreigners and fellow
citizens,136 the poem segues to the “middling” topos of the avoidance of
hybris.
132
I follow Slater in taking φάσει to be an encomiastic future (Slater 2001). Slater, furthermore,
explains this statement as a litotes (1969: 92–3), which it is, but the problem remains as there are no
Pindaric parallels for such an emphatic use of litotes. On the meaning of ἀτρόποισι, see Most (1985:
205–6).
133 134
Most (1985: 206–9). Currie (2005: 342–3). Cf. Burnett (2005: 194–6).
135
As Currie notes, “[i]t seems possible that Molossia, like Aegina, had a stake in the Delphic cult of
Neoptolemos” (2005: 343). I disagree with some aspects of Currie’s argument, such as his positing
the performance of N. 7 at Delphi. Cf. N. 4.51–53 for an interest in Molossia as the territory of
Neoptolemos, displayed from an Aeginetan perspective. For a comparable case of skirmishing for
the Pelopidai between Argos an Sparta, reflected in Pindar’s P. 11, cf. Kurke (2013: 134–44); for
further examples of political contestation of myths in choral lyric, see Kowalzig (2007).
136
O. 7.90, O. 13.3, P. 3.71, P. 4.78, P. 5.57, P. 9.108, I. 1.51, I. 6.70.
Yet why should the Aeginetan speaker be at all apprehensive of the
attitude of the Molossian? An account that casts Neoptolemos in a positive
light, and includes a mention of Molossia, seems to be easily acceptable to
both parties. I suggest that an answer to this question lies in the following
passage, which concludes the narrative of Neoptolemos’s death at Delphi:
εὐώνυμον ἐς δίκαν τρία ἔπεα διαρκέσει·
οὐ ψεῦδις ὁ μάρτυς ἔργμασιν ἐπιστατεῖ,
Αἴγινα, τεῶν Διός τ’ ἐκγόνων. θρασύ μοι τόδ’ εἰπεῖν
φαενναῖς ἀρεταῖς ὁδὸν κυρίαν λόγων
οἴκοθεν.
Three words will suffice for justice consisting in a good name: not false is the
martus who stands by the deeds of your, Aegina, and Zeus’s offspring. It is daring
of me to deem this, a rightful road of discourse for the brilliant achievements
stemming from home [Aegina]. (48–52)137
In light of the Pindaric passages that cast a local tomb as a martus of
athletic contests, discussed above, I suggest that Neoptolemos stands here
as a summoned witness of the successes of Aeginetan victors. He is an
epistatês, an “overseer” of the athletic deeds of the Aeginetans, much as
he is a themiskopos of heroic processions at the shrine.138 The speaker comes
very close to casting Neoptolemos as a numen praesens who contributes to
the success of Aeginetan athletes. Indeed, as the speaker immediately
acknowledges, it is a daring poetic act to link the story of Neoptolemos’s
death and his posthumous residence to these successes.
The logic of the poetic defense of Neoptolemos appears to be curiously
retrospective: the fact that Aeginetans have long been successful in the
Pythian Games, a fact to which Neoptolemos (or his tomb) attests “not
falsely”, emerges as a proof of his good name. Cultic presence, marturia,
poetic boetheia, and the athletic virtues of the laudandi are all collected into
a powerful veridictory nexus. My hypothesis is that such blatant appropri-
ation of Neoptolemos as an Aeginetan hero in the context of the Pythian
Games was possibly an innovative move that, in the context of
137
οἴκοθεν is positioned in such a way that it refers both to the “road of discourse” (the myths of the
Aiakidai Ajax and Neoptolemos) and to “brilliant successes” of the Aeginetan athletes. For other
construals of οἴκοθεν, cf. Wilamowitz (1922: 163) (“von selbst”); Schadewaldt (1928: 55); Thummer
(1957: 107 n.2); Tugendhat (1960: 398) (“vom Hause (vom Ursprung)”); Köhnken (1971: 74–5)
(“von der heimischen Heroensage her”) all take it to refer to the road of discourse; Carey (1981: 157)
(simply, “at home”).
138
The verb epistateô has a broad spectrum of meanings from ‘be in charge of ’ to ‘attend’ and ‘aid’. For
the usage “offspring of the eponymous nymph” = “city population”, cf. I. 7.15; note also fr. 192 (the
Delphians as Apollo’s children).
performance (of which we are lamentably ignorant), called for some extra
rhetorical work in light of Molossia’s claim on the hero.
I thus interpret martus as referring to Neoptolemos’s tomb.139 By
contrast, Stoddart believes that the mythic section concludes with an
assertion of truthfulness of the speaker’s testimony; this is also the view
of most twentieth century Pindarists.140 For Stoddart, this reading is based
on the likelihood that both boathoôn in line 33 and martus in 49 refer to the
same subject.141 Yet one should be wary of collapsing all too easily the
distinction between a specific notion of marturia and a much wider notion
of aid conveyed by the verb boathoein.142 Moreover, the Pindaric speaker
never utters a generic testimony that would apply to each and every
Aeginetan; such a testimony also appears to be ill-suited for an act of
coniuratio, which Stoddart detects in the passage. Pindar in Nemean 7 is
pursuing an agenda that demanded a more nuanced use of the prejuridical
discourse.
5 The mystique of the event: an aspect of

epinician veridictory poetics
Several of the passages already discussed exhibit a concern with attestation
of the victory in situ, at the very site where it took place. This veridictory
pattern, evident in the motif of resident hero-martures as well as in a
reference to the herald’s announcement of the victory in O. 13.100, is
clearly distinct from the demonstration of solidarity through an act of
choral coniuratio. In Olympian 4, however, drawing a distinction between
these two modes of veridiction poses unusual difficulties. As argued by
Thomas Gelzer, this poem likely belongs to epinikia performed at the site
of the victory, rather than on the occasion of the victor’s return to his
home polis. Such poems, described by Gelzer with reference to
Bacchylides’ phrase “Muse born on the spot” (Μοῦσα αὐθιγενής), are
short, have no or reduced mythical narratives, and display a particular,
more immediate attitude to the fact of the victory: in contrast to the
139
Similarly: Fennell (1899: 90); Farnell (1932: 296); Bowra (1964a: 73); Burnett (2005: 193–4).
140
Martus as poet: Wilamowitz (1922: 162); Schadewaldt (1928: 54–5); Tugendhat (1960: 395–6); Segal
(1967: 449–50); Bundy (1986 [1962] 60–1, fn. 66), Lloyd-Jones (1973: 133). Apollo as witness: Carey
(1981: 155); Most (1985: 176–8). Differently, Currie (2005: 313): “whoever bears true witness to
the deeds.”
141
Cf. Segal (1967: 449–50).
142
The latter category can subsume the former, but the two should not be conflated, as Stoddart’s
discussion occasionally suggests (cf. his translation of epikouros as “helper-witness-advocate” 1990
[1980]: 48).
An aspect of epinician veridictory poetics 233
majority of epinikia, their objective is not to conjure the moment of
victory for the home audience, but to express an eager anticipation of
the reception of the news or the “message” (angelia) of the victory.143
Epinikia of this type are very self-conscious of standing at the very origin
of discourse of praise, and this very proximity to the event becomes an
important veridictory strategy.144
A particularly lucid formulation of this aspect of epinician poetics occurs
in Olympian 11, another poem that was performed at the site of the
victory. Here the function of “honey-speaking hymns” – a periphrasis
for epinician poetry – is defined as being twofold, oriented toward the
future and at the same time firmly anchored in the original event:
εἰ δὲ σὺν πόνῳ τις εὖ πράσσοι, μελιγάρυες ὕμνοι
ὑστέρων ἀρχὰ λόγων
τέλλεται καὶ πιστὸν ὅρκιον μεγάλαις ἀρεταῖς·
ἀφθόνητος δ’ αἶνος Ὀλυμπιονίκαις
οὗτος ἄγκειται.
If one achieves success with toil, honey-speaking hymns are accomplished as a
beginning of later stories (logoi) and a reliable pledge (horkion) to great achieve-
ments. This praise is stored up in abundance for Olympic victors.
According to this self-definition, a Pindaric epinikion both motivates the
propagation of future reports or stories (logoi) and is firmly rooted in
the past as a trustworthy horkion of the great achievements, aretai.145
Horkion, technically, is a physical object that was present at the moment
of oath-taking, to be touched by those taking an oath, and whose
persistence, or salience (as in the case of sacrificial meat used as
horkia), guarantees the permanence of the pledge.146 This is also the
original meaning of Greek ὅρκος, the word that later came to mean
‘oath’.147
143
Bacch. Ep. 2.11. Gelzer (1985: 99–101); on angelia in Pindar see Nash (1990 [1976]).
144
Characteristically, Elroy Bundy, sharing in the New Critical premise of not looking beyond the
literary text, overlooks this convention in his celebrated analysis of O. 11. In the end of the poem,
the speaker pledges, using the potent performative ἐγγυάσομαι, to come to Lokris, the home polis
of the victor, presumably for the performance of a full-scale epinikion. ἐγγύη originates in prelaw
(Gernet 1981 [1968]: 198).
145
Especially in the plural, ἀρετά often refers in Pindar to athletic successes (Slater 69–70; s. v. ‘d’).
146
Commentators differ on the construal of ὅρκιον: “a trusty witness on oath” Fennell (1893: 106),
following the scholia, or “the pledge that the victories will be remembered by posterity” (Farnell
1932: 76; Verdenius 1988: 11), simply “pledge on oath” (Slater 389). In N. 9.16, Pindar speaks of
Eriphyle as a ὅρκιον πιστόν, a sworn-upon object that bespeaks loyalty and that is passed between
clans as a token of their tie.
147
Benveniste (1947: 84–6), followed by Gernet (“the thing with which one comes in contact when
one swears an oath” 1981 [1968]: 172).
Notably, Pindar defines epinikion in a way that clearly differentiates it
from epic, which, while implicated in the spread of kleos aphthiton ‘fame
imperishable’, does not boast of direct or full access to the past being
celebrated. The Homeric speaker acknowledges his ultimate ignorance in
the famous address to the Muses in Iliad 2.484–93. Epinikion, by
contrast, issues, as it were, from the mouths of those who have a part,
and a stake, in the glory it celebrates. The distinction points to two very
different modes of veridiction. Epic’s claim to truth is circumstantial,
and dependent on the authority of traditional lore handed down for
centuries. By contrast, epinikion’s veracity is additionally defined by the
willingness of the individual speaker to attest emphatically to the truth of
its statements. This emphatic attestation is predicated not on the exact
knowledge of how a victory has taken place, but rather on an essential,
chronotopic link to the event: poetic discourse is voiced in the same
space-and-time in which the victory it celebrates occurred. As they
anticipate the future celebration in the polis, these poems constitute a
horkion, a salient object that attests and thereby cements the symbolic
value of the victory.
In Isthmian 4.9–11, Pindar seems to generalize this notion of testimony
emerging from the past, praising the manifold achievements of the
Kleonumidai:
ὅσσα δ’ ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπους ἄηται
μαρτύρια φθιμένων ζωῶν τε φωτῶν
ἀπλέτου δόξας, ἐπέψαυ-
σαν κατὰ πὰν τέλος·
Whatever testimonies of the boundless glory of men both alive and dead are blown
toward mankind, they have attained it completely.
These marturia ‘pieces of testimony’ are little more than news, angeliai,
of past glory – encompassing military exploits and aristocratic horse-
breeding – whose echoes reach the present; they are equivalent to
hysteroi logoi ‘later stories’ for which Olympian 11 professes to serve as
a beginning, arkha. Athletic victories, avoidance of hybris in politics,
and acts of proxenia also belong to the aristocratic achievements of this
Theban clan.
In Isthmian 4, marturia is undoubtedly a means of connecting the past
and the present, rather than of forging social ties in the present, but this
connection is construed not legalistically, but as a temporal continuity of
symbolically potent, consequential deeds. Poetic discourse, and especially
the discourse of epinician praise, presents itself as a medium of such
continuity. In this sense, Pindaric poetics participates in the historical in a
way that would be inconceivable in earlier literary forms. Whereas narra-
tive epic stays within the sealed-off domain of the heroic past, and the
poetry of communal cult is concerned with cyclical evocation of traditional
myths, earlier personal lyric, in general, limits its intervention into the
social world to the present moment.
In light of this discussion, we can now turn to the challenges of
Olympian 4, a poem that opens, uniquely, with the speaker’s explicit
self-positioning as a martus.
Ἐλατὴρ ὑπέρτατε βροντᾶς ἀκαμντόποδος Ζεῦ· τεαὶ γὰρ Ὧραι
ὑπὸ ποικιλοφόρμιγγος ἀοιδᾶς ἑλισσόμεναί μ’ ἔπεμψαν
ὑψηλοτάτων μάρτυρ’ ἀέθλων·
ξείνων δ’ εὖ πρασσόντων
ἔσαναν αὐτίκ’ ἀγγελίαν ποτὶ γλυκεῖαν ἐσλοί. (O. 4.1–5)
Zeus, the loftiest driver of the thunder of untiring feet! For it was your
Horai who, by rolling around, have sent me as a martus of the loftiest prizes
(contests ?) to the accompaniment of a song of the multi-toned lyre. Those
who are noble immediately show joy/fawn upon the sweet news when friends
are successful.
Assuming that the poem was performed in Olympia soon after the victory,
its performers comprised the friends of the victor. Given the explicit
reference to nobility (ἐσλοί), the poetic speaker makes no pretense of being
inclusive of the whole citizen body, yet the speaker is also nowhere
identified with the individual poet. A familiar notion of solidarity with
the victor informs lines 4 and 5. What makes this act unusual is that it
comes with a divine prompting. Admittedly, the precise role of the Horai
(Seasons) is disputed; it either refers to the delay in athletic success of
Psaumis, whose advanced age is emphasized elsewhere in the poem (line
10, 26), or, more plainly, to the calendar of the Olympic Games.148 In the
latter case, it might be possible to interpret martus in line 3 as an instance
of a summoned witness, who comes to attend the contests.149 This reading
is, however, probably to be rejected. In light of Pindar’s use of marturia
elsewhere in the epinikia, mere attendance at the games is unlikely to have
called forth such a grandiose statement. More specifically, the phrase
“to the accompaniment of a song of the multi-toned lyre” implies that
148
As Gildersleeve puts it, “It has taken time for Psaumis’s success to ripen” (1885: 163). On the Horai
as the seasons, a construal I find preferable: Farnell (1932: 32). Notably, O. 11, another Mousa
authigenes poem, has a similarly generalized, cosmic opening.
149
Stoddart (1990 [1980]: 32).
the act of marturia is coextensive with the poetic performance, rather than
more broadly applicable to the speaker’s presence at Olympia. Moreover,
ἀέθλων most likely refers to “prizes,” not to “contests,” as the former
reading makes the opening more focused, encomiastic in its intent, and
integrated with the following lines.150
In any case, assuming the poem’s performance at Olympia, the claim of a
martus to “witness” prizes won by Psaumis carries with it no information
value. Rather, upon hearing the sweet news of the victory, friends come to
attest it as a true index of the victor’s aristocratic arete. Thus they anticipate
the full manifestation of the victory’s social significance at Psaumis’s return,
an event the poem gestures forward to. In spite of an emphasis on being
“there and then,” we appear to be distant from a purely epistemic notion of
witnessing which this emphasis might imply for us. Yet, added to the idea of
communal solidarity instrinsic to coniuratio, there is a particular excitement
of standing at the very origin of the chain of angelia.
This reading is confirmed in the antistrophe, where the speaker reverts
to the legal language of the opening lines:
ἐπεί νιν αἰνέω, μάλα μὲν τροφαῖς ἑτοῖμον ἵππων,
χαίροντά τε ξενίαις πανδόκοις,
καὶ πρὸς Ἡσυχίαν φιλόπολιν καθαρᾷ γνώμᾳ τετραμμένον.
οὐ ψεύδεϊ τέγξω
λόγον· διάπειρά τοι βροτῶν ἔλεγχος (O. 4.14–18)
For I praise him, a man very much prepared for expenditures related to horses,
rejoicing in all-receiving hospitalities, and turned with a clean mind to city-loving
Hesykhia (Peace). I shall not stain my statement with falsehood: experience is the
test of mortals [ . . . ]
An overt concern with veridiction (“I shall not stain my statement with
falsehood”) is somewhat ill-suited, from a modern perspective, to the quite
generic assertions about the laudandus that the speaker is advancing. This
passage, in fact, furnishes a very close parallel to the lines with which
I began the survey of Pindar’s use of prejuridical discourse, Partheneion fr.
94b.38–49. In spite of a lack of direct reference to marturia or to oath
taking, the Pindaric speaker here speaks as a partisan witness to the
reputation of the victor.
Summing up the discussion of the three ways of witnessing in Pindar,
it appears that the role of the summoned witness is reserved for locales
150
Pindar uses the adjective ὑψηλός for ἀρεταί ‘athletic achievements’ O. 5.1, I. 5.45, ‘fame’ P. 3.111,
and ‘bliss’ O. 2.22. This suggests that the reading “the loftiest prizes” is preferable to “the loftiest
contests.” Differently, see Fennell (1893: 49).
or resident heroes at the contest (possibly, also for the speaker, in the
beginning of O. 4). In addition, it is possible that Pindar drew on the
emergent notion of witness as a kind of Tatzeuge (in O. 1 and possibly
O. 13). In other contexts, however, I believe that when the Pindaric
speaker utters an oath or comes forward as a martus, we are dealing with a
mimesis of a performative speech act of coniuratio (fr. 94b.39, O. 6.20,
O. 2.92, and N. 11.24); this conclusion is corroborated by the other uses
of marturia in epinikia (I. 5.48, P. 1.88, P. 12.27). Pindar exploits the
social authority of prelaw for a variety of poetic effects. Most crucially,
however, Pindaric lyric engages in a mimesis of social authority inherent
in collective oath taking, coniuratio – a mimesis inflected by the epini-
kion’s choral medium. It appears that this conclusion cannot be extended
to Bacchylidean poetics, which engages with prelaw in a notably different
manner.
In the extant corpus of Bacchylides, the words martus ‘witness’, horkos
‘oath’, and omnumi ‘to swear an oath’ do not occur. Nevertheless, in two of
his epinikia, we encounter a remarkable proto-juridical move, unparalleled
in Pindar. In Ode 5, as the speaker is reporting Hieron’s kelês (single
horse), he leans against or possibly strikes the ground:
ξανθότριχα μὲν Φερένικον
Ἀλφεὸν παρ᾿ εὐρυδίναν
πῶλον ἀελλοδρόμαν
εἶδε νικάσαντα χρυσόπαχυς Ἀώς,
Πυθῶνί τ᾿ ἐν ἀγαθέᾳ·
γᾷ δ᾿ ἐπισκήπτων πιφαύσκω·
οὔπω νιν ὑπὸ προτέ[ρω]ν
ἵππων ἐν ἀγῶνι κατέχρανεν κόνις
πρὸς τέλος ὀρνύμενον·
ῥιπᾷ γὰρ ἴσος βορέα
ὃν κυβερνήταν φυλάσσων
ἵεται νεόκροτον
νίκαν ῾Ιέρωνι φιλοξείνῳ τιτύσκων. (5.37–49)
Golden-armed Eos saw blond-haired Pherenikos, the storm-swift horse, victorious
by wide-eddying Alpheos, and in most holy Pytho. Leaning upon the ground
I declare: the dust from the horses ahead in the contest never stuck to him, urged
on toward the finish: for in his speed he was equal to Boreas, as he rushed forward
obeying the steersman and furnishing a freshly-applauded victory for guest-
friendly Hieron.
The same gesture is employed in Bacchylides’ Ode 8 (the first sixteen lines
of the poem are scarcely legible on the papyrus):
Πυθῶνά τε μηλοθύταν
ὑμνέων Νεμέαν τε καὶ ᾿Ισθ[μ]όν·
γᾷ δ᾿ ἐπισκήπτων χέρα
κομπάσομαι· σὺν ἀλαθείᾳ δὲ πᾶν λάμπει χρέος·
οὔτις ἀνθρώπων κ[αθ’ ῞Ελλα]νας σὺν ἅλικι χρώνω[ι
παῖς ἐὼν ἀνήρ τε π[λεῦ]νας ἐδέξατο νίκας (8.17–25)
. . . hymning sheep-sacrificing Pytho, and Nemea and Isthmos, leaning on/
striking the ground with my hand I will boast – and with truth each thing shines
forth – that no mortal in Greece, a boy or a man, has received more victories in
the same period of time.
Commenting on the participial phrase γαῖ δ᾿ ἐπισκήπτων (χέρα), Rich-
ard Jebb remarks, “The act of touching the sacred Earth meant that the
person who did so invoked the χθόνιοι to punish him if he swore
falsely.”151 I would argue that the Bacchylidean manner of taking an oath
is less sinister and ritually charged than self-consciously literary and
archaizing. Characters in early hexameter poetry on a few occasions swear
oaths touching the ground; that, however, only occurs in mythical
sections, predating the heroic age, or in descriptions of the divine realm.
In Iliad 9, lines 565–6, Althaea, the mother of Meleager, is described as
“beating the many-nurturing earth with her hands” (γαῖαν πολυφόρβην
χερσὶν ἀλοία), “calling on Hades and dread Persephone” (κικλήσκουσ᾿
᾿Αίδην καὶ ἐπαινὴν Περσεφόνειαν). In Iliad 14, Hypnos makes Hera swear
an oath to him that he would indeed be given one of the younger
Kharites in return for his services, and tells her “to grasp the prospering
earth with one hand, and the shining sea with the other.”152 In the
Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Hera appeals to the earth, heaven, and the
Titans, by grasping the earth with her hand (333); she utters a mythos
‘an authoritative utterance’, however, not an oath.153 This suggests that
151
Jebb (1905: 274–5); similarly, see Maehler (1982: 99); Cairns (2010: 225); MacLachlan (2001: 92).
Based on the prejuridical evidence that victims were buried, rather than burned, following the oath
sacrifice, Gernet suggests that “the earth represents the powers of another world, a domain where
the force inherent in an oath will remain deposited and alive, just as the sacrificial knife, buried in
the ground, makes the pledged troth eternal” (1981 [1968] 171). This, however, is primarily relevant
for the promissory oaths, not oaths of affirmation. The oddity of this Bacchylidean usage was
already remarked upon by Wilamowitz in 1898 (154).
152
Il. 14.272–3: χειρὶ δὲ τῇ ἑτέρῃ μὲν ἕλε χθόνα πουλυβότειραν, / τῇ δ’ ἑτέρῃ ἅλα μαρμαρέην.
153
Achilles in Il. 1.245 emphatically casts his scepter, a prejuridical horkos, on the ground, a gesture
repeated by Telemachus in Od. 2.80. In Od. 5.184–5, Calypso calls the earth, heaven and the Stygian
water to witness; cf. Hera’s oath in Il. 15.36 (Callaway 1993).
for the author of the Homeric Hymn, this gesture has already become a
stylistic flourish.154 It is all the more so for Bacchylides.
The peculiar use of the verb episkêptein is notably not Homeric. Louis
Gernet has argued that episkêpsis properly refers to the curse invoked by an
appeal to the divinities of the underworld; Gernet has also related this
usage to Althaea’s act of casting herself upon the earth in Iliad 9.155 If this
reconstruction is correct, Bacchylides’ idiosyncratic use of the verb in the
context of reporting an athletic victory is a case of a misunderstood archaic
custom. The gesture of touching the earth was in most likelihood per-
ceived by the audience as an unrealistic detail; its force derives not from its
appropriation of current social practices but from its participation in a
literary tradition or the imagined world of the past. All of this makes the
Bacchylidean usage notably different from Pindar’s.156
There are other un-Pindaric moments in these passages. Whereas Pindar
is generally uninterested in the details of the actual athletic contest,
Bacchylides in Ode 5 does focus on the actual race.157 As a result, the
passage invites the reader to imagine the speaker uttering the oath as a
witness who was present at the site of the Games at the moment of the
victory and now is engaged in factual reportage. In other words, the
Bacchylidean martus in Ode 5 appears to instantiate a notion of Tatzeuge,
which was becoming increasingly more important, at least in some parts of
Greece, in the course of the fifth century.
In Ode 8, the superlative vaunt of the speaker is very precise, again
un-Pindarically so: “no mortal in Greece, a boy or a man, has received
more victories in the same period of time.” It is this specific claim that calls
forth the gesture of oath taking.158 Again, the purport of this act of
marturia is different from that of an Eideshelfer or a summoned witness,
and closer to that of one reporting a past deed or a fact. In both passages,
the specificity of the assertion suggests an individual, not a collective
speaker, and a notion of truth as conformance to reality seems paramount.
154
Cf. Eur. El. 678, where Electra seems to touch the earth (a gesture probably performed on the stage)
as she and Orestes are appealing to the dead Agamemnon and the Earth. Note that the gesture
seems to be marked as proper to women. For a list of passages on this gesture as a method of
“invoking chthonian deities or ghosts,” see Allen et al. (1936: 249). There is no evidence, however,
that the gesture was combined with oaths in the historical period.
155
Il. 9.569–72. Gernet (1981 [1968]: 184–7).
156
The incommensurability of the pathos-laden descriptor and the triviality of the statement, for von
der Mühll, is a sign of Bacchylides’ modest poetic abilities. “Derart große Worte macht Pindar
nicht, wenn er den Schwur verwendet” (1964: 56).
157
Ep. 5.43–9. Cf. Ep. 9.30–9.
158
Pindaric parallels are characteristically less strongly worded: O. 2.108, P. 2.58–61, N. 6.24–6.
There is an apparent paradox in this conclusion. The description of a
ritual gesture may invite us to imagine the chorus enacting it, in a quasi-
dramatic manner. We lack evidence for whether or not an epinician chorus
was expected to act, in addition to dancing and singing to the musical
accompaniment. In this particular case, dramatization seems unlikely,
since to strike the ground with one’s hand, one would probably need to
squat or sit down.159
There are other strong reasons to resist importing a choral aspect to
this gesture. Bacchylides’ Ode 5, even in comparison to Pindar’s dynast
odes, is unequivocally poet oriented. The poem is remarkable for the
individual poet’s signature in the opening section that lacks good paral-
lels in Pindar, followed by a self-consciously metapoetic image of the
eagle as a solitary bird. As an example of a formulation that sharply
differentiates between the poet and chorus, one may cite lines 14–16:
ἐθέλει {δὲ} γᾶρυν ἐκ στηθέων χέων αἰνεῖν Ἱέρωνα “he [the famous
attendant of Ourania] wishes to praise Hieron by pouring the voice from
[our?] breasts.” These lines mark an explicit self-disavowel on the part of
the chorus, which retains the first-person grammar in this passage pre-
cisely to allow for a clear differentiation between themselves as media and
the poet as the actual enunciator.
Bacchylidean usage thus stands in sharp contrast to Pindar’s. Bacchy-
lides employs a relatively recent notion of martus as a Tatzeuge, which he
cloaks in pseudo-archaic, recherché images. Pindar, by contrast, shuns
both modernity and stylized archaism. Instead, he appears to work with
an established, yet perhaps declining, custom of coniuratio. Unfortu-
nately, the little that we have of earlier choral poetry makes it difficult
to tell whether the choral appropriation of coniuratio was Pindar’s innov-
ation or whether it was the part of an older tradition. Yet as a contrastive
analysis of the evidence of Bacchylides and Pindar has shown, in the first
half of the fifth century BCE choral lyric could employ different modal-
ities of veridiction. However homogenous in its rhetoric this body of
writing may appear to us today, it attests to a variety of means of
constructing poetic authority and poetic discourse. Inasmuch as it
belonged to a transitional period in the history of Greek culture, the choral
lyric of Pindar and Bacchylides can be fruitfully read with an eye to
different diachronic elements: some pointing back to communal song with
159
Cf. Il. 9.568–9; Sittl (1890: 190–1). Sittl points out that the gesture is used for curse or invoking the
dead, not asseveration.
Institutions of veridiction 241
its age-old conventions of form and thought, others pointing forward to
new ways of conceptualizing poetic utterance and the truth.
6 Institutions of veridiction
In “Archaic Truth,” Thomas Cole charts the history of the meanings
associated with truthful discourse and behavior from Archaic to Classical
Greece. In particular, contrary to Heidegger’s tendentious gloss on
a-lêtheia as ‘that which is not forgotten’, Cole shows that the
concept originally referred to ‘conscientious reporting’. In Homer,
correspondence to facts as well as a general notion of genuineness was
instead expressed by the root etu-, which, however, did not develop an
abstract noun equivalent to English truth.160 Other lexical items
conveyed further semantic nuances, such as the root atrek-, which
emphasized precision and punctiliousness. Suggestively, Cole contrasts
the importance of these underlying elements of veridiction to the con-
cern with personal loyalty displayed by the Germanic use of the root
*trewwj – (reflected in German treu and English truth).161 In light of the
centrality of a notion of partisan commitment in prelegal veridiction
in Archaic Greece, this contrast may well be misleading. What is of
principal importance is that behind any concept of truth is a multiplicity
of modes of veridiction that can be called upon to authenticate an
utterance in different social contexts.
As Louis Gernet notes, in prelaw “we recognize a notion of truth that,
instead of being demonstrated, forces acceptance.”162 In that period,
juridical veridiction derives not from the investigation of past events, but
from the authority pure and simple, and sometimes from the undisguised
power of a group of partisan co-swearers. Once an abstract idea of time
evolves, a newly gained mastery of the past places legal truth on a different
footing. Control over time is also central to the constitution of poetic
authority. The mythical past is the province of traditional memory, and
Pindar even redeploys future-oriented, mantic veridiction in a way that
stresses his access to the heroic world. A concern with the future, which
will become an obsession for later poets craving literary immortality, is
only marginally present in Pindar. In Pythian 6, it is not the poet, and not
even a particular poetic artifact, but the metonymic “treasure-trove
of hymns” that is endowed with the ability to withstand the onslaught of
160 161 162

Krischer (1965: 166–7). Cole (1983: 26–7). Gernet (1981 [1968]: 220).
time, figured as rain and stormy wind.163 This “thesaurus” is topographic-
ally consigned to the “Apolline plain” in Delphi, the site of athletic success
and choral, on-site performance. It refers to an occasion for praise, rather
than to a specific text. Poetry’s claim on the future, as well as the recent
historical past, is still anchored in a particular, culturally charged time-and-
space. Yet the process of transferring ritual attributes to a notion of literary
perdurance is nevertheless unmistakable. This is but one kind of conver-
sion of social authority into a literary one. Similarly, the Roman notion of
an auctor is legal in origin.164
The constitution of a literary culture on a preliterary basis implies a
transition from a collective to an individuated mode of authority. One of
the peculiar products of this transition, as I argued in Chapter 1, was a
distinctive kind of authorization through a hypostasized figure of mousikê,
the Muse. Perhaps more importantly, the reliance on the individual, even
biographically specific authorial instance, rather than on the traditional
authority of ‘what they say’ (phatis), demands that literature, at least at
first, becomes enmeshed in the social world: a poetic voice that is individu-
ated is necessarily imbricated in structures of social authority and the
associated veridictory modes. Due to its link with authority and power,
in any society veridiction is subject to institutionalization.165 Literature is
one such institution of truth making, but it did not always exist. To find
its own mode of veridiction, an emergent literary discourse had to exploit
or to engage with already existing social institutions capable of generating
truthful discourse. In Archaic Greece, mantic and (pre-)legal domains
comprise some of the most preeminent of such institutionalized practices.
The evidence I have considered shows that poets could pursue different
strategies in tapping into the resources of the neighboring systems of
culture. Moreover, these systems are subject to their own processes of
transformation, some of which are parallel to those observed in the literary
system. In particular, the communal mode of pre-juridical authorization
peculiar to coniuratio appears to be congenial to the communal cult song,
whereas a professionalized metapoetics invites the posture of a solitary
Tatzeuge. This distinction is pertinent to the difference in the poetics of
marturia between Pindar and Bacchylides. In the case of mantikê, the
Pindaric evidence similarly calls for a stratifying analysis, but of a different
163
P. 6.11–14. Similar diction is characteristic of the exegi monumentum tradition deriving from Horace
Odes 3.30. See Chapter 1, Section 2.
164
Gernet (1981 [1968]: 230).
165
This view is partly inspired by the notion of historically conditioned “regimes of truth” put forward
in Foucault (1972 [1969]).
order. Pindar operates with a sharp distinction between mythical and
contemporary divination, with the former in some cases representing likely
memories of mainstream mantic practices from earlier periods. Poetic ver-
idiction thrives on an image of mantic veridiction, which it claims to restore
in its pristine form. In Pindar, these representations, being limited to mythic
narrative, seem to involve only the authority of traditional lore. The insist-
ence with which the images of perfect human–divine interaction are
employed, however, betokens a self-conscious poetic strategy. The redeploy-
ment of the notion of epidêmia confirms that a different kind of authority is
at play in Pindar’s appropriation of mantic discourse. In Pythian 10 and,
more obliquely, in Pythian 4, the diction of epidêmia is transferred to the
Muse(s), and thus buttresses a new, literary authority. Here ritual supplies
the language of truth, but that language is put to a new use destined for an
important reception in later Western poetics.
Horace begins the third book of his Odes with the following statement:
Odi profanum volgus et arceo.
Favete linguis: carmina non prius
audita Musarum sacerdos
virginibus puerisque canto
I loathe the vulgar crowd and stay aloof.
Guard your tongues: a priest of the Muses,
I sing songs never before heard
to maidens and boys.
In an article first published in 1945 and later included as the last chapter in
his Entdeckung des Geistes, Bruno Snell, commenting on these lines, drew a
distinction between the Greek and the Roman poet’s attitude with regard
to religious institutions. As Snell asserts, “no Greek poet seems to have
spoken of [himself as] a priest of the Muses. Pindar at times calls himself a
prophet of the Muses, but this means only that he communicates the
divine message of the goddesses.”166 For Horace, sacerdos is nothing but an
abstract, albeit highly authoritative, persona subject to explicit, if playful,
appropriation. In contrast, Pindar has a direct and concrete understanding
of particular sacral roles, and thus limits himself to the technically correct
self-designation “a spokesman of the Muses.”
As I have tried to show, this interpretation is correct, and apparent
exceptions – such as fr. 75, where the reconstruction of line 13 postdates
Snell’s original publication, or the prominence of mantic communication
166
Snell (1960 [1946]: 304).
in the epinikia – add nuance to, but do not contradict it. In particular,
Pindar’s “aloofness” is evident in his avoidance of any direct association of
his poetic discourse with the most widespread mantic practices of his time.
Comparisons of the speaker with mantic figures in Pindar only occur in
communal choral poetry, where first-person grammar is only obliquely
implicated in constructing the individual poet’s stance. Whereas in Pindar
the notion of poet as a “spokesman of the Muses” is restricted to non-
epinician poems, Bacchylides is more liberal in the use of that image. As in
the case of different kinds of mantikê, Pindar’s younger colleague attests to
a further step in the development of the professional idea of poetic craft.
One important conclusion of this analysis is that the sacralization of
poetic discourse was not an inherited, but an acquired property – an
aesthetic ideology that emerged the following in its professionalization.
In Archaic Greece, religious and poetic authorities were kept distinct, and
poetic discourse was constituted on the basis of mimesis of social dis-
courses. This mimesis was skillfully attuned to Pindar’s choral medium, as
shown by his use of collective coniuratio in both cult-related and epinician
poetry. Individual authorship does not emerge in confrontation with
communal performance. Quite to the contrary, the new kind of (literary)
discourse is constructed through a redeployment of structures proper to
collective voice.
In conclusion, I would like to propose a distinction within the notion of
poetry as mimesis of socially embedded speech. There are two ways of
construing Pindar’s use of social authority of marturia. One is properly
mimetic, while the other can be termed appropriative. The former assumes
a direct projection of the authority of the Pindaric speaker who comes
forward to make an assertive claim in support of the laudandus. In this
case, the authority of Pindar the poet – or of the chorus as a body of
citizens – is shared with the tyrant or the aristocrat who commissioned the
poem, by analogy with an actual legal procedure. A close consideration of
the Pindaric evidence, however, invites a different reading of poetic
authority. Rather than presuming that it exists and is open to sharing,
the authority of the speaker is being constituted, performatively, by the
very device of authorization: by drawing on socially embedded speech acts,
the speaker poses qua an authoritative speaker. On this view, the subject is
molded as the discourse progresses, based on appropriation of authoritative
speech acts current in the social world. In view of the remarkable malleabil-
ity of the subject position in epinikia, the traditional view of poetic
authority in Pindar as a given should be reconsidered.
Poetic authority emerges as an epiphenomenon of effectively con-
structed literary discourse, which subsists by importing – or appropriating –
proximate social discourses. As we will see in the following chapter, what is
distinctive to literature is its heterogeneity, a protean ability to encompass
and mimic a variety of other verbal forms. Having achieved autonomy as
an institution of veridiction, literature will nevertheless retain a principled
openness to socially embedded uses of language. The preceding discussion
has shown, moreover, that literature’s truth is not merely parasitic on
currently ambient practices. A literary text participates in the longue durée
in more than one way. In addition to being part of a literary tradition, it
keeps alive diachronically antecedent forms of social institutions. This is
most obvious in the case of linguistic and stylistic sedimentation, which in
literature assumes a special authenticating force. Yet the same pattern can
be observed in Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ references to no-longer-current
forms of divination or law. This quality of literature’s historicity – an
ability to retain past forms of social action – is part and parcel of its
function as cultural unconscious, the domain in which – to rephrase
Veselovsky – antiquity is transformed into novelty. One might say that
the past is most alive, for us, in its greatest literary specimens. It is not
incidental that literary forms are best positioned to sustain and communi-
cate this vitality of the past in a changing, oblivious, yet fundamentally
continuous social world.
chapter 4
Genre hybridity and the literary artifact
1 Pindar’s synthetic poetics

