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Myth, Locality, and Identity
in Pindar’s Sicilian Odes
GREEKS OVERSEAS
Series Editors
Carla Antonaccio and Nino Luraghi
This series presents a forum for new interpretations of Greek settlement in the
ancient Mediterranean in its cultural and political aspects. Focusing on the period
from the Iron Age until the advent of Alexander, it seeks to undermine the divide
between colonial and metropolitan Greeks. It welcomes new scholarly work from
archaeological, historical, and literary perspectives, and invites interventions on the
history of scholarship about the Greeks in the Mediterranean.
A Small Greek World

Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean
Irad Malkin
Italy’s Lost Greece
Magna Graecia and the Making of
Modern Archaeology
Giovanna Ceserani
The Invention of Greek Ethnography
From Homer to Herodotus
Joseph E. Skinner
Pindar and the Construction of Syracusan
Monarchy in the Fifth
Century B.C.
Kathryn A. Morgan
The Poetics of Victory in the Greek West
Epinician, Oral Tradition, and the
Deinomenid Empire
Nigel Nicholson
Archaic and Classical Greek Sicily:
A Social and Economic History
Franco De Angelis
Myth, Locality, and Identity in Pindar’s
Sicilian Odes
Virginia M. Lewis
Myth, Locality,
and Identity
in Pindar’s
Sicilian Odes
zz
VIRGINIA M. LEWIS
1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

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© Oxford University Press 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

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You must not circulate this work in any other form

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CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 978–0–19–091031–0
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

For Alexander Lewis Jr.
Contents
List of Figures xi
Acknowledgments xiii
List of Editionsand Abbreviations xvii
Introduction
Epinician Poetry and Local Contexts 5
Pindar's Sicilian Odes 5
Other Local Contextsfor Pindaric Epinician Poetry9
Myth and Locality in Pindar's Odes 16
Space, Place,and Landscape17
Classicsand the Study of Myth and Place20
Previous Studies of Place in Epinician Poetry 21
Identity in Pindar's Sicilian Odes 25
Outline of Chapters 27
1. Arriving in Syracuse: Arethusa and Syracusan Civic Identity 30
Syracuse Under the Deinomenids 33
Pindar's Epinician Odes for Syracusan Victors 36
Arethusa as a Syracusan Civic Symbol: Numismatic Evidence 38
Arethusa and Alpheos in the Syracusan Odes 41
The Mythical Connection Between Syracuse and the Peloponnese 49
Artemis Alpheioa in Syracuse and in the Peloponnese 63
Performance Contexts and Conclusions 69
2. Demeter and Persephone: Ancestral Cult and Sicilian Identity 73
Material Evidence for the Cults of Demeter and Persephone in
Syracuse 74
viii Contents
Demeter and Persephone in the Sicilian Mythic Tradition 79

Diodorus'Narrative of Persephone'sAbduction 84
The Deinomenid Priesthood of Demeter and Persephone 94
Herodotus94
Diodorus105
Pindar and Bacchylides107
Myth and Landscape in Pindar's Nemean 1116
A Syracusan Representationof Sicily in Nemean 1122
ReadingArethusa and PersephoneTogether129

Heraklesand Spatial Ideology132
Conclusions 135
3. Locating Aitnaian Identity in Pindar's Pythian 1 137
The Foundation of Aitna and the Cult of Zeus Aitnaios 142

The Myth of Zeus and Typho 150
EarlierVersionsof Zeus' Suppressionand Imprisonment ofTypho 152
Typho'sAitnaian Prison in Pythian 1 158
A Myth for the Citi2ens of Aitna 171
Conclusions 177
4. Fluid Identities: The River Akragas and the Shaping of
Akragantine Identity in Olympian 2 179
Akragas Under Theron's Rule 180

Emmenid vs. Deinomenid Commemoration 183
Pindar's Odes for Akragas 187
The River Akragas and the Mediation of Emmenid Identity in
Olympian 2 189
The River Akragas as a Civic Symbol BeforeTheron'sRule 189
Locatingthe Emmenids: Placeand Identity in Olympian 2 195
A Heroic Genealogyfor Theron 205
Akragas and the Isle of the Blessed211
Theron, Son of Akragas 219
Conclusions 223
Contents ix
5. Conclusions and Test Cases: Ergoteles of Himera and Psaumis of

Kamarina 224
The Immigrant Victor: Becoming Himeraian in Olympian 12 227
The Native Victor: Psaumis as Local Benefactor in

Olympians 4 and 5 234
Conclusions 24 7
Bibliography
Index Locorum 2 73
Subject Index 2 79
Figures
0.1 Map of Sicily and Southern Italy. xvi

1.1 Syracusan Tetradrachm, Silver, ca. 500–485. 40
1.2 Syracusan Tetradrachm, Silver, ca. 485. 53
2.1 Ennaian litra, Silver, ca. 450–440. 83
2.2 Geloan Didrachm, Silver, ca. 490. 128
3.1 Aitnaian Tetradrachm, Silver, ca. 475–470. 144
3.2 Aitnaian Tetradrachm, Silver, ca. 465–460. 145
4.1 Akragantine Tetradrachm, Silver, ca. 505–500. 190
4.2 Himeraian Drachm, Silver, ca. 530–500. 192
4.3 Himeraian Didrachm, Silver, ca. 483–472. 192
5.1 Himeraian Tetradrachm, Silver, ca. 470–464. 233
5.2 Kamarinaian Litra, Silver, ca. 461–440. 242
Acknowledgments
Like the poetry that it studies, this book has been shaped by multiple
places and the people who live in them. In this case, it was my great fortune
that they were inhabited by generous teachers, colleagues, and friends, who
supported and encouraged me as the book developed. I was first introduced
to Pindar while I was a graduate student at the University of Georgia. I thank
Charles Platter and Nancy Felson for guiding my early research on epinician
poetry and for their continuing support. The seeds of this project were sown in
graduate seminars at UC Berkeley. I am grateful to the Classics faculty, espe-
cially my dissertation committee members—Mark Griffith, Emily Mackil, and
Donald Mastronarde—for encouraging me to pursue this line of inquiry, chal-
lenging me to improve my ideas, and saving me from countless errors as the
dissertation progressed. I owe my greatest debt to Leslie Kurke, who advised
my dissertation and whose research and teaching have shaped my approach to
Pindar’s poetry. Her support and guidance were critical both throughout the
dissertation process and as the project expanded and evolved.
My colleagues at Florida State University have been unfailingly generous
with their time, advice, and encouragement of the project. I am especially ap-
preciative of the mentorship of John Marincola, with whom I co-organized a
Langford Conference in Tallahassee on “Greek Poetry in the West” in Spring
2017 that stimulated discussion related to the book and influenced my thinking
as I wrote the final chapters. Generous support from the FSU Council on
Research and Creativity in the form of a First Year Assistant Professor Award
and a Committee on Faculty Research Support Award allowed me the time
and space for writing and revision at crucial moments. I am grateful to the
Department and the Dean of Arts and Sciences for granting me leave to spend
a semester as a fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Spring 2017. The
support of writing groups and writing intensive workshops at FSU was essen-
tial as I finished the project. Thanks to Laurel Fulkerson and Peggy Wright-
Cleveland for organizing these groups that introduced me to other writers at
xiv Acknowledgments
the university and modeled the writing group form. Kristina Buhrman, Celia
Campbell, Jessica Clark, Matt Goldmark, Katherine Harrington, Jeannine
Murray-Román, Svetla Slaveva-Griffin, and Erika Weiberg infused energy and
focus that sustained me during the final phase of the project. Special thanks
are owed to Sarah Craft for making the map of Sicily and Southern Italy
printed in this volume.
The Center for Hellenic Studies offered me the chance to test my ideas
among a friendly and collegial group of Hellenists during Spring 2017. I am
grateful to the Senior Fellows for this opportunity. Special thanks to my fellow
fellows Maša Ćulumović, Jason Harris, Greta Hawes, Naoise Mac Sweeney,
Michiel Meeusen, and Nikolas Papadimitriou for engaging discussions of
myth and place that influenced my approach to Pindar’s poetry, especially
when they took a roundabout path. I benefited from visits by Nancy Felson
and Daniel Berman to the Center, and I am grateful to them for sharing their
unpublished work. Conversations with Gregory Nagy, Nikolaos Papazarkadas,
and Laura Slatkin following the Fellows Symposium improved the arguments
in chapter 4.
Many others contributed their time and effort to this project from afar.
Carmen Arnold-Biucchi helped me track down images of the Alpheos/barley
grain tetradrachm. Hanne Eisenfeld was a valuable interlocutor on myth and
place in Pindar’s poetry, and I am thankful for her input on earlier drafts.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Nigel Nicholson, who has supported the book from
its very early stages through to the end, reading and commenting on drafts of
the entire manuscript and encouraging me at each turn.
Special thanks to Stefan Vranka at Oxford University Press for his pa-
tience and invaluable assistance as this book came into its final form, to
Christopher Eckerman for his attention to detail on an earlier version (as a
then-anonymous reader), and to the other two anonymous readers whose
suggestions greatly improved the manuscript. Earlier versions of arguments
in the book were presented at meetings of the Society for Classical Studies,
the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, and the Classical
Association, and at UC Berkeley, FSU, the University of Georgia, the Center
for Hellenic Studies, and the First and Third Interdisciplinary Symposia on
the Hellenic Heritage of Southern Italy in Syracuse, Sicily. I am grateful to
members of these audiences for thoughtful questions that advanced my ideas.
All errors that remain are my own.
Finally, I am grateful to my friends and family for conversation, encour-
agement, and support. I thank Wiktoria Bielska, Sasha-Mae Eccleston, Allison
Kirk, Sophie McCoy, Leithen M’Gonigle, Nandini Pandey, Anna Pisarello,
Melissa Rooney, Dan Scott, Randy Souza, Sarah Titus, Naomi Weiss, and
Acknowledgments xv
especially Beth Coggeshall, Athena Kirk, Rachel Lesser, and Sarah Olsen, who
read and gave feedback on multiple drafts, occasionally at the very last minute.
My family members, and above all my parents, have been a constant source of
care and enthusiasm. I dedicate the book to my grandfather. Over the seven-
teen years I knew him, he continually asked when I would finally learn Latin,
but he passed away before I discovered the pleasure of studying and teaching
ancient languages. I hope he would have forgiven me for writing a book about
Greek literature instead.
Figure 0.1 Map of Sicily and Southern Italy.
Editions and Abbreviations
I use the following editions for citations of Pindar, Bacchylides, and the
Scholia to Pindar:
Drachmann, A. B. 1903–1927. Scholia vetera in Pindari carmina. 3 vols.

