• Lyric Poet Pindar of Thebes (Πίνδαρος), 522 B.C.
  

   

Pindar is the first Greek poet to reflect on the nature of poetry and on the poet's role. Like other poets of the Archaic Age, he has a profound sense of the vicissitudes of life, but he also articulates a passionate faith in what men, by the grace of the gods, can achieve, most famously expressed in his conclusion to one of his Victory Odes:

Creatures of a day! What is a man?

What is he not? A dream of a shadow

Is our mortal being. But when there comes to men

A gleam of splendor given of heaven,

Then rests on them a light of glory

And blessed are their days. (Pythian 8)

His poetry illustrates the beliefs and values of Archaic Greece at the dawn of the classical period.

Five ancient sources contain all the recorded details of Pindar's life. One of them is a short biography discovered in 1961 on an Egyptian papyrus dating from at least 200 AD (P.Oxy.2438). The other four are collections that weren't finalized until some 1600 years after his death:

• Commentaries on Pindar by Eustathius of Thessalonica;
• Vita Vratislavensis, found in a manuscript at Breslau, author unknown;
• a text by Thomas Magister;
• some meagre writings attributed to the lexicographer Suidas.

Although these sources are based on a much older literary tradition, going as far back as Chamaeleon of Heraclea in the 4th century BC, they are generally viewed with skepticism today: much of the material is clearly fanciful. Scholars both ancient and modern have turned to Pindar's own work – his victory odes in particular – as a source of biographical information: some of the poems touch on historic events and can be accurately dated. However the 1962 publication of Elroy Bundy's ground breaking work Pindarica led to a change in scholarly opinion — the Odes were no longer seen as Pindar's personal thoughts and feelings, but rather as public statements "dedicated to the single purpose of eulogizing men and communities." It has been claimed that biographical interpretations of the poems are due to a "fatal conjunction" of historicism and Romanticism. The pendulum of intellectual fashion however has now swung back part of the way, and cautious use of the poems for biographical purposes is considered acceptable once more.

The biography in this article is an amalgam of old and new approaches – it is naive in its reliance on the odes as biographical sources and it even includes a few clearly fanciful elements from ancient accounts. Some of the problematic aspects of this traditional approach are then illustrated in notes at the end of relevant paragraphs. Moreover, the biography progresses backwards in time as an example of Pindar's unique literary methods – he often demonstrated particular themes by narrating episodes from traditional myths, sometimes in reverse chronological order: an aspect of his risk taking approach.

πολλὰ γὰρ πολλᾷ λέλεκται: νεαρὰ δ᾽ ἐξευ-

ρόντα δόμεν βασάνῳ

ἐς ἔλεγχον, ἅπας κίνδυνος.

Story is vast in range: new ways to find

and test upon the touchstone,

Here danger lies.

The ancient Greeks cherished the memory of Pindar. His house in Thebes became one of the city's landmarks, even after Alexander The Great demolished the city – he left the poet's house spectacularly intact in gratitude for some verses praising his ancestor, king Alexander I of Macedon. Some of Pindar's verses became an attraction in Lindos, Rhodes, where they were inscribed in letters of gold on a temple wall. At Delphi, the priests of Apollo exhibited an iron chair on which the poet used to sit during the festival of the Theoxenia. "Let Pindar the poet go unto the supper of the gods!" they intoned each night while closing the temple doors (he had once been elected to the priesthood there). One of his female relatives claimed that he had dictated to her some verses in honor of Persephone, after he had been dead for several days!

Pindar lived to about eighty years of age. He died around 440 BC while attending a festival at Argos. His ashes were taken back home to Thebes by his musically gifted daughters, Eumetis and Protomache. Nothing is recorded about his wife and son except their names, Megacleia and Daiphantus. One of his last odes (Pythian 8) indicates that he lived near a shrine to the oracle Alcmaeon and that he stored some of his wealth there. In the same ode he says that he had recently received a prophecy from Alcmaeon during a journey to Delphi  — "...he met me and proved the skills of prophecy that all his race inherit"  — but he doesn't reveal what the long - dead prophet said to him nor in what form he appeared. The ode was written to commemorate a victory by an athlete from Aegina.

