Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/110

Rh 100 P I N D A II usual sense of atc^icr is a drinking-song, taken up by one guest after another at a banquet. But Pindar s &amp;lt;r/coja were choral and antistrophic. One was to be sung at Corinth by a chorus of the ifp65ovoi attached to the tenijile of Aphrodite Ourania, when a certain Xenophon offered sacrifice before going to compete at Olympia. Another brilliant fragment, for Theoxenus of Tenedos, has an erotic character. 9. pyvoi, Dirges, to be sung with choral dance and the music of the flute, either at the burial of the dead or in commemorative rituals. Some of the most beautiful fragments belong to this class (129-133). One of the smaller fragments (137) in memory of an Athenian who had been initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries (iSwv Ktlva) has been conjecturally referred to the Qprjvos which Pindar is said to have written (schol. Pyth. vii. 18) for Hippocrates, the grandfather of Pericles. A number of small fragments, which cannot be certainly classified, are usually given as ^ a.8j]a&amp;gt;v et Soic, &quot; of uncertain class.&quot; On comparing the above list with Horace, Carm.iv. 2, it will be seen that he alludes to Xo. 3 (dithyrambos) ; to Xos. 1, 2, and 7 (sen deos rccjcsve canit); and to No. 9 (flebtti spouses juvcnemre raptum Plorat], as well as to the extant Epinicia (sire qiios Elca domum rcducit Palma cslcstcs). The The Epinicia. The ITTIVIKIO. (sc. fJ.er)), or eVivi/aoi (sc. extant fyu/oi), &quot;Odes of Victory,&quot; form a collection of forty- es four odes, traditionally divided into four books, answering to the four great festivals: (1) OAu/xTriovt/cat (sc. vp.voi): fourteen odes for winners of the wild olive-wreath in the Olympian games, held at Olympia in honour of Zeus once in four years ; (2) HvOioviKai. : twelve odes for win ners of the laurel-wreath in the Pythian games held at Delphi in honour of Apollo, once in four years, the third of each Olympiad ; (3) Neyu,eovucai : seven odes for winners of the pine-wreath in the Nemean games, held at Nemea, in honour of Zeus, once in two years, the second and fourth of each Olympiad ; and (4) lo-fyuovucat : eleven odes for winners of the parsley wreath in the Isthmian games, held at the Isthmus of Corinth, in honour of Poseidon, once in two years, the first and third of each Olympiad. The Greek way of citing an ode is by the nomin. plur. followed by the numeral, e.y., &quot; the ninth Olympian &quot; is OAv/iTriovtKat &. The chronological range of the collection (so far as ascertainable) is from 502 B.C. (Pyth. -x.) to 452 B.C. (01. v.). With respect to the native places of the victors, the geographical distribution is as follows : for the mainland of Greece proper, 1 3 odes ; f or .Egina, 1 1 ; for Sicily, 1 5 ; for the Epizephyrian Locrians (southern Italy), 2 ; for Gyrene (Africa), 3. The general characteristics of the odes may be briefly considered under the following heads : (1) language ; (2) treatment of theme; (3) sentiment religious, moral, and political ; (4) relation to contemporary art. Lan- 1. The diction of Pindar is distinct in character from l % e - that of every other Greek poet, being almost everywhere marked by the greatest imaginative boldness. Thus (a) metaphor is used even for the expression of common ideas, or the translation of familiar phrases, as when a cloak is called evStavov &amp;lt;jip/j.aKov avpav (01. ix. 104), u a warm remedy for winds.&quot; (b) Images for the highest excellence are drawn from the furthest limits of travel or navigation, or from the fairest of natural objects ; as when the superlative hospitality of a man who kept open house all the year round is described by saying, &quot;far as to Phasis was his voyage in summer days, and in winter to the shores of Nile &quot; (Ixthm. ii. 42) ; or when Olympia, the &quot; crown &quot; (i&amp;lt;opv(j&amp;gt;a.) or flower (czwros) of festivals, is said to be excellent as water, bright as gold, brilliant as the noonday sun (01. i. ad init.). This trait might be called the Pindaric imagery of the superlative. (r) Poetical inversion of ordinary phrase is frequent ; as, instead of, &quot;he struck fear into the