Leipzig: Teubner.
Maehler, H. Ed. 2003. Bacchylidis Carmina cum Fragmentis. Leipzig: Teubner.
Snell, B., and H. Maehler. Eds. 1987. Pindari Carmina cum Fragmentis, Pars
I. Epinicia. Leipzig: Teubner.
Snell, B., and H. Maehler. Eds. 1989. Pindari Carmina cum Fragmentis, Pars
II. Fragmenta, Indices. Leipzig: Teubner.
Although influenced by William Race’s Loeb editions, all translations of

Pindar’s poetry (and of other Greek authors) are my own except where other-
wise indicated.
When printing names of Greek places, characters, and authors, my aim
has been to use the most recognizable terms possible, but there are some in-
evitable inconsistencies. I have retained Latinized forms of the names of many
well-known places and authors (e.g., Syracuse and Aeschylus rather than
Surakousai and Aiskulos) for ease of recognition, but in other cases names
have been transliterated from the Greek (e.g., Aitna, Kamarina, and Herakles)
to align more closely with the terminology employed by other scholars of these
subjects.
The abbreviations of ancient authors and works follow those in the Oxford
Classical Dictionary, with the following exceptions:
BCH 1877–. Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique. Paris: Thorin

et fils.
BNJ Worthington, I. Ed. 2006–. Brill’s New Jacoby. Leiden: Brill.
FGrH Jacoby, F. Ed. 1923–1958. Die Fragmente der griechischen
Historiker. 3 vols. Berlin: Weidmann.
xviii List of Editions and Abbreviations
LIMC 1981–2009. Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae.

Zurich: Artemis.
LSJ Liddel, H. G., and R. Scott. Eds. 1940. A Greek-English Lexicon.
Revised and augmented throughout by H. S. Jones, with the
assistance of R. McKenzie, with a supplement (1968). 9th ed.
Reprint ed. 1990. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
PMG Page, D. L. Ed. 1962. Poetae Melici Graeci.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
POxy Grenfell, B. P. Ed. 1898–. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Vols. 1–.
London: Egypt Exploration Fund.
TrGF I Snell, B. Ed. 1986. Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Vol. 1.
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
TrGF III Radt., S. Ed. 1985. Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Vol 3.
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Pindar’s epinician odes are abbreviated as follows:

I. Isthmian
N. Nemean
O. Olympian
P. Pythian
Introduction
In a review of Adolf Köhnken’s monograph Die Funktion des Mythos bei

Pindar (“The Function of Myth in Pindar”), Malcolm Willcock makes the fol-
lowing observation about myth and local place in Pindar’s epinician poetry:
After all, we know Pindar’s ‘τέθμιον’ [“custom”]—when in Aegina, tell

of the Aeacidae; when in Opus, be (if possible) Opuntian; when writing
for a Sicilian tyrant—as there are no comparable Sicilian myths, it
being a new country—find some large and enhancing story, perhaps
related to the place where the victory was won.1
Willcock’s assessment of myth in the Sicilian odes assumes that the “new”
status of the cities in Sicily prevented them from having developed local
mythic traditions. This view of myths in Pindar’s odes for Sicily is representa-
tive of general attitudes; other scholars have similarly argued that Sicily lacked
the kind of established mythological tradition found in other Greek cities in
the fifth century for Pindar to incorporate into celebrations of Sicilian victors.2
1. Willcock 1974: 192.

2. See, for example, Rose 1974: 155–56, Hubbard 1992: 81. Morrison 2007: 26 argues that
there were no heroes associated with Sicilian cities. Though there may have been fewer
ties between Sicilian cities and heroes in the way that the Aiakids were linked to Aegina,
there are strong regional ties to Herakles, for example, that this statement overlooks. For
the importance of Herakles in Sicily, see Diod. 4.23–26, 5.4, Giangiulio 1983, and now
also Nicholson 2015: 258–61. To address the apparent lack of Sicilian mythical narratives,
Morrison 2007: 123 proposes that Pindar favors Panhellenic heroic narratives rather than
local “so that audiences across the Greek world will be interested in his re-telling of these
myths, and hence in his victory odes in general, thus enabling the spread of the victors’
fame.” However, Morrison underplays the role of local Sicilian places in these myths.
Myth, Locality, and Identity in Pindar’s Sicilian Odes. Virginia M. Lewis, Oxford University
Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190910310.003.0001
2 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes
This book reevaluates the role and nature of myth in Pindar’s epinician po-
etry for victors from Sicily, who come from Syracuse, Aitna, Akragas, Himera,
and Kamarina. Willcock characterizes Sicily as a “new” country, yet four of
the five Sicilian cities celebrated by Pindar were founded at least one hundred
years before Pindar celebrated them in song, and Syracuse—a city celebrated
in four odes—was founded in the eighth century. Most of these cities were
not, then, new, and the country surrounding them was even less so since it
had been inhabited by native Sikels before the arrival of the Greeks. Yet, even
as we observe that these cities were not new in a historical sense, there is
some truth in Willcock’s characterization. All five cities experienced regime
changes and, in most cases, stasis in the first decades of the fifth century,
and their populations were reorganized and transferred—either by choice or
by force—from one city to another. From this perspective, the cities and the
country surrounding them were “new.” Τhis study will explore the strategies
by which Pindar engages in a striking, innovating style of mythmaking that
represents and shapes Sicilian identities in this poetry for people and places
that were “new” in the sense that their communities were undergoing rapid
change and redefinition.
Willcock’s observation about the Sicilian odes highlights an underlying
strategy in Pindar’s odes by which this poetry represents Sicily as a “new”
country whose status is up for negotiation and definition by the epinician poet.
I will propose that within a volatile political climate where local traditions were
frequently shifting, Pindar’s poetry supports, shapes, and negotiates iden-
tity for Sicilian cities and their victors by weaving myth into local places and
landscapes. We shall see that the links between myth and place that Pindar
fuses in this poetry reinforce and develop a sense of place and community for
local populations while at the same time raising the profile of physical sites,
and the cities and peoples attached to them, for larger audiences across the
Greek world.
This book will take a historicizing approach to the Sicilian odes. Whereas
older historicists tended to view the epinician poems as reflections of or evi-
dence for historical events,3 in the 1960s, Elroy Bundy, building upon the work
of Wolfgang Schadewaldt, offered an important corrective to their approaches
by focusing on formal analysis and examining the rhetorical conventions
that make up the genre of epinician poetry.4 More recently, scholars have
stressed the idea that the mindsets created and reinforced by epinician poetry
3. Wilamowitz 1922 is one of the most influential examples.

4. Schadewaldt 1928, Bundy 1962.
Introduction 3
shaped the civic communities in which they were performed. Following the
publication of Leslie Kurke’s The Traffic in Praise in 1991, which convincingly
argued that New Historicist approaches should be applied when interpreting
Pindar’s epinician odes, the majority of scholars of Pindar and Bacchylides
now recognize that reading these odes in their social, political, and historical
contexts helps to elucidate aspects of this poetry that cannot be understood
through formal analysis alone.5 This is not to say that we should abandon the
careful study of the odes’ literary effects; rather, the literary effects of Pindar’s
epinician poetry—as poetry that was composed for a specific victory from a
particular city in a certain year—should be interpreted within their historical
and cultural contexts.6
When I speak of reading texts within their cultural contexts, I am situ-
ating my project within a framework of Cultural Poetics, wherein texts are
understood as sites of cultural contestation.7 Culture, in this view, is not a
static system but instead a dynamic force that is constantly being shaped and
negotiated by groups with differing interests within society. Texts not only re-
flect but also react to, shape, and influence the cultures within which they
are created, performed, and received. As a collection of varied interests and
perspectives, theorists have argued that culture should be viewed as an “indis-
soluble duality or dialectic” of “system and practice.”8 Texts, as sites of contes-
tation and participants in culture, give rise to and are inscribed with ideology.
Following Gramsci, Catherine Bell defines ideology as “not a disseminated
body of ideas but the way in which people live the relationships between them-
selves and their world, a type of necessary illusion.”9 Embedded as it is in
lived experience, ideology is complex, unstable, and continually changing.10
5. For studies of Greek choral poetry that emphasize readings within a broader cultural and
historical context see, among others, Calame 1997, Herington 1985, Gentili 1988, Krummen
1990, Nagy 1990, Kurke 1991, 2005, 2007, Stehle 1997, Fearn 2007, Kowalzig 2007, Morgan
2015, Nicholson 2015.
6. For a more detailed, recent discussion of the merits of a historicizing approach, see
Morgan 2015: 5–9. For arguments against, see Nisetich 2007–2008, Sigelman 2016: 7–10
with references.
7. My discussion of Cultural Poetics in this paragraph follows Kurke 2011: 22–25. See also
Foster 2017: 4–6. For New Historicism as it relates to the theory of Cultural Poetics, see
Stallybrass and White 1986: 1–26. Dougherty and Kurke 1993: 1–12 and 2003: 1–19 demon-
strate the relevance of Cultural Poetics to the study of ancient Greek literature and culture.
8. Sewell 1999: 46–47, quote taken from p. 47.
9. Bell 2009: 85.
10. Bell 2009: 81–82, Macherey 2006: 75–101.
Furthermore, ideology is not singular and uniform, but at any point in time
multiple ideologies coexist, which compete both with one another and with
the remnants of older ideologies.11 Like other texts, the epinician poems of
Pindar and Bacchylides participated in, contributed to, and were influenced
by the complex set of overlapping identities and ideologies that constituted
the fifth-century Greek city. The premise that epinician poetry participates in
the negotiation and shaping of cultural systems has motivated my decision
to examine the Sicilian odes together as a set of poems within shared Sicilian
historical and cultural contexts throughout this study.
A focus on the Sicilian odes will allow us to identify and analyze cultural
features that are uniquely Sicilian in a broad sense and also to distinguish
those features that are more specifically linked to individual cities. One of the
most distinctive and remarkable aspects of Pindar’s epinician odes is the va-
riety of cities and civic contexts they celebrate. While nearly all complete sur-
viving tragedies from the fifth century were primarily written for performance
before Athenian audiences,12 Pindar’s forty- five epinician odes celebrate
victors from seventeen different cities. The wide range of victors and cities
commemorated in the odes makes them among the best surviving sources
for understanding the different sociocultural circumstances that existed in
fifth-century Greece. An increased scholarly focus on Greek choral poetry as
embedded in the community in which it was performed has highlighted ways
that sets of poems for individual cities can productively be read alongside one
another to shed light on local culture and history. Scholars have, for instance,
explored the dynamics of Pindar’s poetry in the poet’s hometown of Thebes,
and in other cities and regions whose victors were celebrated by the poet, such
as Aegina, Sicily, and Rhodes.13 This book’s focus on the Sicilian odes makes
it possible to identify trends that apply across the region and, conversely, to
recognize traditions and poetic strategies that are particular to individual civic
communities.
11. Smith 1988, Jameson 1981.