The foregoing discussion has placed Pindar in relation to three kinds of
narratives of the emergence of the literary. First, it is the story of the
creation of Archaic Greek literary culture, in which authors and forms
proliferated in tandem and the name of the individual was little more than
a name of a new genre. Second, it is the evolution of the ways in which
meaning, in Archaic and Classical Greek literature, was packaged and
conveyed through metaphors and concepts. Finally, on the level of prox-
imate contextualization, I discussed societal transformation that left its
marks on verbal art, with particular reference to forms of religion and law
that, themselves subject to change in the late Archaic period, were vari-
ously appropriated within the emergent literary discourse. These narratives
converge to suggest that Pindar does not simply reflect or instantiate
historical processes which his art, in part, illustrates, but takes an active
position as an innovator in all three domains: by forging a distinctive
metapoetics, by experimenting with the tenor-vehicle structure, and by
redeploying antiquated social forms for poetic purposes.
In this chapter, I turn to a detailed examination of Pindar’s “work on
genre,”1 which similarly goes far beyond the kind of hybridization that can
be regarded as normative for the renewal of literary forms. Possibly for the
first time in the history of Greek literature, Pindar displays a systematic
awareness of the synthetic nature of his poetic medium. This recognition
marks the crystallization of literary authorship as a poetic strategy. From
now on, authors not only give their names to proliferating forms, and
display different degrees of metapoetic awareness; they can step forward to
claim responsibility for the mixed constitution of these forms. For this
1
I adapt Hans Blumenberg’s term “work on myth” (Arbeit am Mythos), which he uses to describe
modernity’s incessant recycling of inherited lore (1985 [1979]).
246
Pindar’s synthetic poetics 247
reason, I approach the hybridity of Pindaric epinikion as a twofold
problem, both as an objective fact of the history of Archaic Greek poetic
forms and as an element that enters Pindar’s emphatically individuated
metapoetics.
Might the crystallization of the individual author as a poetic agent be
due to a certain intensification of the fusion of forms at the end of the
Archaic period? This is a likely hypothesis, on theoretical grounds, but
one that can be neither verified nor disproved. What matters most is that
the synchronization of diachronically distinct formal strata is recognized in
Pindar as the work of a particular poet. It might also be pertinent that,
within Greek literary history, epinikion is a short-lived genre: it probably
originated only a generation before Pindar and was not destined for
immediate continuation in the Classical period. It may thus have been a
form that welcomed experimentation, and Pindar was successful, one may
say with hindsight, in exploiting its historical transience and the concomi-
tant potential for a synthesis of inherited forms in such a way as to propel
epinikion – remolded as the Pindaric ode – well beyond his own time.
To reiterate, perhaps the chief value of Pindar’s poetry for comparative
literary history lies in the particular form of authorial self-consciousness it
displays. Even as epinikion recombines preexistent forms with an intensity
unmatched in other early lyricists, these forms are subjected to careful
calibration. Notably, the epinician speaker in Pindar usually steps forward
precisely at the moments of transition within the text of the poem,
suturing together its ostensibly disparate parts. This is most obvious in
the “break-off ” device, when the speaker forcefully interrupts the mythic
narrative in order to turn to his encomiastic task. One could hardly
imagine a more eloquent textual testimony to the dominant conflict of
Pindar’s poetics – the conflict between the communal mode of authoriza-
tion, inherent in cult song and expressed in myth, and individuated
authorship, signalling the uniqueness of the poetic commission.
The hypertrophy of Pindar’s first person is directly related to the
synthetic nature of his texts. It is surely not coincidental that the ancient
scholia to Pindar’s epinikia contain what is very likely to be the first
attestation of the Greek term σύνθεσις in the meaning ‘(poetic) compos-
ition’.2 Furthermore, it was this quality of Pindar’s epinikia that accounted
for their renaissance in the early modern period, when the “Pindaric”
occupied the center of the system of lyric genres, serving as the principal
poetic medium for commenting on historical and political events. As Stella
2
Botta and Schironi (1998: 1058). See n. 21 in this chapter.
248 Genre hybridity and the literary artifact
Revard observes, at that time the “Pindaric ode was perceived as a hetero-
geneous medium, a poetic catch-all.”3 Essential elements of that early
modern genre were sudden shifts in subject and tone, as well as digression.
Pindaric digressive poetics had its proponents and critics. Samuel Cobb, an
adherent of the Cowleyan irregular Pindaric, insists: “In my digressions
and transitions I have taken care to play always in sight, and make every
one of them contribute to my main Design.”4 With a similar apologetic
intent, Boileau put forward the famous notion of the “beau désordre” of
the Pindaric ode, in effect reconciling “Pindaric” poetics with Neoclassi-
cism. And much later, T. S. Eliot, in defense of the metaphysical poets
(Cowley included) against Johnson, would observe that “a degree of
heterogeneity of material compelled into unity by the operation of the
poet’s mind is omnipresent in poetry.”5
In his seminal article “The Ode as an Oratorical Genre,” Yuri Tynianov
describes the modern ode as a “constructive tendency” rather than “a
finalized, closed genre”:
This is why this elevated genre had the capacity to attract and draw into
itself all sorts of new material, to be vitalized at the expense of other genres
and finally be changed almost out of all recognition as a genre, and yet, as
long as the formal elements were fixed to the basic speech function, the
orientation, never ceased to be recognized as an ode.6
This receptivity of the pan-European public ode is historically dependent
on the poetics developed by Pindar in the first part of the fifth century
bce.
In its multifariousness, the Pindaric ode, among poetic genres, provides
an analogue to the novel’s position with respect to prose genres. In his
work, Mikhail Bakhtin has emphasized the heterogeneity of the novel,
which, for him, is a quintessential modern genre because it is open to
historical interference.7 Yet there is no single modernity. Late Archaic and
Classical Greece similarly represents a change-driven society that displays
emergent categories of secularist and historical thought. In fact, a perceived
acceleration of historical time may result in manifestly heterogeneous
forms. Beside Pindaric epinikion and the modern novel, one may mention
3
Revard (2009: 257). In particular, it was the major resource for generically hybrid lyric in which
mourning for the dead could be combined with praise for the living and with “philosophical”
reflection; Revard discusses relevant poems by Ben Jonson, Milton, and Cowley (223–56).
4
The Preface to The Female Reign (London, 1709), sig. a2V. Cited in Revard (2009: 191).
5 6 7
Eliot (1961 [1921]: 283). Tynianov (2003 [1928]: 585). Bakhtin (1984a [1963]).
here the late-classical novelistic satire (Bakhtin’s “Menippean satire”)8 and,
as I argue in what follows, such manifestly coherent forms as analytic
historiography, philosophical dialogue, and tragedy.
Pindar’s work on genre can be recognized at several levels. I would like
to begin with a hypothesis pertaining to the deepest layer of sedimentation.
Yuri Lotman argues for a fundamental distinction between two kinds of
plot: mythological plots that have a cyclical nature (and thus do not
properly qualify as “plots” in the modern sense of the word) and anecdotal
stories that register aberrations from the cosmic order. There are thus “two
diametrically opposed types of text – the one describing the regular course
of events, and the other, chance deviations from that course.”9 It was “the
fixing of unique and chance events, crimes, calamities – anything con-
sidered the violation of a certain primordial order” that constituted the
historical kernel of plot-narration.10 Mythical narration, Lotman remarks,
is communal in the sense that it equally concerns all members of the
community: “Inasmuch as the microcosm of man’s internal world and the
macrocosm of the surrounding universe are identified, any narrative about
external events can be perceived as having an intimate personal relevance
to anyone in the audience. Myth always speaks about me.”11 By contrast,
anecdotal plots drawing on accidents and news are always about
“somebody else.”
The coexistence of these two kinds of plot fundamentally informs the
genre of epinikion: Pindar has to present texts about “somebody else” as if
they were relevant to the community. Focusing on the sociological aspects
of Pindar’s poetics, Leslie Kurke points out that since epinikion must have
catered to the ideologies of both the aristocratic victor and his fellow-
citizens it “deployed its generic hybridity in the service of reconciling in
performance individual and community, elitist and middling values.”12
What I would like to emphasize is the fundamentally innovative aspect
of this generic task.
How does Pindar reconcile the cosmic and the accidental? One answer
to this question is that he projects the level of the historical onto the level
of the mythical, by selecting myths that can be interpreted as pertaining to
8
For an early formulation of this view, see Bakhtin’s article on Satire (1940).
9 10 11
Lotman (1979 [1973]: 170). Lotman (1979 [1973]: 163). Lotman (1979 [1973]: 163).
12
Kurke (2007: 156); cf. Kurke (1991: 5–7). More recently, Kurke has explained the prominent ego in
Paian 6, admittedly unusual for this genre, as “an effect of the different interests the poem is
required to negotiate” (2005: 94), seeing that it was likely intended for both a Delphian and an
Aeginetan chorus.
the victor.13 If we approach Pindaric epinikia as unitary, coherent texts, it
seems inevitable that we adopt a version of this explanation. Yet the
principles of identification, imposed by myth, and of particularization,
resulting from Pindar’s commitment to family and polis history, are clearly
at odds. Pindar is notably averse to straightforward comparisons between
the victor and the mythical hero, such as would become usual in later
panegyric. The heroic world of myth and the domain of lived history,
in the Archaic period, are still disjunct. This explains the intrinsic difficulty
of reading Pindar’s myths as in some sense “allegorical” of immediate
historical circumstances. Myth in Pindar is first and foremost an element
of polis lore. It derives from the communal aspect of epinikia, and should
thus be approached as a phenomenon of the history of forms. Even as it
was being transformed into occasional poetry composed in honor of living
individuals, epinikion retained prominent elements of communal cult hymn.
To posit an immediate utility of the mythic narrative for the encomi-
astic task is to fail to discern, or to take for granted as already completed,
the complex work that the Pindaric form is doing to remold these mythic
survivals while preserving their authorizing potency. It is suggestive, for
instance, that in comparison to mostly locally minded commissions for
aristocratic clans, poems written for tyrants, such as O. 1, P. 2, and P. 3,
appear to exhibit a more pronounced parallelism between the myth and
the laudandus. It is not coincidental that these poems are also notable for a
more ostentatiously individualistic speaker. The inflated epinician ego is
called forth by the innovatory quality of the form, and this quality is
particularly apparent in the case of choral songs containing myths, yet
transposed outside a civic context.
It is important to remember that Pindar could dispose of no sizeable
preestiblished literary authority. Instead, the authority of the Pindaric
speaker relied upon a variety of discursive resources. These are the primary
and secondary genres that epinikion incorporates and combines. Some
of the more obvious ones are (among primary genres) victory announce-
ment delivered by an angelos ‘messenger’,14 an oath of a martus, praise
13
For an explication of this methodological procedure, which goes back to Boeckh (cf. Most 1985:
40–1), see Erbse (1999) (“Tendenz zur Vorbildlichkeit” 32). A residual allegoricity is endemic to a
Bundyist approach to epinikion as encomium, since otherwise myth would have to be deemed
irrelevant (Young 1968: 19–20; Slater 1977: 195–6; Slater 1984: 250–64). In favor of a metaphor-like
likeness that is “never fully pressed,” see Finley (1955: 40–5). Silk (2012: 357) speaks of linkage by
association rather than by analogy.
14
The significance of this generic frame in Pindaric epinikion is investigated by Laura Nash
(1990 [1976]).
offered by fellow-celebrants, congratulations extended by a guest-friend
from a distant city of Thebes, and (among secondary genres) hymnic
address to the divine, erotic encomium, mythic aetiology, didactic
hypothêkê, oracular pronouncement. As I argued in Chapter 1, the
distinctive characteristic of literary texts is the capacity not only to
allude to, but to claim to be an instance of, more than one genre.15
In this respect, Pindaric epinikion instantiates a more general phenom-
enon of genre innovation through continuous remapping of preexistent
forms. In its emphatic hybridity, however, epinikion also points forward
to the Classical age, which saw the birth of several new compound
genre formations that would have a long history in the West.
The prime example of such a formation was Attic drama, which was
theorized precisely as an instance of illegitimate mixture of genres – and
contrasted with the Archaic system of distinct lyric genres – in Plato’s Laws
698b–700e.16 Ironically, as Nietzsche has noted long ago, the form of
Platonic dialogue itself can be fruitfully analyzed as an innovative genre
that appropriates a number of preexistent generic forms.17 The same
reasoning can be extended to such monumental achievements of the
Classical age as Herodotus’s cultural ethnography (merging Homeric
epic, popular storytelling, and “Aesopic” advice) and Thucydides’s histori-
ography (oratory, scientific writings of the physiologoi, tragic
emplotment).18 Pindar’s epinikion, even as it synthesizes a whole spectrum
15
For Leslie Kurke, the synthetic nature of Pindaric epinikion is ultimately motivated by the genre’s
main task, the reintegration of the victor: “The texture of epinikion as ceremonial also includes the
incorporation of a whole set of ritual acts, objects, and gestures. Within the space of the poem,
Pindar evokes funeral libations, marriage ceremonies, the giving of recompense, the offering of
hospitality, and the solemn dedication of crowns and agalmata. Both metaphors and ritual mimesis
cause this newcomer genre to resonate with its audience’s most deeply felt cultural models, and so
make its message of reintegration compelling” (1991: 259). In spite of epinikion’s overtly synthetic
nature, it is misleading to speak of its “generic indeterminacy” (Currie 2005: 21–2, passim). However
many genres Pindaric epinikion may allude to, there is rarely any doubt that it retains the function
of victory ode, as is obvious from the observance of a complex set of rhetorical conventions specific
to this genre (recasting of a victory announcement, victory catalogue, and many others).
16
Svenbro (1984); Nagy (1990b: 108–9). On tragedy as the “final, hybrid flower” of “the entire Greek
tradition of poetry from Homer onward”: Herington (1985, quotation on p. ix).
17
“If tragedy had absorbed all earlier artistic genres, so the same might be said in an eccentric sense of
the Platonic dialogue, which, created from a mixture of available styles and forms, is suspended
between narrative, lyric, and drama, between prose and poetry, and so broke the strict older law of
the unity of linguistic form” (Nietzsche 2000 [1872] 77).
18
On genres in Plato, see Nightingale (1995); Kurke (2011: 301–60). On the fabular element in Plato
and in Herodotus, see Kurke (2011: 301–431). On tragic emplotment in Thucydides, see Connor
(1984). Cf. Harrison (2007) on “generic enrichment” in Horace and Virgil. Incipient discursive
heterogeneity can also be observed in the Homeric epic, but in this case imported genres do not
appear to be constitutive of a new kind of epic. On “embedded” primary genres in Homer, cf.
Martin (1989: 85): “. . . the rule-bound nature of discourses within the poem, coupled with the
of Archaic literary and nonliterary forms, stands at the beginning of a new
poetics of genre, which was to a large extent determined by highly experi-
mental projects undertaken by individual authors. The innovative nature
of most of these projects escapes our notice, since they provided a founda-
tion to highly productive forms in the later periods.
The synthetic constitution of Pindaric epinikion deserves more sustained
analysis also from the viewpoint of its position in the history of Western
lyric. Its legacy to the later European ode consisted not only in legitimating
generic heterogeneity. It was within Pindar’s poetics that some of the central
devices of the later European ode evolved, including a “floating,” indefinite
subject, the claim to a poetic presence constructed by analogy with ritual
presence, and a paradoxical, nonmimetic temporality and topography (the
two parameters subsumed by Bakhtin’s notion of chronotope). These
devices are directly related to Pindar’s amalgamation of different genre
frames. As motivations for these formal developments, I would cite the
conflicting principles of individual authorship and choral performance, the
task of correlating ritual present with mythic past, and the need to incorpor-
ate a multiplicity of locales within a single performance script (the locus of
victory, several places in the victor’s hometown, its metropolis, etc.). As in
the case of diegetic frames, once an external motivation is sedimented as
poetic form, the device in question is inherited by all later texts that claim to
continue the older genre for which this motivation had existed.
What bears emphasizing is the productive quality of emergent, inchoate
literary forms. All these distinctive “Pindaric” traits arose because of a
failure of epinikion to eradicate survivals. Yet this failure does not mark a
shortcoming on the part of the poet. Rather than seeking to merge
preexistent frames in a seamless manner, Pindar repeatedly foregrounds
the nature of his texts as a textual compound designed to respond to several
social tasks at once.
Perhaps the most eloquent testimony to Pindar’s self-consciously syn-
thetic poetics that is necessitated by epinikion’s many functions is the
beginning of Olympian 3:
Τυνδαρίδαις τε φιλοξείνοις ἁδεῖν καλλιπλοκάμῳ θ’ Ἑλένᾳ
κλεινὰν Ἀκράγαντα γεραίρων εὔχομαι,
Θήρωνος Ὀλυμπιονίκαν ὕμνον ὀρθώσαις ἀκαμαντοπόδων
ἵππων ἄωτον. Μοῖσα δ’ οὕτω ποι παρέστα μοι . . . (O. 3.1–4)
comparative evidence for such poetic genres, should lead us to believe that the construction of the
massive epic draws on actually existing socio-poetic genres” (1989: 85). See also Faraone (2015).
I pray that I prove pleasing to the guest-loving Tyndaridai and to Helen of
beautiful locks, as I am honoring famous Akragas, having set up a hymn for an
Olympian victory of Theron as a choicest prize for horses of untiring feet. In this
way the Muse has, I trust, taken a stand next to me [ . . . ]
The text begins by stating, in a somewhat coded way, its three motivations:
cult song for the ritual of theoxenia in which Kastor and Polydeukes and
their sister Helen were thought to be entertained as guests, praise for the
city of Akragas, and a celebration of Theron’s chariot victory in Olympia
(the reference to the chariot race – the most prestigious type of athletic
contest – is implied in the mention of a plurality of horses). Pindar
presents the complexity of this threefold task as the reason for the direct,
quasi-authorial involvement of the Muse, whose personal tie to the poet is
buttressed by a “combination of certainty and reserve” conveyed by the
particle ποι.19 The passage that follows specifies the three ingredients that
the text must “mix together in a fitting way” (συμμεῖξαι πρεπόντως) to
achieve the desired goal: the “varied voices” of the phorminx (φόρμιγγά τε
ποικιλόγαρυν), the more rudimentary “shout” of the auloi (βοὰν αὐλῶν),
referring to the rhythm of the dance, and – finally, and hence most
importantly – “the arrangement of words” (ἐπέων τε θέσιν).20
The compound nature of epinician performance, in turn, calls for the
foregrounding of the authorial presence: only a poet-specialist can assure
that the text is well-fitted for the particular occasion. The text, in other
words, must become an artifact. The conventional way of marking the
poet-composer’s presence in a text designed for choral performance is
by the topos of heurêsis ‘invention’, which is found as early as in Alcman.21
19
Verdenius (1987: 10). Note the use of verbal aspect in this passage: the fact that the “hymn” is not a
spontaneous outburst of praise, but a carefully constructed artifact is brought out by the aorist
participle form ὀρθώσαις ‘having set up’. By contrast, the honor bestowed upon the city is a
function of the ongoing choral performance, hence the present-system aspect of γεραίρων
‘honoring’. Finally, the fact that the “pleasure” derived from the text by the gods is limited in
duration and purpose to the particular ritual event (rather than more loosely linked to Pindar’s
poetic pursuit) is conveyed by the aorist form of the infinitive ἁδεῖν ‘to prove pleasing’.
20
The priamel, which postpones the most significant member to the end, shares this principle with triads
that obey “Behaghel’s Law” (the last member is longer than the preceding ones; cf. West 2007: 116–20).
ἐπέων τε θέσιν is mentioned last, and is the heaviest item in terms of combined syntactic complexity
(genitive and nominative) and length of the phrase. On the music of aulos ‘reed pipe’ as having a
principally rhythmical nature (in contrast to string instruments), see Martin (2003). Differently, see
Heath (1988: 185): “the failure to mention dance at O. 3.8–9 is especially noteworthy.”
21
Fr. 39: ϝέπη τάδε καὶ μέλος Ἀλκμὰν / εὗρε γεγλωσσαμέναν / κακκαβίδων ὄπα συνθέμενος. Note
that the reference to heurêsis occurs in a sphragis that includes Alcman’s name. The meaning of
συνθέμενος is disputed (Campbell 2.425); in Pindar’s P. 4.277, it means ‘to take up, to observe’ a
dictum. Pindar, like Homer, only uses this verb in the middle voice; the active voice with the
meaning ‘to construct’ and (metonym) ‘to compose’ is attested only in the Classical period. By using
In employing this notion, Pindar again emphasizes the effort of fusing, or
fitting together, disparate elements: “I devised/invented a new, still glossy
way of fitting the sound of glorious celebration to the Dorian sandal” (μοι
νεοσίγαλον εὑρόντι τρόπον / Δωρίῳ φωνὰν ἐναρμόξαι πεδίλῳ / ἀγλαό-
κωμον). Elsewhere, Pindar uses “Dorian,” along with “Aeolian” and
“Lydian,” in what appear to be references to musical modes.22 Curiously,
these epithets can be combined within one poem (O. 1, fr. 191), which, as
suggested by Gregory Nagy, points to a certain self-conscious “synthetic”
effect aimed at by Pindar.23
While the musical effects of Pindaric performances are unrecoverable,
there is ample evidence for an aggressive poetics of genre mixture in the texts
of the epinikia. A particularly notable example is Isthmian 1. As Leslie Kurke
points out, Bundy’s reading of the poem as a conventional epinikion fails in
precisely those moments where we can register an intrusion of an “embed-
ded genre.”24 Most strikingly, the poem begins with what appears to be the
poet’s apologia: he had to lay aside his work on a paian for the Keans to
celebrate a Theban athletic victory, since he puts the business of his
homeland even above askholia ‘lack of free time’ (καὶ ἀσχολίας ὑπέρτερον
θήσομαι). Surprisingly, the speaker goes on to declare that
ἀμφοτερᾶν τοι χαρίτων σὺν θεοῖς ζεύξω τέλος,
καὶ τὸν ἀκερσεκόμαν Φοῖβον χορεύων
ἐν Κέῳ ἀμφιρύτᾳ σὺν ποντίοις
ἀνδράσιν, καὶ τὰν ἁλιερκέα Ἰσθμοῦ
δειράδ’ (I. 1.6–10)
the term synthetic poetics I am therefore not implying any privileged etymological link to Pindar’s
usage, but it is nevertheless suggestive that in the later period literary com-position was conceived of
as a syn-thetic activity (Latin compōnō from which the English compose derives may be a calque from
Greek). Pindar’s own vox propria for the effort of fitting together elements of discourse/performance
is harmozô. To speak of a harmonic poetics, however, would be misleading: even as Pindar draws
attention to his effort of composition as fitting together, the resulting poem is revealed as not fully
harmonized.
22
Prauscello (2012: 65–82).
23
Nagy (1990b: 94), taking the epithet as a reference to the dactylo-epitrite meter used in Olympian 3.
Cf. Nagy (1990b: 341–2) on the “ideology of fusion” peculiar to Pindar’s choral medium. Contra
Nagy, there is no foundation for the view that “Dorian” can refer to choral dialect: whenever it is
used, it refers to music or dance, not text (“Dorian lyre” [O. 1.17], “Dorian sandal” [O. 3.5]; also two
fragments [67, 191] where reference to dialect is out of the question). A similar unwarranted
assumption is made by Forssman with regard to P. 2 (1966: 20). On the significance of the
Lydian mode in Pindar, cf. Nash (1990: 99–101).
24
Bundy (1986 [1962]: 35–92); Kurke (1988). Kurke acknowledges the influence of Richard Martin’s
work on embedded genres in hexameter poetry (103, citing Martin 1984; see n. 18 for a relevant
quote from Martin 1989). Note also Bundy’s admission that parts of Isthmian 1 “may be treated as
complete generic wholes” (1986 [1962]: 7).
Ι will yoke together, with the gods’ help, the accomplishment of both graces
[=commissions], celebrating with a khoros both Phoibos of unshorn hair in sea-girt
Keos with marine men, and the sea-flanked ridge of Isthmos . . .
How are we to interpret Pindar’s claim to combine the two commissions?25
An answer is suggested by the syntax and the diction of these very lines:
Pindar constructs the sentence in a way that underscores the similarity of
the two locales involved (ἀμφιρύτᾳ ‘sea-girt’ and ἁλιερκέα ‘sea-flanked’ are
essentially synonymous) and, by making both an object of the verb
χορεύων, boldly claims for the epinician performance, the authority of a
cult song performed by a khoros. Such a claim is indeed quite extraordin-
ary: Pindar never calls the chorus performing an epinikion a khoros, most
likely due to the religious significance of the term.26 The mention of the
Kean commission is thus far from being gratuitous: by a syntactic sleight-
of-hand, which one is almost tempted – given ζεύξω in line 6 – to identify
as a zeugma, it allows the poet to appropriate for the given epinician
occasion the authority of a cult song.
In lines 15–16, the speaker takes this display of mastery over traditional
discursive forms even further as he says that he will “fit him [Herodotos,
the victor] into a hymn of Kastor or of Iolaos” (ἐθέλω / ἢ Καστορείῳ ἢ
Ἰολάοι’ ἐναρμόξαι νιν ὕμνῳ). It is not clear to us how these two forms of
cult song are related to the epinician occasion in question, or to the paian
Pindar is composing for the Keans. The same appropriative dynamic is,
nevertheless, unmistakable: the text is converted into an instance of a
certain generic frame by a mere allusion to that frame.
In contrast to Olympian 3, where a synthetic poetics appears to be
motivated by the complex nature of the occasion, the bewildering interplay
of genres in the opening of Isthmian 1 suggests that Pindar pursues this
poetics as a self-conscious strategy in a bid to supplement the expectation
of what a victory ode is and what it can achieve.27 Kurke suggests that the
principal encomiastic significance of the use of a variety of genres in
Isthmian 1, a “pentathlon of genres,” lies in the poet’s imitation of the
25
This has been seen as a problem at least since Bury, who finds the link in the praise of Apollo, which
is relevant to both commissions (1892: 10). For Bundy (1986 [1962]: 39), the joining of two disparate
items is a conventional focusing device (“foil”) preparing for the entrance of the victor (“name cap”);
how exactly the two are joined together is essentially irrelevant. There is no doubt that ζεύξω is an
example of the encomiastic future: the “yoking” of the two genres is accomplished within the text of
the poem, by the very words spoken (Kurke 1988: 102).
26
This explanation has been suggested by J. M. Bremer (1990: 55).
27
This, I suggest, is also the motivation behind the image of tokos ‘interest’, extra payment delivered
by Pindar, very likely because his poem is late (cf. Bundy 1986 [1962]: 33).
victor’s athletic achievement.28 In my view, however, we must speak of a
poetics of generic fusion in Pindar that is not unique to this poem. What is
at issue is not merely the poet’s “athletic” mastery over discourse, but the
specific uses to which genres are put in epinikia. I attempt to substantiate
this view in the analyses of two Pindaric epinikia in the following section.
Pindar’s unwillingness to smooth over the junctures of various discur-
sive frames might be regarded as an instance of what Viktor Shklovsky
terms the “baring of the device” technique. In their historical context,
Pindar’s explicit references to epinikion’s various tasks are perhaps due to
the genre’s audience-oriented, exoteric poetics.29 On the level of poetics, as
a cursory look at Isthmian 1 has suggested, manifest generic heterogeneity
results in a text that defies linear, narrative order, striving instead for a
certain cumulative effect. To offer a radical version of this hypothesis, one
may say that Pindar’s epinikia often operate in a way that is different from
more familiar kinds of text. In Chapter 1, I proposed a basic distinction
between two modes of text production: the mimetic mode, where the text
is presented as a script of a sequence of verbal acts that take place in real
time, and the diegetic, or narrative, mode, which relies on authorial
mediation. Texts of Archaic Greek lyric employ, and often combine, both
modes (Archilochus’s iamboi tend to be mimetic, melic verse diegetic, and
elegy can be either).
Pindar’s epinikia make use of an elaborate diegetic apparatus, which
they in part inherit from hymnic cult-related lyric. Yet the multiple
functions of the victory ode make the structure of the text much more
complex than the traditional sequence of a hymnic address followed by a
mythic narrative. Even beyond the genres that are relevant to particular
odes, an epinikion normally includes the following segments: hymnic
(prooimial) address; report of the victory announcement; address to/praise
for the victor; praise for his clan/polis; mythic narrative (which may not in
any obvious way be connected to the victor); gnomic utterances.30 Some of
these segments – in particular, those that have a direct encomiastic
28
Kurke (1988: 113).
29
Cf. Bundy’s notion that the material found in Pindar’s epinikia is “in its primary intent
encomiastic,” which, in my view, implies that hermetic elements should not be viewed as central
to Pindaric poetics (Bundy 1986 [1962]: 3; for the reception of this much cited dictum, cf. Slater
1977: 196–7). In contrast, Nagy (1990b: 148–9), in his discussion of Pindaric epinikion, puts
emphasis on the link between ainos ‘praise’ and ainigma ‘riddle’. Against the hermeticist approach
to Pindar, see Section 6.
30
These conventional segments of the epinikion are defined in scholarship with some variation, which
is not significant to the present discussion. On the composition of Pindaric epinikion, see Hamilton
(1974); Greengard (1980); Gasparov (1981).
function – operate in the mimetic mode of quasi-spontaneous celebratory,
komastic procession (in reference to the epinician chorus, kômos appears to
serve as a lexical substitute for the forbidden khoros).
As in the case of Isthmian 1, Pindar often makes no effort to create an
overarching mimetic or diegetic frame. The result is a mode of text
production that should properly be distinguished from both the mimetic
and the diegetic, and which I propose to term topical. This mode is shared
by certain genres of lyric in the Western tradition (particularly those with a
Pindaric genealogy) as well as by rhetorical texts that operate by accumu-
lating topoi, each of which generates an effect of its own, rather than by
constructing a coherent narrative or evoking a particular object. Needless
to say, topoi are also found in abundance in narrative or mimetic texts; by
topical I refer to the kind of texts that reject the two basic principles of
coherence derived from either the object of representation or the subject of
narration.
Within the rhetorical tradition, the theory of inventio is closely linked to
the selection of topoi: it is the task of the rhetor to “find” effective topoi/
topics that would achieve the desired goal of discourse (be it persuasion,
praise, or blame). For example, in Topica, Cicero has little to say about the
distribution of the topoi within the speech, or their order (97–8). The
structure of the oratio is not linear; it is rather composed of several blocks
that invite particular rhetorical moves, and which are not necessarily
related to each other. The resulting discourse is not an organic whole,
but a dynamic artifact meant to effect a change in the world. This, in
particular, pertains to the production of discursive authority, which, as
Cicero perceives, resides not just in the persona of the speaker, but in the
auctoritas of a multitude of agents whose discourse the rhetor appropriates:
witnesses, who are authoritative either by nature (because of their virtuous
character) or due to circumstances peculiar to the case, texts with divine
authority (oracles, portents, visions in sleep, etc.), or men of repute,
including poets (Topica 73, 77–8). Whereas Cicero regards the topics of
auctoritas as “external” to the nature of the case, “internal” topics include
definition, comparison, syllogism, (ad-hoc) etymology, and so forth
(25–71). All of these topics contribute to a persuasive speech, whose success
is ultimately determined by the sum-total of appropriate topoi.
Pindaric epinikion employs a similar appropriative dynamic of generat-
ing discursive authority. Even at the cost of what later readers of Pindar
would dismiss (or admire) as certain incoherence, Pindar allowed a free
interplay of preexistent authoritative genres. My approach thus comple-
ments the rhetorical reading of Pindaric epinikion put forward by Elroy
Bundy, who sought to bring to light an overarching grammar of stable
generic elements of Pindaric epinikion.31 Bundy identified recurrent clus-
ters of conventional devices, which tend to prepare – serve as “foil” – for
the mention of the victor’s name. It has been pointed out repeatedly that
Pindaric epinikia are much less predictable than Bundy’s analysis implies.32
To take the case of Isthmian 1, one of the two poems treated in depth in
Bundy’s Studia Pindarica, the opening “apologia” on the paianic commis-
sion, as well as the mention of the Kastoreion, are not satisfactorily
explained by the conventional rhetorical sequences into which they are
fitted. Yet such was Bundy’s principled position, whose polemical thrust
was directed against the then-widespread view of Pindar as a poet of
irrelevancies: Bundy sought to legitimate these apparent irrelevancies as a
(semantically void) content of rhetorically valid formal structures.
Bundy’s reconstruction of the basic grammar of epinikion, quite simply,
does not tell the full story about the workings of literary form in Pindar.
Non-encomiastic (and thus apparently irrelevant) segments of Pindar’s
poems take on a rhetorical validity inasmuch as they draw on preexistent
generic forms well known to the audience. To understand what kind of
rhetorical supplementation is achieved in each particular poem, these
generic forms must be identified and their history and contemporary
resonance reconstructed. This task calls for a combination of literary and
cultural-historical analysis, since genres employed by Pindar include both
primary genres of everyday interaction and secondary genres, some of them
of literary provenance.
In the following sections, I begin with an elucidation of how Pindar’s
topical strategy of poetic composition operates in two particular poems
(Isthmian 2 and Isthmian 8). I then turn to the origin of epinikion, and, in
particular, critique the notion of a single underlying proto-genre.
I conclude by considering two important components of Pindaric epini-
kion, one a secondary genre, and the other, a primary one: hymnos ‘(choral)
cult hymn’ and prooimion ‘prayer uttered before beginning a journey or a
task’. Any discussion of form in Pindar – and arguably, in any poet of
distinction – must combine a stratigraphy that reveals the form’s dia-
chronic depth with attention to techniques of synchronization that the poet
employs. This balance is what the ensuing discussion seeks to establish.
31
In addition to Bundy (1986 [1962]) and a more dogmatic Bundyist account in Thummer (1968:
1.19–159), William Race’s work on rhetorical devices in Pindar is most instructive (1980, 1987,
1989, 2002).
32
See, e.g., Lloyd-Jones (1973); Hamilton (1974: 3–13); Carey (1981: 1–11); Kurke (1988).
Genre interplay in Isthmian 2 and 8 259
I do not venture to write a history of techniques of synchronization, even
though this is a task of great urgency and interest. One question is that
such a history might pose concerns on the continuity between Pindar’s
topical poetics and notions of inventio and of the accumulation of topoi
found in classical rhetoric.
2 Poetic synchronization: genre interplay in Isthmian 2