beasts,&quot; &quot;he gave the beasts to fear&quot; (Pyth. v. 56). (d) The efforts of the poet s genius are represented under an extraordinary number of similitudes, borrowed from javelin-throwing, chariot driving, leaping, rowing, sailing, ploughing, building, shooting with the bow, sharpening a knife on a whetstone, mixing wine in a bowl, and many more, (e) Homely images, from common life, are not rare ; as from account- keeping, usury, sending merchandise over sea, the o-KirmA.?; or secret despatch, itc. And we have such homely pro verbs as, &quot;he hath his foot in this shoe,&quot; i.e., stands in this case (01. vi. 8). (/) The natural order of words in a sentence is often boldly deranged, while, on the other hand, the syntax is seldom difficult. (//) Words not found except in Pindar are numerous, many of these being coin- pounds which (like eVapt/A/Jporos, /caTa^fAXopoeiv, Arc.) suited the dactylic metres in their Pindaric combina tions. Horace was right in speaking of Pindar s &quot; nova verba,&quot; though they were not confined to the &quot;bold dithyrambs. &quot; 2. The actual victory which gave occasion for the ode is seldom treated at length or in detail, which, indeed, only exceptional incidents could justify. Pindar s method is to take some heroic myth, or group of myths, connected with the victor s city or family, and, after a brief prelude, to enter on this, returning at the close, as a rule, to the subject of the victor s merit or good fortune, and interspersing the whole with moral comment. Thus the fourth Pythian is for Arcesilas, king of Gyrene, which was said to have been founded by men of Thera, descendants of one of Jason s comrades. Using this link, Pindar introduces his splendid narrative of the Argonauts. Many odes, again, contain shorter mythical episodes, (as the birth of lamus (01. vi), or the vision of Bellerophon (01. xiii),- which form small pictures of masterly finish and beauty. Particular notice is due to the skill with which Pindar often manages the return from a mythical digression to his immediate theme. It is bold and swift, yet is not felt as harshly abrupt justifying his own phrase at one such turn, KO.L nva ol^ov (. cra/tu ftpa^vv (Pyth. iv. 247). It has been thought that, in the parenthesis about the Amazons shields (quibus Mos wide deductus . . . quxrere distuli, Carm. iv. 4, 17), Horace was imitating a Pindaric transition ; if so, he has illustrated his own observation as to the peril of imitating the Theban poet. 3. (a) The religious feeling of Pindar is strongly marked in the odes. &quot; From the gods are all means of human excellence.&quot; He will not believe that the gods, when they dined with Tantalus, ate his son Pelops ; rather Poseidon carried off the youth to Olympus. That is, his reason for rejecting a scandalous story about the gods is purely religious, as distinct from moral ; it shocks his conception of the divine dignity. With regard to oracles, he inculcates precisely such a view as would have been most acceptable to the Delphic priesthood, viz., that the gods do illumine their prophets, but that human wit can foresee nothing which the gods do not choose to reveal. A mystical doctrine of the soul s destiny after death appears in some passages (as 01. ii. 6G &amp;lt;/.). Pindar was familiar with the idea of metempsychosis (cp. ib. 83), but the attempt to trace Pythagoreanism in some phrases (Pyth. ii. 34, iii. 74) appears unsafe. The belief in a fully conscious existence for the soul in a future state, determined by the character of the earthly life, entered into the teaching of the Eleusinian and other mysteries. Comparing the fragment of the p^vo9 (no. 137, Bergk), we may probably regard the mystic or esoteric element in Pindar s theology as due to such a source. (b) The moral sentiment pervading Pindar s odes rests on a constant recognition of the limits imposed by the divine will on human effort, combined with strenuous exhortation that each man should strive to reach the limit allowed in. his own case. Native temperament (&amp;lt;$&amp;gt;vri) is the grand source of all human excellence (aperry), while such excellences as can be acquired by Treat ment of theme. Senti ment of the odes re ligious ; moral :