12. There are known exceptions: Aeschylus’ Aitnaiai was certainly first performed in Sicily,
and it is possible that some surviving tragedies were first performed outside of Athens. For
example, Bosher 2012a makes the case that Hieron may have commissioned Aeschylus’
Persians for a first performance in Syracuse. Still, Athens was the center of production of
Greek tragedy in the fifth century.
13. Important recent examples include Kurke 2007, Olivieri 2011 (on Thebes); Larson forth-
coming (on Orchomenos); Kowalzig 2007 (on Delos, Argos, Aegina, Rhodes, South Italy,
and Boiotia); Morrison 2007, Morgan 2015, and Nicholson 2015 (on Sicily and Southern
Italy); Burnett 2005 and the studies in Fearn 2011 (on Aegina); and Kurke and Neer 2014
(on Athens).
Introduction 5
Epinician Poetry and Local Contexts

Pindar’s Sicilian Odes
Despite the rich variety of local communities that we know existed in the fifth
century, Athens tends to dominate our literary sources and therefore also often
dominates our narratives about fifth-century Greece. As I mentioned above,
one reason that the epinician odes are important and especially interesting
is that they offer us rich perspectives on cities outside of Athens. Each of the
seventeen different poleis that Pindar celebrates represents a unique polit-
ical community, and several of them, like Aegina, Cyrene, and Rhodes, were
wealthy and powerful in the fifth century. While some of these poleis are
very well represented (e.g., victors from Aegina are celebrated in ten odes),
other places are barely represented (e.g., there is only one surviving ode for
a victor from Rhodes and there are no surviving odes celebrating victories by
Spartans). Studies that concentrate on sets of odes from a particular city or
region allow us to identify civic symbols and patterns with greater certainty
because we can see that they recur in multiple odes for the same place.14
Still, one might reasonably ask: Why focus such a study on the Sicilian
odes? What makes them distinctive? And are they different from Pindar’s
other epinician odes? One of the most basic reasons why the Sicilian odes are
particularly interesting for a study focused on locality is that the number of
surviving odes written for Sicilians is so large. Of Pindar’s forty-five epinician
odes, fifteen celebrate the achievements of Sicilian victors.15 Of these odes,
four celebrate victors from Syracuse (O. 1, O. 6, P. 2, P. 3), five from Akragas
(O. 2, O. 3, P. 6, P. 12, I. 2), three from Aitna (P. 1, N. 1, N. 9), two from
Kamarina (O. 4, O. 5), and one from Himera (O. 12). In all but one case, the
Sicilian cities are celebrated in more than one ode, and this relative abundance
of evidence for each city will allow us to track the symbolic vocabulary Pindar
uses from poem to poem and to trace the intersections of myth and landscape
in several passages and, in some cases, through different time periods and
political contexts in odes for the same city.
In addition to the relatively large body of material available for this region,
the Sicilian odes are particularly worthy of study because of Sicily’s promi-
nence in the fifth century. By the sixth century, the Sicilians and Southern
Italians participated regularly at Olympia, sending athletes to compete and
14. On the productivity of reading these odes as a group, see Fearn 2011: 175–76.
15. O. 1, O. 2, O. 3, O. 4, O. 5, O. 6, O. 12, P. 1, P. 2, P. 3, P. 6, P. 12, N. 1, N. 9, I. 2. In addition,
O. 10 and O. 11 celebrate Alexidamos, a victor from Locri in Southern Italy.
making conspicuous dedications.16 After the Deinomenids took control of

Syracuse in 485, they controlled most of eastern Sicily, though other key cities
(and, in particular, Akragas) maintained their independence. After the Greek
victory at the Battle of Himera in 480, Syracuse became the dominant polit-
ical power in the region. The city was, furthermore, renowned for its wealth
in antiquity. Strabo says that the Syracusan founder, the Corinthian Archias,
went to Delphi at the same time as another founder, Myscellus: “When they
were consulting the oracle, the god asked them whether they chose wealth
or health; now Archias chose wealth, and Myscellus health; accordingly, the
god granted to the former to found Syracuse and the latter, Croton.”17 Strabo’s
report of Archias’ consultation of the oracle, whether or not it is historically
accurate, demonstrates that Syracuse’s wealth was one of the city’s most fun-
damental and defining characteristics in the Greek imagination, and in fact
we shall see that Pindar celebrates Syracusan agricultural wealth, in particular,
by making allusions to myths embedded in the local landscape.
Sicily was also an important center for philosophical and literary culture.18
The Sicilian poets Empedokles and Epicharmus, for example, were impor-
tant figures in the development of Greek philosophy and poetry.19 During
the period when Pindar composed the epinician odes for him in the 470s,
Hieron invited several internationally famous poets (including Pindar,
Bacchylides, Aeschylus, Simonides, and perhaps also Phrynichus) to Syracuse
and transformed the city into a major cultural center.20 After the fall of the
Deinomenids in Syracuse, the citizens established a democratic government
that lasted through the Athenian attack on the city during the Peloponnesian
Wars until the tyrant Dionysius came to power in 403.21 The famous debate
16. Phillip 1994.

17. Strabo 6.2.4, trans. Jones.
18. On literary and performance culture in the West, see Morgan 2015: 87–132.
19. Porphyry, for example, seems to believe that editing the work of Epicharmus is a project
that can be compared to editing the work of Aristotle (Porph. Plot. 24). On Epicharmus, see
Guillén 2012.
20. For the suggestion that Phrynichus traveled to Syracuse as part of this group and that
his Phoenician Women was performed in the city, see Morgan 2012: 49 and Morgan 2015: 98.
Simonides celebrated victories by the Emmenid tyrants of Akragas and possibly a victory of
Gelon, on which see Morgan 2015: 72–73. Later in the fifth century, Xenophon imagines a
fictional conversation between Hieron and Simonides in the Hieron. On the variety of poetic
performance in Sicily in this period, see also Dougherty 1993: 83–102.
21. The Deinomenids, like the Peisistratids in Athens, preceded a period of democracy in
Syracuse. On the institution of the democracy, Diod. 11.72.2. Aristotle cites Syracuse after the
Introduction 7
represented in Thucydides between Nicias and Alcibiades over whether or not

to attack the Syracusans highlights the importance of this city, and of Sicily in
general, as a threat and rival to the Athenians. The cultural and political im-
portance of Sicily in Greek politics throughout the fifth century merits further
investigation of the social and political role of choral poetry composed for and
performed on the island.
The Sicilian odes, and especially the odes celebrating the Deinomenid
and Emmenid tyrants, represent some of Pindar’s most celebrated poetic
masterpieces. Although interpreters of Pindar’s poetry have always been in-
terested in these odes, in the past twenty years, several studies have now been
devoted to the Sicilian odes as a group.22 Sarah Harrell’s 1998 dissertation,
“Cultural Geography of East and West: Literary Representations of Archaic
Sicilian Tyranny and Cult,” considers the ways in which Herodotus, Pindar,
and Bacchylides shape Deinomenid identity by associating the tyrants with the
east, west, or center of the Mediterranean world. In particular, she argues that
such geographical associations align the Deinomenids with eastern tyrants
like Croesus.23 More recently, Andrew Morrison has examined the issues of
performance and reperformance in Pindar’s Sicilian odes, and his readings
emphasize that passages in these odes would have had different meaning for
audiences of diverse origins and during performances at different points in
time.24
Two recent monographs that examine Pindar’s epinician odes in their
Sicilian and Southern Italian frameworks are especially worthy of note and
have been influential for this project. First, Kathryn Morgan’s monograph,
Pindar and the Construction of Syracusan Monarchy in the Fifth Century B.C.,
has provided both a thoughtful contextualization of Pindar’s odes for Hieron
and his circle in their historical and cultural contexts, and subtle close
readings of this set of odes.25 In particular, Morgan offers new perspectives on
the ways that Pindar characterizes Hieron’s kingship in the Syracusan odes.
fall of the Deinomenid tyrants as an example of the way a tyranny can change into a democ-
racy (Politics 1316a28–34).
22. In addition to the monographs mentioned in the following notes, other important recent
discussions of Pindar’s Sicilian odes include: Harrell 2002, 2006, Hornblower 2004: 186–
201, Currie 2005 (258–95 and 344–405 on Syracusan odes P. 2 and P. 3), Kowalzig 2008,
Bonanno 2010, Thatcher 2012, and Foster 2013.
23. Harrell 1998.
24. Morrison 2007.
25. Morgan 2015.
In addition, Nigel Nicholson’s The Poetics of Victory in the Greek West has con-
sidered hero traditions in the Greek oral tradition alongside Pindar’s epinician
poetry for victors from Western Greece, focusing on this region because so
many competitors at the Olympic games came from the area.26 One partic-
ular type of hero narrative, the “hero athlete narrative,” he argues, was espe-
cially relevant to epinician poetry and represented an ideological tradition that
was fundamentally opposed to the representations of the athlete presented
in epinician poetry. Where Morgan offers new perspectives on the way that
Pindar shapes Syracusan kingship and Nicholson offers a new understanding
of the form of epinician poetry for victors from the West, this study will build
upon these earlier inquiries to illuminate the ways in which Pindar’s inter-
weaving of myth and place in odes for the five Sicilian cities he celebrated
shaped Sicilian identities.
In response to observations that the cities in Sicily lacked local myths for
Pindar to celebrate, I will demonstrate that rich mythological traditions did,
in fact, exist in Sicily by the fifth century when Pindar composed his odes for
Sicilian victors. It is certainly the case that in some instances, for example
in Hieron’s newly founded Aitna, a city was founded so recently that com-
pletely new traditions appear to have been invented to represent it and its cit-
izen body. But the city of Aitna, founded in 476, was more the exception than
the rule. Other Sicilian cities, such as Syracuse (whose traditional foundation
date is 733 bce), had been in existence for centuries and had developed strong
mythological and civic traditions that were available for Pindar to draw upon
and allude to in his odes.
The following discussion will not only show that local Sicilian mytholog-
ical traditions existed within larger systems of civic ideology but will also make
a claim about the character and role of these myths. Like the citizens of other
cities throughout the Greek world, Sicilian Greeks worshipped many gods.
However, the particular mythological and religious figures Pindar incorporates
into his epinician poetry for these cities hold especially close ties to the local
landscape and topography.
This close association between mythological representatives of the city
and the local landscape reflects the political instability in Sicily during a pe-
riod when the Deinomenid tyrants, Gelon and Hieron, ruled cities inhabited
by “mixed populations.”27 Later in the fifth century when, according to
Thucydides, the Athenians debated whether or not to send an army to attack
26. Nicholson 2015: 79–98.