and Isthmian 8
The notion of a synthetic poetics stands in need of further clarification. In
particular, the extraordinary accumulation of genres in Isthmian 1 may be
argued to be an aberration, hardly representative of genre mixing in
Pindaric epinikion. Furthermore, it is worth inquiring whether any differ-
ences exist in the way in which generic frames are deployed in different
segments of the poem. To illustrate the workings of genre in Pindar, I have
chosen two poems that approach the non-epinician resources in different
fashion. In the case of Isthmian 2, a carefully crafted representation of
the literary-historical longue durée informs a sequence that has been
regarded as central to the interpretation of Pindar’s professional self-
consciousness. In a complementary fashion, my reading of Isthmian
8 focuses on myth and demonstrates how Pindar’s manipulation of generic
frames introduced in the narrative section generates supplementary author-
ity for particular statements found in the rest of the poem. The two poems
instantiate the dynast and intermediate types (as defined in Chapter 1,
Section 7), and both include notable metapoetic gestures. A case can be
made for an informed authorial strategy behind genre interplay in these
poems. Once the synthetic quality of the form of Pindaric epinikion is
established on the level of poetic synchronization, I discuss the persistence
and new life of inherited formal elements in Pindar in the following
sections.
The opening of Isthmian 2 has given rise to a heated debate on Pindar’s
attitude toward his poetic vocation. It appears to present a stark contrast
between the days of yore, when poetry was not tainted by money, and the
modern world in which the poet’s services are bought and sold:
Οἱ μὲν πάλαι, ὦ Θρασύβουλε, φῶτες, οἳ χρυσαμπύκων
ἐς δίφρον Μοισᾶν ἔβαινον κλυτᾷ φόρμιγγι συναντόμενοι,
ῥίμφα παιδείους ἐτόξευον μελιγάρυας ὕμνους,
ὅστις ἐὼν καλὸς εἶχεν Ἀφροδίτας
εὐθρόνου μνάστειραν ἁδίσταν ὀπώραν.
ἁ Μοῖσα γὰρ οὐ φιλοκερδής πω τότ’ ἦν οὐδ’ ἐργάτις·
οὐδ’ ἐπέρναντο γλυκεῖαι μελιφθόγγου ποτὶ Τερψιχόρας
ἀργυρωθεῖσαι πρόσωπα μαλθακόφωνοι ἀοιδαί.
νῦν δ’ ἐφίητι <τὸ> τὠργείου φυλάξαι
ῥῆμ’ ἀλαθείας <ᴗ –> ἄγχιστα βαῖνον,
‘χρήματα χρήματ’ ἀνήρ’ ὃς φᾶ κτεάνων θ’ ἅμα λειφθεὶς καὶ φίλων.
ἐσσὶ γὰρ ὦν σοφός· οὐκ ἄγνωτ’ ἀείδω
Ἰσθμίαν ἵπποισι νίκαν. . .
Those men of old, Thrasyboulos, who – accompanied by a resounding33 lyre –
mounted the chariot of the gold-frontleted Muses, swiftly shot from their bows
honey-sweet hymns to boys, whoever, being handsome, held the sweetest late-
summer summons to the well-throned Aphrodite. For then the Muse was not yet
a lover of profit, nor did she work for hire, nor were the sweet, gentle-speaking
songs, their faces silvered by honey-voiced Terpsikhora, exported for sale. But
now she bids us observe the saying of the Argive, which comes closest to the [ . . . ]
truth, ‘Money, money is the man’, who said it when he was deprived of both his
possessions and friends. For you are wise. I do not sing things unknown, the
Isthmian victory with horses [i.e. chariot victory] . . .
In polemic with earlier views on this passage, which resorted to ad-hoc
biographical reconstructions of Pindar’s intentions, Leonard Woodbury
argues that Pindar is contrasting solo and choral lyric: the description of
the mercenary Muse, far from being negative, is in fact a celebration of the
power of wealth as it is revealed in lavish choral performances of Pindar’s
time.34 What gets lost in Woodbury’s reading is a sense of strong contrast
with the earlier kind of poetry that is clearly positively valued. Other
scholars draw attention to a certain excess of irony in what appears to be
Pindar’s description of his own poetic production.35 In particular, building
on Woodbury’s remark that in the description of the mercenary Muse
Pindar seems to be alluding to two earlier poets, namely Anacreon and
Alcaeus, Kurke suggests that the description reports an imagined view of
the earlier poets, which Pindar goes on to revise in the course of the
poem.36
In my view, the two putative quotations from Anacreon and Alcaeus are
to be interpreted not as specific intertextual allusions, but as references to
33
On the meaning of κλυτός, see West (2001), who demonstrates that, in addition to the meaning
‘renowned’, this adjective can have the meaning ‘noisy’, ‘echoing’, which is especially common in
lyric poetry. Cf. (from the viewpoint of derivation) Vine (1998: 19 n. 39): κλυτός = ‘heard of ’ (in
contrast to κλειτός = ‘celebrated’).
34
Woodbury (1968). A similar argument is advanced in Pavese (1966). For the negative view of the
mercenary Muse cf. Thummer (1968: 2.40).
35
See Nisetich (1977), who points to nonconventional elements in I. 2 that are due to its peculiar occasion
(the victor is already dead), and Kurke (1991: 240–5), whose argument is discussed below.
36
Kurke (1991: 245).
generic frames that were not necessarily perceived as deriving from the
“men of old.” In fact, the relevant line from Anacreon (fr. 384) is only
preserved in a scholiast’s remark on this passage, which, according to both
manuscripts, reads οὐδ’ ἀργυρῆ κω τότ’ ἔλαμπε Πυθώ (“not yet then did
Pytho shine silver”). Most scholars emend the last word to Πειθώ ‘Persua-
sion’, an easy change since the vowels spelled υ and ει merged in pronunci-
ation in Byzantine Greek.37
Whether or not we choose to emend, the phrase οὐ . . . πω τότε ‘not yet
then’, followed by a verb in the imperfect, seems to belong to poetic
descriptions of mythical times and places. A crucial parallel is provided
by the Delian Homeric Hymn to Apollo. This portion of the hymn is
addressed to the god (lines 223–8):
. . . τάχα δ’ ἷξες ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ
ἐς Μυκαλησσὸν ἰὼν καὶ Τευμησσὸν λεχεποίην.
Θήβης δ’ εἰσαφίκανες ἕδος καταειμένον ὕλῃ·
οὐ γάρ πώ τις ἔναιε βροτῶν ἱερῇ ἐνὶ Θήβῃ,
οὐδ’ ἄρα πω τότε γ’ ἦσαν ἀταρπιτοὶ οὐδὲ κέλευθοι
Θήβης ἂμ πεδίον πυρηφόρον, ἀλλ’ ἔχεν ὕλη.
Quickly you came from it [the hill] going on to Mykalessos and grassy-bedded
Teumessos and arrived in Thebe’s seat covered in woods: for not yet did any mortal
live in holy Thebe, nor yet then were there pathways nor drives in the wheat-
bearing plain of Thebe, but woods held it.
The parallels from Anacreon and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo suggest
that we should read Pindar’s line ἁ Μοῖσα γὰρ οὐ φιλοκερδής πω τότ’ ἦν
οὐδ’ ἐργάτις not as a veiled reference to Anacreon, but rather as an
evocation of a familiar generic frame for a description of time immemorial.
It asserts the poet’s control over the past: just as the singer of the Homeric
Hymn claims to know the exact route of Apollo’s mythic travel, so Pindar,
just by introducing the phrase “not yet then,” marks – and displays an
ability to bridge – the temporal gap between “now” and “then.” What the
37
Admittedly, the scholiast’s supposition is worded in a rather tentative way, suggesting that the
scholiast is far from confident about the relation between the two passages: “something similar also
Anacreon has said, and perhaps (μή ποτε) the reference is to the words spoken by him” (τοιοῦτον δέ
τι καὶ Ἀνακρέων εἴρηκε, καὶ μή ποτε ἡ ἀπότασίς ἐστιν εἰς τὰ ὑπ’ ἐκείνου εἰρημένα). For the
translation of the scholiast’s remark, cf. Campbell 2.72. The lines from the Delian Hymn to
Apollo quoted below may be seen to provide a circumstantial piece of evidence in favor of the
manuscript reading of Anacreon fr. 384. There are, nevertheless, strong arguments in favor of the
emendation. It is not clear why Anacreon would speak of “silver” (a common way of referring to
money) when describing Pytho. Furthermore, while it is easy to imagine an erotic context, in which
the emended phrase could occur (Bowra 1961: 296), Anacreon apparently did not compose in genres
that are likely to contain descriptions of mythological landscape.
“time immemorial” topos serves to achieve is a vivid representation of the
past, not a meditation on the present.38
In this context, it may be relevant that the mercenary Muse in I. 2.6,
exceptionally in the entire Archaic corpus, carries a definite article/demon-
strative pronoun.39 It appears to be analogous to Pindar’s use of an article
with proper names40 and suggests unusual specificity in the representation
of the Muse as someone who changed her ways over time: “the very Muse
who now is a lover of profit was at that time an altogether different
person.”41
It may thus be a mistake to detect any nostalgia about the past in the
opening lines of the poem. Pindar’s harsh description of the modern
condition is intended, first and foremost, to emphasize the gap between
the two temporal planes. From a parallel in P. 11.41–44, we know that
Pindar is quite comfortable admitting participation in the money econ-
omy, so we need to assume that there was nothing particularly scandalous
in the generalized description of the mercenary Muse in I. 2.42 Instead, this
description serves to foreground, by contrast, Pindar’s ability, in the given
poem, to restore a sense of immediacy associated with the older erotic
poetry.43 The task of Isthmian 2 is to renovate that poetic genre within a
new, synthesized form of epinikion. As Kurke has shown, the later parts of
38
In his discussion of this passage, Crotty points out that the very distinction between the past and the
present is quite peculiar: in general, Pindar “is interested in showing rather the persistence through
time of patterns in mortal life, the better to connect his athletes to the heroic past” (1982: 98).
39
The two are not easy to distinguish in Pindar; cf. Hummel (1993: 174–87).
40
Hummel (1993: 178).
41
There is yet a further paradox, pointed out by Verdier (1972: 21–2): the two MSS that contain the
Isthmians (B and D) both spell the name of the Muse as (Ionic) Μοῦσα in line 6, but as (Aeolic)
Μοισᾶν in line 2. Editors emend the Ionic form to ensure consistency, and it may indeed be argued
that, due to the influence of the opening line of the Iliad, the chance of Ionic normalization was the
greatest in the case of the singular Moisa. Given the uniqueness of the use with a definite article, one
might venture a more daring explanation: Pindar may be using an Ionic form, with a definite article,
to clarify that he is speaking of the Muse who inspired the poets of old (like Demodocus in Od. 8)
and so at that time she was not yet a lover of profit. Another possible explanation for the Ionic form
would be to assume that Pindar is referring to a lost poem of Simonides that used the word ergatis
for ‘Muse’, but this would involve putting too much trust in Callimachus’s testimony: οὐ γὰρ
ἐργάτιν τρέφω τὴν Μοῦσαν, ὡς ὁ Κεῖος Ὑλίκου νέπους ‘I do not nourish my Muse as a working girl,
like the Kean son of Hylikos’s (fr. 222 Pfeiffer; note the use of the article). We cannot be sure that
Callimachus is using Simonides’ diction (and not, for example, the diction of I. 2). Cf. Privitera
(1982: 157–8).
42
Pace Norwood: “So might a poet of our time, who wrote of religion or war or politics, exclaim: ‘We
poets of today have a hard time – forced to think of publishers and contracts: how different from the
Elizabethans who would dash off a sonnet to his mistress’ eyebrow and then go a bat-fowling” (1945:
155; Norwood’s assessment is accepted in Woodbury 1968: 531).
43
Pace Nisetich: “the present ode, while it shares in feeling with the erotic song, goes beyond it in its
ability to glorify its theme. Thrasyboulos knows why Pindar chose the erotic poets for the opening
contrast, and he knows the greater value of the ode to come” (1977: 142).
the poem are saturated with the imagery of the opening lines.44 For
example, Pindar’s poems are, unusually, referred to as “these hymns”
(plural) in line 45, echoing παιδείους . . . μελιγάρυας ὕμνους; note that
“these hymns” are “in motion” (οὐκ ἐλινύσοντας), like the hymns that are
shot swiftly as arrows from the lyres/bows45 of the poets of old. Similarly,
the description of charioteer Nikomakhos as a trusty friend (21–26) refers
back to the opening image of men mounting the chariot “accompanied by
resounding lyre” (κλυτᾷ φόρμιγγι συναντόμενοι); it is the phorminx that
plays the role of a charioteer, which is perhaps not that surprising in light
of the evidence for a perception of the lyre as an intimate friend.46 Note,
too, that the indigent Argive is deprived of his friends, whereas Nikoma-
khos’s reliability is emphasized by the lofty word φωτός (l. 21), also used in
line 1.47 Finally, in a passage that recalls the opening because of the
repeated vocative of Thrasyboulos’s name, his familial dwellings are said
to be “not ignorant of lovely kômoi and songs of honey-sweet praise” (οὐκ
ἀγνῶτες ὑμῖν ἐντὶ δόμοι / οὔτε κώμων, ὦ Θρασύβουλ’, ἐρατῶν, / οὔτε
μελικόμπων ἀοιδᾶν ll. 30–2; cf. l. 12); here the reference is both to
μελιγάρυας ὕμνους in line 3 and μαλθακόφωνοι ἀοιδαί in line 8.
All these dictional echoes suggest that the generic frame introduced in
the opening of the poem is not rejected in lines 6ff, but on the contrary
retains a central role throughout the poem. Pindar appropriates the spon-
taneity of the solo paideios hymnos – a genre to which some of Pindar’s own
compositions belong.48 The introduction of the mercenary Muse serves
the purpose of negative definition of paideios hymnos – as well as of the
present poem, insofar as it succeeds in appropriating this supposedly
unrecoverable generic frame. The pattern is that of P. 10, which centers
on the evocation of the land of the Hyperboreans – the poet achieves the
very feat he described as unfeasible in the poem’s opening.49
One might object to this interpretation: after the mercenary Muse
episode, Pindar does not return to the poetry of old, but instead offers
an additional comment on the modern condition, quoting the saying of
44
Kurke (1991: 246–50).
45
The comparison of a lyre to a bow is deeply ingrained in Archaic Greek culture; for a collection of
evidence, see Monbrun (2007: 31–81).
46
Martin (2003: 160) citing Plut. Alc. 2.6 where Alcibiades comments on the benign merging of the
voices of the singer and the lyre (τὴν . . . λύραν τῷ χρωμένῳ συμφθέγγεσθαι καὶ συνᾴδειν).
47
This echo is noted by Nigel Nicholson (2005: 69), who discusses Nikomakhos’s position in the
poem: although a hired professional, he “is kept well away from the taint of commodity exchange”
(69; further discussion on pp. 64–75).
48
Frr. 123, 124ab (a solo skolion addressed to the same Thrasyboulos).
49
See Chapter 3, Section 3.
the Argive man “Money, money is the man.” It appears that the focus,
from then on, is firmly on the nunc. In her discussion of the poem, Kurke
has suggested that in Isthmian 2 Pindar is engaged in modernizing the
elitist ideology, which has always been inimical to money.50 According to
Kurke, this is achieved by a juxtaposition of an ironic depiction of the
modern state of poetry, as seen by the poets of old, with Pindar’s response
to them, involving a modified acceptance of a money-based poetic econ-
omy. I would argue that a reaffirmation of aristocratic uses of wealth occurs
not through an intertextual polemic, but through a poetic synchronization
of older discursive forms. First, as we saw, Pindar’s rebuttal of the position
of the poets of old draws on the language of the opening description: good
uses of wealth are defined in terms that belong to the generic frame
assigned to “time immemorial.” Second, I would question the view that
Pindar is referring to particular poets in these lines. I already presented my
arguments for seeing in line 6 – in addition, or in place of, an allusion to
Anacreon – a reflex of the “time immemorial” topos, and now turn to the
putative citation of Alcaeus in the Argive saying episode.
First of all, the phrase χρήματα χρήματ’ ἀνήρ is recorded in Greek
collections of proverbs, which makes it a priori unlikely that a specific
reference to Alcaeus fr. 360 is intended.51 Notably, Alcaeus quotes the
gnome in a somewhat different form (χρήματ’ ἄνηρ) and describes it as “a
smart quip” which “they say” Aristodamos once uttered in Sparta; this
diegetic frame implies that in Alcaeus’s day the saying already belonged to
inherited lore. It is also a characteristic of folk tradition that the same
saying could be ascribed to different fictional or legendary speakers:
whereas Alcaeus, beside at least one other ancient source, seems to regard
the speaker as a Spartan, Pindar calls him “an Argive man.” This suggests
that in quoting this saying Pindar was drawing on a tradition different
from that represented by Alcaeus’s fr. 360.52
50
Kurke (1991: 249).
51
Paus. Att. χ 16, Zenob. 6.43, Suda in χρήματα κτλ. Eur. fr. 325 Kannicht may contain a reference to
the same saying: κρείσσων γὰρ οὐδεὶς χρημάτων πέφυκ’ ἀνήρ, πλὴν εἴ τις· ὅστις δ’ οὗτός ἐστιν, οὐχ
ὁρῶ “No man is stronger than money, except one man – but who this one is I do not see.”
Nagy (1990b: 341) takes a view on the relation between I. 2 and Alcaeus fr. 360 that is similar to the
reading proposed here. The scholiast, who adduces the parallel from Alcaeus, does not seem to see it
as Pindar’s intertext, but cites the opinion that it is a proverb and notes that Chrysippus records it as
an apophthegma of Aristodêmos in his book “On Proverbs” (τοῦτο ἀναγράφεται μὲν εἰς τὰς
παροιμίας ὑπ’ ἐνίων, ἀπόφθεγμα δέ ἐστιν Ἀριστοδήμου, καθάπερ φησὶ Χρύσιππος ἐν τῷ περὶ
παροιμιῶν).
52
Diogenes Laertius (1.31), quoting the two lines of Alcaeus, mentions Aristodamos in the context of
the group of legendary wise men known as the Seven Sages. The Greek paroemiographer Zenobius
describes this proverb as “apophthegmatic, such as the utterances of the Seven Sages” (and then
As in the case of a supposed reference to Anacreon fr. 384, I propose that
we hold on to the assumption of an exoteric nature of Pindar’s poetics and
read his texts for generic frames rather than for veiled intertextual allusions.
Indeed, Pindar makes it clear how the saying of the Argive is to be read by
using the verb ἐφίητι ‘she bids’, which is cognate with ἐφημοσύνα ‘behest’,
used of Chiron’s injunction to young Achilles in P. 6.19 and thus equiva-
lent to the genre term hypothêkê ‘piece of didactic wisdom’.53 It is precisely
as an instance of the gnomic genre that the majority of the audience of
Isthmian 2 is likely to have perceived this segment of the poem.
I would thus propose that we read the opening of Isthmian 2 as a
sequence of references to preexistent authoritative genres, none of which is
disavowed or rejected. Pindar begins with the description of paideioi
hymnoi – a genre that supplies the basic frame for the whole poem. More
particularly, in the description of this secondary genre, Pindar hints at a
primary genre of compliments addressed to boys, which conventionally (as
we see from the inscriptional evidence) took the form “[Personal name]
kalos” ‘So-and-so is handsome’ (ὅστις ἐὼν καλὸς “whoever, being
handsome . . .”).54 In line 6, Pindar employs a distinctive turn of phrase
“not yet then,” which restates his ability to bring back, in the context of
the present commission, the time when poetry amounted to improvised,
spontaneous praise. At this point, the text is drawn into the logic of a
distinctly epinician rhetoric, as the topic of money, to use Bundy’s terms,
supplies the material for the gnomic foil, which prepares the “climactic”
mention of Xenokrates’ victories.
By using the term “foil” I mean to describe the Argive man episode as an
antecedent to – and thus as building up an expectation of – the properly
encomiastic segment of the poem, not to dismiss it as semantically void.
Indeed, the significance of the Argive’s saying is emphasized by the phrase
addressed to Thrasyboulos ἐσσὶ γὰρ ὦν σοφός ‘For you are wise’. There is
certainly no reason to look for hermetic communication implied in the
phrase.55 Rather, as I see it, Thrasyboulos’s “wisdom” may be understood
in three ways (and none of these readings excludes the others): (1) he is
notes that it is mentioned in Pindar and Alcaeus). The scholiast views the discrepancy between
ethnic designations of Aristodamos as due to “Argive” having a broader meaning ‘Peloponnesian’
and cites a similar epithet for the Spartan Helen in Homer. This is conceivable, as is the supposition
that there might have existed different traditions locating Aristodamos in Argos and/or Sparta
(Drachmann 3.215; cf. Bury 1892: 41).
53
On the Archaic Greek tradition of didactic poetry, see Martin (1984); on its uses in Pindar, see
Kurke (1990).
54 55
Dover (1989: 111–22). Cf. Woodbury (1968: 542).
privy to proverbial wisdom as such (a minimalist interpretation); (2) he is
aware of the meaning of this particular brachylogic dictum and does
indeed observe it; (3) he would not himself end up in the pitiful position
of “the Argive.” The rest of the poem is dedicated to the problem of
dealing with χρήματα in such a way as to attain to the pristine purity of
aristocratic philia as it is evoked in the opening lines – and not to be
deprived of both one’s possessions and friends.56
To sum up, Pindar juxtaposes generic frames that do not constitute a
linear progression. While a reader accustomed to the rhetorical
conventions of Classical Greek prose privileges the ‘men-de’ contrast
between “Those men of yore” (Οἱ μὲν πάλαι) and “But now she bids”
(νῦν δ’ ἐφίητι), for Pindar the temporal opposition implied here, in itself, is
of little interest. True to the encomiastic purpose of the epinician com-
mission, he uses this opposition, among other resources, to construct a
carefully calibrated system of diction that activates particular genres and
retains them in the audience’s memory in the course of the poem.
Ultimately, the success of the poem depends on its ability to be all these
types of utterance at once: a spontaneous act of praise, an evocation of time
immemorial (the only time when, one is led to think, such spontaneous
praise was possible!), an elaborate (and, very likely, costly) choral perform-
ance taking place hic et nunc, and an exposition of ancient gnomic wisdom
for the sake of the poem’s addressee. Pindar evokes and synchronizes
different, and in some cases ostensibly conflicting pragmatic frames, which
coexist within a new temporal totality imposed by the poem. In other
words, the overt hybridity of the text implies an overarching metaprag-
matic operation, which cannot be legitimated by any preexisting social
scripts.57
To return to the view of Pindar’s epinikia as instances of the topical
mode of text production, I would like to draw attention to the breakdowns
in the mimetic frame that is implicitly introduced in the opening address
to Thrasyboulos – that of the communication between the speaker (the
poet) and the patron. The frame is abandoned, or at least deactivated, in
56
One may venture a more specific reconstruction: from the Pindaric context, it would appear that the
predicament of the Argive man was that he, for one reason or another, lost his money and, as a
result, was deserted by his friends. Thrasyboulos’s wisdom consists in circulating his wealth in the
way that guarantees the preservation of both his friends (unremitting generosity is what is demanded
in lines 39–42) and his property. As Pavese argues (1966), the patron’s liberality and the proper
maintenance of relationships of xenia serve as a guarantee against financial catastrophe. Thummer
takes sophos to refer to Thrasyboulos’s taste for poetry (1968: 42)
57
On metapragmatics, the domain that regiments the functioning of ‘pragmatic’ or ‘deictic’ signs, see
Silverstein (1993).
line 12, which begins an extended report of Xenokrates’ victories: the text is
now a narrative, addressed to the audience, hence the diegetic frame οὐκ
ἄγνωτ’ ἀείδω ‘Not unknown the things I sing.’ The end of the narrative is
marked by another vocative of Thrasyboulos’s name in line 31. The last
triad begins as an independent segment dedicated to the praise of the late
Xenokrates, after which the speaker launches into a sequence of impera-
tives addressed to his son: this particular sequence makes perfect sense as
a mimesis of the praise of the dead ancestor followed by an exhortation to
the survivor(s).58 Yet the illusion that the text of Isthmian 2 may represent
a realistic speech act is annulled in the last two lines of the poem, where, all
of a sudden, the poet turns to Nikasippos, who was never mentioned
before and whom we imagine to be Pindar’s associate (perhaps sent to
Akragas to direct the performance of the ode). With this concluding
statement, Pindar reframes the whole of the preceding text as reported
by an intermediary figure: “Impart these things, Nikasippos, whenever you
come to my established guest-friend” (ταῦτα, Νικάσιππ’, ἀπόνειμον, ὅταν
/ ξεῖνον ἐμὸν ἠθαῖον ἔλθῃς).59 Neither a narrative, nor an imitation of plain
conversation, the poem repeatedly recalibrates pragmatic frames, effect-
ively instituting a new metapragmatic regime, distinctive of Pindar’s
epinikia and retained by the later European Pindaric ode.
Whereas Isthmian 2 is implicated in a long relationship with a particular
patron and his family, and celebrates an ex-tyrant’s chariot victory, Isthmian
8 is dedicated to a more modest event, an Aeginetan’s victory in a pankration,
and has little to say about the poet’s relationship to the addressee. Further-
more, while Isthmian 2 alludes to genres of solo melic poetry, Isthmian
8 insists on its choral/kômastic quality; it is also monostrophic, implying
that it was sung in procession. There is no myth in Isthmian 2, whereas
Isthmian 8 includes a long mythic narrative. Accordingly, Isthmian 8 raises a
different set of issues with regard to Pindar’s use of the resources of genre.
First of all, the centrality of the mythic narrative invites the use of a
distinctive device of “choral projection” or choral synchronization: the
myth includes a description of a khoros performed in the mythic past
and provides a paradigm for the current performance.60 Isthmian 8, in
58
The same order is followed in Perikles’ Funeral Oration (Thuc. 2.43–5) and Plato’s Menex. 246b-
247c.
59
ταῦτα ‘these things’ refers either to the whole poem or just to the preceding third-person imperatives
(ll. 44–5) “Let him [Thrasyboulos] commit to silence neither ancestral accomplishment, nor these
hymns” (μήτ’ ἀρετάν ποτε σιγάτω πατρῴαν, μηδὲ τούσδ’ ὕμνους).
60
The term “choral projection” was devised by Albert Henrichs in a discussion of choruses of Greek
tragedy (1995, 1996); it is applied to Bacchylides in Power (2000). (I am grateful to Richard Martin
particular in its last strophe, celebrates an earlier Isthmian victory of the
current victor’s cousin, Nikokles, who perished (as seems probable) in the
recent war with Persia. The myth concludes with a scene of the Muses
performing at the funeral of Achilles (56a-60):
τὸν μὲν οὐδὲ θανόντ’ ἀοιδαὶ <ἐπ>έλιπον,
ἀλλά οἱ παρά τε πυρὰν τάφον θ’ Ἑλικώνιαι παρθένοι
στάν, ἐπὶ θρῆνόν τε πολύφαμον ἔχεαν.
ἔδοξ’ ἦρα καὶ ἀθανάτοις,
ἐσλόν γε φῶτα καὶ φθίμενον ὕμνοις θεᾶν διδόμεν.
Him [Achilles], not even when he was dead, did songs abandon, but by his pyre
and tomb the Heliconian maidens stood and poured over him a thrênos of many
voices. And so, the immortals, too,61 decreed to hand over to the hymns of the
goddesses even a man who perished, a good one at any rate.
I propose that the scene presents an aetiology for the genre of thrênos. The
clause starting with ἔδοξ’ ἦρα καὶ ἀθανάτοις, at first glance, represents a
redundant rephrasing of the thought expressed immediately before it
(“Songs did not abandon Achilles, even when he was dead”). It should
not, however, be taken to refer only to Achilles. Prompted by the hero’s
death, the gods decreed that, from then on, hymns may be dedicated to
dead men. The precedent of Achilles thus establishes the practice of
formalized laments performed by a pre-trained chorus. Significantly, the
emphatic ἔδοξε with the dative and infinitive construction activates
the generic frame of the official announcement of a council.62 Notably,
for sharing with me his unpublished paper on Bacchylides that touches on these issues.) I would
suggest that the use of choral synchronization, in its basic form, is an inherited device common to
all choral lyric.
61
Taking the particle ἦρα to introduce “expansion of previous thought” rather than its
“summarization” (Slater’s meaning ‘b’, rather than ‘a’ [224]). On the problematic καὶ in line 59,
see Bury (1892: 150), who emends it to παρ’ ‘in the court of ’. Carey comments: ‘also’ “i.e. as well as
mortal praise, such as is about to be offered to Nicocles” (1981: 202). Pindar’s point, however, is that
his own praise for Nikokles is an instance of the same “hymns of the goddesses.” In other words,
spontaneous wailing (goos) may have preexisted the funeral of Achilles, but after that the immortals
also (καὶ) granted that dead men may be praised in the divine medium of hymns. Cf. Köhnken
(1975: 35): “the generalization from ‘Achilles’ . . . to all men in a like position (60 ἐσλόν γε φῶτα)
seems not to have been realized by commentators, although it shows the paradigmatic function of
Achilles’ death and fame vis-à-vis the dead Nikokles.”
62
Cf. the formulaic beginning of Athenian official inscriptions ἔδοξεν τῇ βουλῇ καὶ τῷ δήμῳ ‘it was
decided by the city council and the people’. I. 8.59 is the only occurrence of this construction with
ἔδοξε(ν) in Pindar (Slater 136). Cf. Nash (1990b: 13), who reads the passage as a “story about the
original occasion for praising a mortal” (see Section 4 for further discussion). The usual
interpretation of these lines takes the gods’ decision to refer to Achilles only (Nagy 1979b: 176–7,
1990b: 204; Day 1989: 23).
the hybridized literary form that the poem instantiates is authorized by a
primary speech genre, embedded within the mythic narrative.
This passage, moreover, should be read in the larger context of the myth
narrated in Isthmian 8. It recounts the contest between Zeus and Poseidon
over Thetis, the intervention of Themis who warns of disastrous conse-
quences and insists that Thetis be given to a mortal, the wedding of Thetis
and Peleus, and a summary of the achievements of their son and his burial.
One of the many functions that the myth serves in this poem is the
acknowledgement that there is nothing self-evident in dedicating choral
performances to the dead: on the contrary, this practice rests on the
momentous event of the death of Achilles. The mixing of the human
and divine pedigree embodied by Achilles – on the one hand, Thetis’s son
who might have replaced Zeus, but, on the other, a mortal destined to die
young – reflects the mixing of genres: a cult song performed in honor of a
dead member of the clan.
The elaborate mythic aition might have served to dispel the notion that
a formalized choral song in honor of the dead must presuppose a hero cult.
Hence Pindar’s apparent understatement that all it takes is to be eslos phôs
‘a virtuous/noble man’. Counterintuitively from the perspective of the
Iliad, the implication is that Achilles was honored by the Muses just
because he was a well-behaved aristocrat. The relevance of this mythic
paradigm for the current epinician occasion is revealed in the following
lines (61–4), which refer to the victor’s cousin:
τὸ καὶ νῦν φέρει λόγον, ἔσσυταί τε Μοισαῖον ἅρμα Νικοκλέος
μνᾶμα πυγμάχου κελαδῆσαι. γεραίρετέ νιν,
ὃς Ἴσθμιον ἂν νάπος
Δωρίων ἔλαχεν σελίνων . . .
And this [gods’ decree] still holds true, and the Muses’ chariot has arrived in speed
to sing a memorial of Nikokles the boxer. Do him honor, the one who was
allotted Dorian wild parsley in the Isthmian valley.
The mythic precedent is not incidental; its relevance is that of a divine
law that still carries authority.63 Especially notable in the passage is the
imperative γεραίρετε addressed to the audience; elsewhere Pindar only
63
Thus Burnett (2005: 117): ‘holds true’, ‘proves right.’ On other translations of φέρει λόγον, cf. Bury
(1892: 150): ‘bears reason as its burden, is reasonable’; Köhnken (1975: 30): ‘wherefore the Muses’
chariot even now carries praise’; Privitera (1982: 239): ‘giustificare’ (citing P. 8.38); Nagy (1990b:
205): “it [the glorification of Achilles] wins logos [i.e. story, praise] as a prize.” For other proposals,
see Carey (1981: 202).
applies it to gods or locales.64 In this context, the phrase ὕμνοις θεᾶν
‘hymns of the goddesses’ in line 60 assumes a special significance,
since it serves to distinguish formal choral performance from nonliterary
lament (goos) which was widely practiced throughout the Greek-speaking
world.65
In addition to the thrênic subtext, Pindar introduces another genre in
the mythic narrative, which he also then reclaims for the current epinician
occasion. The account of Achilles’ aristeia at Troy (52–5) mentions two of
its most memorable events, the killings of Memnon and Hektor. The
authority of this mythic segment is reinforced by ascribing it to sophoi
‘poets’ performing at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, who “have shown
forth the youthful66 virtue of Achilles to those inexperienced” (καὶ νεαρὰν
ἔδειξαν σοφῶν / στόματ’ ἀπείροισιν ἀρετὰν Ἀχιλέος). As are characteristics
of epinician poetry, in this case the boundaries of another’s discourse are
not properly marked.67 In this particular case, we may take the failure to
introduce equivalents of quotation marks as an indication of the larger
appropriative poetics at work in the epinician genre: the following narra-
tive of Achilles’ exploits draws on the authority of sophoi by the logic of
contiguity, rather than explicit diegetic subordination.68 Notably, the
descriptions of the killings of Achilles and of Nikokles’ violent boxing
(single underlining in the quotation below), as well as that of the genea-
logical significance of these accomplishments (double underlining), occupy
almost the same metrical position at the beginning of the last two strophes
of the poem:69
64
An exception that proves the rule is I. 2.17 where Poseidon is the honoring agent. Bacchylides,
however, is comfortable using this verb of victors (2.13, 4.3, 6.14). On the importance
of this imperative for the threnic subtext of the poem, see Day (1989: 24). The significance
of this passage for the problematic of hero cult in Pindar is overlooked in Currie
(2005), who, following Day, regards it as dirge-like (Currie 2005: 24, 34; but cf. Nash 1990:
184 n. 8).
65
The locus classicus for goos is Il. 24.718–22. For the history of the folk genre of ritual lament
from Ancient to Modern Greece, see Alexiou (2002 [1974]). I am not persuaded by the
arguments presented in Sotiriou (1998: 242–4) that in I. 8. 56a-60 Pindar draws on Od.
24.45ff.
66
νεαρὰν is an emendation proposed by E. Schmid; the text of the only two MSS reads καὶ νέ’
ἀνέδειξαν.
67
For a failure to demarcate direct speech, cf. Bacch. 3.22ff, I. 8.31ff; discussion in Currie (2013:
248–50).
68
Cf.: “Pindar, like no other Greek poet, is the poet of the associative co-presence” (Silk 2012: 357).
69
The use of relatable items in corresponding metrical position is common in epinikia, and has
frequently been pointed out in scholarship, since Friedrich Mezger drew attention to it in his 1880
commentary. Further discussion in Schürch (1971); Carey (1981: 11–13).
1 . . . γεφύρωσέ τ’ Ἀτρεΐδαι- τὸ καὶ νῦν φέρει λόγον, ἔσ-

σι νόστον, Ἑλέναν τ’ ἐλύσατο, Τροΐας συταί τε Μοισαῖον ἅρμα Νικοκλέος
2 ἶνας ἐκταμὼν δορί, ταί νιν ῥύοντό μνᾶμα πυγμάχου κελαδῆσαι. γεραίρετέ
ποτε νιν,
3 μάχας ἐναριμβρότου ὃς Ἴσθμιον ἂν νάπος
4 ἔργον ἐν πεδίῳ κορύσσοντα, Μέμνονός Δωρίων ἔλαχεν σελίνων· ἐπεὶ
τε βίαν περικτίονας
5 ὑπέρθυμον Ἕκτορά τ’ ἄλλους τ’ ἐνίκασε δή ποτε καὶ κεῖνος ἄνδρας
ἀριστέας· οἷς δῶμα Φερσεφόνας ἀφύκτᾳ χερὶ κλονέων.
6 μανύων Ἀχιλεύς, οὖρος Αἰακιδᾶν, τὸν μὲν οὐ κατελέγχει κριτοῦ γενεά
7 Αἴγιναν σφετέραν τε ῥίζαν πατραδελφεοῦ . . .
πρόφαινεν.
And he bridged the return route for And this [gods’ decree] still holds true, and
the Atreidai, released Helen, cutting the Muses’ chariot has arrived in speed to
with his spear Troy’s sinews which sing a memorial of Nikokles the boxer.
once were hindering him as he was Do him honor, the one who was allotted
marshalling the work of the man- Dorian wild parsley in the Isthmian
slaying battle in the plain: strong valley, for indeed he also once was
Memnon, great-hearted Hektor, and victorious, driving neighbor men in
other leading men. By revealing to confusion with his inescapable hand.
them the dwelling of Persephone, Him the stock of his distinguished uncle
Achilles, the breeze of the Aiakidai, did not put to shame . . .
has shown forth Aegina and his
root [hendiadys].
Both narratives employ the fabular pote ‘once upon a time’,

which may be a reference to the generic frame of memorializing inscrip-
tions: the achievements of both men belong in the past, the domain
to which Greek poetry traditionally claims special access.70 Another inter-
esting dictional clue is the present participle κλονέων, used of Nikokles.
The verb is very often used in the Iliad (never in the Odyssey) in
a somewhat ill-defined meaning ‘drive in confusion, cause panic’,
but Pindar only uses it once elsewhere (P. 9.48: of sands driven in
confusion. Applied to a boxer, it has an unmistakable epic resonance.
Furthermore, there is a tantalizing possibility that this Pindaric κλονέων,
in context, evoked Achilles’ panic-inducing fighting style. In the Iliad, the
nominative form of the present participle is used twice of Achilles in very
memorable passages: Priam’s desperate call to the Trojans who are pressed
to the city gate by Achilles’ onslaught (Il. 21.532–3 ἦ γὰρ Ἀχιλλεὺς ἐγγὺς
ὅδε κλονέων) and the description of the chase after Hektor (22.188). The
only occurrence of this verb in the extant corpus of Bacchylides is clearly
70
On the “inscriptional” pote, see Young (1983).
dependent on the Iliadic usage: εὖτ’ ἐν πεδίῳ κλονέω[ν / μαίνοιτ’
Ἀχιλλεύς / λαοφόνον δόρυ σείων “at the time when in the plain Achilles
raged, causing panic (κλονέω[ν), shaking his man-slaying spear”
(Ep. 13.118–20). This passage is in fact quite close to Pindar’s description
of Achilles in I. 8, suggesting that both Bacchylides and Pindar draw on the
same tradition, very likely the one represented by our text of the Iliad.
In this light, it is notable that Pindar refers to poets performing at the
wedding of Thetis and Peleus as sophoi rather than aoidoi: even as he
builds on the authority of epic performance, Pindar represents it as part of
a common poetic tradition, and thus as the domain of sophoi, rather
than of self-styled aoidoi, ‘bard-singers’ of hexameter poetry, referred to
in N. 2.1.
In contrast with Isthmian 2, in which various discursive frames were
juxtaposed syntagmatically, genre interaction in Isthmian 8 operates on the
paradigmatic principle, in that the mythic narrative and the encomiastic
sections mutually reinforce each other. I conclude with another example of
such genre interplay in this ode.
The poem begins with a third person address to one of the performers or
members of the audience – a typical instance of Pindaric “scripted
spontaneity”:71
Κλεάνδρῳ τις ἁλικίᾳ τε λύτρον εὔδοξον, ὦ νέοι, καμάτων
πατρὸς ἀγλαὸν Τελεσάρχου παρὰ πρόθυρον
ἰὼν ἀνεγειρέτω
κῶμον, Ἰσθμιάδος τε νίκας ἄποινα, καὶ Νεμέᾳ
ἀέθλων ὅτι κράτος ἐξεῦρε· τῷ καὶ ἐγώ, καίπερ ἀχνύμενος
θυμόν, αἰτέομαι χρυσέαν καλέσαι
Μοῖσαν. ἐκ μεγάλων δὲ πενθέων λυθέντες
μήτ’ ἐν ὀρφανίᾳ πέσωμεν στεφάνων,
μήτε κάδεα θεράπευε· παυσάμενοι δ’ ἀπράκτων κακῶν
γλυκύ τι δαμωσόμεθα καὶ μετὰ πόνον·
ἐπειδὴ τὸν ὑπὲρ κεφαλᾶς
γε ϯ Ταντάλου λίθον παρά τις ἔτρεψεν ἄμμι θεός,
ἀτόλματον Ἑλλάδι μόχθον. (I. 8.1–11)
For Kleandros, young men, let someone go to the shining vestibule of his
father Telesarkhos and stir up a kômos as a glorious recompense of toils for
Kleandros’s youth72 and a reward for the Isthmian victory and because he
71
See Introduction, n. 62.
72
The collective aspect of the passage invites an alternative translation for ἁλικίᾳ: ‘youthful
companions’ (of Kleandros); for a summary of different opinions on this question, see Carey
(1981: 185–6).
discovered the success of contests at Nemea. For him73 I also, although grieved in
spirit, am asked to call the golden Muse. Being released from great sorrows, let us
not find ourselves in want of crowns, and do not attend to family afflictions:
having ceased from impracticable evils, we will (or: let us) make public something
sweet, even after toil, since some god has turned aside from us the stone over
Tantalos’s head, the unbearable hardship for Hellas.
The joyous opening proves deceptive, as the focus shifts to the memory of
the recent war with Persia. As a result, the meaning of the phrase “requital
of toils” (λύτρον . . . καμάτων), by itself a common image of epinician
song, is modified by the notion of release “from great sorrows,” expressed
by the cognate verbal form (λυθέντες).74 The speaker takes on the tone of
consolation and exhortation, which is somewhat reminiscent of surviving
examples of consolatory elegy (Arch. 13, Theogn. 355–60). Yet his task is
more specific: it is to ensure that there is “no deficit [ὀρφανίᾳ lit. ‘orphan-
hood’] of crowns,” and he accomplishes this by “calling (upon)” the
Muse.75 Revealing the text to be specially composed for the occasion,
Pindar lays bare the device of the invocation: for a chorus to begin their
performance, a professional poet must be engaged to call upon an already
half-privatized Muse.
In Pindar, cessation of grief appears to present a precondition for poetic
performance: “having ceased from impracticable evils, we will (or: let us)
make public something sweet, even after toil.” Implicitly informing this
passage is the notion of musical performance as healing procedure. The
presence of the Muse, possibly in her primitive “epaoidic” capacity, is
central to this notion.76 Most notably, the opening of I. 8 echoes Theog.
98–103:
εἰ γάρ τις καὶ πένθος ἔχων νεοκηδέι θυμῷ
ἄζηται κραδίην ἀκαχήμενος, αὐτὰρ ἀοιδὸς
Μουσάων θεράπων κλέεα προτέρων ἀνθρώπων
73
Most scholars accept Hartung’s emendation and read τῶ ‘therefore’ (Slater 515, Carey 1981: 186,
Lefkowitz 1991: 44). I believe that the manuscript reading τῷ, with Kleandros as an antecedent, is to
be kept, as it makes it possible to construe καλέσαι with a dative of interest (‘invite on his behalf ’),
rather than absolutely (‘call upon’), which yields poorer meaning with the Muse as an object.
74
For the image of requital, see Kurke (1991: 108–16).
75
This formulation is paralleled by Pai. 6.5–8 where the speaker, addressing Pytho, claims to “have
come hearing the noise of Kastalia bereft [lit. orphaned] of choral song-and-dance of men, to ward
off helplessness from your kinsmen [i.e. the Delphians] and my honors” (ψόφον ἀϊὼν Κασταλίας /
ὀρφανὸν ἀνδρῶν χορεύσιος ἦλθον / ἔταις ἀμαχανίαν ἀ̣[λ]έξων / τεοῖσιν ἐμαῖς τε τιμ̣ [α]ῖς). Orphania,
as well as amêkhania, can be viewed as the opposite of poetic aphthonia; it is not just a reference to
the losses and the feelings of the survivors (see, e.g., Carey 1981: 187–8).
76
Cf. N. 4.1–5, N. 8.45–50; for discussion, see Maslov (2009: 29, n. 64).
ὑμνήσῃ μάκαράς τε θεούς, οἳ Ὄλυμπον ἔχουσιν,
αἶψ’ ὅ γε δυσφροσυνέων ἐπιλήθεται οὐδέ τι κηδέων
μέμνηται· ταχέως δὲ παρέτραπε δῶρα θεάων.
If a man, with sorrow in his freshly-grieved spirit, is dumb-struck, distressed in
his heart, but the singer, the attendant of the Muses, hymns the lays of men and
[hymns] blessed gods who hold Olympus, that man shall immediately forget
anxious thoughts, nor mind any of his sorrows: the gifts of the goddesses swiftly
turn one aside.
I am not arguing for an intertextual connection between the two passages,
although such a possibility cannot be ruled out. In both texts, the poet
claims access to mousikê, while seeking to distract a man grieved “in his
spirit”; the same verb (παρά . . . ἔτρεψεν, in tmesis; παρέτραπε, second
aorist in gnomic use) is used for the divine agent undoing human grief.
Differences between the two passages are no less notable. Rather than
stating a general truth like the Hesiodic aoidos, the Pindaric speaker
expresses an emotion shared by the community.77 Furthermore, in I. 8,
the dispelling of hardship lies back in the past, and the god responsible is
not defined. Nevertheless, Pindar’s text does, in fact, claim to relieve grief
through a verbal act: the sudden direct imperative μήτε κάδεα θεράπευε
“and do not attend to family afflictions,” in addition to causing a minor
disruption in the syntax, appears to have an immediate perlocutionary
effect in the following phrase “having ceased from impracticable evils, we
will make public something sweet” (i.e., perform as a kômos/khoros78).
It appears that in the opening lines of I. 8 Pindar employs traditional
phrasing used to describe poetry’s ability to dispel grief, but ostensibly, as
compared to Theog. 98–103, dilutes its immediate force. Instead of directly
claiming a healing power for his poem, Pindar uses the mythic narrative to
the same effect. In this case, the paradigmatic principle of genre interaction
serves to resuscitate an older notion of poetic authority.
A central part of the mythic narrative is taken by Themis’s lengthy
discourse addressed to Zeus and Poseidon, who are vying over Thetis. Her
words, which merge prophecy (it is fated that Thetis’s son will supersede
Zeus, if “mixed with Zeus or his brothers”), exhortation (cease from
wrangle), and advice (Thetis should be given to Peleus), are called the-
sphata, a supreme epithet of authoritative discourse in Archaic poetry:
indeed, it is difficult to think of a more authoritative instance of discourse
77
The prominence of the chorus in these lines is stressed in Burnett (2005: 109–10).
78
For the meaning of δαμωσόμεθα, cf. δαμώματα ‘public (choral) performances’ in Stesichorus 212.1.
than one to which Zeus and Poseidon have to nod approval (31 θεσφάτων
<ἐπ>άκουσαν, 45a-46 τοὶ δ’ ἐπὶ γλεφάροις / νεῦσαν ἀθανάτοισι).
Pindar uses Themis’s verbal performance strategically, introducing the
verb of speaking in line 31, but failing to mark the beginning of her
discourse (εἶπε δ’ εὔβουλος ἐν μέσοισι Θέμις, / εἵνεκα πεπρωμένον ἦν
κτλ. ‘and in their midst spoke Themis of good counsel, since it was
fated . . .’).79 Direct speech proper begins on line 35a with an unexpected
address to the supreme gods, which in performance must have produced
an effect of an apostrophe to the audience: “But do cease from these things:
let her, having happened upon mortal beds, look upon her son killed in
war” (ἀλλὰ τὰ μέν παύσατε· βροτέων δὲ λεχέων τυχοῖσα / υἱὸν εἰσιδέτω
θανόντ’ ἐν πολέμῳ). I would suggest that there is an unmistakable local
effect that Pindar aims to achieve with Themis’s speech: it is to reiterate,
with renewed force, the exhortation of the opening of the poem. The
phrase ἀλλὰ τὰ μέν παύσατε merges two earlier moments: παυσάμενοι δ’
ἀπράκτων κακῶν “having ceased from impracticable evils” (line 7) and
ἰατὰ δ’ ἔστι βροτοῖς σύν γ’ ἐλευθερίᾳ / καὶ τά “even these things can be
healed for mortals, provided there is political independence” (line 15–15a).
In the latter phrase, which belongs to a prolonged series of gnomes with
consolatory content, the reference of τά is somewhat vague, making it even
more likely that the audience initially took the τὰ μέν in Themis’s speech
to be an echo of the exhortatory segment of the poem.80
More could be said about Pindar’s employment of different genre
frames in Isthmian 8.81 My objective was merely to highlight its most
distinctive aspect, namely the subtle calibration of primary and secondary
genres evoked in the mythic narrative and the main body of the poem.
More generally, the analysis presented in this section suggests the following
conclusions. Putative intertextual allusions in Pindaric epinikia often
(perhaps, as a rule) need to be considered as activations of discursive
frames; Pindar employs the resources of past and present forms in ways
79
It is significant that Themis’s prophecy to the gods most likely represents Pindar’s addition to the
myth (Hubbard 1987: 10–14).
80
Approaches to the myth in I. 8 include stressing shared thematic concerns (“the emphasis of loosing
and staying” [Bury 1892: 135; italics in the original]) and varieties of allegorical interpretation. Cf.:
Hubbard (1987: 15–16): “If the recognition of good men’s merits can help resolve disputes even
among the gods, surely it can do the same for cities and other mortal institutions” etc.; Cole (1992:
73–90, building on a hypothesis Ludolph Dissen advanced in 1821): Zeus, Poseidon, and Thetis
represent Sparta, Athens, and Aegina.
81
To mention several other episodes that call for a similar method of analysis: angeliai that reach
Chiron’s cave (l. 41), the notion of phatis in l. 40, the use of the lofty verb ennepoisa of Themis’s
speech (l. 45a); Aiakos’s role as counselor; the parallelism between the two instances of reported
discourse (Themis’s speech and the story of Achilles as narrated by the sophoi).
that are specific to the tasks of the particular poem. One might theorize
this use of forms in terms of poetic synchronization of otherwise diachron-
ically distinct elements whose coexistence is not licensed by any social
script except for the literary. It is within the literary metapragmatic order
that myth, earlier poetic texts, Hellenic history, the patron’s ideology, and
the concerns of the local community can be brought together in a single
utterance. Notably, poetic synchronization does not imply that the
resulting text has mimetic or diegetic coherence. The Pindaric approach
to forms is topical; it does not aim at consistency, but often parades the
various scripts and frames that it contains. It is not the case, however, that
epinikion is a form that is crafted ad libitum by a single poet. It has its own
history, an archaeology that makes certain genre elements more germane
than others to what an epinician text can achieve. In the remainder of this
Chapter, I seek to offer a stratifying analysis of epinikion that would be
attentive both to the objective facts of the history of forms and to Pindar’s
own work on genre.
3 Epinikion: a genre in the making

