Myth, Locality, and Identity in Pindar's Sicilian Odes 0190910313, 9780190910310

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Myth, Locality, and Identity in Pindar’s Sicilian Odes

GREEKS OVERSEAS Series Editors Carla Antonaccio and Nino Luraghi This series presents a forum for new interpretations of Greek settlement in the ancient Mediterranean in its cultural and political aspects. Focusing on the period from the Iron Age until the advent of Alexander, it seeks to undermine the divide between colonial and metropolitan Greeks. It welcomes new scholarly work from archaeological, historical, and literary perspectives, and invites interventions on the history of scholarship about the Greeks in the Mediterranean. A Small Greek World Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean Irad Malkin Italy’s Lost Greece Magna Graecia and the Making of Modern Archaeology Giovanna Ceserani The Invention of Greek Ethnography From Homer to Herodotus Joseph E. Skinner Pindar and the Construction of Syracusan Monarchy in the Fifth Century B.C. Kathryn A. Morgan The Poetics of Victory in the Greek West Epinician, Oral Tradition, and the Deinomenid Empire Nigel Nicholson Archaic and Classical Greek Sicily: A Social and Economic History Franco De Angelis Myth, Locality, and Identity in Pindar’s Sicilian Odes Virginia M. Lewis

Myth, Locality, and Identity in Pindar’s Sicilian Odes

zz  

VIRGINIA M. LEWIS

1

1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress ISBN 978–​0–​19–​091031–​0 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

For Alexander Lewis Jr.

Contents

List of Figures

xi

Acknowledgments

xiii

List of Editionsand Abbreviations

xvii

Introduction Epinician Poetry and Local Contexts 5

Pindar's Sicilian Odes 5 Other Local Contextsfor Pindaric Epinician Poetry9 Myth and Locality in Pindar's Odes 16

Space, Place,and Landscape17 Classicsand the Study of Myth and Place20 Previous Studies of Place in Epinician Poetry 21 Identity in Pindar's Sicilian Odes 25 Outline of Chapters 27 1.

Arriving in Syracuse: Arethusa and Syracusan Civic Identity

30

Syracuse Under the Deinomenids 33 Pindar's Epinician Odes for Syracusan Victors 36 Arethusa as a Syracusan Civic Symbol: Numismatic Evidence 38 Arethusa and Alpheos in the Syracusan Odes 41 The Mythical Connection Between Syracuse and the Peloponnese 49 Artemis Alpheioa in Syracuse and in the Peloponnese 63 Performance Contexts and Conclusions 69 2.

Demeter and Persephone: Ancestral Cult and Sicilian Identity Material Evidence for the Cults of Demeter and Persephone in Syracuse 74

73

Contents

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Demeter and Persephone in the Sicilian Mythic Tradition 79

Diodorus'Narrative of Persephone'sAbduction 84 The Deinomenid Priesthood of Demeter and Persephone 94

Herodotus94 Diodorus105 Pindar and Bacchylides107 Myth and Landscape in Pindar's Nemean 1116 A Syracusan Representationof Sicily in Nemean

1122

ReadingArethusa and PersephoneTogether129 Heraklesand Spatial Ideology132 Conclusions 135 3. Locating Aitnaian Identity in Pindar's Pythian 1

137

The Foundation of Aitna and the Cult of Zeus Aitnaios 142 The Myth of Zeus and Typho 150

EarlierVersionsof Zeus' Suppressionand Imprisonment ofTypho 152 Typho'sAitnaian Prison in Pythian 1 158 A Myth for the Citi2ens of Aitna 171 Conclusions 177 4. Fluid Identities: The River Akragas and the Shaping of Akragantine Identity in Olympian 2 Akragas Under Theron's Rule 180 Emmenid vs. Deinomenid Commemoration 183 Pindar's Odes for Akragas 187 The River Akragas and the Mediation of Emmenid Identity in

Olympian 2 189 The River Akragas as a Civic Symbol BeforeTheron'sRule 189 Locatingthe Emmenids: Placeand Identity in Olympian 2 195 A Heroic Genealogyfor Theron 205 Akragas and the Isle of the Blessed211 Theron, Son of Akragas 219 Conclusions 223

179

Contents

ix

5. Conclusions and Test Cases: Ergoteles of Himera and Psaumis of Kamarina

224

The Immigrant Victor: Becoming Himeraian in Olympian

12 227

The Native Victor: Psaumis as Local Benefactor in

Olympians 4 and 5 234

Conclusions

24

7

Bibliography Index Locorum

2 73

Subject Index

2 79

Figures



0.1 1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1 5.2

Map of Sicily and Southern Italy. Syracusan Tetradrachm, Silver, ca. 500–​485. Syracusan Tetradrachm, Silver, ca. 485. Ennaian litra, Silver, ca. 450–​440. Geloan Didrachm, Silver, ca. 490. Aitnaian Tetradrachm, Silver, ca. 475–​470. Aitnaian Tetradrachm, Silver, ca. 465–​460. Akragantine Tetradrachm, Silver, ca. 505–​500. Himeraian Drachm, Silver, ca. 530–​500. Himeraian Didrachm, Silver, ca. 483–​472. Himeraian Tetradrachm, Silver, ca. 470–​464. Kamarinaian Litra, Silver, ca. 461–​440.

xvi 40 53 83 128 144 145 190 192 192 233 242

Acknowledgments

Like the poetry that it studies, this book has been shaped by multiple places and the people who live in them. In this case, it was my great fortune that they were inhabited by generous teachers, colleagues, and friends, who supported and encouraged me as the book developed. I was first introduced to Pindar while I was a graduate student at the University of Georgia. I thank Charles Platter and Nancy Felson for guiding my early research on epinician poetry and for their continuing support. The seeds of this project were sown in graduate seminars at UC Berkeley. I am grateful to the Classics faculty, especially my dissertation committee members—​Mark Griffith, Emily Mackil, and Donald Mastronarde—​for encouraging me to pursue this line of inquiry, challenging me to improve my ideas, and saving me from countless errors as the dissertation progressed. I owe my greatest debt to Leslie Kurke, who advised my dissertation and whose research and teaching have shaped my approach to Pindar’s poetry. Her support and guidance were critical both throughout the dissertation process and as the project expanded and evolved. My colleagues at Florida State University have been unfailingly generous with their time, advice, and encouragement of the project. I am especially appreciative of the mentorship of John Marincola, with whom I co-​organized a Langford Conference in Tallahassee on “Greek Poetry in the West” in Spring 2017 that stimulated discussion related to the book and influenced my thinking as I  wrote the final chapters. Generous support from the FSU Council on Research and Creativity in the form of a First Year Assistant Professor Award and a Committee on Faculty Research Support Award allowed me the time and space for writing and revision at crucial moments. I am grateful to the Department and the Dean of Arts and Sciences for granting me leave to spend a semester as a fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Spring 2017. The support of writing groups and writing intensive workshops at FSU was essential as I finished the project. Thanks to Laurel Fulkerson and Peggy Wright-​ Cleveland for organizing these groups that introduced me to other writers at

xiv

Acknowledgments

the university and modeled the writing group form. Kristina Buhrman, Celia Campbell, Jessica Clark, Matt Goldmark, Katherine Harrington, Jeannine Murray-​Román, Svetla Slaveva-​Griffin, and Erika Weiberg infused energy and focus that sustained me during the final phase of the project. Special thanks are owed to Sarah Craft for making the map of Sicily and Southern Italy printed in this volume. The Center for Hellenic Studies offered me the chance to test my ideas among a friendly and collegial group of Hellenists during Spring 2017. I am grateful to the Senior Fellows for this opportunity. Special thanks to my fellow fellows Maša Ćulumović, Jason Harris, Greta Hawes, Naoise Mac Sweeney, Michiel Meeusen, and Nikolas Papadimitriou for engaging discussions of myth and place that influenced my approach to Pindar’s poetry, especially when they took a roundabout path. I benefited from visits by Nancy Felson and Daniel Berman to the Center, and I am grateful to them for sharing their unpublished work. Conversations with Gregory Nagy, Nikolaos Papazarkadas, and Laura Slatkin following the Fellows Symposium improved the arguments in ­chapter 4. Many others contributed their time and effort to this project from afar. Carmen Arnold-​Biucchi helped me track down images of the Alpheos/​barley grain tetradrachm. Hanne Eisenfeld was a valuable interlocutor on myth and place in Pindar’s poetry, and I  am thankful for her input on earlier drafts. I owe a debt of gratitude to Nigel Nicholson, who has supported the book from its very early stages through to the end, reading and commenting on drafts of the entire manuscript and encouraging me at each turn. Special thanks to Stefan Vranka at Oxford University Press for his patience and invaluable assistance as this book came into its final form, to Christopher Eckerman for his attention to detail on an earlier version (as a then-​anonymous reader), and to the other two anonymous readers whose suggestions greatly improved the manuscript. Earlier versions of arguments in the book were presented at meetings of the Society for Classical Studies, the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, and the Classical Association, and at UC Berkeley, FSU, the University of Georgia, the Center for Hellenic Studies, and the First and Third Interdisciplinary Symposia on the Hellenic Heritage of Southern Italy in Syracuse, Sicily. I  am grateful to members of these audiences for thoughtful questions that advanced my ideas. All errors that remain are my own. Finally, I am grateful to my friends and family for conversation, encouragement, and support. I thank Wiktoria Bielska, Sasha-​Mae Eccleston, Allison Kirk, Sophie McCoy, Leithen M’Gonigle, Nandini Pandey, Anna Pisarello, Melissa Rooney, Dan Scott, Randy Souza, Sarah Titus, Naomi Weiss, and

Acknowledgments

xv

especially Beth Coggeshall, Athena Kirk, Rachel Lesser, and Sarah Olsen, who read and gave feedback on multiple drafts, occasionally at the very last minute. My family members, and above all my parents, have been a constant source of care and enthusiasm. I dedicate the book to my grandfather. Over the seventeen years I knew him, he continually asked when I would finally learn Latin, but he passed away before I discovered the pleasure of studying and teaching ancient languages. I hope he would have forgiven me for writing a book about Greek literature instead.

Figure 0.1  Map of Sicily and Southern Italy.

Editions and Abbreviations

I use the following editions for citations of Pindar, Bacchylides, and the Scholia to Pindar: Drachmann, A.  B. 1903–​1927. Scholia vetera in Pindari carmina. 3  vols. Leipzig: Teubner. Maehler, H. Ed. 2003. Bacchylidis Carmina cum Fragmentis. Leipzig: Teubner. Snell, B., and H. Maehler. Eds. 1987. Pindari Carmina cum Fragmentis, Pars I. Epinicia. Leipzig: Teubner. Snell, B., and H. Maehler. Eds. 1989. Pindari Carmina cum Fragmentis, Pars II. Fragmenta, Indices. Leipzig: Teubner. Although influenced by William Race’s Loeb editions, all translations of Pindar’s poetry (and of other Greek authors) are my own except where otherwise indicated. When printing names of Greek places, characters, and authors, my aim has been to use the most recognizable terms possible, but there are some inevitable inconsistencies. I have retained Latinized forms of the names of many well-​known places and authors (e.g., Syracuse and Aeschylus rather than Surakousai and Aiskulos) for ease of recognition, but in other cases names have been transliterated from the Greek (e.g., Aitna, Kamarina, and Herakles) to align more closely with the terminology employed by other scholars of these subjects. The abbreviations of ancient authors and works follow those in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, with the following exceptions: BCH BNJ FGrH

1877–​. Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique. Paris: Thorin et fils. Worthington, I. Ed. 2006–​. Brill’s New Jacoby. Leiden: Brill. Jacoby, F. Ed. 1923–​1958. Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. 3 vols. Berlin: Weidmann.

xviii

LIMC LSJ

PMG POxy TrGF I TrGF III

List of Editions and Abbreviations

1981–​2009. Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae. Zurich: Artemis. Liddel, H. G., and R. Scott. Eds. 1940. A Greek-​English Lexicon. Revised and augmented throughout by H. S. Jones, with the assistance of R. McKenzie, with a supplement (1968). 9th ed. Reprint ed. 1990. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Page, D. L. Ed. 1962. Poetae Melici Graeci. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Grenfell, B. P. Ed. 1898–​. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Vols. 1–​. London: Egypt Exploration Fund. Snell, B. Ed. 1986. Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Vol. 1. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Radt., S. Ed. 1985. Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Vol 3. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Pindar’s epinician odes are abbreviated as follows: I. Isthmian N. Nemean O. Olympian P. Pythian

Introduction

In a review of Adolf Köhnken’s monograph Die Funktion des Mythos bei Pindar (“The Function of Myth in Pindar”), Malcolm Willcock makes the following observation about myth and local place in Pindar’s epinician poetry: After all, we know Pindar’s ‘τέθμιον’ [“custom”]—​when in Aegina, tell of the Aeacidae; when in Opus, be (if possible) Opuntian; when writing for a Sicilian tyrant—​as there are no comparable Sicilian myths, it being a new country—​find some large and enhancing story, perhaps related to the place where the victory was won.1 Willcock’s assessment of myth in the Sicilian odes assumes that the “new” status of the cities in Sicily prevented them from having developed local mythic traditions. This view of myths in Pindar’s odes for Sicily is representative of general attitudes; other scholars have similarly argued that Sicily lacked the kind of established mythological tradition found in other Greek cities in the fifth century for Pindar to incorporate into celebrations of Sicilian victors.2

1. Willcock 1974: 192. 2. See, for example, Rose 1974: 155–​56, Hubbard 1992: 81. Morrison 2007: 26 argues that there were no heroes associated with Sicilian cities. Though there may have been fewer ties between Sicilian cities and heroes in the way that the Aiakids were linked to Aegina, there are strong regional ties to Herakles, for example, that this statement overlooks. For the importance of Herakles in Sicily, see Diod. 4.23–​26, 5.4, Giangiulio 1983, and now also Nicholson 2015:  258–​61. To address the apparent lack of Sicilian mythical narratives, Morrison 2007: 123 proposes that Pindar favors Panhellenic heroic narratives rather than local “so that audiences across the Greek world will be interested in his re-​telling of these myths, and hence in his victory odes in general, thus enabling the spread of the victors’ fame.” However, Morrison underplays the role of local Sicilian places in these myths.

Myth, Locality, and Identity in Pindar’s Sicilian Odes. Virginia M. Lewis, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190910310.003.0001

2

Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

This book reevaluates the role and nature of myth in Pindar’s epinician poetry for victors from Sicily, who come from Syracuse, Aitna, Akragas, Himera, and Kamarina. Willcock characterizes Sicily as a “new” country, yet four of the five Sicilian cities celebrated by Pindar were founded at least one hundred years before Pindar celebrated them in song, and Syracuse—​a city celebrated in four odes—​was founded in the eighth century. Most of these cities were not, then, new, and the country surrounding them was even less so since it had been inhabited by native Sikels before the arrival of the Greeks. Yet, even as we observe that these cities were not new in a historical sense, there is some truth in Willcock’s characterization. All five cities experienced regime changes and, in most cases, stasis in the first decades of the fifth century, and their populations were reorganized and transferred—​either by choice or by force—​from one city to another. From this perspective, the cities and the country surrounding them were “new.” Τhis study will explore the strategies by which Pindar engages in a striking, innovating style of mythmaking that represents and shapes Sicilian identities in this poetry for people and places that were “new” in the sense that their communities were undergoing rapid change and redefinition. Willcock’s observation about the Sicilian odes highlights an underlying strategy in Pindar’s odes by which this poetry represents Sicily as a “new” country whose status is up for negotiation and definition by the epinician poet. I will propose that within a volatile political climate where local traditions were frequently shifting, Pindar’s poetry supports, shapes, and negotiates identity for Sicilian cities and their victors by weaving myth into local places and landscapes. We shall see that the links between myth and place that Pindar fuses in this poetry reinforce and develop a sense of place and community for local populations while at the same time raising the profile of physical sites, and the cities and peoples attached to them, for larger audiences across the Greek world. This book will take a historicizing approach to the Sicilian odes. Whereas older historicists tended to view the epinician poems as reflections of or evidence for historical events,3 in the 1960s, Elroy Bundy, building upon the work of Wolfgang Schadewaldt, offered an important corrective to their approaches by focusing on formal analysis and examining the rhetorical conventions that make up the genre of epinician poetry.4 More recently, scholars have stressed the idea that the mindsets created and reinforced by epinician poetry

3. Wilamowitz 1922 is one of the most influential examples. 4. Schadewaldt 1928, Bundy 1962.

Introduction

3

shaped the civic communities in which they were performed. Following the publication of Leslie Kurke’s The Traffic in Praise in 1991, which convincingly argued that New Historicist approaches should be applied when interpreting Pindar’s epinician odes, the majority of scholars of Pindar and Bacchylides now recognize that reading these odes in their social, political, and historical contexts helps to elucidate aspects of this poetry that cannot be understood through formal analysis alone.5 This is not to say that we should abandon the careful study of the odes’ literary effects; rather, the literary effects of Pindar’s epinician poetry—​as poetry that was composed for a specific victory from a particular city in a certain year—​should be interpreted within their historical and cultural contexts.6 When I  speak of reading texts within their cultural contexts, I  am situating my project within a framework of Cultural Poetics, wherein texts are understood as sites of cultural contestation.7 Culture, in this view, is not a static system but instead a dynamic force that is constantly being shaped and negotiated by groups with differing interests within society. Texts not only reflect but also react to, shape, and influence the cultures within which they are created, performed, and received. As a collection of varied interests and perspectives, theorists have argued that culture should be viewed as an “indissoluble duality or dialectic” of “system and practice.”8 Texts, as sites of contestation and participants in culture, give rise to and are inscribed with ideology. Following Gramsci, Catherine Bell defines ideology as “not a disseminated body of ideas but the way in which people live the relationships between themselves and their world, a type of necessary illusion.”9 Embedded as it is in lived experience, ideology is complex, unstable, and continually changing.10

5. For studies of Greek choral poetry that emphasize readings within a broader cultural and historical context see, among others, Calame 1997, Herington 1985, Gentili 1988, Krummen 1990, Nagy 1990, Kurke 1991, 2005, 2007, Stehle 1997, Fearn 2007, Kowalzig 2007, Morgan 2015, Nicholson 2015. 6.  For a more detailed, recent discussion of the merits of a historicizing approach, see Morgan 2015: 5–​9. For arguments against, see Nisetich 2007–​2008, Sigelman 2016: 7–​10 with references. 7. My discussion of Cultural Poetics in this paragraph follows Kurke 2011: 22–​25. See also Foster 2017:  4–​6. For New Historicism as it relates to the theory of Cultural Poetics, see Stallybrass and White 1986: 1–​26. Dougherty and Kurke 1993: 1–​12 and 2003: 1–​19 demonstrate the relevance of Cultural Poetics to the study of ancient Greek literature and culture. 8. Sewell 1999: 46–​47, quote taken from p. 47. 9. Bell 2009: 85. 10. Bell 2009: 81–​82, Macherey 2006: 75–​101.

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Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

Furthermore, ideology is not singular and uniform, but at any point in time multiple ideologies coexist, which compete both with one another and with the remnants of older ideologies.11 Like other texts, the epinician poems of Pindar and Bacchylides participated in, contributed to, and were influenced by the complex set of overlapping identities and ideologies that constituted the fifth-​century Greek city. The premise that epinician poetry participates in the negotiation and shaping of cultural systems has motivated my decision to examine the Sicilian odes together as a set of poems within shared Sicilian historical and cultural contexts throughout this study. A focus on the Sicilian odes will allow us to identify and analyze cultural features that are uniquely Sicilian in a broad sense and also to distinguish those features that are more specifically linked to individual cities. One of the most distinctive and remarkable aspects of Pindar’s epinician odes is the variety of cities and civic contexts they celebrate. While nearly all complete surviving tragedies from the fifth century were primarily written for performance five epinician odes celebrate before Athenian audiences,12 Pindar’s forty-​ victors from seventeen different cities. The wide range of victors and cities commemorated in the odes makes them among the best surviving sources for understanding the different sociocultural circumstances that existed in fifth-​century Greece. An increased scholarly focus on Greek choral poetry as embedded in the community in which it was performed has highlighted ways that sets of poems for individual cities can productively be read alongside one another to shed light on local culture and history. Scholars have, for instance, explored the dynamics of Pindar’s poetry in the poet’s hometown of Thebes, and in other cities and regions whose victors were celebrated by the poet, such as Aegina, Sicily, and Rhodes.13 This book’s focus on the Sicilian odes makes it possible to identify trends that apply across the region and, conversely, to recognize traditions and poetic strategies that are particular to individual civic communities.

11. Smith 1988, Jameson 1981. 12. There are known exceptions: Aeschylus’ Aitnaiai was certainly first performed in Sicily, and it is possible that some surviving tragedies were first performed outside of Athens. For example, Bosher 2012a makes the case that Hieron may have commissioned Aeschylus’ Persians for a first performance in Syracuse. Still, Athens was the center of production of Greek tragedy in the fifth century. 13. Important recent examples include Kurke 2007, Olivieri 2011 (on Thebes); Larson forthcoming (on Orchomenos); Kowalzig 2007 (on Delos, Argos, Aegina, Rhodes, South Italy, and Boiotia); Morrison 2007, Morgan 2015, and Nicholson 2015 (on Sicily and Southern Italy); Burnett 2005 and the studies in Fearn 2011 (on Aegina); and Kurke and Neer 2014 (on Athens).

Introduction

5

Epinician Poetry and Local Contexts Pindar’s Sicilian Odes Despite the rich variety of local communities that we know existed in the fifth century, Athens tends to dominate our literary sources and therefore also often dominates our narratives about fifth-​century Greece. As I mentioned above, one reason that the epinician odes are important and especially interesting is that they offer us rich perspectives on cities outside of Athens. Each of the seventeen different poleis that Pindar celebrates represents a unique political community, and several of them, like Aegina, Cyrene, and Rhodes, were wealthy and powerful in the fifth century. While some of these poleis are very well represented (e.g., victors from Aegina are celebrated in ten odes), other places are barely represented (e.g., there is only one surviving ode for a victor from Rhodes and there are no surviving odes celebrating victories by Spartans). Studies that concentrate on sets of odes from a particular city or region allow us to identify civic symbols and patterns with greater certainty because we can see that they recur in multiple odes for the same place.14 Still, one might reasonably ask:  Why focus such a study on the Sicilian odes? What makes them distinctive? And are they different from Pindar’s other epinician odes? One of the most basic reasons why the Sicilian odes are particularly interesting for a study focused on locality is that the number of surviving odes written for Sicilians is so large. Of Pindar’s forty-​five epinician odes, fifteen celebrate the achievements of Sicilian victors.15 Of these odes, four celebrate victors from Syracuse (O. 1, O. 6, P. 2, P. 3), five from Akragas (O. 2, O. 3, P. 6, P. 12, I. 2), three from Aitna (P. 1, N. 1, N. 9), two from Kamarina (O. 4, O. 5), and one from Himera (O. 12). In all but one case, the Sicilian cities are celebrated in more than one ode, and this relative abundance of evidence for each city will allow us to track the symbolic vocabulary Pindar uses from poem to poem and to trace the intersections of myth and landscape in several passages and, in some cases, through different time periods and political contexts in odes for the same city. In addition to the relatively large body of material available for this region, the Sicilian odes are particularly worthy of study because of Sicily’s prominence in the fifth century. By the sixth century, the Sicilians and Southern Italians participated regularly at Olympia, sending athletes to compete and

14. On the productivity of reading these odes as a group, see Fearn 2011: 175–​76. 15. O. 1, O. 2, O. 3, O. 4, O. 5, O. 6, O. 12, P. 1, P. 2, P. 3, P. 6, P. 12, N. 1, N. 9, I. 2. In addition, O. 10 and O. 11 celebrate Alexidamos, a victor from Locri in Southern Italy.

6

Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

making conspicuous dedications.16 After the Deinomenids took control of Syracuse in 485, they controlled most of eastern Sicily, though other key cities (and, in particular, Akragas) maintained their independence. After the Greek victory at the Battle of Himera in 480, Syracuse became the dominant political power in the region. The city was, furthermore, renowned for its wealth in antiquity. Strabo says that the Syracusan founder, the Corinthian Archias, went to Delphi at the same time as another founder, Myscellus: “When they were consulting the oracle, the god asked them whether they chose wealth or health; now Archias chose wealth, and Myscellus health; accordingly, the god granted to the former to found Syracuse and the latter, Croton.”17 Strabo’s report of Archias’ consultation of the oracle, whether or not it is historically accurate, demonstrates that Syracuse’s wealth was one of the city’s most fundamental and defining characteristics in the Greek imagination, and in fact we shall see that Pindar celebrates Syracusan agricultural wealth, in particular, by making allusions to myths embedded in the local landscape. Sicily was also an important center for philosophical and literary culture.18 The Sicilian poets Empedokles and Epicharmus, for example, were important figures in the development of Greek philosophy and poetry.19 During the period when Pindar composed the epinician odes for him in the 470s, Hieron invited several internationally famous poets (including Pindar, Bacchylides, Aeschylus, Simonides, and perhaps also Phrynichus) to Syracuse and transformed the city into a major cultural center.20 After the fall of the Deinomenids in Syracuse, the citizens established a democratic government that lasted through the Athenian attack on the city during the Peloponnesian Wars until the tyrant Dionysius came to power in 403.21 The famous debate

16. Phillip 1994. 17. Strabo 6.2.4, trans. Jones. 18. On literary and performance culture in the West, see Morgan 2015: 87–​132. 19. Porphyry, for example, seems to believe that editing the work of Epicharmus is a project that can be compared to editing the work of Aristotle (Porph. Plot. 24). On Epicharmus, see Guillén 2012. 20. For the suggestion that Phrynichus traveled to Syracuse as part of this group and that his Phoenician Women was performed in the city, see Morgan 2012: 49 and Morgan 2015: 98. Simonides celebrated victories by the Emmenid tyrants of Akragas and possibly a victory of Gelon, on which see Morgan 2015: 72–​73. Later in the fifth century, Xenophon imagines a fictional conversation between Hieron and Simonides in the Hieron. On the variety of poetic performance in Sicily in this period, see also Dougherty 1993: 83–​102. 21. The Deinomenids, like the Peisistratids in Athens, preceded a period of democracy in Syracuse. On the institution of the democracy, Diod. 11.72.2. Aristotle cites Syracuse after the

Introduction

7

represented in Thucydides between Nicias and Alcibiades over whether or not to attack the Syracusans highlights the importance of this city, and of Sicily in general, as a threat and rival to the Athenians. The cultural and political importance of Sicily in Greek politics throughout the fifth century merits further investigation of the social and political role of choral poetry composed for and performed on the island. The Sicilian odes, and especially the odes celebrating the Deinomenid and Emmenid tyrants, represent some of Pindar’s most celebrated poetic masterpieces. Although interpreters of Pindar’s poetry have always been interested in these odes, in the past twenty years, several studies have now been devoted to the Sicilian odes as a group.22 Sarah Harrell’s 1998 dissertation, “Cultural Geography of East and West:  Literary Representations of Archaic Sicilian Tyranny and Cult,” considers the ways in which Herodotus, Pindar, and Bacchylides shape Deinomenid identity by associating the tyrants with the east, west, or center of the Mediterranean world. In particular, she argues that such geographical associations align the Deinomenids with eastern tyrants like Croesus.23 More recently, Andrew Morrison has examined the issues of performance and reperformance in Pindar’s Sicilian odes, and his readings emphasize that passages in these odes would have had different meaning for audiences of diverse origins and during performances at different points in time.24 Two recent monographs that examine Pindar’s epinician odes in their Sicilian and Southern Italian frameworks are especially worthy of note and have been influential for this project. First, Kathryn Morgan’s monograph, Pindar and the Construction of Syracusan Monarchy in the Fifth Century B.C., has provided both a thoughtful contextualization of Pindar’s odes for Hieron and his circle in their historical and cultural contexts, and subtle close readings of this set of odes.25 In particular, Morgan offers new perspectives on the ways that Pindar characterizes Hieron’s kingship in the Syracusan odes.

fall of the Deinomenid tyrants as an example of the way a tyranny can change into a democracy (Politics 1316a28–​34). 22. In addition to the monographs mentioned in the following notes, other important recent discussions of Pindar’s Sicilian odes include: Harrell 2002, 2006, Hornblower 2004: 186–​ 201, Currie 2005 (258–​95 and 344–​405 on Syracusan odes P. 2 and P. 3), Kowalzig 2008, Bonanno 2010, Thatcher 2012, and Foster 2013. 23. Harrell 1998. 24. Morrison 2007. 25. Morgan 2015.

8

Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

In addition, Nigel Nicholson’s The Poetics of Victory in the Greek West has considered hero traditions in the Greek oral tradition alongside Pindar’s epinician poetry for victors from Western Greece, focusing on this region because so many competitors at the Olympic games came from the area.26 One particular type of hero narrative, the “hero athlete narrative,” he argues, was especially relevant to epinician poetry and represented an ideological tradition that was fundamentally opposed to the representations of the athlete presented in epinician poetry. Where Morgan offers new perspectives on the way that Pindar shapes Syracusan kingship and Nicholson offers a new understanding of the form of epinician poetry for victors from the West, this study will build upon these earlier inquiries to illuminate the ways in which Pindar’s interweaving of myth and place in odes for the five Sicilian cities he celebrated shaped Sicilian identities. In response to observations that the cities in Sicily lacked local myths for Pindar to celebrate, I will demonstrate that rich mythological traditions did, in fact, exist in Sicily by the fifth century when Pindar composed his odes for Sicilian victors. It is certainly the case that in some instances, for example in Hieron’s newly founded Aitna, a city was founded so recently that completely new traditions appear to have been invented to represent it and its citizen body. But the city of Aitna, founded in 476, was more the exception than the rule. Other Sicilian cities, such as Syracuse (whose traditional foundation date is 733 bce), had been in existence for centuries and had developed strong mythological and civic traditions that were available for Pindar to draw upon and allude to in his odes. The following discussion will not only show that local Sicilian mythological traditions existed within larger systems of civic ideology but will also make a claim about the character and role of these myths. Like the citizens of other cities throughout the Greek world, Sicilian Greeks worshipped many gods. However, the particular mythological and religious figures Pindar incorporates into his epinician poetry for these cities hold especially close ties to the local landscape and topography. This close association between mythological representatives of the city and the local landscape reflects the political instability in Sicily during a period when the Deinomenid tyrants, Gelon and Hieron, ruled cities inhabited by “mixed populations.”27 Later in the fifth century when, according to Thucydides, the Athenians debated whether or not to send an army to attack

26. Nicholson 2015: 79–​98. 27. Diod. 5.6.5, Thuc. 6.17.2–​3, see also ­chapter 1.

Introduction

9

Syracuse, Alcibiades argued that the Syracusans would be easily defeated because they were a group of mixed citizens who lacked civic loyalty. Alcibiades’ claims about the Syracusans ultimately underestimated the Syracusans, who united to defeat the invading Athenian army. Nevertheless, his statements did capture an essential aspect of Sicilian politics, especially in the first half of the fifth century. After Gelon took over the city of Syracuse in 485, for instance, the citizens of Syracuse included former citizens of Gela, Kamarina, Syracuse, Leontini, and Naxos, many of whom had been forcibly moved to Syracuse from their former cities.28 When his brother Hieron came to power, he not only inherited this mixed group of Syracusan citizens, but he also relocated the people from the neighboring cities of Katane and Naxos to Leontini and established yet another group of mixed citizens in his new colony of Aitna in 476. Though Aitna is a unique example, this kind of political volatility was the norm in Sicily during the period, and it created the need for the reinforcement and reworking of notions of identity—​both those of the citizens and of their rulers. The political volatility in fifth-​century Sicily created an environment in which it is possible to observe the stabilizing and community-​building potential of epinician poetry at work. When political and social cohesion are especially threatened, tools that are able to foster unity and shape a common sense of purpose may be employed particularly powerfully in an effort to encourage or to regain political stability. This book proposes that one strategy for creating stability amidst this kind of political turmoil was to connect identity of various kinds to fixed elements in the landscape, such as mountains, rivers, and springs, that remained stable and were not tied to a single group of people, ruler, or ruling family.

Other Local Contexts for Pindaric Epinician Poetry The fifteen odes for Sicilian victors are important sources for Sicilian culture in the fifth century, but they also belong to the larger body of Pindaric epinician poetry and should be understood in that context as well.29 Before exploring some of the ways in which the Sicilian odes are unique in Pindar’s corpus in the upcoming chapters, it is worth considering how the poet marks local contexts in some of his epinician poems for cities outside of Sicily. There is not space here

28. Hdt. 7.156, Thuc. 6.4.2. 29. The fifteen Sicilian odes are, by city: O. 1, O. 6, P. 2, P. 3 (Syracuse); P. 1, N. 1, N. 9 (Aitna); O. 2, O. 3, P. 6, P. 12, I. 2 (Akragas); O. 12 (Himera); and O. 4, O. 5 (Kamarina).

10 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

for a full treatment of the twelve other cities and regions Pindar celebrates,30 so I will focus my discussion on three cities whose victors Pindar celebrated with multiple epinician odes. This is not to say that the other odes cannot provide additional important information, but larger sets will offer more opportunity for comparison. While only two extant poems (P. 7, N. 2) celebrate Athenians and several places (Thessaly, Orchomenos, Opous, Rhodes, Tenedos) receive only one Pindaric ode, Aegina alone commissioned eleven epinician poems that survive,31 and Pindar praised Thebes in five odes and Cyrene in three.32 In nearly every case, the myths Pindar uses to celebrate the victor are fitted to the local context in which the performance of choral poetry solidifies group identity. For many Greek cities, one of the most basic requirements for shared identity was a group’s belief that they were descended from a common ancestor, and Pindar frequently evokes a putative shared belief in common descent from a famous ancestor.33 In the odes for Aegina, for instance, Aiakos, his descendants (Ajax, Achilles, Neoptolemus), and their families (Telamon, Peleus, Thetis) dominate the central mythical narratives of ten out of the eleven odes for the city. In the eleventh ode—​Pythian 8 for Aristomenes—​ Pindar evokes and celebrates the Aiakidai before dismissing them to turn to a myth about Amphiaraos instead (P. 8.21–​32): ἔπεσε δ’ οὐ Χαρίτων ἑκάς ἁ δικαιόπολις ἀρεταῖς κλειναῖσιν Αἰακιδᾶν θιγοῖσα νᾶσος· τελέαν δ’ ἔχει δόξαν ἀπ’ ἀρχᾶς. πολλοῖσι μὲν γὰρ ἀείδεται 25 νικαφόροις ἐν ἀέθλοις θρέψαισα καὶ θοαῖς ὑπερτάτους ἥρωας ἐν μάχαις· τὰ δὲ καὶ ἀνδράσιν ἐμπρέπει. εἰμὶ δ’ ἄσχολος ἀναθέμεν πᾶσαν μακραγορίαν 30

30. In addition to Aegina, Cyrene, Thebes, the other nine cities and regions are Argos, Athens (including Acharnae), Corinth, Locri, Opous, Orchomenos, Rhodes, Tenedos, Thessaly. 31. The odes for Aegina are: O. 8, P. 8, N. 3, N. 4, N. 5, N. 6, N. 7, N. 8, I. 5, I. 6, I. 8. The very fact that the Aeginetans commissioned so many epinician odes makes them similar to the Sicilians. For a comparison and contrast of the two poetic contexts, see Morrison 2011: 228–​31. 32. Thebes: P. 11, I. 1, I. 3, I. 4, I. 7; Cyrene: P. 4, P. 5, P. 9. 33. Hall 1997: 25. Robert Parker likewise emphasizes that “blood or rather a belief in blood is obligatory” as a criterion of Greekness and shared ethnic identity (1998: 21).

Introduction

11

λύρᾳ τε καὶ φθέγματι μαλθακῷ, μὴ κόρος ἐλθὼν κνίσῃ. And not far from the Kharites the just island city has fallen, after touching upon the famous achievements of the Aiakidai; and it has had perfected glory from the beginning. For it is sung for having raised heroes who were superior in many victory-​bearing contests and in swift battles, and in these ways it is distinguished also for its men. I am not at leisure to set out the whole long story with the lyre and a soft voice, for fear that satiety should come and distress us. Pindar’s brief celebration of the Aiakidai here is instructive. Even without telling “the whole long story” (πᾶσαν μακραγορίαν), Pindar raises the Aiakidai as his potential (and anticipated) subject matter, evoking for his audiences many narrative possibilities for the upcoming celebration.34 Aegina is both famous for the renowned achievements of the heroes and distinguished for its men. The introduction and subsequent rejection of the Aiakidai as mythical material overturns audience expectations, and by taking a different direction and celebrating Amphiaraos instead, Pindar is able to have the best of both worlds. The passage is illustrative in another way as well. In Pindar’s odes for Aegina, the Aiakidai operate as a signal or an emblem for the city. They are the heroes who make the island famous, and even a brief mention or allusion to these civic heroes can evoke a series of narratives related to their heroic deeds. In an ode for a Theban victor, Pindar uses an opposite strategy to achieve a similar effect. Isthmian 7 for Strepsiades of Thebes opens with a catalogue of Theban myth, asking Thebe (I. 7.1–​3):  Τίνι τῶν πάρος, ὦ μάκαιρα Θήβα, /​ καλῶν ἐπιχωρίων μάλιστα θυμὸν τεόν /​ εὔφρανας (“In which of your former local glories, O blessed Thebe, did you delight the most in your heart?”). After raising many possibilities (the rearing of Dionysus, Zeus’ impregnation of Alkmene, Teiresias or Iolaos, the Spartoi, the defeat of Adrastus, or the Theban conquest of the Peloponnese), Pindar incorporates no central mythic narrative in this ode. The opening catalogue tantalizes his audiences by alluding to these potential narratives and emphasizes that he could have chosen any of them, though he ultimately does not. The praise of Thebes is therefore amplified; despite the breadth of the catalogue, Pindar’s song does not verge into excess. The frequent appearance of local heroes in epinician poetry for victors from Aegina and Thebes contrasts with their comparative paucity in the odes

34. On audience suspense in the Sicilian odes, see Morrison 2007: 26.

12 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

for Sicilian victors, but this alone is not enough to argue conclusively that the formation and reinforcement of links between myth and place are distinctively Sicilian features. After all, Sicilian cities differ from Aegina and Thebes for many reasons, including their relative distance from the center of the Greek world and their self-​awareness as colonies of other Greek cities. A look at poetry for one such relatively distant city, Cyrene—​a colonial city ruled by a monarchy—​will help to isolate features of myth that are unique to Pindar’s Sicilian odes. Like Sicily, Cyrene was removed from the center of the Greek world, and North Africa was one of the regions where Herakles performed his Labors and through which he wandered, civilizing and Hellenizing as he went.35 Cyrene was founded by Thera in 631 bce during the same period when many Sicilian Greek cities were colonized. Moreover, like many of the Greek cities in Sicily, Cyrene was represented in epinician poetry as a colony, and the city’s colonial status was a central feature of its identity.36 Pindar composed three odes for victors from Cyrene: Pythians 4, 5, and 9.37 Each honors its victor through a different extended narrative that articulates the city’s identity relative to its colonial foundation. First, Pythian 9 takes as its main mythical narrative Apollo’s rape of the nymph, Cyrene, which produces the city itself in addition to a child. From this union, Cyrene also becomes the city’s eponymous nymph after she is relocated there from Thessaly by Apollo. Here, Carol Dougherty has shown that Pindar merges a Hesiodic story about the Greek nymph with a Cyrenean colonial myth, thus joining a local story to the larger Greek tradition.38 In Pythian 4, Pindar celebrates the victory of the king Arkesilas by narrating the expedition of Jason and the Argonauts, who will eventually beget the citizens of Cyrene. Through a prophecy relayed by Medea, the poet also tells the story of the clod of earth from Cyrene that Poseidon’s son Eurypylos gives to Euphamos. The clod is placed on board the ship, but it washes off due to the crew’s carelessness, prefiguring the eventual return of the citizens of Thera to found Cyrene under the leadership of Battos seventeen generations later. Finally, Pythian 5 focuses on the story of hero

35. Diod. 4.17.4–​4.18.5, 4.26.2–​4.27.5. 36. Sobak 2013: 110, Dougherty 1993. 37. The earliest, Pythian 9, commemorates a victory by Telesikrates in the race in armor at Delphi in 474, and Pythians 4 and 5 celebrate the victory of Arkesilas IV, the king of Cyrene, in the Delphic chariot race of 462. 38. Dougherty 1993: 136–​56.

Introduction

13

oikist Battos himself, whom the Delphic oracle compels to found Cyrene.39 Pindar’s inclusion of the three colonial narratives suggests that the city’s status as a colony was central to its civic identity.40 It is unsurprising for a foundation narrative to involve and account for the land that has been colonized.41 We shall see that the colonial status of the Greek cities in Sicily is likewise important for their identity. Yet, despite their shared status as colonial outposts, fifth-​century Sicily and Cyrene were different in two critical ways that affected Pindar’s choices as he celebrated their victors in song. First, although it experienced its share of conflict in the sixth century,42 Cyrene enjoyed relative peace and stability during the lengthy reign of Battos IV, which began around 515 and lasted into the 460s.43 Therefore, in the period during which Pindar composed epinician poetry for its victors, the political stability of Cyrene and the surrounding region contrasts with Sicily at the time where regimes were frequently overthrown and entire populations were forcibly moved from one site to another.44 Second, unlike the Sicilian Greek cities which were ruled by various forms of government (including monarchies, oligarchies, and democracies, as we shall see), Cyrene was ruled by the hereditary kingship of the descendants of Battos.45 Even though the

39. Dougherty 1993 also observes that Pindar describes his poem as a cult offering to Battos in Pythian 5 (Chapter 6) while in Pythian 9 the poet combines the themes of colonization and marriage through the union of Apollo and Cyrene (Chapter 8). 40.  For analyses of the three foundation myths, see especially Dougherty 1993, Calame 2003, Sobak 2013. 41.  See, for example, Pindar’s Olympian 7 for Diagoras of Rhodes, an ode which also celebrates the creation of the land itself. On this ode, see Dougherty 1993:  120–​35 and Kowalzig 2007: 239–​46 on the narrative of Rhodes’ emergence from the sea. 42. On the more turbulent reigns of Battos III and Arkesilas III, and the reforms of Demonax that intervened, see B. Mitchell 2002: 87–​92. 43. On Arkesilas III’s death, see Hdt. 4.163–​64. We do not know exactly when Battos IV died and Arkesilas IV succeeded to the throne, but it was certainly at some point before 462 when Arkesilas IV won the Delphic chariot victory which Pindar celebrated in Pythians 4 and 5. See B. Mitchell 2002: 93–​97, Morgan 2015: 416–​17. 44. The Battiads allied themselves with the Persians by 525, according to Herotodus (3.13, 4.165), and in exchange for paying tribute, the Battiads received the backing of the Persians. The turbulence in Greek Sicily arose from different causes, as we shall see. On the political stability in Cyrene during this time period, see B.  Mitchell 2002:  93. See also Chamoux 1953: 320–​31. However, Morgan 2015: 416–​17 observes that cracks in the image of the peaceful reign of Arkesilas are apparent even in Pindar’s poetry through the figure of the exile Damophilos. 45. Barbara Mitchell says of Cyrene that “its especially distinguishing feature is the long-​ lasting Battiad monarchy” (B. Mitchell 2002: 82).

14 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

dynasty experienced moments of conflict in earlier periods, possibly including signs of unrest from the aristocracy,46 this system of hereditary descent offered the city a narrative of continuity going back eight generations—​from Arkesilas to Battos—​from which Pindar was able to draw.47 The hereditary kingship of the Battiads also meant that their genealogy could be joined to narratives accounting for the origin of the landscape, and because the rulers were linked to the land, it was possible for a poet to plausibly tie the citizens to a longstanding mythology of the place as well. As the Theban and Aeginetan myths linked the citizens of those cities back to their founding heroes, so Cyreneans celebrated both the founder hero Battos and his descendants who ruled the city. It is these historical differences in large part that account for the diverse Pindaric strategies we see in the odes for Cyrene and for Sicily. What is remarkable when we compare the Sicilian odes with the Cyrenean odes is that colonial narratives figure so strongly in the odes for Cyrene while remaining muted or altogether absent in the odes for Sicily. Perhaps most notably, the odes for Cyrene, like the odes for Aegina and Thebes, celebrate a local hero—​ the founder Battos, whom Pindar celebrates in Pythians 4 and 5. Local stories about the foundation of the city were probably preserved in Cyrene, at least orally, well before Pindar composed this set of odes to celebrate the victory of Arkesilas IV.48 In addition to this, the relative political stability in Cyrene fostered an environment in which it was possible to shape narratives of a putative shared historical past for the city and its citizens. In particular, the hereditary kingship was passed on peacefully (especially in comparison with the succession of Sicilian tyrants), and the genealogical line was clear enough that Pindar celebrated the direct descent of Arkesilas in the eighth generation from the founder hero Battos (P. 4.65). The tradition of Battiad kings who went back eight generations from Arkesilas IV to the founder was further bolstered by the narrative in Pythian 4. According to the ode, Battos, by founding Cyrene, fulfilled Medea’s prophecy in the seventeenth generation (P. 4.9–​10). These numbers need not be taken literally,49 but they surely point to

46. B. Mitchell 2002: 87–​93. 47. Herodotus preserves a similar narrative of the colony’s foundation (Hdt. 4.150–​58). 48. Giangiulio 2007: 124–​25 overviews the local genealogical tradition in Cyrene on which Herodotus and Pindar based their versions. On Herodotus’ account of the foundation of Cyrene, see also Malkin 2003. 49. Calame 2003: 35 underscores that the Greeks did not count using the same methods that modern scholars do.

Introduction

15

the historical authority and the weight of the past to which the victor Arkesilas and his family laid claim. While Arkesilas could appeal to the authority of his founder ancestor and in this way link himself and his victory to a glorious past, we shall see that the political authority of the Deinomenid and Emmenid tyrants in Sicily arose from murkier circumstances that involved very recent and ongoing civic strife. In the case of Theron and the Emmenids of Akragas, the family was more securely rooted in the local aristocracy,50 but the Deinomenids came to power in Syracuse in the 480s and their takeover involved displacing and relocating many Syracusans and other surrounding populations. While populations in Cyrene were also mixed,51 there is less evidence for ongoing stasis and strife during the fifth century when Pindar composed epinician poetry. Essential to the following discussion of the Sicilian odes is that in odes for victors from other Greek cities, civic identity is often expressed through narratives that center on gods and heroes who also play significant roles in Panhellenic mythology (e.g., the Aiakidai, the myths of the Theban cycle, the role of Delphic Apollo in the colonial narratives of Cyrene). In Pindar’s Sicilian odes, by contrast, founder heroes rarely appear in the odes, and they are never part of an ode’s central mythical narrative. In some cases (e.g., Aitna, founded in 476), a city may have been so new that it lacked longstanding heroic traditions. Yet in other cities, heroic traditions more likely conflicted with the current political regime, causing Pindar to emphasize other aspects of local culture instead. In Syracuse, for instance, narratives about the Corinthian founder hero Archias are preserved in other sources,52 but the hero is never mentioned in Pindar’s epinician poetry.53 The readings in the following chapters will suggest that, for Sicilian victors, Pindar weaves regional and Panhellenic myth into the local landscape to contextualize people, cities, and their rulers within a wider framework and to represent these cities through traditions that accord with contemporary political circumstances in each case. In this set of

50. See Luraghi 2011, Morgan 2015: 414–​15, and c­ hapter 4: 195–​204. 51.  Herodotus says that Demonax divided the Cyrenaeans into three tribes made up of Cyrenaeans and Libyans, Peloponnesians and Cretans, and islanders (Hdt. 4.161). 52. Strabo 6.2.4, Plut. Mor. 772e–​773b, Diod. 8.10, Paus. 5.7.3. 53.  See Morgan 2015:  248–​49 on the Syracusan foundation story. She observes that “it was, of course, no part of Pindar’s purpose to narrate the story of the original foundation of Syracuse” since the city was undergoing a fresh start after its recent refoundation by Gelon (249).

16 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

poems, mythical figures operate as symbols that connect local place to broader Panhellenic tradition, much in the way that an image on a coin can connect or refer to a mythical narrative without presenting a story in narrative form. Myths embedded in the landscape, therefore, operate as links between these narratives and the physical spaces of the city, and the representation of these myths can shape the character and identity of a city, creating a sense of place for the citizens and a reputation for the city for audiences abroad.

Myth and Locality in Pindar’s Odes Locality, as I use the term in the title of this book, refers broadly to anything that shapes, reflects, responds to, or transforms the local. Locality thus includes any physical or geographical features, both those occurring naturally (e.g., a volcano) and those wrought by human intervention (e.g., a fountain), and representations of them in Greek literature and on material objects (e.g., coins and sculpture). In many cases, such physical features are linked to known mythical narratives, but even when they are not, I am also interested in physical features (e.g., rivers, springs, mountains) as symbols in their own right. I, therefore, include the local landscape and topographical features inside and surrounding a city or territory in my definition of “locality.” Ultimately, the term “locality” refers to a collection of local aspects that, in the first place, are understood and accepted by the members of the local community as belonging to and representative of it and that, on the other hand, are recognizable to people outside of the community (i.e., the international reputation or identity of a place). Local mythology is an important aspect of locality since mythic traditions function in all of these ways for communities. However, separating out local from Panhellenic mythology is not a straightforward task. In the first place, Daniel Berman has recently emphasized that these categories are porous; Panhellenic myth can be localized, and local myth can likewise be introduced into Panhellenic contexts.54 Moreover, even if myths are strictly “local” because they are disconnected from Panhellenic traditions, we must still consider both who is telling such myths and who the members of their intended audiences are. Maurizio Giangiulio, thus, cautions that the term “local tradition” is vague by exploring the Cyrenaean and Theran versions of the foundation narratives found in Pindar and Herodotus. While both versions may

54. Berman forthcoming. McInerney 2013 demonstrates that local myths can become part of the Panhellenic tradition.

Introduction

17

have been considered “local traditions,” after the fall of the Battiads, they were likely preserved by different groups inside and outside of Cyrene (including at Delphi) and did not, therefore, represent strictly epichoric traditions.55 The points at which local and Panhellenic myth overlap are important in Pindar’s epinician odes as expressions of local pride and identity because it is in these intersecting spaces that the local becomes important on a Panhellenic stage. The Aiakidai may serve as an example from a passage already discussed earlier in the chapter. The Aiakidai who regularly appear in Pindar’s Aeginetan odes are important for the island precisely because these heroes are Panhellenic and local at the same time: the fame of Achilles and Ajax at Troy and in Panhellenic stories about the Trojan War is what brings glory to their birthplace. The overlap between local and Panhellenic myth is also a valuable strategy of commemoration for Pindar in a Sicilian context. However, the discussions of Pindar’s Sicilian odes in the chapters that follow argue that when celebrating a region where local heroes either do not exist or are deemphasized for ideological reasons, the poet glorifies Sicilian cities by linking local places to Panhellenic myths.

Space, Place, and Landscape Discussions of geographical and mythical places in ancient Greek literature and material culture have benefited from work in the fields of anthropology, geography, and philosophy, among others, on the terms “space,” “place,” and “landscape.” As the essays in the recent volume Space, Place, and Landscape in Ancient Greek Literature and Culture, edited by Kate Gilhuly and Nancy Worman, demonstrate, the relationship between the three concepts in the volume’s title is of growing interest in the field of Greek literary studies. The volume theorizes the three concepts and engages them to analyze the works of diverse Greek authors and texts.56 Each term—​“space,” “place,” and “landscape”—​has come to represent a different way of thinking about spatial relationships, descriptions, and representations, and all three are important for my study of locality in Pindar’s Sicilian odes.

55.  Giangiulio 2007:  130–​33. The question of “local traditions” in Herodotus is complex and has been strongly influenced by Jacoby’s teleological notion of subcategories of history (Jacoby 1909). For discussions of Jacoby’s model, see Giangiulio 2007: 133–​37 and Marincola 2007: 4–​8. 56. Gilhuly and Worman 2014. See also Berman’s cogent discussion of the critical history of the study of space and place (Berman 2015: 3–​11).

18 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

A central issue that has occupied geographers, anthropologists, and philosophers interested in spatial thinking is distinguishing between the terms “space” and “place.” While the two are defined inconsistently from critic to critic,57 for many scholars of cultural geography; “space” refers to a site or area that has not been infused with cultural meaning. In his influential book Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, for example, the geographer Yi-​Fi Tuan argues that “ ‘[s]‌pace’ is more abstract than ‘place.’ What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value.”58 The term “space” has, thus, been considered by many geographers to denote areas that have not yet become places. Tuan’s conception of “space” also implies an openness or boundlessness.59 While “place” is delimited by human constructs, “space,” by contrast, indicates the larger expanse in which “places” are located. My discussion of descriptions and references in Pindar’s poetry generally engages the concept of space less frequently since through description and characterization “space” transforms into “place.” Nonetheless, in a colonial context, space will also be a productive concept for this study. For instance, a geographical location that is a “place” for Sikels or other indigenous inhabitants may be represented as having been an undifferentiated “space” before the Greek colonists arrived and endowed it with a new name and cultural meaning. In this way, designating a location as an empty space, as opposed to a place, can be a useful strategy for both poets and rulers alike who may wish to appropriate and (re)define it without acknowledging its former inhabitants.60

57.  Perhaps most influentially, Henri Lefebvre conceptualizes “space” differently in The Production of Space (Lefebvre 1991). For Lefebvre, “space” designates something that is lived and socially constructed and that cannot be abstracted. Lefebvre’s work and conceptions of space cover too much ground to discuss in more detail here, but for the present purposes I draw attention to his use of the term “space” in a sense that contrasts starkly with many theorists’ use of the term to designate a geographical location that is empty of cultural associations. In addition, the philosopher Edward Casey has argued that the idea of empty “space” is a modern concept, while “place” is primary and universal (Casey 1996: 14–​20). For Casey, there are no blank locations devoid of culture that may be imbued or endowed with meaning. Instead, all locations are perceived by and interact with humans who belong to a culture and they therefore are always already “places.” Casey’s objections to the notion of space transforming into place caution scholars to remember that when a poem reinforces or ascribes cultural meaning to a particular place it participates in an existing cultural debate. 58. Tuan 1977: 6. 59. Tuan 1977: 51–​66. 60. Space can also be productively engaged as a way to think about how human bodies interact with the physical environment, particularly through the performance of poetry. For a good example of this approach to Pindar’s epinician poetry, see the discussion in Eckerman

Introduction

19

However, for the most part, my study of Pindar’s Sicilian odes will concentrate on representations of “place” defined as a set of associations and cultural constructs that are associated with a particular location.61 If “place” designates a space imbued with cultural significance as people attach meaning to it,62 this book asks how epinician poetry participates in this process and considers the strategies Pindar uses to reflect, reinforce, shape, and transform “place” in Greek Sicily. Since “place” is a social construct that is both comprehensible to the participants within that system and, at the same time, may be contested and negotiated,63 it is essential to consider the cultural context for epinician poetry in broad terms. I will, therefore, also examine other textual and material sources that provide evidence about contemporary Greek culture to draw a clearer picture of the “places” considered in this study. In addition to theories that distinguish “space” from “place,” theories of “landscape” have also outlined valuable frameworks for discussions of topography in the last century. Much as a space becomes a place when it is imbued with cultural meaning, so topography becomes a landscape when cultural values are attached to it. As with the terms “space” and “place,” theorists do not agree on a single definition of “landscape,”64 but one important way that “landscape” is often distinguished from “place” is by the visual engagement it demands. The sense of sight is, thus, crucial for many interpreters

2014: 23–​35 of Pindar’s Pythian 6 and the way the poet causes the audience to vicariously travel to Delphi. On the notion of vicarious transport in Pindar, see Felson 1999. 61. Tuan 1977, Tuan 1991, Low and Lawrence-​Zúñiga 2003. Martyn Smith emphasizes that places are constructed and comprehensible as part of cultural systems and are, therefore, necessarily always in flux along with these systems (Smith 2008). Smith observes that “every place is a palimpsest, one layer of meaning and association making eternal claims, but always hiding previous layers of meaning” (2008: 5). Katherine Clarke also engages the metaphor of the palimpsest in her study of myth and landscape, arguing that ancient landscapes are layered and traveling through them activates figures from the past in the form of place names, stories, and artifacts (2017: 14–​18). However, see also already Bender 1994: 245 for the metaphor of landscape as palimpsest. 62.  Low and Lawrence-​Zúñiga 2003:  13, 16–​18. Tuan 1991 emphasizes that one important way that spaces are converted into meaningful places is through narrative, including storytelling, poetry, music, and song. 63.  In addition to the discussion of Cultural Poetics above, see also the work of Clifford Geertz, who has argued that cultural systems contain external sources of information that are intelligible to members of that culture (1973: 87–​125). 64. For a detailed overview of trends in landscape studies in the past century, see Wylie 2007.

20 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

of landscape, and cultural geographers, including Denis Cosgrove, Stephen Daniels, and Ann Bermingham, have engaged metaphors of sight and seeing to conceptualize the term.65 Cultural geographers have additionally stressed that, like places, landscapes are continually up for negotiation and that landscapes may themselves also negotiate ideological positions and power structures. In this vein, W. J. T. Mitchell takes as the subject of the collection of essays, Landscape and Power, “[w]‌hat we have done and are doing to our environment, what the environment in turn does to us, how we naturalize what we do to each other, and how these ‘doings’ are enacted in the media of representation we call ‘landscape.’ ”66 For Mitchell, representations of landscape embody and endorse social and cultural values. As inextricably bound to what is “natural,” these representations, in many cases, also support power structures and ideologies. Along similar lines, the French historian Pierre Nora edited a seven-​volume series between 1984 and 1992 that explored the relationship between place and memory, or what he has termed “lieux de mémoire,” often translated into English as “realms of memory.” For Nora, a “ ‘realm of memory’ is a poly-​referential entity that can draw on a multiplicity of cultural myths that are appropriated for different ideological or political purposes.”67 The idea that representations of place and landscape—​including both naturally occurring features such as rivers or mountains but also manmade attributes or interventions into the landscape such as buildings or canals—​can naturalize ideology and endorse political power informs much of my discussion of landscape in Pindar’s Sicilian odes in the following chapters.

Classics and the Study of Myth and Place In recent decades, many scholars of classical Greek literature and material culture have been influenced by theories of spatial thinking and conceptions

65.  Cosgrove 1998, Cosgrove and Daniels 1998:  8, Bermingham 1986. For a survey of visual metaphors for landscape, see Wylie 2007: 55–​93. He identifies three dominant visual metaphors used by theorists: landscape as veil, landscape as text, and landscape as gaze. 66. Mitchell 2002: 2. 67. Nora 1984–​1992, Nora 1996 (English translation). Quote taken from Lawrence Kritzman’s foreword to Nora 1996: x. Nora’s influential collection of essays investigates through several examples (e.g., the Eiffel Tower and Joan of Arc) the ways in which French cultural myths promote and enact ideological purposes, and the authors consider how these myths change over time.

Introduction

21

of place in the fields discussed in the preceding sections of this chapter.68 This book builds upon the work of these Classicists, and it is particularly indebted to scholars who have considered the connection between myth and place from a variety of angles within the discipline. Among these, Richard Buxton made a notable advancement for studies of myth and place in Greek literature by distinguishing between landscapes of everyday life and mythical landscapes.69 For Buxton, mythical landscape “is formed from elements which, while they grow out of the practices and perceptions of ordinary life, acquire strongly differentiated and conceptually potent symbolic traits.”70 The division Buxton makes between everyday and mythical landscapes is fundamental for a study of Greek landscape because myth is so pervasive in Greek literature and visual representations. In what follows, I  am less concerned with parsing the distinction between everyday (or real) and mythical (or constructed) landscapes than I am with the way that mythical symbols create significance for a place and, in particular, for a city and its surrounding territory through their connection to the topography. To put it another way, I am interested in the way that mythical landscapes merge and overlap with everyday landscapes and, in this way, affiliate their “potent symbolic traits” with specific places. Throughout this book, I will continually attempt to understand how the myths in Pindar’s epinician odes reinforce, alter, and construct meaning for particular places, and—​relatedly—​for individual communities. My examination of Pindar’s odes for Sicilian victors will demonstrate that the poet links mythical figures representative of specific cultural values to features of the local landscape, thereby infusing landscapes with meaning and, at the same time, attaching them to particular civic and political ideologies and values.

Previous Studies of Place in Epinician Poetry In the epinician poetry of Pindar and Bacchylides, references to place and landscape appear as regular features of the genre, but also, as I will argue, with

68.  See, for instance, Alcock 2002, Purves 2010, Skempis and Ziogas 2013, Gilhuly and Worman 2014, Berman 2015, Hawes 2017. 69. Buxton 1994, Buxton 2009. 70. Buxton 1994: 113. Buxton 1994: 81, in his discussion of the “real-​life” aspect of landscape, says, “Human beings create an image of their surroundings through their interaction with them, so that perception of a landscape is inevitably mediated by cultural factors.” What Buxton identifies as perception of a landscape thus contributes to what Feld and Basso 1996 refer to as a “sense of place.”

22 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

highly loaded symbolic significance. Bruno Currie has identified five types of “spatial location” in epinician odes:  “the site of the games, the athlete’s hometown, the place of the ode’s performance, the setting(s) of the mythical narrative, and the poet’s hometown.”71 Two of these, the site of the games and the athlete’s hometown, appear as standard elements of the victory announcement both at the Panhellenic festival and in epinician poetry.72 Part of the work of an epinician ode was to articulate the relationship between the Panhellenic center, where a victor won his contest, and the victor’s hometown, which he honored through his achievement. Just as the poet’s references to the victor’s hometown and the site of the games designate specific places, so too does his reference to the site of the first performance, even if this can be at times difficult for us to determine. Since in most cases epinician poems were likely first performed at either the site of the victory or in the victor’s hometown, the site of the ode’s first performance probably overlapped with one of the other two places mentioned in the ode.73 Additionally, epinician poems include allusions to mythical places and landscapes. Such mythical places can at times transport the audience far away from the present site of performance,74 and can at others times articulate the mythical significance of a place nearby or, in some cases, even visible to an audience. Finally, the poet at times draws attention to his hometown.75 Given the number of references to different “spatial locations” that may appear in an epinician ode, it is not surprising that the topics of place and landscape in Pindar’s epinician odes have attracted some scholarly attention in the past few decades. Several scholars have undertaken studies of Pindar’s descriptions of landscape in the epinician odes. In 1967, William Mullen discussed the wide range of geographical locations that Pindar includes in

71. Currie 2012: 286. 72. Schadewaldt 1928: 269, 293–​94. Hamilton excludes the name of the event, homeland, and father from his definition of the “Naming Complex,” but acknowledges that they frequently appear with the naming of the victor and the victory (1974: 15). 73. This information comes largely from internal evidence in the odes themselves. On the first performance of an epinician ode in either the victor’s hometown or at the site of the victory, see Slater 1984, Gelzer 1985, Herington 1985: 28–​29, Gentili 1988: 116–​17. Eckerman 2012 presents a strong argument against the performance of epinician poetry at Panhellenic sanctuaries. 74. Felson 1999 shows that epinician poetry can “vicariously transport” an audience from one location to another using deictic linguistic markers. 75. Hubbard 1992.

Introduction

23

his odes by tracing the development of his treatment of landscapes through different stages of his poetic career.76 Mullen’s relatively brief study considers Pindar’s description of individual places in odes for Thebes and Aegina, which are closer to Pindar’s own home, and in odes for places farther away such as Sicily, North Africa, and Rhodes. Mullen seeks to identify traces of the poet’s intentions and to interpret Pindar’s description of places in light of his historical travels (e.g., to Sicily), and compares Pindar’s poetry to the works of Dante and Valéry. In the 1970s, Winfred Elliger published a full-​length study of landscape in ancient Greek poetry, Die Darstellung der Landscaft in der Griechischen Dichtung [The Representation of Landscape in Greek Poetry]. His project dedicates only a short section to the poetry of Pindar and Bacchylides but nonetheless contains several notable insights. For instance, he observes that Pindar often describes the landscape in terms related to the human body and that, for Pindar, the sacred character of the landscape is more important than portraying a sensory impression of it.77 He also notes that in Pindar’s odes cities are often closely associated with goddesses and nymphs. For instance, in the opening of Pythian 12 the city, Akragas, and the nymph, Akragas, are evoked almost simultaneously.78 Finally, he contrasts Pindar’s interest in the theological aspects of the landscape with Bacchylides’ comparative disinterest in landscape descriptions. Elliger’s emphasis on the importance of a theological aspect of the landscape in Pindar thus gestures toward the close relationship between myth and landscape. The analysis of this relationship will be a primary focus of the present study. About a decade after Elliger, Deborah Steiner devoted a chapter of her monograph on metaphor in Pindar to landscape. Rather than focusing on depictions of particular places, her discussion of landscape makes a broad survey of the theme in Pindar’s odes. She argues that Pindar’s landscapes “lack internal coherence, and are subject to rapid modifications in accordance with the character and fortunes of those who populate them. They assume features which serve only as symbols of human aspirations, limitations and achievements.”79 For Steiner, Pindar transforms even landscapes that would have been recognizable and familiar to his audiences into “artificial creations.”80

76. Mullen 1967. 77. Elliger 1975: 205–​7. 78. Elliger 1975: 204–​5. 79. Steiner 1986: 88. 80. Steiner 1986: 89.

24 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

More recently, Christopher Eckerman has challenged Steiner’s claim that Pindar’s landscapes are not accurate representations of familiar places.81 His investigation of Pindar’s depictions of place and space in the four Panhellenic sanctuaries suggests, instead, that “Pindar’s representations of place and space accurately depict culturally embedded historical places.”82 Unlike Mullen, Elliger, and Steiner, Eckerman pays closer attention to the historical and political contexts in which Pindar and Bacchylides wrote. Eckerman has made valuable contributions to our understanding of Pindar’s descriptions of the four Panhellenic sites,83 but because his focus is primarily on Panhellenic landscapes, it does less to improve our understanding of Pindar’s descriptions of the place and landscape of the victor’s hometown. Bruno Currie has examined epinician space from a narratological perspective.84 Currie undertakes a survey of space in epinician poetry rather than a close analysis of specific passages,85 and he suggests, for instance, that “inconsistencies in the narrator’s spatial position,” which represent the mobility of the narrator, correspond to the mobile afterlife of the song as it travels across the Greek world.86 He also observes that spatial details are not included unnecessarily in mythical narratives but instead have specific purposes, often interacting with athletic and performance narratives.87 Currie’s analysis outlines the kinds of space that commonly appear in epinician odes and provides a schematic overview for the ways that spaces can interact within an ode. Keeping in mind the different types of place that Currie delineates, I will, as Eckerman did, consider how Pindar uses particular descriptions of sites to connect the Panhellenic site to the victor’s hometown. However, my primary focus will be on local Sicilian landscapes and on the victor’s home city rather than on the layout of the Panhellenic sites. The places Pindar evokes often contain, as Elliger observed, religious or mythological significance, and I will

81. Eckerman 2007. 82. Eckerman 2007: 261. 83. Eckerman 2013, Eckerman 2014. 84. Currie 2012. 85.  He does include two brief but slightly more extended discussions of Pythian 1 and Olympian 1 at the end of his study (Currie 2012: 297–​303). 86. Currie 2012: 290. Cf. Athanasaki 2004 on shifting spatial deixis in epinician poetry. 87. Currie 2012: 294.

Introduction

25

thus focus especially on the relationship between myth and landscape in these odes. By taking a closer look at Pindar’s Sicilian odes in their historical and cultural contexts, this study demonstrates that Pindar’s references to myths embedded in the physical landscape articulate and reinforce particular values and ideologies in these cities.

Identity in Pindar’s Sicilian Odes The values and ideologies shaped in Pindar’s Sicilian odes are closely related to identity in these cities. Throughout its readings, this book argues that Pindar sets mythical narratives in local places to reinforce, shape, and transform “identity” in a very broad sense. At times, I focus on civic identity, defined as a set of characteristics that set one group of citizens apart from those who do not belong to the group (­chapters 1, 3, 4, and 5).88 Civic identity can also include other types of identity, such as ethnic identity, when citizens are understood to be, or represented as, sharing an ethnicity. When discussing ethnic identity in Pindar’s Sicilian odes, I draw upon the work of Jonathan Hall and Robert Parker, which emphasizes the importance of a belief in shared descent among the members of an ethnic group.89 For example, I will argue that in Pythian 1, Pindar both incorporates an ethnic Dorian myth into the celebration of Hieron’s victory and links the myth of Typho’s imprisonment to the local landscape. The celebration of the Aitnaians as Dorians (P. 1.60–​66) offers the citizens a sense of civic identity that is at once specific to the place in which they live (because Pindar ties the Dorian Aitnaians to the local River Amenas, P. 1.67) and that is also connected to a larger regional network of Dorians (through the myth). In this case, ethnic identity is one facet of civic identity in Aitna. At the same time, the connection Pindar draws between myth and landscape elsewhere is specifically adapted in order to shape the identity or public image of a ruler and his family (­chapters 2, 3, and 4). Thomas Hubbard has argued that Pindar’s epinician poetry was usually commissioned for aristocrats or for entire cities that needed to rehabilitate their reputations within the Panhellenic world.90 Yet Hubbard largely limits his focus to these effects on a Panhellenic scale, suggesting that the fact that Pindar’s odes “functioned as pan-​Hellenic self-​advertisement for a city also explains the interest of the

88. For a similar definition of civic identity, see Thatcher 2012: 75. Cf. Lape 2010. 89. Hall 1997: 25, Parker 1998: 21. On Dorian ethnic identity, see also Malkin 1994: 15–​45. 90. Hubbard 2001.

26 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

Sicilian tyrants in commissioning so many exemplars of the genre.”91 A major concern of the Sicilian tyrants in commissioning epinician poetry was, surely, as Hubbard suggests, to increase their fame and reputation on a Panhellenic scale. Nonetheless, these rulers must also have had local audiences in mind when choosing this form of commemoration, particularly since the odes would have been performed in Sicily, whether in the first or in later performances. Because local places, landscapes, cults, and myths held special relevance for local audiences, the ways that Pindar’s Sicilian odes may have shaped local perceptions of the Sicilian tyrants they celebrated will be a chief concern in this study. In particular, examinations of ways that Pindar characterizes the roles of the Deinomenids and Emmenids by linking their families to local and regional myths will suggest these representations were relevant and directed at audiences in Sicily. On the other hand, the contrasting manner in which Pindar represents the two families of tyrants will underscore both the range of possibilities available to the poet and some underlying ideological differences between the two tyrant families. Regardless of the type of identity, careful consideration of performance scenarios and audiences of individual odes will help to break down the potential effects of connecting Panhellenic myths to local Sicilian places for local, regional, and Panhellenic audiences. More generally, the performance of Greek choral poetry played an important role in the reinforcement and even the formation of ideologies and identities.92 When a group of citizens performed an epinician ode, singing and dancing together for an audience, this communal activity had the power to negotiate and define group identity.93 In this

91. Hubbard 2001: 394. In the transcript of the discussion following the delivery of his paper, Hubbard does acknowledge that the odes would also have supported the ideological claims of the tyrant before a local audience, though he does not develop this point (2001: 398). 92.  On the community-​building function of choral poetry, see Calame 1997, Stehle 1997, Rutherford 2001:  86. For religious contexts, see more recently, Kurke 2005; Kurke 2007; Kowalzig 2007; Kowalzig 2008. Although there is some evidence for solo first performances of epinician poetry, most scholars (myself included) now agree that in the first performance, epinician poetry was probably chorally performed. On the debate over solo vs. choral first performance of epinician poetry, see Lefkowitz 1991, Heath and Lefkowitz 1991, for the solo hypothesis. For arguments that epinician poetry was regularly performed chorally in first performances, see Carey 1991, K.  Morgan 1993, D’Alessio 1994. Briand 2014:  xvii–​xix and Eckerman 2014: 194–​95, however, suggest that epinician performance may have included both solo and choral singers during the same performance. On reperformance of epinician poetry, see Currie 2004, Hubbard 2004, Carey 2007, Morrison 2007, Morrison 2011, Morrison 2012. 93.  See Phillips 2016:  42–​43 for the importance of the status of choral performers of epinician poetry. He observes that “part of the chorus’ legitimacy derives from an awareness

Introduction

27

way, epinician poetry influenced identity from an internal perspective, and we can imagine that a group of citizens singing and dancing as they made statements about their own identity in ritual performance would have been an especially powerful expression of civic identity. This impact was not limited to local performances, however, and in reperformances abroad or for noncitizen audience members, this poetry likewise had the potential to shape an identity and a reputation for the city and its citizens across the Panhellenic world, which was one of the main reasons why elite families like the Deinomenids and the Emmenids were so interested in commissioning epinician poetry to commemorate their achievements.94

Outline of Chapters Each of the following chapters of the book studies the relationship between myth and local place within the context of an individual city or a set of cities with similar interests. In each case, the readings will argue that Pindar grafts Panhellenic or regional myth onto the local landscape to define and shape the reputation of a community and/​or its ruler. Chapter 1 focuses on the cult and mythical narratives of Arethusa and the related goddess, Artemis Alpheioa. I begin with a survey of the historical and material evidence for Arethusa in sixth-​and fifth-​century Syracuse. As a civic symbol for the polis, Arethusa endures despite political volatility in the period. Pindar, I argue, recognizes the importance of Arethusa as a civic symbol and evokes the relationship between Arethusa and Alpheos in nearly every poem for Syracuse, signaling stability and continuity. Furthermore, I propose that links between the cults in Syracuse and related worship of Artemis Alpheioa in the Peloponnese suggest that Pindar’s references to the cult highlight a mythic tradition shared by the Peloponnesians and Syracusans.

on the part of the audience that a poem’s didactic features such as gnomai and mythical exempla would have already been absorbed by the performers before the performance itself” (43). I would add that there is also an implicit endorsement by the chorus after they have absorbed this material, and that this would have made their expressions of civic identity extremely powerful when performed before a community of citizens. On choral identity in tragedy, see Gould 1996, Goldhill 1996, Swift 2010. 94. Hubbard 2001. For a more recent analysis of the formation of reputation from an outsider perspective, see Kate Gilhuly’s subtle discussion of Athens’ construction of Corinth as a place of prostitution (2014). Though Gilhuly’s chapter does not focus on the kind of identity formation that takes place in epinician poetry, her readings nonetheless demonstrate the way that a place can be constructed from an outside perspective in Greek literature.

28 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

In c­ hapter 2, I concentrate on representations of Demeter and Persephone in the Syracusan odes. The goddesses are important for two reasons. First, the Deinomenids were ancestral priests of Demeter and Persephone in Sicily and the goddesses therefore could easily be linked to the rule of this family of tyrants. On the other hand, worship of the two goddesses was widespread throughout Sicily. This chapter argues that references to Demeter and Persephone in epinician poetry for Hieron and members of his circle promote and celebrate Syracusan and Deinomenid expansion throughout the island of Sicily by aligning pan-​Sicilian and Deinomenid interests and rooting them in the island’s landscape. The third chapter proposes that Pythian 1 uses two myths to map out and reinforce a sense of civic identity for the newly founded city of Aitna. Building upon other work that shows that Typho’s prison celebrates Hieron’s recent military and political victories, I argue this myth creates a significant place for Aitna within a Panhellenic mythical context. According to Hesiod, Typho is the final foe Zeus faces before becoming uncontested king of the Olympians (Theog. 821–​80). Typho’s placement under Aitna thus transforms the landscape into an important site for stability of the cosmic order and elevates the new city to a place of Panhellenic significance. Second, I  demonstrate that the myth of the Dorian migration supplies a myth of continuity for the new citizens of Aitna. While these citizens originate from different cities—​ half from Syracuse, half from the Peloponnese, according to Diodorus—​the myth of the Dorian migration offers a shared narrative that unites them as an ethnic group. Taken together, these two myths offer Aitna both a sense of place within a wider Greek narrative and a celebration of their ethnic heritage through their performances in Aitna, in Sicily more broadly, and throughout the Greek world. Chapter 4 argues that Pindar activates the River Akragas as a civic symbol in three of his five odes for victors from Akragas. Along with Syracuse, Akragas was one of the two most powerful Sicilian cities in the fifth century, and the influential Emmenid rulers celebrated their athletic successes by commissioning four odes by Pindar. A fifth ode for Akragas is unique as the only example of an ode in celebration of a victory in a musical competition that survives from classical Greece. A preliminary survey of local references in these odes suggests that the River Akragas became a recurring symbol that echoed the crab on Akragantine coinage of the period. Already in the earliest of the Akragantine odes, Pythian 12, the poet represents Akragas as a morphing figure that shifts from city to nymph to river, emphasizing the equivalency drawn between the three and the importance of the river as a symbol of civic identity. Later, in Olympians 2 and 3 (in celebration of Theron’s chariot victory of 476), Pindar

Introduction

29

draws a spatial analogy between the Akragantines and the inhabitants of the Isles of the Blessed and the Hyperboreans, respectively, that hinges on their link to rivers and bodies of water. Just as the spring of Arethusa became a unifying symbol for the citizens of Syracuse, and ultimately even the citizens of Aitna, as ­chapter 1 argues, the River Akragas, I suggest, becomes a rich locus of Akragantine civic identity in this poetry. A final chapter explores the odes for Psaumis of Kamarina and Ergoteles of Himera. After a brief survey of the history of the two cities and the cultural context for the poems, the chapter then argues that Psaumis and Ergoteles offer contrasting examples of the way that Pindar mitigates the status of hybrid citizens in Sicily by writing the victors themselves into their local landscapes and civic ideology that is bound to the landscape. As examples of an immigrant (Ergoteles) and, at least possibly, a Greek of Sikel ethnicity (Psaumis), Ergoteles and Psaumis contrast with the tyrants Hieron and Theron. The poet, I suggest, emphasizes Psaumis’ control of both the landscape and cityscape of Kamarina in Olympian 4 and Olympian 5 and converts him into a quasi-​ mythical benefactor of the city. On the other hand, Ergoteles, an exiled Cretan, is integrated into the civic fabric of Himera through his connection to the hot springs of the Nymphs and his personal stake in the local landscape. As in the odes for Syracusans and Akragantines, local landscapes in the odes for Kamarina and Himera participate in the formation of civic traditions. I argue, however, that in the cases of odes for victors who are themselves establishing their civic status, the victor himself becomes affiliated with the local landscape through Pindar’s poetry. This final chapter synthesizes the arguments of the previous chapters and, by way of conclusion, proposes that Pindar’s emphasis on landscape in the Sicilian odes is a feature that transcends the divide between tyrant and non-​tyrant victors.

1

Arriving in Syracuse Arethusa and Syracusan Civic Identity

Chapters  1 and 2 explore the significance of the mythical narratives surrounding the cult worship of Arethusa and Persephone in Syracusan civic ideology and the ways in which both figures are connected to the local Sicilian landscape. If the Sicilian cities celebrated by Pindar lack civic heroes that represented them, like the Aiakidai in Aegina, was there anything that represented the city instead? I  propose first, that Pindar emphasized local places, tangible and visible to all citizens; and second, that the places incorporated into the odes were linked to narratives that expressed core civic values. The first two chapters consider appearances of the nymph and the goddess in Pindar’s epinician odes for Syracusan victors to analyze how Pindar alludes to and includes local mythical variants that reinforce and shape identities and ideologies in Syracuse. The makeup of Syracuse was particularly diverse and had recently undergone dramatic changes, so a poet celebrating a Syracusan victor in song faced unique challenges when addressing audiences in the victor’s hometown.1 I will argue that, far from being empty conventions of the genre, Pindar’s references to Arethusa and Persephone are a key part of the way that Pindar addresses the challenges that come with the diverse political and social dynamics in Syracuse under the rule of the Deinomenids.

1. On one hand, this poetry was part of the celebration that welcomed the victor back into his city after victory at the games. For the argument that epinician poetry reintegrated the victor back into his community, see Crotty 1982, Goldhill 1991, Kurke 1991. More recently, however, studies focused on performance of this poetry in its local contexts have emphasized that its effects would have been diverse and were dependent on the audience of each performance, on which see the Introduction: 26. The reintegration model must, therefore, be refined and, as Tom Phillips has argued (2016: 40–​42), the function of Pindar’s odes should be considered on a case by case basis.