Note: Pindar doesn't necessarily refer to himself when he uses the first person singular. A large proportion of his 'I' statements seem to be generic, indicating somebody engaged in the role of a singer, i.e., a 'bardic' I. Other 'I' statements articulate values typical of the audience, and some are spoken on behalf of the subject celebrated in the poem. The 'I' that received the prophecy in Pythian 8 therefore might have been the athlete from Aegina, not Pindar. In that case the prophecy probably concerned his victory in the Pythian Games, and the property stored at the shrine was just a votive offering.

His fame as a poet drew Pindar into Greek politics. Athens, the most important city in Greece throughout his poetic career, was a rival of his home city, Thebes, and also of the island state Aegina, whose leading citizens commissioned about a quarter of his Victory Odes. There is no open condemnation of the Athenians in any of his poems but criticism seems to be implied. For example, the victory ode mentioned above (Pythian 8) describes the downfall of the giants Porphyrion and Typhon and this might be Pindar's way of covertly celebrating a recent defeat of Athens by Thebes at the Battle of Coronea (447 BC). The poem ends with a prayer for Aegina's freedom, long threatened by Athenian ambitions.

Note: Covert criticism of Athens (traditionally located in odes such as Pythian 8, Nemean 8 and Isthmian 7) is now generally dismissed as highly unlikely, even by scholars who allow some biographical and historical interpretations of the poems.

Pindar seems to have used his odes to advance his, and his friends, personal interests. In 462 BC he composed two odes in honor of Arcesilas, king of Cyrene, (Pythians 4 and 5), pleading for the return from exile of a friend, Demophilus. In the latter ode Pindar proudly mentions his own ancestry, which he shared with the king, as an Aegeid or descendent of Aegeus, the legendary king of Athens. The clan was influential in many parts of the Greek world, having intermarried with ruling families in Thebes, in Lacedaemonia, and in cities that claimed Lacedaemonian descent, such as Cyrene and Thera. The historian Herodotus considered the clan important enough to deserve mention (Histories IV.147). Membership of this clan possibly contributed to his success as a poet, and it informed his political views, which are marked by a conservative preference for oligarchic governments of the Doric kind.

Note: Pindar might not actually claim to be an Aegeid since his 'I' statements do not necessarily refer to himself. The Aegeid clan did however have a branch in Thebes, and his reference to "my ancestors" in Pythian 5 could have been spoken on behalf of both Arcesilas and himself – he may have used this ambivalence to establish a personal link with his patrons.

He was possibly the Theban proxenos or consul for Aegina and/or Molossia, as indicated in another of his odes, Nemean 7, in which he glorifies Neoptolemus, a national hero of Aegina and Molossia. According to tradition, Neoptolemus died disgracefully in a fight with priests at the temple in Delphi over their share of some sacrificial meat. Pindar diplomatically glosses over this and concludes mysteriously with an earnest protestation of innocence – "But shall my heart never admit that I with words none can redeem dishonored Neoptolemus". Possibly he was responding to anger among Aeginetans and/or Molossians over his portrayal of Neoptolemus in an earlier poem, Paean 6, which had been commissioned by the priests at Delphi and which depicted the hero's death in traditional terms, as divine retribution for his past crimes.

Note: Some doubt this biographical interpretation of Nemean 7 since it is largely based on marginal comments by scholiasts and Pindaric scholiasts are often unreliable. The fact that Pindar gave different versions of the myth may simply reflect the needs of different genres, and does not necessarily indicate a personal dilemma. Nemean 7 in fact is the most controversial and obscure of Pindar's victory odes, and scholars ancient and modern have been ingenious and imaginative in their attempts to explain it, so far with no agreed success.