Pindaric epinikion instantiates, in a radical form, the diachronic principle
put forward in Chapter 1: the hybridization of forms as a mechanism of
literary evolution. Whatever genres a given poem alludes to or embeds, its
status as an epinikion – an ode composed on the occasion of an athletic
victory – is never in doubt. This recognition of a form is accomplished in
the absence of an overarching mimetic or diegetic frame, in accord with
the topical mode of text production. In other words, while Pindar is free to
shuffle or omit most epinician components, some sequences of rhetorical
moves, as they are analyzed by Bundy, are always present to satisfy the
audience’s expectation, and those that are peculiar to particular poems are
often adapted to epinikion’s overall compositional structure in a way that
may conceal them from the eye of the modern scholar.
As an illustration, we may compare Isthmian 2 and 8, two poems that
can hardly be said to follow a single pattern: while both are, quite unmis-
takably, epinician odes (due to the presence of such topoi as general gnome
followed by name cap and victory catalogue), they display different types
of genre embedding, one of which is more explicit than the other. Whereas
in Isthmian 2 genres are juxtaposed so as cumulatively to inform the entire
poem, in Isthmian 8 processes of generic appropriation are contained
within the expected sequence of topoi/motifs (such as the arrival of the
poetic ego, the “prooimial” Muse, the mythic narrative).
Epinikion: a genre in the making 277
The question arises as to whether the basic compositional structure of
Pindaric epinikion can be analyzed, from a diachronic viewpoint, as itself a
result of interaction between genres. The analytical gains of such a dia-
chronic perspective are obvious: if we could reconstruct a genre prehistory
for each epinician topos/motif, including those sedimented as compos-
itional elements, we would surely have a better grasp of the mechanics of
genre interaction in the preserved epinikia. This question of the origin of
the epinician genre may thus be reformulated as follows: what were the
discursive resources – genre frames on their way to becoming compos-
itional elements – that were involved in creating the expectations that
structure the texts of Bacchylides and Pindar? Unfortunately, the evidence
is far too meager for a detailed reconstruction. Nevertheless, some intim-
ations about the early history and prehistory of the victory ode can be
gleaned from the sources.
First of all, it is necessary to exercise caution when claiming a formal or
chronological priority to any single genre constituent. Given our know-
ledge of the evolution of lyric forms, it is a priori more likely that epinikion
did not organically develop from a “proto-epinikion,” but rather resulted
from a conjunction of more than one preexistent genre.
Let us begin with the more recent history of the genre. In 1984, John
Barron suggested that a papyrus with fragmented lines, previously believed
to be by Stesichorus, should be reassigned to Ibycus, and argued that they
represent an epinikion. If this argument is accepted, that would push the
earliest attested specimen of the genre (at least) to the 530s.82 Previously, it
had been thought that the first composer of epinikia was Simonides, a poet
whom tradition consistently deems to have been the first to charge fees.
We possess several short fragments of Simonides’ epinikia, and some
reports on others – including the famous story about an epinikion for a
Thessalian aristocrat Skopas, who suggested that the poet apply for half of
the agreed fee to Kastor and Polydeukes since half of the poem was
dedicated to the praise of these gods.83 We know that Simonides composed
epinikia for different patrons, most of whom (if our sample is at all
representative) were tyrants and aristocrats from the periphery of the Greek
world.84 This suggests an alignment of early epinikion with monodic praise
82
Barron (1984: 20–2); Rawles (2012). Rosalind Thomas notes that inscriptions begin to “clearly
identify themselves as victory inscriptions” from around the mid-sixth century (2007: 160)
83
Cic. de orat. 2.86, Quint. 11.2.11–16 = Simon. 510.
84
This historical fact supports the stratification of the Pindaric corpus put forward in Chapter 1,
Section 7. These patrons of Simonides are Xenokrates of Akragas (fr. 513), whose victories are
celebrated in Pindar’s I. 2, Anaxilas from Rhegium (515), Astylos from Kroton in Southern Italy
poems composed at aristocratic courts in the course of the sixth century by
Anacreon, Ibycus, and Simonides. Many of these poems would fall into
the category Pindar designates as paideioi hymnoi.85 Moreover, tyrants
appear to be the only ones to commission more than one poet to celebrate
the same victory (P. 6, dated 490, celebrates a victory also celebrated by
Simonides in 494; O. 1 celebrates the same victory as Bacch. Ep. 3).
Aside from whatever indications the fragments of Ibycus and Simonides
can provide, any judgment on the origins of epinikion must, in part, rest
on an internal reconstruction based on the corpora of Pindar and
Bacchylides. A commonly cited proto-form of epinikion is the short song
attributed to Archilochus in the opening of Olympian 9: a song which “by
the Kronion hill [i.e., in Olympia] sufficed for Epharmostos to lead a
kômos with his dear companions” (ἄρκεσε Κρόνιον παρ’ ὄχθον ἁγεμονεῦ-
σαι / κωμάζοντι φίλοις Ἐφαρμόστῳ σὺν ἑταίροις). Pindar’s point is that for
the full-scale celebration he provides a more substantial, as well as a more
personalized, poetic product. Indirect tradition provides the text of this
“Archilochean song,” which I quote here in the version of M. L. West
(fr. 324): τήνελλα καλλίνικε / χαῖρε ἄναξ Ἡράκλεις, / αὐτός τε καἰόλαος,
αἰχμητὰ δύω “Tenella [imitation of lyre sound?], rejoice, victorious lord
Heracles, you as well as Iolaos, two spearmen.” There is little doubt that
this is a traditional, nonliterary chant.86 It is suggestive that its perform-
ance context was apparently restricted to athletic events.87 In particular,
the “Archilochean song” points to a possibility that there existed a tradition
of praising athletes through the paradigm of Heracles, the most prominent
mythic character in Pindar and Bacchylides. Emmet Robbins has drawn
(506), the sons of Aiatios from Thessaly (511); but note also an Aeginetan wrestler Krios (507) and
Euboian victors (509, 518). Simonides’ epinikia include frr. 506–18, 555.
85
It appears that erotic poetry, and particularly paideios (later paidikos) hymnos, supplied the principal
paradigm for praising an individual. This can be seen in Ibycus 282, whose famous concluding
sentence I read as praise for Polykrates’ beauty, rather than an abstract and unsubstantiated claim for
his “eternal glory”: τοῖς μὲν πέδα κάλλεος αἰέν / καὶ σύ, Πολύκρατες, κλέος ἄφθιτον ἑξεῖς ὡς κατ’
ἀοιδὰν καὶ ἐμὸν κλέος (‘among these [Hyllis and Troilos] you also, Polykrates, will have eternal fame
for your beauty, as [I will have] my fame with regard to singing’). Some scholars have inferred that
Polykrates must have been young when the poem was composed (most recently: Campbell 3.6). It is
more likely that tyrants were conventionally represented as eromenoi (Nicholson 2000; cf. Nisetich
1977: 134–5). The opening of I. 2 implies praise for Thrasyboulos as a pais, although he was certainly
far beyond his youth at the time. When in the fourth century ce Themistius praises emperors by
calling them paidika (discussion in Averintsev 1997 [1977]: 259–60), he may be taking up the
same topos.
86
This is shown by the affinity of its predominantly iambic meter to that of other ritual chants (West
1982: 148). Gildersleeve’s reference to Handel is instructive: “It was the ‘See the conquering hero
comes’ of the Greek” (1885: 203).
87
In contrast to, e.g., victory paians sung after battle (Rutherford 2001: 45–7); the earliest example is
Il. 22.391–4.
attention both to the content of the kallinikos song and to the prominence
in the epinikia of myths of Kastor and Polydeukes and Heracles conceived
of as divine proto-athlêtai, suggesting that epinikion originated in cult
hymns addressed to these divinities.88 As I have already pointed out, the
idea of a single point of origin for a genre appears inherently improbable.
Nevertheless, a genealogical explanation for Pindar’s mythic preferences is
a desideratum, and the influence of a subgenre of cult song is a plausible
hypothesis.
I have so far tentatively drawn attention to two forms which may
have played a role in the constitution of epinikion: monodic erotic lyric
and hymns to divinities who have a human aspect and thus can be more
appropriately compared to mortal victors, such as Heracles and the
Dioskouroi.89 The diachrony may account for, or at least facilitate, syn-
chronic actualizations of these generic frames in particular epinician poems
(cf. paideioi hymnoi in I. 2, Kastoreion/Iolaion in I. 1). In light of the ease
with which Pindar draws on a variety of genres, however, internal recon-
struction based on such episodic appropriations is a risky undertaking.
Only consistency of deployment of a given discursive frame in a consider-
able number of poems warrants a claim for its diachronic significance.
In scholarly discussions of the origins of epinikion, two further such claims
have been advanced.
One regards kômos ‘revel, procession’ as a defining feature of epinician
poetry. Indeed, since A. E. Harvey’s pioneering article, it has often been
assumed that in the Classical period epinikia were referred to as enkômia
‘songs that are sung in kômos vel sim’.90 Thus Plato, who is well acquainted
88
Robbins (1997); cf. Durante (1976: 160); Rawles (2012: 9). Note especially the genre designation
Kastoreion ‘hymn to Kastor’, apparently used as a designation of epinikion in P. 2.69; cf. on I. 1.16
Section 1. That Heracles was thought of as a divinity associated with success in Panhellenic
competition is confirmed by Echembrotos’s dedication reported by Pausanias (10.7. 4–6, text in
Campbell 3.200). In Eur. HF 180 Heracles is described as having danced a kallinikos in a komos with
the gods (τὸν καλλίνικον μετὰ θεῶν ἐκώμασε; see Wilamowitz’s commentary ad loc. [1969 3.49]).
Note also the cult hymn addressed to Hercules in Virg. Aen. 8.293, where he is addressed as invicte
(discussion in Schröder 1954: 182–3).
89
These mythical figures are evidently tied to Pindar’s thematic preoccupation with bridging the
divide between the divine and human realms, a link that may have a foundation in popular religion;
cf.: “The Dioskouroi, like Heracles, were also said to have been initiated at Eleusis and were seen as
guiding lights for those hoping to break out of the mortal sphere into the realm of the gods”
(Burkert 1985 [1977]: 213). The theoxenic associations of the Dioskouroi seem to point in the same
direction (cf. O. 3). On the “interstitial” quality of Heracles, poised between humanity and divinity,
see Silk (1993); in particular, Silk shows that this quality made Heracles difficult to accommodate in
Athenian tragedy.
90
Harvey (1955: 163–4). Harvey argued that the term enkômion was misapplied by Hellenistic scholars
to any poems praising a mortal (except threnoi and epinikia, the latter now a separate genre with a
special name). According to Harvey, in the Archaic period, such poems would be viewed as skolia.
with Pindaric epinikia, never uses the genre designation epinikia, although
he does refer to the genre of enkômia.91 It remains uncertain whether, for
Pindar, this term was the proper designation of the genre, since he only
uses enkômios as an adjective.92 He does, however, once use the plural of a
seemingly equivalent noun epikômia ‘songs associated with the kômos’.93 In
fact, Pindar did not promote a specific genre designation for epinician
poetry, resorting instead to intermittent use of terms such as hymnos, aoida,
and melos. Such a preference is itself a significant indication of the self-
consciously synthetic nature of Pindaric epinikion. I discuss this issue
further in the following section. As Felix Budelmann notes, the overlap-
ping sets of addressees in epinikia and in “encomia,” solo songs honoring
individuals and apparently performed at symposia, suggest that these were
kindred poetic forms which, nevertheless, are not to be conflated.94 In
particular, surviving encomia tend to be commissioned by relatively more
significant aristocrats, pointing to the “dynast” substratum in the evolution
of epinikion (discussed in Chapter 1, Section 7). Moreover, it is doubtful
that the performance of texts we know as encomia involved a kômos.95 In
any case, the overall prominence of kômastic diction in epinikion makes it
likely that a celebratory song involving a procession was one of the genre’s
original ingredients; words with the root kômos appear at least once in
twenty-nine out of forty-four Pindaric epinikia.96 Linked to the idea of
scripted spontaneity, kômastic rhetoric is undoubtedly one of the basic
elements of Pindaric epinikion.
The change in terminology was due to the narrowing of the meaning of skolion (originally, any
composition to be sung at symposia), which came to be restricted to short, nonliterary pieces
(Harvey 1955: 162–4, building on Reitzenstein 1893).
91
Cf. Nagy (1990b: 109).
92
It is used with the following nouns: melos ‘song’ (O. 2.47, N. 1.7), hymnos (P. 10.53), tropos ‘style,
method’ (O. 10.77), tethmos ‘ordinance’ (O. 13.29). That it was a technical term for Pindar is
entertained as a hypothesis in Harvey (1955: 163), but taken for granted in Heath (1988: 183–4) and
(apparently) in Cole (1992: 16–32).
93
epikômia as a noun (N. 6.32); as an adjective epikômios with the accusative of *ops ‘voice’ (P. 10.6),
hymnos (N. 8.50). In the surviving corpus of Bacchylides neither enkômios nor epikômios occur.
94
Budelmann (2012).
95
The distribution of the vocabulary of kômos in Pindaric epinikia may suggest otherwise. With the
exception of P. 2, Pindar does not refer to the kômos in poems addressed to the Sicilian tyrant
Hieron. Moreover, both Bacchylides and Pindar appear to have a preference for using kômos-related
word in poems composed for lesser contests. In Pindar, 9 out of 14 Olympians and 6 out of
12 Pythians include such a word, compared to 6 out of 8 Isthmians and 8 out of 10 Nemeans.
Bacchylides uses kômos-related words in 4 out of 15 epinikia, three of them for Nemean victories and
one for a Pythian victory.
96
I exclude from the counts the fragmentary I. 9 and N. 11, dedicated to the assumption of prutaneia
‘magistracy’ in Tenedos. If the latter is included, the proportion of poems with a kômos-related word
is 30/45.
One more genre has been put forward as a possible antecedent for
epinikion: dirge or, more broadly, praise for the dead. A link between
athletic competition and thrênoi is a priori likely given the ample evidence
for games at aristocratic funerals.97 Otherwise, however, it is entirely
hypothetical. It is in part for this reason that three very different concep-
tualizations of the epinikion’s roots in death ritual have been put forward
in the scholarship.
Gregory Nagy has drawn attention to the fact that the aetiologies of the
four Panhellenic athletic contests involved compensation for the death of a
hero (or Python, in the case of the Pythian Games).98 He further argues
that the epinician performance stands at the end of a series of compen-
sations reaching back to the founding death: it is “the final realization, the
final constitutive event, of the ritual process of athletics” and “a formal
‘compensation’ for the athlete’s ordeal.”99 In support of his proposal, Nagy
puts forward an explanation for the formation of the word epinikion. He
suggests the meaning ‘that which is in compensation for victory [nikê]’, by
analogy with the use of epi with the dative case of the name of the dead
hero “compensated” by the funeral games. The latter usage, however, is
restricted to personal names,100 hence the collocation that may have
yielded the meaning Nagy posits (e.g., *μέλος ἐπὶ νίκᾳ) is, in fact, linguis-
tically impossible. For example, instead of *λύτρον ἐπὶ καμάτοις ‘recom-
pense for toils’ Pindar would use an objective genitive (cf. λύτρον καμάτων
in I. 8.2). There is, moreover, no need for such an unlikely scenario. The
meaning of the adjective epinikios (later substantivized as epinikion) is
clearly ‘that which is associated with victory’ or even ‘is for the victory’
(cf. the Pindaric formation ἐπικώμια above); this meaning is confirmed by
a common collocation ἐπινίκια (ἱερά) ‘sacrifices associated with the
victory’.
Furthermore, it is uncertain whether epinikion existed as a genre
designation in the Archaic and Classical periods. This kind of formation
97
Il. 23.257–897, Hes. WD 654–7. For further evidence on funeral games in the Archaic period, see
Roller (1981).
98
Nagy (1990b: 118–42).
99
Nagy (1990b: 142). Nagy’s theorization of epinikion has not been extended beyond Olympian 1.
The premises of Nagy’s reading of O. 1, which are also those of Burkert (1983: 93–103), have been
questioned in Golden (1998: 13–14, 18–23). A different explanation for the use of the vocabulary of
recompense in the epinikia is advanced in Kurke (1991: 108–116): inasmuch as apoina “protects the
community from the threat of a destructive past,” Pindar’s use of this concept serves to “depict
the whole community’s well-being as contingent on the smooth workings of aristocratic
exchange” (108).
100
Cf. LSJ s. epi B.I.b.
with nikê is only twice attested in Pindar with different suffixes (ἐπίνικον
in O. 8.75 and ἐπινικίοισιν in N. 4.77), in both cases as an adjective.
The single occurrence of the word in Bacchylides is a lone example of
substantivized usage (2.14). These attestations, albeit isolated, provided a
sufficient basis for the creation of a genre name epinikion by the Alexan-
drian editors of Archaic lyrikoi. Yet they hardly testify to the existence of
such a term at the time of Pindar and Bacchylides. Both the fact that in
the Classical period enkômion, not epinikion, was the term used to refer to
victory odes, and the uncertainty in the form of the suffix, suggest that
Pindar and Bacchylides use epinik(i)os as an ad-hoc formation.101 Epini-
cian poets are not invested in an idea of epinikion as a firmly defined
form. One still may wonder, nevertheless, why the word epinik(i)os
appears only in these three contexts.
Laura Nash points to a striking parallelism between the two passages in
which epinik(i)os occurs in Pindar (O. 8.74–6, N. 4.76–8): in both cases it
refers to praise of athletic victories of the whole clan, rather than the single
victor, immediately followed by the speaker memorializing the victor’s
dead ancestors.102 But Nash’s tentative conclusion that the term refers to
“the praises of the dead that are occasioned by the present victory” which
“are not ‘about victory’ or ‘of victory’, but rather ‘victorious’ in that they
have overcome death,” is unacceptable on linguistic grounds.103 Moreover,
in Bacchylides 2, the substantivized plural epinikia occurs without any
threnic subtext, and indeed without any reference to victories of the
victor’s ancestors.104
An alternative explanation of the two Pindaric passages can be
suggested: as shown by Bacchylides Ep. 2.13, the adjectival formation
epinik(i)on was in principle available and could be used where (1) a specific
designation of the type of song was demanded, and (2) the use of a
101
Another early occurrence of this formation that belongs to the same type is in Aesch. Ag. 174–5:
Ζῆνα δέ τις προφρόνως ἐπινίκια κλάζων / τεύξεται φρενῶν τὸ πᾶν. Fraenkel (1950 1.101) takes it to
refer to the kallinikos chant and translates: ‘But anyone who gladly shouts ‘Hail to Zeus the victor!’
shall hit full on the target of understanding.’ A safer translation would be ‘shouts to Zeus whatever
is appropriate to victory (congratulations)’. The meaning ‘victory ode’ (Crotty 1982: 66–7) seems
highly unlikely.
102
Nash (1990 [1976]: 85–95).
103
Nash explains the formation with epi- by analogy with epikratêsis ‘conquest’ (1990: 94), a deverbal
noun that cannot serve as a parallel for epinik(i)os.
104
The seventy wreaths, which Nash took to refer to the victories of the clan (1990: 92), must instead
refer to the sum-total of Kean victories, as is made clear by the use of a first person plural form of
the verb. That seventy victories are claimed by a single family would be entirely unprecedented.
Aesch. Ag. 174–5 may also perhaps be cited as evidence against Nash’s explanation, although it does
not refer to the genre of epinikion (see n. 101).
kômos-related word was not appropriate. These conditions are satisfied by
N. 4.77, where reference is made specifically to “victory-related songs”
(ἐπινικίοισιν ἀοιδαῖς), because it is the athletic achievements of the clan
that are emphasized, but kômos may not be involved, since the poem refers
repeatedly to reperformance of epinician poems, most likely in a sympotic
setting.105 Furthermore, the notion of a victory revel may not be appropri-
ate in the solemn context of “setting up a stele whiter than Parian marble”
for the victor’s dead relative Kallikles.106
In O. 8.74ff, the commemorative aspect is quite prominent: as Pindar
remarks, “and for the dead there is a share of things enacted in a lawful
ritual” (ἔστι δὲ καί τι θανόντεσσιν μέρος κἀν νόμον ἐρδομένων), conjectur-
ing that the report of the victor’s achievement will reach his relatives in
Hades. The context again would seem to exclude kômastic rhetoric as
indecorous. Such an argument, however, may not even be necessary to
explain Pindar’s use of the adjective epinikon in this passage. The adjective
occurs in the phrase: “I should, stirring up remembrance, declare the
victorious bloom of hands for/to the Blepsiadai” (ἀλλ’ ἐμὲ χρὴ μναμοσύναν
ἀνεγείροντα φράσαι / χειρῶν ἄωτον Βλεψιάδαις ἐπίνικον). Whether one
construes the dative of the “Blepsiadai” as a vague dative of interest or as an
indirect object of the verb (in which case the term would encompass
the residents of Hades to whom Pindar communicates the news of the
victory107), the “victorious bloom of hands” is to be interpreted as a
reference to the current wrestling victory of Alkimedôn; note, in particular,
the emphasis on his “hands.”108 I would further suggest that the meaning of
ἐπίνικον is different from that of ἐπινικίοισιν in N. 4.77 and Bacch. 2.13, and
this difference is reflected in the different type of formation. The extended
suffix-ios is particularly a characteristic of Rektionskomposita, in which the
105
Morgan (1993: 12); Clay (1999: 33); even if we allow for the possibility of choral reperformance (as
argued in Currie 2004: 56–62), the idea of scripted spontaneity implied by the kômastic rhetoric
may not be opportune in this context.
106
Note that in N. 6.62 Pindar uses the term epikômia for the songs celebrating the achievements of
the Bassidai, but unlike in N. 4.77, there is no thrênic context. This pattern is seemingly
contradicted by P. 5.100 where kômoi are mentioned next to what appears to be cult activity at
the tombs of Cyrenaean kings (indeed, the phrase κώμων ὑπὸ χεύμασι “under the pourings of
kômoi” is so odd that some scholars propose emending κώμων to ὕμνων; cf. Slater 518): Arkesilas’s
ancestors reside not in Hades, but in the place where they are worshipped as heroes, and their
serene presence is only reinforced by victory celebrations (on this passage, see Krummen 1990:
147–8, who discusses the possibility that there was a collective cult of kings in Cyrene).
107
The poet also claims to convey the news of the victory to the realm of the dead in O. 14.20–4 and
P. 5.94–103 (see Segal 1985 for discussion).
108
Contra Gildersleeve (1885: 199), who takes the phrase as a reference to the achievements of the
Blepsiadai as a clan: “‘The victorious prime of their hands’, ‘the fruit of their victorious hands’.”
first member of the compound, in this case a preposition, “governs” the
second, hence the meaning epi-nik-ios ‘that which is for victory, is associated
with victory’.109 No suffix extension is generally expected in a different type
of compound, Possessivkomposita; thus interpreted, the meaning of epinikos
is ‘that which has victory upon itself ’, ‘victorious’ (cf. kallinikos ‘one who
has beautiful victory’), which is the appropriate meaning in O. 8.75. The
hands of the wrestler Alkimedôn are indeed victorious.
Even though Nash’s theory about the original meaning of the term
epinikion cannot be accepted, the notion that dirges are a significant
constituent of epinikion cannot be so easily put aside. A similar argument
was presented in 1940 by Olga Freidenberg, who noted that Pindar’s
epinikia share in folk beliefs about human destiny (transience of life,
inability to attain a lasting greatness, variability of fortune, etc.), which
modern readers, who are familiar with the later reception of these topoi,
tend to regard as metaphysical tokens of a literary sensibility. Yet inasmuch
as Pindar belongs to an age in which literature assumes new social tasks,
Freidenberg argues that the inherited “folk pessimism” – sedimented as
form – receives a new class-oriented content, and the two enter into
contradiction, as is generally the characteristic of “class literature.”110
According to Freidenberg, the proper home of Pindar’s bleak gnomology,
which tends to emphasize the limitations imposed on mortals, is the genre
of thrênos.111 Based on this evidence, Freidenberg suggests that originally
epinikia were dedicated to praise of dead athletes.112
109
Risch (1974: 187–9).
110
Freidenberg (1940: 48): “One can easily observe how in Pindar folklore transitions into a
qualitatively different phenomenon, class literature with its characteristic trait – the contradiction
between form and content. Why would a poet of feasts and victories need mournful intonations of
the grave? Here there are two remarkable features. First, Pindar must follow the ancient canonical
rules of the victory ode itself: the fact that it was constituted by folk eschatology is beyond his
influence. For him, the victory ode, as a structure, is a form; yet he invests it with content that is
new and his own. This is one side of the problem. And here is the other: in addition to being a
form, folklore as an artistic worldview continues to function in Pindar, structuring the thematics of
his odes as well as the themes’ elaboration in the vein of funereal pessimism. If it were due to
Pindar’s consistent, logical thinking, pessimism could not have been part of victory ode. The
folkloric in Pindar [fol’kloristichnost’] is also revealed by the lack of causal connection between
Pindar’s main topic (virtue is victorious) and pessimistic motifs (virtue yields nothing), with the
image clearly prevailing over conceptual meaning.”
111
Freidenberg (1940: 39–40). To cite one such parallel: “being a mortal never say what will happen
tomorrow, nor, seeing a prosperous man, how long he will prosper” (Sim. 521); “we (mortals) do not
know which finishing line fate wrote down for us to run to, neither by day nor at night” (N. 6.6–7).
In Pindar’s threnoi, fr. 128d.7ff contains an allote alla topos, very common in epinikia (Bundy 1986
[1962]: 7ff ). On the gnomic character of threnoi, cf. Harvey (1955: 170–2).
112
In support of her exaggerated claim that “the custom of allocating a passage for the praise of the
dead can be detected in each epinikion” Freidenberg cites O. 8.77, where she translates meros as
Such a kinship between epinikion and threnos is indeed suggestive,
seeing that these are, insofar as we know, the only two choral genres that
were commissioned by aristocrats interested in enhancing their clan’s
prestige. In fact, we know that Simonides composed epinikia and threnoi
for the same Thessalian family, the Skopadai (fr. 529), and Pindar seems to
have composed in both genres for the same families.113 Given the frequency
with which the victor’s late relatives appear in the epinikia, one motivation
behind an epinician commission was the desire to highlight the past
achievements of the family, which often involved praise of the dead.
Synchronically, epinikion and threnos represented proximate forms in
the literary system of the late Archaic period.
In conclusion, I would like to highlight Freidenberg’s notion of contra-
diction between epinikion’s inherited form and newly assigned ideological
or social tasks. It allows us to reconsider the tension between (gnomic and
mythic) foil and (encomiastic) climax which Bundy celebrated as a basic
Pindaric device, but which the majority of Pindar scholars seek to play
down in their readings of individual poems. In her analysis, Freidenberg
points to a kind of fusion of genres that exceeds the poet’s ability to create
a coherent text. There are fissures in the epinician poetics that are due not
to Pindar’s self-consciously synthetic poetics, but to the survival of pre-
existent forms, which are not incidental to particular epinikia but essential
to their overall constitution. It is in these irreducible fissures that the basic
elements of the genre are made apparent. Two such inbuilt contradictions
have been mentioned: that between choral performance and praise of a
mortal individual, and that between the kômastic rhetoric of scripted
spontaneity and the emphasis on the status of the text as precomposed
with the aid of the poet’s Muse. In both cases, it is possible to argue that
the former elements – conventions of choral performance and kômastic
rhetoric – are inherited, albeit not necessarily related, whereas the latter are
innovations.
In this light, Freidenberg’s point that “futility topoi” do not easily go
together with the confirmation of the victor’s divinely granted victory is
‘part of the song’ to be dedicated to the dead (1940: 36). Duchemin also remarks on the parallelism
of epinician and Mediterranean funerary “symbolism.” In Duchemin’s view, this “ambivalence
profonde du funéraire et du triomphal” points to Pindar’s preoccupation with immortality, but she
has not succeeded in showing a strong funerary association of most of the elements discussed, such
as chariot, eagle, crowns, or the Muses (1955: 169–96, quote on p. 282).
113
Aleuadai in fr. 128e and P. 10.5, Thrasydaos in fr. 128b and P. 11 (cf. Drachmann 2.54). A similar
genre overlap is observed in the case of agonistic and funerary epigrams. Further discussion in
Thomas (2007: 160–2).
well taken. I would, however, question her view that these topoi are
expressions of folk pessimism particularly appropriate to the genre of
lament. First, it is worth stressing that the threnoi of Simonides and Pindar
instantiate a literary genre clearly distinct from the goos, its folk analogue.
Moreover, Pindar’s observations on the limits of mortals’ aspirations have
parallels in other kinds of choral lyric (in particular, the choral odes of
Attic drama) and indeed in Archaic poetry more broadly.114 It is conceiv-
able that the origins of this gnomology are to be located in the supragenre
of cult lyric. In this case, it is indeed an inherited element with a preliterary
genealogy. Alternatively, one might modify Freidenberg’s argument:
threnic elements made their way into the victory ode because epinikion
encompassed both memorialization of dead ancestors and praise of living
victors.
In sum, diachronic evidence points to the significance of the genres
of threnos and solo monody (paideios hymnos), both of which attest to
epinikion’s preoccupation with the problem of aristocratic praise. In
keeping with Leslie Kurke’s view of Pindar as a poet who modernized
traditional aristocratic ideology, we may detect in the very medium Pindar
employs the aristocracy’s orchestrated effort to claim the common Greek
literary and cultural past as its rightful possession.115 These ideologically
charged aristocratic forms of discourse merge, in Pindar, with an inherited
poetics of cult-related communal song and a kômastic rhetoric of spontan-
eous celebration. In the three concluding sections, I discuss the choral
constituents of epinikion, paying particular attention to two forms that can
claim the deepest genealogy: the secondary genre of hymnos and a related
primary genre of prooimion.
4 Chorality in Archaic Greek poetics