27. Diod. 5.6.5, Thuc. 6.17.2–3, see also chapter 1.
Introduction 9
Syracuse, Alcibiades argued that the Syracusans would be easily defeated be-
cause they were a group of mixed citizens who lacked civic loyalty. Alcibiades’
claims about the Syracusans ultimately underestimated the Syracusans, who
united to defeat the invading Athenian army. Nevertheless, his statements did
capture an essential aspect of Sicilian politics, especially in the first half of the
fifth century. After Gelon took over the city of Syracuse in 485, for instance,
the citizens of Syracuse included former citizens of Gela, Kamarina, Syracuse,
Leontini, and Naxos, many of whom had been forcibly moved to Syracuse
from their former cities.28 When his brother Hieron came to power, he not
only inherited this mixed group of Syracusan citizens, but he also relocated
the people from the neighboring cities of Katane and Naxos to Leontini and
established yet another group of mixed citizens in his new colony of Aitna in
476. Though Aitna is a unique example, this kind of political volatility was the
norm in Sicily during the period, and it created the need for the reinforcement
and reworking of notions of identity—both those of the citizens and of their
rulers.
The political volatility in fifth-century Sicily created an environment in
which it is possible to observe the stabilizing and community-building poten-
tial of epinician poetry at work. When political and social cohesion are espe-
cially threatened, tools that are able to foster unity and shape a common sense
of purpose may be employed particularly powerfully in an effort to encourage
or to regain political stability. This book proposes that one strategy for creating
stability amidst this kind of political turmoil was to connect identity of var-
ious kinds to fixed elements in the landscape, such as mountains, rivers, and
springs, that remained stable and were not tied to a single group of people,
ruler, or ruling family.
Other Local Contexts for Pindaric Epinician Poetry

The fifteen odes for Sicilian victors are important sources for Sicilian culture in
the fifth century, but they also belong to the larger body of Pindaric epinician po-
etry and should be understood in that context as well.29 Before exploring some
of the ways in which the Sicilian odes are unique in Pindar’s corpus in the up-
coming chapters, it is worth considering how the poet marks local contexts in
some of his epinician poems for cities outside of Sicily. There is not space here
28. Hdt. 7.156, Thuc. 6.4.2.

29. The fifteen Sicilian odes are, by city: O. 1, O. 6, P. 2, P. 3 (Syracuse); P. 1, N. 1, N. 9 (Aitna);
O. 2, O. 3, P. 6, P. 12, I. 2 (Akragas); O. 12 (Himera); and O. 4, O. 5 (Kamarina).
for a full treatment of the twelve other cities and regions Pindar celebrates,30 so
I will focus my discussion on three cities whose victors Pindar celebrated with
multiple epinician odes. This is not to say that the other odes cannot provide ad-
ditional important information, but larger sets will offer more opportunity for
comparison. While only two extant poems (P. 7, N. 2) celebrate Athenians and
several places (Thessaly, Orchomenos, Opous, Rhodes, Tenedos) receive only
one Pindaric ode, Aegina alone commissioned eleven epinician poems that sur-
vive,31 and Pindar praised Thebes in five odes and Cyrene in three.32 In nearly
every case, the myths Pindar uses to celebrate the victor are fitted to the local
context in which the performance of choral poetry solidifies group identity.
For many Greek cities, one of the most basic requirements for shared
identity was a group’s belief that they were descended from a common an-
cestor, and Pindar frequently evokes a putative shared belief in common de-
scent from a famous ancestor.33 In the odes for Aegina, for instance, Aiakos,
his descendants (Ajax, Achilles, Neoptolemus), and their families (Telamon,
Peleus, Thetis) dominate the central mythical narratives of ten out of the
eleven odes for the city. In the eleventh ode—Pythian 8 for Aristomenes—
Pindar evokes and celebrates the Aiakidai before dismissing them to turn to a
myth about Amphiaraos instead (P. 8.21–32):
ἔπεσε δ’ οὐ Χαρίτων ἑκάς

ἁ δικαιόπολις ἀρεταῖς
κλειναῖσιν Αἰακιδᾶν
θιγοῖσα νᾶσος· τελέαν δ’ ἔχει
δόξαν ἀπ’ ἀρχᾶς. πολλοῖσι μὲν γὰρ ἀείδεται 25
νικαφόροις ἐν ἀέθλοις θρέψαισα καὶ θοαῖς
ὑπερτάτους ἥρωας ἐν μάχαις·
τὰ δὲ καὶ ἀνδράσιν ἐμπρέπει.

εἰμὶ δ’ ἄσχολος ἀναθέμεν
πᾶσαν μακραγορίαν 30
30. In addition to Aegina, Cyrene, Thebes, the other nine cities and regions are Argos, Athens
(including Acharnae), Corinth, Locri, Opous, Orchomenos, Rhodes, Tenedos, Thessaly.
31. The odes for Aegina are: O. 8, P. 8, N. 3, N. 4, N. 5, N. 6, N. 7, N. 8, I. 5, I. 6, I. 8. The very
fact that the Aeginetans commissioned so many epinician odes makes them similar to the
Sicilians. For a comparison and contrast of the two poetic contexts, see Morrison 2011: 228–31.
32. Thebes: P. 11, I. 1, I. 3, I. 4, I. 7; Cyrene: P. 4, P. 5, P. 9.
33. Hall 1997: 25. Robert Parker likewise emphasizes that “blood or rather a belief in blood is
obligatory” as a criterion of Greekness and shared ethnic identity (1998: 21).
Introduction 11
λύρᾳ τε καὶ φθέγματι μαλθακῷ,

μὴ κόρος ἐλθὼν κνίσῃ.
And not far from the Kharites the just island city has fallen, after
touching upon the famous achievements of the Aiakidai; and it has
had perfected glory from the beginning. For it is sung for having raised
heroes who were superior in many victory-bearing contests and in swift
battles, and in these ways it is distinguished also for its men. I am not
at leisure to set out the whole long story with the lyre and a soft voice,
for fear that satiety should come and distress us.
Pindar’s brief celebration of the Aiakidai here is instructive. Even without

telling “the whole long story” (πᾶσαν μακραγορίαν), Pindar raises the Aiakidai
as his potential (and anticipated) subject matter, evoking for his audiences
many narrative possibilities for the upcoming celebration.34 Aegina is both fa-
mous for the renowned achievements of the heroes and distinguished for its
men. The introduction and subsequent rejection of the Aiakidai as mythical
material overturns audience expectations, and by taking a different direction
and celebrating Amphiaraos instead, Pindar is able to have the best of both
worlds. The passage is illustrative in another way as well. In Pindar’s odes for
Aegina, the Aiakidai operate as a signal or an emblem for the city. They are the
heroes who make the island famous, and even a brief mention or allusion to
these civic heroes can evoke a series of narratives related to their heroic deeds.
In an ode for a Theban victor, Pindar uses an opposite strategy to achieve
a similar effect. Isthmian 7 for Strepsiades of Thebes opens with a catalogue
of Theban myth, asking Thebe (I. 7.1–3): Τίνι τῶν πάρος, ὦ μάκαιρα Θήβα, /
καλῶν ἐπιχωρίων μάλιστα θυμὸν τεόν / εὔφρανας (“In which of your former
local glories, O blessed Thebe, did you delight the most in your heart?”). After
raising many possibilities (the rearing of Dionysus, Zeus’ impregnation of
Alkmene, Teiresias or Iolaos, the Spartoi, the defeat of Adrastus, or the Theban
conquest of the Peloponnese), Pindar incorporates no central mythic narrative
in this ode. The opening catalogue tantalizes his audiences by alluding to these
potential narratives and emphasizes that he could have chosen any of them,
though he ultimately does not. The praise of Thebes is therefore amplified;
despite the breadth of the catalogue, Pindar’s song does not verge into excess.
The frequent appearance of local heroes in epinician poetry for victors
from Aegina and Thebes contrasts with their comparative paucity in the odes
34. On audience suspense in the Sicilian odes, see Morrison 2007: 26.
for Sicilian victors, but this alone is not enough to argue conclusively that the
formation and reinforcement of links between myth and place are distinc-
tively Sicilian features. After all, Sicilian cities differ from Aegina and Thebes
for many reasons, including their relative distance from the center of the
Greek world and their self-awareness as colonies of other Greek cities. A look
at poetry for one such relatively distant city, Cyrene—a colonial city ruled by
a monarchy—will help to isolate features of myth that are unique to Pindar’s
Sicilian odes.
Like Sicily, Cyrene was removed from the center of the Greek world, and
North Africa was one of the regions where Herakles performed his Labors and
through which he wandered, civilizing and Hellenizing as he went.35 Cyrene
was founded by Thera in 631 bce during the same period when many Sicilian
Greek cities were colonized. Moreover, like many of the Greek cities in Sicily,
Cyrene was represented in epinician poetry as a colony, and the city’s colonial
status was a central feature of its identity.36
Pindar composed three odes for victors from Cyrene: Pythians 4, 5, and 9.37
Each honors its victor through a different extended narrative that articulates
the city’s identity relative to its colonial foundation. First, Pythian 9 takes as its
main mythical narrative Apollo’s rape of the nymph, Cyrene, which produces
the city itself in addition to a child. From this union, Cyrene also becomes the
city’s eponymous nymph after she is relocated there from Thessaly by Apollo.
Here, Carol Dougherty has shown that Pindar merges a Hesiodic story about
the Greek nymph with a Cyrenean colonial myth, thus joining a local story
to the larger Greek tradition.38 In Pythian 4, Pindar celebrates the victory of
the king Arkesilas by narrating the expedition of Jason and the Argonauts,
who will eventually beget the citizens of Cyrene. Through a prophecy relayed
by Medea, the poet also tells the story of the clod of earth from Cyrene that
Poseidon’s son Eurypylos gives to Euphamos. The clod is placed on board the
ship, but it washes off due to the crew’s carelessness, prefiguring the eventual
return of the citizens of Thera to found Cyrene under the leadership of Battos
seventeen generations later. Finally, Pythian 5 focuses on the story of hero
35. Diod. 4.17.4–4.18.5, 4.26.2–4.27.5.