Myth, Locality, and Identity in Pindar’s Sicilian Odes. Virginia M. Lewis, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190910310.003.0002



Arriving in Syracuse: Arethusa and Syracusan Civic Identity

31

The mythical narratives surrounding Arethusa and Persephone occupied a significant place in the religious life of Syracuse and expressed the city’s relationship to the landscape in ways that oriented the polis geographically and sociologically. The local nymph Arethusa represented a specific point in the Syracusan landscape. Her spring was located in the civic center of Syracuse on the island of Ortygia, and it was said to receive its waters from the River Alpheos at Olympia in the Peloponnese. Arethusa and the connection to the mainland that she represented were so important that her image was one of the primary civic symbols the Syracusans chose to place on their coinage. This chapter will examine the mythical tradition surrounding Arethusa, who represented an important gateway from the center of Greece to the west and, for Syracuse, a unique and permanent tie to the mainland and the whole Hellenic world. In the next chapter, I will consider how the goddesses Persephone and Demeter represented and were continually imagined as pan-​Sicilian goddesses linked to the interior of Sicily. When read as a pair of civic symbols, Arethusa and Demeter/​Persephone will allow us to evaluate the ideological claims that Syracuse makes to Olympia and to all of Sicily and to analyze the ways in which both are rooted in the city’s unique geographical features. Here, I concentrate on the spring of Arethusa as a symbol of Syracusan identity to demonstrate that Pindar’s references to the spring evoke a larger system of meaning. Though these references are elements in the conventional epinician “arrival motive,” “which brings the song, or a divine projection of the song, to the scene of the celebration,” I suggest that we should also recognize them as loaded civic symbols containing particular local significance.2 By saying that Arethusa belongs to a “larger system of meaning,” I mean this in the sense that Clifford Geertz describes cultural systems as including “extrinsic sources of information” that lie outside of the individual and are thus comprehensible to all members of that culture.3 In particular, I  will draw upon anthropological work on the spatial relationships created by ritual performance. Catherine Bell, for example, argues that “a basic set of dynamics in many (but not all) ritual systems is the construction of central rites from local ones and the construction of local rites from the simplification of central

2. For the “arrival motive,” see Bundy 1962: 22–​23; see also 27–​28 (quote from p. 23). See also Young 1968 and Hamilton 1974 for conventional elements of epinician poetry. On Pindar’s praise of the victor’s hometown more specifically, see Currie 2012:  285–​90, although he too quickly dismisses the significance of references to local places for local audiences in epinician poetry. 3. Geertz 1973: 87–​125. Quote taken from p. 92.

32 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

ones.”4 Bell emphasizes that ritual systems themselves make up networks of social relations, which, among other things, “are also concerned with distinguishing local identities, ordering social differences, and controlling the contention and negotiation involved in the appropriation of symbols.”5 This chapter proposes that Pindar’s references to Arethusa in the Syracusan odes solidify a bond between the center of the Greek world and the Sicilian West through the choral performance of epinician poetry. This tie was particularly important in Syracuse and Sicily, where there existed a highly contested and even fluid relationship between the center and the periphery.6 As a civic symbol, Arethusa allowed the Syracusans to imagine and reaffirm their identity relative to both the Greek homeland and other Sicilian cities which, though well-​established by the fifth century, still belonged to a landscape marked by conflict and displacement.7 In addition to being physically embodied by the spring in a space that was visible and accessible to Syracusans, Arethusa and Artemis, who was closely linked to the nymph, both appear to have received cult worship on the island of Ortygia in the center of the city.8 References to civic places in Pindar’s epinician odes therefore activated symbols that embodied religious practice well-​known to Syracusan citizens and to those elsewhere who had visited the city or were familiar with its topography.9 The familiarity of these symbols made them powerful and meant that they already carried significance as civic symbols before they appeared in an ode. On the other hand, because they were established symbols, their redefinition and alteration could be particularly influential. Even though we can only uncover traces of the worship of Arethusa and the closely related cult of

4. Bell 2009: 128. 5. Bell 2009: 130. 6. See de Polignac 1995 for the proposal of a model for the relationship between the center and the periphery that differs from Bell’s. He assigns the role of social integration and definition of territory to nonurban sanctuaries, while suggesting that urban sanctuaries instituted and reinforced the authority of the aristocratic elite. In the western colonial cities, this meant in particular connecting the colony back to its mother-​city (de Polignac 1995: 101–​2). Hall 2012: 31–​34 shows that models of the center and periphery that are valid for cities in the center of the Greek world cannot be applied in the same way to the western Greek cities of Sicily and Southern Italy that are themselves located on the periphery of the Greek world. 7. See for example Antonaccio 2007a: 201–​2. 8. On which, see the following discussion. 9. References to the spring of Arethusa during a performance in Syracuse point to a visible place in the surrounding context and are thus examples of “ocular deixis” as discussed by Felson 2004: 254.



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Artemis in Syracuse, there are indications from numismatic and archaeological evidence of how pervasive worship of the nymph must have been, even in the period before Pindar composed his odes for Syracusans. By examining these traces closely and considering them alongside Pindar’s epinician odes for Syracuse, I call attention to the way that Pindar’s references to Arethusa represent the relationship between Syracuse and the Peloponnese and, in particular, the region near the Panhellenic sanctuary at Olympia. After a brief overview of Syracuse under the Deinomenids to contextualize the period during which Pindar and Bacchylides wrote for Syracusan victors, a discussion of Syracusan coin types from the late sixth and fifth centuries emphasizes the importance of Arethusa as a civic symbol for Syracuse.10 I  then analyze Pindar’s references to Arethusa in the epinician odes to see how the spring functions as one of a set of symbols that signal arrival of the ode and the victory celebration in Syracuse. A final section concentrates on the mythical narratives surrounding Alpheos, Arethusa, and Artemis both in the Syracusan tradition and in Elis in the Peloponnese to show that these narratives present a way of conceptualizing the relationship between these two regions and communities.11

Syracuse Under the Deinomenids Gelon first rose to power when he became the tyrant of Gela in 491 after the former tyrant, Hippokrates, died in battle with the Sikels. After leading a campaign against most of the territories in eastern Sicily, Herodotus reports, Hippokrates attacked Kallipolis, Naxos, Zankle, Leontini, and Syracuse in addition to other towns. Only Syracuse successfully repelled him.12 Upon Hippokrates’ death, Gelon, who had served as Hippokrates’ cavalry commander, first became the regent for the tyrant’s young sons, but soon seized the tyranny for himself and ruled over the city of Gela for six years.13 Gelon became the first Deinomenid ruler of Syracuse in 485 by taking advantage of stasis between the Syracusan demos and the Gamoroi, a group

10.  This evidence has been discussed in more detail by many others. See for instance, Boehringer 1929, Carey 1981, Braswell 1992, Dougherty 1993, Antonaccio 2007b, Baldassarra 2010, Foster 2013. 11. An earlier version of parts of this chapter has been accepted for publication in Classical Philology. See Lewis forthcoming a. 12. Hdt. 7.154.2. 13. Hdt. 7.155.1. De Angelis 2016: 101–​2.

34 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

of aristocrats who had previously ruled the city.14 When Gelon relocated to Syracuse, Herodotus reports, he took less interest in the affairs of Gela, which he turned over to his brother Hieron.15 Gelon’s takeover of Syracuse was followed by reorganization, under which he brought many of the citizens of Gela and all the inhabitants of Kamarina to live in Syracuse so that he might secure a loyal citizen base.16 He then subdued the nearby cities of Megara Hyblaea and Euboea, and, to the surprise of the wealthy citizens, he moved them to Syracuse instead of executing them while he sold the rest of the inhabitants into slavery.17 The resulting amalgamated Syracusan citizenry consisted of a group with mixed origins and differing loyalties, many of whom were new to Syracuse and had been forcibly transferred to the city.18 After coming to the aid of Theron of Akragas in 480 and defeating the Carthaginian general, Hamilcar, at Himera, Gelon and the Syracusans became fabulously wealthy through both the spoils of war and the slave labor of the captured Carthaginians.19 Out of the spoils from Himera, Gelon built new temples to honor the goddesses Demeter and Kore,20 whose ancestral priesthood, Herodotus reports, had been held by Gelon’s family, the Deinomenids, for generations.21 Gelon became the most powerful tyrant in Sicily while also

14. Hdt. 7.155.2; Luraghi 1994: 282–​88. 15. Hdt. 7.156.1 16. Hdt. 7.156.2; Thuc. 6.5.3. See Luraghi 1994: 299–​300 on Gelon bolstering his power base in Syracuse. 17. Hdt. 7.156.2–​3, Thuc. 6.4.2. 18.  Luraghi 1994:  288–​90, Bonanno 2010:  39–​40. Now see also Morgan 2015:  55–​61. On population movement in Sicily, see Lomas 2006. On the trauma caused by the population movement and its the lasting effects, see Berger 1992: 35–​39, De Angelis 2016: 106. 19. Hdt. 7.165–​67. Diod. 11.25.1, 11.26.2–​3. 20. ἀπὸ δὲ τούτων γενόμενος ὁ Γέλων ἐκ μὲν τῶν λαφύρων κατεσκεύασε ναοὺς ἀξιολόγους Δήμητρος καὶ Κόρης (“After this incident Gelon built noteworthy temples to Demeter and Corē out of the spoils,” trans. Oldfather, Diod. 11.26.7). Diodorus does not specify where exactly Gelon built these temples. However, most scholars place the temples at Syracuse (van Compernolle 1992: 67–​68, Luraghi 1994: 319, Hinz 1998: 98, Mertens 2006: 312). A temple excavated in the Piazza della Vittoria in Achradina (an area of Syracuse on the mainland to the northwest of Ortygia) may be one of the two temples built by Gelon at this time (Mertens 2006:  312). Gras 1990:  59–​60 argues that Diodorus uses the verb κατασκευάζειν here to indicate adornment of existing temples rather than construction of new ones. On both the temples for Demeter and Kore and Deinomenid architectural activity in Sicily more generally, see Morgan 2015: 46–​52. 21.  For the ancestral priesthood of Demeter and Kore held by the Deinomenids, see Herodotus 7.153.1–​4. See also ­chapter 2 and Lewis forthcoming b.



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winning the loyalty of the Syracusan citizens.22 According to Diodorus, Gelon retained power in Syracuse for over seven years and greatly increased the wealth and prosperity of the city during that time.23 Upon Gelon’s death in 478, his brother, Hieron, succeeded him as ruler of Syracuse and as priest of the ancestral cult of Demeter and Persephone.24 The beginning of Hieron’s rule was marked by uncertainty. Fearing the popularity of his younger brother, Polyzelos, among the Syracusan citizens, Hieron surrounded himself with a foreign bodyguard.25 According to Diodorus Hieron founded a colony, Aitna, in 476 to protect himself from the threat Polyzelos posed. After relocating the citizens of Katane to nearby Leontini, the Syracusan tyrant settled a mixed group of Peloponnesians and Syracusans on the site of the former Katane.26 Although Hieron himself remained in Syracuse, the new colony was close enough to serve as an extension of Syracusan power into the plains below Mt. Aitna, to assert Syracusan authority over the recently conquered Chalcidean colonies of Leontini and Naxos, and to offer support in the event of opposition to Hieron’s rule in Syracuse. In 467/​6 Hieron died and his brother, Thrasybulus, ruled briefly before being overthrown by the Syracusans, who thereafter established a democracy that would endure until the end of the fifth century.27 Pindar and Bacchylides composed the odes for Syracusan and Aitnaian victors in the years between the foundation of Aitna in 476 and the death of Hieron in 467/​6. In the following discussion of representations of Syracuse

22. Diodorus reports that Gelon once, after gathering the assembly and instructing them to bring arms, entered wearing only a cloak and gave an account of his life and his benefactions for the Syracusans. After this, they approved of his rule and hailed him as “benefactor, savior, and king” (εὐεργέτην καὶ σωτῆρα καὶ βασιλέα) (Diod. 11.26.6–​7, quoting 11.26.6). Diodorus later compares the Deinomenid brothers who ruled over Syracuse—​Gelon, Hieron, and Thrasybulus—​and praises Gelon’s fairness and his humane rule (προσενεχθεὶς φιλανθρ ώπως, 11.67.2) in contrast to Hieron, who was less kind than Gelon, but still not as base as Thrasybulus who surpassed his predecessor in vice (ὑπερέβαλε τῇ κακίᾳ τὸν πρὸ αὐτοῦ βασιλεύσαντα, 11.67.5). On Diodorus’ bias toward Gelon and against Hieron, see Morgan 2015: 58. 23. Diod. 11.38. 24. Schol. O. 6.158a. 25. Diod. 11.48.3. On the conflict between Hieron and Polyzelos, see Bonanno 2010: 55–​72. 26. For Hieron’s foundation of Aitna and his motives, see Diod. 11.49.1–​4. See also Luraghi 1994: 337–​38, Bonanno 2010: 127–​57, De Angelis 2016: 187. 27. Diod. 11.66.4. Luraghi 1994: 337 notes that after Hieron’s death Thrasybulus called upon the colonists settled by Hieron in Aitna when the Syracusans turned against him (Diod. 11.67.7). For a discussion of Diodorus as a historical source, see Sacks 1990 and ­chapter 2.

36 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

and its citizens in epinician poetry, it is important to remember that these odes were performed for an audience that had recently experienced great instability during the period of the Deinomenid rule in Syracuse. The changing makeup of the mixed Syracusan citizenry after Gelon moved his base there in 485 and Hieron’s recent foundation of nearby Aitna required a strong ideological program to overcome threats to Hieron’s rule and to reinforce a common civic identity. These challenges were compounded by ongoing conflicts between the Sikels and Greeks in this region.28 With this background of changing political regimes, population movement, and frequent civic reorganization in mind, I  turn to a discussion of Arethusa in Pindar’s epinician odes for Syracusan victors to consider the symbolic role of the spring within a system of civic ideology.

Pindar’s Epinician Odes for Syracusan Victors Pindar wrote four odes for victors from Syracuse (Olympian 1, Pythian 2, and Pythian 3 for Hieron; and Olympian 6 for Hagesias) and two odes for victors from Hieron’s newly founded Aitna (Pythian 1 for Hieron and Nemean 9 for Chromius).29 The city celebrated in one other ode—​Nemean 1—​is less clear. The scholia say the victor was Chromius of Aitna, but some modern scholars, following an emendation by Schroeder, have attributed the victory to Chromius of Syracuse based on the invocation of Ortygia in the opening.30 This chapter will consider Nemean 1 along with the Syracusan odes, though I believe the scholiast’s attribution to Chromius of Aitna should be considered seriously. The problem of Chromius’ city in Nemean 1 is difficult to untangle

28.  For the ongoing conflict between the Greeks and Sikels in this period, see Asheri 1988: 742–​43, 778–​79. 29. Bacchylides also composed three odes for Syracuse, all for Hieron: Odes 3, 4, 5. Bacchylides does not mention Arethusa or Ortygia in any of these odes, and he only names Artemis once within Meleager’s narrative (Ode 5.99). This chapter will therefore focus on Pindar’s odes for Syracuse, though in the next chapter about Demeter and Persephone in Syracuse Bacchylides’ odes will offer useful parallels. Elliger 1975:  209 observes that, in general, Pindar pays more attention to landscape markers in the epinician odes than Bacchylides does. For a discussion of Pindar’s odes for Aitna, see ­chapter 3. 30.  There is no compelling reason to follow Schroeder’s emendation of the scholia’s ΧΡΟΜΙΩΙ ΑΙΤΝΑΙΩΙ to ΧΡΟΜΙΩΙ ΣΥΡΑΚΟΣΙΩΙ, which Snell and Maehler 1987 adopt in the Teubner edition. It may well be the case that Didymus’ proposal that Chromius was announced as Aitnaian at the games as Hieron was for the victory celebrated by Pythian 1 is correct (Schol. N. 1.inscr. a.). Cf. Braswell 1992:  25–​26 who argues against Schroeder’s emendation based on the fact that Nemean 1 likely postdates Nemean 9 and thus was probably performed after the foundation of Aitna.



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with certainty, but it is precisely this difficulty that makes the ode particularly interesting for the present argument.31 The overlap between Syracuse and Aitna in Nemean 1—​an ode for a Syracusan who became the overseer (ἐπιτρόπος) of Aitna—​underscores the way that Pindar blurs the two cities controlled by Hieron and joins them in a common Deinomenid ideological system.32 Pindar links Syracuse to the Peloponnese in all of his Syracusan odes. In some poems, mythological figures are linked to landscapes but are not themselves localized in Syracuse or Sicily. For instance, in Olympians 1 and 6, Pindar connects Syracuse and Sicily to the Peloponnese through the victor himself. In Olympian 1, which celebrates Hieron’s victory in the single horse race in 476, Pelops is emphatically joined to the Peloponnese: Pindar calls the region the “colony of Pelops” (Πέλοπος ἀποικία, line 24), Pelops’ victory over Oinomaos takes place in Elis (line 78), Pelops permanently rests in Olympia by the River Alpheos where he receives cult worship (lines 92–​94), and, of course, the region takes its name from him (“the island of Pelops”). Pelops, as an oikist and recipient of hero cult, is an especially fitting model for Hieron who hoped to extend his political power beyond Syracuse by founding Aitna and also wished to earn hero cult after his death.33 By analogy, Hieron is a Syracusan version of Pelops, who fulfills a similar role in Sicily and likewise seeks to proclaim his influence over a large island. Similarly, in Olympian 6, the featured mythical character, Iamus, is born, comes of age, and receives his powers as a seer all in very specific places in the Peloponnese. Pindar composed this ode for Hagesias of Syracuse to celebrate his victory in the mule cart race at Olympia in 472 or 468. As Margaret Foster has argued, Hagesias “both personifies and symbolically performs Hieron’s fantasy of uniting the Dorian populations of the Peloponnese and Sicily within the tyrant’s city of Aitna.”34 As in Olympian 1, so in Olympian 6 Pindar selects 31. Braswell argues that the ode celebrated a victory that took place after Chromius’ retirement from his post in Aitna when he had returned to Syracuse (1992: 26). See also Morrison 2007:  23–​24. Carey, on the other hand, proposes an earlier date, arguing that the ode celebrates a victory that took place before Chromius became ἐπιτρόπος in Aitna (1981: 104). On the significance of Pindaric passages that refer simultaneously to Syracuse and Aitna, see the following discussion and Foster 2013: 316 with note 97. 32. For the idea that Syracuse and Aitna shared a system of ideology under Hieron’s rule, see Nicholson 2011. 33. Diodorus tells us that Hieron founded Aitna in hopes of receiving posthumous hero cult (11.49.2). For the Pelops myth as an allusion to Hieron’s foundation of Aitna, see Athanassaki 2003: 121 and Morgan 2015: 232–​33. 34. Foster 2013: 285.

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a Peloponnesian myth that ties Sicily to the Peloponnese, but in the case of Olympian 6, the victor Hagesias himself embodies the connection as he is at once Peloponnesian and Syracusan. He furthermore operates as a symbol of Hieron’s colonial program within Sicily as the συνοικιστήρ of Syracuse (O. 6.6).35 In both Olympians 1 and 6, the Peloponnesian setting of the central myth underscores a connection between Sicily and the Peloponnese either by implied (in the comparison between Hieron and Pelops in Olympian 1) or more explicit (in the case of Hagesias’ link to his ancestor Iamus) links between the mythical narrative and the victor. While in some cases Peloponnesian myth is linked to Syracuse through the victor himself, in other odes the two spaces are connected by myths that are rooted in the Sicilian landscape, as we shall see. Pindar uses different strategies in different Syracusan odes, but in each case he connects Syracuse to the Peloponnese through myth.

Arethusa as a Syracusan Civic Symbol: Numismatic Evidence As early as the end of the sixth century bce, the nymph Arethusa personified the freshwater spring of the same name, which is located on Ortygia, the area of the oldest Greek settlement in the city,36 at the place where the island curves to partially close off the Great Harbor in Syracuse. The first coins issued by the city around 510 bce, when it was still under the control of the aristocratic Gamoroi, displayed a quadriga on the obverse and the head of a nymph Arethusa on the reverse.37 The quadriga highlights the importance of the aristocratic activities of hippotrophia and horse racing as representative of the city’s wealth and

35. As many scholars have observed, συνοικιστήρ is a difficult word to render into English (see Stamatopoulou 2014: 7n21 and Eckerman 2015a: 199). Many translate as “co-​founder” or “fellow-​founder” (including Foster 2013, Briand 2014, and Morgan 2015:  390–​412), but Eckerman has recently argued that the term is more likely to refer to Hagesias’ subordinate role than to make him an equal partner in the colonization (2015a: 199). He would translate as “the one who participates in the process of colonization” instead. 36. For Ortygia as the oldest quarter of the city, see Thucydides 6.3.2. 37. Boehringer 1929 dates the earliest issue of Syracusan coins to 530 bce, but his dating has been challenged and downdated by more recent studies. See Rutter 1998: 309–​14 and Arnold-​Biucchi and Weiss 2007: 65–​67 with notes. Kraay dates the earliest Syracusan issue to 510 (1976: 209). Rutter dates the earliest issue to 490, but allows that it could be dated, at the earliest, to the latest part of the sixth century (1997: 115, 131; 1998: 312). Fischer-​Bossert 2012: 148 argues that Syracuse issued its first coins in the decade between 520 and 510 bce. For a good survey of the coinage minted by Hieron and Gelon, see Morgan 2015: 61–​69.



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power. Clementi Marconi has argued that the appearance of the quadriga on Syracusan coinage follows a trend that began earlier in the sixth century when the Syracusans built the archaic temple of Apollo on Ortygia, which featured equestrian figures on its akroteria. Furthermore, he suggests, in the archaic period equestrian imagery was more visually dominant in the cities of Sicily and Southern Italy, where it was placed on top of buildings and could be seen from a distance, than in Athens, where such figures were displayed at ground level.38 Like the equestrian sculptures, the quadriga on Syracusan coins underscores the prominence of the aristocracy in particular through its participation in elite athletic competition on a Panhellenic stage. The image likely evoked the games at Olympia in particular, the most prominent of the Panhellenic games where wealthy elites from Sicily and Southern Italy built many of the earliest treasuries starting in the eighth century and surpassed their mainland rivals with their participation in athletic competition and dedication.39 The quadriga thus symbolized elite interests and over time developed into a recognizable emblem of the Syracusan polis. Nonetheless, the quadriga did not, on its own, distinguish Syracuse as unique from other cities that won prestigious equestrian events at the Panhellenic games. By contrast, the reverse of the coin, displaying the head of Arethusa, represented a specific place in the Syracusan landscape. While on the earliest issue of coins, the small head appears in the center of an incuse square, on later issues dating to the early fifth century, dolphins encircle her head, which now fills the entire space of the reverse (Figure 1.1).40 Colin Kraay observes that the image of the full-​sized head surrounded by dolphins corresponds to the layout of Syracuse: “The whole design expresses in a flight of fancy the site of Syracuse—​the freshwater spring of Arethusa upon the island of Ortygia in the midst of the encircling sea.”41 In this way, the Syracusans represented their city with an image evocative of the local terrain and topography of Ortygia for

38. Marconi 2007: 48. 39.  For equestrian imagery representing Syracusan interests in athletic competition, see Kraay 1976: 209, Marconi 2007: 48, and Fischer-​Bossert 2012: 146. For early Western Greek treasuries and participation at Olympia, C.  Morgan 1990, C.  Morgan 1993, Philipp 1994, Neer 2007, Antonaccio 2007b, and Bonanno 2010: 32–​33. Kathryn Morgan emphasizes that Gelon’s addition of the Nike figure above the charioteer specifies that the symbol refers to victory in the chariot race, rather than representing aristocratic chariot-​racing in general (2015: 63). 40. See Kraay 1976: pl. 47, 799–​810. 41. Kraay 1976: 210.

40 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

Figure 1.1  Syracusan Tetradrachm, Silver, ca. 500–​485. Reproduced by permission of the American Numismatic Society.

Syracusans, and the spring emerged as a stable, defining civic symbol for non-​ Syracusans who saw the coin.42 Arethusa also represented an enduring link between Syracuse and Olympia through her relationship with Alpheos. As I examine in more detail later in the chapter, the River Alpheos, which flowed from Arcadia through the Peloponnese and famously past Olympia, was believed to be the source of the freshwater spring of Arethusa in Syracuse.43 Rivers and springs, along with their associated nymphs, were known to forge geographic ties between cities within the Greek mythic tradition,44 and the spring of Arethusa represented a

42. Rutter 2000: 73 observes that Sicilians were more likely to choose natural features to represent their poleis on coins than other Greeks. 43. See Pindar Olympian 6.34 where Elatus’ son (Aepytus) was ruler of Arcadia in Phaisana and lived on the Alpheos River. For the path of the Alpheos through the Peloponnese, see Paus. 5.7.1 and Polybius 12.4d.5. 44. For another example of the way that geographical ties through rivers are incorporated into epinician poetry, see Nagy 2011. Nagy has shown, for example, that the ancient belief in a connection between multiple locations of the River Asopos in Phleious, in Thebes, and as a spring on Aegina displays an ideology that mirrored the political relations between these states (Nagy 2011: 64–​78). He argues that the city of Phleious claimed that the nymphs Thebe and Aegina were originally abducted from the River Asopos in Phleious, while the Thebans rejected this version, maintaining that Thebe was a native of Thebes and their own River Asopos, from which Zeus abducted Aegina (2011: esp. 64–​72). For other examples of rivers that the Greeks believed to have traveled underground and to have connected communities, see Cole 2004: 28–​29.



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unique and remarkable connection between Syracuse and the most important Panhellenic sanctuary in the Greek world.45 Arethusa and the quadriga appeared on Syracusan coinage from the end of the sixth century through the end of the fifth century, and the continuity of these coin types through the fifth century testifies to their enduring relevance to the Syracusans even as their political circumstances were in flux.46 The following discussion of references to Arethusa and Alpheos in Pindar’s odes for Syracusan victors demonstrates how the civic imagery found on Syracusan coinage operated as a focusing device which connected Syracuse to the wider Greek world. Others have established that the mythical connection between the spring of Arethusa and the River Alpheos symbolizes a bond between Syracuse and the Peloponnese. My analysis will suggest that Pindar presents references to the spring of Arethusa and the River Alpheos as civic symbols that evoke the narrative connection between Syracuse and the Peloponnese in odes where this link is not explicitly made through the victor himself.47

Arethusa and Alpheos in the Syracusan Odes In Nemean 1, Pindar celebrates the victory of Chromius in the chariot race at the Nemean games. Chromius served as general for both Gelon and Hieron and was appointed regent (ἐπιτρόπος) of Aitna at the time of the performance of the ode.48 Based on the reference to Zeus Aitnaios in the ode (line 6), Nemean 1 likely celebrates a victory won shortly after Aitna’s foundation

45. Although several springs called “Arethusa” were known in the ancient world (perhaps most notably the spring at which Odysseus pauses after he arrives on Ithaca, and the spring in Chalcis), only the spring of Arethusa in Syracuse was joined to Olympia by the River Alpheos in the Greek imagination. For Arethusa on Ithaca, see Odyssey 13.408. For Chalcis, see Eur. IA 170. For Thebes, see Pliny NH 4.25. For Argos, see Schol. Od. 13.408. Herodian 3.1.268 reports that Didymus believed that there were eight springs of Arethusa known to the ancient world. See also Magrath 1974: 37 with note 16. 46. The continuity of the iconography of the quadriga and the head of Arethusa on Syracusan tetradrachms resembles the endurance of the head of Athena and the Owl on Athenian tetradrachms and didrachms. See Boehringer 1929: 95ff and Weiss 1984: 21. 47.  For the connection between Alpheos and Arethusa as representing an “intimate link” between Olympia and Syracuse, see Antonaccio 2007b:  284–​85. See also Hornblower 2004: 185, Eckerman 2013: 8–​11, Foster 2013: 316. 48. The scholia to Nemean 9. inscr. report that Chromius was ἐπιτρόπος of Aitna, which was officially ruled by Hieron’s son Deinomenes. Cf. Pythian 1.58.

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by Hieron in 476.49 The poet begins his praise of Chromius by linking his victory to physical places within the Syracusan, Sicilian, and wider Greek landscape. These connections direct the progression of the ode and assert that Chromius’ victory honors not only Syracuse but also all of Sicily, as I will argue in the discussion of Persephone in the next chapter. First, though, we shall see that the features of the city and the surrounding environment Pindar incorporates into the first lines of Nemean 1 make up a collection of significant sacred places that construct a Syracusan geography with elements that recur in other Syracusan odes. Within this conceptual system, Arethusa, Ortygia, and Artemis link the city to Olympia and the Peloponnese in the center of the Greek world. Pindar begins Nemean 1 by invoking Ortygia, the small island where the first Syracusan colonists settled and later constructed monumental temples for Athena, Apollo, and Artemis:50 Ἄμπνευμα σεμνὸν Ἀλφεοῦ, κλεινᾶν Συρακοσσᾶν θάλος Ὀρτυγία, δέμνιον Ἀρτέμιδος, Δάλου κασιγνήτα, σέθεν ἁδυεπής ὕμνος ὁρμᾶται θέμεν αἶνον ἀελλοπόδων    μέγαν ἵππων, Ζηνὸς Αἰτναίου χάριν· ἅρμα δ’ ὀτρύνει Χρομίου Νεμέα    τ’ ἔργμασιν νικαφόροις ἐγκώμιον ζεῦξαι μέλος.

49.  Braswell 1992:  25–​27. Braswell notes that the first Nemean games after 476 were in 475, but he prefers a later date of 469 or 467 for Nemean 1 because he believes that the ode is later than Nemean 9, Pindar’s other ode for Chromius. Carey 1981: 104 dates the ode to 476. Morrison 2007: 23–​24 prefers Braswell’s later date. Luraghi 1994: 339 argues that Nemean 1 should be dated even earlier to 477, when Mt. Aitna erupted. The scholia’s report that Chromius was announced as “Aitnaios” at the site of the victory (schol. N.  1. inscr.) and the internal reference to Zeus Aitnaios in line 6 make it very unlikely that the ode was performed any earlier than 476. For the purposes of the present argument, the date is not essential because the cult of Artemis and the spring of Arethusa were important in Syracuse throughout the possible time period (from 477 to Hieron’s death in 467) though I am convinced by Braswell’s argument that Nemean 9 probably preceded Nemean 1 because there is no reference to the more prestigious Nemean victory in Nemean 9, which celebrates Chromius’ victory at the Sikyonian games. 50.  For the earliest settlement by Archias planted on Ortygia, see Thucydides 6.3.2. Thucydides’ account is supported by pottery sherds dating to around 730 bce discovered during excavations on Ortygia near the altar of Athena (Malkin 1987:  177, Coldstream 1977: 234).



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Hallowed breath of Alpheos, Ortygia, shoot of famous Syracuse, couch of Artemis, Delos’ sister, from you a sweetly worded song is setting forth to place great praise upon the storm-​footed horses for the sake of Zeus Aitnaios. The chariot of Chromius and Nemea urge me to yoke a song of praise for victory-​bearing deeds.  (N.  1.1–​7) Pindar addresses Ortygia with four noun phrases in apposition: (1) hallowed breath of Alpheos, (2)  shoot of famous Syracuse, (3)  couch of Artemis, and (4) sister of Delos.51 Beginning with a celebration of the hallowed breath of Alpheos, the poem evokes the Ortygian spring as well as the Peloponnesian river, pointing to the local Syracusan space where the spring and the river merged. The poem then pans out to the island of Ortygia and the entire city (κλεινᾶν Συρακοσσᾶν) and mentions the worship of Artemis in that place before ending at the faraway Panhellenic sanctuary of Delos in a geographical tour de force. Pindar will further develop the song’s movement outward from Syracuse as the ode continues.52 The opening image of the spring as the “breath” of Alpheos aligns the river’s flow with the direction of poetic song.53 As the river exhales upon reaching the island, the performance of the ode begins with the exhalation of the chorus as they perform the ode, possibly even on Ortygia.54 Pindar’s song likewise rushes out from the spring as it arrives on the island: σέθεν ἁδυεπής /​ ὕμνος ὁρμᾶται (“from you a sweetly worded song is setting forth,” 4–​5). The breath of Alpheos is one and the same as the spring of Arethusa. Through this allusion, Pindar situates the ode on the island (since the breath here is in

51. For further discussion of Pindar’s invocation of Ortygia, see Magrath 1974: 31–​32. 52.  In analyzing Pindar’s tendency to focus the audience’s attention on symbolic places through a close reading of Olympian 1, Eckerman explores the benefits of thinking of Pindar’s poetry as a film (2015b). This approach to spatial analysis helps to emphasize the powerful representational value that places have in Pindar’s epinician odes. 53. For the metaphor of speech as running water in Pindar’s poetry, see Steiner 1986: 72–​73. 54.  It is not clear where the ode’s first performance would have taken place. Didymus believed that the ode was performed at the Aitnaia, a festival for Zeus Aitnaios in Aitna, but the place and context of the first performance of Nemean 1 remain unresolved (Schol. N 1. inscr. a.). Braswell 1992: 37 follows the opinion of the scholia that the ode was performed at the Aitnaia. Griffith 2008: 5 argues that Nemean 1 was first performed in front of the spring of Arethusa. Morrison believes that the first performance of the ode was at a symposium, and he contends that even if the ode were performed at the Aitnaia as Didymus suggests it would have involved a public symposium connected to the public sacrifice for Zeus Aitnaios. He further suggests that the symposium may have occurred in Chromius’ house in Syracuse (Morrison 2007: 25).

44 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

apposition to Ortygia) and he suggests that his song travels the same path as its waters—​from Greece to Syracuse.55 Pindar evokes another significant Syracusan deity in the poem’s opening. In the third line the chorus calls upon Ortygia as the couch of Artemis, the goddess to whom the island and the spring were sacred and who was worshipped on Ortygia in an Ionic temple built in the sixth century.56 Archaeologists have found evidence for the worship of Artemis on Ortygia, including the remains of a shrine, votive deposits, and signs of an altar that has been dated to the seventh century.57 Tobias Fischer-​Hansen proposes that the initial founders of the colony brought the cult (which may even have been the cult of Artemis Alpheioa or Artemis Potamia) with them from Corinth, though it ultimately attained a more prominent place in Syracuse than in the mother-​city and developed independent features.58 Most significantly, the cult of Artemis appears much earlier in Syracuse than it does elsewhere in Sicily and South Italy; in all of the other major cities, there is little evidence of the worship of Artemis until the late fifth and fourth centuries.59 The cult of Artemis on Ortygia therefore represents a uniquely Syracusan phenomenon that originally expressed the significance of the connection between the polis and its mother-​city, Corinth, in the Peloponnese, but over time developed into one of the primary centers of worship for the city and into an expression of Syracuse’s independent identity. Like Arethusa, Artemis evokes a local civic context. Pindar’s final invocation of Ortygia celebrates her as the “sister of Delos,” an epithet that turns on the homonymy of the island in Sicily and the older name of the island Delos. The scholiasts to Nemean 1 note that Pindar was particularly fond of associating places that shared the same name with one

55. Daniel Berman has shown that the spring of Dirce in Pindar’s poetry likewise represents poetic inspiration (in this case of the Pieirian Muses) and describes a topographical feature of the city of Thebes (Berman 2015: 58). For the Pindaric passage, see I. 6.74–​75. 56. For the spring as sacred to Artemis, see Schol. N. 1.inscr.b. Schol. N. 1.2a adds that all of Ortygia was sacred to Artemis. For the temple, see Cic. Verr. 2.4.118. See also Reichert-​ Südbeck 2000: 70–​71 and Fischer-​Hansen 2009: 208–​9. 57. Fischer-​Hansen 2009: 209. Figurines dedicated to Artemis dating to the early history of the city were also found near the Temple of Apollo on Ortygia, and excavators have uncovered two suburban sanctuaries at Scala Greca and Belvedere which date to the fifth century and contained a wide variety of votive offerings to Artemis in her different aspects (Fischer-​ Hansen 2009: 209–​12). 58.  Fischer-​Hansen 2009:  208–​10, 214. He further observes that the cult spread more broadly throughout Sicily during the period when the Corinthian general Timoleon ruled Syracuse in the second half of the fourth century bce (Fischer-​Hansen 2009: 214–​15). 59. Fischer-​Hansen 2009: 214–​15.



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another,60 and Pindar himself says in Paean 7b that Ortygia was another name for Delos.61 In Nemean 1 at the opening of the ode, the connection between Ortygia and Delos emphasizes the widespread worship of Artemis throughout the Greek world and includes the Syracusans among the devotees of the goddess. In these two lines, Pindar invokes a local Artemis, who is worshipped on Ortygia, and represents this Artemis as part of a larger Greek network of religious practice. Pindar’s epithets for Ortygia underscore the close relationship between the goddess, the spring, and the island. The scholiasts believed that the island of Ortygia and the spring of Arethusa were sacred to Artemis,62 and the proliferation of epithets of Ortygia likely alludes to the cult of Artemis in Syracuse practiced on Ortygia near the spring of Arethusa where a cult image of Artemis stood. In the opening, Pindar connects Artemis to two primary features of the Syracusan landscape—​the island of Ortygia and the spring of Arethusa, and, taken together, the three make up a cluster of images that evoke her cult in Pindar’s Syracusan odes.63 In four of the five odes he writes for Syracusan victors, Pindar signals the ode’s arrival in Syracuse by directly naming or alluding to the spring of Arethusa, Artemis, and/​or Ortygia.64 Although the invocation of the victor’s city is conventional in such arrival scenes in epinician poetry, the places invoked nonetheless contain associations that convey important information about that city both to its own citizens and to a broader Panhellenic audience.65 60. Schol. N. 1.4a. 61.  καλέοντι μιν Ὀρτυγίαν ναῦται πάλαι (“Sailors have called her Ortygia since long ago,” Pae. 7b.48). See also Apollonius 1.537 and Vergil Aeneid 3.124 for Ortygia as another name for Delos. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Ortygia and Delos are separate places. Artemis is born on Ortygia, while Apollo is born on Delos (Hymn. Hom. Ap. 15–​16). 62. Schol. N. 1.inscr.b. 63. In line 13, the poet addresses the Muse: “now sow some splendor on the island” (σπεῖρε νυν ἀγλαίαν τινὰ νάσῳ). The mention of νῆσος here may refer to Sicily, but, in a sense, Ortygia is reintroduced as the recipient of the aglaia. For a discussion of the shifting meaning of νῆσος, which refers to both Ortygia and the island of Sicily in this passage, see c­ hapter 2. 64. Pindar does not refer to Arethusa or Ortygia in Olympian 1, though he does mention Alpheos at the site of the victory (line 20)  and as the place where Pelops reclines as he receives cult offerings (line 92). In Olympian 6, Ortygia is invoked, but there is no direct allusion to Arethusa as there is in Nemean 1, Pythian 2, and Pythian 3. Again though, the River Alpheos appears twice as the setting for elements of the mythical narrative—​Aepytus, into whose care the baby Iamus was given, lived beside the Alpheos (line 34) and Iamus wades into its waters as he asks Apollo and Poseidon to grant him an office that would serve the people (line 58). 65. D’Alessio 2009: 162–​66.

46 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

By indicating the ode’s arrival in Syracuse through references to the spring of Arethusa, Pindar represents the city in terms of its relationship with Olympia. We have seen that Pindar describes the ode and the victory celebration as arising from the spring on Ortygia at the beginning of Nemean 1, and other Syracusan odes that evoke one of the cluster of Ortygia, Arethusa, Artemis, and Alpheos as civic symbols follow a similar pattern.66 As in Nemean 1 where the ode opens with a reference to the spring, so in Pythian 2 for Hieron of Syracuse Pindar recalls the site of the spring in the opening lines: Μεγαλοπόλιες ὦ Συράκοσαι, βαθυπολέμου1 τέμενος Ἄρεος, ἀνδρῶν ἵππων τε σιδαροχαρ-​   μᾶν δαιμόνιαι τροφοί, ὔμμιν τόδε τᾶν λιπαρᾶν ἀπὸ Θηβᾶν φέρων μέλος ἔρχομαι ἀγγελίαν τετραορίας ἐλελίχθονος, εὐάρματος Ἱέρων ἐν ᾇ κρατέων 5 τηλαυγέσιν ἀνέδησεν Ὀρτυγίαν στεφάνοις, ποταμίας ἕδος Ἀρτέμιδος, ἇς οὐκ ἄτερ κείνας ἀγαναῖσιν ἐν χερσὶ ποικιλα-​   νίους ἐδάμασσε πώλους. Oh great city of Syracuse, precinct of Ares deeply set in war, divine nurse of men and horses that delight in iron, I  come bearing for you from splendid Thebes this song, a message of the earth-​shaking four-​horse chariot, in which winning the victory in a beautiful chariot Hieron crowned with far-​shining wreaths Ortygia, the seat of Artemis of the river, that goddess not without whom he tamed the horses with embroidered reins in his gentle hands.  (P.  2.1–​8) After invoking Syracuse as a great city and emphasizing its warlike qualities (as he also does in Nemean 1.16–​17), Pindar marks the arrival of the poem and the victory celebration by naming both Syracuse and Ortygia, which Hieron “crowned with far-​shining garlands.” Although Syracuse is named first in the poem, the crowning of Ortygia represents the moment when the victor

66. See Braswell 1992: 36 for the image of the path of song in the opening of Nemean 1. The image anticipates the later poets Callimachus, who compares his own poetry to a stream (Hymn 2.105ff.), and Horace, who describes Pindar’s poetry as a rushing river (Odes 4.2.5–​ 24). On this imagery in Homer and Hesiod, see Maehler 1963 and Kambylis 1965.



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shares his accomplishment with the city.67 Pindar then includes an epithet for Ortygia: ποταμίας ἕδος Ἀρτέμιδος, “the seat of Artemis of the river” (line 7). The appellation at first seems curious for a deity worshipped on a small island that lacks rivers. The scholiast explains that Artemis Potamia is another name for Artemis Alpheioa, who received her cult name because the River Alpheos fell in love with her and pursued her until she reached Ortygia.68 Alternately, she may have received her name from a cult image placed near the spring of Arethusa, who received her waters from Alpheos.69 In either case, “the seat of Artemis of the river” in Pythian 2 incorporates the Syracusan spring indirectly because this river must be the River Alpheos. In both odes, the same set of connected, localized Syracusan symbols—​Ortygia, Artemis, and Alpheos (implied but not directly named)—​signal that the ode has arrived in the victor’s city. In Pythian 3, which also celebrates a victory of Hieron of Syracuse, Pindar most clearly marks the spring of Arethusa as the endpoint of his imagined journey to Syracuse to deliver a poem for Hieron. After a long counterfactual statement in which the poet wishes he could send another Asclepius to heal the ailing tyrant, Pindar describes the trip he would have taken to the island had it been possible: καὶ κεν ἐν ναυσὶν μόλον Ἰονίαν τάμνων θάλασσαν   Ἀρέθοισαν ἐπὶ κράναν παρ’ Αἰτναῖον ξένον, ὃς Συρακόσσαισι νέμει βασιλεύς. And I would have come, cutting the Ionian sea in ships, to the spring of Arethusa and to my Aitnaian host, who rules over Syracuse as king. (P. 3.68–​70) The poet envisions the end of his unrealized journey in Syracuse at the spring of Arethusa, which he here calls by name (Ἀρέθοισαν ἐπὶ κράναν)—​the same place from which the poem sets forth in the opening of Nemean 1 and which signals the culmination of the ode’s journey and the moment when the victor’s

67. Kurke 1993: 137–​41 argues that Pindar’s references to crowning the city correspond literally to the ritual of the victory celebration. However, Eckerman forthcoming shows that the metaphorical meaning of crowns as “songs” must be taken into consideration in these passages. 68. Schol. P. 2.12a. For the cult of Artemis Alpheioa at Olympia, where she shared an altar with Alpheos, see Paus. 5.14.6 and Schol. O. 5.10a. See also the following discussion. 69. Schol. P. 2.12b. The scholiasts to Nemean 1 likewise suggest that the Artemis invoked at the opening of that ode is the same as Artemis Potamia in Pythian 2 (Schol. N. 1.inscr. b.).

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achievement is shared with his city in the opening of Pythian 2. In all three cases Pindar invokes points on Ortygia—​the spring of Arethusa (Ἀρέθοισαν ἐπὶ κράναν, P. 3.69; ἄμπνευμα σεμνὸν Ἀλφεοῦ, N. 1.1; ποταμίας ἕδος Ἀρτέμιδος, P. 2.7)—​as sites for the arrival of the poem and the celebrations that attend it (the κῶμος, P. 3.73; song, ἐγκώμιον μέλος, and feasting, δεῖπνον, N. 1.6, 22; the song, μέλος, and the crowning of the city, τηλαυγέσιν ἀνέδησεν Ὀρτυγίαν στεφάνοις, P. 2.4, 6). In all three odes a cluster of related, locally significant symbols represent Syracuse:  Ortygia, the seat (ἕδος) or couch (δέμνιον) of Artemis, and the spring of Arethusa. A final passage from Olympian 6 for Hagesias of Syracuse for a victory won in 472 or 468 reinforces that this group of images is integral to Pindar’s representation of the city. After the opening invocation of Hagesias, Pindar embarks on a mythical narrative that explains how Hagesias’ ancestor, Iamus, became a divine seer. The action of the mythical narrative takes place in the Peloponnese, emphasizing Hagesias’ ancestral ties to his home city, Stymphalos. After he concludes the mythical narrative, Pindar addresses the chorus trainer, Aineas: εἶπον δὲ μεμνᾶσθαι Συρα-​   κοσσᾶν τε καὶ Ὀρτυγίας· τὰν Ἱέρων καθαρῷ σκάπτῳ διέπων, ἄρτια μηδόμενος, φοινικόπεζαν ἀμφέπει Δάματρα λευκίπ-​   που τε θυγατρὸς ἑορτάν καὶ Ζηνὸς Αἰτναίου κράτος. ἁδύλογοι δέ νιν λύραι μολπαί τε γινώσκοντι. Tell them [the chorus members] to remember Syracuse and Ortygia; while ruling her [Ortygia] with a pure scepter and devising fitting counsels, Hieron attends to red-​footed Demeter and the festival of her daughter of the white horses and to the power of Zeus Aitnaios. Sweetly speaking lyres and songs know her [Ortygia].70 (O. 6.92–​97)

70. For the argument that νιν refers to Ortygia rather than to Hieron since it is more common for a city or a divinity to receive the κῶμος than a man, see Friis Johansen 1973, Kirkwood 1982: 94. However, Morgan 2015: 407–​8 argues that νιν should refer to Hieron. Eckerman 2010 convincingly shows that the primary meaning of κῶμος is always “celebration,” broadly construed, in Pindar and that the noun never refers primarily to individual aspects of the celebration (such as “chorus,” “ode,” “revel band,” etc.).



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In this passage, which transitions from the mythical narrative to an invocation of the victor’s (current) city—​from Stymphalos to Syracuse, and from the Peloponnese to Sicily—​Pindar instructs Aineas to tell the chorus to remember Syracuse and Ortygia. As in Pythian 2, Ortygia is again evocative of, but not identical to, Syracuse. The sacred island—​the acropolis of the city—​is the setting in which the victor celebrates his achievement, and the place that is infused with distinctive power in the Syracusan imagination through its link with Olympia. Here there is no reference to Arethusa or Artemis as the ode arrives on Ortygia in Olympian 6, but in this ode Pindar links Syracuse and the Peloponnese through the victor himself, who is at once Stymphalian and Syracusan and who has a home in each city.71 In Pindar’s epinician odes for Syracuse, the movement from Olympia to Sicily is marked by references to the cult of Artemis, the spring of Arethusa, and the island of Ortygia. Just as the spring on Ortygia is physically joined to Olympia through the waters of the River Alpheos, Pindar’s poetry for Syracusan victors arrives on Ortygia and ensures a lasting connection between Syracuse and the rest of Greece by making the city and its athletic victories famous in song. On Syracusan coinage, the nymph Arethusa represents the city, and, in Pindar’s poetry, the grouping of Arethusa, Artemis, and Ortygia functions not just as a doublet for the city but also colors these epinician passages with local mythic tradition.

The Mythical Connection Between Syracuse and the Peloponnese I have argued that in Pindar’s odes for Syracusan victors Arethusa, Artemis, and Ortygia form a group of images that signal the ode’s arrival in the city, much as the image of Arethusa on the Syracusan tetradrachm expresses a central aspect of Syracusan civic identity. However, Pindar’s mention of Artemis Potamia in Pythian 2 raises another possible target for Alpheos’ advances within the context of Syracusan civic cultic tradition. The following discussion will propose that Pindar’s address to the spring as the “hallowed breath of Alpheos” in the first line of Nemean 1 allows audiences to understand a series of mythical traditions related to the cult of Artemis Potamia (“Artemis of the river”), also known as Artemis Alpheioa. The images of Arethusa, Artemis, and Ortygia in Pindar’s poems for Syracusan victors should therefore be

71. See Foster 2013. In the final epode, the κῶμος for Hagesias travels from one home to another (οἴκοθεν οἴκαδ’, O. 6.99).

50 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

understood as symbols of a wider cultural and religious network of myth and cult practice in which the Syracusans participated and which further linked them to the territory surrounding Olympia.72 That the link between Arethusa and Alpheos was not an innovation made by the Deinomenid tyrants or even by Pindar, but one that went back at least to the sixth century, is suggested by a Syracusan foundation oracle. In this earliest version of the story, Pausanias says that before Archias, a Heraklid from Corinth, founded Syracuse in 734/​3, he consulted the Delphic oracle and was instructed to establish a colony in the place where “the mouth of Alpheos bubbles up mixing together with the springs of fair-​flowing Arethusa” (Ἀλφειοῦ στόμα βλύζει /​ μισγόμενον πηγαῖσιν ἐυρρείτης Ἀρεθούσης, Paus. 5.7.3). The foundation oracle names the site of the new foundation (Ὀρτυγίη) and asserts that the waters of Alpheos are mingled (μισγόμενον) with those of the spring of Arethusa in that place. The spring of Arethusa is the Ἀλφειοῦ στόμα or “mouth of Alpheos,” a description that critics have observed closely resembles Pindar’s “hallowed breath of Alpheos” at the beginning of Nemean 1.73 Pausanias may have recorded the authentic eighth-​century foundation oracle for Syracuse, but in the (perhaps more likely) event that the oracle was composed later, Pindar probably still knew of the tradition that the river “mixed” its waters with the spring.74 Moreover, a lost poem of Ibycus refers to a libation bowl (φιάλη) that came through the sea to Syracuse carried by the

72. For the concept of a “network of interacting myths and rituals,” see Kowalzig 2007: 23. For Kowalzig, it is important that myth and ritual be considered diachronically and be understood to have changed over time. She emphasizes that local myth and ritual have the power to differentiate and shape worshipping communities (2007: 9–​11). 73. On the correspondence between the language of the oracle and the opening of Pindar’s ode, see Braswell 1992: 33; Foster 2013: 315–​16. Eckerman’s translation of ἄμπνευμα as “up-​ breath” nicely captures the similarity between the two passages (2013: 9). 74.  Pausanias 5.7.3. See Fontenrose 1978, 138–​39 for authenticity and Pausanias’ sources. Parke and Wormell believe that this oracle is the oldest source we have for a connection between Alpheos and the Syracusan spring, Arethusa, arguing that “there is no reason for denying its claim to be authentic” (1956: 67–​68, quote taken from p. 68). They also argue that the legend preserved in Pausanias is the “ultimate source” for the Alpheos and Arethusa myth as it develops throughout antiquity (Parke and Wormell 1956: 67–​68). Malkin (1987: 43) sees no reason to dismiss the oracle as inauthentic because it contains plausible factual details: the plague, consultation of the oracle, and colonization. The reference to Arethusa in the oracle, he argues, is a reference to the place rather than a mythological allusion. Miller (1970: 44–​45) dates the oracle to the end of the sixth century both because a mole connecting Ortygia to the mainland was built during this period and because the new temple of Apollo at Delphi had been completed by this time. She posits that the oracle represents “a predisposition to welcome close association with the new splendor of the cult-​center” in this period (Miller 1970: 45).



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River Alpheos (PMG 323; schol. Theoc. 1.117a.). Ibycus’ poem suggests that a close connection between the River Alpheos and the spring of Arethusa appeared in the poetic tradition by the sixth century during the period before the Deinomenids took over the city in 485.75 Ibycus appears to have treated the story at greater length than Pindar’s brief reference in the opening of Nemean 1, but it is impossible to know whether or not he may have included the longer narrative about Arethusa and Alpheos found in later poets.76 There may be a hint of the story in the foundation oracle preserved in Pausanias.77 The image of Alpheos “mixing” (μισγόμενον) with Arethusa surely carries an erotic undertone even if it does not emphasize the mythical narrative. The foundation oracle, Pausanias believes, was the origin of the later tale according to which the hunter Alpheos fell in love with the huntress Arethusa.78 Since she did not wish to marry him, she fled to Ortygia where she transformed from a maiden into a spring. Alpheos, the story continues, then turned from a man into a river, pursued Arethusa under the sea, and mingled (ἀνακοινοῦσθαι) his waters with hers in Ortygia.79 Pausanias’ explanation stresses the underlying erotic sense of the oracle. The Syracusan tetradrachms displaying the head of Arethusa discussed above provide more evidence for the personification of Arethusa in the late sixth and early fifth centuries. Almost all issues of the Syracusan tetradrachm of the early fifth century feature the head of the spring nymph Arethusa, or possibly in some early cases the goddess Artemis. In his comprehensive study

75.  On this fragment of Ibycus, see Barron 1984:  22. Barron proposes that Ibycus’ poem was an epinician ode for a Syracusan victor who had been victorious in the Olympic games because of the reference to Alpheos and Arethusa and because Ibycus elsewhere (PMG 322) writes of underground rivers. See also Bowie 2009: 123. Cf. also Timaeus who tells the story of the φιάλη (BNJ 566 F 41a–​c). 76.  The earliest version that certainly incorporates the love story is narrated at length by Moschus in the second century bce (Mosch. 6), who was himself born in Syracuse, and most memorably later in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 5.487–​641. Both poets represent Arethusa explicitly as a personified nymph who was pursued by the river god Alpheos. For a discussion of the erotic myth, see Boehringer 1929: 98–​101, Carey 1981: 104, Braswell 1992: 33–​34. Braswell 1992:  34 believes the erotic story was a Hellenistic innovation, possibly derived from Telesilla’s poem (PMG 717) about Artemis and Alpheos, on which see the following discussion. 77.  On the oracle as a metaphor for the mixing of native and Greek populations, see Dougherty 1993: 69 and the following discussion. 78. Paus. 5.7.3: κατὰ τοῦτο οὖν, ὅτι τῇ Ἀρεθούσῃ τοῦ Ἀλφειοῦ τὸ ὕδωρ μίσγεται, καὶ τοῦ ἔρωτος τὴν φήμην τῷ ποταμῷ πείθομαι γενέσθαι. 79.  Pausanias 5.7.2–​3. See also Pausanias 8.54.3 where he again says that the river flows under the sea and emerges in Syracuse.

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of Syracusan coinage, Erich Boehringer identified the female head on the earliest tetradrachms as Artemis, to whom the entire island of Ortygia, including the spring of Arethusa, was sacred. His identification has since been challenged, and the current scholarly consensus is that the head on the Syracusan tetradrachms represents the nymph Arethusa.80 It is worth noting, however, that the small head that appears inside an incuse square on the earliest sixth-​ century coins could represent Artemis or Arethusa—​the early female is identified only by analogy with later types on which the spring nymph is surrounded by dolphins.81 In either case, the nymph was almost certainly related to the worship of the goddess Artemis Potamia on Ortygia. The scholiasts to Pindar recall that a cult statue of Artemis stood before the spring, and they recount an aetiological story for the spring in which the nymphs caused it to flow to please Artemis.82 It is no surprise that Artemis and Arethusa, who are closely connected in the literary and mythical traditions, may have been conflated in visual representations as well. As we saw in Pindar’s Sicilian odes where the poet groups Artemis and Arethusa with the island of Ortygia, the goddess and the nymph belong to a cluster of images that represent the city’s tie to Olympia and the ode’s arrival in Syracuse. The female head on the Syracusan tetradrachms operates in a similar way by evoking the mythical tradition rather than simply by making reference to the goddess or the nymph in isolation. In the 2000s, a Syracusan tetradrachm of a previously unknown type was discovered. This tetradrachm provides more evidence that the image of a female head on fifth-​century Syracusan coins signified, above all, the mythical bond between Syracuse and Olympia through the spring of Arethusa and the River Alpheos (Figure 1.2).83 On the reverse, two barley grains are displayed in an incuse square along with the inscription ΣVRA. The barley grains resemble the barley grains that appear on the coinage of Leontini and Gela and also the barley ears on the coins

80. Boehringer 1929: 97–​101. For the argument that the head must be Arethusa, see LIMC II.1:  582–​84 (Cahn 1984). Cahn bases his argument on a similar change in type (but not deity) on the coins of Katane, and he argues that the symbols surrounding the head do not correspond to images displayed with Artemis in other representations. See also Kraay 1976: 209–​10, 221; Rutter 2000: 79; Fischer-​Bossert 2012: 148. 81. Rutter 1997: 124 is more cautious when he describes an earlier representation of the figure from around 480 bce: “On the reverse the small female head (perhaps already representing Arethusa . . .) is transformed into a full type surrounded by dolphins.” 82. Schol. N. 1.2a and Diod. 5.3.5. 83. See Morgan 2015: 62–​63 for a discussion of the coin type and its significance.



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Figure  1.2  Syracusan Tetradrachm, Silver, ca. 485. Source: Arnold-​Biucchi and Weiss 2007. Auctioned in Triton XV on January 3, 2012.

of Metapontion.84 Based on the ethnic inscription (ΣVRA), Carmen Arnold-​ Biucchi and Peter Weiss have identified the silver tetradrachm as Syracusan and have dated it to 485, arguing that this was the very first issue struck by the tyrant Gelon after he came to power in Syracuse.85 Intriguingly for the present discussion, the obverse of the coin depicts a male head with a long wavy beard, two horns above his temples, and “non-​human” ears.86 Arnold-​Biucchi and Weiss have identified the figure on the obverse as the river god Alpheos based on (1) the horns that designate the figure as a river god; (2) analogy with other Sicilian poleis (and Gela in particular) that portray river gods on their coins; and (3) the mythical link preserved in the literary sources which connects the River Alpheos to the spring of Arethusa in Syracuse.87 If Arnold-​Biucchi and Weiss have correctly argued that the male figure on this tetradrachm is the river god Alpheos and that the coin belongs to Gelon’s first Syracusan issue in 485, this means that the Deinomenid tyrant adopted and refigured the customary symbols on the Syracusan tetradrachm, which depicted the quadriga opposite the head of Arethusa, to announce and

84. Arnold-​Biucchi and Weiss 2007: 64. 85. Arnold-​Biucchi and Weiss 2007: 65–​67. 86. A satyr or Silenus, by contrast, would not have horns. For comparison, see the Silenus on the Aitnaian tetradrachm in ­chapter 3, Figure 3.2. 87. Arnold-​Biucchi and Weiss 2007: 61–​64.

54 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

celebrate Syracuse’s economic power. On other Syracusan tetradrachms, the quadriga symbolizes Syracusan wealth and elite interests at Olympia. If the head of Arethusa represents the physical spring in Syracuse that linked the city to Olympia, the new tetradrachm featuring the head of Alpheos and the barley grains depicts a similar set of symbols evocative of Syracusan wealth and of a connection to the Peloponnese, but subtly rearticulates them.88 The barley grains on the reverse signify, above all, fertility. They thus indicate wealth and political power for Sicily in particular since the island had become famous as a grain producer at least by the time of Herodotus.89 Barbara Kowalzig argues that the Deinomenids “carved out for themselves a pivotal position in a Panhellenic, even Pan-​mediterranean context” by developing their grain-​producing capabilities and that their “corn-​producing power and their exports of Demeter’s gift were legendary and important in the ancient imagination.”90 The pair of barley grains on this tetradrachm fits well with Syracuse’s emerging role as a grain producer. Like the quadriga, the barley grains denote wealth but significantly now, instead of representing Syracusan wealth in terms of athletic competition tied to individual victory, the barley grains express Syracusan wealth in terms of the fertility of the land controlled by the city.91 The head of Alpheos on Gelon’s new issue preserves the important connection between Syracuse and Olympia by depicting Alpheos, the other half of the mythical pair represented by the head of Arethusa on the more familiar coin type. On the quadriga/​Arethusa type, the quadriga emphasizes Syracusan participation in elite competition and the head of Arethusa draws attention to a sacred space in the city. It could even be the case that by replacing Arethusa with Alpheos, the coin puns on the similarity between the river god’s name and the Greek word for barley grain:  Ἀλφεός/​ἄλφιτον. It may, through this

88. For a discussion of the coin, see also Lewis 2019. 89. Hdt. 7.158.4 says that Gelon offered to supply grain to the entire Greek army in exchange for a share of the command against the Persians. Strabo 6.2.4 reports that the Syracusans became so wealthy that the proverb that the tithe of the Syracusans would not be enough for them was used to describe very extravagant people. 90. Kowalzig 2008: 134–​35. 91. The barley grains likely allude to the worship of Demeter and Kore, the goddesses who protected the island of Sicily and who were particularly associated with grain production. As I have already noted, the Deinomenids were the ancestral priests of the cult of Demeter and Kore, and the barley grains thus celebrate this aspect of the tyrants’ power. I discuss this at greater length in the next chapter on Persephone and Demeter as symbols of Syracusan political expansion.



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link, underscore the dependence of agriculture—​and therefore the economy of Syracuse—​on fresh water sources. In any case, Gelon’s new issue highlights fertility and grain production on the Sicilian land—​now expanding the purview of Syracuse beyond the confines of Ortygia—​and connects Syracuse to Olympia through the river god Alpheos whose waters flow through the Peloponnese. The image of Alpheos on the tetradrachm thus attests to the enduring importance of the tie between Arethusa and the river god of Elis and Olympia, and if it was indeed struck by Gelon in 485—​the very year that he came to power in Syracuse—​then this mythical connection also makes a bold statement about the growth of Syracusan influence under Gelon’s rule. As I  will examine in more detail later in the chapter, in the early fifth-​ century Peloponnese there was already an extant alternate story of Alpheos’ pursuit in which he fell in love with Artemis. The link between Syracuse and the Peloponnese, and the myths that articulated this link, were not static. Rather they appear to have been adapted to changing needs of the Syracusans. Over time Arethusa appears to have taken the place of Artemis as the object of Alpheos’ desire in the myth, perhaps indicating a growing role for Arethusa in the cult of Artemis or the desire to emphasize the distinctly Syracusan element in the myth. This may be one way in which the Syracusans remained connected to a larger network of cultic worship of Artemis, while at the same time appropriating the tradition and rearticulating it in their own terms. In Pindar’s epinician poetry, Arethusa, Artemis Potamia, and the couch/​ seat of Artemis operate primarily as civic symbols which call to mind a particular place in Syracuse and activate a broader mythical system for a local audience intimately familiar with the symbolic vocabulary the poet employs. A reference to Arethusa or Artemis in Pindar, like an emblem on a coin,92 is above all the evocation of a civic symbol—​a symbol that connects Syracuse so directly to Olympia that the very mention of the Ἄμπνευμα σεμνὸν Ἀλφεοῦ in Nemean 1 may be what prompted Timaeus to identify the ode as Olympian instead of Nemean and caused another scholiast to ask why Ortygia was included in the poem (he suggests that Pindar may have mentioned the island

92. Rutter 2000: 73 argues that in addition to being unique for their advanced artistry Sicilian coins “are also unique in the Greek world for the richness and variety of their depictions of elements of the natural world.” He also suggests that these coin types represent a response to a new environment by incorporating “fresh-​water springs and rivers, products of the fertile soil such as an ear of barley or a grape-​cluster, creatures of the earth, the sky and the sea portrayed in astonishingly accurate detail, natural features of the landscape, such as a harbour or a thermal spring, that give a community its identity” (1997: 16, my italics).

56 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

because Hieron and Chromius kept their horse stables on Ortygia).93 The way Pindar employs these sorts of myths, therefore, contrasts significantly with the way they are used by later poets, like Ovid, who expand and emphasize the mythical narrative. Part of my goal in this chapter is to argue that the short space Pindar gives to references to Arethusa and Artemis does not necessarily indicate that the mythical connection is any less important for Pindar than it is when it appears in expanded versions in the works of later poets. As a symbol of Syracusan civic ideology, the spring of Arethusa resonated with both local and Panhellenic audiences. In Pindar’s poetry, commonly understood cultural symbols like Arethusa were comprehensible to a local audience who also engaged with these localized myths within a wide range of nonliterary dimensions. Topographical symbols like the spring of Arethusa or the couch of Artemis were located outside in the open air and were thus accessible and recognizable to any citizen who moved freely about the city. Such symbols thus function as access points for and markers of civic identity, both to a local audience who would have understood these symbols with all of their local associations and to a Panhellenic audience who would have recognized them as markers of the Syracusan polis—​perhaps from experience with Syracusan coins, but certainly through their appearance in Pindar’s odes—​for those who were already familiar with his poetry. These symbols in Pindar’s poetry appear as brief references but can call to mind an entire mythic and civic complex for an audience. Recently, Tom Phillips has argued that Pindar’s epinician poetry demands engagement from his audiences as they listen to or read an ode:  “Pindar’s frequent meditations on the relationship between praise and envy, his idealization of victors, and the exemplary use of mythical narratives should be seen not as messages to be decoded, but rather as open-​ ended scripts requiring supplementation by readerly response.”94 I  would suggest that Pindar’s odes, similarly, expected and required audiences to fill in the details of the mythical narratives to which they allude. By invoking civic symbols or stories that narrate only a small part of an episode, different audiences were invited to supply the missing details most relevant to their own experience. For a Syracusan audience, the myth of Alpheos’ pursuit of Arethusa may have evoked the city’s colonial foundation in particular. Carol Dougherty has suggested that in the foundation oracle preserved by Pausanias, the

93. For Timaeus’ error, see Schol. N. 1. inscr. a. For a discussion of the reference, see Schol. N. 1. inscr. b. 94. Phillips 2016: 41.



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connection between the river and the spring provides a continuous link between Syracuse and Olympia and works as a metaphor for the inhabitants of archaic Syracuse—​the Greek settlers from the Peloponnese and the native Sikels, whom Archias and the Corinthian colonists expelled from Ortygia before establishing the colony. In the oracle, “the two streams become an emblem for native and Greek interaction,” which offers the colonists a model for their relations in the new city, that is, a model for “reintegration and synthesis.”95 The foundation oracle thus conceals the turbulent relationship between the original Corinthian colonists, who took Ortygia by force, and the captured Sikels by aligning them with a metaphor of harmonious contact—​ the mingling of the Peloponnesian river and the native Syracusan spring.96 Margaret Foster has argued that the myth of Arethusa and Alpheos is relevant not only to the original archaic foundation but also to Hieron’s more recent colonization of Aitna in 476 when Hieron recruited a mixed population of 5,000 colonists from Syracuse and 5,000 from the Peloponnese to serve as its citizens.97 For colonists from the Peloponnese living in Aitna, the symbol of the joined waters of Arethusa and Alpheos offered a connection back to their native land and acknowledged its prominence as the source of the spring.98 The opening of Nemean 1 also emphasizes the relationship between Aitna and its metropolis, Syracuse, for the song arises from the breath of Alpheos for the sake of Zeus Aitnaios. Chromius’ dual status as a Syracusan and an Aitnaian further symbolically joins the fortune and attributes of Syracuse to those of Aitna.99 I would like to stress that during this period the colonial metaphor represented by the connection between Alpheos and Arethusa applies equally well to fifth-​century Syracuse itself.100 Nino Luraghi and Irad Malkin both describe Gelon’s establishment of his new government in Syracuse as a “refoundation” of the city due to the change in political power and to the granting of

95. Dougherty 1993: 69. See also Foster 2013: 315–​16. 96. For the suppression of violence and disruption of the process of colonization in Pindar’s ode, see Athanassaki 2003. She makes the attractive suggestion that the myth of Pelops in Olympian 1 alludes both to Hieron’s foundation of Aitna and to the foundation narrative of Syracuse (2003: 121–​22). 97. Foster 2013: 316. Diod. 11.49.1. 98. Eckerman 2007: 246 observes that the link between Arethusa and Alpheos represents movement both from center to periphery and from the periphery back to the center. 99.  The scholiasts to N. 1.inscr.a. report that Chromius, like Hieron, was announced as “Aitnaian” when he was victorious at Olympia. For Pindar’s blurring of Aitna and Syracuse, see Foster 2013: 316n97. 100. Foster 2013: 316.

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Syracusan citizenship to new settlers from Gela, Kamarina, Megara Hyblaea, and Euboea.101 After this restructuring, a colonial metaphor was an especially appropriate way to incorporate symbolically the diverse population into Syracusan tradition and to offer a model for a united Syracusan citizenry. In Nemean 1, Pindar may therefore include the colonial metaphor as an emblem of the diverse civic makeup in Syracuse under the rule of the Deinomenids, which included other Sicilian Greeks who had been moved to Syracuse in 485; the former ruling class—​the Gamoroi—​whom Gelon reinstated; the demos and enfranchised slaves—​the Killyroi; mercenaries who had become citizens; and possibly settlers from the Peloponnese like Hagesias, whose victory Pindar celebrated in Olympian 6.102 Along with Gelon’s reorganization (or even refoundation) of Syracuse in 485, the different stages of the combining of populations included the original archaic foundation by Archias and Hieron’s colonization of Aitna in 476, the consequences of which were still felt by Syracusans in the period in which Pindar composed his poems for Syracusans. The image of mixed peoples in Sicily, and in Syracuse in particular, visible in the foundation oracle for Syracuse and in Nemean 1 through the link between Ortygia and Alpheos, became an important characteristic of the Syracusans in the ancient imagination. When Thucydides recounts his version of the debate between Alcibiades and Nicias over whether or not the Athenians should undertake a campaign in Sicily, an essential part of Alcibiades’ argument relies on the assumption that the Sicilians would be easily defeated in battle: ὄχλοις τε γὰρ ξυμμείκτοις πολυανδροῦσιν αἱ πόλεις καὶ ῥᾳδίας ἔχουσι τῶν πολιτῶν103 τὰς μεταβολὰς καὶ ἐπιδοχάς. καὶ οὐδεὶς δι’ αὐτὸ ὡς περὶ οἰκείας πατρίδος οὔτε τὰ περὶ τὸ σῶμα ὅπλοις ἐξήρτυται οὔτε τὰ ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ νομίμοις κατασκευαῖς·

101. Hdt. 7.156.2–​3; Thuc. 6.5.3. Malkin 1987: 96–​97 emphasizes that although Gelon was not as direct in seeking the title of oikist, “his tyranny could certainly have been regarded as a foundation” (quote taken from p. 97). See also Luraghi 1994: 288–​304, 378. Luraghi 1994:  291n76 explains that he uses the term “rifondazione” instead of “sinecismo” to acknowledge that Gelon’s actions extend beyond a synoikism, but he emphasizes that he does not mean that Gelon refounded the city in a formal and legal sense. See also Morgan 2015: 51–​56, De Angelis 2016: 101–​6. 102. Asheri 1988: 779 suggests that settlers from the Peloponnese may have been among those who became Syracusan citizens during Gelon’s rule. See also Luraghi 1994: 291–​96 for a discussion of other non-​Sicilians who participated in the refoundation of Syracuse and gained Syracusan citizenship. 103. I follow Jones and Powell’s reading of πολιτῶν which appears in E rather than πολιτειῶν which occurs in the rest of the manuscripts.



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For although the Sicilian cities are populous, their inhabitants are a mixed multitude, and they readily accept changes and receive new citizens. No one really feels that he has a city of his own; and so the individual is ill provided with arms, and the country has no regular means of defense. (Thuc. 6.17.2–​3 , trans. Jowett, slightly modified)

Alcibiades portrays Sicily as populated by a “mixed multitude,” which lacks a sense of civic identity and whose loyalty could easily be shifted or bought. Their mixed nature and the instability created by a policy of receiving new citizens would, according to Alcibiades, prevent the Sicilians from unifying to repel the invading Athenians. It is important to remember that Alcibiades turned out to be wrong about the Syracusans, who effectively withstood the Athenians. He nonetheless expresses a view about the Sicilians that was in all likelihood commonly held in Athens in the fifth century and perhaps also in other parts of the Greek world. Where Alcibiades’ speech offers an Athenian perspective on the character and nature of Sicilians, a passage in Diodorus’ Library suggests that the Sicilians also recognized their own mixed nature. Thus, when Diodorus describes the interaction between early Greek settlers and native Sikels, he too imagines a mixing or mingling of populations: ὕσταται δ’ ἀποικίαι τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐγένοντο κατὰ τὴν Σικελίαν ἀξιόλογοι καὶ πόλεις παρὰ θάλατταν ἐκτίσθησαν. ἀναμιγνύμενοι δ’ ἀλλήλοις καὶ διὰ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν καταπλεόντων Ἑλλήνων τήν τε διάλεκτον αὐτῶν ἔμαθον καὶ ταῖς ἀγωγαῖς συντραφέντες τὸ τελευταῖον τὴν βάρβαρον διάλεκτον ἅμα καὶ τὴν προσηγορίαν ἠλλάξαντο, Σικελιῶται προσαγορευθέντες. The colonies of the Greeks—​and notable ones they were—​were the last to be made in Sicily, and their cities were founded on the sea. All the inhabitants mingled with one another, and since the Greeks came to the island in great numbers, the natives learned their speech, and then, having been brought up in the Greek ways of life, they lost in the end their barbarian speech as well as their name, all of them being called Sikeliotae.  (Diod. 5.6.5; trans. Oldfather) For Diodorus, the inhabitants of Sicily blended easily—​seemingly without conflict—​ and “mingled with one another” (ἀναμιγνύμενοι). Unlike in Alcibiades’ description, which suggests that population mixing undermines civic loyalty and weakens the city’s defenses, in Diodorus, mixture plays a

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positive role, at least from a Greek perspective. Now mixis represents the integration and inclusion of Sikels in a Greek way of life, marked by a shared Greek language and the combined name Sikeliotae. Together, the accounts of Thucydides and Diodorus indicate that the colonial status of Sicilian Greek cities shaped the image of the Sicilians in the Greek world and endured as a defining aspect of Sicilian identity from the fifth century into Diodorus’s time.104 While from an Athenian perspective this diversity augured instability, from a Sicilian perspective, the violence that surely accompanied the integration of the Greeks and the Sikels is omitted from the description and only peaceful interactions remain.105 It is reasonable to imagine that the characterization of Sicilians as a “mixed” people was already known during the time Pindar wrote epinician odes for Sicilian victors. In this case, Pindar then acknowledges the “mixed” nature of the Syracusan citizenry and, like Diodorus, frames it in positive terms. In Nemean 1, for instance, Pindar describes the inhabitants of Sicily rather than those of Syracuse or Aitna and in this way includes all Sicilian audience members (the mixed Hellenized population that Diodorus refers to as Sikeliotae) in the characterization, which glorifies Hieron, Chromius, Syracuse, and Aitna as it describes the Sicilians. By opening the ode with the image of Alpheos’ waters rising on Ortygia, Pindar raises the notion of hybrid populations straightaway. Another passage in the ode alludes to the kind of population mixture that had recently taken place in Syracuse, Aitna, and many other Sicilian cities. Pindar describes the population of the island as mixed, not in the sense of a nonhomogeneous population, but as mixed with Olympic crowns—​a quintessentially Greek honor. When Zeus gave the island to Persephone, he promised her that the land would be fertile and its citizens successful:

104. Frequent population movements took place earlier in the fifth century when the tyrants Gelon and Hippokrates, who ruled in Gela before Gelon, restructured the cities of Southeast Sicily, including Kallipolis, Naxos, Zankle, Leontini, and Syracuse, oftentimes forcibly relocating populations from one city to another (Hdt. 7.154–​55). Hieron’s foundation of Aitna followed in the tradition of these earlier resettlements in that the citizens of Katane were uprooted and transferred to Leontini so that Hieron could found Aitna and transfer his new Aitnaians to the colony in 476 (Diod. 11.49.1–​2, Schol. N. 1.inscr a). On the Sicilian tyrants’ preoccupation with population movement and the effects on the population, see Lomas 2006, especially 106–​8. For the ongoing conflict between Greeks and Sikels during this period, see Asheri 1988: 742–​43, 778–​79. 105. Dougherty 1993: 68–​69, Athanassaki 2003.



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σπεῖρέ106 νυν ἀγλαΐαν   τινὰ νάσῳ, τὰν Ὀλύμπου δεσπότας Ζεὺς ἔδωκεν Φερσεφόνᾳ, κατένευ-​   σέν τέ οἱ χαίταις, ἀριστεύοισαν εὐκάρπου χθονός Σικελίαν πίειραν ὀρθώ-​  15   σειν κορυφαῖς πολίων ἀφνεαῖς· ὤπασε δὲ Κρονίων πολέμου   μναστῆρά οἱ χαλκεντέος λαὸν ἵππαιχμον, θαμὰ δὴ καὶ Ὀλυμ-​   πιάδων φύλλοις ἐλαιᾶν χρυσέοις μιχθέντα. Now sow some spendor on the island, which the master of Olympus, Zeus, gave to Persephone, and nodded assent with his locks that he would set Sicily upright as the best of the fruitful earth in fertility with its wealthy peaks of cities. And the son of Kronos gave to her a people who fight on horseback and are suitors of brazen war, who are indeed often mixed with golden crowns of olive from the Olympic contests. (N. 1.13–​18) The passage begins with the colonial image of Zeus giving the island of Sicily to Persephone as a wedding gift, which I will discuss in ­chapter 2 at greater length. Within this colonial frame, the poem then describes the land and the people of Sicily. Here, the people are “mixed” (μιχθέντα), but rather than being “mixed” with one another in the sense that they are jumbled together haphazardly, they are mixed with golden crowns from Olympia and therefore tinged with Greekness. Pindar’s representation of Sicilian mixture emphasizes that the glory and success of the Sicilians is fundamentally Greek rather than highlighting their instability as a disorganized collection of peoples. Similarly, in Olympian 1, Pindar declares that Pherenikos has mixed his master with power (κράτει δὲ προσέμειξε δεσπόταν, /​ Συρακόσιον ἱπποχάρμαν βασιλῆα·, 22–​23). Drew Griffith suggests that the ode was performed in view of the spring of Arethusa and that, when Pindar uses forms of μείγνυμι and its compounds in the ode, “he nods to the more meaningfully mingled Olympia

106. I follow Snell-​Maehler’s Teubner text, which prints Beck’s emendation of the unmetrical ἔγειρε of the manuscripts to σπείρε, taking the verb from a paraphrase by the scholiasts (N. 1.16a–​16b). Even if this emendation is incorrect, it is consistent with the imagery of fertility that begins the ode, that continues in lines 14–​18, and that recurs later (e.g., with Herakles’ marriage to blooming Hebe, θαλερὰν Ἥβαν 71).