The status of choral lyric as a supragenre in the Archaic Greek literary
system is confirmed by the evidence of poetic dialect.116 Whether or not it
also existed as such in the minds of the Greeks, approached on emic terms,
is a different question. The noun χορός yielded a denominal verb χορεύω,
yet no genre designation was associated with this root. In this section,
I present an argument in favor of the view that a unitary concept of choral
cult song was originally conveyed by the word ὕμνος (hymnos), usually
rendered as ‘hymn’. This hypothesis is corroborated by the word’s usage in
114 115
Cf. Crotty (1982: 43–75); Stenger (2004: 81–8). Kurke (1991).
116
Chorality in Archaic Greek poetics 287
the Archaic period; it also makes it possible to detect a substratum of
communal song in the patterns of metapoetic diction in Pindar.
The history of the word ὕμνος presents several problems. While
undoubtedly an old formation lacking in a certain etymology, it only
appears in Homer once, in Od. 8.161, in an aberrant, nonformulaic con-
text.117 This suggests that in the Archaic period the meaning of the word
was quite specific and, in particular, that it did not subsume hexameter
epic. Yet by the Classical age the noun ὕμνος could be applied to almost
any piece of poetry, and the verb derived from it, ὑμνέω, even assumed an
additional meaning ‘repeat over and over again’. There is little doubt that
in the period in question the word’s meaning changed considerably.
It is often held that the original meaning of ὕμνος was ‘poem addressed
to a god’ but that as early as in Sappho it became permissible to “hymn”
heroes, and eventually contemporaries.118 The openings of the Homeric
Hymns, in which the Muse is commonly called upon to “hymn” a divine
addressee, appear to confirm this reconstruction. Yet a closer look at the
evidence of Archaic lyric suggests otherwise. In the surviving fragments of
Alcman, hymnos-related words occur three times, and the contexts do not
include direct address to the gods: female speakers are “hymning a beautiful
melos” (καλὸν ὑμνιοισᾶν μέλος fr. 3, subfr. 1+3.5), “we hymn/are hymning”
(S 3.5), and, in an apparent incipit, the Muse Kalliopa is asked “to begin
lovely words, infuse desire in this hymnos and make this khoros pleasing”
(ἄρχ’ ἐρατῶν Ϝεπέων, ἐπὶ δ’ ἵμερον ὕμνῳ καὶ χαρίεντα τίθη χορόν fr. 27,
subfr. 1.3). In these Alcmanic fragments, hymnos describes a choral perform-
ance, and can be interpreted as ‘poem addressed to the gods’ only insofar as
choral activity in the context of cult presupposes a divine presence.119
117
ὄφρα . . . δαιτί τε τέρπηται καὶ ἀοιδῆς ὕμνον ἀκούων ‘so that he may enjoy the feast and listening
to a hymnos of song’. Durante explains this usage as a Homeric pleonasm of the same type as πῆμα
κακοῖο, κοίτης λέκτρον, etc. (1976: 160–1). Nagy (2002), however, holds that hymnos was a normal
term for Homeric performance.
118
Durante (1976: 160), citing Plato, Rep. 607a, where hymnoi theois and enkomia tois agathois are
distinguished; Cairns (1972: 92), citing Menander Rhetor (331.15–20); García (2002: 8: “Most
scholars abide by a minimalist definition of hymn . . . : a hymn is a song of praise to a god”).
That the Platonic distinction is a later development is recognized in Wünsch (1914: 140–1); Harvey
(1955: 165–9). Robert Parker (OCD 735) assigns the meaning ‘any song in honor of a god’ to the
Classical period. My position is close to those of Bowra (1964a: 3): “current idiom of their [Pindar’s
and Bacchylides’] kind of choral song” and Calame (1974: 119): “dans la poésie lyrique, et jusqu’à
Euripide, il signifie en général tout chant choral.”
119
A similar lack of a link to divine addressee, but a clear presupposition of choral performance, is
observed in Stesichorus 35.2: τοιάδε χρὴ Χαρίτων δαμώματα καλλικόμων ὑμνεῖν Φρύγιον μέλος
ἐξευρόντας ἁβρῶς ἦρος ἐπερχομένου.
The hypothesis that ὕμνος refers principally to choral performance is
confirmed by the sole occurrence of the word in Sappho’s corpus
(fr. 44.34): the poem concludes with a description of the wedding of
Hector and Andromache, where all men present “sounded a lovely orthion
strain, calling upon the far-shooter Paon with a fine lyre, and [disjunctive
de] hymned godlike Hector and Andromache (πάντες δ’ ἄνδρες ἐπήρατον
ἴαχον ὄρθιον / Πάον’ ὀνκαλέοντες ἐκάβολον εὐλύραν / ὔμνην δ’ Ἔκτορα κ’
Ἀνδρομάχαν θεοεικέλοις). Here the hymn refers to the choral performance
of a marriage song (hymenaios), and not to the invocation of the god that
preceded it. We do not know whether Sappho 44 was meant for choral or
solo performance.120 Yet the evidence is not univocal. Used transitively,
the verb ὑμνέω acquires what appears to be a secondary meaning ‘to
celebrate in song’. This is the case in Alcaeus fr. 308.2b, where the speaker
declares that he is “eager to hymn” Hermes (σὲ γάρ μοι / θῦμος ὔμνην).121
In sum, in Archaic lyric, hymnos most often refers to ceremonial melic
performance, probably involving a khoros. This explains the resistance of
the Homeric corpus to the vocabulary of hymnos, which entered the
diction of hexameter poetry only at a late stage of its development.
Notably, the pattern is identical to that observed in the history of the
notion of aoidos and the Muse: hymnos only appears (once) in the Odyssey
(8.161) and – quite frequently – in Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns, but
never in the Iliad. In Hesiod, hymnos is generally associated with the Muses
as a paradigmatic choral group; they are “hymning” (intransitive use) in
Theog. 37 and 70, hymning (transitive use) their father Zeus (Theog. 11,
WD 2) and “the race of mortals” in Theog. 51.122 Further examples can be
explained by an aedic ideology that involved a transfer of the attributes of
melic performance to hexameter poetry: the Muses are enjoining/teaching
Hesiod to “hymn” (Theog. 33, WD 662), the Muses’ attendant is “hymning
the lays of earlier men or the gods” (Theog. 101). Finally, the speaker of
the Works and Days claims to have won a victory in hymnos in WD 657.123
A likely scenario for the semantic development of the word hymnos
involves cross-genre borrowing: in origin firmly associated with melic
performance, the term was later claimed by specialists in hexameter poetry.
The original association with (cult) choral song is indirectly confirmed by
120
In favor of choral performance cf. Lardinois (1996); in this case, the concluding description
represents an early example of choral projection.
121
The same analysis applies to Ibycus fr. 282.12. I discuss this semantic extension of ὑμνέω later in this
section. Another problematic case, Anacreon fr. 356 b2, is discussed in n. 126.
122
The last use confirms that the gods need not be the object of hymnos. Cf. Koller (1956: 160).
123
Cf. hymnos in the context of a contest of hexameter performance in Hes. fr. 357.2.
the fact that the vocabulary of hymnos was borrowed by “singers” of
hexameter at a late stage, and applied much less extensively than the
vocabulary of aoidê. It must be admitted, however, that the evidence of
early Archaic lyric and the Hesiodic corpus is too scanty, and on occasion
too ambiguous, to allow firm conclusions. More decisive is the evidence of
the Homeric Hymns, which have in fact provided the crucial (if implicit)
support to the theory that hymnos is, first and foremost, ‘a poem addressed
to gods’. In a different context, I note a significant pattern in the distribu-
tion of types of diegetic framing in the openings of the Homeric Hymns:
whereas the imperative of the verb hymnein is often addressed to the Muse,
the verb is never used in the first person (in striking contrast to aeidein).
No such restriction exists in Alcman and in Pindar.124 In light of the
corroborating evidence for the borrowing of the “clear-voiced” Muse from
choral poetry into the hexameter corpus (and in particular the Homeric
Hymns), it appears that hymnos represents a similar metapoetic loan.
I conclude that in the early Archaic period, hymnos properly designated
ceremonial melic performance or, more specifically, choral cult song.125
Two semantic developments were concomitant with – and seem to have
aided in – the extension of this term to hexameter poetry. First, hymnos as a
term for choral performance was increasingly often applied to individual
products of any poetic performance; as such it complemented aoidê, which
(as nomen actionis from the verb ‘to sing’) properly referred to the activity
of singing. As a result, hymnos came to be used as a default designation of
‘song,’ supplanting in this meaning, as I suggest below, melos.126 A parallel
development, whereby a term that was previously associated with a lofty
124
Alcman fr. S 3.5; epinician speaker in O. 7.14; choral singer in a partheneion in Parth. 2.11; also
fr. 29.6. Further discussion in Chapter 1, Section 5 and Maslov (Forthcoming).
125
The only exception to the avoidance of first person forms of hymnein in the Homeric Hymns
appears to confirm the pattern. The line “How then should I hymn you, who are well-hymned in
all respects?” (πῶς τ’ ἄρ σ’ ὑμνήσω πάντως εὔυμνον ἐόντα;) occurs twice in the Homeric Hymn to
Apollo, near the beginning of the Delian and Pythian sections. There is scholarly dispute regarding
the relative dating of the portions, which are usually considered to be separate compositions (West
1975; Janko 1982: 99–105), and it seems probable, given the form in which this Homeric Hymn is
preserved, that at some point it was performed as one composition; this idea is pursued in Miller
1979 who shows the text’s dependence on the model of cult hymn. It therefore appears likely that
the notion of euporia (unique in the corpus of the Homeric Hymns) expressed in this formula is a
borrowing from choral lyric.
126
I list all the occurrences of the word that I would assign to this category. “There I claim to have
been victorious with a hymnos and carried away as a prize a tripod with handles” (ἔνθα μέ φημι /
ὕμνῳ νικήσαντα φέρειν τρίποδ’ ὠτώεντα WD 657), “then at Delos first I and Homer as singers
sang, stitching together song in new hymns” (ἐν Δήλωι τότε πρῶτον ἐγὼ καὶ Ὅμηρος ἀοιδοὶ /
μέλπομεν, ἐν νεαροῖς ὕμνοις ῥάψαντες ἀοιδήν [Hes.] fr. 357). The single use of hymnos in the elegiac
corpus (Theognis 993) also belongs in the context of poetic competition. As a transition formula in
the Homeric hymns: “having begun with you I will now move on to the rest of this performance”
literary genre came to be an unmarked word for ‘song’, is represented by
Modern Greek τραγουδῶ ‘to sing’ (in Ancient Greek, ‘to perform a
tragedy’). Another semantic development that impacted the verb hymnein
in the Archaic period is the emergence of the meaning ‘make an object of
hymnos, that is, celebrate in song, praise’, which resulted from the extensive
use of this verb in the transitive construction.127
By Pindar’s time, these semantic developments were in full force, and
they need to be taken into account when interpreting Pindaric usage. In
fact, hymnos is the most frequent of all genre designations in Pindar’s
corpus (fifty-two occurrences), followed by aoida (forty-eight), melos
(twenty), and molpa (four).128 From the viewpoint of word formation,
whereas aoida and molpa are derived from their respective verbs and hence
receive a straightforward interpretation, hymnos and melos are quite enig-
matic. The fact that all their cognates are derived from these nouns
suggests that they represent significant survivals from the past, yet neither
is attested in Homer (again, except hymnos in Od. 8.161).129
Hermann Koller proposes a daring hypothesis regarding the etymology
of melos, positing the original meaning ‘task, duty, concern’.130 Yet the
putative link between the notion of care or duty and cult poetic activity
appears far-fetched. The evidence of Greek texts, in fact, points to the
(σεῦ δ’ ἐγὼ ἀρξάμενος μεταβήσομαι ἄλλον ἐς ὕμνον Hom. Hymn to Aphrodite 5.293, Hom. Hymn to
Artemis 9.9, Hom. Hymn to Hermes 18.11; for this interpretation of the phrase ἄλλον ἐς ὕμνον, see
Koller 1956: 177). In Anacreon 356b2 kaloi hymnoi are mentioned in a sympotic context, where they
are contrasted with disorderly “noise and loud cries” (πατάγῳ τε κἀλαλητῷ) which accompany
drinking.
127
This type of usage is probably represented by Alcaeus fr. 308.2b, Ibycus fr. 282.12.
128
There are plenty of words referring to poetic activity that Pindar only uses occasionally, such as
αὐδά (interestingly, this noun occurs four times in the partheneia, but only once in an epinikion),
ἰαχά, καναχά, ψαλμός, etc. For an overview of Pindaric vocabulary pertaining to verbal art, see
Grinbaum (1990: 85–92).
129
In the case of these two stems, the adjectives and nomina agentis are in turn derived from the verb,
hence melos > melizein > meliktas, hymnos > hymnein > hymnêtos (but aeidein > aoida, aoidos).
The nouns melos and hymnos should also be contrasted with genre designations that can be related
to – and may have developed from – cult exclamations and/or divine epiklêsis such as ailinos, paian,
dithyrambos, hymenaios (Koller 1963: 112–22).
130
Koller (1965) sees this underlying meaning reflected in melei moi ‘it is my concern,’ amelês (cf. Lat.
munus) and derives the meanings melos ‘limb’ and melos ‘melody vel sim.’ via two different routes:
reanalysis of the Homeric epithet of sleep lusimelês (originally ‘care-releasing’) as ‘limb-loosening’
and reconstruction of the meaning ‘cult song’ (qua Pflicht), from which the properly musical
meaning of melos emerges. The weakest point in this feat of semasiological reconstruction is the
derivation of the meaning melos ‘limb’, amply attested in the Iliad, from an adjective that occurs
only twice in the Odyssey. This problem does not, however, invalidate Koller’s well-taken points
that (1) there is no reason to believe that in the Archaic period Greeks conceived of melodic
development as having “limbs,” and (2) in the Archaic corpus melos does not refer strictly to
melody, but rather more broadly to sung performance.
meaning of melos as ‘strain, tune, song of a simpler kind’; notably, it
occurs in contexts where hymnos does not occur, such as with reference to
birds’ song (Hom. Hymn Pan 19.16, Alc. fr. 39, Pratinas 708.5), particular
melodic patterns that carried ethnic names such as “Phrygian” (Alc.
fr. 126, Stes. fr. 212) or “Aeolian” (Carm.Pop. 851b2), or more straightfor-
ward song-types such as the “dithyramb, melos of Dionysus,” which the
speaker of Arch. 120.1 claims to be able to sing when drunk,131 or the
chant-like “melos of Archilochus” in O. 9.1.132 Furthermore, the form of
melos is echoed in a number of noncognate words that Pindar associates
with poetry.133 While Koller’s ingenious proposal probably must be laid
aside,134 his reconstructed meaning ‘cult song’ for melos is very close to
the meaning that I am proposing for hymnos. On my account, melos was
the original unmarked term for ‘song,’ which tended to be relegated
to more marginal uses as it was replaced by the more prestigious term
hymnos.
In the remainder of this section, I present some further remarks on the
meaning of hymnos in relation to genre in Pindar. First of all, it is
instructive to compare the distribution of particular terms for poetic
performance in the epinikia as opposed to the fragmentary remains of
Pindar’s work in other genres.135 Based on the word count (21,946 total,
compared to 9,106 in fragments), one would expect circa 40 percent of
uses of a particular term to be found in non-epinician fragments.136 Most
figures fall in the expected range (or are too small to be statistically
significant), with the exception of aeidein, with only two uses in non-
epinician fragments out of the total of fifteen, and the noun hymnos, with
131
Clearly, this “dithyramb” has little to do with the elaborate dithyrambs composed in the fifth
century. Cf. also the reference to a particular kind of song in Hipp. 118.12, where melos is a likely
emendation.
132
On O. 9.1ff, see Section 3. Contrast kallinikos hymnos of Pindar’s more elaborate victory song in
N. 4.16.
133
Cf. meli ‘honey’ and numerous compounds that start with meli-but refer to song (meligarus,
meligdoupos, melikompos, melirrothos), melissa ‘bee,’ linked to poetry in P. 6.54, P. 10.54, and
fr. 123.11, meleta of the poet’s work, and melêma ‘object of care’, apparently used of song in
P. 10.59. It is thus probably not justified, pace Koller (1965a: 37), to take the latter as an
indication of the reconstructed meaning melos ‘object of ritual care’. As a parallel for a folk-
etymological (or poetic-etymological) linkage of melos and melissa, cf. the link between aeidein
‘sing’ and aedôn ‘nightingale’ (discussed in Maslov 2009: 16, n. 38).
134
For other etymologies of melos see Beekes (2010: 927–8) and DELG 658, where Koller’s proposal is
deemed “très douteux.” Note that the representation of the poem as a sacrificial victim, discussed in
Svenbro (1984), may speak in favor of an etymological (or folk-etymological) link between melos
‘limb’ and melos ‘song.’
135
These include all fragments in SM, except 1–28, which most likely belong to fragments of lost
Isthmians.
136
The number of words in the epinician fragments is too small to affect this proportion.
seven out of the total of fifty-two.137 How can we interpret these figures,
given that cognate words display the expected distribution (aoida 48/16,
hymnein 8/4)?
In the case of aeidein, one should note that by Pindar’s time it had
developed an extended transitive meaning ‘to sing of; that is, celebrate,
praise.’ It was also the preferred verb for the praise of mortals, in contrast
to hymnein, which was equally possible with reference to gods and mortals.
No comparable development is observed with the noun aoida: it never
came to mean ‘celebration, praise of ’ (e.g., with objective genitive). As for
hymnos, judging by Pindar’s evidence, in the fifth century the word had
assumed a broader meaning ‘song of praise’, which made it appropriate to
epinikia.138 Moreover, hymnos allowed for broad identification with choral
lyric, yet no longer had strong cult associations (in contrast to khoros).
Finally, paian – the only other relatively well-preserved genre in the
Pindaric corpus – is referred to by its proper name, παιάν, limiting the
use of hymnos in non-epinician fragments.
Pindar uses words from the domain of both hymnos and kômos to mark
epinikion as a choral genre, yet their import is quite different. Whereas
hymnos betokens a continuity with the poetics of communal ritual, kômos
presents the epinician performance as spontaneous praise for the victor.139
In Bakhtinian terms, whereas hymnos marks epinikion as a particular
secondary genre, kômos anchors it to a primary genre. The distribution
of the terms for poetic performance (kôm-, hymn-, aeid/aoid-, mel-, molp-)
in the corpus of Pindaric epinikia has interesting implications. In my
survey, I do not distinguish between occurrences of terms that explicitly
denote the given poem and those whose immediate reference point is
outside the text. Genre hybridity is a paramount principle of Pindaric
poetics; hence any reference to a genre is, at least potentially, a metapoetic
reflection on the referring poem.140
137
Cf. hymnein 8/4, melpesthai 5/2, melizein 3/2, aoida 48/16, molpa 4/1, melos 20/7. For a difference to
be considered statistically significant, one expects the probability that it occurs due to chance to be
below 5 percent.
138
P. 1.60, N. 6.33, I. 4.3, I. 4.43, I. 5.63, I. 6.62. In N. 4.83–4, hymnos even occurs with an objective
genitive phrase ὕμνος δὲ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἐργμάτων ‘praise of fine achievements’.
139
For Pindar’s rhetoric of kômos, see Morgan (1993).
140
As an exception, consider the phrase Νεμεαίου ἐν πολυυμνήτῳ Διὸς ἄλσει (‘in the much-hymned
grove of Nemean Zeus’) at N. 2.5; there is no obvious reference to current poetic performance (so
I do not include πολυυμνήτῳ in my counts), but the same may be said of the adjective hymnêtos (of
Iolaos at P. 11.61). No clear dividing line can be drawn between references that activate a genre and
those that do not.Words that include the root kôm- (occurs in 29/44 poems, 35 total occurrences)
include kômos (15 total), kômazein (10), enkômios (5), epikômios (3), sunkômazein (1), aglaokômos (1);
hymn- (33/44 poems, 51 total): hymnos (45), hymnein (4), hymnêtos (2); aeid/aoid- (30/44 poems, 48
It is a striking feature of Pindaric epinikion that almost every poem
includes more than one term for poetic form (only one poem, O. 12, has
none, and six have one only). Moreover, the majority of epinikia (twenty-
three) include both kôm- and hymn- and all but four, one of them. Signifi-
cantly, while there is no restriction on the use of either kôm- or hymn-in any
epinikion, those poems that include kôm- but not hymn-tend to be occasional
pieces, such as O. 4, O. 14, and N. 2 (these poems are classified as sung at the
site of victory in Gelzer 1985), P. 5, which is one of Pindar’s outspokenly
choral poems and is probably linked to the Karneia festival in Cyrene, and
N. 11, dedicated to the assumption of prutaneia ‘magistracy’ in Tenedos. All
these poems, as well as O. 13, P. 9, and O. 10, belong to the intermediate
and civic types according to the typology advanced in Chapter 1, Section 7.
Conversely, some of Pindar’s grander odes, which, as suggested above,
opt for metapoetic strategies different from kômastic rhetoric, tend to
make ample use of self-designation as hymnos: these are the Hieron odes
O. 1, P. 1, P. 2, another tyrant ode P. 6, an ode for chariot victory I. 1, and
some other longer poems (O. 7, I. 5, N. 5 and N. 7). A similar pattern
obtains in Bacchylides, who in his grandest odes, Ep. 3 and 5, does not
refer to kômos, but mentions hymnoi two and three times, respectively.
(It is especially noteworthy that kômos-related words are absent from these
longer poems, since the length of the text would increase the probability of
occurrence of a genre designation.) It is hardly an accident that poems
opting for the vocabulary of hymnos cluster at the beginning of the books
of epinikia, while those that represent themselves as primarily kômastic
appear near the end: the order of the poems in the Alexandrian edition was
determined by the importance of the athletic event.141
The analytic work of stratigraphy in this case is particularly challen-
ging, however, because Pindaric epinikion consistently merges the
notions of hymnos ‘ceremonial poem, usually choral’ and kômos ‘victory
revel, involving collective singing’. Behind this paradoxical combination
there lurks the image of khoreia, forbidden to epinikion. Returning to the
origins of epinikion, internal evidence seems to point to an underlying
hybridization of two genres – choral cult song and celebratory pieces
rehearsing the victory announcement. Adding to this the two constitu-
ents discussed in the preceding section, monodic (sympotic/erotic) praise
total): aoida (32), aeidein (13), aoidimos (3); aoidos (2/44 poems, 3 total): aoidos (a decompound
semantically and derivationally distinct from aoida; for a detailed discussion, see Maslov 2009);
mel- (10/44 poems, 14): melos (13), melizein (1); molp- (5/44 poems, 6 total): melpesthai (3), molpa (3).
141
Chariot victory ranked the highest – with the notable exception of Olympian 1, a poem for a single-
horse victory, but one of Pindar’s most ostentatious texts.
and threnoi, we obtain a good sense of the constitution of epinikion in
the beginning of the fifth century.
5 Indo-European Pindar? The archaeology of hymnos

This book approaches Pindaric epinikion, first and foremost, as an innovative
form that evolved in the late Archaic period. Yet there exists a strand of
Pindaric criticism, inspired by Indo-European poetics, that adopts a different
perspective on this genre. In fact, Pindar has earned a reputation as “in many
ways the most Indo-European of Greek poets,”142 due perhaps less to the
quantity or quality of parallels between Pindar and other traditions than to the
size of the surviving corpus as well as the lack of proper ancient Indo-European
comparanda to Homeric epic. Furthermore, the difficulty of paralleling Greek
traditional oral epic is one reason why, in the scholarship on Indo-European
poetics, a particular notion of continuity linking historically attested Indo-
European literatures to their common past has come to prevail. According to
this notion, which I refer to as “the hermetic hypothesis,” speakers of Indo-
European dialects retained the same notion of verbal specialist, who claims
unique expertise in ritual/poetic language.143 The preservation of traditional
poetic lore is thus made dependent on the continuity in the poet’s social role
and, in particular, on the existence of guilds of specialists in verbal art.
The conflicting evidence for such corporations comes from Vedic
and Celtic. In ancient India, poetic activity was intimately related
to ritual, and the priests were responsible for the preservation of the
Vedas; whereas in premodern Ireland there existed special schools
for poets who underwent training before embarking on their careers.144
The very difference between these two kinds of poetic hermeticism, as
well as the fact that other Indo-European poetic cultures furnish no
comparable evidence, should caution us against positing a shared her-
metic tradition that was continuous for millennia.145 In particular, in
142
West (2007: 15), citing Watkins. West does not disclose the written source of this quote.
143
This notion is upheld, inter alios, by Toporov (1981); Bader (1989); Watkins (1995: 68ff ); West
(2007: 27–31).
144
Acknowledging that there is no evidence for schools of poets in Indo-European cultures, except in
Medieval Ireland, Bader submits that “on doit en supposer l’existence pour comprendre, p. ex., l’emploi
de syntagmes allitérants dans des traditions diverses, ou celui d’un formulaire concernant le protogénèse
identique chez Hésiode ou en védique; ou du non-emploi de l’écriture” (1989: 16). In my view, these
features can be explained by typological coincidence or continuities within genre.
145
For the remarkable fluidity in the development of poetic cultures even among closely related
peoples, see Radlov’s comparative summary of Turkic oral poetic cultures (Radlov 1990 [1885]), as
well as Bowra’s (1964b) survey of the traditions of heroic epic.
Indo-European Pindar? the archaeology of Hymnos 295
Chapter 1, I showed that Greek evidence contradicts the assumption of
a single poetic tradition.146 The divergence between different genres
contradicts the notion that the Greeks of the Archaic period preserved
a social function of the poet that goes back to the Proto-Indo-
European past. It seems far more likely that Archaic Greek literature
developed out of a preliterary folk tradition, which did not involve
professionals.
A brief glance at the metrical evidence, perhaps the only domain of
Proto-Indo-European poetic language that has been reconstructed with a
high degree of certainty, clarifies the contrast between literary (“hermetic”)
and preliterary (popular) modes of preservation. Primary cola associated
with Aeolic lyric were preserved over millennia as part of the popular song
culture; indeed, we find these cola in the bits of Greek folk poetry that
survive from antiquity and postdate Archaic literary sources. By contrast,
the evidence of Archaic poets points to wide-ranging experimentation in
metrical patterns.147 Indeed, only a handful of Pindaric epinikia – and
these tend to be shorter, chorally oriented pieces – can be straightforwardly
analyzed into primary cola. It seems significant that the Greeks conceived
of their early poets as heurêtai ‘innovators’. After a millennium of innov-
ation, we would have very little of the Indo-European metrical heritage
preserved.
Unless we are dealing with a tradition of sacred texts that are preserved
intact (as in the case of the Vedas), a folk tradition appears to be a likelier
medium for preservation of elements of Proto-Indo-European poetic
language than a self-consciously literary poetic tradition. Moreover, schol-
arly appeals to the hermetic hypothesis often yield unsatisfying interpret-
ations of Greek texts. For example, in a major study of Indo-European
poetics, How to Kill a Dragon, Calvert Watkins makes frequent reference
to Pindar’s corpus in an effort to show that certain thematic clusters go
back to the Proto-Indo-European past.148 The claim that Pindar’s texts
contain “hidden formulas expressing themes of far greater antiquity than
he” (80) rests on the view that Pindar represents an age-old tradition of
poet-specialists. In support of this view, Watkins advances an argument
that Pindar’s poetics instantiates common Indo-European patterns of
146
West’s recent overview of Indo-European poetics contains only one piece of evidence from the
Greek world that might support the hermetic hypothesis: the use of catalogues maintained by the
poets “primarily as raw material for their own use” (2007: 70). Yet Hesiod’s claim to a Proto-Indo-
European pedigree is rendered problematic by Near Eastern parallels. For further discussion of
Greek catalogue poetry, see Maslov (Forthcoming).
147 148
Chapter 1, Section 4. Watkins (1995).
poetic patronage. Watkins cites Isthmian 2 as the prime example of such
patterns in Greek literature. Comparing it to Vedic and Celtic poetic texts
(the former predating Pindar by almost a millennium, the latter dating as
late as the seventeenth century ce), which represent themselves as objects
of exchange, Watkins proposes that I. 2 is an instance of a putative Proto-
Indo-European genre of dānastuti, poems recalling past – and anticipating
future – commissions.149 If such a genre could indeed be projected back to
the Proto-Indo-European past, we would have a significant piece of
evidence in support of the hermetic hypothesis.
Watkins’s argument crucially depends on the epithet of the mercenary
Muse, philokerdês ‘profit-loving’ at I. 2.6, whose second root kerd-Watkins
compares to the early Irish word cerd which means ‘craft’ and (only by
metonymic extension) ‘poetry’.150 Even assuming that Greek kerdos and
Irish cerd are cognates, which in itself is not implausible, the two show
entirely different semantic developments: whereas the former invariably
carries negative connotations (being a result of the semantic shift, ‘craft’ >
‘profit’), the latter retains positive connotations, which allows for the
extended meaning ‘poetic craft.’ Watkins’s comparative analysis presup-
poses that the old meaning ‘craft’ (with the implicit metonymic extension,
‘poetic craft’) survives in the Pindaric compound philokerdês thanks to an
undercurrent of poetic language. It is possible to cite several reasons why
such an Indo-European subtext in I. 2 is highly unlikely: (1) I. 2 is the only
example of a supposed dānastuti in the whole of Greek literature; (2) in
light of Vedic and Celtic comparanda, this poem would not qualify as a
dānastuti, since it does not involve a direct plea for remuneration/personal
patronage; (3) the vocabulary of kerdos is nowhere else in Greek applied to
poetry, nor is it assigned positive social connotations, (4) more specifically,
in I. 2.6 philokerdês is marked negatively: the modern “kerdos-loving” Muse
is an antipode of the Muse of the past. In sum, the reconstruction of a
“social context” of the Indo-European poet rests on a verbal correspond-
ence that cannot bear the weight of the argument.
Watkins’s interpretation of I. 2 illustrates some of the risks that
comparative Indo-European poetics faces: due to the richness of Indo-
European poetic traditions, superficially similar, yet typologically wide-
spread, patterns can easily be supported by isolated pieces of linguistic
evidence. The danger of treating the word’s root as a self-sufficient carrier
of meaning (or indeed, of a sum-total of meanings attested in any Indo-
European dialect) is obvious: by claiming an identity of their root it
149 150
Watkins (1995: 80–2). Watkins (1995: 75–6).
becomes possible to link words with seemingly widely divergent meanings.
Thus, Françoise Bader argues that the words ὑμήν ‘hymen’, ὕμνος ‘hymn’,
οἴμη ‘lay’, as well as the names Ὅμηρος ‘Homer’, Ἡσίοδος ‘Hesiod’, and
Αἴσωπος ‘Aesop’– all derive from the same root meaning ‘to tie’.151 In
Bader’s view, support to her reconstruction is lent by the hermetic theory
itself. She submits that the meaning of the root ‘to tie’ in the form in
which it appears in the names of Homer, Hesiod, and Aesop would not
have been recognizable to an average Greek living in the period when these
names were coined, but that this meaning was preserved within a putative
school of poets. This allowed “Homer” and “Hesiod” to invent for
themselves names that had an intentionally obscured semantics but shared
a common component in the form of the root in question.152
It would be a mistake to deny altogether the possibility that at different
points in Greek literary history poets could have developed a more or less
esoteric attitude toward their poetics. It is also possible that elements that
arose in an earlier esoteric poetics were inherited by Archaic Greek texts.153 We
have no evidence, however, that Archaic Greek poets ever practiced a strong
form of hermeticism. Quite on the contrary, there are all reasons to believe
that Archaic poetry, and Archaic lyric in particular, was intensely engaged
with the social world and addressed, first and foremost, the “uninitiated.” In
the texts of Bacchylides and Pindar, even overt statements of esoteric coding
have the rhetorical function of claiming a special relationship to the addressee:
notably, such statements only occur in poems addressed to tyrants.154
151
Bader (1990). While most of these words appear unrelated both from the phonological and from the
semantic point of view, the modern intricacies of the comparative method make it possible to claim
that the same root is present only as /h/ in hymên, hymnos, Homêros, and Hesiodos, but also yields
oimê and Aisôpos, which do not have the /h/ (1990: 21). In fact, alternative explanations, more
plausible even from the viewpoint of phonology (not to speak of semantics), can be offered for
hymnos (see below), oimê (Maslov 2012b), and Homêros (West 1999).
152
Bader (1990: 45). Seeing that, in fact, it is impossible to posit the meaning ‘one who ties together
songs’ for the name Hêsiodos (if we interpret the first part of the name as the root ‘to tie’, it rather
means ‘one who ties together roads’), Bader suggests that the expected ending-aoidos (which would
have yielded the desired meaning), was intentionally replaced by-odos, because a hermetic poetics
welcomes ambiguity and the metaphorical equation of “road” and “song” is well attested in Greek
sources. (Bader 1990: 39). Admittedly, there is no satisfactory etymology of Hesiod’s name. The one
assumed by Nagy (1979b: 296) would yield the meaning ‘the one who emits voice’, but involves
positing an unattested word *ϝοδή ‘voice’ (DELG 400). I am also not aware of etymologies of
Aesop’s name (note that Aesop is commonly regarded as a Phrygian). Aesop’s inclusion in the
category of “hermetic poets” disregards both this figure’s low-class status as a popular hero and the
fact that he is consistently associated with prose in our earliest sources (Kurke 2010).
153
I have in mind, in particular, the Homeric “language of the gods,” which is at the center of
discussion in Bader (1989); cf. also Bader (1989: 97–188) on the enigmatic line WD 524, whose
meaning is obscured in Hesiod’s text.
154
Pind. O. 2.85–8, I. 2.12, fr. 105.1ff, Bacch. 3.85ff.
There is no sufficient basis for positing a hermetic poetic tradition as the
principal means of preservation of the Proto-Indo-European Kulturgut.
Yet, while the hermetic hypothesis in various forms is present in most
studies of Indo-European poetics, it is often not crucial to their conclu-
sions. This concerns, in particular, the reconstruction of poetic phrase-
ology, which may be preserved in a special register of language whose
persistence does not presuppose a hermetic poetic tradition.155
A generalized notion of a poetic register, however, is not sufficient to
explain certain more specific parallels between Indo-European traditions.
A particularly intriguing case is that of metapoetic imagery, especially
prominent in the Vedas, such as the comparison of poetry to weaving
and carpentry, the notion of a poem in motion, and, more specifically, the
poem’s comparison to ship and chariot.156 In the Greek tradition, this
imagery is only represented in Pindar and Bacchylides. As M. L. West
points out, these two poets “were heirs to a repertory of Indo-European or
at least Graeco-Aryan imagery that is hardly visible in the Ionian epic and
Lesbian lyric traditions.”157
Drawing attention to the same paradox, Peter Jackson notes that “[i]t is
significant that metaphors of this kind are less pronounced in epic poetry”
and offers the following explanation:
This could simply be due to characteristics of epic genre. Pindar’s Epinicians
and the Vedic hymns would thus have more in common, because they were
intended as praise poetry, celebrating the appearance and activity of par-
ticular individuals (men or gods) at a given point in time (a festival or a
sacrificial rite). Since this poetry, as opposed to epic poetry, was more
concerned with the situation of its performance, it gave the poet an
opportunity to be more of a presence in his own creation.158
I concur with Jackson in his view that particular linguistic or imagistic
elements were preserved not as part of a generalized Dichtersprache, but
within particular genres. On the other hand, Jackson’s identification of the
common ground of Pindar’s epinikia and Vedic hymns as “praise poetry”
155
These include merisms (“immortals and mortals”, i.e. “all creatures”), poetic compounds,
polyptota, the application of Behaghel’s Law, and others. For an overview, see West (2007:
75–119).
156
West (2007: 36–45). Archaeological evidence demonstrates that horse-drawn chariots appeared long
after the break-up of the Proto-Indo-European unity. As acknowledged by West (2007: 23–4), the
case of similar uses of the chariot in different Indo-European traditions suggests that many of the
elements that one is tempted to derive from a common Indo-European poetics, in fact, spread as a
result of areal diffusion. For our purposes, it is enough to note a link (either areal or historical) that
significantly predates our written sources.
157 158
West (2007: 37). Jackson (2006b: 14).
as well as his notion that this genre occasioned a more prominent poetic
persona are both open to criticism. To begin with the latter, it is mislead-
ing to view Proto-Indo-European metapoetics as linked to the poet, rather
than to the performer. It is rarely remarked, for example, that Pindar
applies the word tektones ‘craftsmen’ once to poets (P. 3.113) and once to
performers (N. 3.4).159 G. B. D’Alessio, drawing particular attention to the
evidence of Alcman’s and Pindar’s partheneia, demonstrates that a chorus
singing a cult song can show the level of metapoetic self-consciousness that
is usually thought to be the poet’s prerogative.160
I submit that the Proto-Indo-European metapoetic apparatus survived
as part of the genre of cult (choral) song whose likely designation in Greek
was hymnos. In fact, the likely Proto-Indo-European roots of Pindaric and
Bacchylidean metapoetics corroborate the metrical evidence in pointing to
the deep prehistory of the choral constituent of the genre of epinikion.161
An alternative explanation offered by Jackson posits a Proto-Indo-Euro-
pean genre of ‘praise poetry (for gods or men)’, uniting Vedic hymns and
Pindaric epinikia. Similarly, West suggests that the epinikia of Pindar and
Bacchylides may represent “a last, luxuriant outgrowth from a Greek
tradition of royal praise poetry, but we can still recognize in them elements
of an ancient inheritance.”162 There is, in fact, no other evidence that
159
For the claim that N. 3.4 also refers to the poets, see, e.g., Durante (1976: 173) and West (2007: 39).
160
D’Alessio summarizes the capabilities of the choral ego in the following five points: “(1) They are
inspired by the Muses. In this process the poet is often, and maybe always, bypassed . . . (2) they
can operate a personal and explicit selection in the narrative [Alc. 1.2: “I won’t reckon Lykaiosos
among the dead”] . . . (3) they can convey in their songs gnomic utterances . . . (4) they can praise
the poetic quality of their song as if it were their poetry. . . (5) they can praise not only their fellow-
parthenoi, but also fellow-citizens, for social and political reasons” (1994a: 119–20).
161
As in the case of metapoetics, other remnants of a shared Indo-European poetics are better
preserved in the lyric tradition. Note that the collocation kleos aphthiton ‘rumor/fame
imperishable’, which has an exact equivalent in Vedic and has long provided the central (and
perhaps the sole undisputed) piece of evidence in favor of common PIE poetic phraseology, is
attested once in Homer (Il. 9.413) and twice in lyric (Sappho 44.4 and Ibycus 282.47). Epic can
thus claim no priority in preserving this Proto-Indo-European idiom, which, moreover, cannot be
regarded as an oral formula (Finkelberg 1986, 2007). For a summary of evidence on the concept
of fame in Indo-European poetic tradition, see Schmitt (1967: 61–102); West (2007: 396–410, with
an up-to-date bibliography on kleos aphthiton on p. 408, n. 103); Jackson (2006b: 14).Jackson argues
for further examples of Indo-European mythic archaisms outside Homer (Helen and her phantom;
Dioskouroi mythology, supplanted by the Phoenicians in the Odyssey: 2006b: 84–92, 101–3). There
are also striking parallels in the didactic tradition (Jackson 2006b: 15), represented by Hesiod, but
such parallels are limited to expressly didactic injunctions: this, again, points to the mode of
preservation through genre (folk didactic maxims), rather than a hermetic tradition. On a formula
that appears to point to a Proto-Indo-European genre of sacral poetry, see Kurke (1989). Finally, the
Proto-Indo-European genre of incantations again points to the domain of popular lore as the
medium of preservation (Toporov 1969; West 2007: 336–9; Maslov 2009: 30).
162
West (2007: 64).
would point to a continuous tradition of ‘praise of men’ even within Greek
literary history. The age of tyrants accounts for the short flowering of the
encomiastic genre in Archaic Greece; by the mid-fifth century it was
moribund.163 A very different genre of panegyric evolved later, in the
context of Hellenistic monarchies. A Pindaric epinikion and a logos basi-
likos do not belong to the same genre of ‘praise of mortals’; instead, the
similarities between the two forms are to be explained by, first and
foremost, reliance on the same hymnic rhetoric, and, only secondarily, on
the importance of Pindaric epinikion as a generic precursor to logos
basilikos. While it is possible that Pindaric epinikion similarly builds both
on an earlier, unattested tradition of praise poetry as well as on the genre of
cult hymn, the latter generic continuity is a sufficient, as well as a more
reasonable, explanation for the preservation of the same metapoetics as the
one found in the Vedic hymns.
A comparative inquiry into Greek epinikia and Vedic hymns is pursued
in a series of exploratory studies by V. N. Toporov.164 Some of his findings
constitute likely additions to the metrical and metapoetic evidence for a
common basis of the two genres, which he describes as “two filiations of
Indo-European proto-hymn.” These include tripartite structure (expos-
ition, narrative/mythic center, and conclusion, of which the first and the
last are homologous), the use of similar techniques such as invocation,
question, address to a third party (both in the exposition and conclusion),
the validation of the poetic text as a “new” hymn (which, however, adheres
to an old, inherited form), and centrality of the agonistic plot in which the
victory is divinely decreed.165 Toporov’s emphasis on a mythical antece-
dent to Pindar’s athletic thematics entails a privileging of the Vedic hymns
addressed to Indra. It is tempting to relate this theory to the idea that
Pindaric epinikion continues a genre of hymns to victorious agonistic gods
(Heracles, the Dioskuroi).166 Toporov also undertook a comparative
inquiry into conceptually significant elements of Pindaric and Vedic
vocabulary.167
163
A curious exception that proves the rule is Euripides’ epinikion for Alcibiades (fr. 755 PMG).
164
This work was collected in Toporov (2006). Some further fragments of the proposed monograph
were published posthumously in Toporov (2012).
165
On formal techniques, see Toporov (2006: 495–502); on the “new”-hymn motif: 518–35; on the
agonistic plot: 491–5.
166
See Section 3.
167
Toporov (2006: 439–71). These include metron (mātra), aretê (rta-), kairos (rtu-, cognate with artus,
_
attested in Hesychius, for which, as Toporov suggests, kairos may _ substitute), and nika
be a lexical
(without a Vedic cognate, but related by Toporov to neikos). Among more hypothetical parallels
between Pindaric epinikion and Vedic hymns discussed by Toporov, I would cite the use of
In addition to his reconstruction of the genre of hymn, Toporov draws
attention to Marcello Durante’s etymology of hymnos, based on a Vedic
parallel sumná-.168 The meaning of sumná- is only partially analogous to
that of hymnos, but, according to Toporov, precisely this divergence,
inasmuch as it points to what he calls a “diachronically dominant” seman-
tic core, makes it all the more likely that the two words are cognate.169
Vedic sumná- refers to a prayer for divine graciousness as well as to good
disposition, graciousness itself.170 Etymologically, it can be analyzed as
either ‘good/kind thought’ or ‘good thing, goodness.’171 Given that the
Vedic word can refer to the verbal realization or motivation of such a
thought or disposition, it is indeed not difficult to imagine how, on its way
to Greek hymnos, the word developed a specialized meaning ‘choral cult
performance’, intended to evoke divine graciousness.
Should the etymological link between sumná- and hymnos be accepted,
it would confirm the hypothesis that highly archaic traits in Pindaric
anagrams of names and the conceptualization of the fragmented mythic narrative by analogy with
the fragmented body of the worsted antagonist, Vrtra in the Indra hymns (503–8). Another recent
contribution to Pindaric-Vedic comparative poetics _ is that of Jackson (2006a), who proposes that
Pindar’s use of the verb (an)egeirein ‘wake up, arouse’ can be related to the application of the root
*jar- to Usas, the goddess of Dawn, in reference to the arousing of poetic inspiration in the early
_ proper time for ritual performances).
morning (the
168
This etymology, first proposed by Theodor Benfey and Adalbert Kuhn, was substantiated by
Durante in his pioneering attempt at a reconstruction of the PIE genre of hymn (Durante 1976:
155–65; the original version of the argument was published in 1959) and is tentatively accepted in
Risch (1974: 54) and Euler (1979: 66–7); there is more certainty in Toporov (2006: 462–3): “The
link, originally proposed by Durante, is so transparent that only the inertia of preconceived views
and disregard for broader context could explain the fact that it has gone unnoticed”; it is ignored in
both DELG 1116 and in Beekes (2010: 1531–2). West (2007: 34) notes the attractions of this
etymology but is concerned about the onset as Skt. su- regularly corresponds to Greek eu-. In
fact, the PIE form is either *h1su-mn-ó or *h1su-mēń, and laryngeals “lautgesetzlich” disappear in
Greek in the onset of “endbetonte Komposita” (Mayrhofer 1986: 125; cf. Peters 1980: 208, n. 160).
Note that the likely shift of accent on hymnos may be due to Aeolic accentuation (Durante 1976:
159), which is particularly suggestive given the Proto-Aeolic basis of the choral dialect (see
Chapter 1, Section 4). An alternative explanation, accepted by Nagy (2002: 70–1), relates hymnos
to hymên; Watkins (2000: 73) proposes a derivation from *sam, but leaves the vocalism
unexplained. A new etymology is presented in Vine (1999: 575–6): hymnos ‘singing, song’ as an
o-grade action noun *suon[H]-mo- ‘sounding, intoning’; however, the Greek textual evidence for
hymnos as an action noun analogous to aoidê is lacking. Earlier scholarly proposals are discussed in
Wünsch (1914: 140–1). The connection to hyphainein, reflected in Bacch. 5.9–10, is now recognized
as a piece of poetic or popular etymology (West 2007: 37).
169
Toporov (2006: 463). Just as phonetically identical words in two languages are likely to be
unrelated, since sounds tend to change, so are the two complex concepts that have identical
semantics, since nonreferential meanings are notably unstable.
170
A similar ambiguity between emotion and the poetic text evoking it can be observed in sumatí-. For
a discussion of the semantics of sumná-, see Durante (1976: 155–9).
171
This depends on whether the second part of the compound is analyzed as a suffix -mn- (e.g., Risch
1974: 54) or as a zero grade of the root *men (e.g., Durante 1976: 157–8).
epinikion are to be explained by a continuity of genre. This is not to say
that such a link would prove the existence of a Proto-Indo-European genre
of “hymn,” since hymnos could have assumed its poetic meaning at any
point in the development of Proto-Greek. Yet one must keep in mind the
distinct possibility that a preliterary genre involving praise or prayers,
whose purpose was to achieve divine graciousness, constituted the medium
that could preserve metapoetic, compositional, and even thematic elem-
ents relating Pindaric epinikia to the Vedas. Whether the diffusion of this
medium was due to contact or common Proto-Indo-European prehistory
is a different question, which we are not in a position to answer.
As Toporov points out, in Pindar hymnos retains a certain irreducible
terminological specificity with regard to the morphologically transparent
and semantically unmarked aoidê ‘song’.172 As I have sought to show on the
basis of a survey of Pindar’s vocabulary for poetic performance, aoidê
represents the default term, whereas hymnos betokens a claim to identifica-
tion with cult lyric. In the remainder of this section, I discuss a peculiarity
in the use of the word hymnos in Pindar that may point back to its semantic
prehistory. In several passages of the epinikia, hymnos takes on a rather
unexpected agent-like function and meaning, which appears to set it apart
from the normal usage for which English hymn serves as a natural transla-
tion. In what follows, I proceed from the less to the more enigmatic loci.
In two passages, both from the beginning of a poem, the word hymnos
appears in a very similar context:
(1) μηδ’ Ὀλυμπίας ἀγῶνα φέρτερον αὐδάσομεν·
ὅθεν ὁ πολύφατος ὕμνος ἀμφιβάλλεται
σοφῶν μητίεσσι, κελαδεῖν
Κρόνου παῖδ’ ἱκομένους μάκαιραν Ἱέρωνος ἑστίαν
O. 1.7–10
. . . nor will we proclaim anything greater than the contest of Olympia, whence
the many-voiced hymnos is cast upon/envelops [crowns?] the wits of the poets, to
sing the son of Kronos, when they have come to Hieron’s blessed hearth . . .
(2) Ὀρτυγία . . . Δάλου κασιγνήτα, σέθεν ἁδυεπής
ὕμνος ὁρμᾶται θέμεν
αἶνον ἀελλοπόδων
μέγαν ἵππων, Ζηνὸς Αἰτναίου χάριν N. 1.2–6
Ortygia . . . from you a sweet-speaking hymnos comes in speed to bestow a mighty
praise for storm-footed horses, a grace of Aitnaian Zeus
172
Toporov (2006: 461, 534).
The passages share a similar construction ‘-θεν (whence) + epithet + hymnos +
present-tense finite verb + purpose infinitive.’ The hymnos is represented as
coming from a particular cult location: in O. 1, it is Olympia, the locus of
victory; in N. 1, Ortygia, a spring in Syracuse, whose significance lies in the
myth that identifies her as a nymph pursued by Alpheus, the river flowing in
Olympia. In both poems, hymnos ties a Sicilian performance to an important
cult center in mainland Greece (why Olympia should be specially relevant to
a Nemean ode is not clear). Significantly, hymnos preexists the poet’s effort
of composition and is independent of the poetic text. As the epithets ‘many-
voiced’ and ‘sweet-speaking’ proleptically suggest, the word denotes the
motivation to praise, which encompasses the ongoing performance.
A partially analogous pattern emerges from N. 3.11–13 where the hymnos
originates from the Muse, and the poet’s role in realizing hymnos as choral
performance is made explicit:
(3) ἄρχε δ’ οὐρανοῦ πολυνεφέλα κρέοντι, θύγατερ,
δόκιμον ὕμνον· ἐγὼ δὲ κείνων τέ νιν ὀάροις
λύρᾳ τε κοινάσομαι. χαρίεντα δ’ ἕξει πόνον
χώρας ἄγαλμα (N. 3.10–13)
[Muse, Zeus’s] daughter, begin an acceptable hymnos for the one who rules the
much-clouded heaven, and I will make it common both to the voices of those
[young men] and to the lyre, and it will have the glory of the land [the choral
group?] as a pleasant toil
Again, hymnos originates in cult (address to Zeus) and is transferred, this
time as a result of the poet’s intervention, to the epinician performance.
The chronological progression implied in these lines implies a complex
dynamic of mediation: in the form in which it is generated by the Muse
hymnos belongs to the divine sphere; it is then appropriated by the poet
who, finally, adapts it to real-life performance.173 Notably, even at this last
stage of materialization hymnos retains an autonomy and agent-like quality:
it possesses the chorus, and the “pleasing” quality of the “toil” of the
performance suggests that the Muse’s hymnos will be well accommodated
on Aegina.174
173
174
For χώρας ἄγαλμα as the chorus, see Wilamowitz (1922: 277 n.1). Burnett takes the chorus as the
subject: “and the chorus will have a sweet toil” (2005: 141). I am inclined to supply hymnos as the
subject in light of the parallel in lines 65–6. Thus Farnell (1932: 255) and Slater 2, who, however,
assign to ἄγαλμα a more abstract meaning ‘the glory’ or ‘glorification’, which is difficult to parallel
in Pindar or elsewhere.
Two further contexts in which hymnos assumes the position of an agent
have caused great interpretative difficulties. I believe that they can be better
elucidated if we regard them as instances of a single kind of usage. In
another passage from N. 3, hymnos again stands as an agent mediating
between the divine and the human:
(4) Ζεῦ, τεὸν γὰρ αἷμα, σέο δ’ ἀγών, τὸν ὕμνος ἔβαλεν
ὀπὶ νέων ἐπιχώριον χάρμα κελαδέων. (N. 3.65–6)
Zeus, yours is the blood [of the Aiakidai], yours the contest, which hymnos has hit,
singing the local joy [i.e. the athletic victory], with the voice of young men.
The verb ballein, in the absence of definite contextual clues, should be
interpreted in accord with its basic meaning ‘cast, hit, strike’.175 This
remarkable agentive usage conveys the function of hymnos as a bridge
between the realm of cult (Zeus’s contest) and the epinician occasion
(“local joy”). More specifically, hymnos celebrates the victory by “hitting”
the contest, but distinctly from (and prior to) the actual singers involved in
the performance (“the voice of young men”). While the poet’s precise role
has already been indicated in lines 10–13, in this passage he is apparently
replaced by hymnos: in fact, one can easily substitute ‘poet(s)’ (sophoi) for
hymnos in N. 3.65.
The intimation that the poet-composer is an epiphenomenon of hymnos
is confirmed by the opening of O. 1, where the sophoi are mere conduits of
hymnos, which envelops their minds, prompting them to celebrate Hier-
on’s achievements. The genre is the text’s composer. It is even possible to
read these passages as indicating that the prominence of, and even the need
for the poet, is due to the spatial and temporal distance that separates the
victory from the performance of praise, the distance that the hymnos must
travel. Building on Freidenberg’s analysis of contradictions within epini-
kion, we can regard Pindar’s emphasis on the poet’s work of heurêsis and
synthesis as well as his innovative notion of a personalized Muse as
fundamentally at odds with a diachronically prior notion of the poet as a
passive conduit of hymnos.176
175
For a plain dative with the aorist of ballein, cf. O. 8.55, N. 1.18. Slater takes ballein to mean ‘to
crown’ (89), adducing P. 8.57, which, however, is not a satisfactory parallel because there the
meaning of the verb is clarified by the dative plural stephanoisi ‘with crowns’. Burnett (2005: 140)
downplays the agentive function of hymnos by translating: “yours the contest tossed by this hymn to
the voices of boys to be sung as a local joy.”
176
Note that this contradiction is resolved in the opening of O. 2.1–2, where the speaker addresses the
“hymns which lord over the phorminx” (ἀναξιφόρμιγγες ὕμνοι) with the question “Whom should
we celebrate? (κελαδήσομεν).” In light of the agentive uses of the word in Pindar, it is tempting to
suggest that hymnoi are meant to join forces with the poet in “celebrating”; note again the verb
The same pattern occurs in all four passages discussed so far. Rather
than coinciding with the actual poem, hymnos serves as its prerequisite. It is
closely associated with the victory and the original locus of celebration. It
preexists on the poet’s compositional effort, but can account for his
disposition to praise the victor. All of this suggests a meaning of hymnos
that is broader than that of ‘song being performed.’ It is conceivable that
hymnos belongs to the category of words that can refer both to a verbal act
and to what it represents or enacts, and which often come from the
vocabulary of interaction with the divine, such as English blessing (cf. also
curse, greeting, oath), Byzantine Greek eulogion, Old Church Slavic and
Russian blagoslovenie.177 Analogously, hymnos may have had two semantic
aspects: not only ‘text that evokes, and instantiates, goodwill/graciousness/
praise’, but also ‘goodwill, disposition to praise’ itself. No single equivalent
word exists in English, making this meaning difficult to grasp, but one
could use ‘the will to praise’ or ‘the blessing (of victory)’ as shortcuts,
which would allow us to make better sense of the passages discussed.
There are other Pindaric passages in which this volitional meaning of
hymnos may be relevant. In O. 6.6–7, the distinctions of Hagesias are
emphasized by a rhetorical question: “What hymnos would that man
escape, having met with ungrudging citizens in lovely songs?” (τίνα κεν
φύγοι ὕμνον / κεῖνος ἀνήρ, ἐπικύρσαις / ἀφθόνων ἀστῶν ἐν ἱμερταῖς
ἀοιδαῖς;). On the one hand, hymnos has a distinctively agent-like behavior:
it pursues the laudandus;178 on the other, it is distinct from ‘songs’
proper, designated as aoidai in the same sentence. The meaning of the
word, as it is used here, approximates that of ‘act of praise, well-
intentioned utterance.’ In I. 4.19–21 Poseidon is said to “lead forth out
of the beds the old fame by furnishing this wondrous hymnos to the clan
[of the Kleônumidai]” (τόνδε πορὼν γενεᾷ θαυμαστὸν ὕμνον ἐκ λεχέων
ἀνάγει φάμαν παλαιάν). The bestowing of a victory, which is Poseidon’s
keladein, which also occurs next to hymnos in O. 1.10 and N. 3.66. In the case of N. 4.16, where the
MSS (and Snell-Maehler) read ὕμνον κελάδησε καλλίνικον, I follow the majority of commentators
in emending to υἱόν in light of νιν in line 21. This emendation, proposed by Bergk, is accepted in
Bury (1890: 70); (tentatively) in Slater 518; Köhnken (1974: 215); Willcock (1995: 96); Currie
(2004: 56).
177
In Byzantine Greek, eulogion can refer both to verbal blessing and to material donation (detailed
discussion in Caner 2006). Blagoslovenie (derived from blago-slovliati, a calque of eulogein) in
modern Russian can refer to such diverse notions as ‘praise’, ‘expression of gratitude’, ‘kindly act
of bestowal’, ‘permission’ (Dal’ 1912–14: 1.230).
178
Cf. I. 4.21, where the speaker correlates his euporia with the victor’s eumakhania: “I have, thanks to
the gods, a myriad roads in all places, o Melissos, for you have shown forth your resourcefulness at
the Isthmian Games, to pursue your (and your clan’s) achievements by means of hymnos (ὑμετέρας
ἀρετὰς ὕμνῳ διώκειν).”
prerogative at the Isthmian Games, coincides with the granting of hymnos,
which is partially identified with the ongoing performance by the demon-
strative pronoun but also marked as a divine product. The implication is
perhaps best suggested in English by a periphrasis such as ‘the blessing of
victory as conveyed in poetic performance’.
In other passages, the clan of the victor is represented as a steward or
author of hymns. In I. 6.62 the same verb anagein is used as in the
preceding passage: “they have led forth into the light such a share of
hymnoi” (ἀνὰ δ’ ἄγαγον ἐς /φάος οἵαν μοῖραν ὕμνων). A similar notion
is expressed in N. 6.32–4: the Bassidai “are able to provide to the plough-
men of the Pieridai [i.e., the performers or the poets] plentiful hymnos on
account of their noble doings” (Πιερίδων ἀρόταις / δυνατοὶ παρέχειν
πολὺν ὕμνον ἀγερώχων ἐργμάτων / ἕνεκεν). In both passages, hymnos is
a cause, or material, for poetic celebration occasioned by athletic victory,
but it exists independently of any particular poetic realization. In P. 6.5–8
the speaker emphasizes that the Emmenidai have won repeatedly in Pytho
by saying that for them “a Pythian-winning treasury of hymnoi is built
ready in the much-golden Apollonian valley” (Πυθιόνικος . . . ἑτοῖμος
ὕμνων θησαυρὸς ἐν πολυχρύσῳ / Ἀπολλωνίᾳ τετείχισται νάπᾳ).179 Each
victory, by virtue of being divinely sanctioned, creates the goodwill that
generates repeated acts of praise, be it from the poet or from fellow-
citizens.
I should emphasize that this interpretation of hymnos is a conjecture,
which I put forward in the absence of any other systematic explanation of
the agentive use of hymnos.180 If this conjecture is accepted, it can be
explained as a development within Pindar’s poetics or as a remnant of an
older usage: it is worth remembering that the Pindaric corpus is the oldest
corpus that makes abundant use of the word. In favor of regarding its
agentive use as a diachronic survival, we could return to the etymological
evidence for hymnos as consisting of two elements, one of which is
179
The passage is comparable to O. 1.7–10 and N. 1.2–6, numbers (1) and (2) above, in that in the
beginning of the text the speaker claims to approach the “navel” of the loud-roaring earth, the
Delphic omphalos stone, where the treasure house of hymnoi stands ready: the proper home of
hymnos is the sphere of the divine, localized in the sacred space of cult. Unlike in O. 1 and N. 1,
however, hymnos does not travel to the site of the performance, but rather the performer(s) are
moving toward it. This goes together well with the fact that P. 6, possibly performed in Pytho, is
monostrophic (so it was likely sung in procession). Thesauroi where dedications of particular poleis
were stored were a common feature of the topography of Delphi (Neer 2001).
180
That this type of usage was not merely a Pindaric peculiarity is confirmed by a passage from the
kommos from Antigone 814–6 “nor yet at my marriage has any hymnos hymned me” (οὔτ’ ἐπὶ
νυμφείοις πώ μέ τις ὕμνος ὕμνησεν).
How to begin a poem 307
adverbial ‘well’ (equivalent to eu- elsewhere in Greek), with a likely
meaning ‘good thing, goodness’ or ‘kind thought, goodwill’. Thus, the
Vedic parallel sumná-, even if it does not prove the existence of a Proto-
Indo-European genre of hymn, may provide an important indication as to
the antiquity of the most significant Archaic Greek term for poetic
performance. Moreover, the strong association of hymnos, in its agentive
use, with cult sites and with divine benevolence provides circumstantial
evidence in support of its putative original meaning ‘cult choral song’.
6 How to begin a poem: prooimion as a diegetic device in Pindar