In his first Pythian ode, composed in 470 BC in honor of the Sicilian tyrant Hieron, Pindar celebrated a series of victories by Greeks against foreign invaders: Athenian and Spartan led victories against Persia at Salamis and Plataea, and victories by the western Greeks led by Theron of Acragas and Hieron against the Carthaginians and Etruscans at the battles of Himera and Cumae. Such celebrations were not appreciated by his fellow Thebans: they had sided with the Persians and had incurred many losses and privations as a result of their defeat. His praise of Athens with such epithets as bulwark of Hellas (fragment 76) and city of noble name and sunlit splendor (Nemean 5) induced the authorities in Thebes to fine him 5000 drachmae, to which the Athenians are said to have responded with a gift of 10000 drachmae. According to another account, the Athenians even made him their proxenus or consul in Thebes, though this claim is now largely discredited. His association with the fabulously rich Hieron was another source of annoyance at home. It was probably in response to Theban sensitivities over this issue that he denounced the rule of tyrants (i.e., rulers like Hieron) in an ode composed shortly after a visit to Hieron's sumptuous court in 476 – 75 BC (Pythian 11).

Note: Pindar's actual phrasing in Pythian 11 was "I deplore the lot of tyrants" and though this was traditionally interpreted as an apology for his dealings with Sicilian tyrants like Hieron, an alternative date for the ode has led some scholars to conclude that it was in fact a covert reference to the tyrannical behavior of the Athenians, although this interpretation is ruled out if we accept the earlier note about covert references. According to yet another interpretation Pindar is simply delivering a formulaic warning to the successful athlete to avoid hubris.

Lyric verse was conventionally accompanied by music and dance, and Pindar himself wrote the music and choreographed the dances for his victory odes. Sometimes he trained the performers at his home in Thebes, and sometimes he trained them at the venue where they performed. Commissions took him to all parts of the Greek world – to the Panhellenic festivals in mainland Greece (Olympia, Delphi, Corinth and Nemea), westwards to Sicily, eastwards to the seaboard of Asia Minor, north to Macedonia and Abdera (Paean 2) and south to Cyrene on the African coast. Other poets at the same venues vied with him for the favors of patrons. His poetry sometimes reflects this rivalry. For example Olympian 2 and Pythian 2, composed in honor of the Sicilian tyrants Theron and Hieron following his visit to their courts in 476 – 75 BC, refer respectively to ravens and an ape, apparently signifying rivals who were engaged in a campaign of smears against him – possibly the poets Simonides and his nephew Bacchylides. Pindar's original treatment of narrative myth, often relating events in reverse chronological order, is said to have been a favorite target for criticism. Simonides was known to charge high fees for his work and Pindar is said to have alluded to this in Isthmian 2, where he refers to the Muse as "a hireling journeyman".

Note: It was assumed by ancient sources that Pindar's odes were performed by a chorus, but this has been challenged by some modern scholars, who argue that the odes were in fact performed solo. It is not known how commissions were arranged, nor if the poet traveled widely: even when poems include statements like "I have come" it is not certain that this was meant literally. Uncomplimentary references to Bacchylides and Simonides were found by scholiasts but there is no reason to accept their interpretation of the odes. In fact some scholars have interpreted the allusions to fees in Isthmian 2 as a request by Pindar for payment of fees owed to himself.

The early to middle years of Pindar's career coincided with the Persian invasions of Greece in the reigns of Darius and Xerxes. During the invasion in 480 / 79 BC, when Pindar was almost forty years old, Thebes was occupied by Xerxes' general, Mardonius, who with many Theban aristocrats subsequently perished at the Battle of Plataea. It is possible that Pindar spent much of this time at Aegina. His choice of residence during the earlier invasion in 490 BC is not known, but he was able to attend the Pythian Games for that year, where he first met the Sicilian prince, Thrasybulus, nephew of Theron of Acragas. Thrasybulus had driven the winning chariot and he and Pindar were to form a lasting friendship, paving the way for his subsequent visit to Sicily.