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and Ortygia.”107 Again, in Nemean 9 Pindar asks Zeus to mix the Aitnaians with celebrations in their city (Ζεῦ πάτερ, ἀγλαΐαισιν δ’ ἀστυνόμοις ἐπιμεῖξαι /​ λαόν, “Zeus father, mix the people with public celebrations,” 31–​32). Although μείγνυμι and its compounds may simply mean “to be crowned with,”108 Pindar nonetheless simultaneously celebrates mixis in Sicily by representing the Sicilian people as mixed with victory revels and glory, suggesting that such mixing is a source of strength and celebration for Syracuse and her colony Aitna. In poetry for non-​Sicilian victors, Pindar uses the verb with the sense of “to crown with.” For instance, at Nemean 2.22 Pindar says that the Timodemidai have been crowned eight times at the Isthmian games (ὀκτὼ στεφάνοις ἔμιχθεν ἤδη), and at Nemean 4.21 the Kadmeians crown Timokritos’ father beside the tomb of Amphitryon (Καδμεῖοί νιν οὐκ ἀέκοντες ἄνθεσι μείγνυον). In Nemeans 2 and 4, the victor or his family are literally crowned, but what has not been acknowledged is that Pindar does not refer to civic groups or rulers in these examples. The verb has, therefore, been understood to have this primary meaning, and only this meaning, in all contexts. In the Sicilian odes, by contrast, Pindar employs μείγνυμι in civic settings or to refer to all of the Sicilian people in Nemean 1. In civic contexts, the verb may mean “crowned” as it does elsewhere, but there is also a deeper and more concrete metaphor that reveals something about the mixed nature of Sicilian peoples. As Alcibiades’ speech shows, Syracusan identity turns out to be a key issue for the Greek world in the fifth century, and Pindar’s poetry already demonstrates that the foundations of Syracusan civic identity, which acknowledged and celebrated the mixture of differing populations, had been established well before the threat of Athenian conquest.109 Pindar depicts Syracusans, Aitnaians, and Sicilians together as a people with shared characteristics, offering a positive model for the interaction of citizens of different origins. Thomas Hubbard has argued that the reputations of many of the cities whose citizens Pindar celebrated were in need of rehabilitation within the Panhellenic community.110 One way in which Pindar reformulates the image and ideology of Syracuse is to elide differences within

107. Griffith 2008: 5. 108. Slater 1969: 1.c.α. 109. On Syracusan civic identity during the rule of the Deinomenids and during the period of democracy that followed, see Thatcher 2012. 110. Hubbard 2001: 394.



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the citizen body. In the case of Nemean 1, this rehabilitation is likely directed at a Panhellenic audience, as Hubbard suggests, but by including all of the Sicilian people Pindar also presents a cohesive model of civic cooperation to the Syracusans and the rest of the Sicilians in the audience, particularly those living within Hieron’s sphere of influence.111 Pindar’s reference to the myth of Alpheos’ pursuit and the mixed waters of Arethusa and Alpheos in the opening of Nemean 1 may furthermore acknowledge Syracuse’s reputation for having a mixed citizenry by alluding to a Peloponnesian version of the myth. The phrase ἄμπνευμα σεμνόν Ἀλφεοῦ has almost always been understood as an allusion to the spring of Arethusa.112 In the final section of this chapter, I will argue that Pindar’s brief, compressed mention of the hallowed breath of Alpheos in the opening of Nemean 1 is a polyvalent reference that simultaneously evokes for Pindar’s audiences both the mythical connection between the River Alpheos and the spring of Arethusa which I have already discussed, and another mythical narrative known both in Syracuse and in the Peloponnese in which the river god pursues the goddess Artemis.

Artemis Alpheioa in Syracuse and in the Peloponnese We have seen that Arethusa and Alpheos represented continuity from Syracuse’s archaic foundation to the present time when Gelon had only recently refounded the city. Margaret Foster has proposed that the myth of Arethusa and Alpheos is relevant to Hieron’s more recent colonization of Aitna in 476, when the tyrant mixed Peloponnesians with Syracusans as the new citizens of Aitna.113 Building upon her observation, I suggest that the symbolic power of the mingling streams gains potency from the fact that the cults associated with Alpheos and Artemis were practiced by Peloponnesians as well as by

111. See Nicholson 2011: 95–​98 for a discussion of the ideology surrounding Hieron’s rule and his sphere of influence. Though Hubbard emphasizes the rehabilitation of the reputations of certain states before Panhellenic audiences, in the transcript of the question and answer period following his talk he acknowledges that efforts at rehabilitation would also have applied to local audiences and that “certainly one can see the Hieron odes as also being very much to confirm that regime in its internal setting, to the extent that he makes Hieron seem like a nice man, to whom he can give advice” (2001: 398). 112.  Braswell 1992:  32–​33 and Carey 1981:  104 acknowledge that multiple versions of the mythical narrative existed. Farnell 1930: 244 mentions the two separate traditions but argues that Pindar has the Syracusan version in mind in Nemean 1. 113. Foster 2013: 315–​16. See also Eckerman 2013: 9–​11.

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Syracusans. The network of cultic narratives that Pindar accommodates with his polyvalent reference in the opening of Nemean 1, therefore, was uniquely relevant to the new citizens of Aitna, half of whom were Syracusan and the other half of whom were immigrants from the Peloponnese. This metaphor emphasizes the common heritage of the new Aitnaian citizens in the opening strophe of the ode, which, as we shall see, continues on to celebrate all Sicilians. The narrative traditions surrounding Alpheos and his pursuit of a lover in the Peloponnese indicate that this myth may have been more relevant for the Peloponnesians than has yet been acknowledged. The surviving narratives suggest, as might be reasonably expected, that the cult of Alpheos was active in areas near the river. Pausanias (5.7.2) quotes the Syracusan foundation oracle, in part, to explain the origin of a mythical narrative about Alpheos and Arethusa that developed at some point. According to Pausanias, Alpheos was said to be a hunter who pursued the unwilling nymph Arethusa. During his pursuit, Alpheos was transformed into a river while the nymph Arethusa was transformed into a spring. Pausanias rejects this story, but it is relevant to the present discussion because it closely resembles another narrative tradition found in the Pindaric scholia. The scholiast to Nemean 1 tells the following story about Alpheos and Artemis: τὸν γὰρ Ἀλφειόν φασιν ἔρωτι ἁλόντα τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος ἐπιδιῶξαι αὐτὴν ἄχρι Σικελίας· τοῦ δὲ τέλους τῆς διώξεως αὐτόθι γενομένου αὐτόθι συστῆναι τὴν Ἀρέθουσαν. διὰ τοῦτο δὲ καὶ τὴν Ἄρτεμιν Ἀλφειώαν προσαγορεύεσθαι· καὶ ἐν Ὀλυμπίᾳ δὲ ὁ Ἀλφειὸς τῇ Ἀρτέμιδι συναφίδρυται· καὶ τὴν ποταμίαν δὲ Ἄρτεμιν εἶναι οἳ παρὰ τῷ Πινδάρῳ (P. II 7)  ἀκούουσι διὰ τὸ ἐπ’ αὐτῇ τοῦ Ἀλφειοῦ πάθος· εἶναι δὲ οἳ Ἀλφειώαν τὴν Ἄρτεμιν λέγουσι διὰ τὸ τὸν Ἀλφειὸν διὰ τοῦ πλησίον τῆς Ἠλείας Ἀρτεμισίου καταφέρεσθαι. For they say that Alpheios, seized by passion for Artemis, chased her as far as Sicily. And when the chase ended, there in that place Arethusa arose. And on account of this she is called Artemis Alpheioa. And in Olympia Alpheios is worshipped on an altar together with Artemis. And they say that there are some who understand that in the verses of Pindar (P. 2.7) she is Artemis Potamia on account of Alpheios’ suffering over her. And they say that she is Artemis Alpheioa because the Alpheios runs through the Artemision near Elis.  (Schol. N. 1.3) In the scholiast’s version, the river god Alpheos now pursues the goddess Artemis rather than the nymph Arethusa. Once again, according to this



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explanation, the goddess worshipped in Syracuse is called Artemis Alpheioa because of her relationship with the River Alpheos.114 It is important to be cautious about accepting this account, which could at first glance appear simply to reflect conjectures based on nothing more than the same text of Pindar that we are reading. However, a closer look at the other accounts of Alpheos’ erotic pursuits will confirm that the cult of Artemis Alpheioa at Elis and the cult of Artemis Potamia at Syracuse shared a similar narrative. The earliest extant version of this myth from the Peloponnese suggests, like the scholiast to Nemean 1, that Alpheos pursued Artemis rather than the nymph Arethusa, who was local to Syracuse. The early fifth-​century poet Telesilla of Argos addresses a group of maidens as follows: ἁ δ’ Ἄρτεμις, ὦ κόραι, φεύγοισα τὸν Ἀλφεόν. And Artemis, maidens, fleeing Alpheos.

(PMG 717)

In this admittedly very short fragment that survives, Telesilla tells a group of young women115 that Artemis flees from Alpheos.116 The fragment was preserved by the grammarian Hephaistion, who unfortunately offers no context or clues about the rest of the poem. The lack of context makes it difficult to assess whether or not the fragment may be preserving a local Argive ritual tradition. Still, the fact that Telesilla herself is an Argive makes this an intriguing possibility. We can safely imagine that Telesilla’s fellow Argives, who controlled the sanctuary at Nemea at this time, would have known Telesilla’s poem

114. Schol. N. 1.2a. Cf. Rose 1974: 164 for the view that both versions of the narrative were maintained in Syracuse. 115.  For Artemis as the goddess who oversaw the initiation of young girls, see Burkert 1985: 150–​52. For the Telesilla fragment, see Ingalls 2000: 15. Dowden 1989 interprets the fragment as part of an initiation rite and Calame 1997: 214 likewise acknowledges this possibility. See also Plut. De mul. vir. 245c–​f on Telesilla. Telesilla was most famous for leading the Argive women in battle against Cleomenes and the invading Spartans when the men had been killed and could not defend the city. For another account, see Paus. 2.20.8–​10 who also describes a statue of Telesilla in Argos. Pausanias furthermore suggests that Herodotus refers to Telesilla’s defense of Argos in the oracle at Hdt. 6.77. 116.  Baldassarra 2010:  102 suggests that Alpheos traveled under the sea to Syracuse and returned to the surface as the source of the spring of Arethusa in Syracuse after he failed in his pursuit of Artemis as preserved here in the bit of Telesilla’s poem. Though her reading is interesting there is nothing in the verses of Telesilla to support it.

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and the narrative traditions she includes.117 Thomas Hubbard has shown that Pindar incorporated local Peloponnesian mythical variants to appeal to the Peloponnesian settlers of Aitna in Nemean 9, the ode that celebrates a victory by the same victor Chromius.118 The brief surviving scrap of Telesilla suggests that Pindar may possibly be using a similar strategy in Nemean 1 to appeal to Peloponnesians originally from the area near Argos. However, since nothing in the poem connects the story to Argos, we must exercise caution in this case. While it is not clear where Telesilla’s poem was localized, several similar narratives are linked to the area near Elis in the northwest Peloponnese near Olympia. Pausanias tells a story about the statue of Artemis Alpheioa that had been set up in the town of Letrini in Elis, which is very close to Olympia (6.22.9–​10). He claims that this Artemis, like the Artemis in Pythian 2, received her cult name Alpheoia from her connection with the river god. According to the myth, Alpheos fell in love with Artemis and when he realized that he could not persuade her to love him, he pursued her by force. Aware of the god’s desires, Artemis escaped Alpheos’ advances during an all-​night revel with the nymphs by smearing her own face and the faces of her companions with mud so that Alpheos could not distinguish the goddess from the others. This caused him to leave in frustration without making his attempt. Pausanias’ account includes familiar elements: namely, a group of young girls and the pursuit of the goddess Artemis by Alpheos, suggesting that we may be dealing with a cultic context in Elis similar to the one we saw in Telesilla’s poem.119 Elsewhere Pausanias refers to Alpheos’ pursuit of Artemis to explain why the two are worshipped together at Olympia on the same altar. He also says that Pindar explains the cause (αἴτιον) for this shared altar in one of his odes.120 Whether or not Pausanias refers to Nemean 1 here, it is significant that he understands the account of the Letrinians to refer to the same tradition that Pindar knew. Pausanias’ narrative raises the possibility that a version of this cult was localized in Elis, which is strengthened by a passage from Strabo. Strabo

117. For Nemea under the control of Argos, see Neer 2007: 226. 118. Hubbard 1992: 107–​11. 119. For possible ritual contexts, see Farnell 1896: 428, Larson 1997: 254. 120. Paus. 5.14.6: τὸ δὲ αἴτιον τούτου παρεδήλωσε μέν που καὶ Πίνδαρος ἐν ᾠδῇ, γράψομεν δὲ καὶ ἡμεῖς ἐν τοῖς λόγοις τοῖς Λετριναίοις. See Magrath 1974: 35. For the shared altar of Artemis and Alpheos at Olympia, which was erected by Herakles, see also Schol. O. 5.10a, citing the grammarian Herodorus.



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describes the cult of Artemis Alpheionia or Alpheiousa near the outlet of the River Alpheos in the Peloponnese: πρὸς δὲ τῇ ἐκβολῇ τὸ τῆς Ἀλφειωνίας Ἀρτέμιδος ἢ Ἀλφειούσης ἄλσος ἐστὶ (λέγεται γὰρ ἀμφοτέρως), ἀπέχον τῆς Ὀλυμπίας εἰς ὀγδοήκοντα σταδίους. By its [the River Alpheos’] mouth there is a grove of Artemis Alpheionia or Alpheiousa (for it is called both), at a distance of 80 stades from Olympia. (Strabo 8.3.12)

Unlike Pausanias, Strabo does not supply an aetiological myth for the cult names Alpheionia or Alpheiousa. Instead, in this case, the meaning of the name is implied by the cult’s proximity to the river. Strabo’s report offers a second witness that confirms the worship of an Artemis linked to Alpheos near Olympia in Elis. The version of Alpheos’ pursuit of Artemis recorded by Pausanias attests to a strain of the myth that was known near Olympia at Letrini and Elis, and Strabo’s account offers additional evidence for the worship in this region of Artemis Alpheioa, who, at least according to Pausanias, was the same goddess worshipped in Syracuse. The scholiasts to Pindar, like Pausanias, understand the Artemis worshipped in Syracuse to be the same goddess who shared an altar with Alpheos at Olympia. The account of Alpheos’ pursuit of Artemis in Telesilla’s early fifth-​century account shows that the narrative was known by this period, and the cult’s persistent link with Elis in other sources suggests that it likely originated in that region of the Peloponnese near the waters of the River Alpheos and only later spread to Syracuse.121

121.  Fischer-​Hansen 2009:  208 reasonably views the cult of Artemis Alpheioa as a colonial import from Corinth to Syracuse. Baldassarra 2010: 102 argues that Alpheos’ pursuit of Arethusa was invented by Ovid, but this argument overlooks the earlier version preserved in Moschus. See also Larson 1997: 254. Braswell 1992: 34 suggests that the story is “probably a Hellenistic innovation which may have been suggested by Alpheos’ pursuit of Artemis mentioned in Telesill. PMG 717.” Later versions of the myth make this movement and transformation of the cult plausible. Ovid’s Arethusa, for instance, tells Demeter that her home is in Pisa and Elis and that she is an alien (peregrina) in Sicily, though she happily lives there now: Pisa mihi patria est et ab Elide ducimus ortus. /​Sicaniam peregrina colo, sed gratior omni /​ haec mihi terra solo est; hos nunc Arethusa Penates, /​hanc habeo sedem (Ovid Met. 5.494–​97).

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Together Pausanias and Strabo locate the worship of an Artemis Alpheioa, or the surely related Artemis Alpheionia or Alpheiousa, in at least three sites at Letrini, Elis, and Olympia. In all cases, the river god Alpheos pursues Artemis, and this Artemis is, according to Pausanias, the very Artemis worshipped by the Syracusans. Imagery related to the cults of Arethusa, Artemis Potamia, and Alpheos was thus relevant to and targeted to resonate with any Peloponnesians from this region who had immigrated to Aitna as well as to the Syracusans who had moved to Aitna.122 In the 470s and early 460s, Hieron was engaged in an active recruitment program to attract new citizens to Aitna from the Peloponnese, apparently opening membership to whoever wanted to join.123 The multiple resonances of the Alpheos myth fit aptly into the context of Hieron’s broad recruitment strategy, which emphasized the cultic and cultural features shared by the Dorian Syracusans and the Peloponnesians.124 The mention of these cults would have resonated not only with Peloponnesians still living in certain areas of the Peloponnese, but also with Syracusans and Peloponnesians living in Sicily. The cults associated with Alpheos present a cohesive civic ideology accessible and tailored to the ode’s multiple audiences, and the opening reference of Nemean 1 is at the same time concise and extremely customized in its allusiveness. With a brief signal, the allusion heralds the joining of both the people and the landscapes of the Peloponnese, through the cults in Elis and Letrini, and Syracuse in the new colony where civic traditions were in the process of being established at the time of the ode’s performance, powerfully asserting a message of Aitnaian civic heritage and continuity. Greek choral poetry in performance played an important role in the reinforcement and even the formation of ideologies and identities, and in the case of Nemean 1, Pindar projects an inclusive and unified image of civic identity tailored to the

122. Although the cults of Alpheos and Artemis Potamia are most strongly attested in Elis, even Peloponnesians who did not originate from Elis, Letrini, or the directly surrounding areas but were currently living in Sicily may have identified with the region in a broader sense as their place of origin. The story of Pelops’ foundation of the Peloponnese in Olympian 1, for instance, demonstrates that a conception of the Peloponnese as a region was meaningful for Pindar and his audiences. 123.  Bonanno 2010:  135. Baldassarra 2010 argues that there was an epic cycle local to the south Peloponnese which centered around the children of Alpheos. Could the tradition that Alpheos pursued Artemis possibly connect to this tradition? 124. In the other odes for Aitna, Pindar likewise emphasizes the shared Dorian characteristics of the Aitnaians and the Peloponnesians. See P. 1.61–​66 with discussion in ­chapter 3 and Hubbard 1992 on Nemean 9.



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circumstances of the colony and its citizens.125 For an Aitnaian audience, the poem thus participates in the merging of the two distinct sets of people—​the Peloponnesians and the Syracusans—​into one group of citizens of Aitna.126

Performance Contexts and Conclusions Recent discussions of the performance contexts for epinician poetry have usefully reframed the focus in Pindaric scholarship away from the first performance of an ode, instead stressing the importance of imagining multiple performance and reperformance contexts.127 In all likelihood, epinician odes were first performed by a chorus.128 Rather than abandoning these prestigious poems after their premieres, the victor, his family, and perhaps also his city would have reperformed them in a continued celebration for years to come. In reperformances, epinician odes would have been performed by a solo singer at symposia held by elite families and they may also have been reperformed by a chorus in some cases.129 Epinician odes, furthermore, circulated across the Greek world, beyond the victor’s city, and they endured over time. That Pindaric poetry endured in literary circles for years after the first performance is demonstrated by Aristophanes’ reference to Pindar’s hyporcheme for Hieron at Birds 926–​930, 941–​945, and Plato, likewise, refers to epinician odes for Sicilian victors.130

125. See the Introduction: 26. 126.  On the shared interconnected frameworks for cults on the local, regional, and Panhellenic levels, see Kowalzig 2007: 23, 31–​32. 127. See, for example, Currie 2004, Hubbard 2004, Carey 2007, Morrison 2007, Morrison 2011, Morrison 2012, Agócs 2012. See also Felson and Parmentier 2015 who propose that the poet invites his audiences to become better interpreters who therefore understand an ode differently when it is reperformed if they follow his lead. 128. I am convinced by the arguments for choral first performance, but this is not the space to rehash the solo/​choral performance debate. For the solo singer model, see Lefkowitz 1988, Heath 1988, Lefkowitz 1991, Heath and Lefkowitz 1991. For arguments that epinician odes were performed chorally in first performances, see Burnett 1989, Carey 1989, Carey 1991, Morgan 1993. For further discussion, see also Morrison 2007: 7–​8, Eckerman 2015a. 129. Herington 1985: 48–​50, 55–​56 and Nagy 1990: 113–​15, 437 present some scenarios for monodic reperformance (but also allow for the possibility of reperformance by a chorus). Currie 2004 and Hubbard 2004 propose scenarios by which Pindar’s poetry may have been chorally reperformed. See also Morrison 2007: 5–​19. 130. Plato refers to four epinician odes, of which three are Sicilian (O. 1 at Euthyd. 304b–​c, O. 2 at Prt. 324b, P. 3 at Resp. 3.408b) and one is Theban (I. 1 at Phdr. 227b). See Irigoin 1952: 16–​18.

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The first performance of Nemean 1 could have taken place either at Syracuse or in Aitna. While the first lines of the poem focus on Ortygia and the waters of Alpheos arriving in Syracuse, the ode moves on, as we have seen, to celebrate Zeus Aitnaios in line 5.  The ode thus contains deictic markers that point both to Syracuse and to Aitna through the city’s eponymous deity. When reperformance scenarios of Nemean 1 are taken into account, it seems very likely that the ode would have been performed—​whether by a chorus or by a solo performer at a symposium—​in both Aitna and Syracuse in the years following its composition since the cities both fell firmly within Hieron’s sphere of influence. For the present argument, therefore, the location of the first performance matters less than the likelihood that it ultimately would have been performed before audiences of Aitnaians, Syracusans, and Peloponnesians in the years following the foundation of Aitna. References to both Syracuse and Aitna within the poem make the location of its first performance unclear in a way that recalls a problem raised at the beginning of this chapter: Does Nemean 1 celebrate Chromius of Syracuse (as the scholia record) or Chromius of Aitna (according to Snell and Maehler, following Schroeder)? I propose that the very fact that these details are so difficult to pin down is more interesting than any attempt to settle on a definitive answer. We may recall here that Didymus believed that Nemean 1 was performed at the Aitnaia festival for Zeus Aitnaios in the city of Aitna, although Pindar places the opening scene in Syracuse. Like Hagesias who has connections with two communities in Olympian 6, Chromius has strong ties to both Syracuse and Aitna. The other person who has similar civic ties, of course, is Hieron, and the tyrant’s own practices make an instructive parallel for Chromius. When the tyrant won the chariot race at Delphi in 470, he was announced as Hieron of Aitna and was celebrated as an Aitnaian by Pindar in Pythian 1.131 In celebration of the same chariot victory Bacchylides praises Hieron as Syracusan, underscoring that the tyrant could comfortably claim citizenship in both cities.132 If Hieron could be categorized either as Aitnaian or as Syracusan in different contexts to suit his purposes, in Nemean 1 Pindar may likewise be exploiting Chromius’ liminal position between Syracusan and

131. For the herald’s announcement of Hieron as “Aitnaian,” see schol. P. 1.metr. Pindar says that the illustrious founder (i.e., Hieron) honored the name of the city that neighbors Mt. Aitna (i.e., Aitna) when the herald announced (κάρυξ ἀνέειπέ νιν ἀγγέλων) it at the games (P. 1.30–​33). 132. Elsewhere Pindar is able to celebrate Hieron as both the administrator of Syracuse and a devotee of Zeus Aitnaios in an ode for Hagesias, another of the tyrant’s commanders (O. 6.91–​96).



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Aitnaian status. In that case, rather than presenting a problem in the text that must be emended or an error by the scholia, this very lack of precision marks the success of the poem, which transforms the new colonists—​Syracusans like Chromius and Peloponnesians—​into Aitnaians and weaves their traditions into the fabric of the new civic ideology without erasing their former identities. The ambiguity surrounding Chromius’ citizenship at the time he won the Nemean victory allows the victor himself to operate as a living model for the citizens of Syracuse or Aitna, depending on the site of performance.133 In addition to possible performances in Syracuse and Aitna, Nemean 1 may also have been performed at Nemea, the site of Chromius’ victory, perhaps as a component of Hieron’s promotion of and recruitment for his new colony.134 A performance at the Nemean games would not only honor Chromius’ victory there, but it would also present an image of a unified Aitna to a Panhellenic audience and bolster the reputation of the oikist, Hieron. By including all of the Sicilian people, however, Pindar also presents a cohesive model of civic cooperation to the Aitnaians, Syracusans, and other Sicilians in the audience, particularly those living within Hieron’s sphere of influence. This strategy recuperates Hieron’s image abroad both for recruitment purposes and for the higher aim of creating lasting fame and glory for the tyrant throughout the Greek world.135 We can thus propose several distinct groups of Peloponnesian audiences for the ode:  (1) new colonists from the Peloponnese listening to the ode in Aitna, (2)  Peloponnesians who had at one point or another relocated to Syracuse, and (3) Peloponnesians who had remained at home and heard the ode in a performance at nearby Nemea. For all three groups, the traditional tale of Alpheos’ pursuit of Artemis would have underscored the similarities between the Syracusans and the Peloponnesians who both knew of, and possibly participated in, the worship of Artemis Alpheioa. Hieron’s desire to emphasize the correspondences between the Sicilians and the Peloponnesians is also present in Pythian 1, where their shared Dorian heritage is emphasized.136

133.  Compare Hagesias’ “hybrid” status as both Peloponnesian and Syracusan, which operates as a link between the Peloponnese and Syracuse in Olympian 6 (Foster 2013). 134. Méautis (1962: 170–​71) argues that Hieron’s subordinates competed at lesser festivals and in less prestigious events (cf. Hagesias’ victory in the mule cart race celebrated in O. 6). 135. See Hubbard 2001: 394 on Hieron’s recruitment in the Peloponnese. 136. Pythian 1.61–​66. For more on Pythian 1 and this passage, see ­chapter 3. The Argives who had asserted their Dorian identity over the course of the sixth century likewise shared an ethnic bond with the people of Syracuse and Aitna. For the “Dorianization of Argos” in the sixth century, see Kowalzig 2007: 149–​53.

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In conclusion, Pindar’s references to the “hallowed breath of Alpheos” and the “couch of Artemis” in the opening line of Nemean 1 connect Alpheos, Arethusa, and Artemis to one another without limiting the reference to a particular version of the myth. Pindar not only evokes the unique connection between Syracuse and the Peloponnese through the link between Arethusa and Alpheos but also, beyond this, he allows audiences to understand a Peloponnesian cultic narrative that relates to cult practice in Syracuse. In other words, it is not merely the case that the connection between Alpheos and Arethusa represent the interaction between Peloponnesians and Sicilians, both in terms of the historical colonization of Syracuse and in a more recent context of Hieron’s colonization of Aitna (which it certainly does). In addition to this, we should also recognize Alpheos and Arethusa as emblems of the cult of Artemis Alpheioa/​Artemis Potamia. Furthermore, Pindar’s naming of Alpheos in the first line of Nemean 1 locates Syracuse within the larger network of the cult of Artemis Alpheioa, who was worshipped both on Ortygia and in Olympia where she shared an altar with Alpheos, and near the River Alpheos in Elis in the Peloponnese. Seen in this light, the ambiguity of Pindar’s polyvalent allusion to Alpheos in Nemean 1 allows the reference to activate a Syracusan tradition central to the identity of the polis while simultaneously evoking Elean versions of the Alpheos myth in which he pursues Artemis. The passage thus affiliates the Syracusan tradition with a larger Peloponnesian one, and the connection with the river god Alpheos emphasizes the close relationship between Olympia and Hieron’s cities. A strong tie to Olympia was crucial not only to the civic identity of Syracuse as a long-​lasting symbol of relations between Greeks and native Sicilian populations but also to Hieron’s new colonial project in Aitna. It was important to foster peace in the colony that Hieron had founded, at least in part, to provide additional military support in the region. Establishing a cohesive identity for the Aitnaians in this way helped the Syracusan tyrant to unify the citizens of Aitna around a set of shared symbols that represented both their common heritage and their future as a united group in the new colony. The imagery in the opening of Nemean 1 presents just one example of the way that Pindar masterfully weaves together diverse landscapes and places through mythical allusion, and thereby promotes a tradition of shared identity for the people who inhabit these places, or even, in the case of Aitna, the people who may inhabit them in the future. In this way, performances of Nemean 1 strengthened a sense of community from within for the citizens of Syracuse and Aitna and shaped a notion of civic identity for Hieron’s cities for Greeks across the Panhellenic world.

2

Demeter and Persephone Ancestral Cult and Sicilian Identity

In the last chapter I  argued that in Pindar’s poetry Arethusa linked the Syracusan polis back to the mainland, both by joining the Syracusans to their early Greek ancestors and by preserving important ties with the Peloponnese which continued to be relevant as Hieron settled Peloponnesian mercenaries in Aitna and as former mercenaries relocated to Syracuse. This chapter focuses on the way in which the goddesses Demeter and Persephone both represented the Deinomenid tyrants and articulated Syracuse’s expanding power over the rest of Sicily, particularly as this relationship is expressed in epinician odes for Syracusan victors. By reading Arethusa/​Artemis and Demeter/​Persephone together as Syracusan civic symbols, I  will propose that the two pairs of goddesses operate in tandem to form a conceptual geography that articulates how the city enjoys a close connection to Olympia and is, at the same time, a dominant power within the island of Sicily. This chapter situates Pindar’s references to Demeter and Persephone in his odes for Syracusan victors within their local and regional contexts. To this end, I will first survey scholarship on the material remains of the cults of the goddesses and then analyze appearances of Demeter and Persephone in literary sources to chart their symbolic meaning in Syracuse and for the island of Sicily.1 In the last chapter, we saw that the opening of Nemean 1 recalls the symbolic tie between Syracuse and the Peloponnese and thereby appeals to Syracusans, Peloponnesians, and Aitnaians in a pointed way. I will argue that, while the link between Arethusa and Alpheos represents the close tie between

1. I thus follow the several important recent studies that examine choral lyric poetry in its civic and ritual contexts. See the Introduction.

Myth, Locality, and Identity in Pindar’s Sicilian Odes. Virginia M. Lewis, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190910310.003.0003

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Syracuse and the Panhellenic sanctuary at Olympia, Pindar’s references to Demeter and Persephone in epinician poetry define the relationship between Syracuse and the rest of Sicily under the rule of the Deinomenid tyrants. A final section argues that in contrast to the goddesses who celebrate uniquely Syracusan and Deinomenid interests, the hero Herakles articulates a role for Syracuse and the West more generally in the maintenance of the order of the Olympians.

Material Evidence for the Cults of Demeter and Persephone in Syracuse Several important studies have used archaeological evidence to survey the form and the role of the cults of Demeter and Persephone in Sicily.2 In his discussion of cults and territory in ancient Greece, for instance, François de Polignac considers Demeter as a goddess whose suburban and periurban sanctuaries mediated between the polis and its surrounding areas. He suggests that this role was particularly important in colonial areas like Sicily, where participation in the cult worship of Demeter may have promoted the inclusion of non-​ Greeks in a system of Greek ritual.3 Susan Cole proposes that processions between urban and rural sanctuaries of Demeter linked the civic center of the polis to its surrounding territory.4 Other treatments have focused specifically on Demeter and Persephone in Sicily. Valentina Hinz, for instance, collects and surveys archaeological evidence for all known cults of Demeter and Persephone in these areas.5 More recently, contributors to the volume Demetra; La divinità, i santuari, il culto, la leggenda consider many aspects of the cults of the goddesses in Sicily, including her localization in Sicily (Schipporeit), and the ideological and political role of the myth of Demeter

2. I will refer to the goddess as Persephone throughout this chapter except in cases where the ancient author refers to her as Kore when I  will follow the name used in the Greek text. Zuntz’s thesis (1971) that the names “Kore” and “Persephone” refer systematically to two separate aspects of the goddess has been refuted by more recent scholarship (see, e.g., Shapiro 2002: 30 with references). Although the names “Kore” and “Persephone” may have represented different aspects of the goddess in some specific cult contexts (Zaidman 2012), in general, Greeks in the fifth century understood “Kore” and “Persephone” as two names for the same goddess. 3. De Polignac 1995: 89–​127, and especially 106–​18 on Demeter’s mediatory role in colonial contexts. 4. Cole 2000. 5. Hinz 1998.



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in Syracuse (Schipporeit) and Sicily more broadly (Caltabiano). Others investigate the colonial nature of Demeter’s cult, tracing similarities between Corinthian and Sicilian cults of Demeter (Bookidis) and comparing them with the cult of Demeter in Cyrene (White).6 The material remains of the cult sites of Demeter and Persephone in Syracuse and throughout Sicily suggest that the goddesses symbolized both local Syracusan and regional, pan-​Sicilian interests. Worshipped in multiple sites in Syracuse from at least the sixth century, Demeter and Persephone symbolized the wealth of the polis that depended on the fertile plains of Sicily.7 An archaic inscription to the “Great [Goddesses]” found in a sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone at the Piazza della Vittoria in Syracuse may suggest cult activity already in the sixth century.8 Terracotta votives representing females seated on thrones, females holding piglets, and maidens, among others found in Syracuse, date from the sixth century. These votive deposits indicate continuous worship of the goddesses throughout the late archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods in Syracuse.9 On the one hand, the goddesses represented local Syracusan interests. The cult site of Demeter and Persephone at the spring of Kyane, located 5 kilometers outside of the city to the west near the Olympieion, commemorates Syracuse’s role in the myth of the rape of Persephone. In the early twentieth century excavators discovered a large limestone female head, known as the Langanello head, which has been identified as the cult statue representing either Persephone or Demeter.10 The head has been dated to about 600 bce. Excavators also found fragments of lion’s head spouts and drains belonging to a monumental building from the late archaic period (which may be the remains of a fountain) and many large terracotta pots. Together the drains

6. Di Stefano 2008. 7.  For a general discussion of the archaeological evidence for cults of Demeter and Persephone in Syracuse, see Hinz 1998: 100–​111. De Miro 2008: 68 argues that the sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone at Kyane, outside of the city, connected the city to the surrounding countryside. 8. Voza 1980–​1981: 683–​84 with tav. CXXIV, 3. 9. Hinz 1998: 106 with maps, pp. 220–​21. Antonella Pautasso 1996: 135–​36 argues that the Deinomenid influence over the cults of Demeter and Persephone led to the increase in production and variety of types of these votive figurines. 10. Orsi 1918 identifies the head as the cult statue of Kore, and his conclusions have been widely accepted. See Zuntz 1971:  71–​72, Voza 1980:  114, and Shapiro 2002:  90 with n.  51. Polacco 1986: 28–​29 identifies the head as Demeter rather than as Kore. Nevertheless, Hinz 1998: 102 is skeptical about the identification of the statue with either goddess.

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and the terracotta pots may suggest that this was a cult site where worship connected to Demeter and Persephone was practiced at the spring, though caution should be exercised until more evidence is discovered.11 I will discuss the mythical tradition that locates Persephone at Kyane in more detail later in the chapter, but for now I point out that the material evidence leaves open the possibility of worship of the goddesses at the site from at least the sixth century. In addition to the sanctuary at Kyane and in the Piazza della Vittoria, a votive plaque found in the Piazza Archimede on Ortygia provides evidence for the worship of the goddesses in the heart of the city in the first quarter of the fifth century. Despite its badly fragmented condition, two female figures can be distinguished. Alan Shapiro identifies the females as Demeter and Persephone based on comparison with contemporary representations of the goddesses. The plaque has been dated to the period between 500 and 475 on stylistic grounds, but Shapiro prefers to narrow its date to the 480s.12 He proposes that the scene represents the festival “of [Demeter’s] daughter of the white horses” mentioned by Pindar in Olympian 6. Although this exciting possibility is difficult to confirm or refute without the discovery of new evidence, the plaque does appear to testify to the growing importance of the goddesses in the period after the Deinomenids came to power in Syracuse, whether or not it represents the same festival that Pindar commemorates. On the other hand, Demeter and Persephone were widely worshipped throughout Sicily and thus also represented Sicilian regional interests. Compared with the Syracusan cult of Artemis, for example, which was practiced from the seventh century onward in Syracuse but did not appear prominently elsewhere in Sicily until the end of the fifth century, the broad reach of the cult worship of Demeter and Persephone by the end of the sixth and beginning of the fifth century was exceptional.13 Already in the seventh century, there is evidence for the worship of Demeter and Persephone throughout the island. Nancy Bookidis has argued, based on similarities between the cult worship of Demeter and Persephone in Corinth and in Sicily, that the earliest Greek settlers in Syracuse already worshipped the goddesses. She furthermore suggests that the Corinthian goddess, Demeter Epoikidia, may have

11. Polacco 1986: 28–​29. 12. Shapiro 2002: 94–​95. 13. On the worship of Artemis in Sicily and Southern Italy, see Fischer-​Hansen 2009: 214–​15 and ­chapter 1: 44.



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played a role in the colonization of the city.14 While archaeological excavations have, so far, uncovered only three sanctuaries that date to the period of colonization (at Selinus, Gela, and Akragas),15 Bookidis convincingly argues that the goddesses would have been worshipped in the open air during this earlier period. The lack of architectural remains for Demeter and Persephone should not, therefore, lead to the conclusion that their cults only developed in the sixth century.16 Archaeological finds show that cults of Demeter and Persephone were practiced in at least fourteen cities throughout the island, including at sanctuaries in Morgantina, Montagna di Marzo, and Sabucina in the center of the island, by the beginning of the fifth century.17 The wide dissemination of the worship of Demeter and Persephone made the goddesses excellent candidates to become symbols of the diffusion of power over the island, and the ancestral link connecting the Deinomenids to their cult made this choice even more natural for the Syracusan leaders. The goddesses were able to hold local meaning for Syracuse and were worshipped at local cult sites within the polis and its territories but were, at the same time, pan-​Sicilian goddesses by the time the Deinomenids came to power in Syracuse. The possibility for slippage between the local and regional significance of the goddesses was particularly valuable for the Deinomenids, who wished to expand their influence outward from Syracuse and who, as we shall see, desired to rule over large numbers of people. In the last chapter, I discussed the Syracusan tetratrachm that displays the head of the river god, Alpheos, on the obverse and two barley grains on the reverse.18 This tetradrachm highlights the contrasting spatial orientations of the cults of Arethusa/​Artemis and Demeter/​Kore for the city of Syracuse (see Figure  1.2). The head of the river god Alpheos faces forward, taking up the entire obverse of the coin. On the reverse, two large barley grains surrounded by the name of the polis (ΣΥΡΑ) are prominent. The Alpheos/​barley tetradrachm, probably minted by Gelon around 485 bce, inverts the symbolism of earlier Syracusan coins which display a quadriga on the obverse and the

14. Bookidis 2008: 99–​104. 15. Hinz 1998: 219–​24. 16. Bookidis 2008: 104. 17. Hinz 1998: 124–​35, 139–​41. 18. For more detailed discussion of this coin, see ­chapter 1: 52–​54. See also Lewis 2019.

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head of Arethusa on the reverse. On coins of the quadriga/​Arethusa type, the quadriga represents elite competition at the games while Arethusa signifies both a particular place on Ortygia and a connection to Olympia. While the athletic prominence of Syracuse and the connection between Syracuse and Olympia feature prominently on these coins, the Alpheos/​barley tetradrachm places the Syracusan link to Olympia on an equal level of importance with the barley grains representing Sicilian fertility, the wealth of the island, and the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. The two sides of the Alpheos/​barley tetradrachm represent two important but distinct ideological poles grounded in physical places in and outside of Syracuse. On the one hand, as I argued in c­ hapter 1, the image of the river god Alpheos links Syracuse to Olympia, to the Peloponnese, and to the wider Greek world. On the other hand, the barley grains represent the inland center, agriculture, and the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Demeter asks Metaneira to prepare her a drink of barley (ἄλφι) mixed with water and pennyroyal (the kykeôn) when she agrees to eat for the first time after Persephone’s disappearance.19 Barley grains appear on two other coin issues minted by Leontini, which fell within the Deinomenid sphere of influence,20 and the barley grains may therefore represent Syracusan wealth produced by the inland fertile plains of Sicily. Read together, the two sides of the coin affirm Syracuse’s status as a Greek polis closely tied to Olympia (represented by Alpheos, the river god who resides in Olympia) that controls and depends on Sicilian wealth (represented by the barley grains). The symbols on the tetradrachm tie Syracuse to the Peloponnese at the same time that they suggest her control of rich Sicilian farmlands. The evidence for the cult sites of Demeter and Persephone in Syracuse strongly indicates that the goddesses were worshipped in an active local cult. The barley grains on the Alpheos tetradrachm along with the grains on the coinage of Leontini, moreover, represent growing Deinomenid and Syracusan authority in eastern Sicily. Like the literary evidence, the material remains contain signs that suggest the goddesses were understood to be local figures who

19. Hom. Hymn Dem. 208. On the kykeôn, see Foley 1994: 47. 20.  Barley grains appear on two series of tetradrachms minted by Leontini. On the first, dating to 470 bce, four barley grains surround a lion’s head (Rutter 1997: 129, no. 128). On the second, four barley grains surround the head of a female, who resembles Arethusa, surrounded by four dolphins on Syracusan tetradrachms from the period (Rutter 1997: 130, no.  130). The date of the second tetradrachm is problematic, but it most likely should be placed just before or just after the fall of the Deinomenids. See Rutter 1997:  132 and Manganaro 1974/​1975: 23–​24.



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were at the same time representative of growing Syracusan, and particularly Deinomenid, power. I now turn to the mythic traditions surrounding Demeter and Persephone from which Pindar and Bacchylides drew.

Demeter and Persephone in the Sicilian Mythic Tradition Nancy Bookidis has suggested that the earliest Greek settlers brought the cults of Demeter and Persephone with them to Sicily, and they undoubtedly also told myths concerning the goddesses that were woven into the local landscape over time. These myths were likely preserved orally at the outset, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to trace their development. What can be determined is that by the period when Simonides wrote (mid-​sixth century through the first quarter of the fifth century), Demeter had been localized in a Sicilian context.21 The scholia to Theocritus report that “Simonides says that Aitna acted as judge when Demeter and Hephaistos quarreled over the land” (Σιμωνίδης δὲ Αἴτνην φησὶ κρῖναι Ἥφαιστον καὶ Δήμητραν περὶ τῆς χώρας ἐρίσαντας, PMG 552). The argument between Hephaistos and Demeter over the land shows that Demeter was tied to the landscape through myth by the time Pindar was writing. Simonides, moreover, visited the court of Hieron, and it is likely that this poem was known in Syracuse at that time.22 Barbara Kowalzig suggests, based on the connection between Demeter and Aitna in Simonides, that Demeter may also have figured in Aeschylus’ play, the Aitnaiai.23 In this play celebrating Hieron’s foundation of Aitna in 476, Zeus married a local nymph, Thalia, who gave birth to the local cult figures, the Palici.24 Though only four lines of the play survive, a papyrus fragment containing a hypothesis of the play reveals that the action moved from Aitna, to Xouthia, back to Aitna, to Leontini, and finally to Syracuse. Part of the ideological work of the play seems to have been to link diverse territories under Syracusan influence, including the newly founded city of Aitna, the non-​Greek settlement of

21. Morgan 2015: 95. 22. Several sources report that Simonides spent time in Sicily. See Paus. 1.2.3, Athen. 14.656d, Aelian V.H. 9.1, etc. The Scholia to Pindar claim that he solved a dispute between Hieron and Theron of Akragas (Schol. O. 2.15). However, Podlecki 1979 argues that Simonides did not in fact spend time in Sicily. See the discussion in Morgan 2015: 93–​96. 23. Kowalzig 2008: 144–​45. 24.  On the play more generally and for possible reconstruction scenarios, see Morgan 2015: 98–​104.

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Xouthia, Chalcidian Leontini, and Syracuse itself, through its mythical narrative.25 If Aeschylus did, in fact, incorporate either the tradition passed down by Simonides or the myth that Demeter kindled her torches in the craters of Aitna during her search for Persephone, this would have corresponded well to other Deinomenid efforts to promote her cult in Sicily.26 Earlier poetic accounts of Demeter and Persephone characterize the goddesses as figures particularly well suited to making territorial claims. In addition to acting as the goddess of grain, Demeter also controls the seasons and the fertility of the land in Greek mythology.27 When she is unhappy, the crops wither and mankind starves. The Homeric Hymn contains the earliest mythic narrative of Persephone’s rape and provides an aetiology for the Mysteries at Eleusis. In the Hymn, Aidoneus seizes Persephone while she picks flowers with her playmates in the Nysian plain (lines 1–​20). Helene Foley has observed that “the setting here is vague and mythical” in contrast to the many specific geographical sites attested in later versions of Persephone’s abduction.28 She, furthermore, argues that the Hymn is a Panhellenic poem whose poet “ignored or de-​emphasized some local features of the cult and its officials, and left parts of the story ‘unmotivated,’ where other versions do not.”29 While Foley is right to point out that the Hymn deemphasizes some local features that make it more relevant to Panhellenic audiences than other versions, the poem should not be viewed as entirely stripped of local aspects. In particular, when Rhea approaches Demeter to convey Zeus’ offer to allow Persephone to spend two-​thirds of the year with her mother, the Hymn emphasizes the primacy and, therefore, the importance of the Rharian plain near Eleusis: εἰς δ’ ἄρα Ῥάριον ἷξε, φερέσβιον οὖθαρ ἀρούρης 450

25. Dougherty 1993: 90–​91, Kowalzig 2008: 145, Nicholson 2011: 96–​97. 26. For Demeter lighting her torches in the craters of Aitna, see Karkinos TrGF I 70 F 5, Diod. 5.4.3, and the discussion later in the chapter. 27. Demeter receives the epithet ὠρηφόρος (bringer of seasons) at Hom. Hymn Dem. 54, 192, and 492. 28. Foley 1994: 36. Richardson 1974: 148–​50 collects evidence for the localization of the rape. 29. Foley 1994: 176. Clay 1989: 207 goes too far by arguing that the poet integrated the myth into a larger framework so that “the resultant poem transcends local traditions and practices to become a document of Panhellenic thought.” For different analyses of the poem, see Walton 1952, Zuntz 1971, and Clinton 1986. Walton 1952 reads the Hymn as an Eleusinian version that overpowered Attic elements of the myth. Zuntz 1971 similarly argues that the Hymn represents a local variant of the myth. Taking the opposite view, Clinton 1986 argues that the absence of details about local topography and other Eleusinian elements suggest that the poet was unfamiliar with the area and that the poem therefore does not offer an aetiology for the Eleusinian Mysteries.



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τὸ πρίν, ἀτὰρ τότε γ’ οὔ τι φερέσβιον, ἀλλὰ ἕκηλον ἑστήκει πανάφυλλον· ἔκευθε δ’ ἄρα κρῖ λευκὸν μήδεσι Δήμητρος καλλισφύρου· αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα μέλλεν ἄφαρ ταναοῖσι κομήσειν ἀσταχύεσσιν ἦρος ἀεξομένοιο, πέδῳ δ’ ἄρα πίονες ὄγμοι 455 βρισέμεν ἀσταχύων, τὰ δ’ ἐν ἐλλεδανοῖσι δεδέσθαι. ἔνθ’ ἐπέβη πρώτιστον ἀπ’ αἰθέρος ἀτρυγέτοιο· And she came to Rharion, before a life-​bearing most fertile land, but at that time not life-​bearing in any way, but it stood fallow and leafless and hid its white grain by the designs of fair-​ankled Demeter. But afterwards it would soon wave with long ears when the spring arrived, and on the plain rich furrows would brim with ears of corn, and others would have been bound in sheaths. There she first stepped coming out of the barren air. Rhea’s appeal to Demeter is introduced by a detailed description of the Rharian plain, which was located near the sanctuary at Eleusis. The depiction of the plain casts it as a place that was especially fertile before Demeter’s anger and as a place that will soon be fertile once more. Perhaps most significantly, in line 457, the plain is marked as the very spot where Rhea first touched the ground (ἔνθ’ ἐπέβη πρώτιστον), designating it as a potential site of religious significance and honoring this point in the Eleusinian landscape. We should, therefore, recognize that the Homeric Hymn honors the primacy of Demeter’s Mysteries at Eleusis by honoring the local landscape near the sanctuary at the same time that it remains relevant and applicable to a wider Panhellenic audience, as Helene Foley and Jenny Clay have argued.30 In contrast to the version that appears in the Homeric Hymn in which Aidoneus abducts Persephone from Nysa rather than a point in a Greek landscape, in other versions the myth of Persephone’s rape was localized in multiple places throughout the Greek world because the localization of this foundational mythical event conferred fame, the protection of the goddesses, and a claim to divine power. The widespread cult worship of Demeter and

30. Clay 1989: 207–​8, 267–​70; Foley 1994: 177. On the importance of the Rharian plain for the region, Pausanias also preserves the claim that it was the first to be sown and the first to bear fruit (1.38.6).

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Persephone throughout the island and the natural fertility of the soil made Sicily a natural setting for the localization of the myth, and the rape was very frequently located in Sicily in other later versions where the myth is narrated at length (e.g., Diodorus, Cicero, Ovid, and Claudian). It is furthermore likely that the localization of Persephone’s rape in Sicily dates back at least to the early fifth century. The full narrative of the Sicilian version is preserved by Diodorus who cites Timaeus as a source.31 Diodorus also quotes part of a poem by the fourth-​century Athenian tragic poet, Karkinos, who likewise sets the myth in Sicily.32 The Athenian playwright spent time in Syracuse at the court of Dionysios II where many of his plays were produced.33 The lines of Karkinos quoted by Diodorus reveal that Plouton raped the daughter of Demeter and then took her beneath the earth. After this, her mother, Demeter, searched for her daughter “in the entire earth in turn” (πᾶσαν ἐν κύκλῳ χθόνα). The final lines describe the reaction of the Sicilian landscape to Persephone’s abduction—​Aitna “teeming with unapproachable streams of fire” (πυρὸς γέμουσαν ῥεύμασιν δυσεμβόλοις) in mourning for the maiden and the people perishing without grain. For these reasons, according to Diodorus, the Sicilians still honor the goddesses. Karkinos represents the Sicilian landscape itself as responsive to Persephone’s disappearance, and this response becomes part of the aetiology for the worship of Demeter and Persephone in Sicily that he offers in the final line.34 Diodorus’ own extended narrative account appears to draw primarily from the writings of the fourth-​ century bce historian Timaeus, whom Diodorus cites just before he recounts his version of the myth of the rape.35 In addition to the evidence and sources mentioned by Diodorus, Callimachus also names Enna as a place particularly sacred to Demeter.36 The earliest surviving literary account that localizes the myth in Enna likely dates to the fourth-​century bce account of Timaeus.37 A silver litra minted by

31. Diod. 5.1.1, 5.6.1. 32. Diod. 5.5.1. 33. For the identification of this Karkinos as Karkinos II, the later Athenian tragedian (and not the earlier Akragantine playwright Karkinos I), see Kannicht 1991: 146–​47. For Karkinos II at Syracuse, see Diod. 5.5.1 and Diog. Laert. 2.7. On Karkinos I, see Rothwell 1994. 34. Diod. 5.5.1; TrGF I 70 F 5. Xanthakis-​Karamanos 1980 discusses the fragment and argues that Karkinos follows Euripides’ tendency to include aetiological myths in his plays. 35. Diod. 5.1. Pearson 1987: 57–​59. 36. Callim. Hymn 2.30. 37. Schipporeit 2008 dates the tradition to Philistus, on which see the following discussion.



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Figure  2.1 Ennaian litra, Silver, ca. 450–​440. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Enna between 450 and 440 offers another sign that the cult was important for the city by this time.38 On the obverse, Demeter carrying ears of grain drives a quadriga, and the goddess also appears standing before an altar and holding a torch on the reverse below the city’s name, HENNAION (“of the Ennaians,” Figure 2.1).39 In addition, the earliest coins minted by nearby Morgantina just after the fall of the Deinomenids around 460 also point to the goddess’s influence in the center of the island. These coins display a bearded male head on the obverse opposite an ear of grain.40 The ear of grain celebrates the fertility of the region,41 and perhaps also refers to Demeter, goddess of grain. As mentioned in the preceding discussion, excavations at Morgantina have shown that a cult of the goddesses was practiced there by the second half of the sixth century.42 The fact that Enna and Morgantina chose to display Demeter and the ear of grain on their coinage cannot prove that the myth of Persephone’s rape was

38.  Rutter 1997:  140 with fi ­ gure  146. For a different date for the coin, see Caltabiano 2008: 123–​24. 39. Rutter 1997: 140 identifies the objects Demeter carries as she drives the chariot as ears of grain. Others identify them as torches on both the obverse and the reverse. 40. Rutter 1997: 140. See also Erim 1989: 4–​7 with plate 1, 1. Erim suggests that this issue may antedate the capture of Morgantina by Ducetius in 459. Erim 1989: 7 also notes that the obverse is archaic in “a rather provincial or ‘Sikel’ manner.” 41. Erim 1989: 7 connects the grain to the agricultural wealth of the region. 42. Hinz 1998: 124–​27.

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localized in the center of the island, but it does indicate the importance of the cult of Demeter in the center of the island by the middle of the fifth century.

Diodorus’ Narrative of Persephone’s Abduction The fullest version of the localization of the myth in Sicily is found in Diodorus’ account. Important questions for the present study are how early the tradition preserved in Diodorus began and whether it may have been invented by Diodorus, whether it traces back to earlier historians, or whether it perhaps simply reflects cultural developments that took place between the fifth and first centuries bce. I  will argue that the myth of Persephone’s rape told by Diodorus is likely to represent a mythical narrative that was known at the beginning of the fifth century.43 Recently, Sven Schipporeit has argued that the myth recounted by Diodorus merged competing local interests into a single “pan-​Sicilian or at least east-​ Sicilian myth with Aetna, Syracuse and Enna as corner points of a triangle in the East of the island.”44 Schipporeit proposes that Philistus, the court historian of the tyrant Dionysios I, invented the mythical narrative in the late fifth century as part of a program of propaganda that promoted the cult of Demeter in Syracuse, in Enna, and throughout Sicily.45 It is possible, and even likely, as Schipporeit suggests, that Philistus told a version of the myth, and it could be that this is how it became known to Callimachus at Alexandria. However, there is no evidence to support the hypothesis that Philistus invented this narrative. Schipporeit argues, based on the date when Dionysios I incorporated Enna into his empire and based on Syracusan coinage of the late fifth century, that his notoriously devoted court historian Philistus would have been motivated to create the mythical narrative including the localized version at Enna so as to support Dionysios’ political plan. The difficulty with this argument is that exactly the same motive would have applied earlier in the fifth century. In fact, if I am correct, Pindar’s poetry expresses this very ambition during Hieron’s reign, so that even if the conquest of Enna was not fully achieved until Dionysios took the city in 396 there is no reason to assume, as Schipporeit does, that a pan-​Sicilian myth that localized Persephone’s rape in

43. Pearson 1987: 57–​59 argues that Timaeus invented this detail out of a sense of competition with Athens, but more recently Kowalzig 2008 has proposed that competition between Syracuse and Athens over the cult began already in the period following the Persian Wars. 44. Schipporeit 2008: 43. 45. Schipporeit 2008: 44–​46.



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Enna was impossible before the unification of the island. Schipporeit rightly stresses the pan-​Sicilian nature of the myth, but the premise from which he argues that the pan-​Sicilian myth could only have formed in the late fifth century overlooks the power of myth and ritual to foment social change.46 The ritual worship of Demeter and Persephone in Syracuse and throughout Sicily provided an established and powerful context in which to redefine and shape the figures of the goddesses. After pointing out the pan-​Sicilian elements of the myth told by Diodorus, Schipporeit concludes: “[c]‌onsidering the usual rivalry between Greek poleis even in myth and cult this [i.e., the formation of a pan-​Sicilian myth] could only happen when these cities were politically unified.”47 Instead of viewing a myth that fuses contested local versions as possible only when such a fusion had already occurred, I would like to stress instead that myth and ritual are as likely to operate as the forces of change as they are to passively reflect a change that has already taken place.48 The thin nature of the evidence in Syracuse and Sicily makes it dangerous to argue that the pan-​Sicilian mythical narrative was “invented” by a particular writer or another. Carol Dougherty and Barbara Kowalzig have shown that Hieron’s commission of the Aitnaiai by Aeschylus likely performed this type of geographical merging as its ideological narrative linked cities (Aitna, Xouthia, Leontini, and Syracuse) in eastern Sicily.49 Archaeological evidence furthermore suggests that Persephone and Demeter were already worshipped in Kyane at this period, and the litrai minted by Enna in the mid-​fifth century show that Demeter was already important to the inland city at this time. Given the significance of the goddesses in both Syracuse and Enna, it is likely that localized versions of the myth of Persephone’s rape that resembled the account of the myth preserved by Diodorus were known earlier in the fifth century. Diodorus begins his introduction to the history of Sicily with the story of the rape of Kore. The Sicilians, he reports, believe, due to a story passed down from

46. See, for instance, Kertzer 1988. He argues that “ritual symbols can be the symbols of change, indeed of revolution; they need not be symbols of stability,” and that “power holders, or aspiring power holders, seek to promulgate the view of the political situation they would like the general population to hold” (Kertzer 1988: 40–​41). See also Kowalzig 2007 and the Introduction. 47. Schipporeit 2008: 43. 48.  For the argument that myth in choral poetry can anticipate and contribute to social change in classical Greece, see Kowalzig 2007 in general, but especially 247–​50 and 257–​66 on Helios as a representative of the unified island of Rhodes. 49. Dougherty 1993: 90–​91, Kowalzig 2008: 144–​45.

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generation to generation, that the entire island was sacred to Demeter and Kore (Diod. 5.2.3). Plouton, he continues, abducted Kore as she picked flowers with the goddesses Artemis and Athena in a meadow near Enna, at the center, or “navel” (ὄμφαλος), of Sicily.50 Plouton emerged from a huge cave in his chariot and captured Kore as she played on a plain in the center of Sicily that was “high at the periphery and precipitous with cliffs on all sides” (κύκλῳ δ’ ὑψηλὸς καὶ πανταχόθεν κρημνοῖς ἀπότομος, Diod. 5.3.2). The abduction occurred at the center of the island in an area referred to as the “navel of Sicily” (Σικελίας ὀμφαλὸς, Diod. 5.3.2). Diodorus concludes the narrative a few lines later with a description of the olfactory and visual delights supplied by the landscape: τὰ δὲ ἴα καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἀνθῶν τὰ παρεχόμενα τὴν εὐωδίαν παραδόξως δι’ ὅλου τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ παραμένειν θάλλοντα καὶ τὴν ὅλην πρόσοψιν ἀνθηρὰν καὶ ἐπιτερπῆ παρεχόμενα. And the violets and the rest of the flowers which proffer a lovely odor remain in bloom all year long contrary to expectations and create a scene of flowers and delight.  (Diod. 5.3.3) The meadow in Enna, like the meadow located in Nysa in the Homeric Hymn, is exceptionally abundant: just before the quoted passage Diodorus reports that the sweet smell (εὐωδίαν) of the flowers growing there renders trained hunting dogs unable to track scents (Diod. 5.3.2). The exceptional fertility of the meadow underscores Diodorus’ claim that the goddesses first appeared to mankind in Sicily because of the high quality of its soil (Diod. 5.2.4). This fertile setting reinforces the reputation of the plains of Sicily in their prolific grain production, for which they were famous by the fifth century bce.51 Although Diodorus’ description of the meadow echoes the setting of the abduction in the Homeric Hymn in some respects, other important features have changed. Surrounded by precipitous cliffs, the meadow from which Plouton takes Kore marks both the center and the highest point of the island. Elsewhere, Diodorus even calls Enna the island’s ἀκροπόλις (“acropolis”).52

50.  Diod. 5.2–​4. Cicero similarly says that the entire island was sacred to the goddesses (insulam Siciliam totam esse Cereri et Liberae consecratam) and describes Enna as the “navel of Sicily” (umbilicus Siciliae) (In Verr. 2.4.106). 51. Kowalzig 2008: 131–​37. 52. Diod. 34/​35.2.24b: ὑπὸ γὰρ τῆς πεπρωμένης αὐτοῖς κεκυρῶσθαι πατρίδα τὴν Ἔνναν, οὖσαν ἀκρόπολιν ὅλης τῆς νήσου (“For it was fated that Enna, the acropolis of the entire island, belong to them as their fatherland”).



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Additionally, Diodorus’ account of the meadow and cave near Enna incorporates natural features of the landscape53—​the ancient city of Enna sat high on top of a mountain that overlooked the plains below (as the modern city still does) and would have been visible from a great distance. More important than the accuracy or realism of Diodorus’ description, though, is the glimpse it offers into the ancient Greek conception of the fertile, inland center of the island, which we will see again in Pindar’s Nemean 1. The mountainous interior of Sicily was historically the territory of the Sikels, while the Greek colonies were, for the most part, founded on the periphery of the island. For Sicilian Greeks, lofty, fertile inland areas like the meadow Diodorus describes at Enna represented the non-​Greek and the unknown.54 In the myth, Enna, with its mysteriously fertile meadow that overwhelms hunting dogs and contains a cave that connects to the Underworld (Diod. 5.3.2–​3), symbolizes the unknown element at the center of the island. The localization of the Panhellenic myth in Sicily works in at least two ways. It first asserts a Greek—​and as we will see Syracusan—​right to the center of the island by placing the Greek myth of the rape of Kore there. From the perspective of Greek colonists and Greeks outside of Sicily, this type of geographical modification would have justified Syracusan expansion into what was thereafter conceived of as Greek territory endowed with mythical authority. But beyond this, the rape of Kore and Demeter’s pursuit of her daughter occupied an important place within Panhellenic mythology, as we saw in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. While the rape itself is not localized in the Hymn, Demeter’s warm reception at Eleusis and her establishment of the mysteries there glorifies the site and makes it famous as the poem is disseminated to Panhellenic audiences. In Diodorus’ version, the localization of the rape in Enna—​the ὀμφαλός of the entire island—​works similarly, proclaiming the significance of the island for the entire Greek world and indeed for all of mankind by claiming that Demeter first introduced grain to the Sicilians.55

53.  For the distinction between types of landscapes (natural, imaginary, etc.), see the Introduction. 54. Ferrer Martín 2013 argues that the acropoleis in Sicily were important sites of ritual worship and interconnectivity for non-​Greek Sikel communities between the tenth and sixth centuries bce. 55. This claim also challenges the Athenian version of the myth by which Triptolemus first introduced grain to men in Attica. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter does not include the tradition that Demeter gave grain and the arts of agriculture to Triptolemus, but this was a familiar scene in Attic visual representations. On several Athenian black figure amphorae from the sixth century, Demeter is pictured presenting ears of grain to Triptolemus. See, for example, LIMC VIII.2, pl. 34, Triptolemus 63 (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, 580; BAD 3).

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According to Diodorus, alongside the fertile meadow in Enna there lies a “massive cave” (σπήλαιον εὐμέγεθες, 5.3.3) containing a direct path to the Underworld through which Plouton emerges when he abducts Persephone. The fertile meadow and the “underground chasm” (χάσμα κατάγειον) leading to the Underworld beside it underscore the permanent supernatural power of the center of the island. Unlike the Homeric Hymn in which the god of the Underworld rose up through the earth that momentarily gaped open for him (χάνε, 16), the cave described by Diodorus with its gaping chasm that leads to the Underworld is a lasting feature. The earth of the Homeric Hymn acts as an accomplice in the abduction, growing a particularly fragrant flower, the narcissus, to lure the maiden goddess and then offering her abductor a path to the surface. In the Sicilian version told by Diodorus, the mountainous center remains at once a foreign power, a potential source of wealth from the bounty of its fields, and a mysterious gateway to the Underworld that endures beyond the mythical time of the account.56 By representing the mythical and the natural landscapes as reinforcing one another in this way, Diodorus stakes a permanent Greek claim to the island’s center. After the abduction, Plouton struck open the ground at Kyane, outside of Syracuse, and descended to Hades, carrying the maiden with him (Diod. 5.4.1–​2). He then caused a spring to gush forth at Kyane. The spring of Kyane was sacred to Kore from that time, and later in mythical time Herakles instituted a public festival there for the Syracusans in honor of the goddesses, Demeter and Kore.57 I  will return to Herakles’ institution of the festival shortly, but first I  want to emphasize the spatial mapping of the abduction. Plouton seized Kore in Enna, a place that was extremely fertile, that was located in the center of the island, that was (at least initially) non-​Greek (Sikel), and that contained a chasm leading directly to the Underworld. Before descending to the Underworld, the pair reappeared outside of Syracuse, moving from center to periphery, from the fragrant and abundantly fertile center of the island to a place that would eventually be transformed into a sanctuary for the Greek goddesses by Herakles. Diodorus’ telling of the myth thus ties together the non-​Greek center of the island and the Greek periphery, granting Syracuse a special role in the action: the myth is localized at only two sites in Sicily—​the cave and the fertile

56. Cicero’s version of the myth also appears to follow Timaeus (or at least uses the same source as Diodorus) and shares several important details with Diodorus including: the localization in Enna, the fertile field surrounded by cliffs, the cave. Cic. Verr. 2.4.106–​7. 57. Diod. 5.4, 4.23.



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meadow near Enna, and the spring of Kyane. The Syracusan spring attains an important status as the site where Plouton split open the earth and completed the abduction. The narrative therefore articulates a conceptual geography that links the center to the periphery, and the non-​Greek to the Greek, within Sicily. The mixture of the Greek and the non-​Greek may be seen in Herakles’ institution of a festival and rites for Kore at the site of the spring of Kyane. According to Diodorus, Herakles arrived in Sicily after driving the cattle of Geryon across the Sicilian straits. Once in Sicily, he “civilized” the island in various ways: he won the territory of Segesta from Eryx in the west (Diod. 4.23); he inspired the nymphs to create hot springs in Himera and in Segesta as places for him to relax after his journeys (Diod. 4.23); he overcame the hostile Sikani in battle (Diod. 4.23); and he was worshipped as a god at Agyrion (Diodorus’ hometown) (Diod. 4.24). As Herakles drove the cattle around the island, he stopped at Kyane to sacrifice to Kore and to show the local people how to honor the goddess: τότε δ’ ὁ Ἡρακλῆς ἐγκυκλούμενος τὴν Σικελίαν, καταντήσας εἰς τὴν νῦν οὖσαν τῶν Συρακοσίων πόλιν καὶ πυθόμενος τὰ μυθολογούμενα κατὰ τὴν τῆς Κόρης ἁρπαγήν, ἔθυσέ τε ταῖς θεαῖς μεγαλοπρεπῶς καὶ εἰς τὴν Κυάνην τὸν καλλιστεύοντα τῶν ταύρων καθαγίσας κατέδειξε θύειν τοὺς ἐγχωρίους κατ’ ἐνιαυτὸν τῇ Κόρῃ καὶ πρὸς τῇ Κυάνῃ λαμπρῶς ἄγειν πανήγυρίν τε καὶ θυσίαν. And while Herakles was making a circuit of Sicily at that time, he arrived at the city which is now Syracuse and when he heard the myths about the rape of Kore, he sacrificed to the goddesses in grand fashion. Offering the fairest of the bulls into the spring Kyane, he showed the inhabitants how to sacrifice to Kore each year and how to set up a magnificent festival day and a sacrifice at Kyane.  (Diod. 4.23.4) The narrative takes place in mythical time in pre-​Greek Sicily. Diodorus imagines the setting of the myth not as Syracuse, but as the city “which is now Syracuse.” Furthermore, the people Herakles taught to perform the sacrifice are not Syracusans but the local inhabitants of the place (ἐγχωρίους). The festival established by Herakles honored the Greek goddesses (Kore and her mother), but its institution took place before Greek Sicily existed. The myth implies that the physical location—​the spring of Kyane—​demands recognition and worship without regard to the ethnicity of the celebrants. Herakles’ “hellenization” of the inhabitants on his circuit of the island models an interaction

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between the indigenous inhabitants of the land and later Greeks based on the inclusive worship of Greek deities.58 Diodorus narrates the story of Herakles’ foundation of the festival for Kore at Kyane twice. The first account (quoted in the preceding excerpt) belongs to Diodorus’ description of Herakles’ circuit of Sicily while he was herding the cattle of Geryon. Herakles’ institution of the festival at Kyane is retold as part of a narrative digression after Kore’s abduction (Diod. 5.3.4–​6). In the second version, Diodorus reports that the goddesses Athena and Artemis picked flowers together with Kore, and that each of the goddesses received a spring as part of her territory to celebrate her love for the island. Athena received the hot springs at Himera (Diod. 5.3.4), Artemis was granted the spring of Arethusa in Syracuse (Diod. 5.3.5-​6), and Kore possessed both Enna and Kyane (Diod. 5.4.1). The spring of Kyane was sacred to Kore because this was the place where Plouton broke open the earth and took her down into Hades (Diod. 5.4.2). When Herakles arrived in Kyane, as in Book 4, he established sacrifices for the goddess at the site, “near which the Syracusans celebrate a notable festival each year” (πρὸς ᾗ κατ’ ἐνιαυτὸν οἱ Συρακόσιοι πανήγυριν ἐπιφανῆ συντελοῦσι, Diod. 5.4.2). Diodorus’ repetition of the story in two separate accounts suggests that it was a key episode in the local Sicilian mythical traditions surrounding both Herakles and Kore, and it testifies to a strong connection between the goddess and the hero. The association between the hero and the goddess was unique neither to Sicily nor to a later historical period. Many accounts record that Herakles obtained Kerberos from Kore/​Persephone when he traveled to the Underworld to perform this labor.59 For instance, Pindar’s Second Dithyramb for the Thebans (fr. 70b SM) appears to tell the story of Herakles’ journey to the Underworld and provides information about his role in the Eleusinian Mysteries. If Hugh Lloyd-​Jones is correct in arguing that fr. 346b SM should be attached to the dithyramb, then the poem presents Herakles as a devotee of Persephone and Demeter who establishes a rite (τελετάν) for the goddesses

58. I am not adhering to the belief that the Greek colonists “hellenized” the indigenous cults of Sicily (a view which the archaeological evidence does not support). Rather, I am suggesting that Diodorus portrays Herakles’ behavior this way in this passage. For a good summary of the complicated issue of cultural interaction between Greeks and non-​Greeks in Sicily, see Hall 2012. De Polignac 1990: 294–​95 suggests that Herakles prepares the Hellenization of the indigenous world. 59. See, e.g., Plut. Nicias 1.3, Diod. 4.26, Apollod. 2.5.12.



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(Φερσεφόναι ματρί τε χρυσοθρόνωι) and the people (ἀστοῖσιν) (fr. 346.4–​5), after he himself has been initiated at the Mysteries.60 Bacchylides may offer another sign of the close connection between Herakles and Persephone. In Bacchylides’ Ode 5, celebrating Hieron’s Olympic victory in the horse race in 476, Herakles’ task of retrieving Kerberos is the pretense for his journey to the Underworld, where his encounter with Meleager occupies most of the mythical narrative:61 τὸν γάρ ποτ’ ἐρειψιπύλαν   παῖδ’ ἀνίκατον λέγουσιν δῦναι Διὸς ἀργικεραύ-​   νου δώματα Φερσεφόνας τανισφύρου, καρχαρόδοντα κύν’ ἄ-​   ξοντ’ ἐς φάος ἐξ Ἀΐδα, υἱὸν ἀπλάτοι’ Ἐχίδνας· They say that once the gate-​destroying, unconquerable son of Zeus who flashes bright lightning, went down to the house of Persephone with the slender ankles to lead the dog with jagged teeth, the son of the unapproachable Echidna, into the light and out of Hades.  (Ode 5.56–​62) Bacchylides’ association of Persephone with Herakles’ retrieval of Kerberos once again attests to a connection between the two figures. It is also suggestive that the myth appears in an ode for Hieron, perhaps marking another sign of the relationship between the goddess and the hero within Syracusan local cult. The connection may have already been known in a version of this labor told by the Sicilian poet, Stesichorus of Himera, who wrote a poem titled “Kerberos,” which does not survive.62 In addition, Diodorus himself provides a more detailed description of the close relationship between the hero and the goddess:

60.  Lloyd-​Jones 1967:  206–​18 and the discussion in Lavecchia 2000:  106–​21. For visual representations that suggest Herakles’ initiation at Eleusis see Boardman 1975. 61. For an interpretation of the myth that links it to its local historical context in a different way, Bonanno 2010: 202 argues that the battle described by Meleager alludes to the recent victories of the Syracusans and the Akragantines over the “barbarian.” 62. Pollux 10.152.

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Οὗτος γὰρ κατὰ τοὺς παραδεδομένους μύθους καταβὰς εἰς τοὺς καθ’ ᾅδου τόπους, καὶ προσδεχθεὶς ὑπὸ τῆς Φερσεφόνης ὡς ἂν ἀδελφός, Θησέα μὲν ἀνήγαγεν ἐκ δεσμῶν μετὰ Πειρίθου, χαρισαμένης τῆς Κόρης, τὸν δὲ κύνα παραλαβὼν δεδεμένον παραδόξως ἀπήγαγε καὶ φανερὸν κατέστησεν ἀνθρώποις. For Herakles, according to the myths handed down to us, after going down into Hades and being welcomed by Persephone just like a brother, led up Theseus and Peirithous out of their chains, and thanks to Kore, took the chained dog, led him away contrary to all expectation, and displayed him to men.  (Diod. 4.26.1) Persephone welcomes Herakles “just like a brother,” and it is thanks to Kore (the same goddess) that Herakles was able to lead Kerberos into the light. Herakles’ trip to the Underworld directly follows his journey to Sicily, during which he founded the sanctuary at Kyane for Persephone in her chthonic aspect. In other accounts, Herakles was initiated into the Mysteries at Eleusis.63 Xenophon even tells a version of the myth in which Herakles was the first person with whom Triptolemos shared the rites of Demeter and Kore.64 Although in this case the discovery of grain is localized in the Peloponnese (the reference appears in a speech by Kallias, whom Xenophon notes is a torch bearer, δᾳδοῦχος, of the Eleusinian Mysteries, addressed to the Spartans), Herakles’ involvement in the cult offers a noteworthy parallel for Kore’s cult at Kyane. The connection between the hero and the goddess was, moreover, familiar in visual representations in the Archaic and Classical periods. An Athenian black-​ figure amphora dating from 540–​ 530 bce, found in Locri, shows Herakles’ journey back from the Underworld after retrieving Kerberos. Below the scene in which Herakles leads Kerberos, Demeter departs in the presence of Herakles and Triptolemos. Although no representation of Persephone remains on the badly fragmented amphora, Shapiro argues from similar scenes on contemporary vases that she is likely to have been represented on the missing part.65 The Locrian amphora demonstrates that the connection

63. See, e.g., Eur. Her. F. 610–​13, Diod. 4.25, Apollod. 2.5.12. Diodorus attributes Herakles’ success to Persephone. See also Pind. fr. 70b SM above. 64. Xen. Hell. 6.3.6. 65. Shapiro 2002: 85–​86 with ­figure 5. For parallels from the last quarter of the sixth century that show that Persephone commonly appeared in visual representations of Herakles’ return with Kerberos, and for a discussion of the relationship between the two scenes on the amphora from Locri, see Boardman 1975: 7–​8 with plates 1–​3.



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between Persephone and Herakles was known in the west already in the sixth century. Finally, Plutarch preserves a version of this myth that relates directly to the safety and well-​being of Syracuse. Plutarch says that the Sicilian historian Timaeus attributed the Syracusan success during the Athenian invasion at the last quarter of the fifth century not only to Kore but also to Herakles: ἔτι δ’ εἰκὸς εἶναι τὸν Ἡρακλέα τοῖς μὲν Συρακουσίοις βοηθεῖν διὰ τὴν Κόρην, παρ’ ἧς ἔλαβε τὸν Κέρβερον, ὀργίζεσθαι δὲ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις, ὅτι τοὺς Αἰγεστέας, ἀπογόνους ὄντας Τρώων, ἔσῳζον, αὐτὸς δ’ ὑπὸ Λαομέδ οντος ἀδικηθεὶς ἀνάστατον ἐποίησε τὴν πόλιν. And further, [sc. Timaeus thought] that it was fitting that Herakles helped the Syracusans on account of Kore, from whom he obtained Kerberos, and that he was angry with the Athenians because they were saving the Segestans, since they were the descendants of the Trojans, whose city he had destroyed because he was mistreated by Laomedon. (Plut. Nic. 1.3) According to Plutarch, Timaeus believed that Kore’s influence caused Herakles to save the city from the invading Athenians. Although Plutarch cites this example to criticize Timaeus in this case, there is no reason to doubt that the Sicilian historian said it. Timaeus’ justification offers a reason why Kore sided with the Syracusans instead of the Athenians in this situation and emphasizes that a close relationship with Kore brought prestige to the city. Diodorus’ twice-​repeated narrative of Herakles’ foundation of the festival for Demeter and Kore at Kyane, together with Timaeus’ account of Herakles’ protection of Syracuse preserved by Plutarch, provides evidence of a strong connection between Herakles and Persephone/​Kore in Syracuse that can be dated to the fourth century bce at the latest. The sixth-​century amphora from Locri offers a suggestive parallel that may indicate that a similar connection between the hero and the goddess was known in Sicily during the same period. Though a connection between Persephone and Herakles in fifth-​century Syracuse is harder to prove due to the nature of the evidence currently available, it is likely that an association between the two was already known at this time as part of an oral tradition, or possibly in a written work that did not survive.66 The

66.  Thus Giangiulio 1983:  827 argues for the period of the Deinomenid tyranny in Syracuse: “Ora, non si può non pensare che a Siracusa tale valorizzazione del culto e delle

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mythic narratives of Demeter’s search for her daughter near the crags of Aitna, the localization of Persephone’s rape in Sicily, and the connection between the goddesses and Herakles all offer important contexts for understanding the way that Pindar links myth and landscape in Nemean 1, which is the focus of the final section of this chapter. However, before turning to the epinician ode, I will survey the evidence for the hereditary priesthood of Demeter and Persephone held by the Deinomenids to analyze the significance of the goddesses for Hieron and his family.

The Deinomenid Priesthood of Demeter and Persephone Demeter and Persephone would have represented both local and regional interests in many Sicilian cities, as argued above, but in Syracuse the cult carried added political significance because the Deinomenids controlled the ancestral priesthood of Demeter and Persephone. A discussion of the historical accounts will show that the goddesses were symbols of increasing Syracusan, and especially Deinomenid, power in Sicily. The expansionist associations attached to the cult become even clearer when these sources are read in tandem with the epinician poems for Syracuse. I therefore begin by considering how Herodotus and Diodorus present the Deinomenid priesthood of Demeter and Persephone, after which I examine the evidence for the Deinomenid priesthood in epinician poetry. Finally, a discussion of the historical and poetic material together argues that these sources share, participate in, and shape a common ideological system.

Herodotus In Book 7 of the Histories, Herodotus says that the Greek assembly voted to send representatives to Argos, Sicily, Corcyra, and Crete to form alliances and to win support for the Greek cause against the Persians. This account of the embassy’s visit to Gelon in Syracuse is the longest sustained passage about Sicily in the Histories.67 Herodotus begins the story by explaining how Telines,

tradizioni legate a Demeter e Kore non abbia implicate un’analoga attenzione per la figura di Eracle.” He moreover believes that the link between Demeter and Herakles should be traced to the earliest period of settlement in Syracuse (Giangiulio 1983: 813–​14). 67. For an analysis of the relationship of the Sicilian logos in Book 7 to the Histories more generally, see Lewis forthcoming b.



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the ancestor of Gelon, secured the priesthood of the chthonic goddesses for his descendants: τοῦ δὲ Γέλωνος τούτου πρόγονος, οἰκήτωρ ὁ ἐν Γέλῃ, ἦν ἐκ νήσου Τήλου τῆς ἐπὶ Τριοπίῳ κειμένης· ὃς κτιζομένης Γέλης ὑπὸ Λινδίων τε τῶν ἐκ Ῥόδου καὶ Ἀντιφήμου οὐκ ἐλείφθη. ἀνὰ χρόνον δὲ αὐτοῦ οἱ ἀπόγονοι γενόμενοι ἱροφάνται τῶν χθονίων θεῶν διετέλεον ἐόντες, Τηλίνεω ἑνός τευ τῶν προγόνων κτησαμένου τρόπῳ τοιῷδε. ἐς Μακτώριον πόλιν τὴν ὑπὲρ Γέλης οἰκημένην ἔφυγον ἄνδρες Γελῴων στάσι ἑσσωθέντες· τούτους ὦν ὁ Τηλίνης κατήγαγε ἐς Γέλην, ἔχων οὐδεμίαν ἀνδρῶν δύναμιν ἀλλὰ ἱρὰ τούτων τῶν θεῶν. ὅθεν δὲ αὐτὰ ἔλαβε ἢ αὐτὸς ἐκτήσατο, τοῦτο δὲ οὐκ ἔχω εἰπεῖν. τούτοισι δ’ ὦν πίσυνος ἐὼν κατήγαγε, ἐπ’ ᾧ τε οἱ ἀπόγονοι αὐτοῦ ἱροφάνται τῶν θεῶν ἔσονται. The ancestor of this Gelon, a settler in Gela, was from the island of Telos which lies off of Triopion. When Gela was founded by the Lindians from Rhodes and by Antiphemos he was not left behind. In time his descendants became and continue to be hierophants of the chthonic goddesses after a certain one of the ancestors, Telines, obtained the priesthood in the following way. After having been defeated in a stasis, a group of Geloan men fled to Maktorion, a city located above Gela. Telines brought these men back to Gela, having no force of men but the cult instruments of these goddesses. From where he took them or if instead he possessed them himself, I can’t say, but trusting in these [instruments] he brought them back on the condition that his descendants would be the hierophants of the goddesses.  (Hdt. 7.153.1–​3) Herodotus specifies that the Deinomenids served as priests of the cult of the chthonic goddesses (χθονίοι θεοί), that is, of Demeter and Persephone.68 Instead of using manpower (ἀνδρῶν δύναμις) to end the stasis and reunite the Geloans, Telines relies on the cult instruments (ἱρά) of the goddesses for protection. By stopping the stasis he secured the priesthood for his descendants and, as Donald White has emphasized, this is “the first recorded occasion in Sicily on which the cult is employed for extra-​religious purposes.”69 Herodotus

68. Van Compernolle 1957 shows that the chthonic goddesses here must refer to Demeter and Persephone. 69. White 1964: 263.