In the Archaic Greek vocabulary of poetic performance there is an enig-
matic term that is first attested in Pindar, but which has not yet been
discussed in this study. It is the word προοίμιον, which in Classical and
post-Classical Greek was used as a rhetorical term for the highly stylized
opening portion of a text, usually of oratorical nature; it was borrowed into
Latin as prooemium in the meaning approximating native Latin exordium
‘opening of a text, proem’. However familiar the word προοίμιον may
appear to classicists today, its derivation, as well as its meaning in the
Archaic period, is subject to debate. Most modern discussions start from
Thucydides’ designation of the text we know as the Homeric Hymn to
Apollo as προοίμιον Ἀπόλλωνος “prooimion of Apollo” (3.104.4–5) and the
assertion in Plato’s Phaedo that Socrates before his death authored τὸ εἰς
τὸν Ἀπόλλω προοίμιον “the prooimion to Apollo” (60d). On the strength
of these two passages, a consensus has emerged that regards all Homeric
Hymns as prooimia – “something that preceded the singing of a heroic
οἴμη.”181
The problem with this view is that neither the word προοίμιον nor any
phrase whose reanalysis it may represent (e.g. προ . . . οἴμης) is attested in
the Homeric Hymns, or elsewhere in the hexameter corpus. The word
προοίμιον, however, has a wide currency in Attic sources in the meaning
“beginning of a speech, address, invocation.” This usage is customarily
explained as a result of semantic broadening.182 Two paths of development
of the meaning of the word προοίμιον are thus conceivable:
181
García (2002: 8). Modern scholars who share this view include Böhme (1937: 28–30); Koller (1956:
191); Costantini and Lallot (1987); Nagy (1990b: 353–60); Watkins (1995: 97–8).
182
Mastronarde (2002: 284) on Medea 663: “a term that originated in reference to musical and poetic
preludes or forepieces, is used more widely in tragedy of first statements and introductions.”
(1) ‘that which precedes a heroic lay’ > ‘that which comes in the
beginning’;
(2) ‘that which comes in the beginning, including an address to the gods’
> ‘a poem that is addressed to a god’ (e.g., a Homeric hymn).
Elsewhere, I have argued that the evidence of both lexical usage and deriv-
ation point to the latter development.183 Etymologically, pro-oimion is ‘what
one says before setting out on one’s way (oimos)’ with the extended meaning
‘proper speech act preceding any undertaking.’ Such a speech act was likely
to consist of, or at least involve, an invocation of the gods, and this is precisely
the most common meaning of προοίμιον (φροίμιον) in Attic sources.
Furthermore, turning to the evidence of contracted forms in Aeschylus,
we encounter several uses that demand a more specific interpretation than
‘beginning, prelude’. In the prologue of Seven against Thebes, φροίμιον
appears to refer to invocation or address: Eteokles’ name will be called
upon in the citizens’ complaints.184 In two further contexts, φροίμιον refers
specifically to words addressed to gods in the beginning of a speech.185
Elsewhere, Aeschylus appears to use the word φροίμιον to refer to some-
thing that precedes an action or an undertaking.186 For his part, Euripides
uses the word φροίμιον ten times (προοίμιον three times), always in
reference to the beginning of a speech. A particular Euripidean topos is
the notion of inauspicious beginning (eight out of the thirteen occurrences
of the term). For instance, in Ion 752, when Kreousa asks the chorus about
the oracular response obtained by Xanthos, they respond with a pitiful
outcry ἰὼ δαῖμον (“Woe is me, fortune”), to which Kreusa reacts with the
words “the phroimion of what you have to say is inauspicious” (τὸ φροίμιον
μὲν τῶν λόγων οὐκ εὐτυχές).187 By contrast, in Medea 663–4, where the
noncontracted form is used, the prooimion is described as auspicious:
“Rejoice/Hello, Medea: no one knows a prooimion that is better than this
to address friends” (Μήδεια, χαῖρε· τοῦδε γὰρ προοίμιον / κάλλιον οὐδεὶς
οἶδε προσφωνεῖν φίλους).
To sum up, it appears that προοίμιον (φροίμιον) most often refers to an
opening whose execution determines the success of the following speech or
undertaking. In particular, it can refer to an invocation of the gods and (by
183 184 185

Maslov (2012b). Aesch. Sept. 5–7. Aesch. Ag. 829, Eum. 20.
186
Aesch. Ag. 31, Eum. 142. I believe that a similar meaning – “beginning of an act” – should be posited
for Ag. 1215–16. Further discussion in Maslov (2012b).
187
The list of Euripidean inauspicious φροίμια: Hipp. 568; Hec. 181; HF 538; Ion 753; Phoen. 1336;
Troiades 712, Troiades 895; inauspicious προοίμιον: HF 1179. Other occurrences of φροίμιον in
Euripides: Hec. 1195, HF 753, IT 1162.
extension) to invocation more generally. Originally, such an invocation was
uttered in the beginning of a journey, when setting out on one’s way.188
It is not difficult to find parallels for such a metaphoric extension of the
meaning ‘road, path’. Many European languages have lexical doublets or
triplets, which show progressive availability of the extended meaning of
this word; cf. English road – way – path, French chemin – route – voie,
Russian doroga – put’ – stezia, and so forth. In Greek, oἶμος tends to be
used in extended meanings, some of which retain the image of traveling
down a path; it only rarely, however, appears in literal contexts. In “Forms
of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel” (written in 1937–8), Mikhail
Bakhtin offers an insightful comment on the fusion of time and space in
the metaphor of the road:
Time, as it were, fuses into space and flows in it (forming roads); this is the
source of the rich metaphorical expansion on the image of the road as a
course: “this course of a life,” “to set out on a new path,” “the course of
history,” and so on; varied and multi-leveled are the ways in which road is
turned into a metaphor, but its fundamental pivot is the flow of time.189
A similar transformation of spatial contiguity into a temporal sequence
seems to have occurred in the case of Greek προοίμιον.
In what follows, I would like to pursue some of the implications that the
recognition of prooimion as a primary genre harbors for the literary analysis
of Archaic lyric, and of Pindaric epinikia in particular. In all the four cases
where Pindar uses the word prooimion, it occurs, as one might expect, at
the very beginning of a poem. This confirms that the genre of prooimion
serves to model the openings of Pindaric epinikia as socially embedded,
quasi-performative utterances. Even though prooimion in Pindar appears to
preserve its function as a primary genre, given its systematic employment
in a literary context, there are good reasons to think that it underwent a
certain degree of formal sedimentation. Should it prove amenable to the
stratigraphic method, a study of prooimion in Pindar may thus provide an
insight into literary form as it emerges out of the preexistent elements in
the universe of discourse.
188
The Greeks were certainly familiar with the idea of a speech act, usually taking the form of a prayer,
to be performed before a journey (Od. 2.430–4, Thuc. 6.32.1–2, Pind. fr. 75.8). A comparandum
from a later period is furnished by verse prayers subtitled ἐνόδια “[spoken] on the road” or περὶ
εὐοδίας προσευχή “prayer for a good voyage” in the corpus of Gregory of Nazianzus (fourth
century ce): PG 37.518–22, 1020. A kindred genre is that of syntaktikon “the farewell of a departing
traveler” (Cairns 1972: 38–50).
189
Bakhtin (1981: 244); translation amended.
Table 4 The openings of Pindaric epinikia (poems that refer to prooimion
are in bold)
Prayers/ gods/ O. 3 (Tyndaridai and Helen)a; O. 4, I. 6 (Zeus); O. 12

addresses personifications (12) (Tykha); O. 14, N. 10 (Kharites); P. 8 (Hesykhia);
(29) P. 11 (Theban heroines); N. 7 (Eleithyia); N. 8
(Hora); N. 11 (Hestia); I. 5 (Theia)
city/nymph (7) O. 5 (Kamarina); O. 8 (Olympia); P. 2 (Surakosai);
P. 12 (Sikelia); N. 1 (Ortygia); I. 1, I. 7 (Theba)
Muse(s) (3) P. 4, N. 3 (Moisa); N. 9 (Moisai)
poetic attributes (2) O. 2 (hymnoi); P. 1 (phorminx)
other addressees (5) O. 10 (anagnôte; foll. by address to the Muse and
Alatheia); P. 6 (akousate); I. 2, I. 4 (laud.); I. 8 (neoi)
Exclamation involving names of P. 7 (superl.); P. 10; I. 9
locales (‘blessed is. . .’) (3)
First-person statement (4) O. 13 (tris- form); P. 3; P. 9; N. 5
Gnomic/general statement (6) O. 1, O. 11, N. 4 (superl.); P. 5 (euru- form; foll. by
address to laud.); I. 3 (eutukhêsais); N. 6
Other (4) O. 6 (architectural simile); O. 7 (toasting simile); N. 2
(comparison with the Homêridai); O. 9 (kallinikos)
a
O. 3.1–4 (discussed in Chapter 4, Section 1) presents a transposition of a prayer into a
third-person statement, in a shift from Du-Stil to Er-Stil (in terms of Norden 1913: 143–66).
While it properly belongs to prayers to the gods, it is also aligned with opening first-person
statements.
Inasmuch as prooimion is an initiatory speech act that validates the

following discourse, in literature it operates as a diegetic device that grants
sociopragmatic decorum to the text it introduces. As I have argued, literary
authority is generated by metapoetic devices inherited from earlier forms; it
can also be supplemented through adaptation of authoritative social (reli-
gious, juridical) forms of speech. Finally, as I believe Pindar’s use of prooimion
demonstrates, the authority of a poetic speaker can be borrowed directly from
an authority inherent in primary speech genres. The synergy of these different
sources of authority accounts for what, in particular, is lyric’s greatest ruse:
while conjuring the direct impact of an actual speech, a poem attributes it to a
voice that draws its power from age-old discursive structures.
Inasmuch as the beginning of the text is a privileged locus for diegetic
framing, the genres evoked therein are also likely to be epinikion’s significant
diachronic precursors or synchronic models.190 An overview of the devices
employed in the beginnings of Pindaric epinikia, synoptically presented in
Table 4, permits some conclusions regarding the constitution of this genre.
190
On the importance of arkha/prooimion in Pindar, cf. Greengard (1980: 119–27).
First of all, the majority of epinikia begin with an invocation (twenty-nine
out of forty-six), and about a half invoke a divine entity (twenty-two), yet
only two epinikia, I. 2 and I. 4, include an opening address to the laudandus
(honoree).191 It is perhaps significant that both of these poems, as well as P. 5
in which a general statement is immediately followed by the vocative of the
laudandus’ name, use dactylo-epitrites, which is the meter of enkomia and
threnoi and thus the proper meter for poems in praise of mortals.192 More
generally, it is a remarkable fact that in an encomiastic genre, which very
frequently employs addresses to the laudandus (and often to more than one),
such invocations are almost entirely banned from the opening of the poem.
Instead, the preferred form of the opening involves an invocation of the
gods, personified abstract concepts, locales (or their eponymous nymphs).
For explanation, I would once again evoke Freidenberg’s notion of a
contradiction between inherited form and ideological content: the preva-
lence of invocations of the gods, while surprising in poems with a primarily
encomiastic function, points to the genre’s origins in choral cult lyric. It
bears emphasizing that the notion of contradiction between form and
content does not imply that Pindar is compelled to retain conventions of
choral cult lyric that have become useless or meaningless in epinikion. On
the contrary, epinikion is a form that maintains markers of sacrality in
what is essentially a poem in praise of a mortal (and, in most cases, living)
man. Adopting a functionalist perspective, one might say that the dia-
chronic link serves as an enabling cause, and epinikion’s pretensions as a
choral genre, as an efficient cause, of Pindar’s maintenance of this diegetic
device. More to the point, however, literary forms, rather than mechanic-
ally accumulating cultural detritus, reveal the rich non-synchronicity of
human experience, which, being constituted by history, is never fully
explicable on presentist premises.
The significance of the figure of address, however, goes beyond cultic
(or quasi-cultic) invocations: ten out of the total of 29 opening apostrophes
are addressed neither to the gods nor to cities or their eponymous nymphs.
So what makes this figure such an effective diegetic device? Fundamentally,
it anchors the poetic text in a real-life pragmatics, creating an illusion of a
speech act.193 This illusion is episodic, as it is never maintained in the
191
Of these two, I. 4 is a moot case, since, in the form in which it is preserved, it was most likely
performed after I. 3, in which case I. 4.1 was not an opening line.
192
193
There is ample theoretical literature on the figure of apostrophe, which emphasizes its capacity to
create an illusion of presence: Braun (1971); Culler (1981, with Findlay 1985); Bergren (1982, with
reference to the Homeric Hymns); Walter (1988).
course of the epinikion’s topical development, which systematically under-
mines the mimetic reading of the poem.
An eloquent testimony to this illusion is given by O. 10 and P. 6, which
begin with a plural form of the imperative, but leave the addressees
undefined. In O. 10, the poem opens with the address: “Read out for me
the [name] of the son of Arkhestratos, Olympian victor, where it is written
in my wits: for I have forgotten that I owe him a sweet song” (Τὸν
Ὀλυμπιονίκαν ἀνάγνωτέ μοι / Ἀρχεστράτου παῖδα, πόθι φρενός / ἐμᾶς
γέγραπται· γλυκὺ γὰρ αὐτῷ μέλος ὀφείλων ἐπιλέλαθ’). In the words of
Basil Gildersleeve, “[w]e have here a humorous search in the poet’s
ledger.”194 Given Pindar’s solemn tone in the rest of the ode, this image
may even strike one as light-hearted. Yet it is another reminder of Pindar’s
inclusive syntheticism: the high literary pedigree of his poetry notwith-
standing, he is comfortable exploiting, for a particular rhetorical effect,
speech genres of everyday interaction.195 The opening of O. 10 evokes the
command to a servant to read a relevant portion of the account book.
Similarly, the opening appeal of P. 6 ‘Hear [this]’ (Ἀκούσατ’) is identi-
fied by Gildersleeve as a herald’s cry.196 Thus in both cases where Pindar
fails to identify the addressees of the opening apostrophe, the beginning of
the poem is in fact modeled on a particular primary genre. Since the social
context of that primary genre was familiar to the poem’s audience, the
particular addressees (an unnamed servant in O. 10, everyone close enough
to hear the herald’s cry in P. 6) did not need to be specified.
I would now like to discuss in more detail those poems that forego the
apostrophic gesture. Many such poems employ the notion of auspicious
beginning as the opening diegetic device. It is particularly obvious in P. 7.1–3:
Κάλλιστον αἱ μεγαλοπόλιες Ἀθᾶναι
προοίμιον Ἀλκμανιδᾶν εὐρυσθενεῖ
γενεᾷ κρηπῖδ’ ἀοιδᾶν ἵπποισι βαλέσθαι.
194
Gildersleeve (1885: 214).
195
As a parallel, I cite the remarkable conclusion of N. 7.104–5: ταὐτὰ δὲ τρὶς τετράκι τ᾿ ἀμπολεῖν /
ἀπορία τελέθει, τέκνοισιν ἅτε μαψυλάκας ‘Διὸς Κόρινθος’ ‘to repeat the same things three and four
times over is aporia, just as for children the chatterer “Zeus the Corinthian”.’ This is the only
context in which this proverbial expression appears in Greek literature, but we have to assume that
it was immediately recognizable to Pindar’s audience. Aetiological stories explaining the origin of
this proverb are provided in the scholia (Drachmann 3.137–9; cf. Bury 1890: 144).
196
Gildersleeve (1885: 316): “So ἀκούετε λεῴ, the ‘oyez’ of the Greek courts.” An alternative
explanation is to view the opening of P. 7 as a reflection of a type of incipit, widespread in Indo-
European poetics, that includes a command to hear (West 2007: 92–3); yet since such an opening is
unique in the surviving corpus of Greek lyric, the audience would have been more likely to
interpret it as a herald’s cry rather than as a metapoetic convention.
The great-city Athens is the best prooimion for the widely powerful clan of the
Alkmanidai to be cast as a foundation of songs honoring horses [horse victories].
The same notion – or, more precisely, the same pragmatics – informs that
moment in Medea 663–4, where an auspicious prooimion is mentioned
(“Rejoice/Hello, Medea: no one knows a prooimion that is better than this
to address friends”).
The notion that whatever is put first in the text should be specially
marked is present in most of Pindar’s poems that forego the opening
address. This special marking may include the use of a positively charged
turn, most often in the superlative, as the first or one of the first words of
the text. In three poems beginning with a gnomic or general statement
Pindar uses a superlative: in O. 1 and N. 4, a form of the superlative ‘best’
(ἄριστος) is put first in the poem, and in O. 11 the form ‘most’ (πλεῖστα) is
the predicate in the first sentence. In P. 5 the predicate of the first sentence
is εὐρυσθενής ‘widely powerful’ (cf. P. 7.2).197
Other examples of positively charged words occurring in the first lines of
a poem are O. 13 (the first word is Τρισολυμπιονίκαν ‘Thrice Olympian
victor’) and possibly I. 3 (the participial form εὐτυχήσαις ‘one who had
good luck’). A particular case of this type of opening is the praise of the
locales: beside P. 7, we may note P. 10.1–2 Ὀλβία Λακεδαίμων / μάκαιρα
Θεσσαλία (‘Fortunate is Lakedaimon, blessed is Thessaly’) and I. 9.2
Κλεινὸς Αἰακοῦ λόγος, κλεινὰ δὲ καὶ ναυσικλυτὸς Αἴγινα (‘Glorious is
the story of Aiakos, glorious also Aegina which is famous for its ships’).
Here Pindar is evoking a distinctly Greek speech genre: the makarismos
‘pronouncing someone blessed’.198
The distribution of the types of Pindaric openings is mirrored by
Bacchylides, who is more traditional than Pindar in that he strongly prefers
invocations (10 out of the 13 epinikia with preserved beginnings). Of these
only one is addressed to the laudandus: the elaborate opening of Ep. 5,
addressed to Hieron, tests the limits of the tyrant’s claims for an elevated
status. Among the remaining three openings, one is a gnomic statement
that includes the superlative ariston (Ep. 14), while two (Ep. 4 and 6) place
the god and the victor in the nominative (this type of opening is not
attested in the Pindaric corpus).
197
Notably, the only other context in which Pindar uses the adjective megalopolis ‘great-citied, i.e. a
great city’ is the first line of P. 2. On typically Pindaric accumulation of words with positive
connotations, cf. Silk (2012: 358).
198
While the noun makarismos first occurs in Plato, Pindar no doubt was aware of this primary genre,
as is shown by his use of the verb from which the noun is derived, makarizein at N. 11.11. Praise of a
locale is treated at length by Menander Rhetor 1.2 (Russell and Wilson 1981: 29–75).
Returning to the Pindaric evidence, I would like to dwell for a moment
on the opening of N. 4, which confirms that Pindar conceived of the
positively loaded incipit as a kind of prooimion, that is, an auspicious
utterance at the beginning of an undertaking. The poem begins with the
praise of the healing, epaoidic quality of epinician performance: Ἄριστος
εὐφροσύνα πόνων κεκριμένων / ἰατρός, αἱ δὲ σοφαί / Μοισᾶν θύγατρες
ἀοιδαὶ θέλξαν νιν ἁπτόμεναι (‘The best physician of toils, once they have
been decided, is revelry, and songs, wise daughters of the Muses, enchant
them by their touch’). Following the first stanza, the speaker exclaims
(N. 4.9–11):
τό μοι θέμεν Κρονίδᾳ τε Δὶ καὶ Νεμέᾳ
Τιμασάρχου τε πάλᾳ
ὕμνου προκώμιον εἴη·
May this be a prokômion I put down for the hymn for Zeus son of Kronos, for
Nemea, and for Timasarkhos’s wrestling.
The phrase ὕμνου προκώμιον, ‘prokômion of a hymn’, blends together two
principal generic determinants of Pindaric epinikion (hymnos and kômos),
yet its precise meaning is in need of clarification. It can hardly be doubted
that prooimion served as a model for the compound prokômion, which is a
hapax and in all likelihood Pindar’s own coinage.199 By analogy with
prooimion, ‘what one says before setting on one’s way (oimos)’, prokômion
is what one says at the beginning of a procession (kômos). That the chorus
indeed in motion is indirectly confirmed by the monostrophic structure of
N. 4, which may imply that it was sung in procession. In light of this, the
fact that the προκώμιον constitutes a separate stanza also seems significant:
at the moment the audience realizes that the same metrical structure is
being repeated (i.e., that the second stanza begins), the chorus designates
the opening section as ὕμνου προκώμιον ‘segment of the hymnos which
comes first in a kômos procession’. And one way of specially marking this
beginning portion is the auspicious first word, “the best.”
The idea of a marked incipit is prominent in another poem with an
unusual opening, O. 6.1–4:
Χρυσέας ὑποστάσαντες εὐτειχεῖ προθύρῳ θαλάμου
κίονας ὡς ὅτε θαητὸν μέγαρον
πάξομεν· ἀρχομένου δ’ ἔργου πρόσωπον
χρὴ θέμεν τηλαυγές.
199
Bury (1890: 69): “ὕμνου προκώμιον is equivalent to κώμου προοίμιον.”
Having set golden columns underneath a well-built portal of a chamber, as when
we construct a wondrous hall: it is appropriate to put down a far-shining face/
façade of a work that is being begun.
Besides the accumulation of positively charged epithets (‘golden’, ‘well-
built’, ‘wondrous’, ‘far-shining’), which is an already familiar Pindaric
opening device, I would point to the prefix pro- in προθύρῳ ‘portal,’ as
it also recurs in N. 4 (pro-kômion) and the poems beginning with a
mention of a prooimion (N. 2, P. 7). All these terms serve to mark the
opening lines as a beginning of the text.
The observation that those poems that do not employ invocations tend
to stage their openings as quasi-prooimia is confirmed by O. 7.1–4, where
the poet’s role as an outsider “sending” the poetic nectar to victorious
athletes is compared to the ritualized gesture of a man granting consent to
his daughter’s marriage:
Φιάλαν ὡς εἴ τις ἀφνειᾶς ἀπὸ χειρὸς ἑλών
ἔνδον ἀμπέλου καχλάζοισαν δρόσῳ
δωρήσεται
νεανίᾳ γαμβρῷ προπίνων [ . . . ]
As when one takes from his bountiful hand a goblet, which is foaming with vine’s
dew inside, and offers it as a gift to a young bridegroom to be, toasting him . . .
The verb propinein in Classical Greek is used in several closely related
meanings, such as ‘toast’, ‘make a present of a cup to the person toasted’,
and ‘give freely, make a present of ’.200 The inner form of the word
suggests a more literal interpretation, ‘to drink first, to start drinking’. In
light of the parallels considered above, the placement of a pro- compound
in the beginning of the poem is hardly coincidental.
In sum, it is possible to point to several patterns of usage in Pindaric
openings that do not include an apostrophe. It is very likely that such
an opening would use a positively charged term (especially a superlative) or
a pro- compound (especially prooimion). I have suggested that both these
strategies can be understood as poetic elaborations on the primary speech
genre of prooimion ‘auspicious utterance pronounced in the beginning of
an undertaking.’ More generally, I have pointed out that Pindar seeks
pragmatically oriented openings: when a figure of address is not used, it is
likely that a speech genre will figure prominently in the opening (O. 6
stands apart in this respect, since it stages a realistic situation, but does not
seem to refer to particular speech genres). In two cases, Pindar opts to
200
LSJ s.v. II. 1–3.
appeal to secondary genres at the beginning of the poem: N. 2, besides
mentioning prooimion in line 2, appropriates the genre of rhapsodic
recitation, and O. 9, which otherwise has an exceptional opening, starts
with an evocation of Archilochus’s melos.201
There are three poems that accomplish a pragmatic contextualization by
the prominent placement of a first-person utterance: a form of the verb
ethelein ‘wish, desire’ as the first word in P. 2 and P. 9, and a metapoetic
statement “I am not a statue-maker” in N. 5. Against the background of
Pindaric usage, these poems are unusual in their foregrounding of the ego.
Finally, a true exception to the patterns outlined in this Section is N. 6,
which famously begins with a lengthy gnomic reflection on the human
condition.202 As a possible motivation, I would point to the prominence in
the poem of praise for the clan of the Bassidai, which seems to align the
poem more closely with the genre of threnos.203
I would like to conclude the discussion of prooimion as a diegetic device
in Pindar with a passage that is perhaps the grandest – and the most
“marked” – of all Pindaric openings:
Χρυσέα φόρμιγξ Ἀπόλλωνος καὶ ἰοπλοκάμων
σύνδικον Μοισᾶν κτέανον· τᾶς ἀκούει μὲν βάσις ἀγλαΐας ἀρχά,
πείθονται δ’ ἀοιδοὶ σάμασιν
ἁγησιχόρων ὁπόταν προοιμίων ἀμβολὰς τεύχῃς ἐλελιζομένα. (P. 1.1–4)
O Golden lyre, the possession and vocal supporter204 of Apollo and violet-haired
Muses: the step, the beginning of festivity, heeds you, and singers obey the signs,
whenever you, being strummed, furnish the starting notes of chorus-leading
prooimia.
This opening is doubly characteristic: it employs an apostrophic gesture
and begins with a positively charged term.205 In addition, the word
prooimia appears in line 4, accompanied by other terms that refer to
beginning (ἀρχά, ἀμβολάς). The precise meaning of the phrase
ἁγησιχόρων . . . προοιμίων ἀμβολάς, however, remains unclear. If the
meaning ‘prelude’ is assigned to prooimion, the phrase becomes a
201
For further discussion of N. 2.1–3, see Maslov (2009: 10–11); on O. 9.1–4, see Section 3.
202
Ἓν ἀνδρῶν, ἓν θεῶν γένος· ἐκ μιᾶς δὲ πνέομεν ματρὸς ἀμφότεροι ‘One is the race of men, another
of the gods, but we both gain our breath from one mother [i.e., Gaia].’ On the later reception of
this famous passage, see, in particular, Kloch-Kornitz (1961).
203
Freidenberg (1940) and the discussion in Section 4. Note that the Muse, mentioned in line 28, is
commanded “to direct the glorious breeze of words” onto the household (oikos), not the victor.
204
For this translation of σύνδικον, see Chapter 3, n. 110.
205
“Gold” is similarly the first word in O. 6.1 and in Pai. 6.1.
pleonasm, as anabolê clearly has a similar force.206 Both general usage
and this particular Pindaric context, however, suggest a different
interpretation.
First, as I argued above, there is no reason to look for any distinctively
musical meaning in the word prooimion. Furthermore, if we consider the
passage more closely, it appears that the men-de contrast is drawn between
dance and song, and the phrase “singers obey the signs” must refer to vocal
performance. In view of this, the poetic plural of “the chorus-leading
prooimia” is likely to pertain to the activity of singers rather than to
musical accompaniment. In particular, prooimia can refer to ‘invocations,
addresses’, consistent with one of the meanings of the word in Attic drama.
The sequence ἁγησιχόρων ὁπόταν προοιμίων ἀμβολὰς τεύχῃς may then
be translated as “whenever you provide the starting music for the opening
invocations which lead forth the chorus.” If this interpretation is accepted,
the significance of prooimion as a primary speech genre may be extended to
all of Pindar’s apostrophic openings. This is particularly the case with those
invocations that go beyond cultic address, which is more naturally inter-
preted as a property of a secondary genre of hymnos. The evidence of the
opening of P. 1 thus suggests that prooimion may have served as the proper
Archaic term for the device of invocation, which in later Greek is desig-
nated by the term klêsis. The history of this word takes us from a spatial
metaphor to a primary speech genre and finally to an element of the
emergent literary discourse.
206
LSJ, s.v. II. 1, Slater 37: the “striking up” of the preludes. Farnell (1932: 107): the word, modeled on
Od. 1.155, referred to “the singer flinging back his head to give full voice to his song.” Most
plausibly, Power (2010: 185–7) explains anabolê as the musical prelude preceding and thus
“delaying” (the common meaning of ἀναβάλλομαι) the song.
Epilogue
Poetry and immortality
Indeed, what is it, in essence, that grants eternity to poetry? That it is