36. Sobak 2013: 110, Dougherty 1993.
37. The earliest, Pythian 9, commemorates a victory by Telesikrates in the race in armor at
Delphi in 474, and Pythians 4 and 5 celebrate the victory of Arkesilas IV, the king of Cyrene,
in the Delphic chariot race of 462.
38. Dougherty 1993: 136–56.
Introduction 13
oikist Battos himself, whom the Delphic oracle compels to found Cyrene.39
Pindar’s inclusion of the three colonial narratives suggests that the city’s
status as a colony was central to its civic identity.40
It is unsurprising for a foundation narrative to involve and account for
the land that has been colonized.41 We shall see that the colonial status of the
Greek cities in Sicily is likewise important for their identity. Yet, despite their
shared status as colonial outposts, fifth-century Sicily and Cyrene were dif-
ferent in two critical ways that affected Pindar’s choices as he celebrated their
victors in song. First, although it experienced its share of conflict in the sixth
century,42 Cyrene enjoyed relative peace and stability during the lengthy reign
of Battos IV, which began around 515 and lasted into the 460s.43 Therefore, in
the period during which Pindar composed epinician poetry for its victors, the
political stability of Cyrene and the surrounding region contrasts with Sicily
at the time where regimes were frequently overthrown and entire populations
were forcibly moved from one site to another.44 Second, unlike the Sicilian
Greek cities which were ruled by various forms of government (including
monarchies, oligarchies, and democracies, as we shall see), Cyrene was ruled
by the hereditary kingship of the descendants of Battos.45 Even though the
39. Dougherty 1993 also observes that Pindar describes his poem as a cult offering to Battos
in Pythian 5 (Chapter 6) while in Pythian 9 the poet combines the themes of colonization
and marriage through the union of Apollo and Cyrene (Chapter 8).
40. For analyses of the three foundation myths, see especially Dougherty 1993, Calame
2003, Sobak 2013.
41. See, for example, Pindar’s Olympian 7 for Diagoras of Rhodes, an ode which also
celebrates the creation of the land itself. On this ode, see Dougherty 1993: 120–35 and
Kowalzig 2007: 239–46 on the narrative of Rhodes’ emergence from the sea.
42. On the more turbulent reigns of Battos III and Arkesilas III, and the reforms of Demonax
that intervened, see B. Mitchell 2002: 87–92.
43. On Arkesilas III’s death, see Hdt. 4.163–64. We do not know exactly when Battos IV died
and Arkesilas IV succeeded to the throne, but it was certainly at some point before 462 when
Arkesilas IV won the Delphic chariot victory which Pindar celebrated in Pythians 4 and 5. See
B. Mitchell 2002: 93–97, Morgan 2015: 416–17.
44. The Battiads allied themselves with the Persians by 525, according to Herotodus (3.13,
4.165), and in exchange for paying tribute, the Battiads received the backing of the Persians.
The turbulence in Greek Sicily arose from different causes, as we shall see. On the political
stability in Cyrene during this time period, see B. Mitchell 2002: 93. See also Chamoux
1953: 320–31. However, Morgan 2015: 416–17 observes that cracks in the image of the peaceful
reign of Arkesilas are apparent even in Pindar’s poetry through the figure of the exile
Damophilos.
45. Barbara Mitchell says of Cyrene that “its especially distinguishing feature is the long-
lasting Battiad monarchy” (B. Mitchell 2002: 82).
dynasty experienced moments of conflict in earlier periods, possibly including

signs of unrest from the aristocracy,46 this system of hereditary descent offered
the city a narrative of continuity going back eight generations—from Arkesilas
to Battos—from which Pindar was able to draw.47 The hereditary kingship of
the Battiads also meant that their genealogy could be joined to narratives ac-
counting for the origin of the landscape, and because the rulers were linked to
the land, it was possible for a poet to plausibly tie the citizens to a longstanding
mythology of the place as well. As the Theban and Aeginetan myths linked the
citizens of those cities back to their founding heroes, so Cyreneans celebrated
both the founder hero Battos and his descendants who ruled the city.
It is these historical differences in large part that account for the diverse
Pindaric strategies we see in the odes for Cyrene and for Sicily. What is re-
markable when we compare the Sicilian odes with the Cyrenean odes is that
colonial narratives figure so strongly in the odes for Cyrene while remaining
muted or altogether absent in the odes for Sicily. Perhaps most notably, the
odes for Cyrene, like the odes for Aegina and Thebes, celebrate a local hero—
the founder Battos, whom Pindar celebrates in Pythians 4 and 5. Local stories
about the foundation of the city were probably preserved in Cyrene, at least
orally, well before Pindar composed this set of odes to celebrate the victory
of Arkesilas IV.48 In addition to this, the relative political stability in Cyrene
fostered an environment in which it was possible to shape narratives of a
putative shared historical past for the city and its citizens. In particular, the
hereditary kingship was passed on peacefully (especially in comparison with
the succession of Sicilian tyrants), and the genealogical line was clear enough
that Pindar celebrated the direct descent of Arkesilas in the eighth genera-
tion from the founder hero Battos (P. 4.65). The tradition of Battiad kings
who went back eight generations from Arkesilas IV to the founder was fur-
ther bolstered by the narrative in Pythian 4. According to the ode, Battos, by
founding Cyrene, fulfilled Medea’s prophecy in the seventeenth generation (P.
4.9–10). These numbers need not be taken literally,49 but they surely point to
46. B. Mitchell 2002: 87–93.

47. Herodotus preserves a similar narrative of the colony’s foundation (Hdt. 4.150–58).
48. Giangiulio 2007: 124–25 overviews the local genealogical tradition in Cyrene on which
Herodotus and Pindar based their versions. On Herodotus’ account of the foundation of
Cyrene, see also Malkin 2003.
49. Calame 2003: 35 underscores that the Greeks did not count using the same methods that
modern scholars do.
Introduction 15
the historical authority and the weight of the past to which the victor Arkesilas
and his family laid claim.
While Arkesilas could appeal to the authority of his founder ancestor and
in this way link himself and his victory to a glorious past, we shall see that the
political authority of the Deinomenid and Emmenid tyrants in Sicily arose
from murkier circumstances that involved very recent and ongoing civic strife.
In the case of Theron and the Emmenids of Akragas, the family was more
securely rooted in the local aristocracy,50 but the Deinomenids came to power
in Syracuse in the 480s and their takeover involved displacing and relocating
many Syracusans and other surrounding populations. While populations in
Cyrene were also mixed,51 there is less evidence for ongoing stasis and strife
during the fifth century when Pindar composed epinician poetry.
Essential to the following discussion of the Sicilian odes is that in odes
for victors from other Greek cities, civic identity is often expressed through
narratives that center on gods and heroes who also play significant roles in
Panhellenic mythology (e.g., the Aiakidai, the myths of the Theban cycle, the
role of Delphic Apollo in the colonial narratives of Cyrene). In Pindar’s Sicilian
odes, by contrast, founder heroes rarely appear in the odes, and they are never
part of an ode’s central mythical narrative. In some cases (e.g., Aitna, founded in
476), a city may have been so new that it lacked longstanding heroic traditions.
Yet in other cities, heroic traditions more likely conflicted with the current po-
litical regime, causing Pindar to emphasize other aspects of local culture in-
stead. In Syracuse, for instance, narratives about the Corinthian founder hero
Archias are preserved in other sources,52 but the hero is never mentioned in
Pindar’s epinician poetry.53 The readings in the following chapters will sug-
gest that, for Sicilian victors, Pindar weaves regional and Panhellenic myth
into the local landscape to contextualize people, cities, and their rulers within
a wider framework and to represent these cities through traditions that ac-
cord with contemporary political circumstances in each case. In this set of
50. See Luraghi 2011, Morgan 2015: 414–15, and c hapter 4: 195–204.
51. Herodotus says that Demonax divided the Cyrenaeans into three tribes made up of
Cyrenaeans and Libyans, Peloponnesians and Cretans, and islanders (Hdt. 4.161).
52. Strabo 6.2.4, Plut. Mor. 772e–773b, Diod. 8.10, Paus. 5.7.3.
53. See Morgan 2015: 248–49 on the Syracusan foundation story. She observes that “it
was, of course, no part of Pindar’s purpose to narrate the story of the original foundation
of Syracuse” since the city was undergoing a fresh start after its recent refoundation by
Gelon (249).
poems, mythical figures operate as symbols that connect local place to broader
Panhellenic tradition, much in the way that an image on a coin can connect
or refer to a mythical narrative without presenting a story in narrative form.
Myths embedded in the landscape, therefore, operate as links between these
narratives and the physical spaces of the city, and the representation of these
myths can shape the character and identity of a city, creating a sense of place
for the citizens and a reputation for the city for audiences abroad.
Myth and Locality in Pindar’s Odes

Locality, as I use the term in the title of this book, refers broadly to anything
that shapes, reflects, responds to, or transforms the local. Locality thus includes
any physical or geographical features, both those occurring naturally (e.g., a
volcano) and those wrought by human intervention (e.g., a fountain), and
representations of them in Greek literature and on material objects (e.g., coins
and sculpture). In many cases, such physical features are linked to known
mythical narratives, but even when they are not, I am also interested in phys-
ical features (e.g., rivers, springs, mountains) as symbols in their own right.
I, therefore, include the local landscape and topographical features inside and
surrounding a city or territory in my definition of “locality.” Ultimately, the
term “locality” refers to a collection of local aspects that, in the first place,
are understood and accepted by the members of the local community as
belonging to and representative of it and that, on the other hand, are recogniz-
able to people outside of the community (i.e., the international reputation or
identity of a place).
Local mythology is an important aspect of locality since mythic traditions
function in all of these ways for communities. However, separating out local
from Panhellenic mythology is not a straightforward task. In the first place,
Daniel Berman has recently emphasized that these categories are porous;
Panhellenic myth can be localized, and local myth can likewise be introduced
into Panhellenic contexts.54 Moreover, even if myths are strictly “local” be-
cause they are disconnected from Panhellenic traditions, we must still con-
sider both who is telling such myths and who the members of their intended
audiences are. Maurizio Giangiulio, thus, cautions that the term “local tradi-
tion” is vague by exploring the Cyrenaean and Theran versions of the foun-
dation narratives found in Pindar and Herodotus. While both versions may
54. Berman forthcoming. McInerney 2013 demonstrates that local myths can become part
of the Panhellenic tradition.
Introduction 17
have been considered “local traditions,” after the fall of the Battiads, they were
likely preserved by different groups inside and outside of Cyrene (including at
Delphi) and did not, therefore, represent strictly epichoric traditions.55
The points at which local and Panhellenic myth overlap are important
in Pindar’s epinician odes as expressions of local pride and identity be-
cause it is in these intersecting spaces that the local becomes important on
a Panhellenic stage. The Aiakidai may serve as an example from a passage
already discussed earlier in the chapter. The Aiakidai who regularly appear in
Pindar’s Aeginetan odes are important for the island precisely because these
heroes are Panhellenic and local at the same time: the fame of Achilles and
Ajax at Troy and in Panhellenic stories about the Trojan War is what brings
glory to their birthplace. The overlap between local and Panhellenic myth is
also a valuable strategy of commemoration for Pindar in a Sicilian context.
However, the discussions of Pindar’s Sicilian odes in the chapters that follow
argue that when celebrating a region where local heroes either do not exist or
are deemphasized for ideological reasons, the poet glorifies Sicilian cities by
linking local places to Panhellenic myths.
Space, Place, and Landscape

