Read complete books and articles on: Pindar

Pindar - pĭnˈdər, 518?–c.438 b.c., Greek poet, generally regarded as the greatest Greek lyric poet. A Boeotian of noble birth, he lived principally at Thebes. He traveled widely, staying for some time at Athens and in Sicily at the court of Hiero I at Syracuse and also at Acragas (modern Agrigento). His chief medium was the choral lyric, and he set the standard for the triumphal ode or epinicion. Of his complete works 45 odes survive; these make one of the greatest collections of poems by a single author in Greek. His fragments are exceptionally numerous and some of them widely famous. The epinicia celebrate victories in athletic games: there are 14 Olympian odes, 12 Pythian odes, 11 Nemean odes, and 8 Isthmian odes. Each was written to be sung in a procession for the victor, usually on his return to his home city. The outstanding feature of each ode is its narrative myth, which is always connected with the winner. The myth makes appropriate the elevated moral tone and religious flavor characteristic of Pindar's poems. His style loses a great deal in translation. It has a high-flown diction and an intricate word order, dependent partly upon the complexity of his metrical requirements. Pindar wrote on commissions, but he was quite independent of any meretriciousness, because of his lofty conception of the poet's vocation.

The term Pindaric ode refers to a verse form used primarily in England in the 17th and 18th cent. The form, based on a somewhat faulty understanding of the metrical pattern used by Pindar, originated with Abraham Cowley in his Pindarique Odes (1656) and was later used by John Dryden, among others. It is characterized by irregularity in the rhyme scheme, length of the stanzas, and number of stresses in a line.

See his works (tr. by L. R. Farnell, 1930–32); his odes (tr. by R. Lattimore, 1976); studies by F. T. Nisetich (1980) and K. Crotty (1982).

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12 of the Best Books and Articles on: Pindar

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Pindar, a Poet of Eternal Ideas (1936) » Read Now
by David M. Robinson. 124 pgs.

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2.

First-Person Fictions: Pindar's Poetic "I" » Read Now
by Mary R. Lefkowitz. 226 pgs.

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This collection of essays, written over a period of almost thirty years, deals with one problem: who is the `I' in the odes of the most celebrated ancient Greek poet, Pindar? Since antiquity, the complex and allusive language of the first-person statements has provoked many different answers...
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This collection of essays, written over a period of almost thirty years, deals with one problem: who is the `I' in the odes of the most celebrated ancient Greek poet, Pindar? Since antiquity, the complex and allusive language of the first-person statements has provoked many different answers. Professor Lefkowitz describes the function and nature of Pindar's `I'-statements and proposes a controversial solution that would cause some histories of Greek literature to be rewritten. Rather than accept the view that the identity of the speaker could be subject to instant and unannounced change, she proposes that the voice of the victory odes is the poet himself, in his most professional persona. Professor Lefkowitz also refutes the traditional belief that the odes were sung by a chorus. She shows that in most, if not all cases, they were sung as solos and that Pindar was continuing the tradition established by the Homeric bards.
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3.

Pindar's Pythian Odes: Essays in Interpretation » Read Now
by R. W. B. Burton. 202 pgs.

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4.

Pindar and the Renaissance Hymn-Ode, 1450-1700 » Read Now
by Stella P. Revard. 386 pgs.

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5.

The Beginnings of European Theorizing: Reflexivity in the Archaic Age, Vol. 2 (Chap. 5 "Pindar and the Age of Literary Consciousness") » Read Now
by Barry Sandywell. 430 pgs.

Collections: Philosophy, Entire Library

In Volume One Barry Sandywell outlined and defended a central place for reflexivity in the human sciences. In this second equally outstanding volume, he reconstructs the origins of "European" reflection.
6.

The Varieties of Enchantment: Early Greek Views of the Nature and Function of Poetry (Chap. Three "The Technique of Piety: Pindar") » Read Now
by George B. Walsh. 170 pgs.

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7.

Speaking Volumes: Orality and Literacy in the Greek and Roman World (Chap. Six "Poetic Authority and Oral Tradition in Hesiod and Pindar") » Read Now
by Janet Watson. 235 pgs.

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8.

The Thinker as Artist: From Homer to Plato & Aristotle (Chap. III "Pindar") » Read Now
by George Anastaplo. 410 pgs.

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In an attempt to subject representative texts of a dozen ancient authors to a more or less Socratic inquiry, the noted scholar George Anastaplo suggests in The Thinker as Artist how one might usefully read as well as enjoy such texts, which illustrate the thinking done by the greatest artists and...
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In an attempt to subject representative texts of a dozen ancient authors to a more or less Socratic inquiry, the noted scholar George Anastaplo suggests in The Thinker as Artist how one might usefully read as well as enjoy such texts, which illustrate the thinking done by the greatest artists and how they "talk" among themselves across the centuries. In doing so, he does not presume to repeat the many fine things said about these and like authors, but rather he discusses what he himself has noticed about them, text by text.
Drawing upon a series of classical authors ranging from Homer and Sappho to Plato and Aristotle, Anastaplo examines issues relating to chance, art, nature, and divinity present in the artful works of philosophers and other thinkers.
As he has done in his earlier work, Anastaplo mines the great texts to help us discover who we are and what we should be. Some of the works used are familiar, others were once better known than they are now. The approach to all of them is freshand provocative, demonstrating the value of such texts in showing the reader what to look for and how to talk about matters that have always engaged thoughtful human beings.
These imaginative yet disciplined discussions of important texts of ancient Greek thought and of Raphael's The School of Athens should appeal to both the specialist and the general reader.
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9.

Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought (Chap. 4 "Pindar's Hymn to Zeus") » Read Now
by Bruno Snell, T. G. Rosenmeyer. 324 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Philosophy, Entire Library

...Early Greek Lyric 42 4 Pindars Hymn to Zeus 71 5 Myth...works of the Greek genius: the epics, Pindars poems, or tragedy. The Olympian gods were...Bacchylides and the...
10.

Apollo and the Nine: A History of the Ode (Chap. 2 "Pindar, Anacreon, and Horace") » Read Now
by Carol Maddison. 430 pgs.

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...1 THE ODE 1 2 PINDAR, ANACREON, AND HORACE 4...seventeenth century, Longinus sublime Pindar was almost its sole patron. Thus the ode...under the influence of Horace, later...
11.

Myth into Art: Poet and Painter in Classical Greece ("Pindar's Victory Odes" begins on p. 77) » Read Now
by H. A. Shapiro. 196 pgs.

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12.

A Bibliography of Pindar, 1513-1966 » Read Now
by Douglas E. Gerber. 160 pgs.

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