Pindar was about twenty years old in 498 BC when he was commissioned by the ruling family in Thessaly to compose his first victory ode (Pythian 10). He studied the art of lyric poetry in Athens, where his tutor was Lasos of Hermione, and he is also said to have received some helpful criticism from Corinna. It is reported that he was stung on the mouth by a bee in his youth and this was the reason he became a poet of honey like verses (an identical fate has been ascribed to other poets of the archaic period). He was probably born in 522 BC or 518 BC (the 65th Olympiad) in Cynoscephalae, a village in Boeotia, not far from Thebes. His father's name is variously given as Daiphantus, Pagondas or Scopelinus, and his mother's name was Cleodice.

Note: Corinna's dates are disputed, and the extant poetry attributed to her actually belongs to the 3rd century BC.

Pindar's strongly individual genius is apparent in all his extant compositions but, unlike Simonides and Stesichorus for example, he created no new lyrical genres. He was however innovative in his use of the genres he inherited – for example, in one of his victory odes (Olympian 3), he announces his invention of a new type of musical accompaniment, combining lyre, flute and human voice (though our knowledge of Greek music is too sketchy to allow us to understand the full nature of this innovation). Although he probably spoke Boeotian Greek he composed in a literary language that tended to rely more on the Doric dialect than his rival Bacchylides, but less insistently than Alcman. There is an admixture of other dialects, especially Aeolic and epic forms, and an occasional use of some Boeotian words. He composed 'choral' songs yet it is by no means certain that they were all sung by choirs — the use of choirs is testified only by the generally unreliable scholiasts. Scholars at the Library of Alexandria collected his compositions in seventeen books organized according to genre:

• 1 book of humnoi – "hymns"
• 1 book of paianes – "paeans"
• 2 books of dithuramboi – "dithyrhambs"
• 2 books of prosodia – "processionals"
• 3 books of parthenia – "songs for maidens"
• 2 books of huporchemata – "songs for light dances"
• 1 book of enkomia – "songs of praise"
• 1 book of threnoi – "laments"
• 4 books of epinikia – "victory odes"

Of this vast and varied corpus, only the epinikia — odes written to commemorate athletic victories — survive in complete form; the rest survive only by quotations in other ancient authors or from papyrus scraps unearthed in Egypt. Even in fragmentary form however they reveal the same complexity of thought and language that are found in the victory odes.

Almost all Pindar's victory odes are celebrations of triumphs gained by competitors in Panhellenic festivals such as the Olympian Games. The establishment of these athletic and musical festivals was among the greatest achievements of the Greek aristocracies. Even in the 5th century, when there was an increased tendency towards professionalism, they were predominantly aristocratic assemblies, reflecting the expense and leisure needed to attend such events either as a competitor or spectator. Attendance was an opportunity for display and self - promotion, and the prestige of victory, requiring commitment in time and / or wealth, went far beyond anything that accrues to athletic victories today, even in spite of the modern preoccupation with sport. Pindar's odes capture something of the prestige and the aristocratic grandeur of the moment of victory, as in this stanza from one of his Isthmian Odes, here translated by Geoffrey S. Conway:

If ever a man strives

With all his soul's endeavor, sparing himself

Neither expense nor labor to attain

True excellence, then must we give to those

Who have achieved the goal, a proud tribute

Of lordly praise, and shun

All thoughts of envious jealousy.

To a poet's mind the gift is slight, to speak

A kind word for unnumbered toils, and build

For all to share a monument of beauty. (Isthmian I, antistrophe 3)