Discussions of geographical and mythical places in ancient Greek literature
and material culture have benefited from work in the fields of anthropology,
geography, and philosophy, among others, on the terms “space,” “place,” and
“landscape.” As the essays in the recent volume Space, Place, and Landscape
in Ancient Greek Literature and Culture, edited by Kate Gilhuly and Nancy
Worman, demonstrate, the relationship between the three concepts in the
volume’s title is of growing interest in the field of Greek literary studies.
The volume theorizes the three concepts and engages them to analyze the
works of diverse Greek authors and texts.56 Each term—“space,” “place,” and
“landscape”—has come to represent a different way of thinking about spatial
relationships, descriptions, and representations, and all three are important
for my study of locality in Pindar’s Sicilian odes.
55. Giangiulio 2007: 130–33. The question of “local traditions” in Herodotus is complex
and has been strongly influenced by Jacoby’s teleological notion of subcategories of history
(Jacoby 1909). For discussions of Jacoby’s model, see Giangiulio 2007: 133–37 and Marincola
2007: 4–8.
56. Gilhuly and Worman 2014. See also Berman’s cogent discussion of the critical history of
the study of space and place (Berman 2015: 3–11).
A central issue that has occupied geographers, anthropologists, and

philosophers interested in spatial thinking is distinguishing between the terms
“space” and “place.” While the two are defined inconsistently from critic to
critic,57 for many scholars of cultural geography; “space” refers to a site or area
that has not been infused with cultural meaning. In his influential book Space
and Place: The Perspective of Experience, for example, the geographer Yi-Fi Tuan
argues that “ ‘[s]‌pace’ is more abstract than ‘place.’ What begins as undifferenti-
ated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value.”58
The term “space” has, thus, been considered by many geographers to denote
areas that have not yet become places. Tuan’s conception of “space” also implies
an openness or boundlessness.59 While “place” is delimited by human constructs,
“space,” by contrast, indicates the larger expanse in which “places” are located.
My discussion of descriptions and references in Pindar’s poetry gener-
ally engages the concept of space less frequently since through description
and characterization “space” transforms into “place.” Nonetheless, in a co-
lonial context, space will also be a productive concept for this study. For in-
stance, a geographical location that is a “place” for Sikels or other indigenous
inhabitants may be represented as having been an undifferentiated “space”
before the Greek colonists arrived and endowed it with a new name and cul-
tural meaning. In this way, designating a location as an empty space, as op-
posed to a place, can be a useful strategy for both poets and rulers alike who
may wish to appropriate and (re)define it without acknowledging its former
inhabitants.60
57. Perhaps most influentially, Henri Lefebvre conceptualizes “space” differently in The
Production of Space (Lefebvre 1991). For Lefebvre, “space” designates something that is lived
and socially constructed and that cannot be abstracted. Lefebvre’s work and conceptions of
space cover too much ground to discuss in more detail here, but for the present purposes
I draw attention to his use of the term “space” in a sense that contrasts starkly with many
theorists’ use of the term to designate a geographical location that is empty of cultural
associations. In addition, the philosopher Edward Casey has argued that the idea of empty
“space” is a modern concept, while “place” is primary and universal (Casey 1996: 14–20). For
Casey, there are no blank locations devoid of culture that may be imbued or endowed with
meaning. Instead, all locations are perceived by and interact with humans who belong to a
culture and they therefore are always already “places.” Casey’s objections to the notion of
space transforming into place caution scholars to remember that when a poem reinforces or
ascribes cultural meaning to a particular place it participates in an existing cultural debate.
58. Tuan 1977: 6.
59. Tuan 1977: 51–66.
60. Space can also be productively engaged as a way to think about how human bodies in-
teract with the physical environment, particularly through the performance of poetry. For a
good example of this approach to Pindar’s epinician poetry, see the discussion in Eckerman
Introduction 19
However, for the most part, my study of Pindar’s Sicilian odes will concen-
trate on representations of “place” defined as a set of associations and cultural
constructs that are associated with a particular location.61 If “place” designates
a space imbued with cultural significance as people attach meaning to it,62 this
book asks how epinician poetry participates in this process and considers the
strategies Pindar uses to reflect, reinforce, shape, and transform “place” in
Greek Sicily. Since “place” is a social construct that is both comprehensible to
the participants within that system and, at the same time, may be contested
and negotiated,63 it is essential to consider the cultural context for epinician
poetry in broad terms. I will, therefore, also examine other textual and mate-
rial sources that provide evidence about contemporary Greek culture to draw
a clearer picture of the “places” considered in this study.
In addition to theories that distinguish “space” from “place,” theories of
“landscape” have also outlined valuable frameworks for discussions of to-
pography in the last century. Much as a space becomes a place when it is
imbued with cultural meaning, so topography becomes a landscape when cul-
tural values are attached to it. As with the terms “space” and “place,” theorists
do not agree on a single definition of “landscape,”64 but one important way
that “landscape” is often distinguished from “place” is by the visual engage-
ment it demands. The sense of sight is, thus, crucial for many interpreters
2014: 23–35 of Pindar’s Pythian 6 and the way the poet causes the audience to vicariously
travel to Delphi. On the notion of vicarious transport in Pindar, see Felson 1999.
61. Tuan 1977, Tuan 1991, Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga 2003. Martyn Smith emphasizes that
places are constructed and comprehensible as part of cultural systems and are, therefore,
necessarily always in flux along with these systems (Smith 2008). Smith observes that “every
place is a palimpsest, one layer of meaning and association making eternal claims, but al-
ways hiding previous layers of meaning” (2008: 5). Katherine Clarke also engages the meta-
phor of the palimpsest in her study of myth and landscape, arguing that ancient landscapes
are layered and traveling through them activates figures from the past in the form of place
names, stories, and artifacts (2017: 14–18). However, see also already Bender 1994: 245 for the
metaphor of landscape as palimpsest.
62. Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga 2003: 13, 16–18. Tuan 1991 emphasizes that one important
way that spaces are converted into meaningful places is through narrative, including story-
telling, poetry, music, and song.
63. In addition to the discussion of Cultural Poetics above, see also the work of Clifford
Geertz, who has argued that cultural systems contain external sources of information that
are intelligible to members of that culture (1973: 87–125).
64. For a detailed overview of trends in landscape studies in the past century, see Wylie 2007.
of landscape, and cultural geographers, including Denis Cosgrove, Stephen

Daniels, and Ann Bermingham, have engaged metaphors of sight and seeing
to conceptualize the term.65
Cultural geographers have additionally stressed that, like places, landscapes
are continually up for negotiation and that landscapes may themselves also ne-
gotiate ideological positions and power structures. In this vein, W. J. T. Mitchell
takes as the subject of the collection of essays, Landscape and Power, “[w]‌hat we
have done and are doing to our environment, what the environment in turn
does to us, how we naturalize what we do to each other, and how these ‘doings’
are enacted in the media of representation we call ‘landscape.’ ”66 For Mitchell,
representations of landscape embody and endorse social and cultural values.
As inextricably bound to what is “natural,” these representations, in many
cases, also support power structures and ideologies. Along similar lines, the
French historian Pierre Nora edited a seven-volume series between 1984 and
1992 that explored the relationship between place and memory, or what he
has termed “lieux de mémoire,” often translated into English as “realms of
memory.” For Nora, a “ ‘realm of memory’ is a poly-referential entity that can
draw on a multiplicity of cultural myths that are appropriated for different
ideological or political purposes.”67 The idea that representations of place
and landscape—including both naturally occurring features such as rivers or
mountains but also manmade attributes or interventions into the landscape
such as buildings or canals—can naturalize ideology and endorse political
power informs much of my discussion of landscape in Pindar’s Sicilian odes
in the following chapters.
Classics and the Study of Myth and Place

In recent decades, many scholars of classical Greek literature and material
culture have been influenced by theories of spatial thinking and conceptions
65. Cosgrove 1998, Cosgrove and Daniels 1998: 8, Bermingham 1986. For a survey of
visual metaphors for landscape, see Wylie 2007: 55–93. He identifies three dominant visual
metaphors used by theorists: landscape as veil, landscape as text, and landscape as gaze.
66. Mitchell 2002: 2.
67. Nora 1984–1992, Nora 1996 (English translation). Quote taken from Lawrence Kritzman’s
foreword to Nora 1996: x. Nora’s influential collection of essays investigates through several
examples (e.g., the Eiffel Tower and Joan of Arc) the ways in which French cultural myths
promote and enact ideological purposes, and the authors consider how these myths change
over time.
Introduction 21
of place in the fields discussed in the preceding sections of this chapter.68 This
book builds upon the work of these Classicists, and it is particularly indebted
to scholars who have considered the connection between myth and place from
a variety of angles within the discipline. Among these, Richard Buxton made
a notable advancement for studies of myth and place in Greek literature by
distinguishing between landscapes of everyday life and mythical landscapes.69
For Buxton, mythical landscape “is formed from elements which, while they
grow out of the practices and perceptions of ordinary life, acquire strongly dif-
ferentiated and conceptually potent symbolic traits.”70
The division Buxton makes between everyday and mythical landscapes is
fundamental for a study of Greek landscape because myth is so pervasive in
Greek literature and visual representations. In what follows, I am less con-
cerned with parsing the distinction between everyday (or real) and mythical (or
constructed) landscapes than I am with the way that mythical symbols create
significance for a place and, in particular, for a city and its surrounding territory
through their connection to the topography. To put it another way, I am inter-
ested in the way that mythical landscapes merge and overlap with everyday
landscapes and, in this way, affiliate their “potent symbolic traits” with specific
places. Throughout this book, I will continually attempt to understand how
the myths in Pindar’s epinician odes reinforce, alter, and construct meaning
for particular places, and—relatedly—for individual communities. My exami-
nation of Pindar’s odes for Sicilian victors will demonstrate that the poet links
mythical figures representative of specific cultural values to features of the
local landscape, thereby infusing landscapes with meaning and, at the same
time, attaching them to particular civic and political ideologies and values.
Previous Studies of Place in Epinician Poetry