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focuses on the ancestral Deinomenid right to the priesthood rather than on the workings of the cult or the causes or nature of the stasis among the Geloans.70 Although we know nothing of the terms of Telines’ agreement, what is clear is that Demeter reconciles factions and joins the people inside the city with those outside of it.71 The story falls within the larger narrative of Gelon’s rise to power, and here Herodotus, as he so often does in the Histories, points to an episode generations earlier that presages the power and character of a family of tyrants.72 Whether or not Herodotus records a historical event in this case,73 his focus on the priesthood underscores its important role in the Deinomenid rise to a position of religious and political power, first in Gela and then in Syracuse. By serving as hierophants of Demeter and Persephone, the descendants of Telines not only honor their ancestral duties but also act as important figures in the new civic cult of Gela.74 Herodotus’ explanation for the Deinomenid control of the priesthood also features the unification of opposing factions in the service of the polis, and, as Nino Luraghi has observed, Gelon may have fashioned himself after Telines, or may possibly have even invented the story of Telines to create ancestral precedent for the peaceful unification of the city.75 Telines’ establishment

70. Malkin 1987: 251; de Polignac 1990: 290. 71.  On Demeter as a colonial goddess who mediates between colonists and indigenous peoples and specifically on her role as mediator in Telines’ foundation of Gela, see de Polignac 1990. 72. For other examples, see Lewis forthcoming b. 73.  This account has provoked a longstanding debate about its historical accuracy. Many scholars believe that the account corresponds reasonably well with historical events. Morgan 2015:  29 thus argues that the “account of Herodotus, while doubtless colored by developments of the later fifth century, does not seem inherently implausible.” For the view that the events may be historical, see Zahrnt 1993: 375–​76. Luraghi 1994: 124–​25 proposes that Herodotus may have reworked the details of the account to suit Gelon’s purposes, but he leaves the question of the episode’s historicity open, arguing that the small amount of evidence provided by Herodotus makes this difficult to determine. See also White 1964, Zuntz 1971: 135–​39, van Compernolle 1957, Kesteman 1970, Giuffrida 2004, Cataldi 2005. 74.  Kesteman 1970:  408 emphasizes that in addition to being in possession of the cult instruments of the goddesses, Telines, as someone of Telian origin through the ancestor cited by Herodotus, may have been able to play a neutral, conciliatory role if the conflict Herodotus mentions was between the two original groups of settlers named by Thucydides: the Rhodians (also cited by Herodotus) and the Cretans (Th. 6.4.3). Privitera argues that sacred images like the ἱρά of the goddesses were fundamental aspects of a ruler who wanted to portray himself as an optimus rex (Privitera 1980, especially 405, 409). For the shift from private to civic cult, see van Compernolle 1957: 477–​79, Harrell 1998: 48–​49. 75. Luraghi 1994: 123–​24. For a different view, see Harrell 1998: 52–​58.



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of the priesthood fuses private and political interests, and we will see that his descendants, Gelon and Hieron, continued to merge personal with civic interests in their use of the cult after their rule in Syracuse had been established. After the Telines episode, Herodotus provides a brief history of Sicily before narrating the account of the Greek embassy’s visit to Gelon’s court. Gelon’s power fluctuates throughout the narration—​he is at times the ruler of Syracuse and at times the ruler of all of Sicily. On Gelon’s rise to power, Herodotus reports that after the tyrant moved his power base to Syracuse he no longer cared about ruling over the city of Gela, which he then entrusted to his brother Hieron.76 Instead, Gelon strengthened Syracuse: ὁ δὲ τὰς Συρηκούσας ἐκράτυνε, καὶ ἦσάν οἱ πάντα αἱ Συρήκουσαι: “He strengthened Syracuse, and Syracuse was everything to him” (7.156).77 He also fortified the polis by moving citizens from Kamarina, Gela, Megara, and Euboea to Syracuse.78 In this way, Herodotus writes, “Gelon became a great tyrant” (τοιούτῳ μὲν τρόπῳ τύραννος ἐγεγόνεε μέγας ὁ Γέλων, 7.157).79 At this point in the description, Gelon’s attention is focused on Syracuse and his fortune as a leader is particularly linked to the success of the city. However, the language of the Greek embassy offers a different perspective on Gelon’s power. The ambassadors adapt the terms they employ to describe Gelon’s power to suit their political aims. When the Greek ambassadors request Gelon’s aid in their struggle against the Persians, they flatter him by emphasizing the scope of his power and the extent of his territory: σὺ δὲ δυνάμιός τε ἥκεις μεγάλης καὶ μοῖρά τοι τῆς Ἑλλάδος οὐκ ἐλαχίστη μέτα ἄρχοντί γε Σικελίης, βοήθει τε τοῖσι ἐλευθεροῦσι τὴν Ἑλλάδα καὶ συνελευθέρου. You have come into great power and since you rule over Sicily your share of Hellas is not insignificant. Help the men freeing Hellas and free it with them.  (Hdt. 7.157.2)

76. Bonanno 2010: 224–​25 argues that though Herodotus mentions Hieron only once, this reference reinforces the legitimacy of Hieron’s succession to the tyranny and thus reflects the influence of Deinomenid propaganda on the Herodotean tradition. 77. For the argument that this phrase refers to Gelon’s expansion of the city into the already settled area of Achradina, see Macan 1908: 216. 78. Cf. Thuc. 6.4, 6.94. 79. On Herodotus’ use of tyrannos and related terms in the Histories as synonyms for basileus and archē, see Dewald 2003: 40–​41.

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The embassy’s appeal to Gelon’s power suggests that the Greeks thought of him as the ruler of Sicily.80 The size of his domain is expressed in litotes—​ “your share of Hellas is not insignificant”—​indicating its magnitude. In response, Gelon offers to send troops as reinforcements and to supply the entire combined Greek army with grain (σῖτος, 7.158) on the condition that the Greeks allow him to serve as their general and leader (στρατηγός τε καὶ ἡγεμών, 7.158). This offer of grain echoes the Greek impression both of Gelon as the ruler of the entire island and of Sicily as a major grain producer.81 If Gelon had access to so vast a supply of grain, much of it would have come from territories further afield than those immediately surrounding Syracuse. Gelon’s proposal is an expression of his material wealth and the power that attends it, but it also doubles as an assertion of Syracusan (and Deinomenid) control over Sicily.82 After Gelon makes his offer, the ambassadors’ rhetoric changes. The Spartan Syagrus and the unnamed Athenian envoy both grow angry at Gelon’s proposal that he command the Greek army and navy. Syagrus exclaims: Ἦ κε μέγ᾽ οἰμώξειε ὁ Πελοπίδης Ἀγαμέμνων πυθόμενος Σπαρτιήτας τὴν ἡγεμονίην ἀπαραιρῆσθαι ὑπὸ Γέλωνός τε καὶ Συρηκοσίων (“Surely Agamemnon son of Pelops would lament greatly if he were to learn that the Spartans were deprived of the command by Gelon and the Syracusans” [7.159]). No longer expecting Gelon’s aid, Syagrus links him only to the Syracusans rather than to all of the Sicilians. As Silvio Cataldi observes, Syagrus’ revulsion at the idea of being led by Gelon and the Syracusans is directed as much at the Syracusans as it is at Gelon.83 Herodotus’ Syagrus thus attributes imperial ambitions to the Syracusan citizens and not solely to their leader. What has not been

80.  Luraghi 1994:  365 argues that this representation should be understood as part of a Deinomenid ideological program rather than the view of a Panhellenic audience or a later historiographical reflection. 81. As Kowalzig has emphasized, despite the fact that Sicily produced many other products besides grain, “what matters in the dynamics of ancient economies is the hyping of (in this case) grain for ideological benefit” (2008: 134–​35, quote taken from p. 135). See also Cataldi 2005: 143n71. 82. Cataldi 2005: 132–​33 argues that Gelon may already at this point have extended his control into western areas of the island through his alliance with Theron. Whether Gelon’s offer reflects his current holdings or those to which he aspires, it indicates his control over large expanses of Sicilian farmland. 83.  Cataldi 2005:  149 understands a later historiographical perspective in this passage. I agree with his emphasis on the Spartan’s outrage at the thought of being commanded by the Syracusans, but I instead attribute this to the rising power of Syracuse under the rule of the Deinomenids in the earlier part of the fifth century.



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recognized, and what I would like to emphasize, is that he also significantly separates the Syracusans from the rest of the Sicilian population and implicitly takes back from Gelon the honor of ruling Sicily previously attributed to him (ἄρχοντί γε Σικελίης, 7.157). The Greeks again downgrade the extent of Gelon’s territory in their response to his counteroffer. Gelon proposes that he would be willing to rule only the navy or the army and to allow the Spartans and Athenians to retain control of whichever of the two they choose. In response, the Athenian envoy addresses the Syracusan tyrant: Ὦ βασιλεῦ Συρηκοσίων, οὐκ ἡγεμόνος δεομένη ἡ Ἑλλὰς ἀπέπεμψε ἡμέας πρὸς σέ, ἀλλὰ στρατιῆς. σὺ δὲ ὅκως μὲν στρατιὴν πέμψεις μὴ ἡγεύμενος τῆς Ἑλλάδος, οὐ προφαίνεις, ὡς δὲ στρατηγήσεις αὐτῆς, γλίχεαι. King of the Syracusans, Hellas sent us to you not out of need for a leader but for an army. But you do not appear to be willing to send an army unless you are leader of Hellas, and you long to become commander-​ in-​chief of it.  (Hdt. 7.161.1) Now hailing Gelon as king of the Syracusans, the Athenian envoy once again limits Gelon’s kingship to Syracuse rather than to include the broader territory of Sicily as his domain.84 The envoy, moreover, suggests that Gelon desires to become the leader of Hellas. Even if this does not accurately represent Gelon’s own ideological position, the statement reveals the Athenian’s understanding of his motivations. The pairing of Gelon’s status as king of Syracuse (rather than ruler of Sicily as at 7.157) and his desire to rule Hellas underscores the divide between his current status and his ambition. Explaining why it would never be acceptable to the Athenians for Gelon to rule over them, the envoy continues: μάτην γὰρ ἂν ὧδε πάραλον Ἑλλήνων στρατὸν πλεῖστον εἴημεν ἐκτημένοι, εἰ Συρηκοσίοισι ἐόντες Ἀθηναῖοι συγχωρήσομεν τῆς ἡγεμονί ης, ἀρχαιότατον μὲν ἔθνος παρεχόμενοι, μοῦνοι δὲ ἐόντες οὐ μετανάστ αι Ἑλλήνων·

84.  How and Wells 1912:  197 note that Gelon’s title changes throughout the passage:  “To H., speaking in his own person, Gelo is τύραννος (156. 3, 163. 1), though Scythes is βασιλεύς (vi. 23. 3 n.), but the Sicilian tyrants like Polycrates (iii. 42. 2) would be flattered by being addressed as ‘king.’ ”

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It would be in vain that we possess the greatest naval force of the Greeks if though we are Athenians we yield leadership to Syracusans, when we are the most ancient race and we are the only Greeks who are not immigrants.  (Hdt. 7.161.3) Yet again, the Athenian refers only to the Syracusans as the rivals of the Athenians and no longer to Sicilians as a collective. Here, Athenian power is expressed superlatively as “the greatest naval force of the Greeks.” The expression echoes and surpasses the superlative adjective that described Gelon’s domain as a “not insignificant” share of Hellas (7.157). As it becomes increasingly clear that the objective of the embassy will not be accomplished, the Athenian asserts Athenian superiority and right to rule in terms that draw a particularly stark contrast with problems endemic to Syracuse and more broadly to all of Sicily in this period. It is not at all unusual for Athenians to emphasize their autochthonous origins as a point of distinction.85 However, the envoy’s reference also recalls Herodotus’ description of Gelon’s rise to power, which, as we have seen, was distinguished by the movement of people from one polis to another (Hdt. 7.154–​57). This contrast between the Athenians who never changed their place of habitation furthermore anticipates Thucydides’ Alcibiades who will compare the motley rabble (ὄχλοι ξύμμεικτοι) of the Sicilians, who move from place to place, with the Athenians, who have always remained in their homeland.86 In addition to the contrast he draws between Athenian autochthony and frequent Sicilian migration, the envoy may hint at a difference in the fertility of the land in the areas surrounding Athens and the territories controlled by Syracuse. According to Thucydides, the inhabitants of Attica remained in the same place precisely because of the poverty of their soil (1.2.5). By contrast, Thucydides suggests that the fertile land of Sicily, like that of other areas of Greece, invited factionalism and the rise of individuals to power (1.2.3–​4). The Athenian envoy’s comments, moreover, contain a personal slight to Gelon, whose ancestor, Herodotus tells us, arrived in Gela with the first group

85. See, e.g., Thucydides’ representation of Pericles’ Funeral Oration (Thuc. 2.36). How and Wells 1912: 198 note that the subject is particularly prominent in funeral orations. On the importance of the myth of authochthony as a topos in Athenian discourse and on the way this myth structured civic space, see Loraux 1993: 3–​71. 86.  Thuc. 6.17.2–​3. See also ­chapter  1:  58–​59. Vattuone 1994:  82 argues that Herodotus sought to draw a distinction between the hegemonies of the Syracusan democracy and that of the Athenian democracy at the time that he was writing by contrasting their ancient models.



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of founders and thus did not spring from the earth in Sicily.87 As we have seen, Gelon transferred his allegiance from Gela to Syracuse, no longer taking an interest in the former after he transferred the rule of the city to his brother.88 The insulted Athenian boasts that his lineage stretches back to Homeric times as a point of distinction and he claims a pedigree that Gelon, despite all of his wealth, could never attain.89 The characterization of Gelon’s rule by Syagrus and the Athenian as limited to control of Syracuse does not, however, correspond to Gelon’s opinion of his own power. When Herodotus describes Gelon’s motives after the embassy’s departure, Gelon imagines himself as the leader of Sicily: Γέλων δὲ πρὸς ταῦτα δείσας μὲν περὶ τοῖσι Ἕλλησι μὴ οὐ δύνωνται τὸν βάρβαρον ὑπερβαλέσθαι, δεινὸν δὲ καὶ οὐκ ἀνασχετὸν ποιησάμενος ἐλθὼν ἐς Πελοπόννησον ἄρχεσθαι ὑπὸ Λακεδαιμονίων, ἐὼν Σικελίης τύραννος. . .  But Gelon, though he feared that the Greeks would not be able to defeat the barbarian, considered it terrible and unbearable for him to go to the Peloponnese and to be commanded by the Lacedaemonians since he was the tyrant of Sicily. . .   (Hdt. 7.163.1) Herodotus combines notions contained in his earlier narrative statement that “Gelon became a great tyrant” (τύραννος μέγας, 7.157.1) with the words of the Greek ambassadors that Gelon ruled over Sicily, not the least part of Hellas (ἄρχοντί γε Σικελίης, 7.157.2). Riccardo Vattuone has argued that in general Herodotus presents Gelon in a negative light in an attempt to tarnish the Deinomenid reputation spread abroad by the poetry of Pindar and Bacchylides

87.  For a different interpretation of the significance of Gelon’s ancestor, see Harrell 1998: 28–​32. 88. Harrell argues that Gelon’s move from Gela to Syracuse marks a contrast between him and Telines, who remained in his own city. She furthermore views Gelon’s ability to change his own identity from a Geloan to a Syracusan as “the ultimate symbol of the tyrant’s ‘greatness’ ” (Harrell 1998: 52–​58, quote from p. 58). Thatcher 2012 argues that the Deinomenid tyrants faced particular challenges when promoting civic ideology in Syracuse because they were not themselves originally Syracusan. 89. Nicholson 2005: 94 similarly contrasts the disconnect in Pindar’s Olympian 6 between Hagesias whose lineage Pindar traces back to the famous Iamid seers and Hieron who lacks this kind of pedigree.

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and established by prominent dedications at Delphi and Olympia.90 Even accounting for Herodotus’ bias, his presentation of Gelon’s ambition does suggest that other Greeks viewed Sicilian tyrants as eager to expand their territory.91 Gelon’s desire to be seen as the tyrant of Sicily (Σικελίης τύραννος) largely corresponds to the aspirations of the Deinomenids articulated in other fifth-​century sources, making it likely that this aspiration was part of Gelon’s own ideological program.92 In addition to the language Herodotus chooses to express Gelon’s political power, other symbols of Deinomenid power may be detected in the embassy’s visit to Sicily. Herodotus may, in fact, be subtly linking Gelon’s ambition to expand his power to the Deinomenid ancestral priesthood of Demeter and Persephone. As discussed above, Telines’ acquisition of the ancestral priesthood of Demeter and Persephone seems to have provided a model for Gelon’s return of the Gamoroi to Syracuse in 485. Herodotus does not specifically name Gelon as a priest, but there are, nonetheless, signs that link the tyrant to the cult. To begin with, Herodotus chooses the same verb to describe the actions of the tyrant and his ancestor, and thereby draws a link between Telines and Gelon: just as Telines led the defeated faction back (κατήγαγε, 7.153.3) to Gela, so too Gelon led the Gamoroi back (καταγαγών, 7.155.2) to Syracuse.93 Furthermore, at the beginning of the Telines episode, Herodotus emphasizes that Telines was Gelon’s ancestor (τοῦ δέ Γέλωνος τούτου πρόγονος, 7.153.1). Herodotus’ anecdote about Telines is thus not only interesting in its own right, but it also provides information about his descendant Gelon. Herodotus never explicitly mentions Gelon’s role as the priest of the chthonic goddesses, but he does express Gelon’s power in terms of fertility and prosperity of the land that recall the Deinomenid connection to Demeter

90. Vattuone 1994: 81–​83. He argues that due to competition between Syracuse and Athens later in the fifth century Herodotus “sembra voler demolire con puntiglio un’immagine positive e gloriosa che si era formata sul personaggio e che probabilmenta era già diffusa nel mondo greco” (81). See also Morgan 2015:  24–​25. Bonanno 2010:  221 suggests that Herodotus’ account is informed by Sicilian sources, particularly in the story of Telines’ acquisition of the ancestral cult. 91. Macan 1908: 227 believes that the extent of Gelon’s power is recognized here, but “its legitimacy is no longer insinuated.” How and Wells 1912: 198 note the repetition of the title τύραννος as in 157.2 and conclude that “Gelo is regarded as suzerain of all (Greek) Sicily.” 92. Luraghi 1994: 365 with note 398. 93.  Luraghi 1994:  122n18 observes, “il verbo κατάγειν, impiegato da Erodoto per indicare l’operazione compiuta da Teline, sembrerebbe indicare preferibilmente l’azione di chi da fuori riconduce in una città qualcuno che ne era stato espulso.” He lists Hdt. 7.155.2 among other examples.



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and Persephone. After Gelon restored the Gamoroi to Syracuse and ended the stasis, the polis enjoyed a period of prosperity: αἳ δὲ παραυτίκα ἀνά τ’ ἔδραμον καὶ ἔβλαστον (“Immediately it [Syracuse] grew up and sprouted,” 7.156.2). The verb ἔβλαστον in this passage is exceptional, and Herodotus uses it in the Histories to describe the growth of a city only in this passage.94 Syracuse sprouts up like a plant, alluding to the ambit of Demeter and Persephone. Through this metaphor, Herodotus recalls and activates the Deinomenid connection to the goddesses set up earlier by the Telines episode. The association between Gelon’s power and Sicily’s abundance reappears in the embassy scene. As part of the negotiations with the Spartans and the Athenians, Gelon offers to send enough grain (σῖτος, 7.158) to feed the entire Greek army. Gelon’s offer of grain implies a connection to Demeter, who helped men discover grain and agriculture, and who was worshipped as Σίτω in Syracuse.95 Furthermore, the grain of the goddess was the resource that allowed Gelon to bargain with the Athenians and the Spartans, even if they were unwilling to accept his offer. Finally, when Gelon responds to the Greek embassy’s refusal of his conditions and their decision to return to Greece empty-​handed, he expresses Greece’s loss through another metaphor of seasonal growth: Ἐπεὶ τοίνυν οὐδὲν ὑπιέντες ἔχειν τὸ πᾶν ἐθέλετε, οὐκ ἂν φθάνοιτε τὴν ταχίστην ὀπίσω ἀπαλλασσόμενοι καὶ ἀγγέλλοντες τῇ Ἑλλάδι ὅτι ἐκ τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ τὸ ἔαρ αὐτῇ ἐξαραίρηται. Since you do not yield at all and wish to have everything, you should return as quickly as possible and announce to Hellas that the spring has been taken from her year.  (Hdt. 7.162.1)

94. However, the compound ἀναβλαστάνω twice refers to the rise (or potential rise) of evils under a ruler (5.92δ of the evils fated to arise from Aëtion’s descendant for Corinth) or a potential challenger to the throne (3.62 of Cambyses’ murdered brother). Herodotus thus appears to reserve the verb and the related compound for royal contexts. The related noun βλαστός also occurs twice to refer to the growth of plants: Hdt. 6.37.2, 8.55. Macan 1908: 217 compares this passage to Herodotus’ description of Sparta after the death of Lycurgus: ἀνά τε ἔδραμον αὐτίκα καὶ εὐθηνήθησαν (1.66.1). The verb ἀνατρέχω describes the growth of a city in only these two passages in the Histories. See also Lewis forthcoming b. Pindar uses the verb βλαστάνω twice (O. 7.69, N. 8.7). In Nemean 8, the verb refers to the birth of the king Aiakos. In Olympian 7, the verb describes the emergence of the island/​ nymph Rhodes from the sea and is a closer parallel for the growth of Syracuse in Herodotus. 95.  For Σίτω as a cult epithet of Demeter in Syracuse, Athen. 3.109a and 10.416c. For Demeter’s close association with grain in Sicily, see Diod. 5.5.2.

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On one level, the metaphorical spring represents the renewal and hope for the future that is lost to the Greeks. As the lines following this passage suggest, this could mean that Gelon’s army was the best part of the Greek army just as the spring is the best part of the year (7.162.2).96 However, Gelon’s parting message also once again frames Sicilian power in terms of fertility and of the cyclical growth of crops, and highlights the abundance of the Sicilian land.97 The loss of the spring may, moreover, refer once more to Demeter and Persephone, since, according to the myth, Persephone returned from the Underworld each spring, bringing fertility and, therefore, wealth to the earth.98 In the course of the embassy’s visit to Syracuse, the productive potential of the land, along with the attendant economic benefits, granted by the goddesses repeatedly emerges as a symbol of Gelon’s power. Herodotus’ account of the Greek embassy to Gelon highlights two important themes that I will revisit again later in this chapter in my reading of Pindar’s Nemean 1. First, in a Syracusan context Demeter and Persephone are not only symbols of the city’s fertility and prosperity but also represent the hereditary cult of the Deinomenid rulers. The recurrent imagery of blossoming and fertility in expressions of Gelon’s power renews the tie between the Deinomenids and the goddesses established in the Telines episode. Second, Herodotus shifts between naming Gelon as the ruler of Sicily (when the embassy flatters him or in his own estimation) and naming him as the king of the Syracusans (after the ambassadors have been insulted by his offer to lead the Greek army). The variation in Gelon’s title reveals, on the one hand, his own aspirations to be the ruler of Sicily (or at the very least Herodotus’ perception of these aspirations) and, on the other, the embassy’s belief that this particular brand of flattery would make him more receptive to their request. The wealth and prosperity granted by Demeter and Persephone belong at once to Syracuse and to Sicily as the two overlap with one another. We will see that the blurring of island and polis recurs in other literary sources and is not unique to Herodotus’ representation of Deinomenid rule. Rather it is suggestive of a broader cultural phenomenon whereby the role of the Syracusan tyrants and the influence of the Syracusan polis throughout the island of Sicily increased under the Deinomenids.

96. Alternately, Baragwanath 2008: 220n25 proposes that the metaphor anticipates the loss of life that will occur without Gelon’s assistance. 97. Kowalzig 2008: 134 understands a reference to Deinomenid grain power here. 98. I am grateful to the anonymous reader for OUP for this suggestion.



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Diodorus Diodorus Siculus was born around 90 bce in the town of Agyrion in eastern Sicily, located to the west of Mt. Aitna. He later lived in Alexandria in Egypt from about 60 to 56, and then from about 56 to 30 he lived in Rome, where he wrote the Bibliotheke.99 Our information about Diodorus’ methodology and sources comes from statements of methodology in his own work. To gather information for the Bibliotheke, he says that he traveled throughout a large part of Europe and Asia for the purpose of seeing with his own eyes (ἵνα ... αὐτόπται γενηθῶμεν) and he indicates a considerable degree of commitment to his undertaking (1.4.1). In addition to his travel, there is reason to believe that he used a wide range of written sources. Some, such as the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Polybius, are familiar to us, but many others, such as the works of Antiochus of Syracuse, Ephorus of Kyme, and Timaeus of Tauromenion, have since been lost.100 In part because of the importance of Diodorus as a source for these lost authors, earlier approaches tended to exclude the possibility that his work possessed any originality. He was frequently called ignorant and incompetent, and scholarship focused on attributing passages of his work to one respected author or another on the assumption that he had mindlessly copied his sources.101 However, several scholars have now challenged this treatment of Diodorus.102 Peter Green, for example, defends Diodorus against accusations that he was a “mindless idiot” and emphasizes his importance as our only surviving connected narrative from the Persian Wars to Alexander’s Successors and as our main source for the history of Greek Sicily.103 For my argument, Book 5, in which Diodorus narrates local Sicilian mythic traditions, and Book 11, in which he describes the Battle of Himera and its aftermath, are the most

99. Diod. 1.44 (on his time in Egypt) and 1.4.2–​3 (in Rome). See also Green 2006: 4. 100. On Diodorus’ sources, see Sacks 1990 and Green 2006: 7–​48. 101. Green 2006: 1–​2, citing Tarn 1948 and the 1998 commentary by Stylianou on Book 15; Green 2006: 34. 102. See, for example, Sacks 1990, Green 2006, Green 2010. 103. Green 2006: 2, Green 2010: 7 (quoted). Perhaps most importantly, Green has emphasized the importance of reading Diodorus in his own right as a useful source, rather than obsessively identifying his sources (2006: 29). Kenneth Sacks argues that far from being mindlessly reliant on earlier authors, Diodorus is a thoughtful and strategic author, who both “echoes contemporary ideas and also preserves in his text certain attitudes of his sources” (1990: 5).

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relevant. In both cases, there is good reason to take Diodorus’ account seriously given that he was a Sicilian who had access to earlier Sicilian histories. It is also true, however, that this raises the question of whether or not he is biased toward Sicily, which I discuss more later in the chapter. Diodorus preserves important evidence for Gelon’s relationship with Demeter and Persephone. After successfully defeating the Carthaginians at Himera in 480, Diodorus says, Gelon dedicated a golden tripod at Delphi and at home he built temples for Demeter and Kore “out of the spoils” of victory (ἐκ μὲν τῶν λαφύρων, 11.26.7). The dedication Diodorus mentions probably belongs to a base excavated at Delphi, which was part of a dedication group.104 The inscription on the base includes both Gelon’s patronymic and his ethnic:  Γέλων ὁ Δεινομέν]εος /​ ἀνέθηκε τὠπόλλονι /​ Συραϙόσιος (“Gelon son of Deinomenes the Syracusan dedicated [me] to Apollo”). Gelon’s tripod dedication at Delphi increased the prestige of Syracuse, since he named himself as Syracusan, while particularly emphasizing his own agency as the lone subject of the verb.105 Gelon’s construction of temples for Demeter and Kore, on the other hand, represents the local counterpart to his Panhellenic tripod dedication. Like his ancestor Telines, Gelon took advantage of the symbolic power of the cult of Demeter and Kore to strengthen his political position. Diodorus does not specify the location of these temples, but it seems very likely that he built them in Syracuse.106 One of the two may belong to the sanctuary excavated by Voza in the Piazza della Vittoria, mentioned in the preceding discussion, where he discovered terracotta votive statue deposits.107 The construction of new temples for Demeter and Kore in Syracuse by the Deinomenids celebrated goddesses whose cult had been practiced in the city from at least the sixth century, and likely from the time of its foundation.108 104. See Amandry 1987: 81–​83, Jacquemin 1999: 252. See also Morgan 2015: 33–​36 for the identification of the base with this dedication to commemorate the Battle of Himera. 105. This inscription may be contrasted with epigrams preserved by the scholia to Pindar P. 1.152b and in the Palantine Anthology. Both epigrams celebrate the four Deinomenid brothers while leaving out Syracuse and the Syracusans altogether. See Morgan 2015: 42–​45. 106. See ­chapter 1: 34. 107.  For this identification, see van Compernolle 1992:  67–​68, Luraghi 1994:  319, Hinz 1998: 98, Mertens 2006: 312. Bonanno 2010: 73 argues that evidence for the spread of the cult of chthonic Demeter and Persephone to the Locrian colony of Hipponion in Southern Italy suggests the Deinomenid intention to establish mild control over this region as well. 108. A dedicatory inscription to the “Megalas [Theas]” (Demeter and Persephone) that dates to the sixth century bce may suggest that the goddesses were worshipped at this sanctuary before Gelon’s arrival in Syracuse. See Voza 1980–​1981: 683–​84 with note 15, Shapiro 2002: 90.



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At the same time, as ancestral priests of Demeter and Kore, the Deinomenids were particularly associated with the goddesses. The special honor Gelon conferred by building temples for them underscored the merger of Deinomenid influence with longstanding Syracusan civic tradition. In contrast to Diodorus’ report of Gelon’s temple building, he passes over Hieron’s participation in the cult of Demeter and Persephone. However, it is possible that Diodorus attributed a temple built by Hieron to Gelon. In addition to the temples built to celebrate the victory at Himera, Diodorus mentions a temple that Gelon intended to erect at Aitna: ἐπεβάλετο δὲ ὕστερον καὶ κατὰ τὴν Αἴτνην κατασκευάζειν νεὼν Δήμητρος νεὼς ἐνδεούσης:  τοῦτον μὲν οὐ συνετέλεσε, μεσολαβηθεὶς τὸν βίον ὑπὸ τῆς πεπρωμένης. (“Later he also planned to build a temple of Demeter at Aitna where there was not one, but he did not complete it, since his life was cut off by fate,” 11.26.7). Diodorus may be referring to a temple that was later constructed by Hieron, but the temple could also be one that was built after Hieron’s death.109 Given Diodorus’ bias in favor of Gelon, his comparative silence about Hieron’s piety is consistent with his negative portrayal of Gelon’s younger brothers.110 Although Diodorus passes over Hieron’s benefactions to the city and the goddesses, evidence for Hieron’s role as a priest of Demeter and Persephone in Syracuse is found in the epinician poetry of Pindar and Bacchylides, and from the scholia to Pindar, to which I now turn.

Pindar and Bacchylides Despite continuing scholarly interest in the cults of Demeter and Persephone in this area, few studies have considered the importance of the goddesses in fifth-​century Syracusan poetry.111 The following survey of references to the

109. Morgan 2015: 83. 110.  Diodorus praises Gelon as a leader who excelled beyond others in courage and as a general who ruled moderately and mildly (11.67.2). Hieron, on the other hand, was greedy, violent, and lacked nobility (11.67.4), while Thrasybulus surpassed Hieron in vice (11.67.5). Cf. Morgan 2015: 58–​59. See also the speech of Nicolaus the Syracusan who praises Gelon’s kindness and the Syracusan rule over all of Sicily. Nicolaus’ speech supports Diodorus’ overall characterization of Gelon in that he exaggerates his praise of Gelon so much that he claims Gelon started as a private citizen (ἰδιώτης) and became the leader of all Sicily (τῆς Σικελίας ὅλης ἡγεμὼν) (13.22.4). Cf. Diodorus’ praise of Gelon at 11.38.5–​6. 111. A notable exception is Kowalzig’s 2008 study in which, by focusing on the evidence for Demeter’s role in Syracusan theatrical performance in the fifth century, she demonstrates that the goddesses were symbols of economic power for the Deinomenids in Syracuse.

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goddesses in the epinician odes of Pindar and Bacchylides will demonstrate that Hieron is especially linked to Demeter and Persephone in these works.

i. Pindar Pindar only mentions Demeter and/​or Persephone seven times in the epinician odes.112 While in every case Demeter refers to a local cult, Persephone is mentioned twice in passages that refer to the Underworld without local contextualization: δόμον Φερσεφόνας (O. 14.20–​21) and δῶμα Φερσεφόνας (I. 8.55). Two passages celebrate victors from Syracuse and are linked to the Deinomenids (O. 6.94–​96, N. 1.14–​18). In the other ode for a Sicilian victor—​Pythian 12 for Midas of Akragas—​Pindar may indicate a local cult by invoking Akragas as the “seat of Persephone” (Φερσεφόνας ἕδος, 2). Finally, two references to Demeter appear in Isthmians 1 and 7, both for Theban victors. At I. 1.57, Pindar celebrates the chariot victory of Herodotus of Thebes by listing his previous victories, including a win in the chariot race at the games for Demeter at Eleusis (τὸ Δάματρος κλυτὸν ἄλσος Ἐλευσῖνα). Here, Demeter appears and evokes the famous cult at Eleusis. In Isthmian 7, Pindar again places Demeter in a local setting, asking Thebe if, out of the catalogue of Theban myths he enumerates to celebrate the city, she takes most delight in rearing Dionysus as the companion of Demeter: ἦρα χαλκοκρότου πάρεδρον /​ Δαμάτερος ἁνίκ’ εὐρυχαίταν /​ ἄντειλας Διόνυσον (“was it when you raised up Dionysos, the long haired companion of Demeter of rattling bronze?,” I. 7.3–​5). Demeter and Dionysus are situated within a local Theban context as part of the catalogue of local myths that Pindar assembles in the first fifteen lines of the ode.113 What emerges from this overview is that each of Pindar’s references to Demeter (O. 6.96, I. 1.57, I. 7.3–​5) contains a reference to a specific local cult. Mentions of Persephone, by contrast, at times refer to a local context (O. 6.96,114 P. 12.2, N.

112. Demeter: I. 1.57, I. 7.4 (Theban victors); Persephone: O. 14.21 (victor from Orchomenos), P. 12.2 (Akragantine victor), I. 8.55 (Aeginetan victor). 113. On the significance of the local Theban context for the myths in this passage, see Felson forthcoming and Olivieri 2011: 130, 150–​54. Pindar’s two references to local cult in myths of Thebes are suggestive, particularly in light of the tradition that Persephone and Demeter founded Thebes, on which see Eur. Phoen. 682–​689. See Zuntz 1971: 71 with note 3. See also Kurke 2013: 146–​49 on the transferral of the Eleusinian Mysteries to Thebes. In addition, Pindar’s biographical tradition includes the anecdote that the goddess (either Demeter or Persephone) reproached him either when he was an old man, in a dream, or after his death for having neglected to hymn her alone among the gods (Paus. 9.23.3, Drachmann 1903 vol. 1: 2. [=Pind. fr. 37 SM]. See Lefkowitz 1981: 60–​62. 114.  I  include O. 6.96, where Pindar refers to Persephone as the daughter (θυγατήρ) of Demeter.



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1.14–​18) while at other times indicate her aspect as queen of the Underworld (O. 14.21, I. 8.55).115 Localized references to Demeter and Persephone are thus relatively uncommon in Pindar’s epinician odes and are noteworthy where they appear. Pindar’s description of Hieron’s power in Olympian 6, an ode for Hieron’s general Hagesias, most clearly connects the Syracusan tyrant with the cult of Demeter and Persephone. The ode celebrates the victory of Hagesias in the mule cart race in 472 or 468.116 After praising Hagesias at length for ninety-​ one lines, Pindar turns his attention to Hagesias’ polis, Syracuse, and to Ortygia, and, crucially for the present argument, he incorporates a celebration of Hieron:117 εἶπον δὲ μεμνᾶσθαι Συρα-​   κοσσᾶν τε καὶ Ὀρτυγίας· τὰν Ἱέρων καθαρῷ σκάπτῳ διέπων, ἄρτια μηδόμενος, φοινικόπεζαν ἀμφέπει Δάματρα λευκίπ-​   που τε θυγατρὸς ἑορτάν καὶ Ζηνὸς Αἰτναίου κράτος. ἁδύλογοι δέ νιν   λύραι μολπαί τε γινώσκοντι. μὴ θράσ-​   σοι χρόνος ὄλβον ἐφέρπων, σὺν δὲ φιλοφροσύναις εὐ-​   ηράτοις Ἁγησία δέξαιτο κῶμον. . . 

95

Tell them [the chorus members] to remember Syracuse and Ortygia; while ruling her [Ortygia] with a pure scepter and devising fitting counsels, Hieron attends to red-​footed Demeter and the festival of her daughter of the white horses and to the power of Zeus Aitnaios. Sweetly speaking lyres and songs know her [Ortygia].118 May time which sneaks

115. Persephone may be alluding to Persephone as the judge in the Underworld in the eschatological myth in Olympian 2.58–​60, but does not name her. Cf. Pindar fr. 133 SM where Persephone again appears as the queen of the Underworld. 116. For the date, see Farnell 1930: 40. 117.  On the abruptness of this celebration of Hieron in an ode for Hagesias, see Morgan 2015: 406–​8. 118. On νιν see discussion in c­ hapter 1: 48n70. I follow Morgan 2015: 407 in rejecting χρόνος as the subject of δέξαιτο, but I read Ortygia as the subject of this verb rather than Hieron.

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up not shatter her happiness, but with lovely acts of friendship may she receive the revel band of Hagesias.  (O. 6.92–​98) Pindar identifies Hieron as ruler of Syracuse, but also significantly as a ruler who attends to Demeter and the festival of her daughter, and to the power of Zeus Aitnaios. His instructions to the chorus leader show that Hieron’s role as priest of Demeter and Persephone shaped his image as a ruler. Hieron’s political and religious duties are bound together in a single sentence, in which his fitting management of the city is expressed by two participles (διέπων and μηδόμενος) while the main verb (ἀμφέπει) is reserved for his role as priest. The two participles and the verb are difficult to render accurately into English, particularly because they are connected to the preceding clause by a relative pronoun (τάν). Interpreters and translators therefore often add a connective where there is none in the Greek.119 Retaining the participles in the translation (or translating them as a subordinate clause) more clearly shows how the verbal actions are connected to one another: Hieron attends to Demeter as he fittingly manages the city that she protects, combining his civic and religious roles.120 The emphasis in these lines falls on Hieron’s position as priest of Demeter and her daughter in Syracuse and of Zeus Aitnaios. It is, however, difficult to determine precisely to which festival Pindar refers when he cites the festival of Demeter’s daughter of the white horses (λευκίπ-​/​που τε θυγατρὸς ἑορτάν, 95). White horses appear in connection with the worship of Demeter and Persephone in Callimachus’ Hymn to Demeter. Callimachus describes aspects of the festival of the goddesses, including the four white-​haired mares that carry the basket in the procession (αἱ τὸν κάλαθον λευκότριχες ἵπποι ἄγοντι /​ τέσσσαρες, 120–​21). Neil Hopkinson believes that the procession described in the hymn may have been part of a Thesmophoria festival.121 While the

119.  For example, Morgan 2015:  398 divides the relative clause into two separate sentences: “Tell them to remember Syracuse and Ortygia, which Hieron governs with a pure sceptre. He thinks perfect thoughts and tends to Demeter of the red foot.” Race 1997: 115 translates: “Tell them to remember Syracuse and Ortygia, which Hieron administers with an unsullied scepter, as he devises fitting counsels, and is devoted to red-​footed Demeter.” 120. On Hieron’s combined political and religious roles here, see also Morgan 2015: 407–​8. 121.  The festival described by Callimachus is believed to be a Thesmophoria because, as Hopkinson describes, “the procession in h. 6 consists entirely of women, and is concerned with fertility; the ‘narrator’ expressly avoids dwelling on the subject of Kore’s rape (17) and instead refers to ἑαδότα τέθμια (18) bestowed by the goddess” (Hopkinson 2004:  35). Hopkinson observes that white animals were often used in ritual because their color denoted purity. The white horses seem to be especially connected to the cult of Kore.



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Syracusans celebrated the Thesmophoria,122 it is unlikely that Pindar means in Olympian 6 that Hieron administers a festival celebrated exclusively by women. The civic festival for Demeter and Persephone at Kyane is another candidate, though the chthonic nature of the cult makes it less likely to be linked to white horses.123 A third possibility is proposed by the scholiasts to Olympian 6, who suggest that Pindar describes Kore as λεύκιππος because after her abduction Demeter drove a chariot pulled by white horses as she searched for her daughter. After Kore’s return, according to the scholia, the white horses carried the pair to Olympus.124 Without more evidence, the significance of Kore’s white horse festival and its cult location remains uncertain. Yet even if the specific festival cannot be determined, the white horses likely refer to a local, ritual context. What is clear from Olympian 6 is that Hieron’s status as priest of Demeter and Persephone was an important part of his public image in Syracuse and that his religious status reinforced his political position.125 In Olympian 6, the prominence of Hieron’s role as a religious leader in Syracuse also places him in a line of Deinomenid leaders who uphold the rites of the goddesses. Luraghi argues that Hieron’s very name contains a reference to the cult of the goddesses, and therefore indicates that he did, in fact, inherit the priesthood.126 In any case, by presenting Hieron as the priest of Demeter and Persephone Pindar recalls the Deinomenid ancestral priesthood of the

122.  Burkert 1985:  242–​46. For the Thesmophoria in Syracuse, see Diod. 5.4.7 and Ath. 14.647a. For the festival at Katane, see Cic. Verr. 2.4.99. 123. The chthonic aspect of the goddesses at this festival does, however, recall the priesthood established by Telines. Wilamowitz 1922: 310 suggests that the daughter’s white horse festival may contain a chthonic reference: “Sehr wichtig, daß sie ein weißes Pferd hat. Kann man sie fahrend oder gar reitend denken? Oder soll man auch auf sie die Gestalt einst übertragen glauben, in der die Mutter als Erinys gedacht ward?” He does not, however, mention the Deinomenid ancestral priesthood. 124. Schol. O. 6.160a, O. 6.160b, O. 6.160c. Radke 1937: 399n44 argues that the scholiasts propose the most plausible explanation of the significance of the white horse festival. 125. Morgan 2015: 83n188 suggests that the “image, as one of triumph, resurrection, and renewal, is well suited to Hieron’s equine achievements.” The scholia understand this passage as a reference to the ancestral cult begun by Telines, and two comments are particularly relevant. The first anonymous report claims that Hieron held the priesthood of Demeter, Kore, and Zeus Aitnaios from his ancestor Telines (Schol. O. 6.158a). Didymus reports that Hieron received the priesthood of the gods from his ancestors, as was reported by Philistus and Timaeus (Schol. O. 6.158c). The scholiast to P. 2.27b suggests that the sons of Deinomenes brought the ἱρά of the goddesses to Sicily from the Triopian peninsula. 126. Luraghi 1994: 327. Pindar’s hyporcheme for Hieron, which puns on the meaning of his name, adds weight to Luraghi’s argument (fr. 105a SM). See also Dougherty 1993: 83–​84.

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goddesses and reinforces their special relationship with the Deinomenids. This passage likely would have reminded Syracusans in the audience of the recent construction of temples for the goddesses out of the spoils from the Battle of Himera by Hieron’s brother Gelon. Through the presentation of Hieron as the guardian of the Syracusan cult honored by his brother, the goddesses become symbols of both Syracusan and Deinomenid power. By contrast, Zeus Aitnaios represents Hieron’s individual accomplishments and ambitions, as he was the principal deity of Hieron’s newly founded Aitna.127 The cultic context in which Pindar places Hieron fosters a sense of cultic continuity and stability for Syracuse through the figures of Demeter and Persephone, while pointing to Hieron’s expanding power that is separate and distinct from the legacy of his brother Gelon, symbolized by the patron deity of Aitna.

ii. Bacchylides Bacchylides names the goddesses only twice in his surviving poetry. The references appear in Odes 3 and 5, both celebrating Hieron’s victories. In Ode 3, Bacchylides celebrates Demeter and Kore prominently at the beginning of the poem along with the island of Sicily. Though Bacchylides only mentions the goddesses twice, the passages align with the two categories outlined in Pindar’s poetry. In addition to the reference to the local goddesses in Ode 3, Bacchylides names Persephone in her aspect as queen of the Underworld (δώματα Φερσεφόνας, 5.59). Demeter and Persephone are not mentioned in any of the other surviving epinician odes composed by Bacchylides.128 Like Pindar, Bacchylides incorporates Demeter and Persephone into his praise of Hieron. Bacchylides’ Ode 3 celebrates Hieron’s most prestigious and sought-​after victory—​a win in the four-​horse chariot race at Olympia in 468. The poem opens with another emphatic reference to the cult of Demeter and Persephone. Bacchylides urges the muse Klio to sing of Demeter, Kore, and the horses of Hieron:

127. In addition to references to Zeus Aitnaios in other Sicilian odes in this connection, Zeus Aitnaios appears on the coinage of Aitna. See Rutter 1997: 127–​28 with nos. 125 and 126 and ­chapter 3: 143–​144. Though the scholia include the priesthood of Zeus Aitnaios as part of Hieron’s inheritance from Telines, no other surviving evidence suggests that Hieron was the priest of this cult. See Luraghi 1994: 339n291. 128.  Bacch. fr. 2 preserves part of a hymn in which Demeter may be addressing Persephone:  αἰαῖ τέκος ἁμέτερον, /​ μεῖζον ἢ πενθεῖν ἐφάνη κακόν, ἀφθέγκτοισιν ἶσον. See Campbell 2006: 255 fr. 2 n1 and fr. 3 n1.



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Ἀριστοκάρπου Σικελίας κρέουσαν Δάματρα ἰοστέφανόν τε Κούραν ὕμνει, γλυκύδωρε Κλεοῖ, θοάς τ’ Ὀ-​   λυμπιοδρόμους Ἱέρωνος ἵππους. Of Demeter ruling over Sicily which bears the best fruit and of violet-​ crowned Kore sing, Klio giver of sweetness, and of the swift horses of Hieron which run at Olympia.  (Ode  3.1–​4) Bacchylides calls Sicily by the epithet Ἀριστόκαρπος (“bearing the best fruit”), distinguishing the island for its fertility. The goddess Demeter rules over this land, which is extremely productive due to her benevolence and care. Hieron too is mentioned in the opening lines when the poet asks Klio to celebrate his swift horses. As Pindar does in Olympian 6, Bacchylides names the goddesses and Hieron in rapid succession. Though Hieron is not hailed here as their priest, Bacchylides highlights the goddesses prominently in the opening, and the progression from the goddesses to the ruler in these verses would have reminded the audience of Hieron’s role as ancestral priest of Demeter and Persephone. Bacchylides delimits areas of power in the first triad of the ode, attributing superlative qualities to both Sicily and Hieron (ἀριστοκάρπου Σικελίας, 1; πλείσταρχον Ἑλλάνων γέρας, 12). In the first line, Demeter rules over (κρέουσαν, 1)  the entire island of Sicily, which bears the best fruit, and her sovereignty over the island corresponds to Hieron’s expanding rule in Sicily.129 Bacchylides’ description of Hieron’s power encourages a connection between the area controlled by the goddess and that controlled by the Syracusan tyrant. Bacchylides addresses Hieron as the man “who obtained from Zeus the honor of ruling over the greatest number of Greeks” (ὃς παρὰ Ζηνὸς λαχὼν /​ πλείστα ρχον Ἑλλάνων γέρας, 11–​12). As Pindar does in Olympian 6.92–​98, Bacchylides celebrates Hieron’s power as a ruler, but here Hieron’s rule extends beyond the city of Syracuse. In Ode 3, Bacchylides underscores the large scale (πλείστ αρχον γέρας) of Hieron’s rule (which by 468 certainly includes his new foundation of Aitna, the surrounding territories of Leontini and Naxos, and much of Greek Sicily)130 rather than its “purity” (καθαρῷ σκάπτῳ διέπων, O. 6.93). Bacchylides’ Ode 3 also highlights that Hieron obtained his reign from Zeus

129.  On fertility, Demeter, and the expansion of Hieron’s power in the ode, see Morgan 2015: 353. 130.  On the expansion of Hieron’s influence in the region, see Diod. 11.48–​49, Bonanno 2010: 73–​126.

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(ὃς παρὰ Ζηνὸς λαχών, 11). Bacchylides restates Zeus’ sanction of Hieron’s rule later in the ode when he asserts that Hieron is a man who “has the scepter of Zeus [. . .] and a share of the violet-​haired Muses” ([. . .]ίου131 σκᾶπτρον Διὸς /​ ἰοπλόκων τε μέρος ἔχοντα Μουσᾶν, 70–​71). The descriptions of Hieron’s kingship in Ode 3 present a king who rules over a vast area by the will of Zeus. From Diodorus we learn that Hieron was concerned with increasing both his power and his reputation. He founded Aitna, for instance, specifically so that he could receive heroic honors as an oikist after his death (11.49). Hieron spared no expense in his celebration of the foundation that he hoped would eternalize his name; he commemorated the city by commissioning a play (the Aitnaiai) from Aeschylus and Pythian 1 from Pindar and by minting a series of Aitnaian tetradrachms featuring Zeus Aitnaios.132 Bacchylides’ Ode 3 is probably the latest of the seven epinician odes composed by Pindar and Bacchylides in celebration of Hieron’s victories. By the time of its performance, Hieron had expanded his rule considerably. He had successfully founded the colony of Aitna eight years earlier, had been victorious at the Battle of Cumae, had established Syracusan control over the Sicilian straits, and, after the defeat of Thrasydaeus, had taken control of Himera and was at least very influential in Akragas.133 In many respects, Bacchylides’ portrayal of Hieron in Ode 3 recalls Pindar’s representations of Hieron’s rule but surpasses them in their boldness to correspond with his expanded influence in Sicily.134 In Olympian 1, for example, Pindar describes Hieron as he “who wields his lawful scepter in flock-​rich Sicily” (θεμιστεῖον ὃς ἀμφέπει σκᾶπτον ἐν πολυμήλῳ /​ Σικελίᾳ, 12–​13). In this passage, men gather at Hieron’s hearth to celebrate the son of Kronos (9–​10). In Olympian 1 both Hieron’s connection to Zeus and his rule over Sicily are

131. Possible supplements here include ξεινίου proposed by Nairn and τεθμίου or δαμίου, both proposed by Blass. Maehler prefers ξεινίου based on his comparison with Pindar’s N. 11.7–​9, but Pindar’s description of Hieron’s lawful (θεμιστεῖον) scepter at O. 1.12 makes τεθμίου an attractive possibility. 132. See Dougherty 1993: 83–​102. 133. Diod 11.48–​49. Cf. Bonanno 2010: 73–​102 (on Hieron’s political involvement in Southern Italy and the Sicilian straits), Bonanno 2010: 103–​26 (on the relationship between Syracuse and Akragas during this period), and Nicholson 2015: 94–​97. 134.  Bonanno 2010:  200 understands these lines as veiled support for the legitimacy of Hieron’s succession. Morgan 2015 argues that Pindar models Hieron after the Homeric and Hesiodic “good king.” Her study focuses on Pindar’s representation of Hieron’s kingship, but for Hieron as a “good king” and the way that this characterization activates the political world of epic, see especially her discussion of Olympian 1, Morgan 2015: 220–​33.



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more subtly phrased, perhaps due to the fact that Hieron controlled fewer territories in 476 when Pindar composed Olympian 1 than in 468 when Bacchylides celebrated his victory in Ode 3. In Olympian 1, Hieron does not rule Sicily, but wields his scepter in Sicily. Later at line 23, Pindar calls Hieron the king of Syracuse (Συρακόσιον βασιλῆα), linking the victorious Hieron to his polis.135 Again, Hieron honors Zeus at his hearth, but Zeus does not directly grant him his rule as he does in Bacchylides’ Ode 3. Elsewhere, Pindaric and Bacchylidean representations of Hieron also fall short of the celebration in Bacchylides’ Ode 3. Of the epinician odes celebrating Hieron’s victories, only Bacchylides’ Ode 3 contains neither an invocation of Syracuse, the victor’s polis, nor an adjective marking Hieron as Syracusan.136 It is only in Ode 3, after Hieron has won the most magnificent of his victories at the height of his power, that Bacchylides chooses the invocation of Demeter and Kore as the goddesses who reign over Sicily in the first line to mark off the entire island as Hieron’s homeland.137 Placed prominently at the beginning of the ode, Demeter and Kore, as representatives of both Deinomenid ancestral right and Syracusan power, assert a bold claim to Hieron’s sovereignty over the island, which matches the grandeur of his Panhellenic athletic achievement. The boldness of Bacchylides’ description of Hieron’s power is extraordinary in comparison with the other odes celebrating his victories and indicates the degree to which Hieron’s power and ambitions had expanded between 476 and 468.138

135. On this passage, Morrison 2007: 59 suggests that the mention of Sicily first may have implied to a first audience that Hieron was ruler of Sicily until Syracuse is mentioned in line 23. 136. Morgan 2015: 353. In Pythian 1, Hieron is the founder of Aitna (κλεινός οἰκιστήρ, 31) and the leader of the Syracusans (Συρακοσίων ἀρχῷ, 73). Pythian 2 begins with an invocation of Syracuse (1), and in Pythian 3, Hieron is both the Aitnaian host (69) and the king (βασιλεύς) of Syracuse (70). Bacchylides mentions Syracuse in the first lines of both Odes 4 and 5, and at 5.184–​85. 137.  Luraghi 1994:  341. Hornblower 2004:  134n20 observes that a “lack of specification is normal for people from large islands when spoken of in an international context” when he discusses individuals who are named as from Rhodes rather than from a particular city in Rhodes. However, in the case of Syracuse and Sicily, it is unlikely that the audience of Bacchylides’ Ode 3 would have been more international than the audiences of the other epinician odes for Hieron composed by Pindar and Bacchylides. 138. Luraghi 2011: 42, pointing out that the island of Sicily takes the place of honor normally reserved for the victor’s polis in an epinician ode, suggests that here “Bacchylides may be giving voice to Hieron’s aspiration to be recognized as the lord of Sicily as a whole.”

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Finally, it is worth noting that Bacchylides’ stress on the large number of Greeks ruled by Hieron in Ode 3 resembles the way the Greek embassy addresses Gelon at Herodotus 7.157.139 The ambassadors speak to Gelon in the hope of convincing him to support their cause, and, accordingly, they flatter the tyrant. In Herodotus, this rhetorical strategy appeals to Gelon’s ambitions while leaving room for other powerful Greek cities like Athens and Sparta as leaders. Bacchylides, on the other hand, composing his ode with the main purpose of praising Hieron, uses the superlative to raise his laudandus to the highest possible position and to praise the greatness of his rule. Despite the different demands of genre and context, it is striking that both passages focus on the enormity of the tyrant’s rule. The similar rhetoric of the two passages reveals the perseverance of the Deinomenid desire for expansion begun by Gelon as he rose from his position as leader of the Geloan cavalry to become the king of Syracuse. His brother Hieron followed his example, seeking to forge his own legacy, in large part by increasing his support outside of Syracuse. The recurring emphasis on the size of the γέρας (“honor”) of Gelon and Hieron thus increases their prestige in a way that recalls that Agamemnon’s power relies on his accumulation of material wealth in the Iliad.140 As in historical representations, then, in the epinician poetry of Pindar and Bacchylides, Demeter and Persephone appear in key passages to signal Hieron’s authority and, ultimately, the expansion of his influence in Sicily. The concluding section of this chapter looks closely at the final Pindaric passage that links Persephone to the expansion of Hieron’s rule to argue that, in addition to making a powerful statement about the Deinomenid tyrant, the goddesses were part of a rich cultic landscape in Sicily.

Myth and Landscape in Pindar’s Nemean 1 This section proposes that the cults of Demeter/​ Persephone and Artemis/​ Arethusa in Syracuse structure a conceptual geography that characterizes Syracuse both as uniquely connected to the Panhellenic sanctuary at Olympia and as dominant within the island of Sicily. This spatial mapping of Syracusan power is visible in both literary and material sources from the fifth century. The

139.  Kenyon 1897:  17 observed the similar language in the two passages. See also Jebb 1905: 254, Maehler 2004: 88, Luraghi: 2011. 140. See Morgan 2015: 225–​28 on Il. 9.97–​102. See also Lefkowitz 1976: 80 on O. 1.12–​22 and Bacchylides’ Ode 5, Harrell 2002: 442–​43.



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passages from Herodotus, Diodorus, Pindar, and Bacchylides, along with the archaeological and numismatic evidence from Syracuse, discussed earlier in the chapter, have shown that Demeter and Persephone played a central role in representations of Deinomenid power in the fifth century and beyond. The remainder of this chapter will consider how Syracusan cult shapes the image of the polis within a single ode—​Pindar’s Nemean 1. In ­chapter 1 and in the discussion above, I suggested that the tetradrachm issued by Gelon with the image of Alpheos opposite the two barley grains articulated a central duality in Syracusan ideology that may also be seen in fifth-​century poetry. In Pindar’s Nemean 1, the same two cults represented on the tetradrachm structure the movement in the opening of the ode and are an essential part of the poetic construction of Syracuse and Sicily in the poem.141 The following section pays particular attention to the opening of the ode, and I will also argue that the link between myth and local landscape developed in the first triad sets up and complements the spatial movement in the second half of the ode.142 Nemean 1 begins with an invocation of Ortygia and is performed in honor of Zeus Aitnaios (1–​7). Pindar hails Chromius’ victory in the chariot race at Nemea, before reflecting that the beginnings of victories like Chromius’ originate from the gods, and that such a victory is the highest glory (8–​12). Next, Pindar praises the island of Sicily, which Zeus once gave to Persephone as a gift, promising that it would be fertile and the best of the fruitful earth (13–​18). In the second triad, the poet celebrates the hospitable man who entertains foreigners at his home,143 and then praises the victor, Chromius, for his hard work and his natural talent (φυᾷ, 25). Next, Pindar transitions into the central myth of the ode by mentioning the hopes of much-​laboring men (ἐλπίδες /​

141. See ­chapter 1: 36, 70–​71 for a discussion of the ode’s date, performance contexts, and the victor’s city. 142. Hall 2012: 31–​32 has argued that a regional identity developed during the fifth century in Sicily. Thus, in Thucydides’ account of the Sicilian Expedition, Hermokrates can refer to Sicilians in general as “Sikeliotai” (4.64.3). See also Antonaccio 2001:  113–​22. Despite the strengthening of a regional Sicilian identity and the emergence of a “barbarian antitype” in the region (2012: 33), Hall claims that “simplistic notions of core and periphery have little purchase” in Sicily, which is itself on the periphery relative to the center of Greece (2012: 34). I propose a different spatial model by which the Syracusans defined their civic identity in balance between the Panhellenic centers of Greece and to Greeks and non-​Greeks at home in Sicily. 143. This man is probably Chromius (cf. Braswell 1992: 46–​48, Kirkwood 1982: 252) since the poet addresses the victor in line 29, but for the argument that the hospitable man is Hieron, see Slater 1984: 259–​64.

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πολυπόνων ἀνδρῶν, 33) to begin the epode. The main myth has three sections. First, just after he is born, the baby Herakles kills the twin serpents sent by Hera to kill him (33–​47). The next section describes the anxiety of his mother and father once they have learned about the snakes (48–​59). Finally, Amphitryon summons the seer, Teiresias, who predicts Herakles’ future deeds, including his eventual ascent to Olympus and marriage to Hebe (60–​72). As discussed in ­chapter 1, the beginning of Nemean 1 focuses on imagery associated with the cult of Artemis Alpheoia. The opening strophe connects Syracuse and Ortygia both to Olympia and to Delos, the birthplace of Artemis and Apollo, and thereby links Syracuse to the physical and symbolic center(s) of the Panhellenic world. The myth of the pursuit of Arethusa or Artemis by Alpheos and the mingling waters of the river and the spring may be read in relation to the continuous flow of Greek culture to Syracuse. The first lines of the poem thus construct a spatial progression that first moves from the center of Greece (the River Alpheos, Delos, and the Nemean games) to Syracuse and then continues throughout Sicily. The ode arises from Ortygia (ὁρμᾶται, 5) and travels from there toward the center of Sicily, advancing from the couch of Artemis “to place praise upon the storm-​footed horses for the sake of Zeus Aitnaios” (5–​6). The mention of Zeus Aitnaios, named for Mt. Aitna, honors the god who presides over Hieron’s newly founded colony at the foot of the volcanic mountain.144 The reference to Aitna here also begins the ode’s movement outward from Syracuse as it claims the new city as part of the territory, which the victor, Chromius, glorifies with his victory and which Pindar celebrates with the present ode. The ode next continues beyond Aitna, as Zeus presents the entire island to Persephone (lines 13–​18). The fertility imagery begun in the opening description of Ortygia resumes when the poet extends a share in the splendor of Chromius’ victory to all of Sicily. In line 13, the poet tells the Muse: “now sow some splendor on the island” (σπεῖρε νυν ἀγλαΐαν τινὰ νάσῳ). The verb σπεῖρε (“sow”) returns to the imagery of fertility begun in line 2, where Ortygia is the “shoot of famous Syracuse” (κλεινᾶν Συρακοσσᾶν θάλος, 2).145 Imagery of blossoming and

144.  The god represented the city on its coins, and the scholia reveal that a festival—​the Aitnaia—​was held at Aitna in his honor. The scholia even suggest that the present ode may have been performed at this festival (Schol. N. 1.7b). For Aitnaian coins with the image of Zeus Aitnaios, see ­chapter 3. 145. See ­chapter 1 for a more detailed discussion of this line. I follow Snell-​Maehler’s Teubner text, which prints the emendation of the unmetrical ἔγειρε of the manuscripts to σπείρε, taking the verb from a paraphrase by the scholiasts (N. 1.16a-​16b). Even if this emendation is incorrect, there is still a consistent pattern of fertility imagery that begins the ode, that



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productivity continues in an extended description of the island of Sicily as Zeus’ gift to Persephone: σπεῖρέ νυν ἀγλαΐαν   τινὰ νάσῳ, τὰν Ὀλύμπου δεσπότας Ζεὺς ἔδωκεν Φερσεφόνᾳ, κατένευ-​   σέν τέ οἱ χαίταις, ἀριστεύοισαν εὐκάρπου χθονός Σικελίαν πίειραν ὀρθώ-​   σειν κορυφαῖς πολίων ἀφνεαῖς· ὤπασε δὲ Κρονίων πολέμου   μναστῆρά οἱ χαλκεντέος λαὸν ἵππαιχμον, θαμὰ δὴ καὶ Ὀλυμ-​   πιάδων φύλλοις ἐλαιᾶν χρυσέοις μιχθέντα.

15

Now sow some splendor on the island, which the master of Olympus, Zeus, gave to Persephone, and nodded assent with his locks that he would set Sicily upright as the best of the fruitful earth in fertility with its wealthy peaks of cities. And the son of Kronos gave to her a people who fight on horseback and are suitors of brazen war, who are indeed often mixed with golden crowns of olive from the Olympic contests. (N. 1.13–​18) The poet transitions from the smaller Syracusan island of Ortygia to the island of Sicily, with a move from the present performance setting in Syracuse into a mythical time when Zeus gave the island to Persephone.146 The transition hinges on the shifting meaning of νᾶσος (“island”), which imperceptibly morphs from Ortygia to all of Sicily. In the first lines of the description of Zeus’ gift to Persephone, the island that will be the best of the fruitful earth could easily be understood by the audience to refer to Ortygia since the name “Sicily” appears, emphatically enjambed, in line 15. Only then does it become clear that the chorus sings about Sicily (Σικελίαν πίειραν) rather than the island of Ortygia, which is invoked and celebrated in the opening lines of the ode. By blurring the distinction between Ortygia and Sicily, Pindar may be taking advantage of the Syracusan, and perhaps Sicilian, habit of referring to Ortygia

continues in lines 14–​18, and that recurs later (e.g., with Herakles’ marriage to blooming Hebe, θαλερὰν Ἥβαν 71). 146. See Chapter 1 for a discussion of the ode’s performances.

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as simply ἡ νῆσος (“the island”) to distinguish this quarter of the polis from the other districts of Syracuse. Diodorus calls Ortygia ἡ Νῆσος (“the Island”),147 and Cicero similarly refers to Ortygia as the part of Syracuse “which is called Island” (quae appellatur Insula).148 If Syracusans already referred to Ortygia as “the Island” in the fifth century, the audience of Nemean 1 would have been primed to understand a reference to Ortygia before the identity of “the island” was specified in line 15. Like “the island,” which can represent either Ortygia or all of Sicily, Persephone herself functions as a connector between Syracuse and all of Sicily. On the one hand, she represents the fertility of the entire island. The land is her possession, and Sicily is fertile because Zeus once promised Persephone that it would be so.149 Pindar depicts Persephone as the guardian of Sicily whose rise to power was choreographed by, and is upheld by, Zeus. The scholia explain that Sicily is the “best of the fruitful earth” (ἀριστεύοισαν εὐκάρπου χθόνος) because the island belongs to Demeter and Persephone.150 We may here also recall Bacchylides’ description of Sicily as ἀριστόκαρπος in celebration of Hieron’s Olympic chariot victory. As Demeter and her daughter rule over “Sicily which bears the best fruit” in Bacchylides’ Ode 3, in Nemean 1, Zeus establishes Persephone as the overseer of the island, who allows it to flourish. Pindar appears deliberately to leave open different aspects of Persephone’s divinity in Nemean 1.151 Like the shifting concept of “the island,” which can

147. 11.67–​68, 11.73, 14.7, 16.11, etc. 148. Cic. In Verr. 2.4.117. 149. Cf. Zeus’ nod of assent to Thetis at Iliad 1.524–​30: εἰ δ’ ἄγε τοι κεφαλῇ κατανεύσομαι ὄφρα πεποίθῃς· τοῦτο γὰρ ἐξ ἐμέθεν γε μετ’ ἀθανάτοισι μέγιστον τέκμωρ· οὐ γὰρ ἐμὸν παλινάγρετον οὐδ’ ἀπατηλὸν οὐδ’ ἀτελεύτητον, ὅ τί κεν κεφαλῇ κατανεύσω. 150.  Schol. N. 1.20. Cf. Diod. 5.2.3 following Timaeus. Braswell 1992:  43 observes that it cannot be Zeus but Demeter and Persephone who make the island fertile. Curiously, he rightly points out that Zeus cannot make the land fertile but insists that “neither πίειραν nor ἀριστεύοισαν is proleptic (pace Carey), but rather Zeus will do so by furthering the prosperity of its cities (presumably by guiding its leaders in peace and war)” (Braswell 1992: 43). Following Carey 1981: 108, I translate πίειραν and ἀριστεύοισαν as proleptic because they describe how the land will prosper under the influence of Persephone’s oversight. 151. Johnston 2013 demonstrates that Greek myths and festivals of Demeter were polyvalent. This aspect of the goddess made her an effective symbol for representing the interests of multiple groups.



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represent either Ortygia or Sicily, Persephone herself has Syracusan and pan-​Sicilian importance and thus can represent both Syracusan and Sicilian interests and also merge the two. In this passage, Persephone is depicted alone without Demeter. She possesses the island of Sicily, but she neither receives an epithet nor is she associated with a particular cult. While the prominent fertility imagery indicates a link to her role as a fertility goddess,152 Zeus’ gift alludes to her role as queen of the Underworld. The scholia understand Zeus’ gifting of Sicily to Persephone as part of the ἀνακαλυπτηρία (the wedding gifts presented to the bride) that Zeus gave her when she married Plouton.153 Though this broad representation of Persephone makes it difficult to link the goddess in Nemean 1 with one particular, local cult, I believe that Pindar deliberately leaves the reference open enough that it could refer to many of the numerous cults of Persephone throughout the territories where Hieron wished to expand his influence. The range of possible cults to which this description of Persephone could potentially apply would have given the passage broad appeal and relevance throughout the island. On the other hand, Persephone held a particularly high place of honor in Syracuse in the first half of the fifth century, particularly under the rule of the Deinomenids, who held an ancestral priesthood of the goddesses, as we have seen. In light of the celebration of Hieron as the priest of Demeter and Persephone in Olympian 6, a reference to Persephone in Nemean 1, an ode for Hieron’s regent Chromius, must also evoke the Deinomenid devotion to the goddesses in Syracuse.154 Epinician parallels demonstrate that Persephone can either represent the goddess who rules over the entire island (Bacchylides’ Ode 3.1–​2) or the goddess who is celebrated in a local context (O. 6.95).155 In Nemean 1.13–​18, “the island” (νᾶσος) and Persephone both are able to shift their

152. For Persephone’s joint role with Demeter as a fertility goddess, see Burkert 1985: 159–​60. 153.  Schol. N. 1.17. δοκεῖ δὲ αὐτὴν ὁ Ζεὺς εἰς τὸν γάμον Πλούτωνος τοῖς ἀνακαλυπτηρίοις τῇ Φερσεφόνῃ δωρήσασθαι. For another attestation of this version of the myth, see Diod. 5.2.3 following Timaeus. Her marriage to Plouton, whose name recalls the Greek word for wealth—​πλοῦτος—​may additionally evoke the wealth of the island that results from the goddess’s marriage. Cf. the etymology in Plato’s Cratylus 403a and on Hades/​Plouton more generally, 403a–​404b. 154. Magrath 1975: 51. Pace Braswell 1992: 42, who argues that if Pindar meant to refer to Deinomenid power in this passage, he would have done so explicitly as he does in O. 6. 155. However, caution should also be exercised here. The evidence for the festival mentioned in O. 6 is too thin to rule out a pan-​Sicilian Persephone. The point is that she is linked to Syracuse in this case.

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meaning to represent either Syracuse in particular or Sicily as a whole, thus symbolically merging Syracuse and Sicily. The fusion of Sicilian and Syracusan elements continues in Pindar’s description of Zeus’ gift—​the island of Sicily. The spatial shift from Ortygia to Sicily is underscored by a temporal shift from present to mythical time:156 σπεῖρέ νυν ἀγλαΐαν /​ τινὰ νάσῳ, τὰν Ὀλύμπου δεσπότας /​ Ζεὺς ἔδωκεν Φερσεφόνᾳ (“Now sow some splendor upon the island, which the master of Olympus, Zeus, gave to Persephone,” N. 1.13–​14). The temporal move from the present imperative (σπεῖρε νυν, 13) to the time of the myth sanctifies the poet’s description of Sicily and its people because the ode imparts Zeus’ will. Zeus’ promise to Persephone to set Sicily upright (ὀρθώσειν, 15) rejoins the mythical past to the present performance: the people foretold in the myth are the very choral performers and spectators of the performance of Nemean 1, and the island promised by Zeus to Persephone is the very ground on which they stand. This moment in Nemean 1 offers an example of the way that the process of ritual performance can shape identity.157 In the acts of performing and listening to this ritual song, the Syracusans, and perhaps other Sicilians, actively participate in the shaping of their civic narrative. Zeus’ promise delineates the present state of Sicily and its people, but at the same time it also predicts the future beyond the performance of the ode.158 This framework grants the chorus the authority of Zeus as they sing into reality the poet’s representation of Sicily and its people. During the performance of the ode, the chorus members not only define the island but also become the Sicilians they themselves describe and reaffirm this characterization for members of the audience.

A Syracusan Representation of Sicily in Nemean 1 Pindar employs Persephone and “the island” to overlay his descriptions of Syracuse and Sicily so that they become nearly identical to one another. However, it is crucial to acknowledge that any description of Syracuse or of Persephone also necessarily evokes Hieron and the Deinomenids through the

156. Pindar employs the strategy discussed by Kowalzig by which the relative clause and a past tense together transport the listener from the present performance into the mythical past (2007: 30). On this function of the relative pronoun with the past tense in Pindar, see Slater 1983: 127, West 1966: 161. 157. See Bell 2009, Kurke 2005, and the Introduction. 158. Kowalzig 2007: 29 observes that aetiological myths set in the past tell us more about the present and its truths than they do about the past.



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ancestral priesthood they held. Expansions of Syracusan power should be understood as expansions of Hieron’s power in this poetry. Persephone’s ability to represent and fuse Deinomenid, Syracusan, and Sicilian interests was useful for Pindar, and the epinician poet uses the goddess to pivot from his opening description of Syracuse to a characterization of Sicilians. In lines 17–​19, he portrays the Sicilians in a distinctly Syracusan light. Zeus’ promise to set the island upright is followed by a list of four characteristics that will define Sicily as an integrated whole: (1) the fertility of the land; (2) the wealth of its cities; (3) its people’s military and, in particular, cavalry prowess; and (4) the athletic success of its people. Individually these attributes could apply to different places. Thus, Andrew Morrison describes Pindar’s praise of Sicily here as “fairly general.”159 However, Giambattista D’Alessio has shown that Pindar could “deal with similar stock-​motifs in radically different ways when facing different local contexts.”160 Pindar does just this in Nemean 1.13–​18 when he takes seemingly general praise and transforms it into a celebration of Syracusan power. The description of the island and its people further develops the blurring of Syracuse and all of Sicily already begun by the ambiguous reference to “the island” and the figure of Persephone herself earlier in the ode. Although there is evidence that conflict between Greeks and Sikels in Syracuse began from the first contact161 and persisted into the fifth century,162 Pindar presents Sicily as a cohesive Greek whole and the description passes over any conflict whether it be among Greeks or between Greeks and native populations.163 When Zeus nods that he will “set Sicily upright,” the depiction of Sicily and its people that follows presents a unified Greek island blessed by divine benefactions.

159. Morrison 2007: 25. 160. D’Alessio 2009: 162. D’Alessio 2009: 162–​66 discusses the way different motifs are developed to characterize the territories of Abdera and Ceos in Paeans 2 and 4. 161. Thucydides reports that the Syracusan colonists drove the native Sikels out of Ortygia in order to found their city (6.3.2). 162. Asheri 1988: 742–​43, 778–​79, Antonaccio 2007a: 201–​2. 163. Athanassaki 2003 argues that Pindar masks colonial disruption and violence in his odes for Greek colonies. She shows that in these odes “his narration suggests either autochthony or, at the least, uninterrupted continuity, thereby highlighting the integration and harmonious coexistence of new settlers and natives” (2003:  94). She touches upon Nemean 1.13–​18 only very briefly as another example of a passage in which Pindar conceals conflict (2003: 123n100).

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The first of the attributes, fertility, marks Sicily as distinct from areas in the center of the Greek world with arid soil and less productive farmland. The island’s fertility is especially linked to Persephone, as discussed earlier in the chapter. We have seen that, like Pindar, Bacchylides celebrates the fertility of Sicily, which appears to have been central to the concept of Sicily in the Greek imagination in the fifth century and in Bacchylides’ Ode 3 is representative of Hieron’s power. Nonetheless, the first term is the most generally applicable of the four attributes. Next, Zeus promises that Sicily will be distinguished by its “wealthy peaks of cities” (κορυφαῖς πολίων ἀφνεαῖς, 15). Morrison has observed that by the “wealthy peaks of cities” Pindar may refer to multiple cities throughout Sicily.164 I  would add to this that the phrase may apply equally well to non-​ Greek Sicilian cities as it does to Greek cities. The peaks (κορυφαί) may call to mind the mountainous center of the island where there were many native Sikel cities (e.g., Morgantina, Enna, Maktorion).165 While some Greek cities like Akragas and Himera were established on higher ground, many Sicilian Greek cities (and especially those in the east like Syracuse and Aitna) were located not on great heights but in flat areas on the island’s periphery.166 However, the image applies equally to diverse areas of the island and its message is normalizing: Sicily as a whole is made up of wealthy peaks of cities, and is renowned for its power and prosperity.167 A description of the cities under Mt. Aitna in Pindar’s conclusion of Olympian 13 provides an instructive parallel.168 Pindar closes the ode with a list of the sites of the victories won by the Corinthian Oligaithidai, among which are: ταί θ’ ὑπ’ Αἴτνας ὑψιλόφου καλλίπλουτοι /​ πόλιες (“the cities beautiful in

164. Morrison 2007: 25 argues that “different elements within the first audience might take the ‘rich peaks of cities’ (v. 15) as referring to the recent foundation of Aitna, or as praise for their own cities (whether Syracuse, Akragas, Himera, etc.).” For the phrase referring to many Greek cities in Sicily, see Bury 1890: 13, Kirkwood 1982: 251. Carey 1981: 108 makes the unlikely suggestion that κορυφαῖς here, and at O. 1.13, may mean “ears.” 165. Thanks to Randall Souza for this suggestion. See also Ferrer Martín 2013 with further references on the importance of mountaintops as sites for Sikel ritual in the tenth though sixth centuries bce. 166.  On the phrase at N. 1.15, see Bury 1890:  13, Rose 1974:  168, and Morrison 2007:  25. Given that Nemean 1 celebrates an Aitnaian victor, the “wealthy peaks” could also refer to the peaks of Mt. Aitna, which Pindar refers to in Pythian 1.27 as the “dark-​leaved peaks of Aitna” (Αἴτνας ἐν μελαμφύλλοις . . . κορυφαῖς). 167. The sense of the phrase is similar to the praise of Crete in Homeric epic. The island is celebrated for its many cities, which represent its wealth and power (cf. Il. 2.649, Od. 19.174). 168. Bury 1890: 13.



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wealth under the lofty crest of Aitna,” O. 13.111–​12). As the peaks of cities are wealthy in Nemean 1, here too the cities are καλλίπλουτοι, “beautiful in wealth.” It is difficult to tell whether Pindar refers only to Syracuse, to cities very close to the mountain, or perhaps once again to Sicily as a whole.169 The geographical blurring of Syracuse and Sicily that takes place in Nemean 1 may also be occurring in this passage. The scholiasts believe that the phrase indicates Isthmian or Nemean games were celebrated at Syracuse.170 If Pindar refers to a Syracusan festival known to his audience in Olympian 13, his description of Syracuse once again appropriates the surrounding countryside for the city. In any case, the poet’s description of cities under Mt. Aitna, like the wealthy peaks of cities in Nemean 1, has the potential to be applied to multiple Sicilian cities for different audiences of the ode. Although all of Sicily was known for its wealth, this wealth was particularly associated with the Greek tyrants, who zealously set up lavish dedications and built treasuries in Olympia and Delphi. After the Battle of Himera, the tyrants of Syracuse and Akragas both received shares of the spoils. This wealth funded public works projects, such as the temples of Demeter and Persephone built by Gelon, and probably also the massive temple of Olympian Zeus begun by the Emmenid tyrant, Theron, at Akragas.171 Diodorus attests to the wealth of Akragas and its citizens later in the fifth century.172 Above all, the Syracusan tyrants were famous for their wealth and their large-​scale expenditure both at home and at the Panhellenic sanctuaries.173 In addition to the epinician poems by Pindar and Bacchylides that celebrated Hieron’s athletic victories, dedications testified to the wealth and glory of the Deinomenids at Delphi and Olympia.