His victory odes are grouped into four books named after the Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean Games – Panhellenic festivals held respectively at Olympia, Delphi, Corinth and Nemea. This reflects the fact that most of the odes were composed in honor of boys, youths, and men who had recently enjoyed victories in athletic (and sometimes musical) contests at those festivals. In a few odes however much older victories, and even victories in lesser games, are celebrated, often as a pretext for addressing other issues or achievements. For example, Pythian 3, composed in honor of Hieron of Syracuse, briefly mentions a victory he had once enjoyed at the Pythian Games, but it is actually intended to console him for his chronic illness. Nemean 9 and Nemean 10 celebrate victories in games at Sicyon and Argos, and Nemean 11 celebrates a victory in a municipal election on Tenedos (though it also mentions some obscure athletic victories). These three odes are the final odes in the Nemean book of odes, and there is a reason for their inclusion. In the original manuscripts, the four books of odes were arranged in the order of importance assigned to the festivals, with the Nemean festival, considered least important, coming last. Victory odes that lacked a Panhellenic subject were then bundled together at the end of the book of Nemean odes.

Pindar's poetic style is very distinctive, even when the peculiarities of the genre are set aside. The odes typically feature a grand and arresting opening, often with an architectural metaphor or a resounding invocation to a place or goddess. He makes rich use of decorative language and florid compound adjectives. Sentences are compressed to the point of obscurity, unusual words and periphrases give the language an esoteric quality, and transitions in meaning often seem erratic, the images seem to burst out – it's a style that sometimes baffles but also makes his poetry vivid and unforgettable.

"Pindar's power does not lie in the pedigrees of ... athletes, ... It lies in a splendor of phrase and imagery that suggests the gold and purple of a sunset sky." – F. L. Lucas

"He has that force of imagination which can bring clear cut and dramatic figures of gods and heroes into vivid relief... he has that peculiar and inimitable splendor of style which, though sometimes aided by magnificent novelties of diction, is not dependent on them, but can work magical effects with simple words; he has also, at frequent moments, a marvellous swiftness, alike in the succession of images, and in the transitions from thought to thought; and his tone is that of a prophet who can speak with a voice as of Delphi." – Richard Claverhouse Jebb

His odes were animated by... "one burning glow which darted out a shower of brilliant images, lept in a white hot spark across gaps unbridgeable by thought, passed through a commonplace leaving it luminous and transparent, melted a group of heterogeneous ideas into a shortlived unity and, as suddenly as a flame, died." – Gilbert Highet

Some of these qualities can be found, for example, in this stanza from Pythian 2, composed in honor of Hieron:

God achieves all his purpose and fulfills

His every hope, god who can overtake

The winged eagle, or upon the sea

Outstrip the dolphin; and he bends

The arrogant heart

Of many a man, but gives to others

Eternal glory that will never fade.

Now for me is it needful that I shun

The fierce and biting tooth

Of slanderous words. For from old have I seen

Sharp - tongued Archilochus in want and struggling,

Grown fat on the harsh words

Of hate. The best that fate can bring

Is wealth joined with the happy gift of wisdom.

The stanza begins with a celebration of divine power, and then abruptly shifts to a darker, more allusive train of thought, featuring condemnation of a renowned poet, Archilochus, Grown fat on the harsh words of hate. Archilochus was an iambic poet, working within a genre that licensed abusive and scurrilous verse – a regrettable tendency from the viewpoint of Pindar, whose own persona is intensely earnest, preaching to Hieron the need for moderation (wealth with wisdom) and submission to the divine will. The reference to the embittered poet appears to be Pindar's meditative response to some intrigues at Hieron's court, possibly by his rivals, condemned elsewhere as a pair of ravens (Olympian 2). The intensity of the stanza suggests that it is the culmination and climax of the poem. In fact, the stanza occupies the middle of Pythian 2 and the intensity is sustained throughout the poem from beginning to end. It is the sustained intensity of his poetry that Quintilian refers to above as a rolling flood of eloquence and Horace below refers to as the uncontrollable momentum of a river that has burst its banks. Longinus likens him to a vast fire and Athenaeus refers to him as the great - voiced Pindar.