In the epinician poetry of Pindar and Bacchylides, references to place and
landscape appear as regular features of the genre, but also, as I will argue, with
68. See, for instance, Alcock 2002, Purves 2010, Skempis and Ziogas 2013, Gilhuly and
Worman 2014, Berman 2015, Hawes 2017.
69. Buxton 1994, Buxton 2009.
70. Buxton 1994: 113. Buxton 1994: 81, in his discussion of the “real-life” aspect of landscape,
says, “Human beings create an image of their surroundings through their interaction with
them, so that perception of a landscape is inevitably mediated by cultural factors.” What
Buxton identifies as perception of a landscape thus contributes to what Feld and Basso 1996
refer to as a “sense of place.”
highly loaded symbolic significance. Bruno Currie has identified five types
of “spatial location” in epinician odes: “the site of the games, the athlete’s
hometown, the place of the ode’s performance, the setting(s) of the mythical
narrative, and the poet’s hometown.”71 Two of these, the site of the games and
the athlete’s hometown, appear as standard elements of the victory announce-
ment both at the Panhellenic festival and in epinician poetry.72 Part of the work
of an epinician ode was to articulate the relationship between the Panhellenic
center, where a victor won his contest, and the victor’s hometown, which he
honored through his achievement. Just as the poet’s references to the victor’s
hometown and the site of the games designate specific places, so too does his
reference to the site of the first performance, even if this can be at times diffi-
cult for us to determine. Since in most cases epinician poems were likely first
performed at either the site of the victory or in the victor’s hometown, the site
of the ode’s first performance probably overlapped with one of the other two
places mentioned in the ode.73 Additionally, epinician poems include allusions
to mythical places and landscapes. Such mythical places can at times transport
the audience far away from the present site of performance,74 and can at others
times articulate the mythical significance of a place nearby or, in some cases,
even visible to an audience. Finally, the poet at times draws attention to his
hometown.75
Given the number of references to different “spatial locations” that may
appear in an epinician ode, it is not surprising that the topics of place and
landscape in Pindar’s epinician odes have attracted some scholarly attention
in the past few decades. Several scholars have undertaken studies of Pindar’s
descriptions of landscape in the epinician odes. In 1967, William Mullen
discussed the wide range of geographical locations that Pindar includes in
71. Currie 2012: 286.

72. Schadewaldt 1928: 269, 293–94. Hamilton excludes the name of the event, homeland,
and father from his definition of the “Naming Complex,” but acknowledges that they fre-
quently appear with the naming of the victor and the victory (1974: 15).
73. This information comes largely from internal evidence in the odes themselves. On the
first performance of an epinician ode in either the victor’s hometown or at the site of the
victory, see Slater 1984, Gelzer 1985, Herington 1985: 28–29, Gentili 1988: 116–17. Eckerman
2012 presents a strong argument against the performance of epinician poetry at Panhellenic
sanctuaries.
74. Felson 1999 shows that epinician poetry can “vicariously transport” an audience from
one location to another using deictic linguistic markers.
75. Hubbard 1992.
Introduction 23
his odes by tracing the development of his treatment of landscapes through

different stages of his poetic career.76 Mullen’s relatively brief study considers
Pindar’s description of individual places in odes for Thebes and Aegina, which
are closer to Pindar’s own home, and in odes for places farther away such as
Sicily, North Africa, and Rhodes. Mullen seeks to identify traces of the poet’s
intentions and to interpret Pindar’s description of places in light of his histor-
ical travels (e.g., to Sicily), and compares Pindar’s poetry to the works of Dante
and Valéry.
In the 1970s, Winfred Elliger published a full-length study of landscape in an-
cient Greek poetry, Die Darstellung der Landscaft in der Griechischen Dichtung [The
Representation of Landscape in Greek Poetry]. His project dedicates only a short sec-
tion to the poetry of Pindar and Bacchylides but nonetheless contains several no-
table insights. For instance, he observes that Pindar often describes the landscape
in terms related to the human body and that, for Pindar, the sacred character of
the landscape is more important than portraying a sensory impression of it.77 He
also notes that in Pindar’s odes cities are often closely associated with goddesses
and nymphs. For instance, in the opening of Pythian 12 the city, Akragas, and
the nymph, Akragas, are evoked almost simultaneously.78 Finally, he contrasts
Pindar’s interest in the theological aspects of the landscape with Bacchylides’
comparative disinterest in landscape descriptions. Elliger’s emphasis on the im-
portance of a theological aspect of the landscape in Pindar thus gestures toward
the close relationship between myth and landscape. The analysis of this relation-
ship will be a primary focus of the present study.
About a decade after Elliger, Deborah Steiner devoted a chapter of her mon-
ograph on metaphor in Pindar to landscape. Rather than focusing on depictions
of particular places, her discussion of landscape makes a broad survey of the
theme in Pindar’s odes. She argues that Pindar’s landscapes “lack internal
coherence, and are subject to rapid modifications in accordance with the char-
acter and fortunes of those who populate them. They assume features which
serve only as symbols of human aspirations, limitations and achievements.”79
For Steiner, Pindar transforms even landscapes that would have been recog-
nizable and familiar to his audiences into “artificial creations.”80
76. Mullen 1967.

77. Elliger 1975: 205–7.
78. Elliger 1975: 204–5.
79. Steiner 1986: 88.
80. Steiner 1986: 89.
More recently, Christopher Eckerman has challenged Steiner’s claim that

Pindar’s landscapes are not accurate representations of familiar places.81 His
investigation of Pindar’s depictions of place and space in the four Panhellenic
sanctuaries suggests, instead, that “Pindar’s representations of place and
space accurately depict culturally embedded historical places.”82 Unlike
Mullen, Elliger, and Steiner, Eckerman pays closer attention to the historical
and political contexts in which Pindar and Bacchylides wrote. Eckerman has
made valuable contributions to our understanding of Pindar’s descriptions of
the four Panhellenic sites,83 but because his focus is primarily on Panhellenic
landscapes, it does less to improve our understanding of Pindar’s descriptions
of the place and landscape of the victor’s hometown.
Bruno Currie has examined epinician space from a narratological per-
spective.84 Currie undertakes a survey of space in epinician poetry rather
than a close analysis of specific passages,85 and he suggests, for instance, that
“inconsistencies in the narrator’s spatial position,” which represent the mo-
bility of the narrator, correspond to the mobile afterlife of the song as it travels
across the Greek world.86 He also observes that spatial details are not included
unnecessarily in mythical narratives but instead have specific purposes,
often interacting with athletic and performance narratives.87 Currie’s anal-
ysis outlines the kinds of space that commonly appear in epinician odes and
provides a schematic overview for the ways that spaces can interact within
an ode.
Keeping in mind the different types of place that Currie delineates, I will,
as Eckerman did, consider how Pindar uses particular descriptions of sites to
connect the Panhellenic site to the victor’s hometown. However, my primary
focus will be on local Sicilian landscapes and on the victor’s home city rather
than on the layout of the Panhellenic sites. The places Pindar evokes often
contain, as Elliger observed, religious or mythological significance, and I will
81. Eckerman 2007.

82. Eckerman 2007: 261.
83. Eckerman 2013, Eckerman 2014.
84. Currie 2012.
85. He does include two brief but slightly more extended discussions of Pythian 1 and
Olympian 1 at the end of his study (Currie 2012: 297–303).
86. Currie 2012: 290. Cf. Athanasaki 2004 on shifting spatial deixis in epinician poetry.
87. Currie 2012: 294.
Introduction 25
thus focus especially on the relationship between myth and landscape in these
odes. By taking a closer look at Pindar’s Sicilian odes in their historical and
cultural contexts, this study demonstrates that Pindar’s references to myths
embedded in the physical landscape articulate and reinforce particular values
and ideologies in these cities.
Identity in Pindar’s Sicilian Odes

The values and ideologies shaped in Pindar’s Sicilian odes are closely related to
identity in these cities. Throughout its readings, this book argues that Pindar
sets mythical narratives in local places to reinforce, shape, and transform
“identity” in a very broad sense. At times, I focus on civic identity, defined as
a set of characteristics that set one group of citizens apart from those who do
not belong to the group (chapters 1, 3, 4, and 5).88 Civic identity can also include
other types of identity, such as ethnic identity, when citizens are understood
to be, or represented as, sharing an ethnicity. When discussing ethnic identity
in Pindar’s Sicilian odes, I draw upon the work of Jonathan Hall and Robert
Parker, which emphasizes the importance of a belief in shared descent among
the members of an ethnic group.89 For example, I will argue that in Pythian 1,
Pindar both incorporates an ethnic Dorian myth into the celebration of Hieron’s
victory and links the myth of Typho’s imprisonment to the local landscape. The
celebration of the Aitnaians as Dorians (P. 1.60–66) offers the citizens a sense
of civic identity that is at once specific to the place in which they live (because
Pindar ties the Dorian Aitnaians to the local River Amenas, P. 1.67) and that is
also connected to a larger regional network of Dorians (through the myth). In
this case, ethnic identity is one facet of civic identity in Aitna.
At the same time, the connection Pindar draws between myth and land-
scape elsewhere is specifically adapted in order to shape the identity or public
image of a ruler and his family (chapters 2, 3, and 4). Thomas Hubbard has
argued that Pindar’s epinician poetry was usually commissioned for aristocrats
or for entire cities that needed to rehabilitate their reputations within the
Panhellenic world.90 Yet Hubbard largely limits his focus to these effects on
a Panhellenic scale, suggesting that the fact that Pindar’s odes “functioned
as pan-Hellenic self-advertisement for a city also explains the interest of the
88. For a similar definition of civic identity, see Thatcher 2012: 75. Cf. Lape 2010.
89. Hall 1997: 25, Parker 1998: 21. On Dorian ethnic identity, see also Malkin 1994: 15–45.
90. Hubbard 2001.
Sicilian tyrants in commissioning so many exemplars of the genre.”91 A major

