Ισθμιονικαι

Front Cover
Harvard University Press, 1997 - Literary Criticism - 446 pages

The preeminent lyric poet of ancient Greece.

Of the Greek lyric poets, Pindar (ca. 518-438 BC) was "by far the greatest for the magnificence of his inspiration" in Quintilian's view; Horace judged him "sure to win Apollo's laurels." The esteem of the ancients may help explain why a good portion of his work was carefully preserved. Most of the Greek lyric poets come down to us only in bits and pieces, but nearly a quarter of Pindar's poems survive complete. William H. Race now brings us, in two volumes, a new edition and translation of the four books of victory odes, along with surviving fragments of Pindar's other poems.

Like Simonides and Bacchylides, Pindar wrote elaborate odes in honor of prize-winning athletes for public performance by singers, dancers, and musicians. His forty-five victory odes celebrate triumphs in athletic contests at the four great Panhellenic festivals: the Olympic, Pythian (at Delphi), Nemean, and Isthmian games. In these complex poems, Pindar commemorates the achievement of athletes and powerful rulers against the backdrop of divine favor, human failure, heroic legend, and the moral ideals of aristocratic Greek society. Readers have long savored them for their rich poetic language and imagery, moral maxims, and vivid portrayals of sacred myths.

Race provides brief introductions to each ode and full explanatory footnotes, offering the reader invaluable guidance to these often difficult poems. His Loeb Pindar also contains a helpfully annotated edition and translation of significant fragments, including hymns, paeans, dithyrambs, maiden songs, and dirges.

About the author (1997)

The Greek poet Pindar, a Boeotian aristocrat who wrote for aristocrats, lived at Thebes, studied at Athens, and stayed in Sicily at the court of Hieron at Syracuse. His epinicians, choral odes in honor of victors at athletic games, survive almost complete and are divided into four groups, depending upon whether they celebrate victory at the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean, or Isthmian games. Scholars surmise that these are representative of his other poetry, such as hymns, processional songs, and dirges, extant in fragments. The 44 surviving odes joyfully praise beautiful, brilliant athletes who are like the gods in their moment of triumph. Bold mythological metaphor, dazzling intricacy of language, and metrical complexity together create sublimity of thought and of style. Pindar was famous in his lifetime and later throughout the Hellenistic world, as is attested by the story that Alexander the Great in 335 B.C. ordered the poet's house spared when his army sacked Thebes. The "Pindaric ode" form used in England in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was based on an incorrect understanding of Pindar's metrical schemes and was characterized by grandiose diction. Pindar is considered to be the greatest of the Greek lyric poets. William H. Race is Paddison Professor of Classics, Emeritus, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Bibliographic information

TitleΙσθμιονικαι
Loeb classical library
Volume 485 of Loeb classical library: Greek authors
Volume 2 of Nemean Odes. Isthmian Odes. Fragments
Volume 2 of Olympian odes: Pythian odes, William H. Race
Online access: Harvard University Loeb Classical Library
Pindar Series
Volume 2 of Pindar, Pindar ed. and transl. by William H. Race
Volume 2 of Pindar, William H. Race
Volume 2 of Pindar, Pindar
AuthorPindar
EditorWilliam H. Race
Translated byWilliam H. Race
Compiled byWilliam H. Race
Editionillustrated, reprint, revised, annotated
PublisherHarvard University Press, 1997
ISBN0674995341, 9780674995345
Length446 pages
Subjects › 

Literary Criticism / Ancient & Classical
Literary Criticism / General
Literary Criticism / Poetry
Poetry / Ancient & Classical
Sports & Recreation / History
Sports & Recreation / Olympics & Paralympics
  
Export CitationBiBTeX EndNote RefMan