Pindar's treatment of myth is another unique aspect of his style, often involving variations on the traditional stories. Myths enable him to develop the themes and lessons that preoccupy him – in particular mankind's exulted relation with the gods via heroic ancestors and, in contrast, the limitations and uncertainties of human existence – but sometimes the traditional stories were an embarrassment and were carefully edited, as for example: "Be still my tongue: here profits not / to tell the whole truth with clear face unveiled," (Nemean 5, epode 1); "Away, away this story! / Let no such tale fall from my lips! / For to insult the gods is a fool's wisdom," (Olympian 9, strophe 2); "Senseless, I hold it, for a man to say / the gods eat mortal flesh. / I spurn the thought," (Olympian 1, epode 2). His mythical accounts are also edited for dramatic and graphic effects, usually unfolding through a few grand gestures against a background of large, often symbolic elements such as sea, sky, darkness, fire or mountain.

Pindar's odes typically begin with an invocation to a god or the Muses, followed by praise of the victor and often of his family, ancestors and hometown. Then follows a narrated myth, usually occupying the central and longest section of the poem, which exemplify a moral, while aligning the poet and his audience with the world of gods and heroes. The ode usually ends in more eulogies, for example of trainers (if the victor is a boy), and of relatives who have won past events, as well as with prayers or expressions of hope for future success. The event where the victory was gained is never described in detail, but there is often some mention of the hard work needed to bring the victory about.

A lot of modern criticism tries to find hidden structure or some unifying principle within the odes. 19th century criticism favored 'gnomic unity', i.e., that each ode is bound together by the kind of moralizing or philosophic vision typical of archaic Gnomic poetry. Later critics sought unity in the way certain words or images are repeated and developed within a particular ode. For others, the odes are just celebrations of men and their communities, in which the elements such as myths, piety, and ethics are stock themes that the poet introduces without much real thought. Some conclude that the requirement for unity is too modern to have informed Pindar's ancient approach to a traditional craft.

The great majority of the odes are triadic in structure – i.e., stanzas are grouped together in three's as a lyrical unit. Each triad comprises two stanzas identical in length and meter (called 'strophe' and 'antistrophe') and a third stanza (called an 'epode'), differing in length and meter but rounding off the lyrical movement in some way. The shortest odes comprise a single triad, the largest (Pythian 4) comprises thirteen triads. Seven of the odes however are monostrophic (i.e., each stanza in the ode is identical in length and meter). The monostrophic odes seem to have been composed for victory marches or processions, whereas the triadic odes appear suited to choral dances. Pindar's metrical rhythms are nothing like the simple, repetitive rhythms familiar to readers of English verse – typically the rhythm of any given line recurs infrequently (for example, only once every ten, fifteen or twenty lines). This adds to the aura of complexity that surrounds Pindar's work. In terms of meter, the odes fall roughly into two categories – about half are in dactylo - epitrites (a meter found for example in the works of Stesichorus, Simonides and Bacchylides) and the other half are in Aeolic meters based on iambs and choriambs.

Modern editors (e.g., Snell and Maehler in their Teubner edition), have assigned dates, securely or tentatively, to Pindar's victory odes, based on ancient sources and other grounds. The date of an athletic victory is not always the date of composition but often serves merely as a terminus post quem. Many dates are based on comments by ancient sources who had access to published lists of victors, such as the Olympic list compiled by Hippias of Elis, and lists of Pythian victors made by Aristotle and Callisthenes. There were however no such lists for the Isthmian and Nemean Games – Pausanias (6.13.8) complained that the Corinthians and Argives never kept proper records. The resulting uncertainty is reflected in the chronology below, with question marks clustered around Nemean and Isthmian entries, and yet it still represents a fairly clear general timeline of Pindar's career as an epinician poet. The code M denotes monostrophic odes (odes in which all stanzas are metrically identical) and the rest are triadic (i.e., featuring strophes, antistrophes, epodes):

The Latin poet, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, was an admirer of Pindar's style. He described it in one of his Sapphic poems, addressed to a friend, Julus Antonius:

Pindarum quisquis studet aemulari,

Iule, ceratis ope Daedalea

nititur pennis vitreo daturus

nomina ponto.

monte decurrens velut amnis, imbres

quem super notas aluere ripas,

fervet immensusque ruit profundo

Pindarus ore... (C.IV.II)

Translated by James Michie:

Julus, whoever tries to rival Pindar,

Flutters on wings of wax, a rude contriver

Doomed like the son of Daedalus to christen

Somewhere a shining sea.