169. Race 1997: 201n5 understands this as a reference to both Syracuse and Aitna. 170. Schol. O. 13.158a, 158b, 158c. 171.  For the temple of Zeus in Akragas, see Mertens 2006:  261–​66, Morgan 2015:  50–​51. See also ­chapter 4: 182, 186. Though the dating of the temple has been challenged, Mertens 2006: 266 prefers a date after 480 for the temple. 172.  Diodorus says that the temples the Akragantines built, and especially the massive temple of Olympian Zeus, demonstrate the megaloprepeia of the citizens at that time (ἥ τε γὰρ τῶν ἱερῶν κατασκευὴ καὶ μάλιστα ὁ τοῦ Διὸς νεὼς ἐμφαίνει τὴν μεγαλοπρέπειαν τῶν τότε ἀνθρώπων, Diod. 13.82.1). He continues on to enumerate more examples of Akragantine wealth. 173. When Herodotus narrates the circumstances surrounding the death of the Samian tyrant, Polykrates, he reveals the extravagant expenditure displayed by the Syracusan tyrants (Hdt. 3.125.2).

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Moreover, Pindar’s description of Sicily’s wealth in Nemean 1 echoes the opening of Olympian 1, the ode celebrating Hieron’s victory in the single horse race in 476. Like lines 13–​18 of Nemean 1, which describe Persephone’s ownership of a fertile land, lines 8–​15 of Olympian 1 celebrate Hieron as the ruler of flock-​rich Sicily: ὅθεν ὁ πολύφατος ὕμνος ἀμφιβάλλεται σοφῶν μητίεσσι, κελαδεῖν Κρόνου παῖδ’ ἐς ἀφνεὰν ἱκομένους10 μάκαιραν Ἱέρωνος ἑστίαν, θεμιστεῖον ὃς ἀμφέπει σκᾶπτον ἐν πολυμήλῳ Σικελίᾳ δρέπων μὲν κορυφὰς ἀρετᾶν ἄπο πασᾶν, ἀγλαΐζεται δὲ καί μουσικᾶς ἐν ἀώτῳ [Olympia] from where the famous hymn encircles the minds of wise men who have come to celebrate the son of Kronos at the wealthy and blessed hearth of Hieron, who wields his lawful scepter in flock-​rich Sicily, culling the peaks of all achievements, and is also celebrated in the finest of songs.  (O. 1.8–​15) Pindar stops just short of saying that Hieron rules over all of Sicily: he wields his scepter in flock-​rich Sicily, while honoring Zeus. In Nemean 1, Pindar again explores the idea of a single ruler of the island, without quite making this suggestion explicit. Now Zeus gives the entire island to Persephone, Hieron’s patron goddess. The passages are otherwise thematically similar. Both emphasize Sicily’s productivity (ἐν πολυμήλῳ /​ Σικελίᾳ, O. 1.12–​13; ἀριστεύοισαν εὐκάρπου χθονός /​ Σικελίαν πίειραν N. 1.14–​15) and the wealth of the island (ἀφνεὰν . . . ἑστίαν, O. 1.10–​11; κορυφαῖς πολίων ἀφνεαῖς, N. 1.15). As we have seen, Sicilian wealth was especially connected to its production of grain, and expressions of the island’s fertility thus also represent its wealth.174 The final two features of the island in N. 1.13–​18 describe the military zeal and athletic success of the Sicilian people. The people of Sicily, he promises, will be both eager for war (πολέμου μναστῆρα, 16) and will be a people who “fight on horseback” (ἵππαιχμον, 17). He additionally vows that they will often be mixed with crowns from the Olympic games (θαμὰ δὴ καὶ Ὀλυμπιάδων 174.  For the tradition that the city was fated to be particularly wealthy even before its foundation by Archias, see Strab. 6.2.4 and, for a discussion of this passage, see the Introduction: 5.



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φύλλοις ἐλαιᾶν χρυσέοις /​ μιχθέντα, 17–​18). The adjective ἵππαιχμον, a hapax legomenon, has been crafted specially to suit Sicily, where horse breeding (hippotrophia) held a place at the center of military and athletic success. In the portrayal of the Sicilians as cavalrymen, Pindar again assigns a trait dominated by Syracusans, and the Deinomenids in particular, to Sicilians as a whole. Elsewhere Pindar depicts Syracuse as “the divine nurse of men and horses who delight in iron” (ἀνδρῶν ἵππων τε σιδαροχαρμᾶν δαιμόνιαι τροφοί, P. 2.2).175 He likewise designates the Aitnaians, the colonists of the Syracusans, as horse-​loving (φίλιπποι, N. 9.32) just before he celebrates Chromius’ success in all three military areas: infantry, cavalry, and naval battles (παρὰ πεζοβόαις ἵπποις τε ναῶν τ’ ἐν μάχαις, N. 9.34). Historical events leading up to the 470s indicate that the Syracusans would have been well-​known for their successful cavalry force. Gelon (and thus the Deinomenid family) rose to power in Gela by becoming commander of the entire Geloan cavalry under the command of the tyrant Hippokrates.176 After the death of Hippokrates in 490, Gelon commemorated his service in the cavalry by minting Gela’s first coins, didrachms representing a naked spearman riding a horse on the obverse and the river god Gelas in the form of a man-​faced bull on the reverse (Figure 2.2).177 At the Battle of Himera, Gelon and the Syracusans came to the rescue of Theron and the Akragantines who could not defend the city of Himera from Hamilcar in 480.178 In the end, according to Diodorus, the Syracusan cavalry brought about the Greek victory by infiltrating the enemy camp.179 In light of

175.  Later in Pythian 2, Pindar declares that Hieron’s boundless fame (ἀπείρονα δόξαν, 64)  comes from “fighting at times among horsemen and at times among foot soldiers” (τὰ μὲν ἐν ἱπποσόαισιν ἄνδρεσσι μαρνάμενον, τὰ δ’ ἐν πεζομάχαισι, P. 2.65). Pindar also calls Hieron the “horse-​loving” (ἱπποχάρμαν) king of Syracuse at O. 1.23. The adjective refers to his victory in the horse race at Olympia celebrated by the ode, but the two areas overlap. Morrison 2007: 32–​33 observes that both Nemean 1.14–​18 and Pythian 2.1–​4 share the association of military strength and athletic victory. 176.  μετὰ δὲ οὐ πολλὸν χρόνον δι’ ἀρετὴν ἀπεδέχθη πάσης τῆς ἵππου εἶναι ἵππαρχος. “Not much later on account of his virtue he accepted the position as leader of the entire cavalry” (Hdt. 7.154.2). 177. See Rutter 1997: 118. See also Morgan 2015: 62. 178. Diod. 11.20–​22. The superior strategy of Gelon and his cavalry force in particular led to the Greek victory. Later in the fifth century, Thucydides attests to the strength of the Syracusan cavalry which frustrated Nicias and the Athenian forces (see, e.g., Thuc. 6.68–​70, 7.4.6, etc.). 179. Diod. 11.22.

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Figure 2.2  Geloan Didrachm, Silver, ca. 490. Reproduced by permission of the American Numismatic Society.

the events of the 480s, Sicilian audiences would have understood a reference to the cavalry as a celebration of Deinomenid victory. In this way, Pindar’s celebration of the Sicilian people as cavalrymen attributes to the Sicilians as a whole expertise in a skill that usually signaled Deinomenid and Syracusan dominance. In addition to inhabiting a fertile land, being exceptionally wealthy, and being skilled both as cavalrymen and in war more generally, the Sicilian people are mixed with golden leaves of Olympic crowns in lines 17–​18. Many commentators have been troubled by the fact that Pindar’s mention of Olympic victories in Nemean 1 is unusual given that Chromius never won a victory at Olympia. John Bury proposed that Pindar mentions the Olympic crowns as the ultimate prize which Chromius has not yet attained.180 This explanation is unlikely. As Hieron’s subordinate, Chromius probably would not have entered into direct competition with his commander, and would have instead competed in less prestigious games, like those at Sikyon and Nemea.181 Ulrich von Wilamowitz-​Moellendorff understood the passage as a reference to Hieron’s victory (or multiple victories) at Olympia.182 The similarities between the opening of Nemean 1 and the praise of 180. Bury 1890: 2. 181.  Rose 1974:  168 rightly follows the suggestion of Méautis that Chromius’ status as Hieron’s associate would have prevented him from entering the more prestigious contest and notes the similarity between this reference to Hieron’s victories and Pindar’s praise of Hieron in O. 6.93–​97. Cf. Méautis 1962: 170–​71. See also Nicholson 2005: 83. 182. Wilamowitz 1922: 254. Braswell 1992: 45 does not offer an interpretation of the passage, but he notes that Wilamowitz may be right.



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Hieron in Olympian 6.92–​96 where Pindar emphasizes the tyrant’s devotion to Demeter and Persephone lend weight to the possibility that the lines describing Persephone’s gift in Nemean 1 honor her patron, Hieron. Another possible explanation is that the “golden crowns of olive from the Olympic contests” (17–​18) apply to Sicilian victors in general. Luigi Moretti presents records for twenty-​three Sicilian victories at Olympia between 648 and 468.183 From the time of the victory of the Geloan tyrant Pantares at Olympia in 508 until 461, Sicilians won a third of all documented victories at Olympia in hippic events.184 The suggestion that the Sicilians will often be mixed with Olympic crowns evokes this long history of Sicilian success at Olympia. In addition to referring to Sicilian success at Olympia more generally, these lines celebrating a victory that probably took place no earlier than 469 must naturally refer to the most recent Sicilian victories—​those of Hieron of Syracuse (single horse) and Theron of Akragas (chariot) in 476, and of Hieron (single horse) in 472.185 Pindar’s description of future Sicilian Olympic crowns therefore once again aligns the island with an area of dominance regularly associated with the Syracusan Deinomenids. More generally, the description in lines 17–​19 presents Sicily in a Syracusan light and, by doing so, both allows the island to share in Syracuse’s prominence and subtly lays claim to the island for the Syracusans and Deinomenids. The effect of this description would have varied depending on the specific performance and the makeup of the audience, and I will consider some performance scenarios and their diverse effect in the final section.

Reading Arethusa and Persephone Together By incorporating multivalent language and features capable of referring to either Syracuse on its own or Sicily as a whole, the aetiological myth explaining Persephone’s possession of Sicily merges Syracusan with Sicilian characteristics. When the myth in lines 13–​18 is read together with the invocation of

183. Moretti 1957: 65–​94. 184. Morgan 2015: 69–​71. All the odes Pindar and Bacchylides wrote for the Sicilian tyrant families (the Deinomenids of Syracuse and the Emmenids of Akragas) and their associates celebrate victories in hippic events. 185. On this point, I follow Morrison’s argument that the Olympic victories mentioned in lines 17–​18 would have meant either Sicilian victories in general, or more specific victories of Theron or Hieron, depending on the listener (2007: 25–​26).

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Ortygia at the beginning of the ode, the triad models the spread of Syracusan (and thus Deinomenid) power from Syracuse to the rest of Sicily. As we have seen, the references to the cult of Arethusa and Artemis Alpheoia at the beginning of the ode establish an important link to the center of Greece, which distinguishes Syracuse from other Sicilian cities. The practice of this cult links Syracuse with cult worship in the areas of the Peloponnese near Olympia, and within Sicily Arethusa symbolizes a distinct point in Syracusan topography. Read together, Pindar’s allusions to Arethusa and Persephone present a cohesive Greek Sicily endowed with concerns and values that align with those of Syracuse and its rulers. The inclusion of Persephone and Arethusa in Nemean 1 recalls the different spheres of influence of two cults observed in the Sicilian narrative of the rape of Persephone. In a Sicilian performance context, Persephone’s appearance would have activated a much richer and more fully articulated version of a mythic narrative localized in Sicily, and the goddesses would have been understood as representative of cults throughout the island, including those in the island’s non-​Greek center. Persephone’s possession of the entire island in Nemean 1 on the divine authority of Zeus is in itself a pan-​Sicilian narrative that envisions the entire island within a Syracusan sphere of influence. This is not to say that Hieron, in fact, ruled the entire island—​though he did control a sizable portion of it either directly or indirectly by this time.186 Rather, the ode represents the land and its people in a way that would have been pleasing to the Syracusan tyrant as well as to the victor, Chromius, whose victory it glorifies. In Nemean 1, Pindar structures the first triad around the cults of Arethusa and Persephone, both Syracusan civic figures who are especially and emphatically joined to the landscape. These were by no means the only civic cults practiced in Syracuse at this time. Other prominent Syracusan deities, such as Apollo and Athena, were worshipped in monumental temples on Ortygia.187 It is significant, then, that Pindar pairs Arethusa and Persephone instead of choosing other deities who were also representative of the polis in other ways. The important distinction between these prominent civic deities and Arethusa and Persephone lies in the symbolic power of their respective relationships

186. See Nicholson 2015: 94–​97 on the scope of Hieron’s rule and ambitions. 187. See Mertens 2006: 258–​59. Mertens argues that Gelon built the temple of Athena on Ortygia after the Battle of Himera.



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with the landscape. Both the nymph and the goddess are involved in mythic traditions that join them to the land itself which allow them, as ideological symbols, to make political statements about territories and the people who inhabit them. Pindar’s grouping of Arethusa and Persephone in Nemean 1 orients Syracuse, and defines its position, relative to the rest of Greece through the cult of Arethusa and relative to Sicily through the cults of Persephone and Demeter. I  have argued that Arethusa represented the gateway from the center of Greece to the west and, for Syracuse, a permanent tie to the Hellenic world. Persephone does just the opposite in Nemean 1. She is firmly rooted in Sicily and represented as the caretaker of the entire island. Instead of continually renewing the relationship of the Syracusans to their Hellenic heritage, Persephone symbolizes the expansion of Syracusan influence throughout the island, as she sets Sicily upright to become an island characterized by attributes that are especially Syracusan. Persephone’s fusion of Deinomenid concerns in Syracuse with wider Sicilian interests in Nemean 1 makes a powerful statement about the role of the goddess in Deinomenid expansionist ambitions. As Morrison points out, descriptions of landscape were popular where they occurred because many people in the ancient world never had the opportunity to travel to far-​ off lands.188 Pindar’s description of Sicily crystalizes this representation of the island formulated in Syracusan terms before Syracusan, pan-​Sicilian, and Panhellenic audiences. For Syracusan and Sicilian audiences, the land familiar to them is envisioned in terms of the benevolence of the goddess and her priest, the Deinomenid Hieron. During a performance in Aitna by Aitnaian chorus members, moreover, the song may have endorsed the expansion of Syracusan influence more actively for audiences who had detailed knowledge of Deinomenid expansion. The Syracusan coloring of Sicily was undoubtedly also felt by some Panhellenic audiences. However, for other Panhellenic audience members abroad, the Syracusan hue of this description may have been barely perceptible as it delicately layered Syracusan interests onto the image of Sicily presented by the ode. Among other effects, for example, we have seen that Pindar’s representation of Persephone as a symbol of Sicilian, Syracusan, and Deinomenid power played a role in shaping Sicily’s international reputation

188. Morrison 2007: 36–​37. Cf. Thuc. 6.24.3 citing the Athenian eagerness to see new places as one reason they supported the Sicilian expedition later in the fifth century.

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as a wealthy grain producer.189 For Panhellenic audiences, the performance of the ode would have participated more generally in the creation of a sense of “Sicily” and would have brought the island to life in later reperformances throughout the Greek world.190

Herakles and Spatial Ideology After expressing the fundamental Syracusan spatial ideology articulated by Arethusa and Persephone in the first triad, the poem moves from Sicily to the house of Amphitryon in Thebes where Herakles’ killing of the snakes, the main action of the myth, is set. The ode makes a spatial journey once again when Teiresias gives a prophecy on Herakles’ future achievements. In general, Herakles offers a good model for athletic victors because he excels in physical strength and performs exceptional feats, but in this version of the myth the hero parallels the victor Chromius specifically in several key ways.191 First, the narrative in Nemean 1 emphasizes the reward that he receives after completing his Labors. Chromius likewise receives rest and the reward of the poet’s praise, which he shares with his community and his commander, after his victory.192 Moreover, Pindar links the victor and the hero by describing them in similar terms: like Chromius who follows “straight paths” (εὐθείας ὁδοῖς, line 25), Herakles travels between the center and the West, slaying “lawless beasts” (θῆρας ἀιδροδίκας, line 63) and giving doom to “crooked insolence” (πλαγίῳ κόρῳ, lines 64–​65) on the sea.193 Herakles’ relationship with Zeus furthermore parallels Chromius’ relationship with Hieron since victor and hero act as subordinates who bolster the rule of their superiors.194 As Herakles fights for the gods in their battle against the Giants195 and “will praise” (αἰνήσειν, line

189. Cf. Kowalzig 2008. 190. See Tuan 1991 for the idea that literary descriptions create and sustain ideas of place. 191. On Herakles’ role in Nemean 1, see also Lewis forthcoming a. 192. Braswell 1992: 56, following the scholiast Chairis (Schol. N. 1.49c). 193. Kirkwood 1982: 253. On the translation of κόρος, see Braswell 1992: 76–​77 and Carey 1981: 126–​27. Both commentators emphasize that straight paths (line 25) contrast with the crooked insolence in lines 64–​65. 194. Schol. N. 1.49c, Radt 1966: 163–​74, Braswell 1992: 56–​57, Morgan 2015: 387–​88. 195.  Regardless of the specific reference, after 480 the Gigantomachy represented the triumph of order over disorder and symbolized the Greek victory over the Persian (or Carthaginian) other. Cf. Hall 1989: 53–​54, 68, 101–​2.



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72) the rule of Zeus, so Chromius supports Hieron through his actions: the victor competes at the Nemean games (in contrast to Hieron who competes at Olympia),196 he fights on behalf of Hieron and serves as regent for his son,197 and he acts as a proper host to foreigners (lines 19–​33).198 Pindar tailors this version of the Herakles myth for his Sicilian audiences and through it enacts a geographical move similar to the one established in the poem’s opening. For Syracusan audiences, in particular, the appearance of Herakles and Persephone in the same ode likely recalled the connection between the two in local civic myth and ritual contexts. As we have seen, Herakles and Persephone were closely linked to one another at the sanctuary and festival of Kyane, which Herakles instituted in her honor, but also in other localized Syracusan contexts (Bacchylides’ Ode 5, Plut. Nic. 1.3).199 The description of Herakles sitting beside Zeus at the wedding feast revisits the theme of marriage that underlies Zeus’ gift to Persephone, while the fertility of flourishing (θαλερὰν, 71) Hebe echoes the productivity of the Sicilian land. Together, Herakles and Persephone represent the range of prosperity granted by Zeus: while Persephone promises fertility and wealth for the Sicilian land, Herakles models victory, both athletic and military, and immortal fame on Olympus. However, Pindar makes his localization of Herakles in the West explicit through the spatial progression of the myth. As Chromius’ ode occasions a celebration of the cultic traditions shared by Peloponnesians and Syracusans that are represented by a movement from the center to the West, Herakles’ actions in the myth also connect the center of the Greek world to the West through his own exploits and travels. Herakles first displays his superlative strength by killing the serpents in his youth at Amphitryon’s court in Thebes in mainland Greece. His only other feat in the poem that is located in a specific place is his support for the gods in the battle against the Giants, which the seer Teiresias predicts will take place on the plain of Phlegra. Although there is no mention of Sicily, Aitna, or Syracuse in the second half of the ode, William Slater has argued that by the fifth century the plain of Phlegra was localized in the fields of Campania near Cumae, where Hieron had recently defeated the Etruscans

196. Méautis 1962: 170–​71. 197. Schol. N. 9.inscr. 198. Morgan 2015: 386. 199. Giangiulio 1983: 813–​14.

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and the Carthaginians in battle in 474.200 If Chromius served in Hieron’s army during the battle (as is likely), the parallel between Zeus/​Herakles and Hieron/​Chromius would have been obvious to Sicilian audiences. Even if a geographical connection to Hieron’s victory at the Battle of Cumae is uncertain,201 Strabo and Diodorus Siculus placed the plain of Phlegra in the West, and it is likely that the battle’s position in the West began earlier.202 The location of the battle between the gods and the Giants on the plain of Phlegra in Nemean 1 thus emphasizes the role of the Greek West both in Herakles’ trajectory toward immortality and in the maintenance of the Olympian order.203 Beyond the similar geographical strategies that Pindar employs in the ode’s opening and conclusion, linguistic echoes at the end recall the ode’s beginning lines. When Teiresias foresees the end of Herakles’ mortal life, he predicts that the hero will ascend to Olympus and marry Hebe:  δεξάμενον θαλερὰν Ἥβαν ἄκοιτιν καὶ γάμον /​ δαίσαντα πὰρ Δὶ Κρονίδᾳ, σεμνὸν αἰνήσειν νόμον (“having received Hebe as his flourishing wife and having celebrated his wedding feast at the side of Zeus, son of Kronos, he will praise his [Zeus’] holy rule,” N. 1.71–​72). The marriage and wedding feast evoke the opening union between Arethusa/​Artemis and Alpheos in Ortygia (“the shoot [θάλος] of famous Syracuse,” line 2), where Chromius’ celebratory feast may have taken place: flourishing (θαλεράν) Hebe echoes Ortygia as the shoot (θάλος) of Syracuse, and the repetition of the adjective σεμνός to describe both the breath (ἄμπνευμα) in the first line and to describe Zeus’ rule in the final line is striking.204 By describing the moment when Herakles crosses the ultimate boundary between the mortal and the immortal world in terms that recall the union of Arethusa/​Artemis and Alpheos, the final lines revisit the theme of transgressing both traditional boundaries and limits defined by citizenship, geography, and,

200. Slater 1984: 258–​59. Slater admits that this identification is hard to prove conclusively or to reject due to the small amount of evidence available. Morgan 2015: 388 (following Radt 1966 and Slater 1984)  also argues that the association between the plain of Phlegra and the area near Cumae seen in Strabo (5.4.4) may have already existed in the earlier period. Although the Battle of Cumae was a sea battle and did not take place on the plain itself, the association was probably active for contemporary Sicilian audiences. 201. Braswell 1992: 79 argues against the parallel. 202. Morgan 2015: 388. 203.  See Strabo 5.4.4, Diod. 4.21.5–​7, 5.71.4. Diodorus attributes his account to Timaeus (4.21.7). 204. Rose 1974: 163. The text is difficult on the last word of the ode. I read νόμον following the text of SM. The manuscripts have δόμον or γάμον, while νόμον is suggested by the scholia.



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in the case of Herakles, mortality. While Arethusa/​Artemis and Alpheos connect specific populations in the Peloponnese near Olympia and in Sicily where these cults are practiced and Persephone extends Syracusan influence across the island of Sicily, Herakles’ battle with the Giants emphasizes the role of the West in the maintenance of the order of the Olympians and as a subordinate of Zeus he underscores Chromius’ deference to the tyrant Hieron.

Conclusions This chapter has argued not only that there were local myths and local variants of Panhellenic myths in Syracuse, but also that each of the mythological figures I  have discussed was localized in Syracuse in a different way that can be seen in epinician odes for Syracusan victors, and especially in Pindar’s Nemean 1.  Each figure articulates a different aspect of the relationship between Syracuse and the rest of the world. Thus, the waters of Arethusa mix with those of Alpheos, symbolizing colonial mixture but also the permanence of Greek culture within the city. Arethusa connects the Syracusans to their founders and ancestors in the Peloponnese but also to the sanctuary at Olympia, highlighting the significance of athletic competition within the city. The Syracusan cults of Demeter and Persephone take a completely different form. Rather than articulating the relationship between Syracuse and the Panhellenic world more broadly, appearances of Demeter and Persephone in Pindar’s odes express the relationship between Syracuse and the rest of Sicily. Where Arethusa orients the city back in time toward its origins in the Peloponnese, the cult of Demeter and Persephone looks forward to Syracuse’s own territorial expansion. The goddesses were important local figures in Syracuse where they were worshipped in the sixth century, even before the Deinomenids rose to power in the city. Unlike Arethusa, whose cult was connected to a single place and in part derived its power from that unique location, Demeter and Persephone were also the goddesses of the entire island and were particularly associated with the fertility of the land and Sicilian wealth. Where they appear in the odes of Pindar and Bacchylides for Syracusan victors (O. 6, N. 1, Ode 3), the goddesses at once represent Syracuse and all of Sicily, and they reinforce the broadening of Syracusan influence throughout the island. Even in a Syracusan context, Herakles is always connected to a broader tradition, representing Panhellenic athletic competition and the maintenance of divine order. He was nonetheless important in Syracuse in his own right and through his cultic intersections with the goddess Persephone, whether at Kyane or in the Underworld on his quest for Kerberos. Demeter and Persephone are

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prominent goddesses in a Panhellenic context (as in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter), but take on new significance in Sicily when they are localized on the island. Herakles appears never to lose his general Panhellenic status in Syracuse; instead, his wanderings in Sicily integrate Syracusan mythic and cultic tradition into the completion of his Labors, and thus into a narrative that spans the Greek and non-​Greek world, when he founds the festival at Kyane. Rather than articulating a particular characteristic of Syracuse as the cults of both Arethusa and Persephone and Demeter do, Herakles’ contact with Syracuse creates a place for the city within his broader Panhellenic narrative by inaugurating a local cult at Kyane. As an agent of Zeus, Herakles supports the Olympian order, and in Nemean 1 Pindar suggests that the victor Chromius likewise maintains peace for his commander Hieron. I have argued that Pindar incorporates Arethusa/​Artemis and Persephone into epinician odes for Syracusans to signal particular aspects of Syracusan and Deinomenid identity that are especially linked to the landscape. However, these figures appear most prominently in odes for Chromius (Nemean 1)  and Hagesias (Olympian 6), Hieron’s subordinates, where the celebration of Persephone and Demeter, in particular, allows the poet to praise the Deinomenid family more subtly without overshadowing the victor in each case. The next chapter will explore the more explicit equation that Pindar draws between Hieron and Zeus in Pythian 1, which celebrates Hieron’s own victory in the chariot race at Delphi, and the way this comparison weaves a place for Aitna within Panhellenic mythology.

3

Locating Aitnaian Identity in Pindar’s Pythian 1

The last two chapters focused on myth and locality in Pindar’s odes for Syracuse. I  argued that Arethusa, on the one hand, and Demeter and Persephone, on the other hand, emerge and resurface in the Syracusan odes as symbols that shape Syracusan identity and represent the expansion of Deinomenid power. In Pindar’s epinician poetry for Syracuse, the goddesses link the Syracusans to the local landscape and to topographical sites within the city. Their areas of influence—​the spring of Arethusa and the fertile countryside more generally—​offer new citizens ready access to their worship and make it possible for citizens with different backgrounds to participate in Syracusan civic culture. Arethusa and Demeter and Persephone likewise define the cultural boundaries of Syracuse, which is characterized, on the one hand, by its origins in the Peloponnese and, on the other hand, by its dominance over the rest of the island of Sicily. In the present chapter, I concentrate on Pindar’s representation of myth and locality in Pythian 1.  This ode celebrates Hieron’s recent foundation of the city of Aitna at the same time that it celebrates his Pythian chariot victory.1 As a celebration of the newly founded city, the ode offers a particularly clear example of the way that Pindar’s epinician poetry roots the identity of a city

1. Cf. Dougherty 1993: 93–​96. I follow Luraghi 1994: 342 in reading the ode as a celebration of the chariot victory that honors Hieron’s new colony, rather than as an anomalous epinician ode composed for the occasion of the foundation of Aitna. He refutes the idea that the ode was performed at a coronation ceremony for Hieron’s son Deinomenes. For the view that this ode primarily celebrates the colonial foundation, see Wiliamowitz 1922: 296, Burton 1962: 99, and Pfeijffer 2005: 35. On the ode as a “Coronation Hymn,” see Burton 1962: 91.

Myth, Locality, and Identity in Pindar’s Sicilian Odes. Virginia M. Lewis, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190910310.003.0004

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and its citizens in the physical landscape and emphasizes its local characteristics. Civic ideology in Aitna, including representations of the city itself and of its citizens, was especially malleable since the city had been founded so recently. This allowed poets and other artists extra freedom to incorporate older traditions and to invent new civic symbols where few already existed. I will examine the particular strategies by which Pindar characterizes the territory of Aitna and its settlers. By presenting separate narratives in Pythian 1, Pindar defines both the physical place and the people of Aitna in distinct ways. Pythian 1 contains four main mythical sections:  (1) the myth of Zeus’ suppression of Typho, (2)  a comparison between Hieron and Philoktetes, (3) the ethnic myth of the Dorian migration, and (4) the myth of Croesus and Phalaris.2 In her recent monograph on Pindar’s odes for Hieron, Kathryn Morgan analyzes the way that Hieron’s kingship is defined by these four myths.3 She argues that the ode “positions Hieron as legitimate monarch and panhellenic freedom fighter, a decisive winner in contemporary contests for preeminence.”4 My focus in this chapter is in some ways the inverse of her inquiry; while she examines the construction of Hieron’s rule, my aim will be to examine the shaping of civic identity in these odes. Though it is difficult and often impossible to separate Pindar’s praise of the city from his praise of Hieron (who is the victor, ruler, and oikist), I will suggest that myths that were bound to the physical place fostered a sense of civic identity for Aitna and its citizens, and forged an image of the city when performed before Panhellenic audiences. I  therefore focus particularly on the first and third myths in the ode—​those of Zeus/​Typho and the Dorians—​because they most explicitly define the character of the Aitnaian territory and its people. While the former establishes a meaningful place for the new colony of Aitna, the latter presents a shared ethnic identity that binds its citizens together and connects them to other Greeks throughout the Mediterranean. In a certain sense, Hieron’s new city of Aitna presented problems that many Greek colonies typically faced. New foundations often adopted mythical narratives that defined the land itself and that accounted for the settlers who

2. Kathryn Morgan observes that by the time of the performance of Pythian 1, Croesus and Phalaris “were well on their way to becoming myth” (Morgan 2015: 309). Phalaris was likely a historical tyrant in Akragas in the second quarter of the sixth century (Luraghi 1994: 27–​ 28). The Phalaris story was mythologized in the late sixth or early fifth century, and I believe that Morgan rightly links Phalaris to the Emmenid tyrant, Theron (Morgan 2015: 119–​21). For a different view of the development of the Phalaris myth, see Luraghi 1994: 27–​30. 3. Morgan 2015: 300–​358. 4. Morgan 2015: 21.



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inhabited it. Irad Malkin observes that colonial myths may be placed into two main categories: “territorial myths often relate the initial connection between that community and its territory,” while “land-​myths account for the country and landscape in which one has arrived.”5 In other words, territorial myths link the populace to the place, while land-​myths articulate the significance of the place on its own. The categories reveal two of the most fundamental ways that new groups of settlers seek to define themselves and their new city. That is, inhabitants tend to ascribe significance to the new place (through land-​myths) and they draw a connection between themselves and this place (through territorial myths). Hieron’s foundation of Aitna follows in the tradition of older archaic colonial foundations and, in addition to Pindar, several other poets and artists commemorated the foundation according to this tradition.6 In another sense, however, Hieron’s colonization of Aitna was exceptional. While many groups of Greek settlers displaced the native inhabitants of a place before planting a new settlement, Hieron and Gelon had recently expelled and displaced many other Greeks living in the area. In particular, Ionian Greeks living in Naxos and Katane had been forcibly moved to Leontini to make way for the new city of Aitna. Many of Pindar’s epinician poems tend to smooth over the violence and displacement of the process of colonization.7 However, unlike Pindaric odes for other colonial sites (such as Cyrene and Rhodes), Pythian 1 avoids the issue entirely. Instead of replacing the violent transfer of colonists to a new land with a narrative of peaceful migration and colonization by a mythical founder or founders (such as the myths of Battos in Cyrene and Tlapolemos in Rhodes), there is no myth that describes the arrival of the Aitnaian settlers or their founder in Aitna, though the ode clearly honors Hieron as founder.8 Because the foundation was so recent, it may have been particularly difficult to obscure its details and to replace them with other narratives. I will show how the myths in Pythian 1 overcome these challenges to present a multifaceted image of the city that celebrates its relationship to the land and the shared ancestry of its citizen body.

5. Malkin 1994: 6. 6.  See Dougherty 1993:  85 on Hieron following the tradition of an archaic founder and 1993: 85–​92 for other celebrations of the foundation of Aitna by poets and visual artists. 7. Cf. Athanassaki 2003 for this phenomenon in other Pindaric odes. 8.  This is perhaps one reason why Athanassaki 2003 focuses on Pythians 4 and 9 for Cyrene and Olympian 7 for Rhodes but discusses Pythian 1 only briefly (119–​21). See Morgan 2015: 56–​57 on avoiding mention of the displaced Ionians and Morgan 2015: 334–​35 on the lack of a standard colonial narrative in Pythian 1.

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It is necessary to mention at the outset that the characterization of the city takes on different meaning, and operates on multiple levels, depending on place of performance and on the audience of the ode. When I  refer to “Aitnaian identity” and “civic identity,” these terms likewise have multiple meanings, depending on the performance envisioned. At the most basic level, by “Aitnaian identity” and “civic identity” I refer to characteristics that define Aitna and her citizens as distinct from other cities and from other people who are outside of this group.9 Choral songs performed by the victor’s own citizens in his city powerfully reinforced civic representations within the songs.10 By singing and dancing narratives that ascribed meaning to the city, its people, and the surrounding territory, the citizen chorus implicitly gave its assent to such representations. It is helpful here to think of Catherine Bell’s concept of ritualization (as opposed to ritual) as a “matter of various culturally specific strategies for setting some activities off from others, for creating and privileging a qualitative distinction between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane,’ and for ascribing such distinctions to realities thought to transcend the powers of human actors.”11 One of the defining aspects of Bell’s concept of ritualization is that humans participating in an act of ritualization construct a concept of the organization of power in the world and assert their own place within this system.12 When understood within the framework of ritualization, it becomes possible to recognize that the dancing and singing chorus members performing Pythian 1 construct a concept of power in the world through their performance. At performances where the citizens sang of their own identity, their assertion of their place in the world was made explicit and these expressions were thus especially forceful.

9. For a similar definition of civic identity, see Thatcher 2012: 75. Cf. Lape 2010. 10. Burnett argues that older Greek myths were often introduced into colonial cities because they were “more effective in mending the broken continuities of place and time that all colonists experienced” (1988: 141). She emphasizes that choral song was the most powerful vehicle for expressing the connection between an older Hellenic past and the colonial present “since a myth danced out in public could be ingested at once by an entire community” (1988: 141). Cf. Mullen 1982: 55, Dougherty 1993: 96, Kowalzig 2007. 11. Bell 2009: 74. 12.  Bell 2009:  81–​88. On the relevance of Bell’s idea of ritualization for performances of Greek choral poetry, see Kurke 2005 on Pindar’s Paean 6.



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However, Pindar’s epinician odes were always meant to be reperformed and were composed with both local and broader Greek audiences in mind.13 Because the ode was also intended to be heard by Greek audiences outside of Aitna, when I discuss “Aitnaian identity” from an outside perspective, I am referring to the reputation that the ode shapes for the city and its citizens among Panhellenic audiences abroad. As we have seen in previous chapters, Thomas Hubbard argues that Pindar often composed odes for patrons whose reputations were in need of rehabilitation, either because they were perceived to be tyrants or because they engaged in activity such as trade and commerce that needed to be made more palatable to an aristocratic Panhellenic audience.14 I  focus instead on the identity and reputation of the city itself, which is closely related (but not identical) to the reputation of the victor. The reputations of Aitna and of Hieron were certainly closely connected and dependent upon one another. Nonetheless, the establishment of a reputation for the new city of Aitna presented unique challenges in comparison to a more established city like Syracuse where recognized, longstanding traditions were adapted to suit Hieron’s political aims and to represent Deinomenid power.15 There is a fine line between civic identity and Deinomenid propaganda in odes for Syracusan tyrants, and the objection could be made that representations of Aitna in Pindar’s odes are simply products of Deinomenid self-​representation. However, even as Pythian 1 praises Hieron highly and links his fame to the city of Aitna, this does not mean that its representation of the city and its people does not capture aspects of the community that were accepted and recognized by the group as a whole. In fact, the evidence will suggest the opposite, for the citizens of Aitna maintained aspects of their civic identity even after the fall of the Deinomenids by refounding the city of Aitna after its destruction upon the death of Hieron, whom they still celebrated as their founder, and by minting coinage that maintained a symbolic vocabulary similar to that which we will see in Pythian 1.

13. On reperformance for multiple audiences, see Currie 2004, Carey 2007, Morrison 2007, Morrison 2011, Hubbard 2004. Bonanno 2010: 151 argues that Aeschylus’ Aitnaiai was intended for a more provincial audience than Pindar’s Pythian 1. See Athanassaki 2009 for the argument that the poet makes this intention for the ode’s repeated performances especially clear in Pythian 1 itself. 14.  Hubbard 2001. Cole 1994:  306 argues that “a complete account of civic ritual would have to include the ways in which cities represented themselves outside as well as inside the polis.” 15. See ­chapters 1 and 2.

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The Foundation of Aitna and the Cult of Zeus Aitnaios Before discussing the first and most fully treated mythical narrative in Pythian 1—​the myth of Zeus’ suppression of Typho—​I will consider the sources for the foundation of Aitna and for the cult of Zeus Aitnaios, the god featured in the iconography of the new city and in Pythian 1. A discussion of this evidence will provide a historical context in which to read Pythian 1 and to understand its myths more fully. Diodorus Siculus presents the most detailed surviving account of Hieron’s foundation of Aitna. He reports that Hieron founded Aitna in 476 after first displacing the local inhabitants of the city of Katane. As part of a larger strategy to remove Ionians from the territories surrounding Syracuse and to replace them with his Dorian supporters, Hieron forcibly moved the citizens of the cities of Katane and Naxos to Leontini.16 Diodorus says that, after resettling the Katanians, Hieron founded the city of Aitna on the site and repopulated it with new settlers, five thousand from nearby Syracuse and five thousand from the Peloponnese. He did this in order that he might have help readily available since Aitna was located in close proximity to Syracuse. The new colony of Aitna also opened up a domain for Hieron’s son Deinomenes, whom the Syracusan tyrant established as ruler there under the oversight of the regent Chromius (who is also the victor celebrated by Pindar in Nemeans 1 and 9).17 In addition to other benefits, Hieron hoped eventually “to receive heroic honors” (τιμὰς ἔχειν ἡρωικάς) as the founder of the city.18 When Hieron died in 466, the colony of Aitna remained intact as an independent city. In fact, Aitna was one of the few strongholds that remained loyal to the Deinomenids after Hieron’s death. When the Syracusans turned against Hieron’s brother Thrasybulus, he called upon the men settled by Hieron at Aitna (on the site of the city that was previously Katane), who were presumably mercenaries.19 Aitna continued to be inhabited by Hieron’s settlers until 461 when the native Katanians drove out the Aitnaians at the instigation of the

16. Diod. 11.49.2. 17. Schol. N. 9.inscr. 18. Diod. 11.49.1–​2. 19. Diod. 11.67.7 (συνήγαγεν ἔκ τε τῆς Κατάνης τοὺς κατοικισθέντας ὑφ’ Ἱέρωνος). By contrast, the Syracusans call upon the cities of Gela, Akragas, Selinous, and Himera for help in opposing Thrasybulus (11.68.1). For a discussion of the possible supporters and enemies of Thrasybulus during this conflict, see Luraghi 1994: 370–​71 with note 420.



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Sikel leader Ducetius. Defeated and expelled, the Aitnaians moved their city to the nearby site of Inessa where they demonstrated their loyalty to Hieron by proclaiming him as their founder, though he had died five years earlier and the city had moved to a new site.20 The continuity of the cult of the founder and the settlers’ decision to transfer the city to Inessa after Hieron’s death demonstrate that at least some of the citizens of Aitna identified with and chose to uphold the civic traditions of their former city. By choosing to relocate the colony rather than to attach themselves to another extant city (as was common for mercenaries during this period in Sicily),21 or to denounce the deceased tyrant, the citizens of Hieron’s Aitna signaled their allegiance and chose to continue to call themselves “Aitnaians.”22 The actions of the displaced citizens of Aitna demonstrate that Hieron’s foundation endured beyond his lifetime and even beyond the fall of the Deinomenids in Syracuse.23 Pythian 1 offers one window onto the system of civic ideology that shaped and unified this citizen body. The only material remains from Hieron’s Aitna are a small number of coins struck by the city after its foundation in 476. Two spectacular tetradrachms feature the god, Zeus Aitnaios. On the obverse of the first (Figure 3.1), Athena drives a chariot. This image recalls the chariot type found on Syracusan coinage from the period, though now on the Aitnaian coin the charioteer is identified as the goddess (see, for example, Figure 1.1). Winged Nike crowns the goddess with a wreath, and a frond is placed in the exergue. On the reverse, Zeus Aitnaios is seated on a throne. He holds the lightning bolt in his right hand, and in his left, he grasps his scepter with a bird, probably his eagle, perched on top. The blocks below

20. According to Strabo, Inessa (the new site of Aitna) was located about 80 stadia (about 9 miles) from Katane (the original site of Aitna) (6.2.3). For the relocation of Aitna to Inessa in 461 bce, see Diod. 11.76.3. For the declaration of Hieron as founder of the new city by the Aitnaians, see Strabo 6.2.3. Cf. Luraghi 1994: 339–​41. 21. Diodorus reports that many mercenaries settled in Messenia when driven out of their cities after the fall of the tyranny in Sicily (Diod. 11.77.5–​6). Bonanno 2010: 137 argues that the former Syracusans settled in Aitna by Hieron were Geloans and Megarians who had been made citizens by Gelon after his takeover of the city. Hieron, she argues, resettled these men in Aitna to restore the Syracusan civic body to its earlier makeup. She points to this split between the original citizens of the Corinthian colony of Syracuse and those introduced by Gelon as the reason why the Aitnaians moved to Inessa once expelled rather than returning to Syracuse. 22.  Thatcher 2012:  88 similarly argues that after the fall of the Deinomenid tyranny the choice of 7,000 mercenaries to stay in Syracuse rather than to relocate (as others did) suggests that these men felt that “the set of experiences they had shared with the other Syracusans entitled them to membership in the community.” 23. Cf. Bonanno 2010: 155.

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Figure  3.1  Aitnaian Tetradrachm, Silver, ca. 475–​470. Photograph courtesy of the Antikenmuseum Basel and Sammlung Ludwig.

his feet suggest that this image represents the cult statue of the god.24 The coin shows that Zeus Aitnaios was a civic symbol for Aitna and confirms the importance of his cult in Hieron’s newly founded city.25 The god, whose toponymic cult epithet links him to the mountain over which he rules, acts as another link between the city and the mountain of the same name. On a second, later Aitnaian tetradrachm, the head of Silenus appears above a scarab beetle on the obverse and Zeus Aitnaios once again sits on a throne on the reverse (Figure 3.2). Zeus now grasps the lightning bolt in his left hand while his right arm supports him as he leans on an ivy branch. A  bird perches on the top of a pine tree instead of sitting atop the god’s scepter. The Aitnaian scarab beetle, the staff of ivy on which Zeus’ right arm rests, and the pine tree on this tetradrachm were local to the area and thus all pay tribute to the local landscape.26 Scholars now agree that this coin was minted after Hieron’s death and thus

24. Boehringer 1968: 76–​81. See also Manganaro 1974/​1975: 37, Rutter 1997: 128. Holloway 1964: 7–​8 argues that the image is modeled after a painting rather than a statue. 25. Another very similar depiction of Zeus on an Aitnaian drachma was minted at the same time as the tetradrachm; see Manganaro 1974/​1975: 19–​20 with Plate I.3. See also Luraghi 1994: 344–​45. 26. Manganaro 1974/​1975: 20–​21 and Dougherty 1993: 87 with note 15 for ancient references. For Silenus on other Aitnaian coins opposite the winged thunderbolt, see Kraay 1966, plate 11, image 34.



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Figure  3.2  Aitnaian Tetradrachm, Silver, ca. 465–​460. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque royale de Belgique.

should not be used as evidence for the 470s.27 However, the collection of local symbols here demonstrates that Aitnaian identity came to be particularly bound to the local landscape, even after the death of the city’s founder, Hieron. The coin, though minted in a period later than the time of performance of Pythian 1, confirms that the strategies implemented by Pindar were not unique to the poem—​or even limited to Hieron’s reign—​but made up part of a larger Aitnaian cultural system with which the citizens identified and through which the new group of citizens chose to express their collective identity. Aside from the Aitnaian tetradrachms, our best evidence for the cult of Zeus Aitnaios comes from Pindar’s own poetry and the scholia to Pindar. In Pindar’s poetry, there are four direct references to the god, all in odes for Sicilian victors. Twice Pindar identifies him as Zeus who rules over Mt. Aitna (O. 4.6–​7 and P. 1.30) and twice as Zeus Aitnaios (O. 6.96 and N. 1.6). In Olympian 6, Pindar mentions Zeus Aitnaios in a list of cults cared for by the ruler, Hieron: τὰν Ἱέρων καθαρῷ σκάπτῳ διέπων, ἄρτια μηδόμενος, φοινικόπεζαν

27. Kraay’s original dating of the coin between 476 and 470 was challenged by Manganaro 1974/​1975: 33–​36. Manganaro argues for a date after 450, but Knoepfler 1992: 34n134 prefers to date the minting of the coin to the period between Hieron’s death and the fall of the city to the Sikels in 460 based on stylistic features it shares with a tetradrachm from Naxos. Rutter 1997: 128–​29 likewise dates the Aitnaian tetradrachm to the period between 465 and 460.

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ἀμφέπει Δάματρα λευκίπ-​   που τε θυγατρὸς ἑορτάν καὶ Ζηνὸς Αἰτναίου κράτος. While ruling her [Ortygia] with a pure scepter and devising fitting counsels, Hieron attends to red-​footed Demeter and the festival of her daughter of the white horses and to the power of Zeus Aitnaios.  (O. 6.93–​96) Here Hieron’s attentiveness to Zeus Aitnaios importantly appears in a passage that describes the manner in which he rules over Syracuse. Like Demeter and Persephone,28 Zeus Aitnaios is a symbol of Hieron’s political authority at the same time that he is a representative of the city of Aitna. In Aitna, as in Syracuse, this symbol of Deinomenid power is promoted as a symbol of the city and its citizens as well. In Olympian 6, Hieron tellingly tends to the power (κράτος) of Zeus Aitnaios. We will see in Pythian 1 that the god’s power is connected to both peace and violence, including the destructive forces of Mt. Aitna, over which he rules. The preceding quotation of lines in Olympian 6 suggests that part of Hieron’s authority as a ruler in Syracuse comes from his dutiful maintenance of the god’s cult. In this poem for Hieron’s commander, the divine lord of the volcano and the mortal ruler of Syracuse and Aitna are linked. The scholia provide more information about the cult of Zeus Aitnaios and Hieron’s connection to it. To explain Pindar’s reference to the god at the beginning of Nemean 1, the scholiasts report that there was a temple of Zeus in Aitna, and they know of a festival and a contest held there in honor of Zeus Aitnaios.29 Hieron is also reported to have held the priesthood of Zeus Aitnaios, which, like the priesthood of Demeter and Persephone, was passed down from his ancestor.30 The scholiast has likely conflated the priesthood

28. See ­chapter 2. 29. For the contest and temple: Διὶ γὰρ ἀνάκειται καὶ οὗτος ἀγών. ἐν γὰρ τῇ Αἴτνῃ Διὸς ἱερόν (“For this contest is also set up for Zeus. For in Aitna there is a temple of Zeus,” Schol. N. 1.4g). For the festival: Ζηνὸς Αἰτναίου χάριν: ἢ εἰς χάριν τοῦ Διός, ἢ ἕνεκεν τοῦ Διός, παρόσον ἐν τῷ ἀγῶνι καὶ ἐν τῇ πανηγύρει τοῦ Αἰτναίου Διὸς ᾖδον οἱ περὶ τὸν Ἱέρωνα τοὺς ἐπὶ τοῖς στε φανίταις ἀγῶσι πεποιημένους ἐπινίκους [καὶ ᾖδον] (“[This means] either for the favor of Zeus or for the sake of Zeus, inasmuch as at the contest and at the festival of Zeus Aitnaios those around Hieron sang epinician songs made for festivals which have crowns as prizes,” Schol. N. 1.7b). On Zeus Aitnaios’ location in Aitna, see also Schol. P. 1.56b. 30. Schol. O. 6.158a. Didymus, following Philistus and Timaeus, also explains that Pindar says this about Hieron because he held the priesthood from his ancestors (Schol. O. 6.158c).



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of Demeter and Persephone with the priesthood of Zeus Aitnaios because the cults appear together in Olympian 6, and we should not, therefore, necessarily assume that the priesthood of Zeus Aitnaios also originated with the Deinomenid ancestor, Telines.31 Hieron himself may even have instituted the cult of Zeus Aitnaios.32 Whether Hieron founded the cult himself or took an interest in a cult of the mountain god that had been established earlier, Olympian 6 offers good evidence that the cult of Zeus Aitnaios was an important part of the image Hieron wished to project of himself as a ruler. From Pindar, the scholia to Pindar, and the Aitnaian tetradrachms, a picture emerges of Zeus Aitnaios as the chief deity and representative of Hieron’s Aitna. The god was linked to Hieron, as we will see more clearly in Pythian 1. Nigel Nicholson has shown that Zeus Aitnaios persisted as one of a group of symbols of the Deinomenid sphere of influence in other areas of Sicily, and probably also in Aitna itself, even after Hieron’s death.33 However, Zeus Aitnaios also made a symbolic link between the city and the mountain. Part of the symbolic value of this cult and its endurance after Hieron’s death came from the fact that it was embedded in the local landscape. The volcano’s permanent presence for anyone living nearby made it a powerful visual reminder of the Deinomenids. For audiences in Aitna, narratives connecting the god to the countryside infused it with meaning and transformed it into an important place.34 Every citizen of Aitna would have been keenly aware of the force of the volcano that was active and alive even when it was not violently sending rivers of lava to the sea during a massive eruption. The power of Zeus Aitnaios offered an explanation for the physical phenomenon of volcanic activity and converted the threat of the volcano into a celebration of the city. We have already seen that the citizens of Aitna felt enough loyalty to their city to transfer it with its cults to a new location after the death of Hieron

31. Luraghi 1994: 339–​40 with note 291. 32.  Luraghi 1994:  339–​40 argues that Hieron founded it right after the major eruption of Aitna in the early 470s. Luraghi observes that there is no mention of the cult of Zeus Aitnaios prior to the foundation of Aitna but afterwards his cult is highlighted in poetry for Hieron. This may be the case, but it also seems reasonable to imagine that, recognizing its symbolic potential, Hieron took a keen interest in the worship of a mountain deity that predated the eruption in the 470s and the foundation of the colony. For the major eruption of Aitna, see Thuc. 3.116.2 and Marmor Parium, FGrH 239 A 52. Thucydides reports that the eruption took place in 476/​5 while the Parian Marble places the eruption in 479. 33. Nicholson 2011, especially 103–​9. See also c­ hapter 5. 34. For a discussion of the distinction between “space” and “place,” see the Introduction and the discussion below.

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and the city’s fall. We also have some evidence that the cult of Zeus Aitnaios endured through the classical period until at least the second century bce. Diodorus reports that after the death of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 bce, a Roman embassy visited the altars of Zeus Aitnaios throughout Sicily: Ὅτι ἡ σύγκλητος δεισιδαιμονοῦσα ἐξαπέστειλεν εἰς Σικελίαν κατὰ Σιβυλ λιακὸν λόγιον. οἱ δὲ ἐπελθόντες καθ’ ὅλην τὴν Σικελίαν τοὺς τῷ Αἰτναίῳ Διὶ καθιδρυμένους βωμούς, θυσιάσαντες καὶ περιφράγματα ποιήσαντες ἀβάτους ἀπεδείκνυον τοὺς τόπους πλὴν τοῖς ἔχουσι καθ’ ἕκαστον πολίτευμα πατρίους θύειν θυσίας. The senate, prompted by religious scruples, sent a delegation to Sicily in accordance with an oracle of the Sibylline Books. They visited throughout Sicily the altars set up to Aitnaian Zeus; here they offered sacrifice and fenced in the areas, and forbade access to them except in the case of those in each state who had ancestral sacrifices to perform. (Diod. 34/​3 5.10.1, trans. Walton, slightly modified)

This passage tells us a few things about the cult of Zeus Aitnaios in the second century bce. First, his altars were spread throughout Sicily (καθ’ ὅλην τὴν Σικελίαν), suggesting that the cult enjoyed a wide sphere of influence. Furthermore, Diodorus’ mention of “ancestral sacrifices” (πατρίους θυσίας) is intriguing and may indicate that hereditary priests performed sacrifices for Zeus Aitnaios. Though we should exercise caution in taking Diodorus’ account of second-​ century Sicily as evidence for the fifth century, his description of the Roman embassy’s visit to the altars of Zeus Aitnaios hints at the symbolic importance that the cult of Zeus Aitnaios may have also had in Sicily in the earlier period. Just as Olympian Zeus reigns over the largest mountain in mainland Greece, the most important Sicilian Zeus rules over the mountain that looms over and is visible from great distances across the rest of the island. While better evidence that would allow us to understand the prominence of Zeus Aitnaios in the Sicilian imagination is lacking, it is possible that Hieron selected this location for his colony because he recognized the symbolic power Zeus Aitnaios held, or had the potential to hold, for Greeks in Sicily.35

35. The desire for a Sicilian tyrant to promote, or possibly even create, a cult modeled after the cult of Olympian Zeus in Sicily may, in fact, be paralleled by Theron of Akragas, who began to build the temple for Zeus Olympios in Akragas. Diod. 13.82.1–​4, Polyb. 9.27.7–​9. Eveline Krummen has argued that Theron created his own “akragantinische” Olympia in Akragas



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We have seen that Zeus Aitnaios was an important civic symbol who was also integral to the religious structure of Aitna. In addition, Hieron chose both to name his new colony after the volcanic mountain that dominated the surrounding landscape and to take a particular interest in the cult of Zeus Aitnaios. With all of this in mind, I will now take a closer look at the role of Zeus Aitnaios in Pindar’s Pythian 1 to demonstrate how the figure of the god both shaped the image of the city of Aitna and authorized Hieron’s political power.36 Pythian 1 was composed for Hieron of Aitna on the occasion of his victory in the four-​horse chariot race at Delphi in 476. Its first performance most likely took place in the city of Aitna.37 The scholiasts say that there was a festival for Zeus Aitnaios called the Aitnaia at Aitna where epinician poems were performed,38 and Pindar’s odes for Aitna, including Pythian 1, may have been performed at this festival honoring the city’s patron god.39 Pythian 1 is the only one of Pindar’s three odes for Aitna that celebrates the city’s founder, Hieron (Nemeans 1 and 9 celebrate victories by Chromius).40 The ode is also unique among Pindar’s surviving odes as the only poem that honors the living founder of a city colonized in the fifth century. By contrast, Hieron commissioned Bacchylides’ Ode 4 in celebration of the same victory by Hieron of Syracuse, where the ode was probably first performed.41 If Pythian 1 was first and even modeled his temple of Zeus after the temple at Olympia (Krummen 1990: 235). See also Krummen 1990: 222–​23. Polybius recounts that there were temples to Athena and to Zeus Atabyrius on the citadel of Akragas and suggests that it is natural for the Akragantines to worship Zeus Atabyrius, the god named after the highest mountain on Rhodes, because Akragas is a Rhodian colony (9.27.7). It is striking that Aitnaian civic ideology emphasizes a local god rather than adopting one of the main deities of Syracuse or Corinth as its patron deity. On the temple of Zeus in Akragas, see ­chapter 4: 182, 186. 36. Though Pindar mentions Zeus Aitnaios in all three odes for victors from Aitna (Nemean 1, Nemean 9, and Pythian 1), I  will focus my discussion on Pythian 1 where he is treated most fully. 37. Morrison 2007: 66 suggests that “premiere in Sicily is certain for P. 1, and the characterization of Hieron as ‘Aitnaian’ suggests a performance at Aitna.” For performance at Aitna, see also Dougherty 1993: 100n47, Pfeijffer 2005: 18, Gentili 1995: 9. Pindar’s other odes for Hieron, Olympian 1, Pythian 2, and Pythian 3, celebrated Hieron of Syracuse rather than Hieron of Aitna, as did Bacchylides’ Odes 3, 4, 5. 38. Schol. N. 1.7b. 39. Morrison 2007: 67. 40. For a discussion of whether the victor’s city should be identified as Aitna or Syracuse in Nemean 1, see Chapter 1: 36, 70. 41. Dougherty 1993: 100n47 suggests that Hieron is from Syracuse in Bacchylides’ ode because it was performed at Delphi but from Aitna in Pindar’s because it was performed in

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performed in Aitna, as I think is likely, Pindar crafts the ode at least in part with a local audience in mind. This need not mean, of course, that the poem was not crafted to have meaning for Greeks living in other places throughout the Greek world (as it surely would have had in reperformances). Rather, the myths Pindar incorporates into Pythian 1 establish the new city as a mythically significant site that links the colony to a wider representational system of mythological landscape in Greek literature. I will argue that the myths in Pythian 1 represent different aspects of Aitnaian identity, both for audiences of Aitnaian citizens and for audiences in other parts of the Greek world. That is, these myths highlight what it means to be a citizen of Aitna and offer a way to think about Aitna as a city for someone living there or for a listener in a distant land. An investigation of the mythical and historical narratives in Pythian 1 will demonstrate how Pindar shapes a civic identity for Aitna in distinct ways through the two most extended narratives in the ode. First, he ties the Panhellenic myth of Zeus and Typho to local geographical sites that both recall and pay tribute to Hieron’s recent political achievements and highlight Mt. Aitna’s important role in the maintenance of Zeus’ kingship and the cosmic order. Second, he legitimizes Hieron’s new government and offers the Aitnaian citizens an ethnic identity by telling a narrative of shared descent that emphasizes their Dorian ancestry.42

The Myth of Zeus and Typho Pindar begins Pythian 1 with a hymn to the lyre, celebrating the effect of its music on mortals and immortals. As a transition between this opening (to which I  will return) and the announcement of the victory, Pindar describes Typho’s imprisonment under Mt. Aitna and provides a lengthy aetiology for the volcano’s activity. The myth of Typho in Pythian 1 is exceptional both for its vivid description of the volcanic eruption and for the way that it maps earlier

Sicily. See also Gentili 1995: 9. For a recent discussion of sites of initial performances and reperformances of Pindar’s odes at festivals, see Currie 2004. Hubbard 2004 argues that odes were reperformed at the sites of the athletic games. Eckerman 2012 presents strong arguments against first performances of epinician odes at Panhellenic sites. As Eckerman 2012:  345–​50 argues, we should not locate the first performance of Bacchylides’ Ode 4 in Delphi. 42.  Hall 1997:  25 argues that “[a]‌bove all else, though, it must be the myth of shared descent which ranks paramount among the features that distinguish ethnic from other social groups.”



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Greek traditions onto places that are politically significant for Hieron. This myth is also unique because Pindar focuses on a different part of the myth than all the other extant early Greek sources. When Pindar’s account begins, Typho has already been defeated by Zeus and is imprisoned under the volcanic Mt. Aitna. Pindar shifts both the temporal and spatial setting, and I will argue that both changes particularly suit the celebration of Hieron’s chariot victory and his foundation of Aitna. Earlier versions of the myth appear in three earlier poems:  the Iliad, Hesiod’s Theogony, and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. As we will see, none of the earlier sources locates Typho’s prison under Mt. Aitna in Sicily or even in the West. Did Pindar draw on another earlier source that no longer survives? Or was the localization of Typho’s prison under Mt. Aitna his innovation? Several scholars have argued that Pindar drew on another source or have assumed that the myth of Typho’s imprisonment under Mt. Aitna was already known before Pindar’s account. Adolf von Mess argued, for instance, that both Pindar and the author of Prometheus Bound, which contains a very similar version of the myth with close linguistic parallels to Pythian 1, borrowed from a third, earlier epic source.43 More recently, Andrew Morrison has posited that Pindar selected the myth of Typho’s suppression and imprisonment under Mt. Aitna as one of several possible mythical choices already established for the region.44 His argument takes it for granted that a link between Typho and Aitna was already known at the time of the original performance of Pythian 1.  However, the arguments against a tradition that placed Typho under Mt. Aitna earlier than Pindar’s ode are more compelling.45 Pindar appears, then, to

43. Von Mess 1901. Cf. Burton 1962: 97–​99. 44. Morrison 2007: 26. According to his argument, the audience of an ode for a Sicilian victor would have been held in particular suspense as they speculated about the subject of a myth because “there were no heroes associated directly with the cities of the island, though there were a few mythic creatures associated with Sicily, notably Typhos, exploited in Pythian 1” (Morrison 2007: 26). Cf. Willcock 1974 on the paucity of local Sicilian traditions for Pindar to incorporate into his odes. However, Pindar’s incorporation of the Syracusan traditions surrounding Arethusa, Demeter, and Persephone shows that local elements made important statements in the Syracusan odes (see ­chapters 1 and 2). 45.  Mark Griffith convincingly refutes the argument that Pindar and Aeschylus drew on a third, earlier epic source by observing that verbal similarities can all be explained if Prometheus Bound follows Pythian 1. He observes that “it would be too great a coincidence that Pindar, when he came to tell a story immediately after the 479/​5 eruption of Aetna, found a ready-​made epic version” (1978: 117–​20, quote from 119). Cf. Gentili 1995: 14. Debiasi 2008: 79–​94 attempted to revive the case for an earlier archaic epic source for the myth, but see the cogent arguments against this in Stamatopoulou 2017: 56–​63.

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be creating a new aetiological narrative for the Aitnaians by localizing in Sicily a myth that is a central part of the larger Greek tradition. The question of whether or not Pindar was the first poet to localize the myth of Typho under Mt. Aitna is less important than the fact that he chooses this version of the myth to express Hieron’s power as a ruler in Pythian 1. Pindar borrows and adapts elements of earlier versions of the myth to celebrate Hieron’s chariot victory and his recent foundation of Aitna, and a consideration of the references to Typho in Homer, Hesiod, and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo will make this clearer.

Earlier Versions of Zeus’ Suppression and Imprisonment of Typho In the Iliad, Typho46 plays only a very small role. He appears in one simile in which the poet compares the roar of the forward movement of the Greek army marching into battle to the sound made by Zeus when he was angrily battling the monster: Οἱ δ’ ἄρ’ ἴσαν ὡς εἴ τε πυρὶ χθὼν πᾶσα νέμοιτο· γαῖα δ’ ὑπεστενάχιζε Διὶ ὣς τερπικεραύνῳ χωομένῳ, ὅτε τ’ ἀμφὶ Τυφωέϊ γαῖαν ἱμάσσῃ εἰν Ἀρίμοις, ὅθι φασὶ Τυφωέος ἔμμεναι εὐνάς· And they went just as if the entire earth were consumed by fire: and the earth groaned below just as it groans below Zeus who delights in thunder in his anger when he smites the earth around Typhoeus among the Arimi, where they say the bed of Typhoeus is.  (Il. 2.780–​83) The poet highlights the visual and aural effects of the marching army through the use of two similes. The first containing the visual image of the earth consumed by fire conveys the quick, engulfing movement of the men. In the second simile, the sonic response of the earth is likened to its groaning when Zeus smites Typho with his thunderbolt to express the sound made by the march. Already in the Iliad, the confrontation between Zeus and Typho is distinguished for its auditory effect, and it is connected to the landscape as the battle shakes the very earth below them.

46. I refer to the monster called alternately Typho, Typhon, Typhoeus, and Typhaon as “Typho” throughout, except when translating an ancient source that names him by another name.



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The poet, furthermore, gives a specific, if mythical, location for the monster: “among the Arimi.” The Arimi appear only a few times in early Greek poetry, but according to Strabo they were a mythical people who may have been understood in antiquity as Scythians or neighbors of the Scythians.47 In the Iliad, Typho lies firmly in the world of myth. Representative of fire and thundering, he is mentioned only to convey the booming effect of the army’s advance. In the Theogony, Hesiod likewise places Typho among the Arimi (εἰν Ἀρίμοις).48 As part of a catalogue of monsters, Typho is mentioned as the consort of the half-​nymph, half-​monster Echidna. As in the Iliad, in the Theogony no further information is provided about the Arimi themselves, but here Echidna’s home is underground (ἣ δ᾽ ἔρυτ᾽ εἰν Ἀρίμοισιν ὑπὸ χθονὶ λυγρὴ Ἔχιδνα, “She, the baneful Echidna, keeps guard under the earth among the Arimi,” 304) in a hollow cave (σπῆι ἔνι γλαφυρῷ, 297). Typho, again, resides in a mythical land. However, Hesiod mentions the monster Typho again later in the poem and this time offers a detailed and extended narrative of his battle with Zeus. In the context of the Theogony, Zeus’ battle with Typho marks the final step in Zeus’ ascent to supreme power over the gods. It occurs after a series of myths in which sons usurp their fathers and in which Zeus overcomes threats from other enemies. After Zeus’ defeat of the Titans,49 Gaia lies with Tartarus and gives birth to the most powerful of her offspring, Typho (or “Typhoeus”), a monster with one hundred snake heads growing out of his shoulders, who seeks to overthrow the king of the gods.50 Typho turns out to be the fiercest opponent Zeus ever faced, and the god only narrowly defeats the monster. Hesiod includes a vivid description of the battle: Ζεὺς δ’ ἐπεὶ οὖν κόρθυνεν ἑὸν μένος, εἵλετο δ’ ὅπλα, βροντήν τε στεροπήν τε καὶ αἰθαλόεντα κεραυνόν, πλῆξεν ἀπ’ Οὐλύμποιο ἐπάλμενος· ἀμφὶ δὲ πάσας 855 ἔπρεσε θεσπεσίας κεφαλὰς δεινοῖο πελώρου.

47. Strabo 13.4.6. Strabo attempts to uncover the identity and location of the Arimi. Locations he proposes include Cilicia, Syria, and the Pithecussae Islands. 48. Hes. Theog. 304. 49. Hes. Theog. 664–​719. 50. Hes. Theog. 820–​38.

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αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ δή μιν δάμασε πληγῇσιν ἱμάσσας, ἤριπε γυιωθείς, στενάχιζε δὲ γαῖα πελώρη· φλὸξ δὲ κεραυνωθέντος ἀπέσσυτο τοῖο ἄνακτος οὔρεος ἐν βήσσῃσιν ἀιδνῇς παιπαλοέσσῇς 860 πληγέντος· πολλὴ δὲ πελώρη καίετο γαῖα αὐτμῇ θεσπεσίῃ καὶ ἐτήκετο κασσίτερος ὣς τέχνῃ ὑπ’ αἰζηῶν ἐν εὐτρήτοις χοάνοισι51 θαλφθείς, ἠὲ σίδηρος, ὅ περ κρατερώτατός ἐστιν, οὔρεος ἐν βήσσῃσι δαμαζόμενος πυρὶ κηλέῳ 865 τήκεται ἐν χθονὶ δίῃ ὑφ’ Ἡφαίστου παλάμῃσιν· ὣς ἄρα τήκετο γαῖα σέλαι πυρὸς αἰθομένοιο. ῥῖψε δέ μιν θυμῷ ἀκαχὼν ἐς Τάρταρον εὐρύν. When Zeus had accumulated his strength, then, and taken his weapons, the thunder, lightning, and blazing bolt, he leapt from Olympus and struck, and he scorched all the strange heads of the dreadful monster on every side. When he had overcome him by smiting him with blows, Typhoeus collapsed crippled, and the huge earth groaned. Flames shot from the thunderstruck lord where he was smitten down in the dark, rugged glens of the mountain. The huge earth burned far and wide with unbelievable heat, melting like tin that is heated by the skill of craftsmen in crucibles with bellow-​holes, or as iron, which is the strongest substance, when it is overpowered by burning fire in mountain glens, melts in the divine ground by Hephaistos’ craft: even so was the earth melting in the glare of the conflagration. And vexed at heart Zeus flung Typhoeus into broad Tartarus. (Hes. Theog. 853–​68, trans. West 1988, slightly modified) As in the passage from the Iliad and earlier descriptions of Zeus’ battle with the Titans, these lines are filled with the imagery of sound and sight.52 Now the earth is consumed by fire as a result of the confrontation: Zeus’ thunderbolt is “flashing” (αἰθαλόεντα κεραυνόν, 854), the earth groans (στονάχιζε, 858), and flames burn (859–​62) and even melt the entire earth (τήκετο γαῖα σέλαι πυρὸς

51. I reproduce the text of Merkelbach and West 1970, except in line 863, where I follow West 1966 (ἐν εὐτρήτοις χοάνοισι). 52. Goslin 2010 argues that Zeus’ victory over Typho, whose range and hybridity of sound are nearly unparalleled by other creatures, paves the way for the creation of song, which in turn structures the cosmos by enabling communication between gods and men.



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αἰθομένοιο, 866). In all likelihood, Hesiod does not specify the place where Zeus subdued the monster.53 However, even if Hesiod does refer to a mountain here, it is significant for the present argument that this mountain would designate the location of his defeat rather than of his prison. What is clear is that Hesiod places Typho’s final resting place in broad Tartarus. Two aspects of the narrative are most important for a discussion of Pythian 1. First, Zeus overcomes Typho only with great difficulty. Zeus’ victory marks not only the culmination of his own strength and power but also the saving of humankind. Earlier Hesiod emphasizes that “a thing past help would have come to pass that day, and he [i.e., Typho] would have become king of mortals and immortals, had the father of gods and men not taken sharp notice” (836–​ 38, trans. West). After Typho’s defeat, the other gods urge Zeus to become king of the immortals and he assigns them their privileges (881–​85). Zeus’ defeat of Typho is the culminating moment that secures his position as ruler of mortals and immortals. I will return to this significant moment in the Theogony shortly in my discussion of Pythian 1. Second, Hesiod clearly mentions two geographical locations in the above passage:  (1) Mt. Olympus from which Zeus springs into action against the

53.  In line 860, the text is particularly difficult to interpret. West persuasively argues for ἀιδνῆς rather than for the variant αἰτνῆς. While it is possible that ἀιδνῆς could represent a place name that is otherwise unattested, the word is more likely an adjective meaning “unseen” or “dark” that modifies βήσσῃσιν (glens). I follow the variant reading ἐν βήσσῃσιν ἀιδνῇς in the text of Merkelbach and West 1970 in this line, which renders the passage more lucid and intelligible. Tzetzes seems to have changed ἀιδνῆς to αἰτνῆς, but his emendation is almost certainly influenced by the narrative in Pindar and later accounts and does not provide convincing evidence that Hesiod located Typho in Aitna, especially since Hesiod adds in line 868 that Zeus cast the monster into Tartarus. Farnell is not troubled by the textual problem and thinks that Hesiod refers to Aitna here (1930: 108). West 1966, however, argues that there are “weighty reasons against [accepting] it [αἰτνῆς],” namely that it is metrically difficult, that ἀιδνῆς is the more difficult reading and is therefore more likely to be correct, and that the mythographers who annotated the text come from a vulgate tradition that follows Pindar and Aeschylus (s.v. 860). West 1966 s.v. 860 takes the position that the word refers to a particular mountain with “an otherwise unrecorded name, whether Ἀιδνή or something else that ἀιδνῆς has replaced.” He thus translates line 860: “in the mountain glens of rugged Aïdna.” He argues that the adjective meaning “dark, opaque” does not seem appropriate for wooded mountain glens, but this seems no more problematic than conjecturing an otherwise unattested mountain. In the end, a reading of the passage remains difficult. I am less convinced than West that Hesiod must refer to a particular mountain here, but it cannot be ruled out as a possibility. Now see also Stamatopoulou 2017: 61–​63 for a good summary of the textual problem. While arguing for ἀιδνῆ(ι)ς, she raises the intriguing possibility that αἰτνῆς could represent a local variant of the Hesiodic text that was altered for performances in Sicily.

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monster (Theog. 855, see also earlier where “great Olympus shook under the divine feet of the lord as he rose,” 842); and (2) broad Tartarus where Typho is confined after being soundly defeated in battle by Zeus (868). Zeus fights from Olympus as the ruler of the Olympians while Typho’s prison is located in Tartarus (who also, personified, happens to be Typho’s father) with the other transgressors after they have been defeated by Zeus. Like Homer, Hesiod locates Typho’s prison in a mythical place. What matters more for the narrative of the Theogony is that Typho—​the final in a series of challengers to Zeus’ power—​has been defeated and less where he lies in defeat. Typho appears in one other passage that predates Pythian 1. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (305—​55), Hera grows angry with Zeus because he gave birth to Athena without her. In response, she conceives the monster Typho (Typhaon) and gives birth to him without Zeus. After his birth, Hera places him in the care of the snake Pytho. He reappears later in the poem when Apollo slays his nurse in anger because she has deceived him. As the dying monster Pytho gasps her final breaths, the god boasts: οὐδέ τί τοι θάνατον γε δυσηλεγέ’ οὔτε Τυφωεὺς ἀρκέσει οὔτε Χίμαιρα δυσώνυμος, ἀλλά σέ γ’ αὐτοῦ πύσει Γαῖα μέλαινα καὶ ἠλέκτωρ Ὑπερίων. And neither will Typho nor the ill-​famed Chimaira ward off painful death from you in any way, but the black earth and shining Hyperion will cause you to rot here.  (Hymn. Hom. Ap. 367—​69) Apollo’s boast that Typho and Chimaira cannot save Pytho from death asserts his supremacy over this set of threatening monsters who ultimately cannot match the god’s strength. At the same time, he was born out of Hera’s anger at Zeus to be “a bane to mortals” (πῆμα βροτοῖσιν, 352). In the Hymn to Apollo, Typho is conceived out of Hera’s anger with Zeus and is cast as inimical to Apollo when the god names him as a potential helper of his nurse, Pytho. In early Greek poetry, then, Typho is an enemy, or is aligned with the enemies, of Zeus and of Apollo in different traditions. His adversarial relationship with both gods allows Pindar in Pythian 1 to use the monster to honor the patron god of the contests at Delphi and, at the same time, to celebrate the authority of the patron god of the victor’s city, Zeus Aitnaios.54 However, the

54. Morgan 2015: 310 connects the opening celebration of Apollo and Zeus to the powers of kings and poets in Hesiod’s Theogony, where “both kings and poets employ authoritative



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localization of Typho under Aitna was not a set element of the myth for Pindar. Rather, three mentions of Typho by Pindar in addition to the myth in Pythian 1 show that he connects the monster and the mountain only when celebrating victories by Sicilians. In Olympian 4 in celebration of the victory of a Sicilian, Psaumis of Kamarina, Typho lies once again under Mt. Aitna: ἀλλὰ Κρόνου παῖ, ὃς Αἴτναν ἔχεις ἶπον ἀνεμόεσσαν ἑκατογκεφάλα    Τυφῶνος ὀβρίμου But, son of Kronos, you who hold Aitna, the windy weight upon mighty hundred-​headed Typho  (O.  4.6—​7) Olympian 4 celebrates a victory won by Psaumis in the 450s.55 Nigel Nicholson has convincingly argued that Pindar’s invocation of Zeus Aitnaios here not only recalls the myth of Typho and Zeus Aitnaios in Pythian 1 but also evokes Hieron’s larger political order. In Olympian 4, another ode for a Sicilian victor, these symbols align the victor, Psaumis, with Hieron’s ideological system.56 By contrast, two other appearances of Typho in Pindar’s poetry place Typho in other geographical spots. Pindar mentions Typho again in Pythian 8, but now, in an ode celebrating a wrestling victory by Aristomenes of Aegina in 446, there is no mention of Mt. Aitna. Instead Typho is simply Cilician (Τυφὼς Κίλιξ ἑκατόγκρανος οὔ νιν ἄλυξεν, P. 8.16).57 The monster appears again in fr. 93 which is preserved by Strabo as part of his discussion of the location of the

discourse in the pursuit of justice. Kings come from Zeus, and poets from Apollo and the Muses, but it is the gifts of the Muses that enable the king to settle disputes. Here too, music metaphorically helps to create judgments, and it is the enemies of Zeus who will be found to be wanting.” For a different view on the relationship between Pythian 1 and earlier versions of the myth, see Kollmann 1989: 106–​7. 55. On the dating of Olympian 4, see Nicholson 2011: 94 with note 3. The ode celebrates a victory in either 456 or 452. For the present argument, the precise date matters less than the fact that this ode was composed after the fall of the Deinomenids and later than Pythian 1. 56.  Nicholson 2011:  97. Nicholson points out that since there is no evidence for the cult of Zeus Aitnaios in Kamarina at this time, the invocation of Zeus Aitnaios in an ode for Psaumis, who was very likely a former mercenary under Hieron, aligned him with Hieron’s political program (2011: 96–​103). 57. Pindar transfers Typho’s origins from the mythical land of the Arimi to a known place, Cilicia, on the Asia Minor coast near Cyprus. On Cilicia and the Arimi, see Strabo 13.4.6. Callisthenes says there was a mountain range named Arima in Cilicia (FGrH 124 F 33).

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Arimi. In the excerpt, Zeus smites fifty-​headed Typho “among the Arimi.” Unfortunately, no context is provided for the fragment, but it is noteworthy that Typho’s location in this passage follows the tradition in Homer and Hesiod.58 Typho’s appearances in Pythian 8 and fr. 93 demonstrate that his imprisonment under Mt. Aitna was not a set element of the story for Pindar. Instead, the localization of Typho under Mt. Aitna was crafted to address specific concerns of the new city.

Typho’s Aitnaian Prison in Pythian 1 When Pindar places Typho under Aitna, he does not simply choose a myth that is traditionally associated with the local landscape. A closer examination of the text of Pythian 1 will show how his adaptation of the myth for Aitna reinforces Hieron’s authority and at the same time transforms the Aitnaian countryside into a meaningful place for audiences in Aitna, in Sicily more broadly, and across the Panhellenic world. The myth of Typho’s imprisonment is notable for the rich description of the volcanic eruption as an expression of Typho’s rage. The eruption of Aitna in Pythian 1 is the fullest representation of any local landscape in Pindar’s epinician odes,59 and it is no coincidence that this extended description of the earth appears in an ode for a new colony. Pindar transports the more traditional telling of the myth of Zeus and Typho into a new setting (both spatially and temporally) to provide a land-​ myth60 for Aitna—​that is, a myth that explains why the land itself has value by establishing its place in a longstanding tradition of Greek myth. Pythian 1 begins with an invocation of the lyre in celebration of its power as the instrument of the victory revel and its power over the immortal gods: Χρυσέα φόρμιγξ, Ἀπόλλωνος καὶ ἰοπλοκάμων σύνδικον Μοισᾶν κτέανον· τᾶς ἀκούει    μὲν βάσις ἀγλαΐας ἀρχά, πείθονται δ’ ἀοιδοὶ σάμασιν ἁγησιχόρων ὁπόταν προοιμίων    ἀμβολὰς τεύχῃς ἐλελιζομένα. καὶ τὸν αἰχματὰν κεραυνὸν σβεννύεις 5

58. Strabo 13.4.6. 59. Currie 2012: 297. 60. For Irad Malkin’s definition of a “land-​myth,” see the preceding discussion.