concern of the Sicilian tyrants in commissioning epinician poetry was, surely,
as Hubbard suggests, to increase their fame and reputation on a Panhellenic
scale. Nonetheless, these rulers must also have had local audiences in mind
when choosing this form of commemoration, particularly since the odes would
have been performed in Sicily, whether in the first or in later performances.
Because local places, landscapes, cults, and myths held special relevance for
local audiences, the ways that Pindar’s Sicilian odes may have shaped local
perceptions of the Sicilian tyrants they celebrated will be a chief concern in
this study. In particular, examinations of ways that Pindar characterizes the
roles of the Deinomenids and Emmenids by linking their families to local and
regional myths will suggest these representations were relevant and directed
at audiences in Sicily. On the other hand, the contrasting manner in which
Pindar represents the two families of tyrants will underscore both the range of
possibilities available to the poet and some underlying ideological differences
between the two tyrant families.
Regardless of the type of identity, careful consideration of performance
scenarios and audiences of individual odes will help to break down the poten-
tial effects of connecting Panhellenic myths to local Sicilian places for local, re-
gional, and Panhellenic audiences. More generally, the performance of Greek
choral poetry played an important role in the reinforcement and even the
formation of ideologies and identities.92 When a group of citizens performed
an epinician ode, singing and dancing together for an audience, this com-
munal activity had the power to negotiate and define group identity.93 In this
91. Hubbard 2001: 394. In the transcript of the discussion following the delivery of his paper,
Hubbard does acknowledge that the odes would also have supported the ideological claims
of the tyrant before a local audience, though he does not develop this point (2001: 398).
92. On the community-building function of choral poetry, see Calame 1997, Stehle 1997,
Rutherford 2001: 86. For religious contexts, see more recently, Kurke 2005; Kurke 2007;
Kowalzig 2007; Kowalzig 2008. Although there is some evidence for solo first performances
of epinician poetry, most scholars (myself included) now agree that in the first performance,
epinician poetry was probably chorally performed. On the debate over solo vs. choral first
performance of epinician poetry, see Lefkowitz 1991, Heath and Lefkowitz 1991, for the solo
hypothesis. For arguments that epinician poetry was regularly performed chorally in first
performances, see Carey 1991, K. Morgan 1993, D’Alessio 1994. Briand 2014: xvii–xix and
Eckerman 2014: 194–95, however, suggest that epinician performance may have included both
solo and choral singers during the same performance. On reperformance of epinician poetry,
see Currie 2004, Hubbard 2004, Carey 2007, Morrison 2007, Morrison 2011, Morrison 2012.
93. See Phillips 2016: 42–43 for the importance of the status of choral performers of
epinician poetry. He observes that “part of the chorus’ legitimacy derives from an awareness
Introduction 27
way, epinician poetry influenced identity from an internal perspective, and

we can imagine that a group of citizens singing and dancing as they made
statements about their own identity in ritual performance would have been an
especially powerful expression of civic identity. This impact was not limited to
local performances, however, and in reperformances abroad or for noncitizen
audience members, this poetry likewise had the potential to shape an iden-
tity and a reputation for the city and its citizens across the Panhellenic world,
which was one of the main reasons why elite families like the Deinomenids
and the Emmenids were so interested in commissioning epinician poetry to
commemorate their achievements.94
Outline of Chapters
Each of the following chapters of the book studies the relationship between
myth and local place within the context of an individual city or a set of cities
with similar interests. In each case, the readings will argue that Pindar grafts
Panhellenic or regional myth onto the local landscape to define and shape the
reputation of a community and/or its ruler.
Chapter 1 focuses on the cult and mythical narratives of Arethusa and the
related goddess, Artemis Alpheioa. I begin with a survey of the historical and
material evidence for Arethusa in sixth-and fifth-century Syracuse. As a civic
symbol for the polis, Arethusa endures despite political volatility in the period.
Pindar, I argue, recognizes the importance of Arethusa as a civic symbol and
evokes the relationship between Arethusa and Alpheos in nearly every poem
for Syracuse, signaling stability and continuity. Furthermore, I propose that
links between the cults in Syracuse and related worship of Artemis Alpheioa
in the Peloponnese suggest that Pindar’s references to the cult highlight a
mythic tradition shared by the Peloponnesians and Syracusans.
on the part of the audience that a poem’s didactic features such as gnomai and mythical
exempla would have already been absorbed by the performers before the performance itself”
(43). I would add that there is also an implicit endorsement by the chorus after they have
absorbed this material, and that this would have made their expressions of civic identity
extremely powerful when performed before a community of citizens. On choral identity in
tragedy, see Gould 1996, Goldhill 1996, Swift 2010.
94. Hubbard 2001. For a more recent analysis of the formation of reputation from an out-
sider perspective, see Kate Gilhuly’s subtle discussion of Athens’ construction of Corinth as a
place of prostitution (2014). Though Gilhuly’s chapter does not focus on the kind of identity
formation that takes place in epinician poetry, her readings nonetheless demonstrate the
way that a place can be constructed from an outside perspective in Greek literature.
In c hapter 2, I concentrate on representations of Demeter and Persephone

in the Syracusan odes. The goddesses are important for two reasons. First,
the Deinomenids were ancestral priests of Demeter and Persephone in
Sicily and the goddesses therefore could easily be linked to the rule of this
family of tyrants. On the other hand, worship of the two goddesses was wide-
spread throughout Sicily. This chapter argues that references to Demeter and
Persephone in epinician poetry for Hieron and members of his circle promote
and celebrate Syracusan and Deinomenid expansion throughout the island of
Sicily by aligning pan-Sicilian and Deinomenid interests and rooting them in
the island’s landscape.
The third chapter proposes that Pythian 1 uses two myths to map out and
reinforce a sense of civic identity for the newly founded city of Aitna. Building
upon other work that shows that Typho’s prison celebrates Hieron’s recent
military and political victories, I argue this myth creates a significant place for
Aitna within a Panhellenic mythical context. According to Hesiod, Typho is
the final foe Zeus faces before becoming uncontested king of the Olympians
(Theog. 821–80). Typho’s placement under Aitna thus transforms the land-
scape into an important site for stability of the cosmic order and elevates
the new city to a place of Panhellenic significance. Second, I demonstrate
that the myth of the Dorian migration supplies a myth of continuity for the
new citizens of Aitna. While these citizens originate from different cities—
half from Syracuse, half from the Peloponnese, according to Diodorus—the
myth of the Dorian migration offers a shared narrative that unites them as
an ethnic group. Taken together, these two myths offer Aitna both a sense of
place within a wider Greek narrative and a celebration of their ethnic heritage
through their performances in Aitna, in Sicily more broadly, and throughout
the Greek world.
Chapter 4 argues that Pindar activates the River Akragas as a civic symbol
in three of his five odes for victors from Akragas. Along with Syracuse, Akragas
was one of the two most powerful Sicilian cities in the fifth century, and the in-
fluential Emmenid rulers celebrated their athletic successes by commissioning
four odes by Pindar. A fifth ode for Akragas is unique as the only example of an
ode in celebration of a victory in a musical competition that survives from clas-
sical Greece. A preliminary survey of local references in these odes suggests
that the River Akragas became a recurring symbol that echoed the crab on
Akragantine coinage of the period. Already in the earliest of the Akragantine
odes, Pythian 12, the poet represents Akragas as a morphing figure that shifts
from city to nymph to river, emphasizing the equivalency drawn between the
three and the importance of the river as a symbol of civic identity. Later, in
Olympians 2 and 3 (in celebration of Theron’s chariot victory of 476), Pindar
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Myth, Locality, and Identity in Pindar's

Sicilian Odes Virginia Lewis

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List of Editionsand Abbreviations xvii

Demeter and Persephone in the Sicilian Mythic Tradition 79

ReadingArethusa and PersephoneTogether129

The Foundation of Aitna and the Cult of Zeus Aitnaios 142

Akragas Under Theron's Rule 180

5. Conclusions and Test Cases: Ergoteles of Himera and Psaumis of

The Immigrant Victor: Becoming Himeraian in Olympian 12 227

The Native Victor: Psaumis as Local Benefactor in

0.1 Map of Sicily and Southern Italy. xvi

Drachmann, A. B. 1903–​1927. Scholia vetera in Pindari carmina. 3 vols.

Although influenced by William Race’s Loeb editions, all translations of

BCH 1877–​. Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique. Paris: Thorin

LIMC 1981–​2009. Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae.

Pindar’s epinician odes are abbreviated as follows:

In a review of Adolf Köhnken’s monograph Die Funktion des Mythos bei

After all, we know Pindar’s ‘τέθμιον’ [“custom”]—​when in Aegina, tell

1. Willcock 1974: 192.

3. Wilamowitz 1922 is one of the most influential examples.

11. Smith 1988, Jameson 1981.

Epinician Poetry and Local Contexts

making conspicuous dedications.16 After the Deinomenids took control of

16. Phillip 1994.

represented in Thucydides between Nicias and Alcibiades over whether or not

26. Nicholson 2015: 79–​98.

Other Local Contexts for Pindaric Epinician Poetry

28. Hdt. 7.156, Thuc. 6.4.2.

ἔπεσε δ’ οὐ Χαρίτων ἑκάς

τὰ δὲ καὶ ἀνδράσιν ἐμπρέπει.

λύρᾳ τε καὶ φθέγματι μαλθακῷ,

Pindar’s brief celebration of the Aiakidai here is instructive. Even without

35. Diod. 4.17.4–​4.18.5, 4.26.2–​4.27.5.

dynasty experienced moments of conflict in earlier periods, possibly including

46. B. Mitchell 2002: 87–​93.

Myth and Locality in Pindar’s Odes

Space, Place, and Landscape

A central issue that has occupied geographers, anthropologists, and

of landscape, and cultural geographers, including Denis Cosgrove, Stephen

Classics and the Study of Myth and Place

Previous Studies of Place in Epinician Poetry

71. Currie 2012: 286.

his odes by tracing the development of his treatment of landscapes through

76. Mullen 1967.

More recently, Christopher Eckerman has challenged Steiner’s claim that

81. Eckerman 2007.

Identity in Pindar’s Sicilian Odes

Sicilian tyrants in commissioning so many exemplars of the genre.”91 A major

way, epinician poetry influenced identity from an internal perspective, and

Drachmann, A. B. 1903–1927. Scholia vetera in Pindari carmina. 3 vols.

BCH 1877–. Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique. Paris: Thorin

LIMC 1981–2009. Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae.

After all, we know Pindar’s ‘τέθμιον’ [“custom”]—when in Aegina, tell

26. Nicholson 2015: 79–98.

35. Diod. 4.17.4–4.18.5, 4.26.2–4.27.5.

46. B. Mitchell 2002: 87–93.

In c hapter 2, I concentrate on representations of Demeter and Persephone