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Table of Contents:
Pindar's works
The poems on which Pindar's fame chiefly rests are the ἐπινίκια, or Songs of Victory, composed
in celebration of successes gained at the great national games. It
is true that these poems constituted only one phase of his work,
but they are the most important, the most characteristic, of all.
Else they had not alone survived entire. They were more popular than
the others, says Eustathios, because they addressed themselves more
to human interests, the myths were fewer, and the obscurity was
less. But these reasons, which are strange to us now, do not account
for the survival. That which embodies the truest, inliest life of a
people comes down, the rest perishes and passes over into new forms.
Antique epos, antique tragedy, the Old Attic comedy,
the ἐπινίκια of Pindar —
for these there is no Avatar, and they live on; and yet it would not
be doing justice to the rare genius of Pindar to judge him by the
ἐπινίκια alone, and
fortunately the fragments of the other poems that remain are long
enough to justify a characteristic, or at all events long enough to
vindicate his versatility. The Pindar of θρῆνος, ὑπόρχημα, σκολιόν, is the Pindar of the
ἐπινίκια, but now his mood is
sweeter, tenderer, now brighter and more sportive, than in the
ἐπινίκια.
But a rapid
enumeration must suffice here. The Pindaric fragments are arranged
under the following heads:
- 1. Ὕμνοι, the
fundamental notion of which is praise (κλέος). The fragment of the ὕμνος that called forth the
counsel of Korinna suggests a κλέος in every line.
- 2. Παιᾶνες. The Doric
name (Παιάν, Παιών）
shows a Doric origin, and the rhythms were Dorian (τεταγμένη καὶ σώφρων Μοῦσα,
says Plutarch). The theme is either petition or
thanksgiving. Pindar's paeans are mainly on Apollo, to whom,
with his sister Artemis, the paean originally was
exclusively addressed. The paean seldom had orchestic
accompaniment, and so forms a contrast to
- 3. Ὑπορχήματα, in which
the dancing is prominent, and in which there is a close
correlation between the theme and the orchestic movement.
The greatest master of this mimetic composition was
Simonides of Keos, αὐτὸς αὑτοῦ
κράτιστος. The hyporchemata were more secular
than the paean, and represented the exuberant joy of the
festival. Pindar composed a hyporchema in honor of Hieron,
of which we have fragments; and famous is the passage also
from the hyporchemata touching the eclipse of the sun.
- 4. Of προσόδια, or
processional songs with flute accompaniment, Pindar composed
two books, the most considerable fragment of which was
prepared for a πομπή to
Delos, the others for a πομπή to Delphi.
- 5. Παρθένια, with flute
accompaniment in the Dorian mood for choruses of virgins in
honor of gods, as Apollo or Pan, in the fragments of Pindar;
or of men, as Hieron (P.
2.19).
- 6. ᾿Ἐγκώμια are
laudatory poems in the widest sense. In a narrower sense
they are songs sung at the Dorian κῶμος in honor of distinguished men, and
evidently it would often be difficult to tell an ἐπινίκιον from an ἐγκωμιον.
- 7. Παροίνια, or
“drinking-songs,” of which the σκόλια, or rather σκολιά,1
were sung by individuals at banquets. The name is puzzling,
and has been variously explained in ancient and in modern
times; the “obliquity” of the σκολιόν being referred now to
the zigzag way in which the song was passed on from singer
to singer, now to the character of the rhythm. Engelbrecht,
the most recent investigator, maintains that it was a
generic name for the lighter Aiolian (Terpandrian)
composition in contradistinction to the gravity of the epic.
As developed in literature the skolia were brief, pithy songs, almost
epigrammatic. The themes were love, wine, the philosophy of
life, the stirring scenes of history. Clement of Alexandreia
compares them oddly, but not ineffectively, with the psalms.
The most famous of all the Greek σκολιά is that of Kallistratos in honor of
Harmodios and Aristogeiton, the slayers of Hipparchos
(ἐν μύρτου κλαδὶ τὸ Ξίφος
φορήσω). Böckh thinks that Pindar
developed the σκολιόν and
put it into a choral form, the chorus dancing while the
singer was singing. All which is much disputed.2
The fragments that we have are dactylo-epitrite. One of them
is referred to in the introduction to O. 13.
- 8. The dithyramb (διθύραμβος) — a half-dozen etymologies
might be given, each absurder than the other — is
a hymn to Iakchos (Bakchos), the mystic god, whose more
mundane side is expressed by the name Dionysos. It is a
fragment of one of Pindar's dithyrambs that preserves to us
the memorable encomium of Athens: “
ὠ ταὶ λιπαραὶ καὶ ἰοστέφανοι καὶ ἀοίδιμοι,
Ἑλλάδος ἔρεισμα, κλειναὶ Ἀθᾶναι, δαιμόνιον
πτολίεθρον.
”
- 9. Yet one more department must be mentioned —
one in which Pindar attained the highest excellence.
Simonides, his rival, touched tenderer chords in the
θρῆνος, or
“lament,” and the fragment that tells of
Danaë's lullaby to Perseus, the noble tribute to
those who died at Thermopylai, are among the most precious
remains of Greek poetry. But Pindar's θρῆνοι struck a higher key, and at the sound
of his music the gates of the world beyond roll back. The
poet becomes a hierophant.