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αἰενάου πυρός. εὕδει δ’ ἀνὰ σκά-​    πτῳ Διὸς αἰετός, ὠκεῖ-​    αν πτέρυγ’ ἀμφοτέρωθεν χαλάξαις, ἀρχὸς οἰωνῶν, κελαινῶπιν δ’ ἐπί οἱ νεφέλαν ἀγκύλῳ κρατί, γλεφάρων ἁδὺ κλάι-​    θρον, κατέχευας· ὁ δὲ κνώσσων ὑγρὸν νῶτον αἰωρεῖ, τεαῖς10 ῥιπαῖσι κατασχόμενος. Golden lyre, rightful possession of Apollo and the violet-​haired Muses, to whom the step, the beginning of the celebration, listens, and whose signs singers obey whenever you, quivering, strike up chorus-​leading preludes. And you quench the warring thunderbolt of ever-​flowing fire. And the eagle sleeps on the scepter of Zeus, having relaxed his swift wings on both sides, the leader of birds, and you have poured a black-​faced cloud down over his curved head, a sweet cover for the eyelids. And he, slumbering, raises his supple back held back by your blasts.  (P. 1.1–​10) The lyre,61 as the agent of Apollo and the Muses, directs the dancers and singers of the chorus who obey its sound.62 The opening surely refers to the performance of the ode itself at Aitna, but, as Charles Segal and Lucia Athanassaki have argued, the song of human choral performers merges with an imagined divine performance on Olympus in line 6.63 The lyre affects performers and audiences in both mortal and Olympian settings in a similar way. The lyre’s music even overcomes physical strength as it quenches Zeus’ thunderbolt (τὸν αἰχματὰν κεραυνὸν σβεννύεις, 5) and lulls to sleep the eagle perched on ​ τῳ Διὸς αἰετός, 6).64 This description recalls the image his scepter (ἀνὰ σκά-​/π

61. Barker 1989: 56, commenting on this passage, observes that “Pindar’s instrument was certainly what came to be called the kithara, though he himself does not use the word.” However, West 1992: 51 argues that Pindar uses the terms phorminx and lyrā interchangeably both to refer to the box lyre. See also West 1992: 346 with note 82. In the opening of Pythian 1, where the phorminx is the leader of the dance, the larger kithara seems more likely than the box lyre. 62. On the legal sense of σύνδικον in this passage, see Morgan 2015: 344. 63. Segal 1998: 13, Athanassaki 2009: 246–​48, Fearn 2017: 174. Morgan 2015: 312–​13 argues that the performance in the opening should be understood as a paradigmatic performance on Olympia. The Olympian performance, then, would have resonated with performances of the ode, whether in Sicily or elsewhere. 64. See Morgan 2015: 123–​32 for a discussion of Pindar’s alignment of the victor and poet with the eagle of Zeus in the Sicilian odes.

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of Zeus Aitnaios on the Aitnaian tetradrachm minted in the same period as the ode’s performance (discussed earlier). However, it is unclear that the god in the opening of Pythian 1 must be Zeus Aitnaios. The eagle, the thunderbolt, and the scepter are three of the most characteristic symbols of Zeus’ power, all commonly associated with the god as sovereign over mortals and immortals in early Greek poetry and in contemporary visual representations.65 In other iterations of the battle between Zeus and Typho, it is Olympian Zeus, king of mortals and immortals, who subdues the monster. In these lines, Zeus’ “thunderbolt of ever flowing fire” (lines 5–​6) also recalls his “flashing thunderbolt” in the Theogony (line 854). The Zeus in the opening of Pythian 1 can thus represent both the local Zeus Aitnaios and Zeus as the ruler of the Olympians.66 Just as Pindar merges the local human choral performance with the divine Olympian performance, he also simultaneously evokes the two aspects of the god as linked to the Aitnaian countryside and as sovereign on Olympus. The lyre quenches Zeus’ thunderbolt, soothes the eagle, and charms Ares, the god of war, but its music bewilders creatures Zeus does not love, and especially his most powerful adversary in the Hesiodic narrative of his rise to power—​the monster Typho. Initially, Pindar’s characterization of Typho and the geographical sites associated with the monster essentially correspond to those in the Homeric and Hesiodic accounts: ὅσσα δὲ μὴ πεφίληκε Ζεύς, ἀτύζονται βοάν Πιερίδων ἀίοντα, γᾶν τε καὶ πόν-​    τον κατ’ ἀμαιμάκετον, ὅς τ’ ἐν αἰνᾷ Ταρτάρῳ κεῖται, θεῶν πολέμιος, Τυφὼς ἑκατοντακάρανος· τόν ποτε Κιλίκιον θρέψεν πολυώνυμον ἄντρον·

65. So Burkert 1985: 127 observes that Zeus basileus “is seen by the Greeks in two images: as the boldly striding warrior who swings the thunderbolt in his raised right hand, and as the figure enthroned with sceptre in hand. His creature is the eagle.” Cf. Gantz 1993: 48 and Cook 1925: 1131–​34. Kossatz-​Deissmann 1978: 43 and Brillante 1992: 13–​14 compare the opening of Pythian 1 to Pheidias’ seated cult statue of Zeus at Olympia. 66. On the unity of gods and goddesses with different cult epithets, see Parker 2003. On the unity of Zeuses in particular, he insists that the cult epithet allows the god to be “very close at hand, if it is topographic. And yet that figure also has all the power and dignity of one of the greatest Olympians” (Parker 2003: 182).



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But as many as Zeus does not love, they are bewildered when they hear the shout of the Pierians, those throughout the earth and the unyielding sea, and the one who lies in dread Tartarus, enemy of the gods, Typho with one hundred heads. Him the renowned Cilician cave once raised.  (P. 1.13-​17) As in the Theogony, the defeated monster lies in Tartarus (cf. Theog. 868). The “renowned Cilician cave” does not appear in earlier versions of the story that survive, but it may be an alternate way of referring to the Arimi mentioned by both Homer and Hesiod.67 The famous Cilician cave “raised” Typho. This glimpse of the monster’s youth recalls his upbringing in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, where the snaky Pytho acts as his nurse. Typho again has one hundred heads (16). So far, in lines 13–​17, Typho, his place of origin, and the location of his prison correspond fairly closely to the monster portrayed in the Theogony. Though similar in its geographical details, the beginning of Pindar’s description in lines 13–​17 already makes an important temporal move from Hesiod’s version. Pindar covers a wider span of mythical time than the narratives of Hesiod’s Theogony and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. This temporal range brings the myth into the present moment of performance—​from the illud tempus to the hic et nunc.68 Rather than describing the battle between Zeus and the monster, from the beginning of the description Pindar’s Typho already lies in Tartarus in the present tense (κεῖται, 15).69 While in the Homeric Hymn Zeus struggles in his fight against the monster, in Pindar’s version Zeus’ domination of his enemy is effortless. Part of the descriptive power of the passage, moreover, results from the way that Pindar merges space (including both “mythical” and “actual” landscapes) and time (the mythical past with the present at the time of each performance). Typho can at once be in Tartarus and under Cumae, Sicily, and Mt. Aitna. Instead of describing Zeus’

67.  “Cilician caves” are mentioned in Prometheus Bound, 351–​52, where Prometheus calls Typho the “earthborn inhabitant of the Cilician cave” (γηγενῆ τε Κιλικίων οἰκήτορα /​ ἄντρων). In Hesiod’s Theogony, the Echidna’s cave, where Typho spends time as her lover, lies among the Arimi (Theog. 297, 304). The adjective πολυώνυμον, literally “of many names,” in Pythian 1 may even acknowledge the many possibilities for the location of the Arimi and the cave. 68. See Kowalzig 2007: 24–​32 (especially p. 24) on the way aetiological myths connect the mythical past to the present performance. Cf. Athanassaki 2009: 249–​50. See Athanassaki 2004: 334 for a similar temporal effect at Olympian 1.90. See also Stamatopoulou 2017: 55. 69.  Kollmann 1989:  98. Athanassaki 2009:  249–​50 argues that Typho is in Tartarus in the mythical past, but the present tense κεῖται places him in Tartarus in the present. Fearn 2017: 179, differently, stresses that in contrast with the Theogony, in Pythian 1, “Zeus’ triumph is on-​going, with divine ease defined by victories achieved in the past that continue to resonate into and serve to define the timeless present.”

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rise to power, Pindar zooms in on a moment when the monster has already been subdued and suspends it in the present moment of the ode’s performance.70 Typho may continue to fume in his prison, but there is no question that Zeus is the clear winner as Hieron is the true victor, both in the chariot race and over his enemies in battle. After relating the mythical narrative to the earlier tradition in lines 13–​17, Pindar transforms the story into an extended fusion of mythical details and local Aitnaian landscape that creates a role for the volcano in the maintenance of the cosmic order:                  νῦν γε μάν ταί θ’ ὑπὲρ Κύμας ἁλιερκέες ὄχθαι Σικελία τ’ αὐτοῦ πιέζει    στέρνα λαχνάεντα· κίων δ’ οὐρανία συνέχει, νιφόεσσ’ Αἴτνα, πάνετες χιόνος ὀξείας τιθήνα· Now, however, the sea-​girt hills above Cumae and Sicily press down upon his shaggy chest. And a heavenly column, snowy Aitna, holds him fast, a yearlong nurse of biting snow.  (P. 1.17–​20) The deictic νῦν γε μάν, “now, however,” in line 17 propels the story into the present in contrast with the ποτε, “once,” in line 16.71 The jump forward in time places extra emphasis on the local material that Pindar is about to incorporate into the myth. Now (νῦν), in mythical time and in the time of the performance, Typho is constrained by the hills above Cumae,72 by Sicily, and by snowy Aitna. Pindar’s pinning of Typho under Mt. Aitna gives meaning to the eponymous city by proclaiming a role for the volcano (and thus its surrounding territory) in the myth of Zeus’ ordering of the cosmos and rise to power as king of the

70.  As we have seen, the Homeric Hymn to Apollo likewise takes a different point of departure, focusing on Typho’s youth spent with Pytho and passing over his battle with Zeus to highlight his part in Apollo’s story. On Pindar’s “cinematography,” see Eckerman 2015b. 71. Athanassaki notes that the νῦν here “as elsewhere in Pindar covers the wide timespan from illud tempus to the present” (2009: 249–​50). See also Felson 2004: 257 on “time deixis.” 72. For a discussion of the precise meaning of ταί . . . ἁλιερκέες ὄχθαι here, see Kollmann 1989: 109–​11. The phrase refers either to the hills above Cumae or to the shores of a nearby island. Kollmann concludes that while the expression probably refers to Ischia if it must refer to a single place, it can be best understood as a general allusion that allows for multiple interpretations and ultimately should be identified with Cumae because of the importance of that site for Hieron (1989: 110–​11).



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Olympian gods. In Pindar’s ode, local sites, and especially Mt. Aitna as the culminating element in the tricolon, take on the task of containing the monster and helping to uphold the cosmic order that Zeus has established.73 Kathryn Morgan observes that Pindar’s description of Mt. Aitna as a heavenly column (κίων δ’ οὐρανία, 19) makes Aitna “the chief instrument of torture for Typhon” in the description.74 Typho’s ongoing imprisonment under Mt. Aitna links the monster and the ruler of the gods to the natural spectacle of the volcanic eruption, and the recently active but now calm volcano acts as a constant renewal and permanent visual reminder of the cosmic and civic order established in Pythian 1.75 As Pindar writes the Aitnaian landscape into the earlier Greek myth by placing the monster’s residence under the mountain, he simultaneously reinforces Hieron’s political authority over the city.76 The theme of order introduced by the civilizing power of the lyre reappears here and throughout the poem. The three sites of Typho’s prison in the West all carry specific political significance for Hieron. Bruno Gentili has observed that in this passage: Geografia mitica e realtà storica vengono dunque a coincidere: Tifone giace disteso sotto la vasta regione vulcanica che ha il suo epicentro meridionale in Sicilia, nell’ Etna, e quello settentrionale nell’ area che comprende il Vesuvio, i Campi Flegrei e le isole antistanti Cuma; Cuma segna i confini settentrionali del potere di Ierone, e diventa insieme a Etna nella seconda parte dell’ ode il fulcro dell’ encomio del tiranno. Mythical geography and historical reality therefore converge: Typhon lies outstretched under the vast volcanic region which has its southern epicenter in Sicily, in Aitna, and the northern one in the area that includes Vesuvius, the plain of Phlegra, and the islands

73.  Mann 2001:  264 argues that this is the only time that Pindar localizes a myth in the odes for Hieron, but he overlooks mythical allusions that are not part of a more extended narrative. 74. Morgan 2015: 317. 75. For the idea that physical markers, such as objects or localities, function as hinges between the mythical past and the singer’s present, see Kowalzig 2007: 24–​32, especially 32. 76.  On the snake-​slaying trope in foundation narratives, see Trumpf 1958, Fontenrose 1959:  70–​93, Watkins 1995:  448–​59, Ogden 2013:  69–​80. Fearn 2017:  174 reads Pindar’s description of the eruption of Mt. Aitna as a framing device that “disrupts the encomiastic flow” before it begins instead of a clear statement about Hieron’s authority in the newly founded city. My interpretation of the poem differs considerably throughout from Fearn 2017: 168–​228, who proposes that Pindar’s use of ekphrasis and focus on the lyric voice in Pythian 1 opens the victor and his foundation of Aitna up to scrutiny.

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opposite Cumae. Cumae marks the northern limits of Hieron’s power, and, together with Aitna, it becomes the axis of the tyrant’s praise in the second part of the ode. (Gentili 1995: 14) Just as Zeus has subdued the monster, Hieron has subdued his enemies at Cumae, in Sicily, and at the foot of Mt. Aitna in the city of Katane. As Gentili notices, Typho’s prison corresponds suitably to the northern and southern limits of Hieron’s influence in the western Mediterranean.77 At Cumae, Hieron defeated the Etruscans and the Carthaginians in battle in 474. The significance of the place is implicit for any audience member who knows that Hieron recently won this battle against the Etruscans and the Carthaginians, but later in the ode a few lines make this even clearer. At line 72, Pindar explicitly draws attention to Hieron’s success. The battle at Cumae, which fittingly lies beside another active volcanic area at Mt. Vesuvius, was the most significant battle of Hieron’s military career that he won without the aid of his brother Gelon: λίσσομαι νεῦσον, Κρονίων, ἥμερον71 ὄφρα κατ’ οἶκον ὁ Φοίνιξ ὁ Τυρσα-​    νῶν τ’ ἀλαλατὸς ἔχῃ, ναυ-​    σίστονον ὕβριν ἰδὼν τὰν πρὸ Κύμας, οἷα Συρακοσίων ἀρχῷ δαμασθέντες πάθον, ὠκυπόρων ἀπὸ ναῶν ὅ σφιν ἐν πόν-​    τῳ βάλεθ’ ἁλικίαν, Ἑλλάδ’ ἐξέλκων βαρείας δουλίας. ἀρέομαι 75 πὰρ μὲν Σαλαμῖνος Ἀθαναίων χάριν μισθόν, ἐν Σπάρτᾳ δ’ τᾶν πρὸ Κιθαιρῶ-​    νος μαχᾶν, ταῖσι Μήδειοι κάμον ἀγκυλότοξοι, παρὰ δὲ τὰν εὔυδρον ἀκτὰν    Ἱμέρα παίδεσσιν ὕμνον Δεινομένεος τελέσαις,    τὸν ἐδέξαντ’ ἀμφ’ ἀρετᾷ, πολεμίων ἀνδρῶν καμόντων. I pray grant, son of Kronos, that the Phoenician and the war cry of the Etruscans remain peacefully at home, after seeing their ship-​wrecking insolence before Cumae, such things they suffered when they were defeated by the leader of the Syracusans, who cast their youth into the sea from swiftly sailing ships, drawing Greece away from heavy slavery. I shall win from Salamis the gratitude of the Athenians, and in Sparta 77. See also Mann 2001: 264.



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from the battles before Kithairon, in which the curved-​bowed Medes toiled, but beside the well-​watered shore of the Himeras having finished a hymn for the sons of Deinomenes, which they received through their excellence after their enemies had toiled.  (P. 1.71–​80) The poet suggests that, with this victory, Hieron has delivered Greece itself from slavery (line 75). The battle is presented as the culminating event in the fight for freedom after the Battle of Himera (won by Hieron’s brother Gelon in 480) and the Athenian and Spartan victories at Salamis and Plataia against the Persians. The emphasis on cosmic order and the quelling of hostile forces in the opening invites an analogy between Hieron and Zeus that Pindar strengthens when he recalls the barbarians he has defeated in lines 71–​75.78 In addition to being located beneath Cumae, Typho’s prison lies under the entire island of Sicily (line 19). By 470, the Emmenid tyrants in Akragas had fallen from power and Hieron was the most powerful ruler on the island.79 Typho’s prison may, therefore, operate as another expression of Hieron’s supremacy and expanding power on the island since all of Sicily constrains the monster and the site is not limited to eastern Sicily.80 Finally, and most significantly, Typho’s prison lies under the volcanic Mt. Aitna that loomed above Hieron’s new city of Aitna (lines 19–​20). Hieron, through his son Deinomenes, creates civic order and later in the ode, Pindar assures Hieron that by honoring his people he can turn them toward “harmonious peace” (συμφώνον ἐς ἡσυχίαν, 70). Typho’s position under Mt. Aitna glorifies the city, but also serves as an enduring reminder of the dire consequences of upsetting the proper order, whether cosmic or civic. The ode offers the new citizens of Aitna a celebration of their new homeland woven into the physical landscape. The choral performers, who were likely citizens of the new colony themselves at the performance in Aitna, would have shaped the audience’s perception of the landscape through their performance. In an article that argues that language has the power to shape and even create a place, Yi-​Fu Tuan has demonstrated that myths have a special ability to strengthen a people’s attachment to a place “by weaving in observable features in the landscape.”81 He offers as an example the Dreamtime

78. Burton 1962: 105 and Morgan 2015: 313–​20. For a different interpretation of this passage, see Fearn 2017: 207–​11. 79. On Bacchylides’ representation of Hieron as the ruler of Sicily, see ­chapter 2: 112–​183. 80. See c­ hapter 2 for a discussion of Demeter and Persephone and symbols of Hieron’s control of the island of Sicily. 81. Tuan 1991: 686.

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wanderings of the Australian Aborigines, who make sense of their environment through songs that recall the actions, both mundane and ritually significant, performed by their ancestors in particular points in the landscape. Through performing these songs, the Australian Aborigines, Tuan suggests, “have sung the world into existence.”82 Choral performance similarly had the power to shape a community’s collective understanding of its landscape.83 This effect is especially powerful when performed in view of the place it represents and redefines, but still effective even when a song evokes and describes an unseen place. Pindar’s memorable description of Typho’s prison under Mt. Aitna would have strongly shaped a shared image of the Aitnaian landscape for audiences at home and abroad. Typho’s prison under the volcano literally brings the Aitnaian landscape to life,84 and the vivid description of a volcanic eruption caused by his anger makes the site of the mountain unique, significant, and even wondrous:          κίων δ’ οὐρανία συνέχει, νιφόεσσ’ Αἴτνα, πάνετες χιόνος ὀξείας τιθήνα·20 τᾶς ἐρεύγονται μὲν ἀπλάτου πυρὸς ἁγνόταται ἐκ μυχῶν παγαί· ποταμοὶ δ’ ἁμέραισιν    μὲν προχέοντι ῥόον καπνοῦ αἴθων’· ἀλλ’ ἐν ὄρφναισιν πέτρας φοίνισσα κυλινδομένα φλὸξ ἐς βαθεῖ-​    αν φέρει πόντου πλάκα σὺν πατάγῳ. κεῖνο δ’ Ἁφαίστοιο κρουνοὺς ἑρπετόν25 δεινοτάτους ἀναπέμπει· τέρας μὲν    θαυμάσιον προσιδέσθαι,    θαῦμα δὲ καὶ παρεόντων ἀκοῦσαι. . .  And a heavenly column, snowy Aitna, holds him fast, a yearlong nurse of biting snow. From which the most pure springs of unapproachable

82. Tuan 1991: 687. For a discussion of scholarship on the relationship between literature and place, see the Introduction: 17–​24. 83.  Kowalzig 2007:  41–​42 argues that “ritual binds cult places and sacred places into the construction of a tradition by constantly redefining and adapting the role of religious locality in the ritual process, imbuing them with new roles in the past according to present circumstances.” See also Kowalzig 2007: 69–​80 for the mapping of religious space through ritual song on Delos. 84. Cf. Morgan 2015: 20.



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fire belch forth, and by day rivers pour forth a blazing flow of smoke, but in the darkness a rolling red flame carries rocks into the deep expanse of the sea with a crash. And that monster sends up the most terrible springs of Hephaistos. A marvel that is wondrous to look upon, and a wonder even to hear of from those who were present.   (P. 1.19–​26) Here, Pindar personifies the mountain. Mt. Aitna is a “yearlong nurse of biting snow.” The representation of the land, or even a city, as a nurse is not unusual, but instead of promoting growth the mountain nurse fosters a harsh and barren terrain.85 The poet’s choice to describe the mountain as a nurse is particularly remarkable when read alongside the tradition in the Hymn to Apollo, where Pytho nurses the young monster. The personification of the landscape may even point to the version of the myth that Pindar does not tell in Pythian 1 while at the same time highlighting the innovative detail that links myth and place: instead of Pytho, the Hymn’s female, monstrous, mythical nurse, Pindar supplies Mt. Aitna—​a tangible, local feature of the Aitnaian landscape that represents the city below it—​as Typho’s nurse. To emphasize this personification of the land, the volcano’s most pure springs of fire “belch forth” (ἐρεύγονται). The verb ἐρεύγομαι is relatively uncommon in archaic and classical Greek outside of Homeric epic. Its two main senses in the Iliad and the Odyssey refer either to the crash of water against the shore or to the bellowing of animals.86 Pindar has masterfully repurposed this verb to describe the flowing lava—​liquefied rock that comes from the depths of the earth—​that is also personified:  the streams rush from the mountain flowing into the sea with a crash but these sounds also emanate from the suffering monster, Typho.87 Pythian 1 was first performed just a few years after a major volcanic eruption that some members of the audience may have witnessed firsthand.88 85. For Syracuse as a nurse of men and horses, see, e.g., P. 2.2 (ἀνδρῶν ἵππων τε σιδαροχαρμᾶν διαμόνιαι τροφοί). On the strange phrase, see Morgan 2015: 319. 86. The verb appears eight times in Homer, once in a fragment of Alcaeus, and twice in Pindar. For the crashing of water, see Il. 17.265, Od. 5.403, Od. 5.438. For the bellowing of animals, including the belching of the drunken, uncivilized Polyphemos, see Il. 20.403, Il. 20.404, Il. 20.406, Od. 9.374. At Il. 16.162 the verb describes wolves vomiting up clotted blood after devouring their prey. 87. In book 20 of the Iliad, the verb refers to the bellowing of cattle, and it may resonate with the bronze bull of Phalaris at the end of the ode. 88.  On the eruption of Aitna, see Thuc. 3.116.2 and Marmor Parium, FGrH 239 A  52. Bonnano 2010: 131 with note 7 suggests that during this very active period the volcano may have erupted more than once.

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Deictic references in the passage create a sense of immediacy and proximity. The effect would have been especially powerful during a performance in Aitna with the active volcano in sight, but this language also brings the eruption to life for other audiences.89 Typho lurks just below the surface and causes this destruction with his disruptive rage. The deictic κεῖνο highlights his placement under the volcano:  “that monster sends up most terrible springs of Hephaistos” (25–​26). Though the monster is more distant than the volcano itself (“this mountain” τοῦτ’ . . . ὄρος, line 30), he too is understood in relation to the place of performance. The eruption itself is styled as a spectacle that dazzles the senses: it is a “wondrous portent to look upon and a wonder even to hear of from those present” (τέρας μὲν θαυμάσιον προσιδέσθαι, θαῦμα δὲ καὶ παρεόντων ἀκοῦσαι, 26). The repetition of θαυμάσιον and θαῦμα places emphasis on the striking visual display made by the volcanic eruption.90 The description ends with the introduction of a third sense—​the sense of touch. Similarly to the way in which Pindar inverted the expected sense of “nurse,”Typho’s bed becomes a sharp instrument of torture rather than a place of rest or repose: οἷον Αἴτνας ἐν μελαμφύλλοις δέδεται κορυφαῖς καὶ πέδῳ, στρωμνὰ δὲ χαράσσοισ’ ἅπαν νῶ-​    τον ποτικεκλιμένον κεντεῖ. Such a one is bound in the dark and leafy peaks and in the plain, and a bed tearing into him goads his entire back as it leans against it.  (P. 1.27–​28) Typho’s prison under Aitna moves closer to the audience and becomes more vivid. After the graphic description of the eruption, the image of the plain goading Typho’s back returns to the moment of performance when the monster has once again been stilled. It also recalls the supple back of Zeus’ eagle, lulled to sleep by the lyre earlier in the ode (line 10).91 Typho now lies

89. Morrison 2007: 101, Morrison 2012: 131, Phillips 2016: 151–​52 and, on later reception and rereading of the ode, 157–​65. 90. The phrase τέρας . . . θαυμάσιον προσιδέσθαι recalls a Homeric expression for amazement, often at crafted objects like weapons or buildings: θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι. See Prier 1989 on this formula in archaic Greek. Cf. Il. 5.725, 10.439, 18.83, 18.377; Od. 6.306, 7.45, 8.366, 13.108, Hymn Dem. 427, Aphrodite 90. Theogony 575, 581. Phillips 2016: 151 observes that τέρας here adds a visual element that θαῦμα does not contain on its own. 91. Gantz 1974: 150 notices the stark contrast between the eagle’s back as it sleeps and Typho’s back as it is goaded by the sharp plain.



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constrained within and beneath the dark and leafy peaks and the plain—​the very plain below the mountain where the performance was likely taking place. The mythical narrative concludes with a prayer to Zeus, returning to the god in a ring structure that, as Carol Dougherty has observed, allows Zeus to contain Typho within the ode itself.92 Another deictic reference powerfully asserts the god’s connection to the mountain: εἴη, Ζεῦ, τὶν εἴη ἁνδάνειν, ὃς τοῦτ’ ἐφέπεις ὄρος, εὐκάρποιο γαί-​    ας μέτωπον, τοῦ μὲν ἐπωνυμίαν κλεινὸς οἰκιστὴρ ἐκύδανεν πόλιν γείτονα, Πυθιάδος δ’ ἐν δρόμῳ κά-​    ρυξ ἀνέειπέ νιν ἀγγέλ-​    λων Ἱέρωνος ὑπὲρ καλλινίκου ἅρμασι. May it be possible, Zeus, may it be possible to be pleasing to you, who rule over this mountain, the brow of the fruitful earth, whose neighboring city of the same name the famous founder glorified and in the course of the Pythian games the herald proclaimed it announcing it on behalf of Hieron’s beautiful victory with the chariot.  (P. 1.29–​33) Unlike the opening lines of the ode in which Zeus has not yet been connected to the mountain, here the poet hails the god as Zeus, “you who rule this mountain.” The landscape has become the focal point of the prayer.93 Now that the mountain is under the influence of Zeus instead of the monster, Pindar describes it as the “brow of the fruitful land” (line 30) rather than “the nurse of biting snow” (line 20). The landscape imagery is central to the mythical narrative, and its message is clear: adherence to the proper order brings prosperity and fertility in contrast to the destruction brought by unworthy enemies of Zeus and Hieron. As Zeus brings prosperity and fertility to Mt. Aitna, so the famous founder Hieron brings fame to the eponymous city below it, to Sicily, and even to all of Greece. Pindar’s decision to make his point by writing the Aitnaian landscape into a wider Greek traditional story was not his only option if he sought to honor the

92. See Slater 1984: 257–​58, Dougherty 1993: 93. 93. Deictic references do not, of course, guarantee performance at the site. However, their force would be particularly powerful during such performances. See Felson 2004: 264–​66.

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Aitnaian countryside and its local traditions. In addition to Pindar’s epinician poem, Hieron commissioned a play by Aeschylus, The Women of Aitna, to celebrate the foundation of his new colony.94 From the very few fragments that survive, we may observe that Aeschylus adopts a completely different strategy to honor the city. The surviving fragment is preserved by Macrobius: A: τί δῆτ’ ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς ὄνομα θήσονται βροτοί; B: σεμνοὺς Παλικοὺς Ζεὺς ἐφίεται καλεῖν. A: ἦ καὶ Παλικῶν εὐλόγως μένει φάτις; B: πάλιν γὰρ ἵκουσ’ ἐκ σκότου τόδ’ εἰς φάος.

A: What name will mortals give to them then? B: Zeus orders [mortals] to call them the holy Palici. A: And does the name of the Palici remain suitable? B: Yes, for they have come back from the darkness into the light. (Aeschylus, TrGF III F 6)

The surviving lines show that Aeschylus adapts the local twin Sikel heroes, the Palici, to suit their new Greek inhabitants by creating an etymology for their name that works in the Greek language. Aeschylus links the Sikel name “Palici” to the Greek adverb πάλιν and the verb ἵκουσ(ι), so the Palici are those who “have come back.”95 Aeschylus likewise chooses a myth connected to the landscape as the Palici were reportedly born from the earth and had a shrine close to Aitna.96 From a papyrus fragment we learn that the play was a kind of meditation on Aitna’s relationship with the surrounding landscape. The fragment shows that The Women of Aitna featured several scene changes, starting in Aitna, then moving to Xouthia near Leontini, then back to Aitna, then to Leontini, with the final scene taking place in Syracuse.97 In contrast to

94. It is possible that Hieron may have also commissioned a third poem to celebrate the foundation of Aitna (Dougherty 1993: 91–​92). A scholiast to Theocritus says that Simonides told a story that the nymph Aitna (likely a personification of the land) judged a contest between Demeter and Hephaistos. However, Podlecki 1979 shows that there is little solid evidence for Simonides’ activity in Sicily. 95. Carol Dougherty has argued that “this fragment provides us with yet another example of the linguistic appropriation of a cult” because the etymology for the name of the local heroes is only intelligible in the Greek language (1993: 89). For a useful classification of etymologies and the words used to signal them by ancient authors, see Cairns 1996. 96. Diod. 11.88–​89. Macrob. Sat. 5.19.26. Cf. Dougherty 1993: 88–​89. 97.  POxy. 2257 fr. 1  =  TrGF III F 6.  Cf. Manganaro 1974/​1975:  20–​21 and Dougherty 1993: 88–​90.



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Pindar, who creates a role for Aitna and its landscape within a traditional Greek myth, Aeschylus relates an extant Sikel myth about the landscape to the Greek colonists of Aitna.98 Rather than preserving (or even acknowledging) Sikel traditions in the new city, Pindar’s version of the myth of Zeus and Typho powerfully connects Hieron and his new foundation to a larger Greek tradition and religious authority. Through the telling of this myth, Aitna becomes distinct and worthy of its settlers’ pride as its citizens sing and dance the Greek myth into the Aitnaian landscape. The song forges a place for Aitna and her citizens within this rich tradition—​a place which Hieron, as the illustrious founder (κλεινὸς οἰκιστήρ, 31), established for them.

A Myth for the Citizens of Aitna The localization of Typho’s prison in the Aitnaian landscape imprints a model of cosmic order onto the land surrounding Hieron’s newly founded Aitna. As a “land-​myth,”99 the aetiological explanation for volcanic activity infuses longstanding Greek tradition into this landscape—​that is, the volcano and the territory at its base, where the city of Aitna lies. Pindar’s placement of Typho, the defeated opponent of Zeus, under the volcano gives the land itself an important role in the maintenance of cosmic order and asserts that the plain below it is worthy of being inhabited. Yet however powerful this myth may be and however great its ability to establish a place for Aitna in the Greek mythical imaginary, it does not connect the citizens themselves to the new city or the surrounding territory. Nor does this myth include the new settlers of Aitna in an emerging set of civic myths and traditions. Pindar instead introduces a separate mythical narrative later in the ode that connects the new colonists of Aitna to the land and reinforces a sense of shared ethnic identity for its citizens. Any celebration of the citizens of Aitna posed two major challenges for a poet. First, the Aitnaian colonists came to Aitna from multiple cities.100 Diodorus reports that Hieron recruited half of his colonists from Syracuse and

98. Bonanno 2010: 144 observes that the sanctuary and cult of the Palici were so central to the religious life of the area surrounding Aitna that Hieron’s new foundation would never have been successful without promoting it and integrating it into the cultic system of his new city. 99. For the definition of a “land-​myth,” see the earlier discussion and Malkin 1994: 6. 100. This is of course not unprecedented even in Sicily, where Gela was founded by Rhodes and Crete (Thuc. 6.4.3).

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the other half from the Peloponnese.101 The problem faced here is similar to the problem faced in Syracuse, where the population was “mixed” after people from surrounding Sicilian cities and from the Peloponnese became Syracusan citizens.102 A myth celebrating and characterizing the citizens of Aitna likewise required a common strand that applied to citizens with different backgrounds. A second challenge that made Aitna completely unique was the fact that the city had been founded only six years before the performance of Pythian 1. For many Greek cities, one of the most basic requirements for shared identity was a group’s belief that they were descended from a common ancestor,103 but in a city that had been founded so recently, myths of descent from a founder or another common ancestor had had little time to emerge.104 Moreover, the founder, Hieron, was still living at the time of the ode’s performance. The settlers undoubtedly brought memories and myths of their own putative ancestry when they moved to their new city that could not be instantly erased and replaced with new ones, though they certainly could be shaped over time. As an example of the beginning of Hieron’s transformation from a historical figure into a mythical founder hero, Pythian 1 provides a unique window onto the early process of mythmaking for a new colony. Pindar addresses both challenges by fashioning a narrative of shared Dorian ancestry for the citizens of Aitna. This genealogical narrative links them to one another by highlighting ancestral traditions common to the two groups recruited by Hieron to be settlers of Aitna. After concluding Typho’s response to the lyre’s music and describing the eruption of Aitna, the poet prays to both Zeus and Apollo for the prosperity of the city. Prayers to Apollo and Zeus recall the celebration of Apollo and Zeus that began the ode, and honor Hieron’s two patrons: Apollo at Delphi, where he won the chariot victory, and Zeus at Aitna. The poet next honors the king of Aitna, Hieron’s son Deinomenes, and celebrates the city’s ethnic traditions and ancestry:

101. Diod. 11.49. 102. See ­chapter 1. 103. Hall 1997: 25. Robert Parker likewise emphasizes that “blood or rather a belief in blood is obligatory” as a criterion of Greekness and shared ethnic identity (1998: 21). 104. By contrast, Pindar celebrates Battos, the founder of Cyrene, who was also believed to be the ancestor of the ruling kings (P. 4.6, P. 4.280, P. 5.28, P. 5.55, P. 5.124). See also the discussion in the Introduction: 11–​15.



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Μοῖσα, καὶ πὰρ Δεινομένει κελαδῆσαι πίθεό μοι ποινὰν τεθρίππων·    χάρμα δ’ οὐκ ἀλλότριον νικαφορία πατέρος. ἄγ’ ἔπειτ’ Αἴτνας βασιλεῖ φίλιον ἐξεύρωμεν ὕμνον· 60 τῷ πόλιν κείναν θεοδμάτῳ σὺν ἐλευθερίᾳ Ὑλλίδος στάθμας Ἱέρων ἐν νόμοις ἔ-​    κτισσε· θέλοντι δὲ Παμφύλου καὶ μὰν Ἡρακλειδᾶν ἔκγονοι ὄχθαις ὕπο Ταϋγέτου ναίοντες αἰ-​    εὶ μένειν τεθμοῖσιν ἐν Αἰγιμιοῦ Δωριεῖς. ἔσχον δ’ Ἀμύκλας ὄλβιοι 65 Πινδόθεν ὀρνύμενοι, λευκοπώλων    Τυνδαριδᾶν βαθύδοξοι    γείτονες, ὧν κλέος ἄνθησεν αἰχμᾶς. Muse, obey me and sing a recompense for the four-​horse chariot also for Deinomenes. The victory of a father is not a foreign joy. Come then and let us discover a friendly hymn for the king of Aitna, for whom Hieron founded that city with god-​built freedom under the laws of the rule of Hyllos. And the descendants of Pamphylos and of Herakles wish, living under the hills of Mt. Taygetos, always to remain Dorians in the ordinances of Aigimios. Blessed, they got hold of Amyklai having started up from Pindos, very famous neighbors of the white-​ horsed Tyndaridai, and the fame of their fighting force flourished.  (P. 1.58–​66) The myth begins by praising the government of Hieron’s new polis. The colony has divine support and it follows in the Dorian tradition: Hieron founded it “with god-​built freedom under the laws of the rule of Hyllos.”105 The laws and customs of the Dorians offer historical continuity through the murky, semimythical past of the Dorian invasion and the subsequent success of the Dorians in the Peloponnese. Dorian ethnicity matters for both Syracusans and Peloponnesians and links them together. Syracuse was a Dorian colony, founded by the Corinthian Heraklid, Archias, in the eighth century bce.106 The

105.  This passage led Kirsten to conclude, too literally, that Hieron founded Aitna on the model of Spartan government, and established a Spartan constitution, as an idealistic experiment designed to promote eunomia and avoid tyrannical forms of government (Kirsten 1941). 106. Thucydides specifies that Archias was a Heraklid (6.3.2).

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remaining settlers of Aitna were “Peloponnesians,” according to Diodorus and Strabo. Of course, not all Peloponnesians were Dorians,107 and the information from Diodorus and Strabo alone is not specific enough to determine whether or not Hieron’s Peloponnesian settlers were, in fact, Dorians. A scholiast specifies that the Aitnaian colonists were Syracusans, Megarians, and Geloans, but this identification is more likely explaining Pindar’s celebration of the Dorians in this passage rather than offering evidence from an independent source.108 Nino Luraghi observes that the few Peloponnesian settlers connected to the Deinomenids for whom we do have more information are Arkadians, not Dorians.109 Ultimately, though, the actual origins of Hieron’s settlers are of less importance than their belief in a shared identity. What matters for my purposes is that Pindar’s myth solidifies a narrative of putative shared ancestry for the citizens of Aitna as a collective unit. In addition to offering the Aitnaians a common ethnic narrative, the Dorian Herakleidai convey stability by a contemporary analogy with other established Dorian cities (in Sicily: Syracuse, Gela, Kamarina, etc.; and elsewhere in the Mediterranean: Aegina, Cyrene, etc.). As with any new colony, there would have been anxiety about the potential failure of the new settlement and the Dorian legal system provides an auspicious colonial model to counterbalance this fear. The myth of the Herakleidai works especially well in a colonial context because the sons of Herakles were, above all, founding heroes. Thucydides and Strabo, for instance, emphasize that the founders of Syracuse, Corcyra, and Epidamnos were all Corinthian Herakleidai.110 It is also therefore unsurprising to find a celebration of the Dorians in a colony of Syracuse. One of the major strands of myth surrounding the Dorians describes their arrival in the Peloponnese. It has been argued that this myth shows that the Dorians are, in a sense, paradigmatic colonists who migrated and successfully settled in a foreign land.111 As in Pythian 1, Pindar introduces the Herakleidai in other epinician odes to assert the Dorian ethnicity of the Aiginetans and the Cyreneans.112

107. Herodotus says seven ethnē inhabited the Peloponnese (8.73). 108. Schol. P. 1.120b. On this scholion, see Luraghi 1994: 338n274. 109. Luraghi 1994: 338n174. 110. Malkin 1994: 36. Cf. Thuc. 6.3.2, Strabo 2.6.9; Thuc. 1.24.2. 111. Morgan 2015: 334–​36. 112. I. 9.2–​4 (for Aegina) and P. 5.70–​72 (for Cyrene).



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Pindar’s narration of the Dorian migration into the Peloponnese in Pythian 1 contains his fullest account of the Dorians.113 It is significant that in the version of the narrative in Pythian 1, Hyllos, the son of Herakles, and Pamphylos, the son of Aigimios, are the heads of separate Dorian tribes who traveled to the Peloponnese and settled there in harmony with one another, since, in this case, the descendants of Pamphylos and of the Herakleidai model the successful merger of two peoples into one.114 The paradigm suits Aitna, where the colonists are conceived of as two separate groups of Syracusans and Peloponnesians. The myth aligns the Aitnaians with this tradition, representing continuity between the new settlers of Aitna and their prestigious ancestors. As in the earlier myth of Typho’s imprisonment under Aitna, the temporal and spatial aspects of the myth of the Dorians carefully relate the myth to the space and time of the present performance and to the current civic circumstances in Aitna. Pindar begins his story of the descendants of Pamphylos and the Herakleidai in the present tense:  they “wish, living under the hills of Mt. Taygetos, always to remain Dorians in the ordinances of Aigimios.” From there, he moves into the past:  “Blessed, they got hold of Amyklai having started up from Pindos, very famous neighbors of the white-​horsed Tyndaridai, and the fame of their fighting force flourished.” Like the Aitnaians who recently expelled the former inhabitants of Katane before founding their city, the sons of Pamphylos and the Herakleidai once took Amkylai from its previous inhabitants. As in other colonial narratives, there is only a faint suggestion of violence: “the fame of their fighting force flourished.” The Dorian Herakleidai earned their fame with their spears, like the Aitnaians did. The present tense that began the description reinforces the continuity of the Dorians, while their past actions explain how they rose to their current status. The descendants of Pamphylos and the Herakleidai are not only the Dorian ancestors of the Aitnaians, but also models for conquest over neighboring peoples. After emphasizing the stability of the Dorian line, Pindar prays to Zeus for the tradition to continue in the new colony of Aitna:

113. For a fuller narrative of the Dorian migration, see Diod. 4.57–​58. For a discussion of the Dorian migration, see Hall 2002: 73–​89, and especially 73–​82 for variant myths. See also Malkin 1994: 33–​45. 114. Pace Fearn 2017: 205–​6, the Aitnaians should be understood as analogous to the Dorians as they merge two tribes even though the Dorians wish to remain in a Spartan landscape, especially in light of the prayer in lines 67–​68.

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Ζεῦ τέλει’, αἰεὶ δὲ τοιαύταν Ἀμένα παρ’ ὕδωρ αἶσαν ἀστοῖς καὶ βασιλεῦσιν διακρί-​    νειν ἔτυμον λόγον ἀνθρώπων. Zeus accomplisher, determine such a share always for the citizens and their kings beside the water of the Amenas as the true report of men. (P. 1.67–​68) The poet asks that the Aitnaians always have a share (αἶσαν) of the Dorian lineage described in lines 62–​66, as the descendants of the sons of Herakles wish “always to remain” (αἰεὶ μένειν, 64) under the institutions of Aigimios. Like the Dorians in the earlier passage whom Pindar situates in the Peloponnese “under the hills of Taygetos,” the Aitnaians are linked to their local landscape:  the poet hopes that they will live in this tradition next to the River Amenas. Carol Dougherty has even suggested that Pindar puns on the name of the river (Ἀμένα) when he says that the sons of Herakles wish always to remain (αἰεὶ μένειν), thereby creating a sense of tradition for the colony.115 This pun translates the native Sicilian name of the river into Greek, representing it as a symbol of continuity for the settlers. At the same time, the prayer importantly envisions the Aitnaians “beside the Amenas,” a fixed point in the landscape that roots the citizens to the place. As the myth of Typho’s imprisonment provided an aetiology for the eruptions of Mt. Aitna based on a wider system of Greek mythology, so the Dorian ancestry of the citizens is now joined to another feature of the local topography. Pindar once again transforms a point in the Aitnaian landscape into a meaningful civic space:  the River Amenas has now become a symbol of the citizens’ shared Dorian past and of their longevity. The connection between the Dorians and the Aitnaians would have been particularly powerful during a performance in Aitna by Aitnaian citizens. If the ode was first performed at the Aitnaia festival in honor of Zeus Aitnaios, or anywhere in Aitna, then Mt. Aitna would have been visible for audience members and the River Amenas would have been close by. Whether or not the ode was actually performed in sight of the river, both the river and the mountain are ideal civic symbols, especially for a mixed citizen body. Like the spring of Arethusa, both the mountain and the river were fixed natural features that were visible and accessible to any citizen and had the potential to define the civic space.

115.  Dougherty 1993:  94–​95. She argues that the pun “provides a sense of continuity and longstanding tradition to the city’s brand new foundation” (quote taken from p. 95).



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The myths in Pythian 1 infuse these natural spaces with civic meaning, turning them into civic spaces that provide a common tradition for the citizens themselves and present an image of the city and its people to the rest of the Greek world. Thus, instead of being merely a feature of the landscape, the volcano becomes a living creature that suppresses the chaos of those who displease Zeus (and Hieron) and supports both the cosmic and civic orders. The myth presents the mountain as an essential space that upholds Zeus’ power. Likewise, Pindar locates the ethnic and colonial origins of the Aitnaians at a specific place in the Aitnaian land—​beside the waters of the River Amenas. The powerful example of the sons of Pamphylos and the Herkleidai shapes local perceptions, and perhaps eventually collective memory, of the river and fashions it as a symbol of colonial success and ethnic identity for Aitna.

Conclusions Pindar’s incorporation of the ethnic Dorian narrative into Pythian 1 situates the new colony genealogically and historically. The ancient lineage both legitimizes Hieron’s new political system and creates ethnic solidarity as one component of the social cohesion promoted by the performance of the ode.116 By coloring the Aitnaian political system with Dorian associations, Pindar also authorizes political organization at the polis and ethnic levels.117 The entire description is transported to Aitna and located beside the river, a permanent feature of the landscape that now becomes a symbol of the city’s Dorian heritage. The placement of Typho under Mt. Aitna establishes an important role for the new city of Aitna within a wider Greek context, marking the mountain and the city as the upholder of cosmic order. The newly localized Panhellenic myth provides the Aitnaians with a “land-​myth,” which creates a sense of civic identity that is distinctively Greek and that is significant to Greece as a whole rather than to the local population alone. The association of Hieron’s current government with the Dorians, on the other hand, includes Aitna in a stable authoritative tradition from which its settlers are genealogically descended. Where the myth of Zeus and Typho creates a broader significance for the land, the legend of the Dorians underscores the venerable lineage and history of the inhabitants, including both the settlers and their founder, who have now

116.  On the creation of social cohesion through choral performance, see Stehle 1997 and Kowalzig 2007: 4–​6. 117.  For polis and ethne as the two basic forms of political organization recognized by the Greeks, see Parker 1998: 16.

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been joined to that land through the poet’s prayer. In counterbalance to the Panhellenic myth, the ethnic Dorians endow Aitna with a specific, regional identity and connect them to a smaller and more close-​knit, yet still extensive, network within the larger Greek world. The crucial link between the two civic myths of Pythian 1 is the victor and city-​founder, Hieron. Pindar ties the Panhellenic myth of Zeus’ defeat of Typho to the Aitnaian landscape, and at the same time makes a bold statement about Hieron’s power in the region. Similarly, as he presents the citizens with an ancestral past that augurs stability for the new colony, Hieron features front-​and-​ center as the founder who set up the city within this tradition (lines 60–​62). Pindar’s representation of Aitnaian identity in Pythian 1 thus succeeds at once in creating an enduring place for the tyrant Hieron within Aitnaian ideology as he shapes civic mythical narratives and identities for the new colony.

4

Fluid Identities The River Akragas and the Shaping of Akragantine Identity in Olympian 2

In the odes for Hieron and the members of his circle, Pindar celebrates the Syracusans, the Aitnaians, and the Deinomenids in relation to the Sicilian landscape. We have now seen that the points where Pindar weaves civic and dynastic identity into the landscape are not random but, in each case, celebrate aspects of civic ideology. This strategy lends weight and authority to Pindar’s expressions of identity because they are reinforced by enduring civic symbols, like Arethusa in Syracuse and Zeus Aitnaios in Aitna, that are independently attested in the material record and, in some cases, in other sixth-​and fifth-​ century literary sources. When commemorating victors from Akragas, Pindar roots civic identity and the identity of the Emmenid rulers in the local landscape as well. Founded in the first half of the sixth century, Akragas had established civic traditions by the time Pindar celebrated its victors at the Panhellenic games in the period from the late 490s to the late 470s. This chapter examines the representational and commemorative strategies of the tyrant Theron and his family, and it argues that Pindar merges Emmenid identity with civic identity by celebrating the city’s rulers in relation to a civic symbol that is rooted in the Akragantine landscape: the River Akragas. Although each of the five odes for Akragas engages with the city’s longstanding local traditions and most of the odes allude to the city’s river, I focus especially on Olympian 2 because it is in this ode that Pindar asserts the relationship between the victor and the city’s landscape most directly.

Myth, Locality, and Identity in Pindar’s Sicilian Odes. Virginia M. Lewis, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190910310.003.0005

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Akragas Under Theron’s Rule According to Thucydides, colonists from Gela led by Aristonous and Pystilus founded Akragas in 580.1 Many of the details of the city’s early history are difficult to trace, but a few things can be determined with more confidence. Theron was not the first tyrant of Akragas. Not long after the city’s foundation a man named Phalaris was the first to seize the tyranny in the city, possibly during the Thesmophoria festival.2 After Phalaris’ reign, Akragas was ruled by an oligarchy for a period before Theron rose to power in 488.3 By the time Pindar celebrated Sicilian victors in song, Phalaris had already entered into the realm of myth as a paradigmatic bad ruler and, perhaps most famously, is said to have burned men alive inside a bronze bull.4 About five years after he became tyrant of Akragas, Theron overthrew Terillus, tyrant of Himera, and also took control of that city until his own death in 472.5 One of the most significant moments during Theron’s reign was the Carthaginian invasion of Himera in 480.6 After being driven out of Himera, Terillus marshaled support in Carthage and returned with a large army to oppose Theron.7 In response, Theron sent to Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse, for aid in warding off the Carthaginians, and together the Akragantines and the Syracusans successfully repelled them.8 After the Battle of Himera, the Carthaginian soldiers taken as captives provided a massive influx of labor for

1. Thuc. 6.4.4. For a discussion of the possibility that some founders of Akragas came directly from Rhodes (the tradition preserved by Polyb. 9.27), see below. 2. For Phalaris’ rise to power at the festival, see Polyaen. 5.1.1–​4 and Luraghi 1994: 28–​29. On Phalaris more generally, see Luraghi 1994: 21–​49. 3. On the history of Akragas before Theron, see Luraghi 1994: 231–​39 and on Akragas more generally, Luraghi 1994: 231–​72. 4.  P. 1.95–​98, Polyb. 12.25, Diod. 9.19.1, Cic. Verr. 2.4.73. Because of the mythical status Phalaris attained, the anecdotes describing his cruelty preserved in later sources should, however, be accepted with caution. 5.  Hdt. 7.165. The date of Terillus’ expulsion is not precise, but must be before 480. See Luraghi 1994: 244–​50. While van Compernolle 1992: 28 argues that Theron “refounded” the city, Luraghi 1994: 248 rightly argues that Theron should not be considered an oikist in this case since no ancient source calls him one, and he received hero cult as tyrant of Akragas not as founder of Himera. On hero cult for Theron, see Diod. 11.53.2. 6.  On which, see ­chapter  1. Morgan 2015:  30 emphasizes that although Himera was in Theron’s sphere of influence, Gelon received most of the credit, in the form of prestige and monetary gain, from the victory. 7. Hdt. 7.165, Diod. 11.20. 8. Diod. 11.21–​22.



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the Akragantines, who used them to quarry stones for the construction of temples and aqueducts.9 During Theron’s tyranny, the Emmenids and the Deinomenids alternated between periods of alliance and conflict. On one hand, the families forged ties through marriage: Gelon married Theron’s daughter Demarete, and Hieron’s third wife was Theron’s niece, while Theron married the daughter of Polyzelos, who married the same Demarete after Gelon’s death.10 The Emmenids and the Deinomenids also supported one another’s interests, most notably at the Battle of Himera. Nonetheless, Theron and Hieron were constantly vying for power. When Hieron became tyrant of Syracuse and quarreled with his brother Polyzelos, even attempting to kill him by sending him on a suicide mission, the latter fled to Theron for safety. When the two tyrants were on the point of war, the poet Simonides is said to have intervened and maintained the peace.11 Even if, as Podlecki has argued, Simonides never traveled to Sicily, the anecdote underscores the contentious relations between the two tyrant families.12 In addition, Diodorus recalls that an embassy from Himera approached Hieron complaining of the cruelty of Theron’s son Thrasydaeus in an attempt to gain his support and overthrow Akragantine control there. Hieron remained loyal to Theron in this case, informing him of the attempted rebellion.13 Theron ruled in Akragas until his death in 472, when his son Thrasydaeus became tyrant of the city for a brief period. Not satisfied with this position, Thrasydaeus gathered an army to lead against Hieron, but Hieron anticipated him and the Syracusans decisively defeated his forces in Akragas.14 After this defeat, Thrasydaeus was driven from Akragas, and a peaceful relationship was established between the Syracusans and the Akragantines.15 Theron, like Hieron, received hero cult after his death.16 By the time Theron became tyrant, Akragas had developed a rich variety of local cults and civic traditions, and the influx of wealth and labor after 480

9. Diod. 11.25.2–​5. 10. Schol. O. 2.29c, Schol. P. 1.112. See also Bonanno 2010: 115–​16 and Morgan 2015: 60–​61. 11. Diod 11.48.3–​5. On the intervention of Simonides, see Schol. O. 2.29c. 12. Podlecki 1979. 13. Diod. 11.48.6–​8. See also Luraghi 1994: 251–​52, Bonanno 2010: 103–​16 with a useful chart that outlines the sources for divergent narratives, and Morgan 2015: 55–​56, 95–​96. 14. Diod. 11.53.3–​5. 15. Diod. 11.53.1–​5. 16. Diod. 11.53.2.

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allowed him to embellish the city more lavishly. Akragas was already home to significant cults of Demeter and Persephone, Athena Lindia, and Zeus Atabyrios, among others.17 In the sixth century, cult worship of Demeter and Persephone is attested in three sanctuaries in and near the city.18 Likewise, excavators have found votive offerings that date to the mid-​sixth century for Athena Lindia, who was worshipped in a temple on the acropolis.19 When describing the city, Polybius specifically mentions the temples of Athena and Zeus Atabyrios, modeled after Rhodian tradition.20 Recent excavations near the acropolis (the Rupe Atenea) have identified a cult for Athena Poliouchos on the hillside overlooking the River Akragas, which may confirm the literary evidence for a cult of Athena on the acropolis. However, the material discovered suggests a Cretan influence in the cult of Athena near the acropolis rather than displaying Rhodian features.21 Furthermore, a sanctuary for Demeter built in the period between 490 and 480 may suggest that Theron was attempting to suppress Cretan elements.22 We shall see that the tension between Cretan and Rhodian elements visible in the material record also emerges in literary sources from this period. After the Battle of Himera, Theron put the Carthaginian captives to use in the construction of a magnificent and unprecedented Olympieion for Zeus in Akragas that Polybius praises as “inferior to no temple whatsoever in Greece.”23 In recent decades, some scholars have argued that construction on

17. Holloway 2000: 60–​61. 18. Cult worship of Demeter and Persephone has been confirmed at Santa Anna, the sanctuary of the Chthonic Deities, the sanctuary of San Biagio, and the related Rock Sanctuary by the sixth century. The sanctuaries and the archaeological evidence for offerings dedicated to the goddesses are discussed at length by Hinz 1998: 70–​92. See also Mertens 2006: 197, 239, 317 and Holloway 2000: 63. 19. Mertens 2006: 195–​97. 20. See Polybius 9.27 and Demand 1975. 21.  Luraghi 1994:  23 doubts any early influence directly from Crete. Now, however, see Fiorentini 2005, De Angelis 2012: 173, and De Angelis 2016: 192 on the Italian led excavations that took place from 1996 to 2000. Fiorentini 2005: 163–​64 identifies Cretan features, including a group of terracotta figurines representing Europa riding a bull, in the cult of Athena Poliouchos near the acropolis in Akragas that date to the time of Phalaris. 22.  Fiorentini 2005:  164–​ 65 proposes that Theron suppressed Cretan aspects (and associations with Phalaris) by emphasizing Rhodian elements in the extramural temple of Demeter that was constructed below the cult of Athena between 490 and 480. However, Cretan influence and cult aspects need not necessarily indicate direct foundation from Crete since they could represent Cretan cult that came to Akragas via Gela. 23. Polyb. 9.27.



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the enormous temple began before the Battle of Himera,24 while others maintain that work on the building began only after the defeat of the Carthaginians by Gelon and Theron.25 The temple may, then, be understood either as an expression of the civic climate in which Theron came to power or as a statement in commemoration of the victory at Himera.26 In either case, the temple was unprecedented in the Greek world. Built on a massive scale—​the enormous building was 56.3 meters wide by 112.6 meters long27—​the temple featured an open central area and memorably incorporated pillars in the form of Atlantes (male figures) who supported the temple’s roof. The Atlantes have been associated with the Carthaginian captive laborers who constructed the temple. From Diodorus, we learn that the east frieze featured a Gigantomachy while the west frieze depicted an Ilioupersis, both appropriate either during the period of Theron’s ascent to power or after the recent defeat of the Carthaginians by Theron and the Deinomenids at the Battle of Himera. The temple of Zeus Olympios is important for a discussion of Akragantine and Emmenid identity both because Theron himself oversaw the temple construction (regardless of when construction began) and because the temple, as a celebration of Zeus, relates to an established Akragantine symbol visible on the city’s coinage in the period before Theron came to power. The Olympieion provides an example of Theron himself participating in the kind of fashioning and reworking of a civic symbol that I will suggest Pindar’s poetry for Theron is likewise undertaking.

Emmenid vs. Deinomenid Commemoration Despite the fact that Theron and Hieron were both Sicilian tyrants, Pindar characterizes the two quite differently when celebrating their victories.28 Kathryn Morgan has shown that the nature of Hieron’s rule is one of Pindar’s

24. See De Angelis 2001: 180 with further bibliography. 25.  Despite Polybius’ claim that the temple had never been finished (cf. Diod. 13.82.1), Mertens 2006: 266 argues convincingly that the temple was built quickly and completed during Theron’s reign and that it was refurbished toward the end of the fifth century. See also Morgan 2015: 50–​52 for a discussion of the arguments for construction pre-​and post-​Himera. 26. Barbanera 1996 argues that the Gigantomachy could as easily belong to the period in which Theron came to power as to the period after Himera. Marconi 1997: 5–​11 analyzes the changing significance of the Atlantes before and after Himera. 27. Mertens 2006: 261. 28. Luraghi 2011, Morgan 2015.

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central concerns,29 and we have seen in analyses of the odes for Hieron that Panhellenic myths intersect with local landscapes in expressions of Hieron’s kingship, highlighting his authority in relationship to the physical places over which he rules. In epinician odes for the Emmenids, Pindar celebrates Theron in terms that align him more closely with other wealthy aristocrats and that celebrate his family origins and their established position in Akragas rather than highlighting his role as tyrant.30 In addition to the differences we see in the representation of the two tyrants in epinician poetry, Theron and Hieron commemorated their achievements differently in other areas as well. Nigel Nicholson has recently explored the wide range and innovative style of commemoration which Hieron and the Deinomenids employed in comparison to other victors in the same time period, showing that the Deinomenids were exceptional for the variety of ways in which they commemorated their victories. Besides commissioning a large number of epinician poems by multiple poets, they promoted Syracuse and their families by dedicating innovative sculpture at Delphi and Olympia and at home in Sicily.31 The Deinomenids also celebrated their achievements on coinage with major alterations to two coin issues as we saw in ­chapters 1 and 2 (see Figures 1.1 and 1.2). In contrast to the Deinomenid use of coinage as a commemorative device, we shall see that Akragantine coin types remained remarkably stable throughout the Emmenid period in Akragas.32 While the contrast between the representational styles of the tyrants can be explained if we accept that Theron was subordinate to Hieron and fell under his sphere of influence,33 we should also consider to what extent the political circumstances under which each tyrant came to power may have shaped the

29. Morgan 2015. 30. Luraghi 2011: 31–​32, Morgan 2015: 416. 31. Nicholson 2017 argues that the Deinomenids experimented with new sculptural forms at Olympia, in Delphi, and at home in Syracuse, discussing Gelon’s statue group ca. 488, Hieron’s statue group ca. 467, and the Acroterion of the Syracusan Treasury at Olympia; at Delphi, the Deinomenid chariot group dedication; and in Syracuse, the statue of Philoktetes commissioned from Pythagoras (Plin. NH 34.19). On innovative Deinomenid sculpture, see also Nicholson 2015: 131–​34, 213–​21. 32. Jenkins 1970: 162, Kraay 1976: 209. However, the coinage of Himera was altered during Theron’s rule. See the discussion later in the chapter. 33. Nicholson 2015: 93–​94 and 241 (on the Deinomenid regime). See also Clay 2011: 342–​43 on the cooperation of the tyrants.



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exigencies of Pindar’s project.34 While Gelon was alive, Hieron ruled as tyrant of Gela. Hieron became tyrant of Syracuse in 478 upon the death of Gelon, who had gained control of the city by overthrowing its aristocracy and then forcibly transferring the aristocratic populations of Megara Hyblaea and Euboea in addition to the entire population of Kamarina and half of the Geloans to Syracuse.35 Both Deinomenid brothers ruled as outsiders who had been tyrants of Gela before seizing power in Syracuse, and the subject population consisted of citizens from a variety of origins, including mercenaries from outside of Sicily. We saw in ­chapter 2 that when celebrating Syracusan victories Pindar highlights aspects unique to the circumstances of the Deinomenid family, emphasizing especially their ancestral priesthood of Demeter and Persephone and linking Hieron’s expanding rule to Persephone’s domain in Sicily. This rhetorical work was necessary, in part, because of the violent methods by which the Deinomenids acquired the tyranny and maintained their authority. Theron, by contrast, rose to power from within the city of Akragas where the Emmenid clan was already prominent:  Theron’s father, Ainesidamos, was an Akragantine, and a victory by Theron’s brother Xenokrates at Delphi in 490 confirms the family’s high status before Theron ruled the city.36 This chapter proposes that the contrasting ways in which the Deinomenids and the Emmenids acquired the tyranny and the resulting political climates also required Pindar to employ different types of mythical and colonial narratives to celebrate their authority and to relate each ruler to the city and citizens over which he ruled. Unlike the massive reorganization of the citizenry of Syracuse that took place when Gelon came to power, Akragas did not experience this level of upheaval or an influx of citizens from other cities when Theron came to power. I will suggest that in the odes for Akragas Pindar links Theron to the land by using narratives that both underscore the continuity and esteemed lineage of the Emmenids and provide a colonial narrative of arrival (i.e., a “territorial myth” in Malkin’s terms)37 that depends on this family. Pindar’s odes for

34. Luraghi attributes the contrasting representations of the two in epinician poetry to the tyrant’s personal preference (2011:  30), but also suggests that Hieron’s role as regent for Gelon’s son may have influenced him to emphasize his autocratic power (2011: 44). 35. Hdt. 7.165. 36. Luraghi 1994: 239–​42. A fragment of Diodorus 10.28.3 indicates Theron’s prominence in the city in 489/​488 before he became tyrant. On Ainesidamos and the Emmenids, see Schol. O. 2.8a, O. 3.68a–​d. 37. Malkin 1994: 6–​7. See also ­chapter 3: 138.

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Hieron and his associates color sites in the local landscape with Panhellenic meaning by linking places to well-​known myths, but, for the most part, the Deinomenids do not play a part in these narratives; myths emphasizing continuity of the ruler’s lineage or the citizenry would have had less relevance for many Syracusan citizens who, like their rulers, had arrived within recent living memory of local audiences. In the odes for Akragas, by contrast, the political circumstances in Akragas allow the Emmenid family to play a larger role in the mythical narratives that tie Panhellenic myth to local place. While Deinomenid commemoration was exceptional in many areas and eclipsed that of other tyrants in most respects, the Emmenids in Akragas innovated in one famous way that outshone even the Syracusans by initiating the construction of the massive Olympieion. By contrast, the temple the Deinomenids constructed in Syracuse for Athena was more distinctive for its conservative turn away from Ionic innovations of the Gamoroi and back to Dorian style than for its innovation.38 Unlike dedications of sculptures in Panhellenic sanctuaries, epinician poetry, and coinage—​all of which are designed to be experienced by citizens but also by people outside of the city, a temple constructed within one’s own city is a conspicuous object that celebrates that local community’s relationship with the deity and defines that community in its own space, even while it also creates an impression for visitors and those who hear of it outside the city. While there is no question that Theron was interested in displaying his wealth and prominence on a Panhellenic stage,39 his most memorable and grand commemorative statement was undertaken within the city of Akragas, suggesting a special interest in expressing his authority on the local level. Notwithstanding the differences in characterization Pindar employed in the odes for Hieron and Theron, when praising either Sicilian tyrant Pindar also faced many of the same challenges. The Akragantines, like the Syracusans and Aitnaians, were aware of their status as a colony that had been founded relatively recently. In contrast to cities like Athens, Thebes, or Aegina where citizens had myths of autochthony to link them to the land itself,40 Pindar made use of other strategies for the colonial landscapes of Greek Sicily. I will

38. For other Deinomenid temple dedications, see ­chapter 2 and Morgan 2015: 51. 39. In addition to competing in the Panhellenic games and commissioning epinician poetry to celebrate his successes, Theron may also have dedicated a victory monument similar to that erected by Polyzelos to commemorate his achievements at Delphi. For a discussion of the base and inscription, see Vatin 1996. 40. Buxton 1994: 189–​93.



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suggest that what sets the odes for Theron apart from those for Hieron is that his family’s permanence and investment in the local civic culture allows Pindar to link the victor closely to the landscape and the civic ideology of Akragas, and to celebrate the Emmenids’ relatively longstanding status in the city in a manner impossible for the newly arrived Deinomenids.

Pindar’s Odes for Akragas Pindar composed five odes for victors from Akragas. Four odes celebrate victories by the Emmenid brothers Theron and Xenokrates (Olympian 2, Olympian 3, Pythian 6, and Isthmian 2), while the fifth (Pythian 12)  commemorates the victory of an aulos player named Midas. Taken together, the set of odes represents Akragantine culture in the period just before Theron became tyrant of the city in 488 and, if we accept a later date for Isthmian 2,41 extends to the end of his reign in 472. Pythians 6 and 12 celebrate victories won in 490, two years before Theron became tyrant of the city, whereas the remaining three odes celebrate victories that took place while the Emmenids were in power. Olympians 2 and 3 both celebrate Theron’s Olympic chariot victory, while Isthmian 2 honors Xenokrates’ chariot victory at the Isthmia in 472 and was written after his death.42 In previous chapters, we have seen that in the odes for Hieron and his associates Pindar relates Syracusan and Aitnaian identity to the landscape of the Peloponnese. Whether celebrating Hieron by analogy with the hero Pelops, founder of the Peloponnese (O.1), emphasizing cultic links between Syracuse (and thus also Aitna) and the Peloponnese through the cults of Alpheos (N. 1, P. 2, P. 3), likening the Aitnaians to the Dorian Herakleidai (P. 1), or emphasizing the victor’s origins in the Peloponnese (O. 6) or accomplishments there (N. 9), Pindar’s odes for Syracuse and Aitna establish the Peloponnese as a site of comparison that shapes identity for the Sicilian cities under Deinomenid control. In Pindar’s odes for Akragas, by contrast, there is no single geographical place that the poet consistently relates back to the city (though the poet does introduce other Greek landscapes into the Akragantine odes, as we shall see). Pindar’s references in this set of poems are more wide-​ranging. Although the

41. Privitera 1982: 27 dates the victory to 476 and the ode to 474, arguing that Xenokrates need not be dead yet since his death is not mentioned in the ode. However, most commentators propose a date after Theron’s death in 472. See Bury 1892:  30–​32, Wilamowitz 1922:  311, Bowra 1964: 410, and Verdenius 1987b: 119. 42. See Luraghi 1994: 239–​40 with note 42.

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local landscape is central to depictions of Akragantine civic identity in these odes, Pindar does also draw parallels between Akragas and utopian landscapes that align the city with blessed peoples on the edges of the earth in all four odes for the Emmenids. In Pythian 6, the Ethiopian Memnon slays Antilochus (30–​ 32); in Olympian 3, Herakles discovers the olive tree and brings it to Olympia from the land of the Hyperboreans (13–​38); and in Isthmian 2, Pindar praises Xenokrates’ generosity by saying that he traveled to Phasis in summer and to the banks of the Nile in winter (41–​42). These foreign and far-​off landscapes emphasize aspects of the Akragantine landscape and define the city and its citizens against places and peoples distant in space and time.43 Hanne Eisenfeld has recently argued that Pindar situates Akragas relative to the edges and to the center of the Greek world through a process of “mytholocation,” which she defines as the idea that “poets us[e]‌mythical geography to do something similar to what bats do with echolocation—​bouncing their own representations off of widely available traditions about the mythical boundaries of the world in order to orient or reorient their compositions and audiences.”44 In the case of Pindar’s odes for Theron, she argues, the “westernness” of Akragas allows the poet to align the city with an idealized western paradise on the edge of the earth. At the same time, however, Akragas is associated through myth with the idealized center of the Greek world and distanced from the desolate spaces at the limits of known geography. Eisenfeld’s reading emphasizes one way that Pindar defines Akragas by asking how far the city is from the edge and answering this question by aligning the city with landscapes, both on the edge and in the center of Greece, and by defining it against them through mythic geographies in Olympians 2 and 3. Eisenfeld concentrates on the ways that myths orient the city externally by setting up a culturally meaningful geography that distinguishes the city and its rulers from other cities. I approach this question from the opposite perspective by examining, instead, the way that Pindar roots local, regional, and Panhellenic mythical representations in the Akragantine landscape to shape civic and ruler identity in the city. To this end, I will argue that the poet joins Akragas and its victors to mythological traditions that relate to the city’s colonial past by anchoring these traditions in the local landscape. Though these strategies are visible, at least in part, in all five of Pindar’s odes for Akragas, they emerge most strongly in Pindar’s Olympian 2 in celebration of Theron’s Olympic chariot victory of 476, and that ode will therefore be the primary focus

43. On the significance of distant landscapes in O. 3, see Krummen 1990 and Pavlou 2010. 44. Eisenfeld 2017.



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of the remainder of this chapter. We shall see that Pindar glorifies Theron by associating the tyrant with his illustrious ancestors and with the founders of Akragas and, at the same time, by suggesting that they have attained, and will attain, a blessed afterlife.45

The River Akragas and the Mediation of Emmenid Identity in Olympian 2 Theron’s chariot won the competition at Olympia in 476, fourteen years after Pindar composed Pythians 6 and 12. We shall see that Pindar already incorporates into the two earlier odes aspects of civic ideology that will be developed at length in Olympian 2. More particularly, Pindar merges Emmenid and Akragantine identity by linking both to an established civic symbol: the River Akragas. In what follows, I will propose that the river operates as a site in the landscape that merges the civic mythology of Akragas with the Panhellenic genealogy of the ruler and his family.

The River Akragas as a Civic Symbol Before Theron’s Rule Although literary sources contemporary with Theron’s rule are lacking aside from Pindar’s poetry, numismatic evidence sheds a welcome light on expressions of Akragantine identity from the period before the Emmenid family assumed the tyranny through the fall of Theron’s son Thrasydaeus. By the end of the sixth century the city began to mint didrachms that featured an eagle on the obverse and a crab on the reverse (Figure 4.1).46 The crab is often understood as a type parlant for the city, since the name “Akragas” sounds similar to the Greek word for crab, karkinos.47 In addition to this connection between animal and city, Kenneth Jenkins interprets the images on the Akragantine didrachm thus: “The eagle is the bird of Zeus and lord of the air, the crab, identified as a freshwater variety, expresses the watery element of river and seashore; one can almost imagine from the coins the splendid

45. An earlier version of a part of this argument appeared in the CHS Research Bulletin. See Lewis 2017. 46. Kraay 1976: 208 places the beginning of Akragantine coinage around 510 and Jenkins 1990: 43 around the end of the sixth century. 47. Holloway 2000: 124.

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Figure  4.1  Akragantine Tetradrachm, Silver, ca. 505–​500. Reproduced by permission of the American Numismatic Society.

position of the city which seems to hang between sky and sea.”48 Jenkins underscores the way that the eagle and the crab situate the city of Akragas spatially on a vertical plane between the sea and the sky. As the most common coin type from Akragas, the eagle/​crab didrachm persisted throughout the fifth century until the city’s destruction by Carthage in 406.49 In addition to locating the city between the water and the sky, the eagle and the crab may represent Zeus Olympios and the River Akragas (or perhaps even the River god Akragas), respectively.50 Akragantine coinage displaying the eagle/​crab type began in the period before the Emmenid rule. Excavations near the River Akragas have suggested

48. Jenkins 1990: 43. 49.  Rutter 2000:  74 describes the crab as “a constant feature of the typology of Akragas from the beginning of coinage there towards the end of the sixth century down to its end in 406.” Although the main types remained consistent, some small additional symbols were added as the dies changed over this period. The didrachms of Akragas were minted on the Attic standard. 50. Rutter 2000: 74 observes that on one of the very few Akragantine issues where the crab does not appear (a series of bronze hemilitra dating ca. 410), a male river god takes its place (SNG ANS 1097–​1102). To Rutter’s argument, we should add the series of silver tetradrachms on which either Skylla or a fish appears below the crab, once again evoking a watery setting (Rutter 1997: 149 with plate 162). In addition to the obvious association between the crab and water, there may be a parallel with the coinage of Gela—​the mother-​city of Akragas—​ on whose coinage the river god Gelas is represented. Rutter 2000:  75, however, stresses the high incidence of river-​god types in Sicily, attributing them to the colonial status of the Sicilian Greek cities.



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that the first settlers from Gela established an emporion on the river and only later built the city on the mountain above it,51 and the appearance of the crab already on the early coin types may attest to the river’s importance as a symbol for the city. The type remained consistent throughout the rule of Theron (488–​472), and while it was not unusual for the main coin types minted by Sicilian cities to remain stable after the rise of a tyrant,52 it is notable that the Emmenids seem not to have added extra symbols to mark their rule, such as the Nike added to the Syracusan tetradrachm by the Deinomenids.53 The Akragantine issues demonstrate that the crab, as a representation of the River Akragas, was already an established and recognizable civic symbol by the time Theron came to power in 488. The continuity of the crab furthermore suggests that this image and the river it represented were central to the city’s identity. In addition, the coinage of another Sicilian city confirms the importance of the crab as a symbol of Akragas. After Theron and the Akragantines took control of Himera, the city became subject to Akragas and the Himeraian coin types changed to reflect the new political reality.54 The earliest coinage of Himera, the drachma minted on the Euboeic standard that displayed the rooster, had first been minted between 530 and 500 (Figure 4.2). The obverse types of early coinage were variable and included an incuse square with mill-​ sails and a hen.55 After Terillus’ expulsion, the city adopted the didrachma minted on the Attic standard to align it with the coinage of Akragas. While the cock on the obverse of the Himeraian didrachm remained, the reverse of the coin changed to the crab, emblematizing Akragantine influence in the city (Figure 4.3).56 By 476 when Pindar composed Olympian 2, the crab and the river it represented were established symbols of Akragas, but they now also represented the expansion of Akragantine influence in the region more broadly on the coinage of Himera. The addition of the crab signals a changed relationship between Akragas and Himera, but it is impossible to determine the exact nature of this

51. Mertens 2006: 195, De Angelis 2016: 83. 52. Rutter 1997: 101–​39. Examples include the quadriga/​Arethusa type on Syracusan coinage, the lion on coinage of Leontini, and the rooster on Himeraian coinage. 53. Kraay 1976: 209. 54. For a discussion of Himeraian coin types of this period, see Nicholson 2015: 245–​48. 55. Rutter 1997: 105–​8. 56. Rutter 1997: 107, 120. See Kraay 1976: 208–​9.

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Figure 4.2  Himeraian Drachm, Silver, ca. 530–​500. Reproduced by permission of the American Numismatic Society.

Figure  4.3  Himeraian Didrachm, Silver, ca. 483–​472. Reproduced by permission of the American Numismatic Society.

relationship and any conclusions must be tentative,57 since, aside from the altered power dynamic between Akragas and Himera, most details remain unclear. We cannot determine, for instance, who ordered the coin type to be modified, and it therefore could as easily represent a conciliatory—​or even celebratory (as unlikely as this seems)—​gesture on the part of the Himeraians as it could represent a mandate from the Akragantines or from Theron himself

57. Luraghi 1994: 246.



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that the Himeraians carried out reluctantly.58 What matters for the present discussion, however, is that in any of these scenarios the crab on Himeraian coinage operates as an Akragantine emblem that is recognizable throughout Sicily as a marker of the city, its territories, and its authority. If the crab represents Akragantine identity within Sicily, then allusions to the river it represents may have a similar effect in epinician poetry for Akragas. Appearances of the River Akragas in two Pindaric odes for victories won by the Akragantines in 490 offer additional evidence for the river’s prominence in civic ideology that predates Olympian 2. Two years before Theron became tyrant, Pindar celebrated two Akragantine victories at Delphi: the chariot victory of Theron’s brother Xenokrates in Pythian 6 and the aulos victory of Midas in Pythian 12. As in nearly all epinician odes, Pindar celebrates the victor and his city in these poems.59 However, in both odes, but less commonly elsewhere, the city of Akragas is celebrated in relation to its river. Pythian 6 opens with a procession to Delphi where a treasury of hymns has been built: Ἀκούσατ’ · ἦ γὰρ ἑλικώπιδος Ἀφροδίτας   ἄρουραν ἢ Χαρίτων ἀναπολίζομεν, ὀμφαλὸν ἐριβρόμου χθονὸς ἐς νάιον προσοιχόμενοι · Πυθιόνικος ἔνθ’ ὀλβίοισιν Ἐμμενίδαις ποταμίᾳ τ’ Ἀκράγαντι καὶ μὰν Ξενοκράτει ἑτοῖμος ὕμνων θησαυρὸς ἐν πολυχρύσῳ Ἀπολλωνίᾳ τετείχισται νάπᾳ · Listen! For indeed we are plowing once again the field of glancing-​ eyed Aphrodite or of the Kharites, as we proceed to the revered navel of the loudly rumbling earth, where ready at hand for the fortunate Emmenidai and for Akragas on its river, and indeed for Xenokrates, a Pythian victor’s treasure house of hymns has been built in Apollo’s valley rich in gold.  (P.  6.1–​7)

58. Luraghi 1994: 246, Mackil and van Alfen 2006: 208n22. 59. The usual third element is the name of the victor’s father or his family. Almost no information survives about Midas. Gentili et al. 1995: 307 argue that his family is not mentioned in the ode because he came from modest origins. However, the absence of a celebration of Midas’ family also supports the argument that Midas is a stage name (for this suggestion, see Clay 1992: 519, Martin 2003: 169n69). Morrison 2007: 42n5 cautions that it is impossible to be sure that Midas had links with the Emmenid family. In any case, as the only surviving ode for an auletic victor, Pythian 12 is exceptional.