A river bursts its banks and rushes down a

Mountain with uncontrollable momentum,

Rain - saturated, churning, chanting thunder –

There you have Pindar's style...

Pindar's verses have come down to us in a variety of ways. Some are only preserved as fragments via quotes by ancient sources and papyri unearthed by archeologists, as at Oxyrhynchus – in fact the extant works of most of the other canonic lyric poets have survived only in this tattered form. Pindar's extant verses are unique in that the bulk of them – the victory odes – have been preserved in a manuscript tradition, i.e., generations of scribes copying from earlier copies, possibly originating in a single archetypal copy and sometimes graphically demonstrated by modern scholars in the form of a stemma codicum, resembling a 'family tree'. Pindar's victory odes are preserved in just two manuscripts, but incomplete collections are located in many others, and all date from the mediaeval period. Some scholars have traced a stemma through these manuscripts, for example Ulrich von Wilamowitz - Moellendorff, who inferred from them the existence of a common source or archetype dated no earlier than the 2nd century AD, while others, such as C.M. Bowra, have argued that there are too many discrepancies between manuscripts to identify a specific lineage, even while accepting the existence of an archetype. Otto Schroeder identified two families of manuscripts but, following on the work of Polish born classicist, Alexander Turyn, Bowra rejected this also. Different scholars interpret the extant manuscripts differently. Bowra for example singled out seven manuscripts as his primary sources, all featuring errors and / or gaps due to loss of folios and careless copying, and one arguably characterized by the dubious interpolations of Byzantine scholars. These he cross - referenced and then supplemented or verified by reference to other, still more doubtful manuscripts, and some papyral fragments – a combination of sources on which he based his own edition of the odes and fragments. His general method of selection he defined as follows:

"Where all the codices agree, there perhaps the true reading shines out. Where however they differ, the preferred reading is that which best fits the sense, meter, scholia and grammatic conventions. Wherever moreover two or more readings of equal weight are found in the codices, I have chosen that which smacks most of Pindar. Yet this difficulty rarely occurs, and in many places the true reading will be found if you examine and compare the language of the codices with that of other Greek poets and especially of Pindar himself."

• The influential Alexandrian poet Callimachus was fascinated by Pindar's originality. His masterpiece Aetia included an elegy in honor of Queen Berenice, celebrating a chariot victory at the Nemean Games, composed in a style and presented in a manner that recall Pindar.

• The Hellenistic epic Argonautica, by Apollonius Rhodius, was influenced by some aspects of Pindar's style and his use of episodic vignettes in narrative. The epic concerns the adventures of Jason, also touched on by Pindar in Pythian 4, and both poems link the myth to a Greek audience in Africa.

• There seems to have been a vogue for Pindaric style lyrics following the 'publication' of Horace's Odes 1-3 — Horace had mastered other styles such as Sapphic and Alcaeic, which had discouraged his contemporaries from attempting anything in the same form, but he had not composed anything in triadic stanzas in the manner of Pindar.

• Pindar was much read, quoted, and copied during the Byzantine Era. For example, Christophoros Mytilenaios of the 11th century parodied a chariot race in his sixth poem employing explicit allusions to Pindar.

• During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, literary theorists in Europe distinguished between two types of lyric poetry, loosely associated with Horace and Pindar. Regular verses in four line stanzas were associated with Horace's Odes, which did in fact inspire and influence poets of the period. Irregular verses in longer stanzas were termed Pindarics though the association with Pindar was largely fanciful. Abraham Cowley was considered the main exponent of English Pindarics. In fact, the two styles were not always easy to distinguish and many 'Pindaric' odes were quite Horatian in content, as in some poems by Thomas Gray.