preserved even as it changes absolutely. This, by the way, is the
principle of life: stability in mutability. If a restricted set of rigid
rules that have no mechanism of self-mutation and self-regeneration
is imposed on scientific thought, this science will be exhausted when
its object is exhausted. Yet if we succeed in building a complex
mechanism that is capable of self-regeneration and can remain itself
as it becomes wholly different, then these are already traits of life.
This is what gives longevity to a scholarly method.
Yuri Lotman1
“It is not possible for me to bring your soul back home again, o Megas” –
the speaker of Nemean 8 addresses the victor’s dead father as he is nearing
the poem’s closure. What he can offer, in place of resurrection, is “to set up
a stone of the Muses” for Megas’s fatherland, Aegina, and his clan, the
Khariadai, on account of “the twice famous feet of two men.”2 The last
phrase, which apparently refers to the father and the son, might suggest
that Megas’s inclusion in the poem is due to his past athletic achievements.
Yet it is a typical Pindaric device, a zeugma that transfers praise to a new
object.3 As in the case of Isthmian 1, the task of Nemean 8 is “to yoke
together the telos of two commissions,” the threnic memorialization of
Megas and the epinician celebration of his son, Deinias. It is as much
about immortality granted by poetry as about poetic elevation of the living.
1
Lotman (2003 [1992]: 150). For the idea, cf. T. S. Eliot’s dictum (1996 [1926]: 45): “[W]e can only
capture the enduring by perpetual movement and adaptation.”
2
ὦ Μέγα, τὸ δ’ αὖτις τεὰν ψυχὰν κομίξαι / οὔ μοι δυνατόν . . . σεῦ δὲ πάτρᾳ Χαριάδαις τ’ ἐλαφρόν
[MSS τέ λάβρον] / ὑπερεῖσαι λίθον Μοισαῖον ἕκατι ποδῶν εὐωνύμων / δὶς δὴ δυοῖν. Deinias won in
a running contest (diaulos), hence the reference to feet. On the meaning of κομίξαι ‘convey back
home,’ see Kurke (1991: 46).
3
Pindar similarly couples the two names as the recipients of the “Nemean adornment” (agalma) in line
16. If Megas were a successful athlete, we would expect an unambiguous acknowledgement of this in
the text of the poem.
318
This particular synthesis is by no means unique to Nemean 8. What is
unusual is that it is justified by a self-reflexive statement on genre hybridity
that concludes the poem, the passage discussed at the very beginning of
this book:
χαίρω δὲ πρόσφορον
ἐν μὲν ἔργῳ κόμπον ἱείς, ἐπαοιδαῖς δ’ ἀνήρ
νώδυνον καί τις κάματον θῆκεν· ἦν γε μὰν ἐπικώμιος ὕμνος
δὴ πάλαι καὶ πρὶν γενέσθαι τὰν Ἀδράστου τάν τε Καδμείων ἔριν.
(N. 8.48–51)
I rejoice in having cast a vaunt that befits the deed – what is more, with sung
incantations it is possible to undo the pain of any toilsome effort. After all, the
festive hymn has existed from days of yore and even before the strife of Adrastus
and the progeny of Cadmus.
The three modes of historical contextualization I focused on in the
Introduction – pragmatic anchoring, social efficacy, and the longue durée
of literary history – are signaled by three different genres, listed in the order
of increasing authority. Kompos represents spontaneous expression of
praise, whose directness poses a potential risk to the decorum of the
occasion. Elsewhere, Pindar compares kompos to wine that must be diluted
with the water of song.4 If kompos is a primary speech genre of direct,
unpremeditated praise that is almost unliterary, epaoida is a preliterary
genre that carries with it the full, magical force of the performative.5 Finally,
epikômios hymnos is an eminently literary secondary genre whose authority
is, characteristically for Pindar, grounded in the mythical illud tempus.6
In spite of the heightening movement created by the sequence of
particles (men – de – ge man . . . dê), none of the genres mentioned cancels
or impugns the other. All three stand as epinikion’s valid, if incomplete,
definitions.7 The same synthesizing gesture is contained within the phrase
4
I. 5.24: μὴ φθόνει κόμπον τὸν ἐοικότ’ ἀοιδᾷ κιρνάμεν ἀντὶ πόνων (‘Do not grudge to mix an
appropriate kompos with song as a recompense for [athletic] toils’).
5
Here Pindar makes explicit a pattern of generic appropriation that is also found in other epinikia,
where the victory ode is described as having a healing effect (N. 3.17–18, N. 4.2–3, P. 3.73). On
epaoida as a metaphor for poetry in the Classical period, cf. Maslov (2009: 29, n. 64).
6
On the significance of myth in this passage, see Introduction, Section 1. According to Nagy, these
words imply that “praise poetry was praising heroes even before the events recorded by epic” and that
therefore “the kleos of Homer is treated [by Pindar] as an offshoot of the kleos that survives as the
praise poetry of Pindar” (Nagy 1990b: 192–4; cf. 1979b: 227–8). Crotty suggests, based on the use of
the word eris ‘strife’, which is associated with the human condition in Hesiod, that Pindar means to
project the epikômios hymnos to the time before the onset of the mortal condition, which, in Crotty’s
reading, makes it only partially relevant to modern epinikion (1982: 101–2).
7
Slater points out (311–2) that ge man is always adversative in Pindar (= ‘but of course’), with the
exception of this passage, where it is used “with a notion of affirmation” (= ‘after all, it is true’).
320 Epilogue: poetry and immortality
epikômios hymnos, which couples the genre’s two basic constituents: kômos
and hymnos. It is this cumulative effect of a triad of genres that fulfills the
promise of the memorial “stone of the Muses” honoring Megas. The
passage thus suggests a remarkable poetic perspicuity: Pindar recognizes
that the substitute immortality that epinikion can claim to convey hinges
on its ability to reconcile utterances that belong to everyday discourse with
the highest registers of inherited poetic language. Such a formal reconcili-
ation or synchronization, negotiated again and again on changing, historic-
ally contingent terms, would remain the quintessential quality of lyric, and
literature in general, in the Occident.
If literature claims and grants immortality by hybridizing pregiven
discursive forms, literary-historical scholarship has an intrinsic function
in this project. In contrast to a literary critic who confronts the work in its
tentative, temporary unity, literary historians reconstruct the universe of
discourse that conditioned it, uncovering the text’s double work of hybrid-
ization and synchronization. Literary text is constituted in a creative
encounter, indeed a struggle, with relatively inert constituent elements.
As time passes, however, the form brought forth by that struggle is either
reified as part of the current universe of discourse or enters the culture’s
unconscious, often to reemerge in another, as yet unimaginable discursive
encounter. Yet the resources of the future, inasmuch as they are the past’s
possession, are available only to an unfailing, agile and inclusive historical
consciousness.
The task of scholarship is to aid in poetry’s regeneration by reentering,
in the scholar’s present, the original ordeal of its composition. Poetics is
thus a true homonym: it is both the art of “making” literary artifacts and
the science that reveals their constructedness to the eyes of a different
epoch. This means that the scholar of poetics is both an ally and an
antagonist of the poet. The exposure of the spuriousness of the text’s unity
may “bare a device” occluded in the context of the text’s creation. Yet the
intellectual effort of stratigraphy also renews the text’s openness to wider
historical vistas. To be rescued for the future, the past must be decon-
structed and recomposed rather than approached as another, forgettable
present.
In addition to exploring the emergence of literature in Archaic Greece,
this book set itself the task of elucidating a method of literary-historical
inquiry that would correspond to poetry’s distinctive historicity. This
methodological experiment comes at a time of interregnum. While New
Historicism is assuming the air of an antique and, in some quarters, is even
being superseded by a renewed “old” historicism, and while more recent
developments such as World Literature or reinvented varieties of formal-
ism have still to realize their promise, Yuri Lotman’s reflections on the
futility of short-lived intellectual hegemony seem particularly opportune.
The epigraph, taken from one of Lotman’s last interviews, comments on
the twilight of a major school of twentieth-century literary theory, the
Moscow-Tartu semiotics, and more broadly, on the decline of structural-
ism in the humanities. Indeed, what is the value of new “perspectives” on
literature, if they only serve to eclipse earlier perspectives, and are bound to
lose currency even within the lifespan of an individual scholar? What are
the proper limits to the rigor of literary scholarship, seeing that it is so
obviously implicated in the historical? What kind of knowledge about art
should we strive for?
Lotman believed that in order to open a new future, any work in the
humanities must look back to the past: “we always know only our past: it is
not only the future that we don’t know, but also the present.”8 In his
comments on the historical method, Quentin Skinner stresses that the past
is “ours” in different degrees, suggesting that a meaningful future is
contingent on objective and continuous reexamination of past paths not
taken. In a sense, the historian becomes an aide to the workings of the
cultural unconscious:
one of the present values of the past is as a repository of values we no longer
endorse, of questions we no longer ask. One corresponding role for the
intellectual historian is that of acting as a kind of archaeologist, bringing
buried intellectual treasure back to the surface, dusting it down and enab-
ling us to reconsider what we think of it.9
This archeological work should “prevent us from becoming too readily
bewitched” by our own intellectual heritage and from being led “into
believing that the ways of thinking bequeathed to us by the mainstream
of our intellectual traditions must be the ways of thinking about them.”10
Historical self-reflexivity and an ability to engage in conversation not
only across different disciplines as they are presently constituted, but also
across the history of any given field of knowledge, are perhaps the best
precepts for building a hermeneutic mechanism complex enough to gen-
erate ideas of lasting validity. Literary history, in particular, must seek to be
adequate to its distinctive, yet historically variable object of study; its
success depends on incessant cross-examination of reified notions of
8 9
Lotman (2003 [1990]: 144). Skinner (1998: 112), citing Foucault (1972 [1969]: 135–40).
10
Skinner (1998: 112).
“literariness” and “history” as well as “theory.” Historical Poetics,
understood as an overarching paradigm for pondering literary form along-
side history, thus calls for theoretical reflection that is necessarily combined
with work on literary history as well as on the history of theory.
In “The Concept of History,” Hannah Arendt notes that modern
historical consciousness has been “accustomed to the idea of immortality
only through the lasting appeal of works of art and perhaps through the
relative permanence we ascribe to all great civilizations.”11 It was different
for the ancients, who linked immortality to the political realm, inasmuch
as only heroic deeds and great words were thought to escape oblivion.
True, such an escape is made possible by poetic memorialization. Yet
ancient poetry – Arendt’s argument continues – survives only inasmuch
as it registers actual greatness, not by virtue of a property intrinsic to
literary discourse. In the ancient world, there can be no eternal poem
about a petty subject. By contrast, the modern world, according to Arendt,
has lost that vision of intrinsically meaningful action, as individual life and
action are submerged in the myriad of empty time-sequences, “processes,”
that, in the long run, bring about “the new indifference toward the
question of immortality.”12
Pindar’s “stone of the Muses” is intended to last because it is a memor-
ial. Yet the poem’s capacity to outlive its honorand, in this case, is not due
to the greatness of his deeds; it has more to do with Pindar and his art than
with Megas and his life. Whereas folk poetry is often preserved because it
carries on the memory of men, klea andrôn, Pindar’s is “made” to survive
for an immanent reason, even though overtly the survival is still motivated
by the extrinsic, memorializing function. In this regard, Pindar points
forward to the eventual reversal of the relation between poetry and
humanity. In the long run, as Arendt suggests, art’s capacity for persistence
would become paradigmatic for any concept of endurance, or immortality,
in history.
Furthermore, Arendt’s account invites the supposition that art’s histor-
icity, with its insistence on the individual and the unique, is itself a survival
of a historical consciousness that is ill at ease with the modern world. It is,
one might say, the only domain in which the ancient ideal of the signifying
uniqueness is still alive. On the other hand, it appears that the recognition
of genre as an immanent force of literature, as well as the notion of literary
evolution itself, only became possible with the rise of modern process-
centered thinking. It thus seems counterintuitive that traditional verbal art,
11 12
Arendt (1961: 71). Arendt (1961: 74).
rooted in the premodern world, did not involve the individuation of the
text or the author, whereas a modern literary self-consciousness, by con-
trast, tends to repudiate genre and celebrate the individual.
This apparent paradox suggests that the opposition between a unique
deed and a generic process is insufficient for theorizing the literary. Indeed,
literature reveals the mutual implication of the individual and the “pro-
cessual”: rather than being in conflict, these two categories can enter into
different configurations. In celebrating Achilles’ achievements, a Homeric
poem draws together centuries of historical experience, which it condenses
to a representation of a specific event. Traditional art thinks in terms of the
individual and the concrete, but this thinking takes place within a struc-
ture that is itself processual, rather than self-consciously individuated. This
is the structure of a folkloric genre.
By contrast, a literary poem is aware of its processual qualities, its being
part of a tradition or genre, which allows it to comment on continuities –
be it an imperial or national tradition, the notion of translatio studii, or the
longue durée of a particular form such as the epikômios hymnos. In this
sense, the literary retains genre as a survival of the preliterary. On the other
hand, literature takes the unique more seriously than folklore, and it
projects it onto its very structure. It accepts the risks of transience along
with the ambition of individual persistence. Once constituted as a fully-
fledged signifying practice, literature allows for what is possible neither in
traditional art nor even in the poetry of Pindar’s time. A poet can write
about the pettiest of subjects, the least eligible candidate for preservation
(be it a beloved’s pet sparrow or a jar in Tennessee), yet expect the text to
outlast both himself and his contemporaries.
Thus literature is more than a survival; it is a medium of anticipation
par excellence. It appears to represent the only domain of human practice
that was self-consciously processual – actively aware of its historicity – long
before the rise of historiography. Yet it has also always been a form of
thought that thrives on representations of the concrete and the unique.
The essence of art remains elusive, since it both crosscuts history and is
revealed in it; and literary scholarship, as it enters into an antagonistic
alliance with its object of study and aims at capturing its paradoxes, has no
choice but to seek its ammunition in diverse intellectual quarters, however
distant chronologically or even opposed in historical spirit. Artistic synthe-
sis must be matched by intellectually rigorous, purposeful conversation
between different approaches to literary study. Needless to say, it is not
feasible that a single theoretical platform, and even less a particular
scholarly statement, encompass all voices. The case for a renewed
Historical Poetics that this book advances, nevertheless, is not based
simply on the combination of philologically-minded literary analysis with
an interest in history that, in Classics, is often taken for granted in any
case. Historical Poetics, as it is envisioned here, can advance our know-
ledge of literature only by virtue of creating an intellectual space which
would be shared by a diversity of thinkers (ranging from Thucydides and
Cicero to Blumenberg and Greenblatt), and in which their views would be
subject to mutual illumination and recalibration, and thus obtain a new
life that they themselves did not necessarily foresee.
In History: The Last Things Before the Last, Siegfried Kracauer provided
the most sustained philosophical analysis of history in the wake of the
Modernist recognition of the uneven, nonsynchronous quality of historical
time.13 In particular, he pointed to the self-defeating claim of historicism.
If all ideas and philosophical categories are historically conditioned, one is
led to absolutize a particular continuous history, the history of winners.
Instead, Kracauer views history as the domain of incomplete truth claims,
the “anteroom” of philosophy and its last questions. History, he contends,
is similar to photographic media, which “make it much easier for us to
incorporate the transient phenomena of the outer world, thereby
redeeming them from oblivion.”14 At the same time, one must admit
“limited relativity” of certain ideas that seem to survive history: “We live
in a cataract of times. And there are ‘pockets’ and voids amid these
temporal currents, vaguely reminiscent of interference phenomena.”15 In
the task of understanding, the general and the particular, or the philosoph-
ical and the historical, must coexist: “There is no general definition of, say,
beauty that would lead one straight to an appropriate definition of the
peculiar beauty of a specific work of art. That general definition exceeds
the latter in range, while lagging behind it in fullness of meaning.”16
Kracauer points to literary works at other crucial moments of his
discussion. Most notably, Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu is singled
out for its effort to aesthetically redeem the ruptures of linear time.17 Yet
verbal art engages with historical time not only mimetically, through
devices of narrative and closure. As this book has argued, literature in
the Occident evolved as a medium in which historically contingent mean-
ings could endure, collide, and enter new juxtapositions. Literary forms are
13
Among his theoretical predecessors, Kracauer cites Marx, Curtius, Raymond Aron, Dilthey,
Focillon, and Kubler, as well as Proust (1995 [1969]: 148–63).
14 15
Kracauer (1995 [1969]: 192). Kracauer (1995 [1969]: 199).
16 17
Kracauer (1995 [1969]: 205–6). Kracauer (1995 [1969]: 160–3).
social forms adapted for dialogue, preservation, and hybridization. To take
on Kracauer’s notion, literature is a pocket in which chronological time is
suspended. Poetry’s limited immortality, and perhaps even its claim to
elicit an immanent, “aesthetic” pleasure, derives from an inclusive gesture
whereby a historically unique individual and a singular, specially crafted
text offer themselves as conduits or receptacles for historical experience
shared by multitudes.
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Subject Index
Achilles, 11, 120, 157, 192, 214, 238, 265, 268–71, Pythian, 189, 201–12
275, 323 as recipient of paians, 65, 202
Adrastus, 1–3, 319 Arabic literature, 15
Aegina, 1, 110–11, 154, 200, 228, 230–1, 271, 275, archaeology
303, 313, 318 as method of historical inquiry, 24–5
Aeolic as study of the conditions of possibility, 3, 32,
Aeolian musical mode, 254, 291 58
dialect, 78, 84 textual, 32, 46, 58, 276, 321
poetic culture, 81–9 Archaic Greece
aeolic (primary) cola, 69, 80–1, 86, 112, 115, 162, cultural transformation in, 4, 6, 61, 178
295 its distinctiveness reflected in poetry, 59, 63,
Aeschylus, 5, 75, 100, 102, 123, 155, 161, 308 114, 121, 128, 144
aestheticism, 9, 13, 176 Archemoros, 3
Aiakos, 193, 228, 275 Archilochus, 14, 52, 57, 66, 68, 71, 74, 79, 82, 115,
Alcaeus, 61, 66, 68–70, 72, 78, 81–3, 87, 95, 157, 256, 278, 291
183, 260 Arion, 20, 84, 88, 91
Alcman, 75–6, 78–81, 83–4, 136, 224, 287–9, 299 aristocracy, 6, 8, 61, 67, 72–5, 98, 107, 110, 113,
allegory, 25, 134, 151, 168, 250 148–9, 158, 217, 234, 236, 249–50, 264, 266,
Freidenberg on, 142 278, 281, 286
and history of figuration, 117–20 Aristophanes, 106
in Pindar, 113, 122, 144, 250 Aristotle, 121, 123, 147
Amphiareus, 193–5, 222 on dithyramb, 92–3
Anacreon, 44, 57, 66, 68–70, 75, 78, 80–1, 115, on metaphor, 176
278 Artemis, 65, 150, 158, 161
Anacreontea, 70 Athena, 158, 193, 195, 202, 214, 218
Ancient Greek popular poetry, 14 Athena Lindia on Rhodes, 20
traditional meters of, 83 Athens, 4–5, 52, 65, 75, 110, 112–13, 187, 189, 198,
anekdot, 50 214, 217, 275, 312
antiquarianism, 7, 60 audience, 20, 51, 102, 129, 153, 229, 249, 251, 256,
aoida, 147, 280, 290–4, 305 266–7, 276
aoidos, 91, 96–7, 274, 288, 290, 292 addressed, 93, 101, 269, 272, 275
Aphrodite, 134, 149, 195 of a poetic performance, 101, 104, 151, 208, 210,
as word meaning ‘love’, 127 233
Apollo, 125, 158, 161–2, 192, 195, 229, 255, 261, 307 original, 93, 156, 201, 239, 258, 265, 275, 312,
and Daphne, 139 314
as father of Iamos, 196 removed in time, 8, 72, 90
as father of the Delphians, 231 tertiary, 20
Galaxios, 203 aulos, 66, 69, 218, 253
as mantis, 193–5 author-function, 19, 95–6, 181
Mousagetas, 212 in Foucault, 16, 48, 51, 61, 99
and the Muses, 204, 207, 221, 223 specialization in, 16, 18
355
356 Subject Index
author-function (cont.) democracy, 5
three types of, 33, 99–100, 115, 124, 155 Democritus, 12
transformation of, 19, 22, 47, 59, 92, 125, demos, 98, 148–9
197 diegetic framing, 33, 90–7, 99, 103, 111, 115, 197,
Averintsev, Sergei, 12, 16, 47, 56, 72, 183, 278 252, 257, 264, 267, 276, 289, 310
Dionysus, 65, 195, 203, 206, 291
Bacchylides, 1, 4, 20, 34, 62, 65, 67, 75, 80, 83, dithyramb, 20, 36, 65, 81, 93, 187, 198–9, 206,
98–9, 107–8, 112–13, 184–5, 187, 212–13, 218, 290–1
232, 237–42, 244–5, 267, 270–1, 277–8, 280, Dorian
282, 287, 293, 297–9, 313 Pindar’s use of the ethnonym, 103, 254, 269
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 9, 30–2, 40, 42, 45, 67, 72, 114, putative poetic tradition, 81, 83–4
248, 252, 309 view of Pindar as, 5
Bedouin nomads, 15 Doric dialects, 83–4
Beowulf, 15 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 22, 40
Blumenberg, Hans, 9, 28–30, 137, 246, 324 drama, 13, 20, 31, 45, 59, 74, 78, 93, 129, 144, 251,
boetheia, 228, 231 286, 317
Bogatyrev, Pyotr, 16, 18–19, 50
Bundy, Elroy, 7, 22, 66, 151–2, 186, 223, 232–3, early modern period, 5, 45, 188, 247–8
254–6, 258, 265, 276, 284–5 economics, 4
his method, 6, 129, 164, 186, 250, 257 elegiac couplet, 64, 69–71, 78–82, 148
Studia Pindarica, 6, 107, 123, 258 elegos, 70
Burckhardt, Jacob, 8, 25 elegy, 36, 42, 59, 67, 70–3, 75, 81
historical elegy, 20
Calchas, 190, 192 Roman, 72, 96
Callimachus, 11, 184, 205–6 Eliot, T. S., 8, 41, 118, 120, 146, 176, 248, 318
Carmina popularia. See Ancient Greek popular Empedocles, 169
poetry encomiastic future, 21, 173, 223, 230, 255
Cassirer, Ernst, 29, 139–42, 144–6 enkomiologikon, 81
Cervantes, Miguel de, 30 Enlightenment, 5, 52, 138, 140
chorality, 15, 19, 62, 98, 106, 286–94 epaoidos, 91, 97, 273, 314
chronotope, 32, 108–9, 184, 202, 208, 212, 252 epic, 17, 32, 43, 45, 61, 92–3, 115, 129, 144, 172,
Classical period, 5–6, 64, 66, 105, 247, 251 234–5, 294, 298
Classical tradition, 12, 39–40, 57 its evolution in Greece, 15, 57, 59–60, 77, 79,
cognitive universals, 2, 12, 137, 141, 170–1, 174, 84–90
177 post-Homeric, 176
Cole, Thomas, 122, 186, 241, 275, 280 Slavic, 14, 87
contextualism, 4, 26, 38, 129, 182 Epic Cycle, 143
contextualization, 1–2, 4, 7, 246, 316, 319 epidêmia, 34, 201–12, 243
copyright, 19, 48 epigonism, 3, 57
Cowley, Abraham, 7, 248 Epigonoi, 3
cultural history, 4, 9, 30, 105, 181 epikôm-, 280, 283, 292, 319, 323
Currie, Bruno, 6, 19–21, 106, 108, 124, 196, 228, epinikion
230, 232, 251, 270, 283, 305 choral performance of, 19, 213, 285, 292
Curtius, Ernst Robert, 56, 324 encomiastic devices in, 6, 105, 149, 151, 164,
186–7, 247, 250, 255, 257, 265, 285, 311
D’Alessio, Giambattista, 6, 21–2, 62, 83, 100, 103, as genre, 1–3, 6–7, 106–7, 109, 113–14, 124, 151,
105–6, 108, 112, 124, 164, 223–4, 229 185–6, 247, 249, 251, 255–6, 280, 285, 291,
dactylic hexameter, 71–2 319
and associated genres, 88–9, 91, 97 history of, 276–86
and dactylo-epitrites, 78–80 meaning of the term, 281–4
its origins, 85–7 stratification of, 85–116
dactylo-epitrites, 79–81, 113, 115, 254, 311 as synthetic form, 246–76
dānastuti, 296 ethnopoetics, 8, 11
death of the author, 2, 41, 47 evolution
Deinias, 1, 3, 318 defined, 12
Subject Index 357
literary, 40, 45, 55, 88, 90, 97, 114, 143, mutation, 96, 115
276–7, 322 nomenclature, 64–5, 279–81, 286–7, 290–1
of cultural forms, 24–5, 29, 141, 181–2, 246 and occasion, 20–1, 62–76, 207, 250, 255, 276
societal, 144 primary speech genres, 42–4, 62, 64, 72, 81,
Euripides, 204 180, 184, 250–1, 258, 265, 269, 275, 292,
evolutionism, 23, 60, 67 309–10, 312–13, 315, 317, 319
exegi monumentum, 58, 242 proliferation, 37–8, 42–5
experience socially embedded, 12, 20, 183, 244–5, 309
embedded in cultural forms, 19, 23, 25, 44, 311 as survival of the preliterary, 56, 323
historical, 7–8, 25, 49, 114, 323, 325 the Romantics on, 59
and myth, 145 genre memory, 40, 46, 114
and poetry, 3, 33, 118, 199 genredness, 18
and primary speech genres, 43 Gentili, Bruno, 11, 62, 85–7
ritual, 204–5 Gernet, Louis, 212–15, 218, 226, 233, 238–9, 241–2
Ginzburg, Carlo, 24
fable, 15, 66, 73 Ginzburg, Lydia, 46
fairytale, 18, 32, 45 Godzich, Wlad, 13, 15
first-person grammar Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 7, 188
in Bacchylides, 240 goos, 70, 268, 270, 286
in folklore, 21–2 Greenblatt, Stephen, 2, 10, 31, 163, 178, 324
in lyric, 59 Grinbaum, Natan S., 74, 83, 290
in N. 7, 228
in Pindar, 105–14, 154, 213, 244, 316 Hector, 11, 214, 288
plural in Pindar, 102 Hegel, G. W. F., 8, 59, 144
Flower, Michael, 189, 194 Hellenistic period, 3, 11, 52, 62–4, 81, 123, 128, 183,
Foley, John Miles, 17 188, 190, 205, 300
folklore, 8–9, 14–15, 19, 30, 43, 64, 167–9, 175, scholars, 62, 279
179, 299 Hera, 238
as langue, 16 Heracles, 158, 193, 195, 221, 278–9
contrasted with literature, 44, 47, 50, 56, 323 Herder, Johann von, 138–40, 170
evolves into literature, 9–22, 67–8, 90, 120, 140 hermetic tradition, 294–5, 298–9
in Romanticism, 15, 96 Herodotus, 189, 251
traditional referentiality, 17, 171 Hesiod, 33, 52, 68, 77, 88, 96, 115, 122, 125, 130–6,
Ford, Andrew, 6, 13, 62, 64, 71 147–8, 151, 214, 221, 274, 289, 295, 297, 299,
formalism, 10, 321 319
formula, 13, 19, 71, 86, 96, 168, 176, 289, 299 heurêsis, 164, 253, 304
Foucault, Michel, 16, 32, 48, 51, 57, 61, 99, 242, Hipponax, 74, 82
321 Historical Poetics, 9–10, 23–33, 36, 40–1, 47, 91,
Fränkel, Hermann, 5, 59–60, 98, 124–5, 127–9, 116, 144, 179, 183, 322, 324
144–5, 171–2, 174–5, 186–7, 221, 229 historical time
Freidenberg, Olga, 15, 28, 32, 46, 67, 120, 124, future, 2, 5, 8, 22–7, 30, 32, 55, 114, 129, 182,
130, 136, 140–6, 157, 174–6, 284–5, 304, 311, 233, 241–2, 320–1
316 past, 7–8, 22–7, 114, 233–4, 261–2, 320–2
Futurism, 10 present, 23–7, 60, 234–5, 262, 321
historical tradition, 2, 54
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 2, 29 historicism, 2, 5, 7–8, 38, 40, 176–7, 320, 324
genre normative, 9, 26, 128
Bakhtin on, 40, 42, 45, 67 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 38, 52, 119, 169
in Historical Poetics, 40–1 Homer, 4, 11, 53–4, 57, 64, 66, 68, 70, 73, 76, 79,
hybridity, 11–12, 31, 45, 55, 57, 113, 180, 184, 82, 85, 88, 98, 115, 123, 149, 171, 176, 203, 251,
249, 251, 266, 292–3, 319–20 289, 297, 299
ideological (secondary) speech genres, 42–3, aspects of diction, 71, 87, 133, 158, 186, 203,
45, 72, 94, 250–1, 265, 275, 292, 316–17, 319 207, 221, 241, 253, 265, 287–8, 290, 297
in modern literatures, 18, 42 divination in, 190
Jameson on, 27–8 fixation of the Homeric poems, 53, 87–90
358 Subject Index
Homer (cont.) kômos, 22, 63, 222, 257, 272, 274, 278–94, 314, 320
Freidenberg on, 143 kompos, 319
Homeric epic as genre, 14, 49, 251, 294, 323 Kronos, 150–1
invention of, 53 Krummen, Eveline, 6, 59, 107, 124, 283
metaphor in, 175–6 Kurke, Leslie, 2, 4, 6, 15, 21–2, 28, 49, 60–1, 68,
name of, 297 71, 73, 100, 104–7, 124, 129, 134, 146, 148,
as precedent for Pindar, 64, 80, 115, 124, 158, 162, 182, 187, 217, 224–5, 229–30, 249,
227, 270–2 251, 254–6, 258, 260–5, 273, 281, 286, 297,
recitation of the Homeric poems, 77 299, 318
simile in, 90, 130, 145, 157, 166, 170–2
summoned witnesses in, 214 lament, 19, 43–4, 67–8, 70, 120, 268, 270, 286
the Homeric problem, 14 Old Babylonian, 21
use of direct speech, 92 law, 49, 178, 246, 269
Homeric Hymns, 77, 86, 88, 184, 287–9, 307–8, authority in, 51–2
311 prelaw, 51–2, 241
Horace, 7, 38, 52, 57–8, 188, 243, 251 sacred, 189
hymn, 37, 101, 153, 184, 188, 250, 279 Levinton, Georgii, 14, 17, 21
hymnos, 1–3, 65, 81, 154–5, 252, 255, 286–94, 297, Likhachev, Dmitri, 19, 44, 50
314, 319 Linos, 65
Indo-European etymology of, 300–7 literacy, 6, 17, 50, 89, 114
paideios, 263, 278–9, 286 literariness, 10, 16–17, 93, 322
Hyperboreans, 202, 205, 208, 210–12, 263 literary canon, 5, 56, 58, 115
hypothêkê, 251, 265 literary culture, 6, 9, 11–12, 33, 54, 77, 89–90, 95,
99, 105, 115, 242, 246
Ibycus, 69, 75, 83, 174, 277–8 signs of emergence, 20
idealism, 5, 45, 59, 119, 129, 138, 140, 145 literary forms
imagery, 117–23, 126–9, 141–2, 151, 155–78, 203, as approached by Historical Poetics, 32, 164,
207, 263, 298–9 324
immortality, 28–30, 58, 73, 241, 318–25 emergent, 252
incantation, 1–2, 91, 167, 179, 299, 319 history of, 13, 22, 59, 185
individuation, 30, 36, 47, 99, 106, 323 persistence of, 3–4, 27–8, 47, 137, 245, 259,
of authorship, 49–55, 92 262, 298, 311, 322
of literary production, 16–20, 95 renewal of, 96, 246
intertextuality, 10–11, 260, 264–5, 274–5 theory of, 7, 42–6, 324
inventio, 257, 259 typology of, 38
Ionian, 5, 81, 230, 298 literary history, 2–4, 14, 48, 92, 170, 181, 322
poetic culture, 64, 80–90 Ancient Greek, 5, 16, 36, 50, 53, 78, 88, 144,
Ionic 157, 170, 184, 297, 300
dialect, 70, 78–90 approaches to, 2–4, 38–41, 46, 61, 114, 129
Isthmian Games, 200, 305 the value of Pindar’s poetry for, 34, 247, 319
literary system, 15, 51, 58–64, 66, 68, 71–8, 96,
Jakobson, Roman, 10, 16, 18–19, 42, 69, 137, 167 114, 242, 285–6
Jameson, Fredric, 2, 9–10, 27–8, 42 literary tradition, 3, 11, 15, 23, 40, 46, 54–8, 83–4,
Jauss, Hans Robert, 4, 9, 38 89, 114, 148, 182, 239, 245
literature
kallinikos, 279, 282, 284, 291, 310 definitions of, 9–11, 30, 42–5, 47, 51, 55–6, 115,
Kharis/Kharites, 95, 110, 152, 218–20, 238, 310 182, 320, 323–5
signalling choral performance, 112 its rise in Archaic Greece, 11–14, 49, 181, 284
khoros, 222, 255, 267, 288, 292 as “signifying practice,” 13–15, 18, 32, 37, 49, 58,
replaced by kômos, 257 115, 323
kitharôidia, 76, 86 longue durée, 2, 4, 30–1, 40, 48, 58, 105, 119, 164,
Kittay, Jeffrey, 13, 15 182, 245, 259, 319, 323
klea andrôn, 64, 322 Lord, Albert, 14, 48
Koller, Hermann, 64, 70, 86, 88, 91, 97–8, 184, Lotman, Yuri, 46, 142, 249, 318, 321
288–91, 307 lyre, 87, 154, 179, 221, 254, 263
Subject Index 359
lyric, 15, 137, 144, 174–5, 178, 235, 320 in Pindar, 151, 154, 156, 197, 204, 208, 223–4,
and lack of titles, 20 303, 310
Archaic Greek, 36–7, 77, 81–4, 145, 250, 256, Pindar’s personalized, 101, 103, 147, 154, 164,
309 253, 273, 304
choral, 74–7, 83–5, 136, 240, 286, 311 Pindar’s stone of, 322
folk, 19, 25, 166–8 poet as prophatas of, 200–1, 243
its powers, 30, 179–84, 310 as transitional author-function, 115, 197
privatized, 5, 46 αὐθιγενής, 232
Western, 7, 42, 96, 118, 121, 212, 252, 257 myth, 11, 13–14, 24, 26, 124–5, 145, 212, 299
in Pindar, 100–5, 119–28, 206–11
Mandel’shtam, Osip, 7, 117–20, 166 in Plato, 133–5
marriage songs, 63, 65, 68, 74, 120 theories of, 136–46
Russian, 21 mythopoesis, 119, 123, 131, 175
Martin, Richard, 14, 22, 66–7, 120–1, 147, 186, Freidenberg on, 141–5
203, 252–4, 263, 265, 267 mythos, 128, 186, 238
marturia, 185, 213–42, 244
Marxism, 8, 27, 67, 114 Nagy, Gregory, 3, 6, 11, 14–15, 20, 22, 62–4, 66,
Megas, 3, 318, 320, 322 72–3, 79, 81, 85–8, 92, 98, 103–4, 109, 188,
melos, 280, 287, 289–93, 316 194, 251, 254, 256, 264, 268–9, 280–1, 287,
metaphor 297, 301, 307, 319
Bakhtin on, 309 narrative, 13, 20, 93, 95, 104, 115, 134–5, 137, 142,
genealogical, 130–6, 146–55 152, 173, 208, 247, 249, 256–7, 269
and history of figuration, 166–77 in Pindar, 250, 256–7, 267–75
in Indo-European poetics, 298–9 Nash, Laura, 282, 284
and myth, 136–46 Near Eastern literatures, 11–14, 56, 73, 77, 89–90,
in Pindar, 146–66, 213, 215 158, 172, 295
metapoetics, 21, 52, 91, 93, 95–6, 100–1, 103, 111, Nemean Games, 3
147, 149, 151, 154, 179, 188, 201, 212, 225, 240, New Criticism, 10, 183, 233
246, 259, 287, 289, 292–3, 298–300, 302, New Historicism, 2, 4, 30, 48, 320
310, 316
metonymy, 126–7, 134, 142, 150, 159, 176, Olympic Games, 102, 151, 220, 226, 235
241, 296 oral performance, 11, 14, 16, 21–2, 37, 53, 63, 88
metonymic expansion of the vehicle, 159–62 oral tradition, 9, 12, 14–15, 17, 46, 50, 53–4, 77,
Middle Ages, 24, 48, 56 86–8, 98, 100, 104, 125, 175, 264
French, 13–14 orality, 6, 88, 114
Medieval poetry, 117 originality, 3, 14, 17, 57, 167, 187
Milton, John, 118, 248 Orpheus, 53–4, 65, 91, 155
Modernism, 9–11, 39, 41, 48, 324
moralization paian, 62, 64–5, 74–5, 255, 278, 290
expurgation in Homer, 11 Panhellenism, 3, 15, 70, 107, 124, 279, 281
of myth, 104, 124–5, 229 paradeipnon, 70
Most, Glenn, 5, 39, 125, 138, 215, 228, 230, 232, paralittérature, 9, 55
250 parallelism, 17, 32, 104, 130, 144, 166–9, 171–2,
Müller, Max, 139 174, 177, 188, 275, 284
Musaeus, 53, 89 Parry, Milman, 14, 48, 88, 175–6
Muse(s), the Pasternak, Boris, 119, 174–5
in Alcman, 287 pastoral, 28, 37, 42, 45, 56, 184
in Bacchylides, 100, 244 Pavese, Carlo, 83, 260, 266
“clear-voiced,” 289 Peleus, 269–70, 274
as choral group, 96–7, 288 performance context, 18, 20, 62–4, 70, 72, 74,
epidêmia of, 212, 243 76–7, 90, 278
at the funeral of Achilles, 268 phatis, 100, 104, 155, 242, 275
as hypostasization of mousikê, 242 philia, 108, 216, 266
invocation of, 96, 99, 234, 273 philology, 10, 137
mercenary, 260–3, 296 as method, 2, 9, 39, 183, 324
360 Subject Index
philosophy, 4, 124, 129–30, 134, 143 the study of, 136–40
of history, 8, 28–30, 119 Renaissance, 10, 39, 48, 63
history as the “anteroom” of, 324 poetry, 43, 56
literature as midwife of, 140 re-performance, 19–20, 66, 72–3
and poetry, 12, 119–23, 135, 188 Revard, Stella, 5, 7, 39, 188, 248
Pindar rhapsodes, 15, 53, 64, 71, 76–7, 91–3, 132, 316
reception of, 4, 20, 38, 121, 164, 199 rhetoric
Pindaric scholarship, 6, 22, 106, 186 conventions, 4, 251, 266
biographism, 6, 123 of delegation, 200
Plato, 121–2, 130, 134, 136, 279, 313 devices, 6–7, 41, 66, 196, 258, 276, 297, 312
on divination, 194 energeia, 2
genres in, 251 and metaphor, 145
on mimesis, 92–3 professional, 154
poetic authority, 12, 34, 183, 190, 204, 208, 216, sociopolitical, 66, 107–11, 217, 222
227, 240, 274 of spontaneity, 104, 283, 286, 292–3
and coniuratio, 226 as stylistic excess, 117, 130, 197
and control over time, 241 topical mode of text production, 257
and mantic authority, 201–2, 213 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 119
and social authority, 181–8, 244–5 Romanticism, 5, 14, 46, 48, 59, 96, 138, 146, 179,
poetic language, 39, 76, 81, 90, 119, 121, 137, 168, 188, 204, 212
294–6 Russian Formalism, 4, 10, 40, 183
choral Kunstsprache, 84, 89, 115 Rutherford, Ian, x, 6, 62, 124, 162, 206, 229, 278
inflation of, 118
Pindar’s, 6, 157, 320 Sappho, 6, 14, 57, 61, 68–70, 72, 76, 78, 81–3, 87,
Proto-Indo-European, 294–8 90, 95, 115, 157, 184, 287
poiêtês, 13, 41, 91 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 16, 26
politics, 4, 48–9, 58, 178, 180, 234, 262 schema Pindaricum, 199
of form, 28, 114 Schlegel, Friedrich, 25
Poseidon, 192, 269–70, 274–5, 305 scholiast
professionalization, 16, 18 to Pindar, 20
of literary production, 99, 201 self-consciousness in verbal art, 3, 11, 13–14, 16, 19,
of poetic culture in Ancient Greece, 65, 88–9, 48, 101, 103, 144, 178, 259, 295, 299, 323
94–5, 244 Sentimentalism, 5, 44, 137
of solo performance, 97 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 170
prooimion, 153, 307–17 Shklovsky, Viktor, 10, 167, 256
prose, 49, 137, 248, 251, 266 Silk, Michael, 10, 22, 31, 39, 42, 45, 63, 66, 78,
associated with fable, 15, 297 92–3, 120, 137, 144, 146, 149, 153, 155–60,
associated with science, 144 163, 167, 169, 171, 176, 186, 199, 208, 250,
its emergence in the Middle Ages, 14 270, 279, 313
Pushkin, Alexander, 58 simile, 17, 120, 145–6, 175, 177, 197, 310
Songs of Western Slavs, 15 condensed simile in Pindar, 155–66, 172–4
Pythian Apollo, 208 Simmel, Georg, 18
Pythian Games, 211, 226, 231, 281 Simonides, 13, 20, 65, 75, 80, 83, 95, 98, 184, 262,
277–8, 286
Quintilian, 56 skolion, 19, 66–7, 81, 263, 280
Snell, Bruno, 11, 59–60, 76, 79–81, 128–9, 144,
reception studies, 7, 38–40 188, 197, 243
religion social authority, 11, 34, 53, 58, 156, 166, 179–87,
cult, 4, 75, 81, 90, 100, 104, 132, 153, 201–2, 283 226, 237, 242
cult centers, 190, 201–2, 204–6, 211, 303 social energy, 2, 8, 178
cult-embedded poetry, 74, 109, 292, 307 Solon, 52, 67–8, 72, 74
early Greek poets linked to, 53 Sophocles, 73, 229
hero cult, 230, 269–70 sphragis, 19, 99–100, 108, 115, 253
personification of concepts, 124–8 Steinthal, Heymann, 170
and Pindaric studies, 6, 123–5, 153 Stesichorus, 61, 80, 83, 85–6, 277
survivals in, 23–4 Stoddart, Robert, 196, 213–16, 223, 228, 232
Subject Index 361
stratification, 9, 22–6, 31, 89, 105, 115, 185 Tykha, 136, 147, 152–3, 310
structuralism, 10, 26, 38, 41, 142, 321 Tylor, Edward, 23–6, 28, 30
Stymphalos, 20, 222 Tynianov, Yuri, 2, 4, 12, 40, 181, 183,
symbol, 156, 170, 175, 177 248–9
and allegory, 117–19, 142, 168 Tyrtaeus, 67–8, 72, 82
culturally persistent, 168
in Pindar, 6, 121–3, 126, 190 Usener, Hermann, 85, 139–40, 203
Symbolism, 117–18, 123
synchronization, 31, 34, 198, 247, 258–9, 264, 266, Vedas, 19, 294–5, 298, 302
276, 320 velichaniia, 19, 21
choral, 267 Veselovsky, Alexander, 7, 9, 14, 16, 24–7, 29–30,
as formal reconciliation, 320 32, 36, 40, 46–7, 91, 98, 144, 167–70, 174,
poetic labor of, 23 176, 181, 183, 245
within the Great time, 114 victor, 3, 20–1, 108, 111–12, 209–10, 216, 221, 224,
syntaktikon, 309 226, 232, 235–6, 250, 252, 255–8, 260, 269,
Syracuse, 20, 75, 222, 224, 303 282–3, 285, 292, 305, 313, 316, 318
as speaker, 105, 196
Terpander, 53, 84, 88, 108 Virgil, 5, 56, 171, 179, 184, 188
Thamyris, 89, 91 Vivante, Paolo, 171, 174, 176
Thebes, 2–3, 76, 100, 110, 112, 192, 217, 251, 308 von Hallberg, Robert, 30, 180
Themis, 135, 195, 269, 274–5
Themistius, 6, 278 West, Martin, 8, 14, 53, 69, 74, 77, 79–83, 85–7,
Theocritus, 56, 84, 184 90, 133, 151, 158, 172, 253, 260, 278, 289, 294,
Theognis, 14, 19, 61, 66, 69–70, 72, 115, 155 312
thespiaoidos, 91, 96–7 Whitman, Walt, 22
Thespis, 74 Whorf, Benjamin, 129, 139
Thetis, 192, 269–70, 272, 274–5 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von, 5–7, 84,
thrênos, 70, 268, 284 122–3, 138, 194, 196, 226, 228–9, 231–2, 238,
Thucydides, 24, 251, 324 279, 303
time writing, 8–9, 11, 15–16, 42, 53, 60, 89
Greek conception of, 220 Wundt, Wilhelm, 170
in Pindar, 208, 234, 252, 261–2, 266, 304
and space, 167, 309 xenia, 108–9, 173, 216, 266
Toporov, V. N., 11, 64, 294, 299–302
tradition, 3, 29, 39, 41, 145, 169 Yeats, William, 118–19, 169
truth
and alêtheia, 241 Zeus, 136, 148, 150, 154–5, 163, 189–90, 192, 200,
conceptions of in Archaic Greece, 242 222, 269, 274–5, 288, 303–4, 310
epic vs. epinician, 234 Eleutherios, 153
and literature, 2, 242, 245 Lykaios, 221
modes of veridiction, 13, 181, 185, 232 Zhukovsky, Vasily, 44
Index Locorum
Aeschylus fr. 77, 168