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While the ode begins with movement to Delphi (lines 1–​4), its focus soon returns to Sicily, where Pindar’s treasury of hymns celebrates the victor’s city as Akragas potamia60 (“Akragas on its river”) in a nod to this civic symbol at home in Sicily.61 Already in the earliest Pindaric ode for a member of the Emmenid family, the river is the most notable civic feature cited by the poet and the only aspect of the Akragantine landscape or topography mentioned in the ode. In his ode for the aulos victory by Midas in 490, Pindar celebrates the river in greater detail. In the ode’s opening, the poet refers to the river within an elaborate pile-​up of addresses: Αἰτέω σε, φιλάγλαε, καλλίστα βροτεᾶν πολίων, Φερσεφόνας ἕδος, ἅ τ’ ὄχθαις ἔπι μηλοβότου ναίεις Ἀκράγαντος ἐύδματον κολώναν, ὦ ἄνα, ἵλαος ἀθανάτων ἀνδρῶν τε σὺν εὐμενίᾳ δέξαι στεφάνωμα τόδ’ ἐκ Πυθῶνος εὐδόξῳ Μίδᾳ αὐτόν τέ νιν Ἑλλάδα νικάσαντα τέχνᾳ. I ask you, lover of splendor, most beautiful of mortals’ cities, abode of Persephone, you who dwell upon the well-​built height above the banks of the Akragas, where sheep graze, O queen receive this crown from Pytho offered by famous Midas and welcome the man himself who defeated Hellas with his skill.  (P. 12.1–​6) The first three titles (φιλάγλαε, καλλίστα βροτεᾶν πολίων, Φερσεφόνας ἕδος) must address the city, but the city transforms into its eponymous nymph as the relative clause continues. The merged city and nymph dwell (ναίεις) above the River Akragas.62 The verb ναίω commonly describes actions of people or

60. Pindar only uses this adjective in one other passage in Pythian 2.7, where Artemis is potamia. In Pythian 2, Artemis of the river connects cult worship of Arethusa in Syracuse to the worship of Artemis in the Peloponnese, on which see ­chapter 1. 61. Most critics argue that the ode was performed in Delphi: Bury 1892: 29–​30, Wilamowitz 1922: 139, Farnell 1932: 183, Gentili et al. 1995: 183. However, Eckerman 2011 argues that we should understand Akragas as the place of the ode’s performance rather than Delphi. See also Eckerman 2014: 25. 62. Empedokles similarly takes advantage of the shared name of the river and the city in a poem that begins: ὦ φίλοι, οἳ μέγα ἄστυ κατὰ ξανθοῦ Ἀκράγαντος ναίετ’ ἀν’ ἄκρα πόλεος, ἀγαθῶν μελεδήμονες ἔργων, χαίρετ’·



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anthropomorphized deities, but its use to express the location of a city is less expected. Already in the previous line, the banks (ὄχθαι) establish that the poet now refers to the river—​a third Akragas and the only one named by a proper noun. While the natural landscape below (the river) is contrasted with the manmade city above (ἐΰδματον κολώναν, “well-​built height”), the city itself is never given a proper name in the ode. Instead, its eponymous River Akragas supplies the appellation that brings lasting fame to the victor’s home through Pindar’s song. Read together with the coins for Akragas, Pindar’s earlier epinician poems for the city demonstrate that the river was already a recognized civic symbol before Theron became tyrant of the city in 488 and commissioned epinician poetry from Pindar to commemorate his own victory in the chariot race at Olympia in 476. By the time Theron won the chariot victory at Olympia in 476, he had been the ruler of Akragas for over a decade. His rule was firmly established,63 and this impressive success in the chariot race provided an opportunity to celebrate his victory on Panhellenic, regional, and local levels by commissioning not one but two Pindaric odes to commemorate the event. In the following section, I will argue that in Olympian 2, Pindar celebrates Theron’s achievement and his rule by linking the Akragantine tyrant and his family to the River Akragas, by that time an established civic symbol, and acknowledges his ambitions and unique potential by aligning him with the heroes on the Isle of the Blessed.

Locating the Emmenids: Place and Identity in Olympian 2 The famous opening of Olympian 2 poses a question: “What god, what hero, and what man shall we celebrate?” (2). The god and the hero, Zeus and

O friends, who dwell in the great city of the yellow Acragas, up in the high parts of the city, concerned with good deeds, hail! (1/​112.1–​3, trans. Inwood) As Pindar does in Pythian 12, Empedokles names only the river, suggesting its enduring prominence in Akragantine civic ideology. 63. Luraghi 1994: 241–​42 argues that the Emmenids had risen in power as a family to the extent that Theron’s assumption of the tyranny was the next logical step rather than an abrupt shift.

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Herakles, are parallel figures for the man, the victor Theron, whom the poet then celebrates in relation to his city and his family: Ἀναξιφόρμιγγες ὕμνοι, τίνα θεόν, τίν’ ἥρωα, τίνα δ’ ἄνδρα κελαδήσομεν; ἤτοι Πίσα μὲν Διός· Ὀλυμπιάδα   δ’ ἔστασεν Ἡρακλέης ἀκρόθινα πολέμου· Θήρωνα δὲ τετραορίας ἕνεκα νικαφόρου  5 γεγωνητέον, ὄπι δίκαιον ξένων,   ἔρεισμ’ Ἀκράγαντος, εὐωνύμων τε πατέρων ἄωτον ὀρθόπολιν· Hymns that rule the lyre, what god, what hero, and what man shall we celebrate? Indeed, Pisa belongs to Zeus, while Herakles established the Olympic festival as the first fruits of war; but Theron, because of his victorious four-​horse chariot, must be proclaimed—​a man just in his regard for guests, pillar of Akragas, and foremost city-​straightener from a line of famous ancestors.  (O.  2.1–​7) The comparison between Zeus, Herakles, and Theron introduces a parallel between the Akragantine tyrant and Zeus that resumes later in the ode. In his role as founder of the Olympic games, Herakles offers a model for Theron and his ancestors as the founders of Akragas. After this line, Herakles disappears from the ode, though audiences who heard both Pindaric odes for Theron’s victory may have understood a connection between his appearance in Olympian 2 and his establishment of a sacred olive grove in Olympia, which dominates the mythical narrative of Olympian 3.64 Theron’s athletic victory offers an opportunity to celebrate both his civic benefactions and his illustrious ancestors in customary epinician style:  the poet honors the victor (Theron, line 5), his family (his “famous ancestors,” line 7), and his city (Akragas, line 6). While in Pythian 12 the poet supplies the name of the river instead of naming the city, in Olympian 2 Pindar celebrates the city in relation to the victor and the role he plays within it. Theron is

64.  Clay 2011:  343 argues that Herakles being set aside in Olympian 2 only to be treated fully in Olympian 3 is evidence that the two odes should be read together with Olympian 1 as part of a three-​part song cycle. On reading Olympians 2 and 3 together, see also Morrison 2007: 46–​57,  84–​89.



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a “pillar of the community” (ἔρεισμα Ἀκράγαντος) and a “foremost city-​ straightener” (ἄωτος ὀρθόπολις) from a line of famous ancestors.65 The terms ἔρεισμα and ὀρθόπολις are both unusual in Greek literature of this period and therefore deserve closer examination. The noun ἔρεισμα (“pillar”) does not appear in extant Greek literature before Pindar,66 and it appears in only one other Pindaric passage when, in a poem for Athens, Pindar calls the city the Ἑλλάδος ἔρεισμα (“pillar of Greece”) (fr. 76.2). For the Athenians the phrase was such high praise, according to Isocrates, that they rewarded Pindar with one thousand drachmas (Antid. 166). The contrast between the usage of ἔρεισμα in the two Pindaric passages underscores the difference between the democracy in Athens and Theron’s rule as tyrant in Akragas: while the entire city supports Greece in the Athenian poem, Theron alone functions in this role for Akragas in Olympian 2.67 Even more unusual than the noun ἔρεισμα is the adjective ὀρθόπολις (“city-​ straightener”, which does not occur elsewhere in extant Greek literature except as the proper name of a city.68 As “the foremost city-​straightener from a line of famous ancestors” (εὐωνύμων τε πατέρων ἄωτον ὀρθόπολιν, 7), Theron supports the city in the present and sustains an inherited legacy. When applied to a ruler, the adjective ὀρθόπολις may recall the concept of straight justice found in Hesiod’s Theogony.69 In the Pindaric ode, the ruler sets the city straight, aligning his activity with that of a proper king, and the fact that Theron is just (δίκαιος, line 6) to his guests reinforces this characterization.

65. Pindar’s phrasing here looks forward to his description of Hector as the ἄμαχον ἀστραβῆ κίονα (“invincible pillar of strength”) at line 81. See Smoot 2010: 9–​10 and Eisenfeld 2017. 66. The word does not appear again until Xenophon, where it generally refers to watchtowers. 67. In a similar celebration of a city’s benefactor, Pindar calls Battos, the founder of Cyrene and ancestor of the victor, a “tower of the city and shining light for guests” (πύργος ἄστεος ὄμμα τε φαεννότατον /​ ξένοισι, P. 5.56–​57). The tower refers to the victor’s ancestor in Pythian 5 rather than to the victor himself, but otherwise incorporates the same terms of praise, demonstrating that Pindar employs this complex of descriptors in colonial settings. 68. Luraghi 2011: 31. As a proper name, see Strabo 7a.1.36 and Pausanias 2.5.8. The word does, however, appear in the epigraphic corpus. An inscription for Termessos in Psidia dating to the second or third century ce presents an intriguing parallel where Termeros is described as the ἕρμα πόληος and ὀρθόπολιν (BCH 23.302). For the Homeric formula ἕρμα πόληος, see Iliad 16.549 of Sarpedon and Odyssey 23.121 of the slain suitors, the youth of Ithaka. Gentili et al. 2013: 391 compare the term to the Pindaric terms: φιλόπολις (Olympian 4.16), ἀρχέπολις (Pythian 9.54), φερέπολις (fr. 39), yet none of the parallel terms cited have the sense of height expressed by ὀρθόπολις that is uniquely suited to Theron. 69. Cf. Hes. Theog. 81–​93. For a similar analysis of the verb ἀνορθοῦν in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos, see Nagy 2013: Hour 19.17. On Pindar using the model of the Hesiodic king for Hieron, see Morgan 2015, especially pp. 123–​32, 209–​59.

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By describing Theron as an ἔρεισμα and as ὀρθόπολις, Pindar applies unique terms that emphasize the spatial height of Akragas to describe Theron’s role as supporter and upholder of his city. In an Akragantine context, the portrayal of Theron as a pillar is also an evocation of the building program he initiated following the Battle of Himera, part of which included the construction of the massive temple for Zeus Olympios and which featured Atlantes who supported parts of the temple.70 By alluding to the architectural legacy that Theron fashions for himself in Akragas, Pindar asserts the ruler’s presence within the cityscape. The first strophe completes the poet’s celebration of Theron by framing him within the context of his ancestral achievements, which the antistrophe will explore in greater detail. Theron is not merely a city-​straightener, but a foremost city-​straightener from a line of famous ancestors (εὐωνύμων πατέρων, 7). Theron’s lineage merges with the civic history of Akragas and with the local landscape in lines 8–​9: καμόντες οἳ πολλὰ θυμῷ ἱερὸν ἔσχον οἴκημα ποταμοῦ, Σικελίας τ’ ἔσαν ὀφθαλμός, αἰὼν δ’ ἔφεπε μόρσιμος, 10   πλοῦτόν τε καὶ χάριν ἄγων γνησίαις ἐπ’ ἀρεταῖς. Who having toiled much in their hearts held a holy dwelling place on a river, and they were the eye of Sicily, while their fated lifetime went on, adding wealth and glory to their inborn virtues.  (O. 2.8–​11) The glimpse of Theron’s ancestors presented in the ode places them on a river (line 9) where they held a holy dwelling place. In Olympian 2, the river lacks a proper name, which led the ancient scholia to debate exactly which river Pindar meant. While Artemon suggested that Pindar could be referring to the River Gelas because Gela was the mother-​city of Akragas, the majority of scholiasts, including Aristarchus, argued that the river should be understood as the Akragas.71 As we have seen, in Pythian 6, Akragas is there “on a river” (ποτάμιος), and in Pythian 12 the river supplies the name of the city.

70. Kirkwood 1982: 67 understands this terminology as a metaphor of building. Cf. Pindar’s description of Zeus promising Persephone that he will set Sicily upright in Nemean 1.15 (Σικελίαν ... ὀρθώσειν). 71. See scholia Olympian 2.15c, 2.16a-​e. On Artemon’s erroneous interpretations of Pindar’s text, see Broggiato 2011.



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Since nothing in the poem suggests that Pindar refers to Gela here and the scholiasts add no reliable information to support this identification, we should understand the river in this passage as the Akragas.72 Beyond praising Theron as a civic benefactor sprung from a line of famous ancestors, Pindar aligns the tyrant’s forebears with the original founders of the city in Olympian 2.  By placing his illustrious ancestors on the River Akragas, the poet links them to an established civic symbol and through it asserts their right to dwell in that place.73 Rivers, moreover, appear regularly in colonial imagery and the linkage of the tyrant’s forefathers with this symbol may therefore also imply their role in the foundation of Akragas.74 The toil of Theron’s ancestors (καμόντες οἳ πολλὰ θυμῷ) before they held a holy home on the river further adds a colonial overtone to the passage (line 9),75 leading some interpreters to understand it as a possible reference to the struggle that the founders of Akragas faced.76 As we have already seen, the River Akragas was an established civic symbol on the city’s coinage by this period, and it could be the case that the river was also a traditional element in the city’s foundation story, particularly since, according to Thucydides, the city of Akragas took its name from the local river when settlers from Gela arrived around 580 to plant a new colony.77 Lucia Athanassaki has demonstrated that epinician poetry avoids representations of the moment of colonial conflict and instead presents a

72. Kirkwood 1982: 66 likewise identifies this river as the Akragas. The Emmenid tyrants, moreover, may have had reason to distance themselves from the Geloans since their rivals, the Deinomenids, were originally from Gela and ruled over that city after the death of Hippokrates through the period of Theron’s rule (Gentili et al. 2013: 47–​49). On the propagandistic value of emphasizing a lineage that comes directly to Akragas from Rhodes instead of via Gela, see Gentili et al. 2013: 48. 73. In other words, this is a “territorial myth” because it describes the people’s right to the land. See Malkin 1994: 6–​7. 74. Rutter 2000: 76 notes that river deities are particularly common on the coinage of cities in Greek Sicily. 75. Alternately, Smoot 2010: 12–​13 argues that κάμοντες should be understood to refer to “the dead,” i.e., men who have passed on to the Isle of the Blessed. This association may have been active in reperformances of the ode for audiences who were able to anticipate the upcoming mythical section. 76.  Gentili et  al. 2013:  391. The scholia identify this as the toil the founders faced when fighting with the barbaroi (Schol. O. 2.15b). Musti 1992 argues that the phrase refers to the sea voyage from Rhodes, but this is a more difficult reading and requires us to read too much external information into the text. Wilamowitz 1922: 244 understands the phrase as a reference to the difficult path the Emmenids navigated to attain the tyranny. 77. Thuc. 6.4.3–​4.

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peaceful state after the foundation has taken place.78 In Olympian 2, Pindar quickly moves past the toil of Theron’s ancestors and their involvement in the city’s beginnings to dwell on the prosperity that followed once they held their holy home (line 9). This celebration of the Emmenids is a representative of a convention of epinician poetry in the sense that it celebrates the land and the prosperity of the ancestors after their sufferings.79 However, even conventional descriptions may offer crucial information about the identity and values of a particular community.80 In this case, the river underscores the importance of this symbol for the local community, and the terms in which Pindar describes Theron’s ancestors thus adapt an epinician convention to the circumstances of Theron’s victory in its Akragantine civic context. As elsewhere in his epinician poetry, Pindar does not create a realistic description or a map of Akragas. Rather, he weaves Theron’s ancestors into the civic history of the city by connecting them to civic iconography (the River Akragas), and this bond sanctions the rule of their descendant and, through him, glorifies the entire city. After suffering in their hearts, Theron’s ancestors were the “eye” (ὀφθαλμός) of Sicily (9–​10). Taken on its own, this description is unremarkable. The noun ὀφθαλμός occurs in a metaphorical sense of “dearest,” “best,” or “pride” elsewhere in Pindar’s odes,81 and suggests that Theron’s ancestors were a beacon of wealth and prosperity for the island.82 However, in the context of this passage, the visual aspect of the eye—​that is, the power of sight—​also nods to the height of the city from which its inhabitants have a superior vantage point.83 In the broader context of the ode as a whole, the image of the Emmenids as the eye of the island places the ancestors on a height as those living on the

78. Athanassaki 2003. The downplaying of discord here is thus consistent with other colonial references in epinician poetry. 79.  Luraghi 2011:  31 argues that the passage is conventional in contrast to the innovative terms in which Pindar praises the Deinomenid tyrant Hieron. 80. D’Alessio 2009: 162 argues that Pindar’s Paeans 2 and 4 demonstrate how “a great poet might have been able to deal with similar stock-​motifs in radically different ways when facing different local contexts.” 81. O. 6.16, P. 5.18. 82. Kirkwood 1982: 67 suggests that the metaphor refers to the brightness of eyes rather than to their precious quality. 83. Smoot 2010: 13–​14 argues that because Sicily was associated with the land of the Cyclops, which resembled a utopian landscape similar to the Isle of the Blessed in the Greek imagination, we should also understand ὀφθαλμός in this passage as a reference to this tradition alongside the interpretation that the wealth of Akragas shone over the island.



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ἄκρα γᾶς (“high part of the earth”).84 Pindar regularly puns on names of people and places in the epinician odes,85 and his incorporation of height in Olympian 2 may be another example of Pindaric wordplay that translates the city’s name into Greek. The city of Akragas was famous for its lofty position in antiquity, probably reflecting a level of realism but also playing on the meaning of the city’s name:  Akragas, literally “the high part of the earth” or perhaps “the end or extremity of the earth.” Maria Pavlou understands the city’s name in a horizontal sense, suggesting that Pindar places the city on the eschata or periphery.86 The term ἄκρα can, of course, refer to either vertical or horizontal extremity,87 and Pindar likely takes advantage of the ambiguity.88 However, in Olympian 2 where the poet has fashioned Theron as a bulwark and a city-​ straightener, the city’s name should be linked to its lofty position. The Greek meaning of the city’s name may have been important for another poet who himself hailed from Akragas. A dedicatory epigram, (probably falsely) attributed to Empedokles,89 puns on his native city’s name in a witty response to a request by the physician Akron that the city build a monument for his family: ἄκρον ἰατρὸν Ἄκρων’ Ἀκραγαντῖνον πατρὸς Ἄκρου   κρύπτει κρημνὸς ἄκρος πατρίδος ἀκροτάτης. A lofty crag of his very lofty homeland covers the lofty doctor, Akron of Akragas, son of Akros. (Diog. Laert. 8.65, trans. Inwood) The punning of the verse turns on the multiple meanings of the adjective ἄκρος, particularly since the doctor is named “Akron” (“Lofty”). In the poem, ἄκρος can represent both the placement of Akragas in a high place (here

84.  Pavlou 2010. Gentili et  al. 2013:  391–​92 understand a reference to the Emmenids watching over the island in a military sense against the threatening Carthaginians. Diodorus and Polybius emphasize the height of the city, on which see the discussion below. 85. For example, see N. 5.49, N. 1.2, fr. 105ab, fr. 120, etc. See Dougherty 1993: 24–​26, 45–​57 on bilingual puns in foundation oracles and colonial narratives. Also see Cairns 1996 on the forms and etymology of bilingual puns. 86. Pavlou 2010: 326. 87. LSJ s.v. ἄκρα. 88. See also Eisenfeld 2017. 89. Wright 1981: 19 and Inwood 2001: 157 both consider the epigram, which was preserved by Diogenes Laertius 8.65, to be spurious.

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confirmed by κρημνός) and the greatness of its citizens. Even if Empedokles did not compose the epigram, it at least supports the idea that the city’s name actively signified for native Greek speakers. Like the epigram, later descriptions of Akragas by Diodorus and Polybius emphasize two characteristics in particular: the city’s high geographical position and its high status, both of which are suggested by the name Akragas itself and the topographical reality of the city’s layout.90 Pindar’s representation of Theron’s ancestors on high, therefore, parallels other ancient descriptions of the city, offering some evidence that the meaning of the city’s name would have resonated with ancient Greeks in the earlier fifth century as well. The depiction of Theron’s ancestors as the eye of Sicily furthermore echoes and reinforces the poet’s description of the victor himself. A few lines earlier, Theron was portrayed as a pillar and a city-​straightener, evoking the physical height of Akragas above its river. Like the victor, his ancestors are situated on a height and are assigned a superior position, emphasizing the continuity of excellence through their lineage. Pindar’s placement of Theron’s ancestors on the banks of the Akragas in Olympian 2 is thus part of an ideological statement that weaves the Emmenids into an expression of Akragantine civic identity through the River Akragas, underscores their high status within the city, and includes Theron within a group of illustrious founders. On one hand, the Emmenid activity of establishing a home parallels the toil and subsequent prosperity of the victor,91 and, as in other odes, colonial foundation and athletic victory are equated by the comparison, glorifying both the victor and his family. Nevertheless, Theron’s ancestors are quite different from other colonial figures in Pindaric epinician poetry. Unlike the founders of Aitna, Cyrene, and Rhodes, no individual oikist or group of oikists is specified for Akragas. Epinician odes celebrating colonies demonstrate that celebrating the oikist of the victor’s city is not a problematic mode of praise in this poetry. Whether the oikist is himself the victor (Hieron of Aitna in Pythian 1), is the putative ancestor of the victor (Battos of Cyrene in Pythians 4 and 5), or is unrelated to the victor (Tlapolemos of Rhodes in Olympian 7), it is unexceptional for an oikist to be mentioned explicitly in Pindaric epinician odes.92 Why, then, does no such founder appear in the odes for Akragas? Here is it helpful to take a step back and compare the situation in other Sicilian cities with

90. See Diod. 13.85.4–​5, Polyb. 9.27.6. 91. Dougherty 1993: 108 with note 9; on the victor’s toil, Nagy 1990: 136–​45. 92. Hieron of Aitna: P. 1.31–​32. Battos of Cyrene: P. 4.6. Tlapolemos of Rhodes: O. 7.30. Of the three, only Hieron is the victor himself.



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that in Akragas. Despite the fact that Sicilian cities were aware of their status as colonial foundations, Pindar does not mention founders we know of from other sources. In the case of Syracuse, the poet appears to emphasize Hieron’s own colonial aspirations by comparing him to Pelops, who was the founder of the Peloponnese (O. 1.24), possibly asserting Hieron’s own partial claim to oikist status (O. 6.6, perhaps through a refoundation of the city after the Deinomenids came to power),93 and through his role as the literal founder of Aitna.94 While other oikists are celebrated figures in Pindar’s epinician poetry, in Olympian 2 Theron’s ancestors are not directly named nor are they explicitly called “founders.” The omission of these labels and the complication of Theron’s ancestry, however, allow the poet to layer the victor’s genealogy. Carol Dougherty observes that founding heroes “occupy a tantalizing middle ground between the mythological heroes of the epic cycle and recent historical figures.”95 I will propose that in the case of Theron and Akragas, the very lack of specificity in Theron’s lineage permits the poet to align the victor with all three mythical periods Dougherty cites: the heroic past, the middle ground of the colonial founders, and the present time of Pindar’s ode.96 In the absence of traditional Akragantine heroes and founders, Pindar is able to cast the ruling Emmenid family in these roles. After establishing Theron’s ancestors as wealthy and virtuous, Pindar transitions back to Zeus to complete the ring established in the ode’s opening lines. The Olympian god is hailed in a divine recapitulation of the earthly attributes of Theron and his forebears: ἀλλ’ ὦ Κρόνιε παῖ Ῥέας, ἕδος Ὀλύμπου νέμων  12 ἀέθλων τε κορυφὰν πόρον τ’ Ἀλφεοῦ,   ἰανθεὶς ἀοιδαῖς εὔφρων ἄρουραν ἔτι πατρίαν σφίσιν κόμισον λοιπῷ γένει.

93.  It is also possible that Pindar did not know of Archias, but this seems unlikely. For the suggestion that the Pelops myth in Olympian 1 may allude to the Archias story, see Athanassaki 2003: 121–​22 and Krummen 1990: 168–​211. On the meaning of συνοικιστήρ in Olympian 6, see ­chapter 1:37n35. 94. In the next chapter we shall see that in the odes for Kamarina, Psaumis takes on some of the traits that are elsewhere attributed to an oikist, while the brief ode in celebration of Ergoteles of Himera largely avoids the history of the city’s foundation. 95. Dougherty 1993: 116. 96. For a recent discussion of Pindar’s compression of the heroic past and the present more generally, see Sigelman 2016.

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But son of Kronos and Rhea, ruling over your seat on Olympus, over the peak of contests, and over the course of Alpheos, cheered by my songs graciously preserve their ancestral land for a future generation. (O. 2.12–​15) Pindar’s description of Zeus mirrors his earlier depiction of Theron and the Emmenids. As the ancestors have their holy home on the river, Zeus, the son of Kronos and Rhea, rules over his seat (ἕδος) on Olympus, which is of course on a high mountain peak. Here Zeus also rules over the course of a river, the Alpheos at Olympia.97 Commentators have proposed that the ruler of the Olympians is called the son of Kronos and Rhea in this passage because Pindar prefers variation in naming.98 In addition to providing a new turn of phrase, the invocation of Zeus as a descendant of an older lineage also strengthens him as a foil for Theron whose ancestry is raised in the ode’s opening and will be developed further as the ode progresses. Finally, the poet’s prayer to Zeus reiterates the bond between the Emmenids and the Akragantine landscape. Pindar asks the god to “preserve their ancestral land for a future generation” (ἄρουραν ἔτι πατρίαν σφίσιν κόμισον /​ λοιπῷ γένει, 14). The prayer evokes, and simultaneously creates and authorizes, an established right to the landscape for Theron’s descendants because it is “ancestral.”99 The poet’s appeal to Zeus links the ancestral past to the future by asking the god to preserve the land for a future generation (λοιπῷ γένει, 15), emphasizing temporal and generational continuity. The prayer for the longevity of the victor’s city is conventional.100 It also, nonetheless, draws an important contrast between Pindar’s representations of the relationship that Theron and his family have to Akragas but that Hieron lacks and must then be supplied another way.101 We have seen that in Pindar’s prayer for Aitna in Pythian 1.67–​68 he asks Zeus to “determine such a share

97. Smoot 2010: 14. 98. Willcock 1995: 160, Nisetich 1989: 85n15. 99. Cf. the Homeric formula πατρὶς ἄρουρα that appears three times in the Odyssey at line end (1.407, 10.29, 20.193). In the first and third passages, someone asks where a man is from and who his ancestors are. In the second passage, Odysseus and his crew make it close enough to Ithaka to see their homeland, but they are foiled by the crew’s curiosity when they open Aeolus’ bag of winds. The phrase ἄρουρα πατρία is itself unusual. Outside of commentaries, it appears only in one other text: the very last words of Aristophanes’ Frogs are πατρίοις ἐν ἀρούροις (1533). 100. See Bundy 1962: 78–​79. 101. On Hieron’s lack of a pedigree, see Nicholson 2005: 94.



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always for the citizens and their kings beside the water of the Amenas.” The prayer for Aitna follows the myth of the Dorians, which Pindar imports to characterize the Aitnaian citizens because, unlike Theron and his ancestors, Hieron has only recently founded Aitna, a reality of which Hieron and the new citizens were very aware. Pindar’s prayer in Olympian 2, by contrast, emphasizes what Theron has and Hieron cannot have: a claim to longstanding continuity and ancestry in the city over which he rules. I am suggesting, then, that despite Pindar’s tendency to describe the Emmenids using more conventional aristocratic language and themes,102 the poet emphasizes and flaunts the advantages that Theron has over Hieron in this ode.103

A Heroic Genealogy for Theron By the end of the first triad, Pindar has established Theron as the heir to a noble lineage and has asserted an ancestral claim over both the River Akragas and the Akragantine landscape. The accomplishments of the victor and his family have been expressed through and framed by the Akragantine landscape, which also plays a central role for the future of Theron’s lineage through the poet’s prayer to Zeus. At this point in the ode, however, the family’s more distant past remains murky and disconnected from the world outside of the victor’s city. In the second and third triads, Pindar fills out and develops the victor’s lineage, providing more information and a richer narrative about his clan and, (only) through them, about the citizens of Akragas. The origin of the Emmenids before their arrival in Akragas was contested in antiquity. As mentioned above, Gela was the metropolis of Akragas,104 and some ancient interpreters therefore believed that Theron’s ancestors came to Akragas by way of Gela. Others, however, claimed that Akragas was founded by Rhodians directly.105 Scholiasts to the passage cite both traditions, claiming that Timaeus endorsed the Rhodian version, and they also cite a passage from an encomium Pindar composed for Theron:

102. Luraghi 2011, Morgan 2015: 415–​16. 103. Considering that Pythian 1 was composed after the performance of Olympian 2 and after Theron’s death, the prayer for the citizens of Aitna and their kings (i.e., the Deinomenids) to continue dwelling beside their local river may even be a competitive response to the genealogical claim for the past and the future made by Theron and his family. 104. Thuc. 6.4.3–​4. Luraghi 1994: 22, following Dunbabin 1948: 310 and Graham 1983: 21, proposes two oikists, one from Rhodes and one from Gela. 105. Polybius 9.27.8.

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ἂν δὲ Ῥόδον κατῴκισθεν ..., ἔνθεν δ’ ἀφορμαθέντες ὑψηλὰν πόλιν ἀμφινέμονται, πλεῖστα μὲν δῶρ’ ἀθανάτοις ἀνέχοντες, ἕσπετο δ’ αἰενάου πλούτου νέφος. And they settled in Rhodes . . . having set out from there, they dwell around a lofty city, and as they offer the most gifts to immortals, a cloud of ever-​flowing wealth has followed them.  (fr. 118–​19) The encomium contains intriguing parallels with Olympian 2 that offer additional information about the characterization of the Emmenids and their city. As in the opening of Olympian 2, Pindar stresses the high position of the city, here a ὑψηλὰ πόλις. In both the epinician ode and the encomium, Theron’s ancestors are founders, they inhabit a city situated on a height, and they enjoy wealth from the gods in exchange for their virtue and generosity.106 The encomium, however, adds that Theron’s ancestors first settled in Rhodes and then traveled from Rhodes to Akragas. Unless more of the encomium is discovered we cannot say much more about why Pindar emphasized Theron’s Rhodian lineage in this poem.107 For the present argument it is significant that the encomium presents another line of Theron’s genealogy that the poet could have chosen to emphasize in Olympian 2 but does not. Instead of presenting the Emmenids in terms of ties to Rhodian colonists who settled their city or linking them to a traditional lineage originating in Gela, Pindar’s epinician poem for Theron remains neutral on the subject, defusing tension within the polis between Cretan and Rhodian elements108 and at the same time prioritizing Panhellenic concerns. Felix Budelman has argued that where an epinician ode avoids narrowly setting itself in any single context (e.g., at a symposium, at a specific festival, etc.), an encomium is less concerned to avoid this specificity, and, in particular, that encomia often locate themselves in a sympotic setting.109 He emphasizes the arguments of other

106. For the tradition that Thersandros’ descendant Theros founded Thera, see Hdt. 4.147, Paus. 3.1.7, 3.15.6, 4.3.4. See also the discussions of Emmenid genealogy in Gentili 2013: 47–​ 49, Caserta 2000, and Musti 1992. Catenacci 2006: 181 dates the encomium to the period between 476 and 470. 107. For the argument that the cloud of ever-​flowing wealth connects to local Rhodian cult and to Pindar’s language in O. 7, see Catenacci 2005a: 27–​29. 108. See the preceding discussion of the cult for Athena Poliouchos and Demeter. See also De Angelis 2016: 192, Fiorentini 2005. 109. Budelman 2012.



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scholars who conclude that epinician poetry is an integrative genre that avoids division. I suggest that we are seeing this dynamic play out in Pindar’s treatment of Theron’s lineage in the encomium and in the epinician ode. Where the encomium (or at least the scrap of it that survives to us) takes a stance on Theron’s genealogy, declaring his ancestors as founders from Rhodes, the epinician poem mediates the contested origins of the city, declining to take a firm position and instead supplying a different backstory for the victor.110 In this ode for Theron, as in the other odes for Sicilian victors we have analyzed, Pindar links physical space with identity when he defines Theron’s ancestors as the group who settled on the River Akragas, but for the moment he leaves their precise ancestry ambiguous.111 As Olympian 2 progresses, Pindar places the victor and his ancestors within the context of a broader Panhellenic mythic tradition. In the ode’s first mythical section (lines 22–​45), mythical exempla from Thebes supply a Panhellenic, heroic lineage for the victor and resume the vertically oriented spatial structure established in the ode’s opening by narrating stories of rising and falling fortunes. The first set of Theban figures introduced in the ode are the daughters of Kadmos, Semele, and Ino, examples of mortals who suffered greatly (ἔπαθον μεγάλα, 23)  but later received great rewards among the Olympian gods.112 Pindar closes the examples of Semele and Ino with a gnomic observation: ῥοαὶ δ’ ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλαι /​ εὐθυμιᾶν τε μέτα καὶ πόνων ἐς ἄνδρας ἔβαν (“some streams flow with pleasures and others with toils at various times for men,” lines 33–​34). The gnome functions like others in Pindar’s epinician poetry, first by summarizing the lesson of the mythological exemplars (that the fortunes of men and generations fluctuate) through a metaphor and then by transitioning to the next example. However, it is also suggestive that out of the

110.  On encomia as a genre, see Harvey 1955, Lowe 2007. On performance, see Cingano 2003: 37–​43 and Budelman 2012. Cingano 2003: 40 argues that encomia may have been chorally performed at banquets, while Budelman 2012:  178–​79 observes that Bacchylides seems to have paired his encomium for Hieron (fr. 20C) with an epinician ode either for Hieron’s Delphic chariot victory in 470 or his Olympic chariot victory in 468. It is tempting to imagine very cautiously with Budelman that Pindar likewise paired his encomium for Theron with Olympian 2 (2012: 179n19). The scholia to Pythian 2 also suggest that Pindar composed a hyporchema for Hieron to go along with the epinician ode (Schol. P. 2.127). Despite the difference in genre, this provides further evidence for the pairing of a non-​ epinician poem with the victory ode. On the hyporchema and its connection to Pythian 2, see Morgan 2015: 174. 111.  We might also imagine here that the ambiguity would have created suspense for audiences in Akragas and elsewhere who knew of one tradition or the other, or both. 112. Morrison 2007: 48; Nisetich 1989: 71–​72.

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wide variety of metaphors he makes use of in the epinician odes Pindar here employs one that features streams. Lest this connection appear too tenuous, we may observe that the image echoes the experiences of Theron’s forebears in a few ways. Most obviously, the streams and the river are parallel, but beyond this the overall concept is very similar: although the ancestors once toiled (κάμοντες οἳ πολλὰ θυμῷ), after time passed they obtained wealth (πλοῦτός) and glory (χάριν) (lines 8–​10). The gnome thus summarizes an important truth, but also relates the Theban exempla back to the victor’s ancestry. The poet next observes that Fate controls the destiny of mortals, which can be reversed in another time (lines 35–​38). The key exemplar of this fortune is the Theban Oedipus: οὕτω δὲ Μοῖρ’, ἅ τε πατρώιον 35 τῶνδ’ ἔχει τὸν εὔφρονα πότμον, θεόρτῳ σὺν ὄλβῳ ἐπί τι καὶ πῆμ’ ἄγει,   παλιντράπελον ἄλλῳ χρόνῳ· ἐξ οὗπερ ἔκτεινε Λᾷον μόριμος υἱός 38 συναντόμενος, ἐν δὲ Πυθῶνι χρησθέν παλαίφατον τέλεσσεν. ἰδοῖσα δ’ ὀξεῖ’ Ἐρινύς ἔπεφνέ οἱ σὺν ἀλλαλοφονίᾳ γένος ἀρήιον· λείφθη δὲ Θέρσανδρος ἐριπέντι Πολυ-​   νείκει, νέοις ἐν ἀέθλοις ἐν μάχαις τε πολέμου τιμώμενος, Ἀδραστιδᾶν θάλος ἀρωγὸν δόμοις·45 ὅθεν σπέρματος ἔχοντα ῥίζαν πρέπει   τὸν Αἰνησιδάμου ἐγκωμίων τε μελέων λυρᾶν τε τυγχανέμεν. And thus Fate, who holds the ancestral lot of these men with kindly spirit, with god-​sent happiness also adds in some pain that reverses itself at another time; from the time when the fated son killed Laius when he met him and fulfilled the oracle declared long before at Pytho. Keenly noticing this, the Erinys killed his warlike offspring in mutual slaughter. But Thersandros survived the fallen Polyneices, won honor in youthful contests and in battles of war to be a savior shoot for the house of Adrastus’ descendants. And it is fitting that the son of Ainesidamos, who has roots from this seed, should meet with victory songs and lyres. (O. 2.35–​47)



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Theban mythical precedents establish the guiding principle that fortunes may be reversed for better or for worse and that the decision does not end with one man’s life but extends to future generations. Oedipus and Thersandros exemplify the continuity of their lineage despite the setbacks and misfortunes they experienced. While Oedipus fulfilled the Pythian oracle and suffered an ill reversal of fortune, his descendant Thersandros survived, preserved his line, and also saved the family of the Argive Adrastus on his mother’s side. By praising Thersandros as a distant ancestor of the Emmenids, Pindar honors the hero’s descendants by implicitly inserting them into a familial tradition that is filled with glory because of its widespread renown but is also characterized by recovering from setbacks to regain its famous reputation. More specifically, Pindar’s portrayal of the hero revisits descriptions of Theron and his family earlier in the ode and establishes a longstanding tradition of athletic and military excellence attained through individual effort for their line. Thersandros operates as a model for Theron as epinician victor who both won honor by competing in contests (line 43) and was successful in his role as military leader who fights in battle (line 44). The Akragantine tyrant has not won in youthful contests, but in the most prominent of competitions—​the chariot victory at Olympia—​on the occasion celebrated by Olympian 2.  Not only do Theron’s own victory and the celebrations that attend it stem naturally from his famous ancestor (lines 46–​47), but the chariot victories of his brother Xenokrates at the Pythian and Isthmian games also spring from the same seed (lines 49–​51). On the other hand, Thersandros’ martial success echoes the toil Theron’s ancestors suffered when they arrived at Akragas, and the reference to battle recalls Theron’s recent success at the Battle of Himera in 480.113 As both ancestor and heroic exemplar, Thersandros elevates the athletic and military achievements of Theron and his family. In addition to exerting effort like a hero or an athletic victor, Thersandros is a θάλος ἀρωγὸν for the house of Adrastus, which William Race translates as “savior son.”114 While θάλος may be translated as “son” and often means just this, in this passage the translation misses the nuance of the fertility theme that Pindar sustains throughout this passage. Thersandros is a “savior shoot” for the house of the sons of Adrastus. A shoot springs skyward from the ground and rises vertically like the support that described Theron in the ode’s opening. The fertility metaphor continues: from this shoot it is fitting that the son of Ainesidamos (i.e., Theron, but perhaps also Xenokrates) who has a root

113. Willcock 1995: 148, Gentili et al. 2013: 397. 114. Race 1997a: 67.

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(ῥίζα) from that seed (σπέρμα) should meet with victory songs and lyres (lines 46–​47). By line 47, Theron and the Emmenids are thoroughly established as members of a long line of heroes that hail from Thebes.115 In contrast with Pindar’s encomium for Theron, the poet omits the Rhodian version of Theron’s lineage in Olympian 2.116 In the epinician ode, the poet instead highlights a lineage that connects the Emmenids to the Labdacids, that is, a genealogy that weaves Theron’s family into an even broader Panhellenic narrative. While celebrations of Aenesidamos, Theron’s father, or his more distant relatives may have been significant for Akragantine audiences, the epinician ode skips from distant origins directly to the present location of the family. In this way, Pindar highlights a lineage that connects the Emmenids to the Theban pedigree stretching back to Polyneices and Adrastus, that is, a genealogy that inserts Theron’s family into narratives that were part of the Theban cycle.117 Pindar carefully balances the Emmenid relationship with their city, Akragas, in the present and their link to the heroic past. Absent Pindar’s emphasis on Theron’s Theban lineage, the Emmenids could be restricted to local importance, relevant only to Akragantines, or perhaps, at best, Sicilians more broadly construed. On the other hand, without their home on the river that ties the Emmenids to the local landscape, Theron’s family could appear to be equally removed from Akragantine civic life and culture. The ode establishes enduring roots for Theron’s ancestors in Akragas, while his Theban connection through Thersandros elevates the Emmenids to prominence across the Greek

115. Although Adrastus is from Argos rather than Thebes, his descendants are implicated in the Theban tradition since they fought with the Epigonoi against Thebes (P. 8.48–​55). 116. Musti 1992: 34–​35 argues that the narrative in which the Emmenids traveled directly to Akragas from Rhodes (rather than belonging to the group of Geloans who colonized the city in other traditions found in Thucydides 6.4.4 and Strabo 6.2.5) was Emmenid propaganda begun either by Theron or one of his more recent ancestors. He observes that the provenance of the population of Akragas from Rhodes appears nowhere outside of the Pindaric scholia (1992: 34). On the multiple versions of Emmenid genealogy preserved by the scholia to Pindar, see Caserta 2000 and Gentili et al. 2013: 48–​50. 117. This pedigree obviously comes with some baggage, which there is not space to discuss fully here. Surely it is not an uncomplicated honor to be the descendant of Oedipus. On the implications of being a descendant of Oedipus in this poem, see Griffith 1991. Griffith argues that the brotherly strife Pindar introduces in Olympian 2 (Polyneices and Eteocles) is balanced by the brotherly love and accord showcased in Olympian 3 (Castor and Pollux) (1991: 51). Through the fraternal pairs, the Emmenid brothers Theron and Xenokrates are offered positive and negative exempla. For similarities between this passage and Oedipus’ cursing of his sons in the Thebaid, see fr. 2 (West 2003: 44–​45) and discussion in Griffith 1991: 50.



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world, reframing the family in Panhellenic terms both for local and regional audiences and for audiences outside of Sicily. Although local Akragantine audiences familiar with Theron’s family history (or with his propaganda about their past)118 may have traced this lineage from Thebes to Rhodes to Akragas, for audiences elsewhere, the Emmenids, and the city they founded on the river, are represented in this poem as players on a larger Panhellenic stage when they are portrayed as sons of Thebes.

Akragas and the Isle of the Blessed While the first three triads of Olympian 2 link the Emmenids to the physical landscape of the city of Akragas by locating them on the River Akragas and intertwine the city’s past with the heroic Theban ancestors of the ruling family, the final two triads of the ode telescope outward to situate Theron and his forebears within a broader heroic tradition. We shall see that the Isle of the Blessed is at once impossibly far away, making it difficult to attain, but at the same time its layout echoes Pindar’s portrayal of Akragas earlier in the ode. The myth elevates the city through the comparison as it glorifies Theron by hinting that he too may achieve this glorious afterlife. Pindar’s description of the afterlife (lines 56–​83) outlines three possible outcomes for mortals:  a painless afterlife for good men, one filled with toil for bad men, and an exceptional and difficult-​to-​obtain path to the Isle of the Blessed for a select few.119 I focus here on Pindar’s description of the Isle of the Blessed, which sketches a detailed portrayal of this landscape even if much remains obscure. While many have attempted to identify these lines with Pythagoreanism or Orphism or to suggest that they represent a local

118. Gentili et al. 2013: 48. See also Luraghi 2011 on the widespread propagandistic tendencies of the Sicilian tyrants more generally. Luraghi argues that while Theron opted to be depicted in a way that was consistent with traditional aristocratic values, Hieron chose to be represented explicitly as a ruler who is not only portrayed in the usual superlative ways that Pindar described other aristocrats but also as one who has personal power within the community. Theron is therefore more interested in genealogical memory, whereas Hieron’s lineage does not extend past his father (Luraghi 2011: 30, 35–​37). 119. Edmunds 2009. Beginning with Wilamowitz some interpreters have understood the road of Zeus as the third road that Plutarch refers to when quoting Pindar (fr. 130) (Wilamowitz 1922:  497–​500). Edmunds, following Cannatà Fera rightly argues that this interpretation is flawed because the crossroads implies only two paths in addition to the original one on which the traveler treads (2009:  673). See Cannatà Fera 1990:  170–​71 on the passage in Plutarch.

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mystery religion,120 I set aside this question for the present discussion. Instead, I follow the group of scholars who argue that Pindar here evokes an image of the heroic afterlife for Theron.121 In a literary context, Pindar first and foremost offers Theron poetic immortality, but he also suggests that, like Achilles, it may be possible for the tyrant to attain an afterlife on the Isle of the Blessed. I will propose that Pindar, in addition to drawing a correspondence between Achilles and Theron to augur Theron’s poetic immortality and the potential of a glorious afterlife,122 represents the landscape and organization of the Isle of the Blessed so that it echoes descriptions of the victor, his city, and his family and the space with the city of Akragas itself. A consideration of the ode’s possible audiences recommends reading the myth in broad strokes. Although local Akragantine audiences may have understood references to an idiosyncratic local mystery cult,123 such references would be less meaningful for the uninitiated or for Panhellenic audiences, who would have had very little, if any, knowledge of local practices.124 Local mystery religion, therefore, differs from other civic representations considered so far in this study. Unlike emblems on coins and other public civic displays, mystery cults were deliberately obscure. Since Pindar composed his epinician odes with reperformance in mind,125 and since we have limited other information about Theron’s own beliefs and Akragantine cult in the period, this description of the afterlife is best understood, first, in the context the Greek

120. On local religion: Demand 1975 traces possible elements of Cretan and Rhodian cult in the myth and in Akragas. Particularly evocative is the connection she draws between the temple of Zeus Atabyrios on the Akragantine acropolis and this Zeus in particular as the son of Rhea and Kronos who appear in the myth of Olympian 2. Unfortunately, this temple lies under the modern duomo and has therefore not been excavated. On Pythagoreanism:  Willcock 1995: 138–​39; Orphism: Zuntz 1971: 181–​393, Graf 1974: 79–​94, Hornblower 2004: 89–​95. For a good discussion of possible Pythagorean, Orphic, and Dionysiac aspects, see Lloyd-​ Jones 1985, but see also the objections of Edmunds 2009: 675 to an Orphic interpretation. 121.  Lloyd-​Jones 1985, Nisetich 1988, Edmunds 2009. Currie 2005:  83–​84 argues that by aligning the victor with the heroes on the Isle of the Blessed, Pindar refers to the “literal immortality” that Theron will receive through hero cult after his death. 122. Lloyd-​Jones 1985, Nisetich 1988. 123. The Akragantine Empedokles seems also to have believed in a system of transmigration of souls and to have memory of some of his own reincarnations, on which see Inwood 2001: 55–​68 and fr. 1/​112, 111/​117, 137/​147. 124. Edmunds 2009: 675 observes that “[i]‌t would be absurd at this point for Pindar to refer to Orphic beliefs, in effect limiting his audience to Orphics, even if one assumes that the beliefs expressed in Antistrophe 4 are somehow Orphic.” 125. On reperformance of Pindar’s poetry, see ­chapter 1: 69.



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literary tradition and, then, within the framework of the ode as a whole.126 To this end, I will argue that Pindar (1) engages with representations of the afterlife in the poetry of Homer and Hesiod but that he (2) alters crucial details to emphasize aspects of the afterlife that parallel his descriptions of Theron, his ancestors, and the island of Sicily.127 The fullest description of the heroic afterlife in Homer is in Odyssey 4, where Proteus tells Menelaos that he is fated to spend his afterlife on the Elysian plain: σοὶ δ’ οὐ θέσφατόν ἐστι, διοτρεφὲς ὦ Μενέλαε, Ἄργει ἐν ἱπποβότῳ θανέειν καὶ πότμον ἐπισπεῖν, ἀλλά σ’ ἐς Ἠλύσιον πεδίον καὶ πείρατα γαίης ἀθάνατοι πέμψουσιν, ὅθι ξανθὸς Ῥαδάμανθυς, τῇ περ ῥηΐστη βιοτὴ πέλει ἀνθρώποισιν· οὐ νιφετός, οὔτ’ ἂρ χειμὼν πολὺς οὔτε ποτ’ ὄμβρος, ἀλλ’ αἰεὶ Ζεφύροιο λιγὺ πνείοντος ἀήτας Ὠκεανὸς ἀνίησιν ἀναψύχειν ἀνθρώπους, οὕνεκ’ ἔχεις Ἑλένην καί σφιν γαμβρὸς Διός ἐσσι. It is not fated for you, Zeus-​nourished Menelaos, to die in horse-​raising Argos and to meet your fate, but the immortals will send you to the Elysian plain and the ends of the earth, where blonde Rhadamanthys is, where life is easiest for men. It is not snowy, nor is there much wintry weather, nor is there ever rain, but Ocean always sends up blasts of the sharply blowing west wind to cool men, since you have Helen as a wife and you are the son-​in-​law of Zeus.  (Od. 4.561–​69) Homer’s vision of the blessed afterlife includes several details about its physical location. The Elysian plain is located at the ends of the earth, where life is easiest and the weather is mild. The River Ocean provides refreshment for men, but Proteus emphasizes that there is neither snow nor rain, both of which hinder the easy life. Menelaus attains his position here because of his marriage to Helen, the daughter of Zeus.

126. Edmunds 2009 emphasizes the latter. 127. Hanne Eisenfeld has argued differently that Pindar’s use of remote mythical landscapes locates Akragas somewhere between the mythical blessed peoples who dwell on the edge and the Greeks in the center of the Greek world.

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The other surviving extended description of the heroic afterlife that predates Pindar’s ode comes from Hesiod’s Works and Days, where the poet describes the fourth generation of men created by Zeus to inhabit the earth. Part of this generation, he says, lived in strife, fighting around the city of Oedipus and at Troy. Some of them were shrouded by death on the battlefield, but others fared better: τοῖς δὲ δίχ’ ἀνθρώπων βίοτον καὶ ἤθε’ ὀπάσσας Ζεὺς Κρονίδης κατένασσε πατὴρ ἐς πείρατα γαίης. καὶ τοὶ μὲν ναίουσιν ἀκηδέα θυμὸν ἔχοντες ἐν μακάρων νήσοισι παρ’ Ὠκεανὸν βαθυδίνην, ὄλβιοι ἥρωες, τοῖσιν μελιηδέα καρπὸν τρὶς ἔτεος θάλλοντα φέρει ζείδωρος ἄρουρα. But to others father Zeus son of Kronos assigned a life and homes apart from men and settled them at the edges of the earth. And they live with a painless heart in the islands of the blessed next to deep-​eddying Ocean, blessed heroes, for whom the life-​giving earth bears honey-​ sweet fruit that flourishes three times a year.  (Hes. Op. 168–​73) In Hesiod’s poem, the River Ocean appears at the center of the afterlife scene. In contrast with the men consumed by strife fighting around Thebes, the men in this realm have painless hearts as they dwell in their homes beside the river and the earth spontaneously abounds in honey-​sweet fruit for the heroes to enjoy. Unlike the Homeric passage, which makes no mention of the fertility of the land, the land on Hesiod’s Islands of the Blessed is productive and sustains the men who live there. In Olympian 2.68–​83, Pindar borrows aspects of the topography of the heroic afterlife from the Homeric and Hesiodic versions and transforms them to accommodate the victor, his city, and Sicily more broadly: ὅσοι δ’ ἐτόλμασαν ἐστρίς ἑκατέρωθι μείναντες ἀπὸ πάμπαν ἀδίκων ἔχειν ψυχάν, ἔτειλαν Διὸς ὁδὸν παρὰ Κρό-​  70   νου τύρσιν· ἔνθα μακάρων νᾶσον ὠκεανίδες αὖραι περιπνέοισιν· ἄνθεμα δὲ χρυσοῦ φλέγει, τὰ μὲν χερσόθεν ἀπ’ ἀγλαῶν δενδρέων,   ὕδωρ δ’ ἄλλα φέρβει, ὅρμοισι τῶν χέρας ἀναπλέκοντι καὶ στεφάνους



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βουλαῖς· ἐν ὀρθαῖσι Ῥαδαμάνθυος,75 ὃν πατὴρ ἔχει μέγας ἑτοῖμον αὐτῷ πάρεδρον, πόσις ὁ πάντων Ῥέας ὑπέρτατον ἐχοίσας θρόνον. But as many as dare, after remaining three times on either side, to keep a soul entirely free from unjust things, they travel the road of Zeus to the tower of Kronos. There Ocean breezes blow around the Isle of the Blessed, and flowers of gold blaze, some from the glorious trees on the land, while others water nourishes, out of which they intertwine their hands with bracelets and weave crowns for their heads in accordance with the upright judgments of Rhadamanthys, whom the great father, husband of Rhea who has the highest throne of all, keeps as a ready attendant for himself.  (O. 2.68–​77) Pindar incorporates details from each of the earlier accounts that create a recognizable heroic afterlife. The River Ocean is present in all three versions, and, as in the Odyssey, Ocean generates pleasant breezes for the inhabitants (lines 70–​72). In addition, Pindar’s Isle of the Blessed is spontaneously fertile, just as the earth produces fruit in the Works and Days, and like the men on Hesiod’s Islands, the inhabitants of the Isle of the Blessed in Olympian 2 spend their time near the water’s edge. Pindar’s passage also adapts the heroic afterlife to suit the epinician genre and his Sicilian victor. In Olympian 2, the inhabitants of the Isle are enriched not by food but by wealth. Instead of Hesiod’s grain-​giving earth that bears fruit, flowers of gold now blaze for the heroes to use to adorn themselves. Golden flowers and crowns make a fitting image in an epinician ode, which privileges wealth over more mundane concerns like physical sustenance. Furthermore, by making the Isle of the Blessed one island instead of the archipelago described by Hesiod or the Elysian plain in Homer’s account, the passage may even evoke Sicily as a whole. Hanne Eisenfeld has observed that Pindar elides the Homeric and Hesiodic location of this afterlife at the ends of the earth (πείρατα γαίης), instead allowing for a greater range of possibilities for the location of the Isle.128 This ambiguity would have invited audiences to associate the heroic afterlife with Sicily, which was famous in the ancient imaginary as an idyllic landscape where the exceptionally fertile land bore fruit

128. Eisenfeld 2017.

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spontaneously129 and the inhabitants (and especially their rulers) accumulated wealth from its bounty.130 In addition, Pindar’s Isle of the Blessed also more directly echoes Pindar’s earlier characterization of Theron and his ancestors. The image of men growing wealthy beside a river recalls that Theron’s forebears held a holy home on a river and amassed wealth and glory there (πλοῦτον καὶ χάριν, 10).131 Moreover, Pindar’s afterlife is notable for its focus on vertical spaces. Vertical movement is neither Homeric nor Hesiodic but recapitulates a recurring theme in Olympian 2.132 To reach the Isle of the Blessed, the successful hero travels the path of Zeus to the tower of Kronos (Κρόνου τύρσιν, line 70). While it may be impossible for us to know precisely what these images meant,133 we may observe that in the context of the poem, the tower of Kronos is another image of height that recalls the poet’s description of Theron as the bulwark of Akragas (ἔρεισμα, 6) and city-​straightener (ὀρθοπόλις, 7), and his ancestors as the eye of Sicily (ὀφθαλμός, 10). Within the Isle of the Blessed, the principles of governing are also similar to those in Akragas. The inhabitants adorn themselves “in accordance with the upright counsels of Rhadamanthys, whom the great father has as a ready companion for himself, the husband of Rhea, who has the highest throne of all” (lines 75–​77). As Theron keeps the city upright, the judge Rhadamanthys presides with upright counsels (βουλαῖς ὀρθαῖσι), aligning both the mortal and immortal ruler with the Hesiodic good king who rules with straight judgments.134 Finally, Rhadamanthys is seated next to the father Kronos, husband of Rhea, who has the highest throne of all (line

129. See Odysseus’ description of the Cyclops’ island in the Od. 9.109–​11. ἀλλὰ τά γ᾽ ἄσπαρτα καὶ ἀνήροτα πάντα φύονται /​ πυροὶ καὶ κριθαὶ ἠδ᾽ ἄμπελοι, αἵ τε φέρουσιν /​ οἶνον ἐριστάφυλον, καί σφιν Διὸς ὄμβρος ἀέξει. In Euripides’ Cyclops, Polyphemos’ cave is located on the slopes of Mt. Aitna (Eur. Cyc. 299). On the fertility of Sicily, see also Aesch. PV 370. On the location of the Cyclopes in Greek literature, see Buxton 2017. 130. Kowalzig 2008: 134–​35. On Sicily’s fertility, see Diod. 5.2.3–​4. For Gelon’s wealth and access to grain, see Hdt. 7.158.4 and ­chapter 2. 131.  For a different link between Theron’s ancestors and the inhabitants of the Isle of the Blessed, see Smoot 2010: 12. Smoot proposes that the participle κάμοντες refers to the dead in Homer and thus aligns Theron’s ancestors with the deceased blessed men of the mythological section, allowing the unnamed river in line 9 to parallel the River Ocean. 132. For the theme of alternation of highs and lows in the life of men in the ode more generally, see Gentili et al. 2013: 56. 133.  On the road of Zeus and a discussion of similar passages in Greek literature, see Lavecchia 2002. However, Edmunds 2009: 674 cautions that we should not assume that Pindar’s audiences did not understand these references just because we cannot. 134. See note 69 above and Hes. Theog.  81–​93.



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77).135 The emphasis on height in the passage aligns Akragas with the Isle and Theron with its rulers, promoting Akragas as the mortal equivalent of this divine realm. However, Pindar’s vision of the Isle of the Blessed also suggests that Theron may one day attain this afterlife.136 The description of the Isle concludes with a list of heroes who dwell there: Peleus, Kadmos, and Achilles. Kadmos not only recalls Theron’s Theban lineage introduced earlier in the ode, but he also completes the idea that suffering and toil are rewarded after death.137 Peleus likewise experiences a range of happiness and suffering, for he marries the goddess Thetis but their only son, Achilles, dies at an early age.138 Nisetich is right to emphasize that Kadmos and Peleus reach the Isle of the Blessed, like Menelaus, because they have married goddesses (or the daughter of Zeus, in the case of Helen), but Achilles has attained this afterlife both through the intervention of Thetis and Zeus and because of his great achievements.139 The passage concludes with a list of enemies slain by Achilles:  Hektor, Kyknos, and Memnon (lines 81–​83), emphasizing some of his greatest feats.140 As a

135.  Commentators have observed that Rhea’s appearance in this passage is unusual. Kirkwood 1982: 75 and Gentili et al. 2013: 406–​7 connect the prominence of Rhea in the passage with mother-​goddess figures in mystery religions. For Pindar’s mention of Rhea as a way of avoiding repetition of Kronos’ name, see Nisetich 1989: 85n15, Willcock 1995: 160. Pindar may name Rhea as a way to avoid repeating Kronos’ name, but in the context of the poem, she also adds a thematic cap to the description: the name Rhea may derive from the verb ῥέω (“to flow”), recalling not only the river on which Theron’s ancestors settled and the river in the Island of the Blessed, but also the gnomic statement Pindar uses as a transition earlier in the poem. Smoot 2010: 29 argues that Pindar’s ῥοαί at line 33 represents an etymologization of Rhea’s name, but the text of the gnome does not support this conclusion since it is so far removed from the mention of Rhea. 136. Lloyd-​Jones 1985: 277–​79. Currie 2005: 3, 223. 137.  Thummer 1957:  127 believed that Kadmos (as ancestor) and Theron (as descendant) paralleled the father/​son relationship of Peleus and Achilles. However, it is better to understand Achilles, a hero who reached the Isle of the Blessed after extraordinary achievements, as a model for the tyrant here. 138. Morgan 2008: 140 observes that Pindar employs the same pair—​Peleus and Kadmos—​ as exempla for Hieron in Pythian 3.86–​104, where they also demonstrate that the fortunes of humans often change rapidly and unexpectedly. 139. Nisetich 1988: 14. Elsewhere, Achilles spends a gloomy afterlife in the Underworld (Od. 11.487–​91) or a more favorable one on the island of Leuke (“the shining island in the Euxine,” N. 4.49–​50). 140. Athanassaki 2012: 144–​45 links Pindar’s use of the Memnon myth in Pythian 6 with his appearance in this passage, arguing that Pindar evoked the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi in both odes: the east frieze in P. 6 and the west in O. 2. Both passages emphasize the strong relationships between parent and child.

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hero who earned his place in the Isle of the Blessed, Achilles makes a good model for Theron, who has attained the highest victory at the games in the chariot race at Olympia. The poem transitions back to Theron through a metaphor in which the poet compares himself to an archer who has many arrows at his disposal (2.83–​86). The poet declares that “a wise man knows many things by nature, while those who have learned are loud. Let them cry in vain like a pair of crows against the divine bird of Zeus.” The scholia suggest that Pindar here compares himself (the eagle of Zeus) to his inferior epinician rivals, Bacchylides and Simonides.141 Many modern scholars follow this interpretation and understand a harsh personal attack in these lines,142 and Kathryn Morgan has argued convincingly that when Pindar introduces the eagle, especially in odes for tyrants, the bird represents both the poet and the tyrant in contrast to their rivals.143 Additionally, in an ode for Theron the eagle also echoes the eagle of Zeus that appears on the coinage of Akragas (see Figure 4.1). Here we may compare the opening of Pythian 1, where Pindar depicts the eagle resting on the scepter of Zeus, putting the image of Zeus Aitnaios on the coinage of Aitna into verse.144 While the eagle in Olympian 2 is a simpler reference than the description in the opening of the ode for Hieron, so too is the eagle on the coinage of Akragas less assuming than the intricately wrought detail of the image of Zeus Aitnaios on the Aitnaian tetradrachm (Figure  3.1). The simplicity of the image makes it more difficult to prove that audiences would have understood a civic reference here, but given Pindar’s tendency to cite Sicilian coinage, this possibility should remain active. In addition to elevating the poet and his patron, therefore, Zeus’ eagle in Olympian 2 should be understood as a nod to Akragantine civic iconography.

141. Schol. O. 2.154c, 157a, 158cd. 142. Farnell 1932: 22 understands the lines as a personal attack on two local critics rather than on Bacchylides and Simonides. See also Gentili et al. 2013: 50–​53. Hornblower 2004: 288 argues that “Pindar had no particular rivals in mind.” For the argument against a poetic self-​ reference, see Lefkowitz 1981: 57. 143. Morgan 2015: 123–​32, Pfeijffer 1994. On the eagle in Pindar’s poetry, see also Steiner 1986: 104–​5. 144. See ­chapter 3.



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Theron, Son of Akragas The poet poses a question in lines 89–​90 that briefly conflates the victor and his city: τίνα βάλλομεν /​ ἐκ μαλθακᾶς αὖτε φρενὸς εὐκλέας ὀιστοὺς ἱέντες; (“At what/​whom do I  aim, then, shooting my arrows of fame from my gentle mind?”). He soon answers his own question—​he will shoot Akragas with his arrows of fame. But a celebration of Theron is not far behind:               ἐπί τοι  Ἀκράγαντι τανύσαις αὐδάσομαι ἐνόρκιον λόγον ἀλαθεῖ νόῳ, τεκεῖν μή τιν’ ἑκατόν γε ἐτέων πόλιν    φίλοις ἄνδρα μᾶλλον εὐεργέταν πραπίσιν ἀφθονέστερόν τε χέρα Θήρωνος. Stretching my bow at Akragas, I will make a statement on oath with a truthful mind, that no city within a hundred years has given birth to a man more beneficent to his friends in spirit and with a more ungrudging hand than Theron.  (O. 2.90–​95) Although commentators generally pass over the line or simply observe that τινα must agree with ἄνδρα rather than with πόλιν,145 I will propose that the verb τίκτω here deserves more attention and that its primary sense of “give birth” is active in this passage. According to the LSJ, the first meaning of τίκτω is “to bring into the world, engender.” However, τίκτω can have a metaphorical sense of “generate, engender, produce” in Greek literature.146 Many of the passages cited under the metaphorical usage involve the production of abstract concepts (“the land will produce a plague,” Hdt. 7.49) or an abstract concept producing another abstract concept (“take care lest boldness produce fear,” A. Supp. 498; “the impious [δυσσεβὲς] deed afterwards produces more impiety,” Α. Ag. 758–​59). In cases involving abstract concepts, then, it makes sense to understand τίκτω as metaphorical. However, a survey of Pindar’s uses of the verb does not show as clear a case for the metaphorical sense of τίκτω. Pindar uses the verb thirty times, and

145. Willcock 1995: 165. The only commentary to address briefly the meaning of the verb is Gentili et al. 2013. 146. LSJ s.v. τίκτω.

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William Slater classifies three of these uses as metaphorical.147 The first is the passage in question, O. 2.93, which I will save for last. The second instance Slater identifies as metaphorical appears in Pythian 4.52. Here Medea prophesies that Euphamos will find in the beds of Lemnian women “a race who after coming to this island with the honor of the gods will produce a man (to be) a master of the dark-​clouded plains” (γένος, οἵ κεν τάνδε σὺν τιμᾷ θεῶν /​ νᾶσον ἐλθόντες τέκωνται φῶτα κελαινεφέων πεδίων /​ δεσπόταν· P. 4.51–​53). The third example Slater identifies comes from Paean 2 for the Abderites: “I am a young city, but nevertheless I produced my mother’s mother” (νεόπολίς εἰμι· ματρὸς δὲ ματέρ’ ἐμᾶς ἔτεκον ἔμπαν, Pae. 2.29). Slater classifies these passages as metaphorical, but in contrast to the metaphorical uses in the LSJ, both passages deal with a genealogical connection (rather than an abstract concept), and the verb could just as well be translated as “to give birth” or “to beget” in both passages: Euphamos, with the help of the Lemnian women, will find a race that will beget a master, that is Battos, the founder of Cyrene. In Paean 2, the city of Abderos gave birth to its mother’s mother. Ian Rutherford argues that “the eccentricity of the expression merely reflects a highly abnormal event: the refoundation by a colony of its mother-​city.”148 We may also observe that Pindar employs τίκτω in colonial contexts in each case. While in Cyrene, Battos will provide the race of ruling kings, the city of Abdera gives birth to (i.e., refounds) Teos. Slater’s metaphorical designation of τίκτω does not, therefore, result in a better translation for P. 4.51–​53 or Pae. 2.29. Of the twenty-​seven other instances of τίκτω that appear in Pindar’s surviving works, twenty-​four designate either childbirth by a goddess or a mortal or a father who begets a child.149 However, in the three remaining cases, a city or an island gives birth. Thus, at O. 6.85, Pindar links himself to the victor, Hagesias, whose family hails from Stymphalos: “my grandmother was Stymphalian, flourishing Metope, who gave birth to horse-​driving Thebe” (ματρομάτωρ ἐμὰ Στυμφαλίς, εὐανθὴς Μετώπα /​ πλάξιππον ἃ Θήβαν ἔτικτεν). In this case, Stymphalos and Thebes are represented by local nymphs, who draw a genealogical connection between the two regions. Similarly, in O. 7.71–​ 73, the sun god Helios and the island Rhodes mingle and produce human

147. Slater 1969: s.v. τίκτω. 148. Rutherford 2001: 268. 149. In addition to O. 2.93 and the five passages discussed here (P. 4.52, Pae. 2.29, O. 6.85, O. 7.71, I. 8.21), see O. 1.89, O. 6.30, O. 6.41, O. 6.49, O. 7.74, P. 2.42, P. 3.101, P. 4.46, P. 9.16, P. 9.33, P. 9.59, P. 9.84, N. 5.13, I. 1.12, I. 3/​4.82, I. 8.33, fr. 30.7, fr. 33d.9, fr. 34.1, fr. 52i.20, fr. 52k.42, fr. 52la.21, fr. 70b.30, fr. 333a.11.



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children: “There at some time after mingling with Rhodes he [Helios] begot seven children who inherited the wisest thoughts among men of earlier times” (ἔνθα Ῥόδῳ ποτὲ μιχθεὶς τέκεν /​ ἑπτὰ σοφώτατα νοήματ’ ἐπὶ προτέρων ἀνδρῶν παραδεξαμένους /​ παῖδας). Although Helios is the subject of τίκτω, the passage is nonetheless distinctive because his children are also the offspring of the island/​nymph Rhodes. Finally, in Isthmian 8 for the pankration victory of Kleandros of Aegina, Pindar celebrates the victor’s island city and its hero Aiakos. As in Olympian 6, the poet links Thebes and Aegina, now explaining that the nymphs Thebe and Aegina were twins (I. 8.16a–​17). While Thebe was established near Dirce, Zeus took Aegina to the island of Oinopia and slept with her, and “there you [Aegina] gave birth to divine Aiakos, most dear of mortals to the loud-​thundering father” (δῖον ἔνθα τέκες /​ Αἰακὸν βαρυσφαράγῳ πατρὶ κεδνότατον /​ ἐπιχθονίων·, I. 8.21–​23). Aiakos, the civic hero of Aegina, was produced from the island/​nymph. In O. 7 and I. 8, Pindar employs the verb τίκτω in contexts that explain the origins of Rhodes and Aegina, respectively, and that account for a part of the origin myth of each respective city.150 With the above passages in mind, I suggest that Pindar’s use of τίκτω in Olympian 2 deserves more critical attention. Like all the other twenty-​nine uses of the verb in Pindar, τεκεῖν should also be translated in a nonmetaphorical sense at O. 2.93, as follows: “no city within a century has given birth to a man more beneficent to his friends in spirit and more generous of hand than Theron.” Pindar’s song marks Theron clearly as a product of his city, but perhaps also as its benefactor. Gentili et al. suggest that the image of Akragas giving birth to Theron may recall a passage from Theognis, where the city becomes pregnant and gives birth: “Kyrnos, this city is pregnant, and I fear lest it give birth to a man (who will be) a straightener of our evil hybris” (Κύρνε, κύει πόλις ἥδε, δέδοικα δὲ μὴ τέκηι ἄνδρα /​ εὐθυντῆρα κακῆς ὕβριος ἡμετέρης. Thgn. 39–​40). When read together with Theognis, Olympian 2 presents Theron as a man like the one Theognis fears will arise in the city as a “straightener” (cf. Theron as ὀρθόπολις, line 7). While Theognis is afraid of this man, in the world of epinician poetry, and from the perspective of the ruler, straightening the city is a benefit that Theron provides to his hometown as we saw in the opening triad where the tyrant is ὀρθόπολιν. What makes the image of Akragas giving birth to Theron even more exceptional is that the ruler is still alive and not (yet) a civic hero, like Aiakos or

150. In O. 7, Pindar goes on to say that one of the seven children of Helios and Rhodes begot Kamiros, Ialysos, and Lindos, who gave their names to the three cities of the island. Aiakos is the father of Peleus and Telamon, and the ancestor of the Aiginetans.

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the founders of the Rhodian cities.151 The phrase is more fleeting than when it is applied to oikists who are firmly located in the past, and Pindar does not go into detail since Theron has other ancestors who have been featured in the poem and since multiple genealogies for Theron and the Akragantines are possible. However, this is a moment when we see tension between Pindar’s representations of the Emmenid and Deinomenid tyrants. While Hieron attempted to establish himself as oikist and to secure posthumous hero cult for himself by founding Aitna,152 Theron is never explicitly called a founder in epinician poetry or in other ancient literature (or likened to one directly as Hieron is compared to Pelops in Olympian 1).153 Nevertheless, at the end of Olympian 2, Pindar acknowledges Theron’s established roots in Akragas which contrast the Emmenids with the itinerant Deinomenids. When celebrating Hieron, Pindar could not claim a historical connection to Syracuse or Aitna, but in an ode for Theron, the poet plays up Theron’s strength—​the fact that he is the son of his hometown. This phrasing would be remarkable in any epinician ode, but it is particularly worthy of note in a Sicilian context where citizens supposedly lack the belief that their populations have descended from autochthonous heroes. While not going so far as to suggest that Theron is an autochthonous hero, Pindar may be hinting that Theron could serve a similar function for his city, and, in fact, Diodorus records that Theron received hero cult after his death.154 If we recall Willcock’s assertion that there were no heroes like the Aiakids for Pindar to employ in the Sicilian odes,155 what we may be seeing here is the formation of such a figure in this poetry. After celebrating Theron’s kindness to his friends and generous spirit, Pindar concludes the ode with the familiar epinician trope that one must avoid an excess of praise. He expresses the boundlessness of Theron’s good deeds

151. One could further distinguish between the types of civic hero that Aiakos, on one hand, and Tlapolemos (or perhaps even Kamiros, Ialysos, and Lindos), on the other, represent, but for the present discussion the essential distinction is that they all reside securely in the heroic distant past, while Theron is very much a figure of the present whom Pindar is fashioning in a similar mold. 152. See ­chapter 3. 153. See Luraghi 1994: 248. Aside from their statuses as founders, Theron and Hieron did appear to use Aitna and Himera for some of the same purposes (Bonanno 2010: 117). See Diod. 11.49. Nonetheless, while Aitna was a major part of Hieron’s campaign of self-​promotion, Theron appears to have instead focused on his hometown of Akragas for this purpose rather than on Himera. 154. Diod. 11.53.2. 155. See Introduction: 1 and Willcock 1974: 192.



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through the image of counting the grains of sand on the shore: “for grains of sand escape counting, and all the joys which that man has wrought for others, who could declare them?” (98–​100). The image in the final question of the ode is surely gnomic, but the grains of sand may also leave audiences with a final echo of the riverbanks by which Theron’s ancestors held their home and of the water’s edge on the Isle of the Blessed.

Conclusions In Olympian 2, Pindar praises Theron by highlighting the unique connection that he and his ancestors held to an enduring emblem of the city—​ the River Akragas. Not only are Theron and his ancestors anchored to the city, but through this connection the citizens of Akragas also gain access to a Panhellenic, heroic ancestry. The river imagery winds through the poem, appearing in brief flashes and allusions that recall and reactivate the opening image of Theron’s ancestors established beside it at key moments in the ode, likening the citizens of Akragas to the heroes who dwell on the Isle of the Blessed. In this ode, Pindar merges Emmenid and Akragantine interests by emphasizing strengths of Theron’s that Hieron does not and cannot share. The fact that Theron’s ancestors could plausibly claim involvement in the city’s foundation and the fact that the Akragantine tyrant was born in the city over which he ruled immediately set him apart from the Geloan/​Syracusan/​Aitnaian ruler, Hieron, and Pindar plays up this distinction when celebrating the Emmenid ruler. While the tyrant’s personal preference may account for some of the thematic differences between the odes for Theron and Hieron, this chapter has demonstrated that Pindar links each tyrant to the local landscape through very different strategies that correspond to the circumstances under which he came to power and the style in which he continued to rule over his city.

5

Conclusions and Test Cases Ergoteles of Himera and Psaumis of Kamarina

The preceding chapters have highlighted the variety of ways that identity is expressed through and mediated by the linkage between myth and places in Pindar’s Sicilian odes. I have attempted to answer the questions: What did it mean for Sicilian victors and their communities to forge a local, civic identity? How did conceptions of local identity relate to representations of the identity of the victor, who was in many cases also a ruler? And how did the members of these communities find commonalities amidst nearly constant strife, dislocation, and reorganization? These questions are inevitably related to questions about myth in Pindar’s epinician odes more broadly. Although Malcolm Willcock may not have been wrong to observe that Sicilian cities lacked local heroes for Pindar to celebrate in the sense that there were no heroes analogous to the Aiakidai in Aegina, for instance, I have emphasized that Sicilian communities and their rulers instead defined and expressed themselves through physical links with local places. While Sicilian identity is expressed through a different medium, regional and local identities are nonetheless ubiquitously marked by their bonds with the local landscape. The answers to these questions, furthermore, are complex and we have seen that they vary by city, by victor, and even by individual ode. Genealogical continuity and links to heroic ancestors may have been impractical and downright unbelievable in certain cases like Hieron’s new city of Aitna, which had been colonized within a decade of the composition of Pindar’s odes for its victors. While it seems unlikely that the mixed group of Peloponnesian and Syracusan settlers who became the citizens of Aitna could have accepted a putative shared lineage from an ancestor who was a native of Aitna, we saw that, even in this most extreme case, the poet offers the Aitnaians a common

Myth, Locality, and Identity in Pindar’s Sicilian Odes. Virginia M. Lewis, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190910310.003.0006



Conclusions and Test Cases: Ergoteles of Himera and Psaumis of Kamarina 225

narrative of descent through their shared Dorian past in Pythian 1.  Pindar additionally emphasizes cult traditions that were common to Syracusans, Aitnaians, and Peloponnesians by spotlighting and repeatedly invoking the myth of Arethusa and Alpheos in the Syracusan and Aitnaian odes. However, in other cases, where populations are slightly more stable, we may see Sicilian cities trending toward the kind of genealogical myths established for other Greek cities. Our prime example of this kind of narrative is Akragas. Despite being originally founded more than a century later than Syracuse, Akragas had a population that was, nevertheless, by all accounts more established than the populations in Syracuse and Aitna. Although intermarriage between Greeks and local populations and between Greeks and Carthaginians surely took place, displacement on a massive and citywide scale of the kind that Syracuse experienced did not occur here. Akragas, therefore, by contrast, enjoyed a population with a more constant makeup, many of whose members likely had longer memories of civic history that, even if colored by stasis and a degree of internal conflict, were unmarred by forced relocations of entire populations of the kinds that the cities in eastern Sicily experienced. Akragas differed from Syracuse and Aitna not only because the overall population remained more uniform during the period of the tyrants but also because the tyrant, Theron, and his family hailed from Akragas originally. Unlike other Sicilian victors celebrated by Pindar whom we have examined—​ Hieron, Chromius, and Hagesias—​Theron could be more naturally and plausibly portrayed as genealogically related to the city’s original founders. While Hieron founded a city himself to attain such a status, Theron could be placed in this role for Akragas with considerably less maneuvering on his own part or on Pindar’s.1 My study, so far, has focused on the close relationship between landscape and civic identity in epinician odes for tyrants and their henchmen (to borrow Kathryn Morgan’s term):2 the Emmenid brothers Xenokrates and Theron, and the Deinomenid Hieron and his associates Hagesias and Chromius. The preceding discussion has concentrated on Aitna, Syracuse, and Akragas. However, Pindar also composed three odes for two additional victors from two other cities in Sicily:  Ergoteles of Himera and Psaumis of Kamarina. This chapter will test some of the arguments and conclusions laid out in the

1. This is not to say that Theron did not engage in the kind of self-​aggrandizement that his Syracusan counterpart engaged in. We have seen that the refoundation of Himera may have been Theron’s answer to Hieron’s foundation of Aitna, and it may have likewise been part of his attempt to obtain a posthumous hero cult. 2. Morgan 2015: 359–​412.

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previous chapters by investigating how well they apply to Pindar’s odes that celebrate different types of victors. To put it another way, we must ask whether Pindar links myth and landscape especially strongly in odes for tyrants and their henchmen, or if this strategy applies to his Sicilian odes more broadly. The odes for Ergoteles and Psaumis offer an opportunity to evaluate the hypothesis that the close relationship between myth and landscape is a broader Sicilian phenomenon that is not limited to the tyrants. Pindar composed one ode for Ergoteles of Himera, while for Psaumis of Kamarina two odes have been preserved through the manuscript tradition. In Olympian 12, Pindar commemorated the victory of Ergoteles of Himera in the long footrace at Olympia, while he celebrated the chariot victory of Psaumis of Kamarina in Olympian 4.3 Psaumis also commissioned Olympian 5, which was included in the manuscripts as Pindaric although many scholars have challenged its authenticity, as I will discuss in more detail later in the chapter. In some important ways, the odes for Ergoteles and Psaumis fall within cultural contexts similar to the odes we have examined for Aitna, Syracuse, and Akragas. By the time of Ergoteles’ victory (either in 470 or 466, on which see the following discussion), it was nearly impossible for any Sicilian victor to participate in the Olympic games or to commission a Pindaric ode without participating in a system of Deinomenid ideology.4 After the foundation of Aitna in 476, Hieron controlled the eastern half of the island, and after Theron’s death in 472 and the overthrow of his son in 471, the Deinomenid sphere of influence spread across the island of Sicily. Himera and Kamarina also experienced upheaval, population movement, and immigration that created a political climate similar to that which we saw in Syracuse in ­chapter 1.5 This chapter proposes that, as in the odes for Syracuse and Aitna and the odes for Ergoteles and Psaumis, Pindar defuses the effects of political strife and offers the newly reconfigured citizenries a stake in the ideology of their recently constituted cities by linking them to civic symbols rooted in the landscape. While the odes for Himera and Kamarina resemble odes for the cities discussed in the previous chapters in some respects, the odes for Ergoteles and

3. Barrett 2007: 40 argues that both Olympian 4 and Olympian 5 celebrate Psaumis’ mule cart victory rather than his chariot victory of 452. Race 1997a assigns Olympian 4 to Psaumis’ chariot victory of 452 and Olympian 5 to his mule cart victory, for which he proposes a date of 448. On the dating and event of the ode, see the discussion below. 4. Nicholson 2015: 79–​98. 5. Nicholson 2011: 98–​99 surveys the evidence for the multiple groups (previous residents of Kamarina, previous residents of Gela, new settlers from Rhodes and Crete, Sikels) present in the refounded Kamarina.



