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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.
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.
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
List of Figures xi
Acknowledgments xiii
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
Bibliography
Index Locorum 2 73
Subject Index 2 79
Figures
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:
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
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
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.
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rubber warp, and the shorter the stretch produced.
Aside from the fineness and body of the goods, the element of
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different sizes of yarns used. Weft, binder and gut all play their part
in the governing of the stretch, as also does the number of picks put
in the goods. Any excess of weight on the binder warp also
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wrongly adjusted, may result in the difference between the profit and
loss.
In making the selvage of these goods a hard steel wire is used,
around which the filling passes at each pick. This wire, shown at W
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obtainable. Sharpened to a needle point at one end, with a loop
turned at the other end, it is fastened at the back of the loom by a
cord which has an adjustable slip knot, so as to be able easily and
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wear of the wire, which is always being crowded against the dent by
the nipping action of the filling as it draws against the wire in the
process of weaving, and the repeated beat at the same place in the
dent at the weaving line. In any event, after a short time the dents in
the reed will be cut so that it becomes necessary to frequently
replace them with new ones, and for this reason it should be so
arranged that they can be easily and quickly removed from and
replaced in the reeds.
Cable Web
The most popular web now made up into men’s garters is what is
known as the cable web, shown at Fig. 9. With the pronounced
prominence of the two-dent rib, which gives it a character peculiarly
different from the plain web, it is well adapted to this class of goods.
Simple in appearance, it nevertheless requires special care to
manufacture, particularly when we remember that it is not unusual to
be required to make a finished stretch of not less than 100 per cent.
The harness draft and weave are shown at Fig. 9A. The construction
is as follows: Binder, 34 ends 80/2; Gut, 24 ends 20/2; Rubber, 18
ends 28s; Reed, 20 dent; Picks, 80 per inch; Stretch, 100 per cent.
The filling, floating across the wide spaces under which lie the
rubber threads in pairs, is very easily thrown out of place, the result
of which may be an unsightly seersucker appearance, as shown in
Fig. 10, which the process of finishing aggravates rather than
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Trouble may manifest itself by the filling over the ribs opening up
and allowing the gut threads to prick through. To prevent this
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Chapter IV.
Elaboration of Honeycomb Effects by Parti-Dyed and Printed Fillings
—Bandage and Surgical Webs Made with Plain and Covered
Rubber—Frill Web Woven on Cam Looms—Double Cloths—
Importance of Securing Balance Between Back and Face of Goods
Among the group of single cloth webs confined to the capacity of
plain looms, is what is commonly known as the honeycomb, shown
at Fig. 1 and Fig. 1A. This is generally made with silk, wood silk, or
schappe filling. The smooth filling floating over two cords gives the
web a smooth feel, there being no rib effect noticeable whatever,
making it well adapted for a fine trade. The warp lines are almost
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web and the cable. The honeycomb is thus confined to plain solid
colors or such elaboration as can be obtained from the filling.
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more colors. Such yarns when woven in the goods produce
alternating effects at regular distances in different colors, such
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the goods. The effects which can be produced are quite varied. The
simplest way of accomplishing this is to use the regular 54-inch
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and dyeing the immersed part in the usual manner.
Where cotton is used for the filling and more elaborate effects are
desired, long reeled skeins are used, sometimes 108 or 216 inches,
which have been reeled on specially designed collapsible reels.
Such skeins are not practicable to handle in the dye house in the
manner already described. Sections of such skeins are wrapped in
heavy waterproof paper and tied tightly, so that the dye liquor cannot
penetrate that portion, and then the whole is put in the liquor, when
the exposed part only will be dyed.
Then again sometimes wood clamps are used, like that shown at
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carefully folded. The two halves are clamped together tightly in such
a manner that the dye cannot penetrate the clamped part of the
skein while the part left outside the clamp is dyed when the whole is
immersed in the dye liquor.
Printed Filling
Another form of elaboration used in such goods is printing the
skein yarn used for the filling. This is done by using a machine
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Different sets of rolls are used so as to get fine and coarse effects
and various colors are used in printing.
Where plaid or printed fillings are used for the elaboration of webs
of the honeycomb type, it is not unusual to introduce a couple of
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to break up the flatness of the weave. This opens up the opportunity
of using lines of a different color in the warp which properly arranged
will produce a plaid-like effect.
Fig. 1.—Honeycomb
Bandage Webs
There is quite a large demand for surgical and bandage webs, Fig.
3, in widths ranging from 2 to 4 inches. These webs are used for
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goods are similar in construction to a regular lisle web, except that
the gut is omitted in order to get the easiest possible movement.
Fig. 3.—Bandage Webs; Fabric at Left Made with Plain Rubber; Web at Right
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The yarn is generally the same quality and size for both warp and
filling, and is usually a soft spun 2-20s. The side of rubber is
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as we have already said a soft and sluggish stretch, prevents the
use of a heavy rubber thread, the result being that when the
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fine rubber is of short duration.
This condition, and the open weave necessary to get the easy
stretch, have made it expedient to use in many of these goods
strands of rubber which have been covered with cotton threads
before weaving. This process not only prolongs the life of the web,
but allows for even more open weaving, the use of different weaves
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In order to get the soft easy stretch which is the most desirable
characteristic of a bandage web, and yet have the necessary width,
it is not unusual to introduce a seersucker effect, as shown in Fig. 4,
in sections of the web so as to reduce the strong elasticity of the
whole. In an ordinary cotton cloth the seersucker or crinkle effect is
usually produced by the use of a separate warp of heavier yarn than
the rest of the fabric, which warp must be weighted differently and
often a different weave is employed to emphasize the contrast in the
puckered seersucker effect.
In the elastic web all this special preparation is unnecessary.
Wherever the seersucker stripe is desired, strands of rubber are left
out which of course takes away from these portions that element
which contracts the other part of the web, and a seersucker effect is
the result. Such stripes are often used for the ornamentation of some
webs by having narrow sections introduced for border effects, or
running down the center, and in fact they may be employed in a
variety of ways, inasmuch as they lend themselves effectively to
different forms of coloring, in relief to the main fabric.
Fig. 6A.—Harness Draft and Weave for Fig. 6, Simplest Form of Double Cloth