Agamemnon 31, 308 fr. 356b2, 288, 290
Agamemnon 104–60, 79 fr. 384, 260–2, 265
Agamemnon 174–5, 282 Ancient Greek popular poetry
Agamemnon 829, 308 851b2 PMG, 291
Agamemnon 1215–16, 308 856 PMG, 94
Choephoroi 188, 198 891 PMG, 19
Choephoroi 505–7, 146, 161 Archilochus
Eumenides 20, 308 fr. 13, 273
Eumenides 142, 308 fr. 16, 152
Eumenides 180, 209 fr. 120.1, 291
Eumenides 318, 216 fr. 248, 215
Eumenides 761, 221 fr. 324, 278
Persians 614–15, 150 fr. 394, 316
Prometheus Bound 488–92, 190 Aristophanes
Seven against Thebes 5–7, 308 Clouds 275–90, 79
Suppliants 726, 221 Knights 1056, schol., 227
Alcaeus Thesmophoriazusae 39–42, 204–5, 243
fr. 39, 291 Wasps 571, 158
fr. 126, 291 Aristotle
fr. 249, 19 Poetics 1448a, 93
fr. 307c, 202–3, 205 Poetics 1457b, 169
fr. 308.2b, 288, 290 Poetics 1459a10, 176
fr. 347, 203 Poetics 1459b34, 176
fr. 360, 264–5 Rhetoric 1376a, 214
Alcman fr. 57 R., 149
fr. 1.2, 299
fr. 1.39–49, 160 Bacchylides
fr. 1.45–9, 168 Dith. 17.67–71, 192
fr. 1.98–9, 216 Ep. 1, 112
fr. 3, subfr. 1þ3.5, 287 Ep. 1.151, 112
fr. 14a1, 97 Ep. 1.160–74, 113
fr. 27.1.3, 287 Ep. 2, 112
fr. 28.1.1, 97 Ep. 2.13, 270, 283
fr. 30.1, 97 Ep. 3, 108
fr. 39, 253 Ep. 3.11–12, 109
fr. 57, 136 Ep. 3.22ff, 270
fr. 64, 136 Ep. 3.70, 109
fr. S 3.5, 287, 289 Ep. 3.71, 108
Anacreon Ep. 3.85–7, 110
fr. 72, 168 Ep. 3.85ff., 297
362
Index Locorum 363
Ep. 3.96, 108 Bacchae 684, 198
Ep. 4, 108 Bacchae 695, 198
Ep. 4.3, 270 Electra 678, 239
Ep. 4.7–8, 108 Hecuba 181, 308
Ep. 5, 108 Hecuba 1195, 308
Ep. 5.3–5, 108 Heracles 180, 279
Ep. 5.9–16, 108, 111 Heracles 538, 308
Ep. 5.11, 108 Heracles 753, 308
Ep. 5.14–15, 108 Heracles 1179, 308
Ep. 5.14–16, 240 Hippolytus 568, 308
Ep. 5.15–30, 108 Hippolytus 1255, 199
Ep. 5.37–49, 237 Ion 95, 203
Ep. 5.43–9, 239 Ion 140, 125
Ep. 5.195–200, 108 Ion 229, 209
Ep. 6, 112 Ion 752, 308
Ep. 6.14, 270 Ion 753, 308
Ep. 7.1–2, 151 Iphigeneia in Tauris 1162, 308
Ep. 8.17–25, 218, 237 Medea 663–4, 308, 313
Ep. 9, 110 Phoenissai 1336, 308
Ep. 9.1–2, 112 Troiades 712, 308
Ep. 9.3, 200 Troiades 895, 308
Ep. 9.30–9, 239 fr. 325 Kannicht, 264
Ep. 10.28, 200 fr. 438 Nauck, 132
Ep. 11.1–9, 151 fr. 540.5 Kannicht, 198
Ep. 12, 110 fr. 755 PMG, 300
Ep. 12.5, 151
Ep. 13, 108 Heraclitus
Ep. 13.59, 151 B40 DK, 124
Ep. 13.190, 113 B42 DK, 124
Ep. 13.221–30, 108 fr. 53, 132
Ep. 13.224–5, 108 Herodotus
1.23, 20
Callimachus 1.51, 206
Aetia 3.1.26, 205 1.181–2, 206
Hymn to Apollo 4, 8, 9, 10, 11–12, 205 4.79, 194
Hymn to Artemis 226, 205 8.77, 149
fr. 222, 262 Hesiod
Cicero Shield of Heracles 20, 214
Topica 25–78, 257 Shield of Heracles 206, 97
De oratore 2.86, 277 Theogony, 91, 115, 128, 143–4
Theogony 11, 288
Demosthenes Theogony 33, 288
Or. 40.11, 217 Theogony 37, 288
Or. 46.6, 214 Theogony 51, 288
Diogenes Laertius Theogony 70, 288
1.31, 264 Theogony 98–103, 273
Dionysius of Halicarnassus Theogony 101, 288
De compositione verborum 22, 198 Theogony 114–15, 96
Theogony 123–5, 132
Euripides Theogony 211–25, 131–3
Alcestis 172, 198 Theogony 360, 152
Andromache 103–16, 70 Theogony 901–2, 135
Andromache 399, 11 Theogony 965–7, 96
Bacchae 142, 203 Works and Days, 33, 14, 115
Bacchae 298–9, 195 Works and Days 2, 288
364 Index Locorum
Hesiod (cont.) Iliad 21.231, 207
Works and Days 117, 203 Iliad 21.362–5, 145
Works and Days 371, 214 Iliad 21.431, 156
Works and Days 582–8, 203 Iliad 22.188, 271
Works and Days 654–7, 281 Iliad 22.255, 214
Works and Days 657, 288–9 Iliad 22.391, 74
fr. 357, 289 Iliad 22.406, 198
fr. 357.2, 288 Iliad 23.257–897, 281
Himerius Iliad 23.783, 207
Or. 46.6, 203 Iliad 24.221, 190
Or. 48.11 ¼ Alcaeus fr. 307c, 202–3 Iliad 24.718–22, 270
Hipponax Odyssey, 87, 89, 115
118.12, 291 Odyssey 1.155, 317
fr. 79.17, 215 Odyssey 1.273, 214
Homer Odyssey 2.80, 238
Iliad, 30, 64, 86, 89, 96, 115, 171, 192, 269, 272 Odyssey 2.146–76, 190
Iliad 1.201, 163 Odyssey 2.430–4, 309
Iliad 1.245, 238 Odyssey 5.184–5, 238
Iliad 1.338, 214 Odyssey 6.231, 198
Iliad 1.357–61, 192 Odyssey 8, 262
Iliad 1.473, 74 Odyssey 8.161, 287, 290
Iliad 2.7, 163 Odyssey 11.238, 203
Iliad 2.302, 214 Odyssey 11.543–64, 227
Iliad 2.484, 96 Odyssey 13.231, 158
Iliad 2.484–93, 234 Odyssey 13.301, 207
Iliad 2.491, 96 Odyssey 14.393, 214
Iliad 3.280, 214 Odyssey 16.423, 214
Iliad 3.381, 158 Odyssey 22.240, 171
Iliad 4.284, 163 Odyssey 22.349, 158
Iliad 5.78, 158 Odyssey 23.195, 198
Iliad 8.306–8, 174 Odyssey 24.45ff, 270
Iliad 9.413, 299 Odyssey 24.62, 97
Iliad 9.502–12, 120 Homeric Hymns
Iliad 9.565–6, 238 to Aphrodite (V), 204
Iliad 9.568–9, 240 to Aphrodite (V) 293, 290
Iliad 9.569–72, 239 to Apollo (III), 204
Iliad 10.13, 74 to Apollo (III) 19, 289
Iliad 10.279, 207 to Apollo (III) 146–64, 211
Iliad 14.231, 133 to Apollo (III) 223–8, 261
Iliad 14.272–3, 238 to Apollo (III) 333, 238
Iliad 14.274, 214 to Apollo (III), apud Thuc. 3.104.4–5, 261
Iliad 14.290–1, 171 to Artemis (IX) 9, 290
Iliad 14.508, 96 to Demeter (II), 204
Iliad 15.36, 238 to Demeter (II) 420, 152
Iliad 15.237, 171 to Dionysus (VII), 204
Iliad 16.112, 96 to Dioscuri (XVII) 1, 97
Iliad 16.672, 133 to Hephaestus (XX) 1, 97
Iliad 18.493–5, 74 to Hermes (IV) 97, 156
Iliad 18.518, 158 to Hermes (IV) 372, 214
Iliad 18.525–6, 74 to Hermes (IV) 482–6, 92
Iliad 20.444, 158 to Hermes (XVIII) 11, 290
Index Locorum 365
to Mother of the Gods (XIV) 2, 97 I. 4.3, 292
to Pan (XIX) 16, 291 I. 4.9–11, 234
Horace I. 4.18–19, 157
Odes, 188 I. 4.19, 165
Odes 1.16.5–6, 205 I. 4.19–21, 305
Odes 3.1, 243 I. 4.21, 305
Odes 3.30, 58, 242 I. 4.40, 163
Odes 4.2, 36, 199 I. 4.41–2, 157
Odes 4.9, 188 I. 4.42, 165
Hyperides I. 4.43, 292
Epitaph. 1, 220 I. 5, 110–11, 152, 293, 310
I. 5.1–10, 126
Ibycus I. 5.20–1, 111
fr. 282, 278, 288, 290, 299 I. 5.21–2, 111–12
fr. S 151.23, 92 I. 5.24, 319
Isocrates I. 5.28–9, 108
Evagoras 194c, 158 I. 5.45, 236
I. 5.46–51, 220
Lucretius I. 5.48, 237
2.1158, 203 I. 5.51, 103, 124
I. 5.59–61, 112
Menander Rhetor I. 5.63, 292
1.2, 313 I. 6, 110, 310
331.15–20, 287 I. 6.1, 165
I. 6.1–3, 157, 160
Ovid I. 6.1–7, 172
Metam. 90, 203 I. 6.21, 111
I. 6.47–8, 157–8, 165
Pausanias I. 6.49–51, 157, 163
7.26.8, 152 I. 6.51, 165, 193
Pausanias Atticus I. 6.57, 111
χ 16, 264 I. 6.57–8, 112
Philostratus I. 6.62, 292, 306
Imagines 2.12, 188 I. 6.62–4, 112
Pindar I. 6.70, 230
I. 1, 110–12, 254–7, 279, 293, 310 I. 6.74, 111
I. 1.1, 147 I. 6.74–5, 111
I. 1.1–10, 111 I. 7, 112–13, 310
I. 1.6–10, 254 I. 7.15, 231
I. 1.16, 279 I. 7.16–17, 100
I. 1.51, 230 I. 7.23, 108
I. 2, 95, 107, 259–67, 277–9, 296, 310–11 I. 7.37, 113
I. 2.6, 262, 296 I. 7.37–51, 21, 112
I. 2.7, 100 I. 7.39–44, 100
I. 2.12, 297 I. 7.40–8, 113
I. 2.17, 270 I. 7.44–7, 229
I. 2.18, 222 I. 8, 110, 275, 310
I. 2.26, 148 I. 8.1, 101, 113
I. 2.47, 108 I. 8.1–11, 272
I. 2.48, 108 I. 8.2, 281
I. 3, 112, 310–11, 313 I. 8.5, 111, 148
I. 3.4–5, 153 I. 8.16, 111
I. 3.8, 112 I. 8.31ff, 270
I. 4, 112, 310–11 I. 8.56a–60, 268, 270
I. 4.1, 311 I. 8.59, 268
366 Index Locorum
Pindar (cont.) N. 5.1–3, 111
I. 8.61–4, 269 N. 5.7, 148
I. 8.67, 152 N. 5.14–18, 103, 124
I. 9, 107, 197, 280, 310 N. 5.20–1, 111
I. 9.2, 313 N. 5.21, 113
I. 9.7–8, 111–12 N. 5.48, 152
N. 1, 22, 112, 303, 306, 310 N. 5.48–9, 112
N. 1.2–6, 302, 306 N. 5.54, 112
N. 1.4, 147, 150 N. 6, 112–13, 153, 280, 284, 310, 316
N. 1.7, 280 N. 6.1–4, 147
N. 1.18, 304 N. 6.17–22, 112
N. 1.19, 110 N. 6.24, 152
N. 1.19–22, 108, 113 N. 6.24–6, 239
N. 1.60, 193, 195–6, 200 N. 6.26, 165
N. 2, 112–13, 293, 310, 315–16 N. 6.26–8, 157
N. 2.1, 272 N. 6.26–30, 159
N. 2.1–3, 316 N. 6.32–4, 306
N. 2.5, 292 N. 6.33, 292
N. 2.8, 113 N. 6.37–8, 112
N. 2.9–10, 113 N. 6.57, 112
N. 2.17–24, 113 N. 6.62, 283
N. 2.24, 101, 113 N. 6.65–6, 112
N. 3, 110, 154–5, 304, 310, 319 N. 7, 112–13, 124–5, 152, 227–32, 293, 310
N. 3.1, 147 N. 7.1–4, 147
N. 3.1–5, 111 N. 7.4, 102
N. 3.4, 299 N. 7.9, 111
N. 3.5, 200 N. 7.20–30, 124
N. 3.10, 147 N. 7.21, 103, 124
N. 3.10–13, 303 N. 7.24–7, 64
N. 3.11–12, 108, 111 N. 7.32–40, 227
N. 3.11–13, 303 N. 7.39–40, 230
N. 3.23, 221 N. 7.40–7, 125
N. 3.65, 304 N. 7.44–7, 228
N. 3.65–6, 304 N. 7.48–52, 231
N. 3.66, 305 N. 7.49, 212, 218
N. 3.76–80, 111 N. 7.52, 149
N. 3.80–1, 111 N. 7.61, 108
N. 3.80–2, 108 N. 7.61–3, 157
N. 3.83, 100 N. 7.62, 165
N. 4, 110, 113, 153, 310, 313–15 N. 7.64–7, 230
N. 4.1–5, 273 N. 7.65–7, 113
N. 4.2–3, 319 N. 7.70–2, 157
N. 4.3, 147, 155 N. 7.71, 165
N. 4.7, 112, 152 N. 7.85, 113
N. 4.16, 291, 305 N. 7.93, 165
N. 4.30–3, 110 N. 7.93–4, 157
N. 4.41, 21, 112 N. 7.102–3, 230
N. 4.51–3, 230 N. 7.102–4, 124
N. 4.74, 112 N. 7.104–5, 157, 159, 161, 164, 312
N. 4.77, 282–3 N. 8, 1–4, 112–13, 152–3, 310, 318–19
N. 4.80, 112 N. 8.13–15, 113
N. 4.83–4, 292 N. 8.19, 113
N. 4.83–5, 110 N. 8.35–9, 113
N. 4.91–6, 112 N. 8.40–3, 157, 165
N. 5, 110–11, 293, 310, 316 N. 8.45–50, 273
Index Locorum 367
N. 8.48–51, 1, 319 O. 2.85–8, 297
N. 8.50, 280 O. 2.86, 108, 165
N. 9, 110, 310 O. 2.86–8, 108, 157
N. 9.16, 165, 233 O. 2.89–90, 225
N. 9.16–17, 157–8 O. 2.91–5, 225
N. 9.19, 192 O. 2.92, 222, 237
N. 9.48, 108 O. 2.93–4, 225
N. 9.50, 200 O. 2.95, 149
N. 9.52, 147 O. 2.108, 239
N. 9.54–5, 110 O. 3, 107, 109–10, 279, 310
N. 10, 112, 310 O. 3.1–4, 252, 310
N. 10.25, 152 O. 3.3–6, 111
N. 10.26, 112 O. 3.4, 207
N. 10.39–40, 21, 112 O. 3.5, 254
N. 10.76, 163 O. 3.8–9, 253
N. 11, 107, 280, 293, 310 O. 3.13–45, 109
N. 11.1, 147 O. 3.36, 223
N. 11.11, 313 O. 4, 112–13, 237, 293, 310
N. 11.15–16, 113 O. 4.1, 148
N. 11.24, 218, 222, 226, 237 O. 4.1–5, 235
O. 1, 102–5, 107, 109, 237, 250, 254, 281, 293, O. 4.3, 218, 222
303–4, 306, 310, 313 O. 4.4, 108
O. 1.1, 110 O. 4.14–18, 236
O. 1.1–2, 157, 162–3 O. 5, 112, 114, 310
O. 1.2, 165 O. 5.1, 236
O. 1.7–10, 302, 306 O. 6, 20, 107, 173, 194, 310, 315
O. 1.9, 108 O. 6.1, 316
O. 1.10, 108, 305 O. 6.1–3, 157
O. 1.15, 108 O. 6.1–4, 172, 314
O. 1.16–18, 108 O. 6.2, 165
O. 1.17, 254 O. 6.5, 191
O. 1.28–52, 124 O. 6.6–7, 305
O. 1.30–4, 219 O. 6.17, 195
O. 1.41, 148 O. 6.17–21, 223
O. 1.55–6, 149 O. 6.20, 222, 237
O. 1.86–7, 192 O. 6.21, 224
O. 1.103, 108 O. 6.22, 112
O. 1.103–5, 225 O. 6.35, 127
O. 1.110, 156 O. 6.49–51, 196
O. 1.110–12, 224 O. 6.52, 195
O. 1.111–12, 156 O. 6.61–3, 192
O. 1.113–14, 109 O. 6.62–3, 196
O. 1.115, 108 O. 6.66–7, 191
O. 2, 107, 310 O. 6.84–7, 108
O. 2.1–2, 304 O. 6.85–90, 224
O. 2.7, 109 O. 6.88, 108
O. 2.17, 147, 150 O. 6.105, 108
O. 2.22, 236 O. 7, 20, 110, 293, 310
O. 2.32, 136, 147, 150 O. 7.1, 157, 165
O. 2.47, 280 O. 7.1–4, 315
O. 2.62, 136 O. 7.1–6, 172
O. 2.72–3, 110 O. 7.8, 111
O. 2.76, 150 O. 7.11, 112
O. 2.83, 156 O. 7.14, 289
O. 2.85, 163, 225 O. 7.70, 147, 150
368 Index Locorum
Pindar (cont.) O. 13.1–4, 111
O. 7.77–80, 157–8 O. 13.3, 230
O. 7.79, 165 O. 13.6–8, 147
O. 7.80–7, 112 O. 13.6–10, 135–6
O. 7.90, 230 O. 13.9–10, 148
O. 8, 112, 310 O. 13.10, 146
O. 8.1, 131 O. 13.29, 280
O. 8.2, 191 O. 13.30–46, 112
O. 8.37, 193 O. 13.44, 225
O. 8.46, 194 O. 13.49, 111
O. 8.51, 148 O. 13.49–52, 157
O. 8.54–66, 112 O. 13.52, 157, 165
O. 8.55, 304 O. 13.67, 163
O. 8.74ff, 283 O. 13.73, 193
O. 8.75, 284 O. 13.83, 218
O. 8.77, 284 O. 13.91, 103, 124, 229
O. 8.81, 147 O. 13.93–7, 156, 224
O. 9, 110, 113, 310, 316 O. 13.93–100, 225
O. 9.1, 291 O. 13.98–113, 112
O. 9.1ff, 291 O. 13.99, 222
O. 9.1–4, 316 O. 13.100, 232
O. 9.2, 163 O. 13.107–8, 221
O. 9.5, 207 O. 13.108, 218
O. 9.8, 156 O. 13.113, 225
O. 9.14–16, 147–8 O. 14, 112–13, 293, 310
O. 9.25, 111 O. 14.13–16, 147
O. 9.35–8, 124 O. 14.16, 152
O. 9.80–4, 224 O. 14.20–4, 283
O. 9.82, 111 P. 1, 107, 153, 293, 310, 317
O. 9.82–99, 112 P. 1.1–4, 316
O. 9.98–9, 221 P. 1.25, 127
O. 10, 110, 293, 310, 312 P. 1.42–5, 157
O. 10.1–3, 312 P. 1.43, 165
O. 10.1–8, 111 P. 1.44, 173
O. 10.3–6, 147 P. 1.49, 225
O. 10.14, 100, 111 P. 1.60, 292
O. 10.16–19, 157, 164 P. 1.82, 149
O. 10.53–5, 220 P. 1.85–6, 109
O. 10.60–75, 112 P. 1.87–8, 219
O. 10.77, 280 P. 1.88, 237
O. 10.85–7, 157 P. 1.90–2, 157–8
O. 10.86, 165 P. 1.91, 165
O. 10.97, 111 P. 2, 107, 250, 254, 280, 293, 310, 313, 316
O. 11, 110, 113, 233–5, 310, 313 P. 2.3–4, 108
O. 11.2, 147 P. 2.7–8, 153
O. 11.15, 111 P. 2.50, 108
O. 11.18, 111 P. 2.56, 152
O. 11.85, 111 P. 2.58–61, 239
O. 12, 112, 128, 152–4, 293, 310 P. 2.60, 225
O. 12.1, schol., 153 P. 2.68, 111
O. 12.2, 147, 152 P. 2.69, 279
O. 12.13, 165 P. 2.79, 164
O. 12.13–16, 157, 163 P. 2.79–80, 146, 157, 159, 161
O. 12.14, 146 P. 2.80, 165
O. 13, 110, 122, 237, 293, 310, 313 P. 2.87–96, 109
Index Locorum 369
P. 2.96, 108 P. 7.1–3, 312
P. 3, 107, 250, 310 P. 7.2, 313
P. 3.40, 127 P. 7.9–11, 113
P. 3.68–9, 108 P. 7.13–17, 113
P. 3.71, 230 P. 8, 110, 113, 310
P. 3.73, 319 P. 8.1–4, 147
P. 3.77–9, 109 P. 8.21, 111, 149
P. 3.85–6, 109 P. 8.21–8, 111
P. 3.111, 236 P. 8.29–31, 112
P. 3.113, 299 P. 8.32, 149
P. 4, 107, 206–8, 310 P. 8.38, 269
P. 4.1, 108 P. 8.39, 193
P. 4.1–8, 207 P. 8.44–55, 195
P. 4.4, 148 P. 8.45, 194
P. 4.10, 195 P. 8.50, 192
P. 4.64, 165 P. 8.53, 152
P. 4.64–5, 157, 159 P. 8.55–60, 196
P. 4.65, 208 P. 8.56–60, 21, 112, 191
P. 4.78, 230 P. 8.57, 304
P. 4.111–15, 157–8 P. 8.58–60, 112
P. 4.112, 165 P. 8.98, 111, 147
P. 4.163, 163 P. 9, 112, 293, 310, 316
P. 4.176, 65, 147, 155 P. 9.3, 112
P. 4.190, 193 P. 9.38, 195
P. 4.190–1, 192 P. 9.48, 271
P. 4.233, 108 P. 9.89–92, 21, 112
P. 4.277, 64, 253 P. 9.90–103, 112
P. 4.294, 108 P. 9.108, 230
P. 4.295, 108 P. 10, 107, 208–12, 263, 310
P. 4.299, 108 P. 10.1–2, 313
P. 5, 107, 109, 112, 293, 310–11 P. 10.5, 285
P. 5.1, 313 P. 10.6, 280
P. 5.10–11, 108 P. 10.8–9, 209
P. 5.12, 108 P. 10.10–11, 209
P. 5.15–19, 109 P. 10.11, 153
P. 5.26–54, 112 P. 10.22, 108
P. 5.27–9, 147, 151 P. 10.29–36, 210
P. 5.57, 230 P. 10.37–40, 211
P. 5.68–9, 209 P. 10.41–2, 211
P. 5.94–103, 283 P. 10.51–2, 173, 177
P. 5.100, 283 P. 10.53, 280
P. 5.107, 108 P. 10.53–4, 157
P. 5.111–12, 108 P. 10.54, 165, 291
P. 5.113, 157, 165 P. 10.55–7, 108
P. 5.114, 108 P. 10.56, 154
P. 5.117–24, 109 P. 10.59, 291
P. 6, 107, 113, 293, 306, 310, 312 P. 10.64, 108
P. 6.1, 312 P. 10.64–6, 108
P. 6.5–8, 306 P. 10.66, 108
P. 6.11–14, 242 P. 10.67–8, 110
P. 6.19, 265 P. 10.71–2, 109
P. 6.49, 108 P. 11, 100, 102, 112–13, 230, 285, 310
P. 6.54, 291 P. 11.6, 191
P. 7, 112–13, 310, 312, 315 P. 11.10, 100
P. 7.1, 313 P. 11.16, 108
370 Index Locorum
Pindar (cont.) fr. 94b, 222
P. 11.22–5, 100 fr. 94b.5–6, 157–8, 165
P. 11.28, 105 fr. 94b.38, 223
P. 11.33, 191 fr. 94b.38–49, 216–18, 236
P. 11.35, 100 fr. 94b.39, 218
P. 11.36, 127 fr. 104b, 157, 203
P. 11.37–40, 157–8 fr. 105.1ff, 297
P. 11.38, 102, 113 fr. 122.4, 146
P. 11.38–40, 159 fr. 123, 157, 165, 263
P. 11.40, 165 fr. 123.11, 291
P. 11.41–4, 262 fr. 124ab, 263
P. 11.50–7, 100 fr. 128b, 285
P. 11.53, 113 fr. 128c, 65
P. 11.61, 292 fr. 150, 156, 197, 200
P. 12, 110, 112–13, 310 fr. 151, 200
P. 12.23–7, 218, 221 fr. 169, 132
P. 12.27, 237 fr. 180.2, 124
Pai. 6, 124 fr. 191, 254
Pai. 6.1, 316 fr. 192, 202, 231
Pai. 6.1–6, 200 fr. 209, 122
Pai. 6.2, 202 fr. 215.5–7, 157, 160
Pai. 6.5–8, 273 fr. 215.7, 165
Pai. 6.6, 156 fr. 222.1, 147, 150
Pai. 6.12, 147, 165 fr. 231, 195
Pai. 6.12–15, 157, 162 fr. 241, 157, 164
Pai. 6.109–20, 125 Plato
Pai. 6.112–16, 229 Ion, 188
Pai. 6.181–3, 111 Ion 534a, 203
Pai. 7a.7, 100 Laws 698b–700e, 251
Pai. 7b.15, 147 Laws 764d–e, 62
Pai. 8.1, 202 Menex. 246b–247c, 267
Pai. 8.70, 148 Phaedo 60d, 307
Pai. 9.42, 200 Phaedrus 244, 194
Pai. 9.46, 223 Republic 392c–395, 93
Pai. 12.14, 158, 161, 165 Republic 607a, 287
Pai. 14.32, 97 Symposium, 73
fr. 4, 147 Symposium 203b–c, 133–5
fr. 30, 148 Plutarch
fr. 30.2, 148 [De mus.] 1132d, 88
fr. 33c.3, 147, 150 Aetia Romana et Graeca 292e–f, 205
fr. 38, 152 Alcibiades 2.6, 263
fr. 39, 152 Alexander 73.2, 190
fr. 40, 152 Solon 25.6, 52
fr. 41, 152 Procopius of Gaza
fr. 67, 254 Ep. 16.3, 206
fr. 70b.12–13, 199 Ep. 65.9, 206
fr. 75, 197–200
fr. 75.8, 309 Quintilian
fr. 75.12, 157, 165 9.1.14, 170
fr. 75.13, 156, 243 10.1.61, 36
fr. 75.14, 202 11.2.11–16, 277
fr. 78.1, 147, 150
fr. 78.2–3, 199 Sappho
fr. 81.2–3, 124 fr. 1, 19
fr. 94a.5–6, 156, 197, 202 fr. 44, 86–7
Index Locorum 371
fr. 44.4, 299 Theognis
fr. 44.34, 288 153–4, 148
fr. 105a, 174 355–60, 273
fr. 128, 95 993, 289
Simonides 1041–2, 70
fr. 26, 222 1226, 215
fr. 510, 277 Thucydides
fr. 521, 284 1.6.2, 24
fr. 529, 285 2.43–5, 267
Solon 3.104.4–5, 307
fr. 1.52–3, 92 6.32.1–2, 309
fr. 6.3–4, 148
fr. 36.3, 220 Virgil
Sophocles Aeneid 8.293, 279
Ajax 1031, 11 Eclogues 4.45, 203
Antigone 419, 198
Antigone 998–1004, 190 Xenophanes
Electra 449, 198 B11 DK, 124
Philoctetes 657, 158 B12 DK, 124
fr. 737 P., 79 fr. 1.22 W, 124
Stesichorus Xenophon
fr. 35.2, 287 Anabasis 6.5.11, 223
fr. 63.1, 97
fr. 101.1, 97 Zenobius
fr. 212, 291 6.43, 264
fr. 212.1, 274

MASLOV Boris Maslov - Pindar and The Emergence of Literature-Cambridge University Press (2015)

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MASLOV Boris Maslov - Pindar and The Emergence of Literature-Cambridge University Press (2015)

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PINDAR AND THE EMERGENCE OF LITERATURE

Pindar and the Emergence of Literature places Pindar in the context of

boris maslov is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

Acknowledgments page viii

Introduction: archaeologies of literature 1

This book owes its inception to my teachers at the University of California

I follow the practice of using single quotation marks for meanings of

1 “How can Pindar be anything to us?”

2 From folklore to literature

Authors, forms, and the creation

1 Comparative literary history and the forms of lyric

2 Toward a historical ontology of authorship

3 Performance context, genre, and authority in Archaic

4 Reconstructing the early history of Archaic Greek poetry:

5 Metapoetics and the evolution of authorship in Archaic Greece

6 Pindar’s three author-functions

Aeschylus (choral passages)

Sing. 233 109 38 16 20 6 14

7 Qui parle? Stratifying the corpus of epinikia

Image, metaphor, concept: the semantics

1 Pindar and the comparative history of poetic image

2 The evolution of the genealogical metaphor:

3 Herder, Cassirer, and Freidenberg on myth and metaphor

5 Pindar’s tenors and vehicles

Tenor The Laudandus, his excellence

Vegetation N. 8.40–3*, P. 4.64**, 3

6 The birth of poetic metaphor

157 158 159

vehicle. In contrast, the toasting image in O. 7 projects a vision of epinician commission as

Speech acts, social personas, and poetic veridiction

1 Mimesis and veridiction: from social to poetic authority

2 “A prophet of the Muses”? Delimiting Pindar’s mantic poetics

Mantis Addressee Context Teras Explication

N. 1.60 Teiresias Amphitrion the infant Heracles future exploits of Heracles

3 Divine epidêmia as a model for poetic presence

4 Three meanings of witnessing in Ancient Greece

5 The mystique of the event: an aspect of

160 161 162

Genre hybridity and the literary artifact

1 Pindar’s synthetic poetics

2 Poetic synchronization: genre interplay in Isthmian 2

1 . . . γεφύρωσέ τ’ Ἀτρεΐδαι- τὸ καὶ νῦν φέρει λόγον, ἔσ-

Both narratives employ the fabular pote ‘once upon a time’,

3 Epinikion: a genre in the making

4 Chorality in Archaic Greek poetics

5 Indo-European Pindar? The archaeology of hymnos

6 How to begin a poem: prooimion as a diegetic device in Pindar

183 184 185

Prayers/ gods/ O. 3 (Tyndaridai and Helen)a; O. 4, I. 6 (Zeus); O. 12

Inasmuch as prooimion is an initiatory speech act that validates the

Indeed, what is it, in essence, that grants eternity to poetry? That it is

Aeschylus fr. 77, 168

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