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Psaumis present new perspectives on the Sicilian odes since neither victor was a tyrant himself nor did either belong to a tyrant’s court (as, for example, Hagesias and Chromius did under the Deinomenids). As a runner, Ergoteles is the only athlete in a nonequestrian event whose victory is celebrated in Pindar’s Sicilian odes.6 In comparison with other Sicilian victors celebrated in the epinician odes, Ergoteles’ athletic event and his status as an immigrant from Crete present a novel set of circumstances for Pindar to accommodate in his poetry. The odes for Psaumis, on the other hand, introduce a temporal contrast with the rest of Pindar’s Sicilian odes because they were performed at least a decade after the fall of the Deinomenids. Nigel Nicholson has argued that Deinomenid ideology was a powerful device for Pindar when celebrating Psaumis, even years after the Deinomenids fell from power.7 I  will argue that in addition to exploiting and reconfiguring Deinomenid ideology in Olympian 4, Pindar and the poet who composed Olympian 5 (whether or not this is Pindar himself) continue to use strategies familiar from other Sicilian epinician poems that implicate the victor in the local landscape to characterize the city of Kamarina and to celebrate Psaumis. The situational differences under which Ergoteles and Psaumis won their victories and commissioned odes to commemorate them present a good opportunity to test the hypothesis that a strong link between myth and landscape is a feature of Sicilian epinician and civic ideology that transcends any one particular political system or narrow point in time.

The Immigrant Victor: Becoming Himeraian in Olympian 12 Pindar’s ode for Ergoteles is the shortest of his epinician poems for Sicilian victors, and I include it in its entirety: λίσσομαι, παῖ Ζηνὸς Ἐλευθερίου, Ἱμέραν εὐρυσθενέ’ ἀμφιπόλει, σώτειρα Τύχα. τὶν γὰρ ἐν πόντῳ κυβερνῶνται θοαί νᾶες, ἐν χέρσῳ τε λαιψηροὶ πόλεμοι κἀγοραὶ βουλαφόροι. αἵ γε μὲν ἀνδρῶν5 πόλλ’ ἄνω, τὰ δ’ αὖ κάτω

6. Midas of Akragas, whose victory is celebrated in Pythian 12, may be added to the list, but he is a musician rather than an athlete. On the importance of equestrian competition at the Panhellenic games for Sicilians, see Morgan 2015: 69–​72. 7. Nicholson 2011: 95–​98.

228 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

ψεύδη μεταμώνια τάμνοισαι κυλίνδοντ’ ἐλπίδες· σύμβολον δ’ οὔ πώ τις ἐπιχθονίων πιστὸν ἀμφὶ πράξιος ἐσσομένας εὗρεν θεόθεν, τῶν δὲ μελλόντων τετύφλωνται φραδαί· πολλὰ δ’ ἀνθρώποις παρὰ γνώμαν ἔπεσεν, 10 ἔμπαλιν μὲν τέρψιος, οἱ δ’ ἀνιαραῖς ἀντικύρσαντες ζάλαις ἐσλὸν βαθὺ πήματος ἐν μικρῷ πεδάμειψαν χρόνῳ. υἱὲ Φιλάνορος, ἤτοι καὶ τεά κεν ἐνδομάχας ἅτ’ ἀλέκτωρ συγγόνῳ παρ’ ἑστίᾳ ἀκλεὴς τιμὰ κατεφυλλορόησε(ν) ποδῶν, 15 εἰ μὴ στάσις ἀντιάνειρα Κνωσίας σ’ ἄμερσε πάτρας. νῦν δ’ Ὀλυμπίᾳ στεφανωσάμενος καὶ δὶς ἐκ Πυθῶνος Ἰσθμοῖ τ’, Ἐργότελες, θερμὰ Νυμφᾶν λουτρὰ βαστάζεις ὁμι-​ λέων παρ’ οἰκείαις ἀρούραις. I beseech you, child of Zeus Eleutherios, protect mighty Himera, savior Tyche. For swift ships are guided on the sea by you, and on the land quick-​moving battles and assemblies that give counsel (are gathered by you). And men’s hopes rise up sometimes and at others roll back down as they travel over idle falsehoods. No one of those living on the earth has yet discovered a trustworthy token sent from a god of an action that is about to happen, but knowledge of future events lies in obscurity. And many things happen for men contrary to their judgment, sometimes opposite of their delight, but others after coming upon terrible storms have received deep good in exchange for their pain in a short time. Son of Philanor, indeed, just like the rooster who fights at home, the honor of your feet would also have shed its leaves without glory, if stasis that pits man against man had not deprived you of your fatherland, Knossos. But now having won a crown at Olympia and twice in Pythia and in Isthmia, Ergoteles, you touch the hot baths of the Nymphs as you live beside your own lands. The brief ode consists of a single triad. The strophe begins with a prayer to Tyche sōteira to preserve the city of Himera and then meditates on the changeability of men’s hopes.8 The antistrophe builds on this theme, emphasizing 8.  On Tyche as an evocation of Deinomenid ideology, Catenacci 2005b:  38, Nicholson 2015: 242–​43.



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that the future is unknowable, but also that even after ill fortune, humans can experience good once more. Finally, the epode addresses the victor, Ergoteles, son of Philanor. The poem’s thematic emphasis on rising and falling fortunes maps onto the victor’s experience; while he was expelled from his hometown due to stasis, the poet stresses that he never would have attained kleos through his victory and its celebration in song had he remained in Knossos (lines 13–​ 16), but instead would have been like a rooster who won no glory by fighting at home. Far from living in obscurity, Ergoteles has attained distinction and prominence through his victory and the performance of Pindar’s ode, both of which depend on his move to a new homeland in Himera.9 As a private citizen, Ergoteles commissioned a much briefer and more modest poem than those commissioned by Theron, Hieron, and Hieron’s associates. The ode’s brevity also means that the poet only touches upon generic features that are emphasized more strongly in other odes.10 While the victor’s father, Philanor, is mentioned, for instance, the poem does not dwell on Ergoteles’ lineage. Nor does it link him to any heroes (local or otherwise) or use a hero as a paradigm for his success.11 In fact, the brief ode evokes no obvious mythical narrative at all.12 Instead Pindar attends to the victor’s personal situation through the poem’s thematic preoccupations: disappointed hopes of men turn out favorably in the end because it is impossible to know the gods’ will ahead of time (lines 5–​9). The ode’s gnomic statements further flesh out Ergoteles’ own narrative, which itself takes the place of the mythical hero’s journey that appears in other epinician odes. In spite of the ode’s brevity, it carefully mediates Ergoteles’ return to Himera after his victory, smoothing over the chaotic circumstances under which he, as an exile, arrived in the city that had just undergone stasis. Ergoteles probably immigrated to Himera during the period after the Himeraian revolt in 476/​

9.  Nicholson 2015:  240 with note 8 discusses the strong tradition of distance-​running in Crete, and also observes that Pindar had no obligation to acknowledge Ergoteles’ training in Crete. Silk 2007: 190 notes that the poem portrays Crete as a “backwater” compared to Ergoteles’ new city where achievement is celebrated for encomiastic effect. 10. Silk 2007: 182. 11. If Nicholson 2015: 258–​61 is correct about Herakles at the fountain being a Himeraian theme, then Pindar could be alluding to the hero and likening the victor to Herakles in this ode. In any case, Herakles is not named and the reference is very subtle. 12.  Silk 2007:  182, Gentili et  al. 2013:  291. Nicholson 2015:  257 suggests that “by placing Ergoteles in relation to a specific cult, the final image served a similar role to the mythical narratives found in longer odes.”

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5 when Theron reorganized the city and offered citizenship to Dorians and “any others who wished.”13 Originally from Crete, Ergoteles was forced out of his homeland by stasis, as we learn in Pindar’s ode. As a recent immigrant, Ergoteles presented unique challenges for Pindar. I will propose that Pindar uses civic imagery linked to the landscape to reshape and rework the victor’s relationship to the city in a way that distinguishes this ode from the odes for tyrants and their associates. Neither the date of the celebrated Olympic victory nor that of the ode is certain.14 However, the two most likely dates for the ode are 470 and 466, and scholars have made strong cases for both. Recently Nigel Nicholson has argued that the ode should be read within the cultural context of Deinomenid control of Himera and should therefore be dated to 470 after Hieron’s defeat of Theron’s son Thrasydaeus.15 After the death of Theron, Thrasydaeus ruled briefly in Akragas and Himera, but in 471 or 470, he led an army against the Syracusans and was defeated by Hieron. Thrasydaeus was then banished to Nisean Megara where he was executed,16 and independent governments were installed in Akragas and Himera.17 If Nicholson and the other proponents of a 470 date are correct, then Pindar composed Olympian 12 for Ergoteles right after this political shift when Himera had very recently broken free from the control of the Emmenids of Akragas. On the other hand, Spencer Barrett has argued that Pindar composed the ode in 466, just after the fall of the Deinomenid tyrants.18 This turbulent 13.  Diod. 11.48.6–​49.4. Mann 2001:  245n811, Catenacci 2005b:  33, Barrett 2007:  79–​80, Nicholson 2015: 238–​39. See also c­ hapter 4: 180 on this episode. 14.  In Olympian 12, Pindar mentions four victories:  two Pythian, one Olympic, and one Isthmian. Pausanias reports that Ergoteles was a periodonikes, and the surviving victory lists show that he won twice at Olympia in 472 and 464. Since Pindar’s poem mentions only one Olympic victory, it must have been composed after the first Olympic victory and before the second. Rather than celebrating the Olympic victory specifically, the ode may have been commissioned to celebrate Ergoteles’ career more broadly, and was probably composed directly after a Pythian victory, rather than one of the two at Olympia. See Nicholson 2015: 237–​ 53 for further discussion of the dating, including the testimonia of the scholia. See Barrett 2007: 80–​86 on possible dates for Ergoteles’ Olympic and Pythian victories. 15. Catenacci 2005b, Nicholson 2015: 237–​53. 16. Diod. 11.53.3–​5. On this episode, see Luraghi 1994: 262. Bonanno 2010: 121n146 observes that it is difficult to understand from the limited available evidence why the Megarians executed Thrasydaeus. 17.  Although Diodorus says that the Akragantines established a “democracy,” Asheri 1992b: 101–​2 argues that this should not be taken literally, but instead means that they were free from the rule of the tyranny. See also De Angelis 2016: 192. 18. Barrett 2007: 86–​96.



Conclusions and Test Cases: Ergoteles of Himera and Psaumis of Kamarina 231

political moment would make the reference to stasis in the ode equally poignant as a date of 470. Although I am inclined to accept the earlier date, in the end, a firm date is not important for the present argument. Whether the ode was composed just after the rise of Deinomenid influence in Himera or in the period soon after the Deinomenids fell, Olympian 12 offers a perspective that contrasts with the odes we have examined to this point because Ergoteles is not a member of the Deinomenid court and also because Pindar dwells on the victor’s immigrant status and his integration into his new city. We may contrast Ergoteles here with Hagesias, celebrated in Olympian 6, whose Peloponnesian lineage contains expedient ideological value for Hieron’s projects in Syracuse and Aitna, since many of the citizens there were also Peloponnesians and former mercenaries. Unlike Hagesias, Ergoteles does not represent a group of mercenaries, but he could, perhaps, represent groups that have been displaced and reorganized by stasis and must work through the collective grief of relocation and redistribution of power, land, and wealth. Whether Olympian 12 was composed in 470 or in 466, therefore, the ode not only mediates the stasis that Ergoteles has personally suffered but also transforms him into a symbol of reintegration and new beginnings for Himera and her citizens. As in Pindar’s other odes for Sicilian victors, in Olympian 12, the poet articulates the victor’s identity in terms of the local landscape and cult sites. In particular, the final sentence of the poem relates the victor to the landscape and civic traditions of Himera.19 The poet addresses the victor here, saying that he “exalts,” “touches,” or “lifts” (βαστάζεις, 19) the warm baths of the Nymphs.20 The verb βαστάζω in this passage has been understood differently by various commentators. The scholia proposed a metaphoric sense of “exalt” or “raise,” and several modern commentators have also understood the phrase to indicate that the victor glorifies Himera.21 Others, however, have suggested that the victor literally touched the baths, either by bathing in them or during the performance of civic ritual. The phrase recalls the therapeutic hot springs in which athletes soaked after a competition to heal their sore muscles. Pindar employs this image in Nemean 4, where he compares praise

19. Silk 2007: 192–​93 also notes the connection to the community and natural features of the city in the last line of the ode. He collects Pindaric passages that share these features, which notably all come from Sicilian odes with the exception of a strong parallel at the end of Pythian 4 for a victor from Cyrene. 20. See Silk 2007: 193–​94 for a discussion of the verb βαστάζω and its translation. 21. Schol. O. 12.25a, Schol. O. 12.27a. Hamilton 1984: 261–​62 still offers a useful survey of the earlier scholarship.

232 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

poetry to a restorative bath that soothes the athlete,22 and, on one level, we should understand a similar restorative context in Olympian 12 provided by the local springs for the returning victorious athlete.23 However, a ritual context may be as significant on a literal level as the image of the athlete relaxing in a restorative bath. The warm baths of the Nymphs must refer to the hot springs of Himera, which still flow to the present day in Termini Imerese. Richard Hamilton has argued that Pindar’s mention of the springs in Olympian 12 should be read together with a specific series of tetradrachms of Himera. The city’s earlier issues displayed a rooster—​a type parlant because the bird announces the day (hemera in Greek)24—​opposite a variety of symbols, which Theron changed permanently to a crab following his takeover of the city (Figures 4.2 and 4.3).25 However, Himera minted a new series close to the time of the composition of Olympian 12, and it is with this series that Hamilton connects the imagery in Pindar’s ode.26 On these coins, the quadriga appears on the obverse and the nymph Himera makes a libation at an altar on the reverse. Next to her, a male figure, who is sometimes a Silenus (as pictured here) and on other issues a human male, reaches his hand into a fountain (Figure 5.1).27 In a Himeraian context, Herakles was associated with fountains, and it may be the case that a relief from nearby Colle Madore depicting Herakles bathing in a fountain should also be linked to the scene on the tetradrachm.28 In Pindar’s ode, Ergoteles is likely being represented as taking part in the same 22. N. 4.1–​5. Ἄριστος εὐφροσύνα πόνων κεκριμένων /​ ἰατρός· αἱ δὲ σοφαί /​ Μοισᾶν θύγατρες ἀοιδαὶ θέλξαν νιν ἁπτόμεναι. /​ οὐδὲ θερμὸν ὕδωρ τόσον γε μαλθακὰ τεύχει /​ γυῖα, τόσσον εὐλογία φόρμιγγι συνάορος. (“Joyous revelry is the best healer of labors judged successful in the contest. But the wise daughters of the Muses, songs, charm when they touch him. Not even hot water makes the limbs as relaxed as praise, the companion of the lyre.”) 23. The image of the victor bathing may indicate that he has completed his journey home, on which see Fränkel 1960: 97–​99 and Kurke 1991: 33–​34. Fränkel 1944 argues that a bath in local waters was a symbol for an immigrant settling in a new country. On the fountain, in particular, as a signal for the homecoming of an exile, see Nicholson 2015: 257–​58. Already Becker 1940: 48 compared the bathing imagery in Olympian 12 with that in Nemean 4. 24. Rutter 1997: 106, Holloway 2000: 123. 25. See the discussion of coinage and Akragantine intervention in ­chapter 4. 26. Gutmann and Schwabacher 1929: 118–​27, Rutter 1997: 135–​36, and Nicholson 2015: 245–​ 49 place the issue of the new tetradrachms right after Thrasydaeus’ expulsion in 470, while Carmen Arnold-​Biucchi 1988 argues that issue began in 464. For a recent summary of the arguments, see Nicholson 2015: 245–​49. 27. Hamilton 1984. 28. On the relief, which dates to the second half of the sixth century from a sanctuary for the hero, see Vassallo 1999: 203–​8. Nicholson 2015: 259–​60 argues that Pindar’s representation of Ergoteles should be read with this context in mind.



Conclusions and Test Cases: Ergoteles of Himera and Psaumis of Kamarina 233

Figure 5.1  Himeraian Tetradrachm, Silver, ca. 470–​464. Reproduced by permission of the American Numismatic Society.

ritual,29 and for Himeraian audiences but probably also for other Sicilians familiar with the coinage, Pindar’s phrase would have recalled the ritual bath on the new tetradrachm of Himera. By aligning Ergoteles with a bather in the local springs, the poet both signals the victor’s homecoming and also links him to a civic ritual that is woven into the physical landscape. In addition to connecting the victor to the physical surroundings through the baths of the Nymphs, Pindar expresses Ergoteles’ investment in the city in terms of land in the poem’s final phrase: after moving to his city and winning at Olympia, the victor lives “beside his own lands” (παρ’ οἰκείαις ἀρούραις, line 19). The peaceful image contrasts with the stasis he experienced in his homeland of Knossos: the land belongs to Ergoteles (οἰκείος) and represents his newfound stability.30 For the present discussion of myth and place in the Sicilian odes more broadly, we may observe that Pindar again uses the land—​ this time combining the natural (baths of the Nymphs) and cultivated (fields) landscapes—​to emphasize that Ergoteles belongs in his new city and to define the recent fame and peace he has attained after escaping a contentious political situation in Crete. While the celebration of any victor required finesse and skill to avoid inspiring envy in his townsmen,31 this was a particularly challenging task in 29. Hamilton 1984: 262. 30. On οἰκείος, see Hubbard 1985: 33–​60, especially p. 57 on Olympian 12. 31.  As Leslie Kurke has shown, megalopropeia—​ the lavish expenditure of wealth on dedications, athletic competition, sacrifices, and other civic benefactions—​can inspire envy

234 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

the case of Ergoteles since he was a recent addition to the community and since his arrival was likely controversial for groups of the population, especially if the new Dorian settlers were granted land that had formerly belonged to opponents of Theron. Pindar not only links Ergoteles to the land in the epinician ode, but he also asserts his claim to it while emphasizing the peace he has attained after recovering from stasis in both Crete and Himera. Pindar’s assertion of Ergoteles’ ownership of his land may also contain a sharper edge in the wake of the Himeraian uprising against Theron and Thrasydaeus in 476. Ergoteles probably arrived just after this stasis when Theron invited Dorians to settle in the city, and he may have been awarded land that had formerly belonged to one of the executed opponents of Theron.32 During a performance in Himera, Pindar’s declaration that Ergoteles’ lands belong to him would have been a pointed statement of Ergoteles’ status in the community and an endorsement of the new makeup of the city, in particular for any citizens who had known the land’s former owner.33 This brief poem for Ergoteles suggests that, in the Sicilian odes, Pindar links the victor, civic symbols, and the landscape to articulate and shape the identity not only of tyrants but also of athletes with less (or, perhaps, no) political power. Because Ergoteles was a newcomer to the city, his return from the games required careful mediation, which Pindar enacts in this ode by emphasizing his relationship to the physical space of Himera. Just as in the case of mercenaries who had only recently been granted citizenship in Syracuse or in Aitna, it would have been implausible, if not impossible, for Pindar to argue that Ergoteles’ family descended from civic heroes in Himera. What we see instead is that Pindar replaces this kind of genealogical claim with a statement of the victor’s close connection to, investment in, and glorification of the physical spaces of the city.

The Native Victor: Psaumis as Local Benefactor in Olympians 4 and 5 Where Olympian 12 for Ergoteles celebrates a victor with a different background and civic status, the odes for Psaumis offer an important temporal

and tension because such expenditures can potentially lead to tyranny (Kurke 1991: 195–​224). Elsewhere, she emphasizes the “talismanic power” that a victorious athlete brought home with him after being crowned at the games (Kurke 1993). 32. Diodorus reports that Theron put his opponents to death (11.48.8). 33. I thank Nigel Nicholson for this suggestion.



Conclusions and Test Cases: Ergoteles of Himera and Psaumis of Kamarina 235

contrast to the rest of Pindar’s Sicilian odes because they celebrate victories that took place at least a decade after the fall of the Deinomenids. The era of the Deinomenids ended not long after the death of Hieron in 466.34 Although his brother Thrasybulus ruled Syracuse briefly, he lacked Hieron’s strength and popularity among the Syracusans. Despite the lasting allegiance of Hieron’s outnumbered mercenaries, Thrasybulus was soon overthrown, and a popular government was established in place of the tyranny.35 During this period, the Sikel leader Ducetius freed many other cities, including Aitna, which had been under the control of the Deinomenids since Hieron founded the city in 476.36 After his defeat, Thrasybulus fled to Locri, while his mercenaries were granted permission to leave Syracuse and establish their own communities. As we saw in ­chapter 3, at least some of these mercenaries fled to Aitna, and when that city fell to the original Katanians who had been forcibly displaced by Hieron, the mercenaries refounded Aitna on the nearby site of Inessa.37 The conflict between the Deinomenid mercenaries and the combined Sikel and Greek opponents of tyranny continued for five years until a general agreement was reached in 461, at which time the city of Kamarina was refounded as one of the terms. It is within this historical context of conflict and displacement followed by peace and reconciliation that Psaumis commissioned two epinician odes to celebrate his victories at Olympia. Even though these odes come later, they demonstrate that Deinomenid ideology persisted as a powerful device, which Pindar employs and refashions in Olympian 4.38 Psaumis was not commissioning epinician poetry under the control of a living tyrant, and we shall see that he accordingly plays a more political role in Kamarina than Ergoteles does in Himera. The odes for Psaumis furthermore contain a more detailed characterization of Kamarina than we saw of Himera in Olympian 12. In addition to his temporal distance from other Sicilian victors, Psaumis may himself have embodied a mixture of Greek and indigenous populations that recalls the theme of mixed Sicilian populations celebrated by Pindar in Nemean 1 and Pythian 1.39 In the odes for Aitna, Pindar celebrates Sicilian mixture and supplies a shared narrative that applies to all citizens. In Kamarina,

34. Diod. 11.66.4. Berger 1991: 36–​39. 35. Diod. 11.67.1–​11.68.7. 36. Diod. 11.76.3. 37. See ­chapter 3: 142. Diod. 11.76.3, Strabo 6.2.3. Luraghi 1994: 339–​41. 38. Nicholson 2011. 39. See ­chapter 1: 58–​63 and ­chapter 3.

236 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

Psaumis’ name plays a similar role since it likely derives from an Italic root and may have indicated his family’s support of Sikel interests in Kamarina.40 I  will suggest here that in addition to exploiting Deinomenid ideology and celebrating the diverse citizen makeup in Kamarina, Olympians 4 and 5 use strategies now familiar from other Sicilian epinician odes to link the victor to physical spaces and to articulate civic identity for the citizens of Kamarina in relationship to the landscape on Panhellenic, regional, and local scales. There is no doubt that Pindar wrote Olympian 4, but several scholars have questioned his authorship of Olympian 5.41 It has been proposed, instead, that Psaumis commissioned the ode from a local poet who would have been more familiar with the city and for this reason included many local details.42 I see no reason to insist that the poet was local since Pindar incorporates local details into many of his odes in as much detail as in Olympian 5, as the other Sicilian odes have demonstrated throughout this study. Whether or not Pindar composed the poem (and I am inclined to think that he did), as an ode for a Sicilian victor Olympian 5 offers an important comparandum for the present study of myth and landscape in the Sicilian odes. Olympians 4 and 5 were composed between 456 and 444.43 A  majority of scholars argue that Olympian 4 celebrates Psaumis’ Olympic chariot victory of 452 following the ancient scholia,44 but some have argued that the ode commemorates a victory in the mule cart race in 456.45 Nearly all place Olympian 5 in the time period after the fall of the Sicilian tyrants when Kamarina was reorganized and resettled.46 Barrett has alternately proposed that Olympians 4 and 5 both celebrate the same mule cart race, perhaps in

40.  Nicholson 2011:  109–​12. However, Gentili et  al. 2013:  116 (with note 6)  argue that the name Psaumis has Geloan, perhaps even Cretan, origins. 41. Instone 1992, Barrett 2007: 46–​53. For the view that the ode is Pindaric, see Hamilton 1972: 324–​29, Mader 1990: 109–​13, Ferrari 2006, Gentili et al. 2013: 120 with note 4. 42. Barrett 2007: 48. 43. Gerber 1987: 8 with further references. According to Pausanias (5.9.1), the mule cart race at Olympia was discontinued in 444, but other ancient sources place the event’s cancellation later. See Golden 1998: 40–​43. In any case, Psaumis’ victory is likely to have taken place in the 450s. 44. Schol. O.4. inscr. Gerber 1987: 8, Schmitz 1992, Nicholson 2011: 94n3. 45. See Mader 1990: 14, Barrett 2007: 40–​46. 46. Gentili et al. 2013: 113–​20 place the ode’s performance in 488 by arguing that the phrase νέοικος ἕδρα (“newly founded home”) cannot refer to the reorganization of the city after 461, but this argument is unconvincing and νέοικος ἕδρα should be understood to refer to the resettlement after the fall of the tyrants.



Conclusions and Test Cases: Ergoteles of Himera and Psaumis of Kamarina 237

456.47 For the present discussion, the precise dates of the odes are less essential than the larger point that both were composed for victories that took place after the fall of the Deinomenid tyrants in the period after Kamarina was reconfigured. The utilization of local elements in Olympian 5, in particular, suggests that a link between local cult, local landscape, and the identity of the city was a feature of Sicilian epinician rather than merely a feature of the propaganda of the tyrants. The two odes for Psaumis evoke features of the landscape as sites of identity for Psaumis. We shall see, however, that where Olympian 4 links the victor to an older system of Deinomenid ideology and a pan-​Sicilian landscape, Olympian 5 focuses on positioning Psaumis vis-​à-​vis local, regional, and Panhellenic interests through an articulation of his role in each sphere. By incorporating local symbols and places, the ode also fashions an identity for Kamarina where Olympian 4 largely passes over the details of the victor’s city. Of the two odes, Olympian 5 relies more heavily on local features, but Olympian 4 still engages Sicilian cult in a pointed way, so I will begin by considering the latter. In the short ode that consists of just a single triad, Pindar prays to Zeus: ἀλλὰ Κρόνου παῖ, ὃς Αἴτναν ἔχεις ἷπον ἀνεμόεσσαν ἑκατογκεφάλα   Τυφῶνος ὀβρίμου, Οὐλυμπιονίκαν δέξαι But son of Kronos, you who rule Mt. Aitna, windy burden for hundred-​ headed Typho the mighty, receive an Olympic victor. . . (O.  4.6–​9) It is remarkable that the poet invokes Zeus Aitnaios, whose cult seems not to have been practiced in Kamarina. Nigel Nicholson has shown that, rather than referencing a local civic cult, Olympian 4 incorporates and revises symbols of Hieron’s ideological program to suit the needs and interests of Psaumis and Kamarina in the 450s.48 Zeus Aitnaios is perhaps most prominent in Pythian 1 for Hieron, as we saw in c­ hapter 3. Where Pythian 1 draws a binary opposition between Hieron and his enemies (including both conquered Greeks and natives in Sicily, among others),49 Olympian 4 makes space for a wider variety of civic participation. 47. Barrett 2007: 38–​46. 48. Nicholson 2011. 49. See ­chapter 3 and Morgan 2015: 313–​20.

238 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

When Kamarina was refounded in 461 following the general agreement, the new citizens came from diverse and mixed backgrounds, and included former Deinomenid mercenaries, Sikels, and Greeks. In this context, as Nigel Nicholson has shown, the kind of stark opposition between Greek and foreigner outlined in Pythian 1 did not apply as well as it did to Hieron’s colony where a putative Dorian ethnicity was instead emphasized.50 In contrast to the ideological stance toward non-​Greeks in Pythian 1, the myth in Olympian 4 expresses a more nuanced attitude toward foreigners and mixed populations. The ode concludes with the myth of Erginos and the Lemnian women who question his physical prowess because his hair is graying. After winning the race in bronze armor, Erginos declares to Hypsipyle: ‘οὗτος ἐγὼ ταχυτᾶτι· χεῖρες δὲ καὶ ἦτορ ἴσον. φύονται δὲ καὶ νέοις ἐν ἀνδράσιν πολιαί θαμάκι παρὰ τὸν ἁλικίας ἐοικότα χρόνον.’ Such am I in speed. My hands and heart also equal one another. Even for young men gray hair often grows before the appropriate time of life. (O. 4.24–​27) Erginos corrects the false assumption of the Lemnian women that he could not win the contest because of his gray hair, and the disconnect between his appearance and his victory allows him to bridge the dichotomy set up in Pythian 1 between Greeks and non-​Greeks. Through the union represented by the marriage of the Lemnian women and the Argonauts (including Erginos), Pindar adds a third term to the equation, making space for other populations of Kamarina, and perhaps, in particular, for indigenous Sikels in Psaumis’ time.51 For the present discussion of myth and identity, we may observe that the version of Sicilian Greek identity sketched in Pythian 1 has already undergone a dramatic transformation by the time of the composition of Olympian 4 after the fall of the Deinomenids. Yet even as Sicilian identity is rearticulated and reshaped to reflect a new political reality, it is still Zeus’ relationship to the Sicilian landscape that provides continuity for the citizens of Kamarina. As in other Sicilian odes, the Sicilian terrain endures as an essential element in the

50. Nicholson 2011. 51. Nicholson 2011: 103–​9. On intermarriage and the mixed populations, see also De Angelis 2016: 205–​6.



Conclusions and Test Cases: Ergoteles of Himera and Psaumis of Kamarina 239

poem’s articulation of Kamarinaian identity. Nonetheless, in Olympian 4 the landscape of the victor’s city is absent and the ode instead adopts a pan-​Sicilian perspective through the figure of Zeus Aitnaios. By contrast, Olympian 5 accentuates local features of Kamarina and interweaves local and Panhellenic elements in a carefully wrought network of seemingly disparate deities and physical locations. With fewer lines than Olympian 4, Olympian 5 is made up of three short triads that structure the spatial and geographic scope of Psaumis’ praise. In each triad, the poet invokes a different deity, and through these invocations articulates Psaumis’ relationship to his city and to the larger Panhellenic world.52 The first triad combines a celebration of Psaumis’ Olympic achievements with an invocation of the city’s eponymous nymph, Kamarina: Ὑψηλᾶν ἀρετᾶν καὶ στεφάνων ἄωτον γλυκύν τῶν Οὐλυμπίᾳ, Ὠκεανοῦ θύγατερ, καρδίᾳ γελανεῖ ἀκαμαντόποδός τ’ ἀπήνας δέκευ Ψαύμιός τε δῶρα· ὃς τὰν σὰν πόλιν αὔξων, Καμάρινα, λαοτρόφον, βωμοὺς ἓξ διδύμους ἐγέραρεν ἑορταῖς θεῶν μεγίσταις ὑπὸ βουθυσίαις ἀέθλων τε πεμπαμέροις ἁμίλλαις, ἵπποις ἡμιόνοις τε μοναμπυκίᾳ τε. τὶν δὲ κῦδος ἁβρόν νικάσας ἀνέθηκε, καὶ ὃν πατέρ’ Ἄ-​   κρων’ ἐκάρυξε καὶ τὰν νέοικον ἕδραν. Daughter of Ocean, receive with a gentle heart a sweet peak of high achievements and crowns won at Olympia and gifts of the mule-​cart with tireless feet and of Psaumis, who elevating your people-​nourishing city, Kamarina, glorified the six double altars at the greatest festival of the gods with sacrifices of oxen and in athletic contests for five days, with horses, with mules, and in the single-​horse race. Having won, he dedicated luxurious glory to you, and announced his father Akron and his newly founded home.  (O.  5.1–​8) In these lines, the poem moves back and forth between the Panhellenic and the local. After the initial mention of Olympia, Kamarina is first hailed as the “daughter of Ocean” (line 2) before she is named in line 4. The poet thus first defines the nymph through her paternal lineage and, in common Pindaric

52. Hamilton 1972: 326–​27 notes that the invocations of Kamarina (“daughter of Ocean,” line 2) and Athena (“city-​guarding Athena,” line 10) are placed in the same metrical position in the triad.

240 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

fashion, avoids repetition of the name Kamarina. However, this description of the nymph also introduces her within a Panhellenic context as one of the descendants of the river god Okeanos. She is addressed as Kamarina in line 4, before the action returns to Olympia where the victor increases the city’s fame by honoring the six double altars of the gods and entering equestrian races. The triad concludes with a return to Kamarina, the victor’s newly founded home (νέοικαν ἕδραν, line 8), to which the victory has brought glory. The first triad thus alternates between Olympia and Kamarina several times, underscoring the connection between the site of the victory and the city it glorifies. The second triad, by contrast, primarily celebrates Psaumis’ civic benefactions in Kamarina: ἵκων δ’ Οἰνομάου καὶ Πέλοπος παρ’ εὐηράτων σταθμῶν, ὦ πολιάοχε Παλλάς, ἀείδει μὲν ἄλσος ἁγνόν τὸ τεὸν ποταμόν τε Ὤανον ἐγχωρίαν τε λίμναν καὶ σεμνοὺς ὀχετούς, Ἵππαρις οἷσιν ἄρδει στρατόν, κολλᾷ τε σταδίων θαλάμων ταχέως ὑψίγυιον ἄλσος, ὑπ’ ἀμαχανίας ἄγων ἐς φάος τόνδε δᾶμον ἀστῶν· αἰεὶ δ’ ἀμφ’ ἀρεταῖσι πόνος δαπάνα τε μάρναται πρὸς ἔργον κινδύνῳ κεκαλυμμένον· εὖ δὲ τυχόν-​    τες σοφοὶ καὶ πολίταις ἔδοξαν ἔμμεν. Having come from the lovely abodes of Oinomaos and Pelops, O city-​ guarding Pallas, he sings of your holy grove and the river Oanos and the local lake and the holy channels, through which Hipparis waters the people, and he fits together a high-​stemmed grove of sturdy chambers, having led this group of townsmen from helplessness into light. And on each occasion toil and expense strive for achievements toward labor cloaked in danger. But when men are successful they seem wise even to their fellow citizens.  (O. 5.9–​16) The triad begins by mentioning the abodes (σταθμοί) of Oinomaos and Pelops in the Peloponnese, which will soon be echoed by the poet’s praise of the housing project Psaumis has instituted in Kamarina (line 14).53 In this way, the victor’s city continues to be linked to the site of the victory, but the focus soon turns exclusively to Kamarina. The poet invokes poliaoche Pallas (city-​guarding Pallas) within the detailed and specific local cityscape of Kamarina, taking care

53. Ćulumović 2016: 357–​58 observes that the second triad, like the first, begins in Olympia and moves to Kamarina.



Conclusions and Test Cases: Ergoteles of Himera and Psaumis of Kamarina 241

to link Athena to the physical features of the city. In this list, natural features of the landscape (the lake and the rivers Oanos and Hipparis) give way to and, in the case of the Hipparis, even participate in, Psaumis’ civic projects (through housing and possibly also the building of canals).54 Psaumis’ benefactions to the city are thus framed as lasting interventions in the physical space that save his townsmen by freeing them from their helplessness and bringing them to the light (line 14). Beyond adorning the city with glory through his victory, Psaumis literally decorates the city with new buildings, and his contact with the landscape improves the city in a lasting tangible and visual manner for his townsmen. The local landscape and public works are celebrated to honor Athena, the goddess who has local significance, but who is also an integral figure in larger narratives in a way that the local nymph Kamarina cannot be. Excavations in Kamarina have brought to light a sanctuary and temple of Athena Polias. While archaeologists have dated the temple to the first half of the fifth century, the sanctuary preceded the temple with a temenos wall dating to the early sixth century.55 Gela became the mother-​city of Kamarina when Hippokrates refounded the colony in 492.56 A prayer to city-​guarding Pallas may link the city of Kamarina through the goddess to a regional network of cults of Athena Lindia in Gela and Akragas, where she was also worshipped.57 Though Athena was worshipped in this specific aspect in Olympian 5—​as πολιάοχε Παλλάς—​ she may also here represent the familiar Panhellenic goddess who protected many cities across the Greek world.58 In this way, the invocation to Athena that introduces the second triad bridges local, regional, and Panhellenic interests by celebrating the city’s patron goddess.

54. Critics are divided on whether or not to understand ὀχέτους as natural channels or manmade canals. Mader 1990: 79 emphasizes that the distinction is not clear from the passage. See also Brunel 1971: 329. 55. Di Stefano 1984–​1985: 729–​37, Buongiovanni and Pelagatti 1985: 296, Malkin 1987: 178, Sulosky-​Weaver 2015: 50–​54. 56. Schol. O. 5.19c, Thuc. 6.5.3. 57. See Ciaceri 1911: 153–​54, Fiorentini 1985: 14, Manni 1987: 73–​74, Gentili et al. 2013: 118–​19. A sanctuary of Athena Poliouchos is attested in the acropolis of Akragas, for instance. See ­chapter 4: 181 and De Angelis 2012: 173, De Angelis 2016: 192, Fiorentini 2005. 58. πολιάοχε Παλλάς is attested in literary sources from a variety of geographical contexts. See Pind. fr. 70d.38, Hdt. 1.160.9, Ar. Eq. 581, Ar. Nub. 602, Ar. Av. 826–​28, Ar. Lys. 345, Callim. Hymn 5.53. The cult of Athena Polias, the goddess worshipped in the sanctuary at Kamarina, was widespread. Manni 1987: 73–​74 likewise emphasizes the Greekness of the cults of Athena and Zeus in Kamarina, while also acknowledging their local character.

242 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

Figure 5.2  Kamarinaian Litra, Silver, ca. 461–​440. Reproduced by permission of the American Numismatic Society.

The pairing of the patron goddess Athena with a celebration of the local landscape in Kamarina incorporates contemporary civic iconography at the same time that it offers the poet flexibility for celebrating the victor in different contexts. After the refoundation of Kamarina in 461, the city issued a new series of silver litrai.59 On the obverse, this series displayed a winged figure above a swan and, on the reverse, a helmeted Athena holds a spear with her shield beside her. N.K. Rutter, following Ulla Westermark and Kenneth Jenkins, suggests that this depiction of Athena is modeled after a real statue due to its statuesque pose (Figure 5.2).60 The litra features several images already familiar from Olympian 5. Rutter proposes that the winged figure who appears above the swan probably has a “dual nature” as the local nymph Kamarina and Victory, while the Athena who appears on the coin is surely the city’s patron goddess. Moreover, the swan that appears below the nymph on the obverse may have been a denizen of the nearby lake. According to Aristarchus, Kamarina was named after this lake (celebrated at O. 5.11), and in the Roman period the citizens of Kamarina became famous for having foolishly drained the surrounding marsh.61 The

59. On Kamarina’s coinage in this period, see Westermark and Jenkins 1980: 24–​39 with plates  2–​6. 60. Rutter 1997: 137–​38, Westermark and Jenkins 1980: 26–​27. 61. Schol. O. 5.1b. On the marsh in Kamarina, see also De Angelis 2016: 229–​30. According to Servius’ commentary on the Aeneid (3.701), the Kamarinaians suffered from a plague in 405. Suspecting that the nearby marsh may be causing the illness, they decided to consult the Delphic oracle about whether or not to drain it. Although Apollo advised them against it, the desperate Kamarinaians drained the marsh anyway, which turned out to have been



Conclusions and Test Cases: Ergoteles of Himera and Psaumis of Kamarina 243

homonymy of the lake, city, and nymph is by now a Sicilian trait familiar from Akragas and Himera. Like the crab on the tetradrachms of Akragas, the swan on the litra of Kamarina acknowledges a distinctive aspect of the local landscape and celebrates the overlap between nymph, natural landscape, and civic space. In addition to representing Kamarina as relevant to a range of different audiences, the second triad locates Psaumis within an epinician tradition of Sicilian benefaction. We have seen that, in Olympian 5, the poet describes Psaumis as saving his townsmen from helplessness (ὑπ’ ἀμαχανίας ἄγων ἐς φάος τόνδε δᾶμον ἀστῶν, line 14). This description represents a modulated version of the benefactions of the Sicilian tyrants Hieron and Theron familiar from Pindar’s earlier epinician odes.62 First, in Pythian 1, Hieron is credited with saving all of Greece from slavery by defeating the Etruscans at Cumae: Ἑλλάδ’ ἐξέλκων βαρείας δουλίας (line 75). Psaumis does not, of course, save the Kamarinaians (let alone all of Greece) from slavery, but he does save them from their helplessness, an act that is more fitting, and still constitutes extremely high praise for a victor who is not a tyrant. Furthermore, Psaumis’ construction project establishes a legacy in the city that reformulates Pindar’s praise of Theron and his ancestors for having toiled on behalf of Akragas to found the new city in Olympian 2. In the opening of the ode, Pindar praises the victor and his ancestors for laboring on behalf of their city. Theron’s ancestors: “having toiled much in their hearts /​held a holy dwelling place on a river, and they were /​the eye of Sicily” (καμόντες οἳ πολλὰ θυμῷ /​ ἱερὸν ἔσχον οἴκημα ποταμοῦ, Σικελίας τ’ ἔσαν /​ ὀφθαλμός, lines 8–​10). Just as Psaumis saves the townsmen in a more modest way than Hieron saves Greece from slavery, he also sets up the city in a more commonplace manner by building literal houses (and possibly also canals) for the inhabitants instead of holding a holy dwelling place on a river (and perhaps also setting up temples for the gods), as the passage in Olympian 2 suggests Theron’s ancestors did. Furthermore, the language that describes Psaumis’ actions blurs the manmade and natural landscapes. Critics have objected to the phrase ὑψίγυιον

a natural protection against enemy invasions. Soon thereafter, the city was sacked and destroyed by the Carthaginians. The story became proverbial in the Roman world for an action that was likely to end in disaster, and it was much more recently used as a paradigm for imprudent human action in 1994 by Carl Sagan in Pale Blue Dot. 62. Mader 1990: 85–​86 offers a useful survey of Pindar’s uses of φάος (“light”) and ἀμαχανία (“helplessness”) as opposing terms. He notes that, for Pindar, light indicates the glory of victory (1990: 85).

244 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

ἄλσος in Olympian 5 as awkward and un-​Pindaric,63 but this phrase likening the houses to a grove may imply their permanence, natural presence, and rootedness in the city’s landscape. Psaumis is not portrayed as the oikist of the city, but the notion that he has fit together sturdy dwellings for its inhabitants still suggests a colonial air that is familiar from the Sicilian odes. In the praise of Psaumis in Olympian 5, the rhetoric is more understated than in the odes for the tyrants, but it borrows thematically from them. Psaumis is not a tyrant; he does not save his townsmen from slavery, nor does the poem quite portray him as an oikist of the city. Nonetheless, the idea that Psaumis brought his townsmen out of helplessness (ἀμαχανία) and into the light (φάος) combines the notion of Hieron saving Greece (Pythian 1.73–​75) with that of the Emmenids being a protection and an eye (i.e., a light) for the city of Akragas (Olympian 2.9–​10).64 While Pindar’s descriptions of Psaumis and his accomplishments are more mundane than his celebrations of the tyrants, they still follow a recognizable pattern that is tailored to the victor. In Olympian 5, the poet’s praise of Psaumis once more echoes the style of Pindar’s praise for the now defunct Sicilian tyrants, as the myth of Zeus Aitnaios does differently in Olympian 4. The final triad of Olympian 5 encompasses the largest scope of the three, relating Kamarina to the larger Olympian order through the invocation of Zeus Sōter: Σωτὴρ ὑψινεφὲς Ζεῦ, Κρόνιόν τε ναίων λόφον τιμῶν τ’ Ἀλφεὸν εὐρὺ ῥέοντα Ἰδαῖόν τε σεμνὸν ἄντρον, ἱκέτας σέθεν ἔρχομαι Λυδίοις ἀπύων ἐν αὐλοῖς, αἰτήσων πόλιν εὐανορίαισι τάνδε κλυταῖς δαιδάλλειν, σέ τ’, Ὀλυμπιόνικε, Ποσειδανίοισιν ἵπποις ἐπιτερπόμενον φέρειν γῆρας εὔθυμον ἐς τελευτάν υἱῶν, Ψαῦμι, παρισταμένων. ὑγίεντα δ’ εἴ τις ὄλβον ἄρδει, ἐξαρκέων κτεάτεσσι καὶ εὐλογίαν    προστιθείς, μὴ ματεύσῃ θεὸς γενέσθαι.

63. Barrett 2007: 52 protests that “[t]‌his again is not Pindar; not Pindar, but an incompetent. And another mark of his incompetence is the words he uses for the houses: ‘a high-​limbed grove of firm-​set chambers.’ This might fit New York, or a set of London’s modern tower blocks; but not the ordinary Greek dwelling-​house, which was a very undistinguished affair. This is now high-​falutin stuff that has just got out of hand.” 64. See ­chapter 4. Also cf. Battos in Pythian 5, who is a tower for the city and a most shining eye for foreigners (πύργος ἄστεος ὄμμα τε φαεννότατον/​ξένοισι, 56–​57).



Conclusions and Test Cases: Ergoteles of Himera and Psaumis of Kamarina 245

Zeus Sōter, high in the clouds, you who inhabit the Kronion crest and honor the broad-​flowing Alpheos and the holy Idaian cave, I come as your suppliant calling to the Lydian auloi, to ask you to embellish this city with famous, courageous feats, and (I ask) you, Olympic victor, delighting in the horses of Poseidon, to reach cheerful old age in the end, Psaumis, with your sons beside you. If someone fosters healthy prosperity, being sufficient in possessions and adding praise to them in addition, let him not seek to become a god.  (O. 5.17–​24) The poet now returns to Olympia, praying to Zeus Sōter, who inhabits the crest of Kronos, and honors the broad-​flowing Alpheos and the holy Idaian cave.65 The crest of Kronos and the River Alpheos certainly evoke an Olympic context, and the holy Idaian cave may refer to a cave near Olympia as well as to the cave in Crete where Zeus was born.66 Within this Olympic context, the poet prays to Zeus to embellish this city (πόλιν τάνδε, 20, i.e., Kamarina) with famous, courageous deeds. On one hand, the prayer underscores the link Psaumis has forged between Kamarina and Olympia by winning his victory there as the opening triad did. Although Zeus is hailed as the protector of Olympia, the deictic τάνδε situates the performance in Kamarina. However, the poet’s prayer for Zeus to adorn the city also aligns the god with Psaumis’ own embellishment of Kamarina both literally through his building project and also through his Olympic victory and the poet’s song that commemorates it. The spatial progression of the third triad both mirrors Psaumis’ journey from the games back to his home and aligns it with the benefactions that Zeus will provide to the citizens of Kamarina on his behalf. The poet’s final invocation of the ode addresses the Olympic victor Psaumis in line 21 and then again in line 23. Here, the poet prays that the victor will reach old age beside his sons, suggesting that he is once again at home in Kamarina. Though it is not uncommon for a victor to be compared to a god in an epinician ode, the comparison between the benefactions of Zeus and Psaumis and their parallel invocations may be part of what prompts the poem’s final gnomic warning in the last line: “let him not seek to become a god” (μὴ ματεύσῃ θεὸς γενέσθαι, 24).67 When Olympians 4 and 5 are examined together as a pair, the poet’s invocation of Zeus Sōter is particularly noteworthy. In Olympian 4, Pindar invokes

65.  Gentili et  al. 2013:  119n3 speculates that there may have been a cult of Zeus Sōter in Kamarina, but, so far, no evidence for the cult has been discovered. 66. Ćulumović 2016: 358n23. 67. Hamilton 1972: 327.

246 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

Zeus Aitnaios in a nod to regional, Sicilian identity. Where Zeus Aitnaios celebrates Sicilians, and specifically former Deinomenid mercenaries who have relocated to Kamarina,68 Zeus Sōter similarly signals Deinomenid ideology69 but also ties Kamarina to Olympia where Psaumis won his victory, since the poet hails him as the god who lives on the Kronion Hill and honors the broad-​flowing Alpheos. By invoking Zeus Sōter whose geographical purview is wider, the poet celebrates Psaumis on a larger Panhellenic stage and also honors Kamarina as the city the god will embellish. Although Olympian 5 has been thought to feature an unusual (and thus, to some, suspect) degree of local detail, I would emphasize instead that in this brief ode the poet—​whether or not he is Pindar—​incorporates an extraordinary degree of geographical detail more generally to elevate Psaumis within his city and to define Kamarina, both within the region and in a Panhellenic context. The balanced invocations of three separate figures, which represent a range of local, regional, and Panhellenic associations—​Kamarina, poliaoche Pallas, and Zeus Sōter, underscore the geographical organization that structures the ode. Olympian 5 undertakes an ideological project that is distinct from that in Olympian 4, but, as in the odes we have examined for Syracuse, Aitna, Akragas, and Himera, the ideology in both odes turns on a connection to the landscape. Where the landscape of Kamarina is elided in favor of featuring Mt. Aitna in Olympian 4, the landscape of Kamarina is showcased alongside that of Olympia in Olympian 5. By offering kleos to the victor on the basis of his local deeds and by emphasizing the landscape of the Olympic sanctuary, which Olympian 4 largely omits, Olympian 5 complements the interests laid out in Olympian 4. As a set, the two odes display a variation on the strategy we saw Pindar employ in Pythian 1. In that ode, the poet provided a land-​myth (explaining how the land itself was significant—​i.e., Typho was restrained there by Zeus) and a myth that offered the citizens a stake in the city and a shared sense of identity (the ethnic narrative of the Dorians).70 In the case of Kamarina, Olympian 4 offers this shared sense of identity in its reworking and nuancing of the dichotomy between Zeus/​Typho, god/​monster, Greek/​non-​Greek, and so on expressed in Deinomenid ideology. The invocation of Zeus Aitnaios, and his realm—​ a physical point in the landscape of Sicily—​ signals that Hieron’s former mercenaries still have a stake in the new order, while the

68. Nicholson 2011: 98–​103. 69. Catenacci 2005b: 38, Nicholson 2015: 242–​43. 70. See ­chapter 3.



Conclusions and Test Cases: Ergoteles of Himera and Psaumis of Kamarina 247

myth of Erginos carves out space for other citizens who were not represented in previous iterations of this ideology.71 Olympian 5 completes the circle. While Olympian 4 could perhaps equally well celebrate a new city anywhere in eastern Sicily with a similar citizen makeup, Olympian 5 is emphatically tied to the local topography of Kamarina through invocations to the nymph Kamarina and poliaoche Pallas, through the mentions of features of the local landscape and cityscape, and specifically through Psaumis’ own benefactions. In addition, the ode strongly ties the Sicilian city to Olympia through the benefaction of the victor. The poet of Olympian 5 recognized the importance of infusing the landscape with significance in a new city whose traditions and myths were still in the process of formation. As in Olympian 12 where the narrative of Ergoteles fills in for a traditional mythical narrative, we may understand Psaumis’ benefactions for the city as taking the place of a more traditional heroic mythical narrative in Olympian 5.

Conclusions This book has argued that Pindar’s employment of mythic landscapes as sites of identity is an enduring encomiastic strategy in the Sicilian odes that spans the odes for tyrant and non-​tyrant victors. Chapter 5 has considered the odes for Ergoteles and Psaumis as limit cases to test this argument. As in the odes for Aitna, Syracuse, and Akragas, in the odes for Himera and Kamarina Pindar shapes identities by inscribing Panhellenic myth onto physical places in Sicily. In Pindar’s Sicilian odes, the relationship between Panhellenic myth and local place comes in many forms. Myths are at times attached to extant features of the landscape. Chapter  1 demonstrated that, in Syracuse, for instance, the spring on Ortygia ties the city to Olympia through the myth of Arethusa and Alpheos, while in Akragas the local river links the citizens to a Theban heroic lineage that is mediated through and dependent upon the Emmenid family (­chapter  4). In the new city of Aitna, the myth of Typho’s prison is woven into the volcanic terrain, imbuing the mountainside with Panhellenic significance (­chapter  3). In other cases, however, the victor and his city are praised in relation to human interventions into the landscape. In Himera, Ergoteles is thus linked to cult practice at the fountain of the nymphs and to the land itself, which was presumably farmed, while Psaumis is celebrated for the buildings he constructed in the city of Kamarina (­chapter  5). Finally, Demeter and Persephone are affiliated with the entire island. Their

71. Nicholson 2011.

248 Myth, Loca lity, & Identity in Pindar’s Sicil ian Odes

ambit therefore encompasses the fruitfulness of the land, the agricultural labor of its inhabitants, and the wealth produced from the land (­chapter 2). The Sicilian places celebrated by Pindar are, therefore, varied and adapted to the needs and exigencies of the victor and his city. The preceding discussions of sites of identity in the Sicilian odes can, furthermore, generate new lines of inquiry when considered alongside one another. For instance, we may now observe that the links between myth and place are flexible enough to signify differently when celebrating different victors and when performed before different audiences. The localization of Typho’s prison under Mt. Aitna in the Sicilian odes is a good example of the potential symbolic range that variations of the same myth can have in different odes. Chapter 3 argued that, in Pythian 1 for Hieron of Aitna, the monster’s volcanic prison weaves the tradition of earlier Panhellenic narratives into the landscape of the new city. In this context, through the parallel between Hieron and Zeus, it reinforces Hieron’s authority in Aitna, in Sicily, and in the region more widely. In Olympian 4, however, as c­ hapter 5 has discussed, the localization of Typho under Aitna carries new meaning in a later time period and in a city spatially removed from the volcano, representing the overthrown Deinomenid regime, their supporters, and the regional control they exerted over Sicily rather than a local tie to the victor’s own city of Kamarina.72 Pindar’s use of Typho’s prison in different odes and in diverse cultural contexts demonstrates that this style of localization was malleable and negotiable. Pindar, in each case, modifies his localization of Panhellenic myth to suit the ideological interests of his patron. The adaptable nature of the links between myth and place Pindar fashions can likewise be explored by considering different performance scenarios for the same ode in diverse spatial and temporal contexts. To continue with the example of Typho’s prison (although many other examples could be engaged), during a performance of Pythian 1 in Aitna, Pindar’s description of the restraint of Typho as part of the living landscape was a local phenomenon that played out before the eyes of the audience during outdoor performances. However, in performances of the ode that took place elsewhere, whether close in time to the original performance or not, Typho’s prison may have represented Deinomenid ideology for audiences who had a personal stake in or who were knowledgeable about Sicilian politics. For nearly all Greeks, the myth would have evoked the Hesiodic narrative of Zeus’ defeat of the snake as

72. Following Nicholson 2011.



Conclusions and Test Cases: Ergoteles of Himera and Psaumis of Kamarina 249

part of his rise to power, and thereby would have made a place for the city of Aitna within a broader Greek poetic and cultic tradition.73 Just as Pindar’s Sicilian odes contain a program of praise that defines Sicilian place in terms of Panhellenic myth, they likewise assert a place for Sicily within a larger network of Greek cultic geography mapped throughout Pindar’s epinician poetry. Christopher Eckerman, for example, has argued both that Pindar manipulates representations of the myths, monuments, and landscape of Olympia to accommodate the needs of his patrons, and that the poet represents Olympia as a sacred space by incorporating the divinities Alpheos, Kronos, Pelops, and Zeus into the landscape.74 This book’s analyses of symbolic places in the Sicilian odes proposes that Pindar adheres to a similar approach to placemaking for local spaces throughout his poetry for Sicilian victors. Moreover, because local places and landscapes are imbued with Panhellenic significance in each case, Pindar’s representations of Sicilian places also intersect with and inform the poet’s characterizations of Panhellenic spaces, including the sites of his patrons’ victories, in all his epinician odes for Sicilian victors. This study began by contrasting the Sicilian odes with epinician poetry for other Greek cities celebrated by Pindar. For other cities like Thebes, Aegina, and Cyrene, local heroes often provided victors and other citizens with a genealogical claim to the land, but the political unrest and population reorganizations that characterized Sicily in the first half of the fifth century left Greeks on the island without deeply rooted heroic narratives for the poet to employ. Reading the odes for Aitna, Akragas, Himera, Kamarina, and Syracuse as a collection of poetry for Sicilian victors has demonstrated that the comparative lack of heroes in civic narratives of Pindar’s Sicilian odes should not lead to the conclusion that Sicilian cities had no comparable civic myths. Instead, the unique political climate in Sicily tested Pindar’s poetic flexibility and inspired a distinct mode of representation that was unique to the Sicilian odes: whether establishing a civic identity for a single city, a regional identity for Sicily, or the identity of a ruler and his family, the ties drawn between myth and physical places, as symbols charged with meaning, provided a sense of stability for local audiences and shaped an international reputation for Sicilian cities and their citizens.

73.  On the effect of the description of Typho and the eruption of Mt. Aitna during reperformances of Pythian 1, see Morrison 2007: 100–​101. 74. Eckerman 2013: 3–​4.

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Index Locorum

For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Aelian VH 9.1, 79n22 Aeschylus Agamemnon 758–​59, 219 Aitnaiai (TrGF III F 6), 4n12, 79–​80, 85, 114, 170–​71 Persians, 4n12 Prometheus, 151–​52; 351–​52, 161n67; 370, 216n129 Suppliants 498, 219 Apollodorus 2.5.12, 90n59, 92n63 Apollonius 1.537, 45n61 Aristophanes Birds 826–​28, 241n58; 926–​930, 69; 941–​945,  69 Clouds 602, 241n58 Frogs 1533, 204n99 Knights 581, 241n58 Lysistrata 345, 241n58 Aristotle Politics 1316a28–​34,  6–​7n21 Athenaeus 3.109a, 103n95 10.416c, 103n95 14.647a, 111n122 14.656d, 79n22

Bacchylides 3: 36n29, 114–​16, 120, 135; 3.1–​2, 121–​22; 3.1–​4, 112–​13; 3.12, 113–​14; 3.70–​71,  113–​14 4: 36n29, 115n136, 149–​50 5: 36n29, 115n136, 133; 5.56–​62, 91; 5.59, 112; 5.99, 36n29; 5.184–​85, 115n136 fr. 2, 112n128 fr. 20C, 207n110 BCH 23.302, 197n68 Callimachus Hymn to Apollo 2.105ff., 46n66 Hymn to Athena 5.53, 241n58 Hymn to Demeter 6.30, 82n36; 6.95, 110–​11; 6.120–​21,  110–​11 Callisthenes FGrH 124 F 33, 157n57 Cicero Verr. 2.4.73, 180n4; 2.4.99, 111n122; 2.4.106, 86n50; 2.4.106–​ 7, 88n56; 2.4.117, 120n148; 2.4.118, 44n56 Diodorus Siculus Book 1.4.1, 105; 1.4.2–​3, 105n99; 1.44, 105n99

274

Index Locorum

Diodorus Siculus (cont.) Book 4.17.4–​18.5, 12n35; 4.21.5–​7, 134n203; 4.21.7, 134n203; 4.23, 88n57, 89; 4.23.4, 89–​90; 4.23–​ 26, 1n2; 4.24, 89; 4.25, 92n63; 4.26, 90n59; 4.26.1, 91–​92; 4.26.2–​27.5,  12n35; 4.57–​58, 175n113 Book 5.1, 82n35; 5.1.1, 82n31, 82n32; 5.2–​ 4, 86n50; 5.2.3, 85–​86, 120n150, 121n153; 5.2.3–​4, 216n130; 5.2.4, 85–​ 86; 5.3.2, 85–​86; 5.3.2–​3, 87; 5.3.3, 86, 88; 5.3.4, 90; 5.3.4–​6, 90; 5.3.5, 52n82; 5.3.5–​6, 90; 5.4, 1n2, 88n57; 5.4.1, 90; 5.4.1–​2, 88–​ 89; 5.4.2, 90; 5.4.3, 80n26; 5.4.7, 111n122; 5.5.1, 82n33, 82n34; 5.5.2, 103n95; 5.6.1, 82n31; 5.6.5, 8n27, 59–​60; 5.71.4, 134n203 Book 8.10, 15n52 Book 9.19.1, 180n4 Book 11.20, 180n7; 11.20–​22, 127n178; 11.21–​22, 180n8; 11.22, 127n179; 11.25.1, 34n19; 11.25.2–​5, 181n9; 11.26.2–​3, 34n19; 11.26.6–​ 7, 35n22; 11.26.7, 34n20, 106, 107, 107n110; 11.38, 35n23; 11.38.5–​ 6, 107n110; 11.48.3, 35n25; 11.48.3–​ 5, 181n11; 11.48.6–​8, 181n13; 11.48.8, 234n32; 11.48–​49, 113n130, 114n133; 11.48.6–​49.4, 230n13; 11.49, 114, 172n101, 222n154; 11.49.1, 57n97; 11.49.1–​2, 60n104, 142n18; 11.49.1–​4, 35n26; 11.49.2, 37n33, 142n16; 11.53.1–​5, 181n15; 11.53.2, 180n5, 181n16, 222n154; 11.53.3–​5, 181n14, 230n16; 11.66.4, 35n27, 234–​35; 11.67.1–​11.68.7, 235n35; 11.67.4, 107n110; 11.67.5, 107n110; 11.67.7, 35n27, 142n19; 11.67–​68, 120n147; 11.68.1, 142n19; 11.72.2, 6–​7n21; 11.73, 120n147; 11.76.3, 143n20, 235n36, 235n37; 11.77.5–​6, 143n21; 11.88–​ 89, 170n96

Book 13.22.4, 107n110; 13.82.1, 183n25; 13.82.1–​4, 148–​49n35; 13.85.4–​5, 202n90 Book 14.7, 120n147 Book 16.11, 120n147 Book 34/​35.2.24b, 86n52; 34/​ 35.10.1,  147–​48 Diogenes Laertius 2.7, 82n33 8.65, 201 Empedokles 1/​112, 212n123; 1/​112.1–​3, 194n62; 111/​ 117, 212n123; 137/​147, 212n123 Euripides Cyc. 299, 216n129 Her. F. 610–​13, 92n63 IA 170, 40n43 Phoen. 682–​689, 108n113 Herodian 3.1.268, 41n45 Herodotus Book 1.66.1, 103n94; 1.160.9, 241n58 Book 3.13, 13n44; 3.62, 103n94; 3.125.2 Book 4.147, 206n106; 4.150–​58, 14n47; 4.161, 15n51; 4.163–​64, 13n43; 4.165, 13n44 Book 5.92δ, 103n94 Book 6.37.2, 103n94; 6.77, 65n115 Book 7.49, 219; 7.153.1, 102; 7.153.1–​ 3, 94–​97; 7.153.1–​4, 34n21; 7.153.3, 102; 7.154.2, 33n12, 127n176; 7.154–​55, 60n104; 7.154–​157, 100; 7.155.1, 33n13; 7.155.2, 34n14, 102; 7.156, 9n28, 97; 7.156.1, 34n15; 7.156.2, 34n16, 102–​3; 7.156.2–​3, 34n17, 58n101; 7.157, 97–​99, 116; 7.157.1, 101–​2; 7.157.2, 101–​2; 7.158, 98, 103; 7.158.4, 54n89, 216n130; 7.159, 98–​99; 7.161.1, 99; 7.161.3, 99–​100; 7.162.1, 103–​4; 7.162.2, 104; 7.163.1, 101–​2;



Index Locorum

7.165, 180n5, 180n7, 185n35; 7.165–​67,  34n19 Book 8.55, 103n94; 8.73, 174n107 Hesiod Theogony, 151, 153–​56, 197–​98; 81–​93, 197n69; 297, 153, 161n67; 304, 153, 161n67; 575, 168n90; 581, 168n90; 664–​719, 153n49; 820–​ 38, 153n50; 821–​880, 28; 836–​ 838, 155; 842, 155–​56; 853–​868, 153–​56; 854, 160; 860, 155n53; 868, 155–​56, 161; 881–​885, 155 Works and Days 168–​73, 214 Homer Iliad, 116, 151, 152 Book 1.524–​30, 120n149 Book 2.649, 124n167; 2.780–​83,  152–​53 Book 5.725, 168n90 Book 10.439, 168n90 Book 16.162, 167n86; 16.549, 197n68 Book 17.265, 167n86 Book 18.83, 168n90; 18.377, 168n90 Book 20.403, 167n86; 20.404, 167n86; 20.406, 167n86 Odyssey Book 1.407, 204n99 Book 4.561–​69, 213 Book 5.403, 167n86; 5.438, 167n86 Book 6.306, 168n90 Book 7.45, 168n90 Book 8.366, 168n90 Book 9.109–​11, 216n129; 9.374, 167n86 Book 10.29, 204n99 Book 11.487–​91, 217n139 Book 13.108, 41n45, 168n90; 13.408 Book 19.174, 124n167 Book 20.193, 204n99 Book 23.121, 197n68 scholia, 13.408, 41n45 Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 90, 168n90

275

Hymn to Apollo, 151, 161, 167; 15–​16, 45n61; 305–​355, 156; 367–​369,  156 Hymn to Demeter, 78, 86–​88, 135–​36; 1–​20, 80; 16, 88; 54, 80n27; 192, 80n27; 208, 78n19; 427, 168n90; 450–​57, 80–​81; 492, 80n27 Horace Odes 4.2.5–​24, 46n66 Ibycus PMG 323, 50–​51 Isocrates Antid. 166, 196–​97 Karkinos II TrGF I 70 F 5, 80n26, 82n34 Macrobius Sat. 5.19.26, 170n96 Marmor Parium FGrH 239 A 52, 147n32, 167n88 Moschus 6, 51n76 Ovid Met. 5.494–​97, 51n76, 67n121 Pausanias Book 1.2.3, 79n22; 1.38.6, 81 Book 2.5.8, 197n68; 2.20.8–​10, 65n115 Book 3.1.7, 206n106; 3.15.6, 206n106 Book 4.3.4, 206n106 Book 5.7.1, 40n43; 5.7.2, 64; 5.7.2–​3, 15n52, 51n79; 5.7.3, 15n52, 50–​51, 51n78; 5.9.1, 236n43; 5.14.6, 47n68, 66n120 Book 6.22.9–​10, 66 Book 8.54.3, 51n79 Book 9.23.3, 108n114 Pind fr. 30.7, 220n149 fr. 33d.9, 220n149

276

Index Locorum

Pind (cont.) fr. 34.1, 220n149 fr. 37, 108n113 fr. 39, 197n68 fr. 52i.20, 220n149 fr. 52k.42, 220n149 fr. 52la.21, 220n149 fr. 70b, 90–​91, 92n63 fr. 70b.30, 220n149 fr. 70d.38, 241n58 fr. 76.2, 196–​97 fr. 93, 157–​58 fr. 105a, 111n126, 201n85 fr. 105b, 201n85 fr. 118–​19,  205–​6 fr. 120, 201n85 fr. 130, 211n119 fr. 133, 109n115 fr. 333a.11, 220n149 fr. 346b, 90–​91 fr. 346.4–​5,  90–​91 Pae. 2 (=fr. 52b), 123n160 2.29,  219–​20 Pae. 4 (=fr. 52d), 123n160 Pae. 7b (=fr. 52h), 44–​45; 7b.48, 45n61 Isthmian 1, 10n32; 12, 220n149; 57, 108n112,  108–​9 Isthmian 2, 5, 187; 41–​42, 187–​88 Isthmian 3/​4, 10n32; 82, 220n149 Isthmian 5, 10n31 Isthmian 6, 10n31; 74–​75, 44n55 Isthmian 7, 10n32; 1–​3, 11; 3–​5, 108–​9; 4, 108n112 Isthmian 8, 10n31; 16a–​17, 220–​21; 21–​23, 220–​21; 33, 220n149; 55,  108–​9 Isthmian 9.2–​4, 174n112 Nemean 1, 5, 36–​37, 41–​48, 49–​51, 55–​ 56, 57–​58, 63–​64, 65–​66, 68–​ 69, 70–​72, 73–​74, 87, 93–​94, 116–​35, 142, 187, 235–​36; 1, 47–​48; 1–​7, 42–​45; 2, 201n85; 5, 70; 6, 41–​42, 47–​48, 145; 13, 45n63; 13–​18, 60–​61, 118–​29; 14–​18, 61n106, 108–​9, 127n175; 15, 126; 16–​17,  46–​47; 17–​19,  123; 19–​33,

132–​33; 22, 47–​48; 25, 132–​33; 63, 132–​33; 64–​65, 132–​33; 71, 61n106, 118–​19n145, 133; 71–​72, 134; 72,  132–​33 scholia N. 1.inscr., 42n49; inscr.a., 36n30, 56n93, 57n99, 60n104; inscr.b., 44n56, 45n62, 47n68, 56n93; 1.2a, 44n56, 52n82, 65n114; 1.3, 64–​65; 1.4a, 45n60; 1.4g, 146n29; 1.7b, 118n144, 146n29, 149n38; 1.16a–​16b, 61n106, 118–​19n145; 1.17, 121n153; 1.20, 120n150; 1.49c, 132n192, 132n194 Nemean 2, 9–​10; 22, 62 Nemean 3, 10n31 Nemean 4, 10n31; 1–​5, 232n22; 21, 62; 49–​50, 217n139 Nemean 5, 10n31; 13, 220n149; 49, 201n85 Nemean 6, 10n31 Nemean 7, 10n31 Nemean 8, 10n31; 7, 103n94 Nemean 9, 5, 36–​37, 65–​66, 142, 187; 31–​32,  61–​62; 32, 126–​27; 34,  126–​27 scholia N. 9.inscr., 41n48, 133n197, 142n17 Nemean 11.7–​9, 114n131 Olympian 1, 5, 36–​38, 187; 8–​15, 126; 9–​10, 114–​15; 12, 114n131; 12–​13, 114–​15, 126; 20, 45n64; 22–​ 23, 61–​62; 23, 114–​15, 127n175; 24, 37, 202–​3; 78, 37; 89, 220n149; 92, 45n64; 92–​94, 37 Olympian 2, 5, 28–​29, 179; 1–​7, 195–​ 98; 8–​11, 198–​203; 8–​10, 207–​8, 243–​44; 9–​10,  244; 12–​15,  203–​5; 22–​45,  207–​8; 35–​38,  208; 35–​47, 208–​11; 58–​60, 109n115; 56–​83, 211–​12; 68–​83, 214–​18; 81–​83, 217–​ 18; 83–​86, 218; 90–​95, 219; 93, 219–​21; 98–​100,  222–​23 scholia O. 2.8a, 185n36; 15, 79n22; 15b, 199n76; 15c, 198n71; 16a–​e, 198n71; 29c, 181n10, 181n11; 154c,



Index Locorum 218n141; 157a, 218n141; 158cd, 218n141 Olympian 3, 5, 28–​29, 187; 13–​38,  187–​88 scholia O. 3.68a–​d, 185n36 Olympian 4, 5, 29, 234, 248; 6–​7, 145, 157; 6–​9, 237; 16, 197n68; 24–​27,  238 scholia O. 4.inscr., 236n44 Olympian 5, 5, 29, 234; 1–​8, 239–​40; 9–​16, 240–​44; 17–​24,  244–​46 scholia O. 5.1b, 242–​43n61; 10a, 47n68, 66n120; 19c, 241n56 Olympian 6, 5, 36–​38, 45n64, 49–​50, 57–​58, 70–​71, 76, 101n89, 121–​22, 135, 136, 187; 6, 37–​38, 202–​3; 16, 200n81; 30, 220n149; 34, 40n43, 45n64; 41, 220n149; 58, 45n64; 85, 220–​21; 92–​96, 128–​29; 92–​97,  48–​49; 92–​98, 109–​12, 113–​14; 93, 113–​14; 93–​96, 145–​46; 93–​97, 128n181; 94–​ 96, 108–​9; 95, 121–​22; 96, 108–​ 9, 145; 99, 49n71 scholia O. 6.158a, 35n24, 111n125, 146n30; 158c, 111n125, 146n30; 160a, 111n124; 160b, 111n124; 160c, 111n124 Olympian 7, 13n41, 202, 206n107; 30, 202n92; 69, 103n94; 71–​73, 220–​21; 74, 220n149 Olympian 8, 10n31 Olympian 10, 5n15 Olympian 11, 5n15 Olympian 12, 5, 227; 5–​9, 229; 19, 231–​32; 13–​16,  228–​29 scholia O. 12.25a, 231n21; 27a, 231n21 Olympian 13.111–​12,  124–​25 scholia O. 13.158a, 125n170; 158b, 125n170; 158c, 125n170 Olympian 14.20–​21, 108–​9; 21, 108n112,  108–​9 Pythian 1, 5, 36–​37, 36n30, 70–​71, 114, 136, 137, 187, 202, 218, 224–​25, 235–​36, 237, 248–​49;

277

1–​10, 158–​60; 13–​17, 160–​62; 17–​20, 162–​63; 19–​26, 166–​67; 25–​26, 167–​68; 27, 124n166; 27–​28, 168–​69; 29–​33, 169; 30, 145, 167–​68; 30–​33, 70n131; 31, 115n136; 31–​32, 202n92; 58–​66, 172–​75; 60–​62, 178; 60–​66, 25; 61–​66, 68n124; 67, 25; 67–​68, 175–​76,  204–​5; 71–​80, 164–​65; 73, 115n136; 73–​75, 244; 75, 243; 95–​98,  180n4 scholia P. 1.metr., 70n131; 56b, 146n29; 112, 181n10; 120b, 174n108; 152b, 106n105 Pythian 2, 5, 36–​37, 45n64, 49–​50, 66, 187; 1, 115n136; 1–​4, 127n175; 1–​8, 46–​47; 2, 126–​27, 167n85; 4, 47–​48; 6, 47–​48; 7, 47–​48; 42, 220n149; 65, 127n175 scholia P. 2.12a, 47n68; 12b, 47n68; 27b, 111n125; 127, 207n110 Pythian 3, 5, 36–​37, 45n64, 187; 68–​ 70, 47–​48; 69, 47–​48, 115n136; 70, 115n136; 73, 47–​48; 86–​104; 101, 220n149 Pythian 4, 10n32, 12–​14, 202, 231n19; 6, 172n104, 202n92; 9–​10, 14–​15; 46, 220n149; 51–​53, 219–​20; 65, 14–​15; 280, 172n104 Pythian 5, 10n32, 12–​14, 202; 18, 200n81; 28, 172n104; 55, 172n104; 56–​57, 197n67, 244n64; 70–​72, 174n112; 124, 172n104 Pythian 6, 5, 187, 189, 198–​99; 1–​7, 193–​94; 30–​32,  187–​88 Pythian 7, 9–​10 Pythian 8, 10n31; 16, 157–​58; 21–​32, 10–​ 11; 48–​55 Pythian 9, 10n32, 12–​13; 16, 220n149; 33, 220n149; 54, 197n68; 59 220n149; 84, 220n149 Pythian 11, 10n32 Pythian 12, 5, 28–​29, 187, 189, 198–​ 99; 1–​6, 194–​95; 2, 108–​9

278

Index Locorum

Plato Cra. 403a, 403a–​404b, 121n153 Euthyd. 304b–​c, 69n130 Phdr. 227b, 69n130 Prt. 324b, 69n130 Resp. 3.408b, 69n130 Pliny NH 4.25, 41n45, 34.19, 184n31 Plutarch De mul. vir. 245c-​f, 65n115 Mor. 772e-​773b, 15n52 Nic. 1.3, 93, 133 Pollux 10.152, 91n62 Polyaenus 5.1.1–​4,  180n2 Polybius Book 9.27, 182n20, 182n23; 9.27.6, 202n90; 9.27.7–​9, 148–​49n35; 9.27.8, 205n105 Book 12.4d.5, 40n43; 12.25, 180n4 Porphyry Plot. 24, 6n19 Servius Commentary on the Aeneid 3.701, 242–​43n61 Simonides PMG 552, 79–​80 Strabo Book 2.6.9, 174n110 Book 5.4.4, 134n203 Book 6.2.3, 143n20, 235n37; 6.2.4, 5–​ 6, 15n52, 54n89, 126n174; 6.2.5, 210n116

Book 7a.1.36, 197n68 Book 8.3.12, 66–​67 Book 13.4.6, 153n47, 157n57, 158n58 Telesilla PMG 717, 51n76, 65–​66, 68n121 Theocritus Scholia 1.117a, 50–​51 Theognis 39–​40,  221–​22 Thucydides Book 1.2.3–​4, 100; 1.2.5, 100; 1.24.2, 174n110 Book 2.36, 100n85 Book 3.116.2, 147n32, 167n88 Book 4.64.3, 117n142 Book 6.3.2, 38n36, 123n161, 173n106, 174n110; 6.4, 97n78; 6.4.2, 9n28, 34n17; 6.4.3, 96n74, 171n100; 6.4.3–​4, 199n77, 205n104; 6.4.4, 180n1, 210n116; 6.5.3, 34n16, 58n101, 241n56; 6.17.2–​3, 8n27, 58–​59, 100n86; 6.24.3, 131n188; 6.68–​70, 127n178; 6.94, 97n78 Book 7.4.6, 127n178 Timaeus BNJ 566 F 41a-​c, 51n75 Vergil Aeneid 3.124, 45n61 Xenophon Hell. 6.3.6, 92n64 Hieron, 6n20

Subject Index

For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Achilles, 10, 17, 211–​12, 217–​18 Adrastos, 11, 208–​10 Aegina, 1, 4, 5, 9–​10, 11–​12, 14–​15, 22–​23, 30, 40n44, 174, 186–​87, 220–​21 Aeschylus, 4n12, 6–​7, 79–​80, 85, 114,  169–​71 Agamemnon, 98–​99, 116 Aiakidai, 1, 10–​11, 15–​16, 17, 30, 221–​22 Aiakos, 10, 220–​22 Ainesidamos, 185–​86, 208, 209–​10 Aitna (city), 2, 5, 8–​9, 15–​16, 25, 28–​29, 36–​38, 41–​42, 57, 60, 61–​62, 65–​ 66, 68–​69, 70–​72, 118, 124, 131, 133–​ 34, 136, 137, 179, 187, 202–​3, 204–​5, 218, 221–​22, 224–​26, 230–​31, 234–​ 35, 246, 247–​49 foundation of, 8, 35–​36, 37, 41–​42, 57–​58, 63–​64, 142–​50, 224–​25, 225n1, 226 Aitna (Mt.), 28, 35, 118, 124–​25, 137, 237, 246, 248 eruption, 147n32, 147, 150–​51, 158, 162–​63, 163n76, 166–​69, 172, 176, 249n73 Aitnaia festival, 43n54, 70–​71, 118n144

Akragas (city), 2, 5–​6, 15, 23, 28–​29, 76–​77, 108–​9, 114, 124, 125, 129, 165, 179, 225–​26, 230, 241, 242–​44, 246, 247–​48, 249 Akragas (nymph), 194–​95 Akragas (River), 28–​29, 179 Alcibiades, 6–​7, 8–​9, 58–​60, 62, 100 Alpheos, 27, 30, 73–​74, 77–​79, 117, 118, 134–​35, 187, 203, 204, 224–​25, 244, 245, 247–​48, 249 Amenas (River), 25, 176–​77 Archias, founder of Syracuse, 5–​6, 15–​ 16, 50–​51, 56–​58, 173–​74, 203n93 Arethusa, 27, 28–​29, 30, 73–​74, 77–​78, 90, 116–​17, 118, 129–​36, 137, 176, 179, 224–​25,  247–​48 Argos, 65–​66, 94–​95, 213 Arimi, 152, 153, 157–​58, 161 Arkesilas of Cyrene, 12–​15 arrival of ode, 31–​32, 33, 45–​48, 49–​50,  51–​52 Artemis, 32–​33, 41–​43, 44–​48, 49–​50, 51–​52, 55–​56, 63, 72 Alpheioa, 27, 44, 46–​47, 49–​50, 63–​69,  72

280

Subject Index

Artemis (cont.) Potamia, 44, 46–​47, 49–​50, 51–​52, 55–​56, 64–​65, 68, 72 Athanassaki, Lucia, 159–​60, 199–​200 Athena, 42, 85–​86, 90, 130–​31, 143–​44, 156, 181–​82, 186, 240–​43 Lindia, 181–​82, 241 Polias/​Poliouchos, 181–​82,  240–​41 Athenians, 4, 6–​7, 8–​10, 58, 59–​60, 62, 82, 93, 98–​101, 103, 164–​65, 196–​97 Atlantes, 182–​83,  197–​98 autochthony, 100, 186–​87, 221–​22 Bacchylides, 2–​4, 6–​7, 21–​22, 23, 24, 33, 35–​36, 70–​71, 78–​79, 91, 101–​2, 107–​ 8, 112–​17, 120, 124, 125, 135, 218 Battos, 12–​15, 139, 172n104, 197n67, 202,  219–​20 Bell, Catherine, 3–​4, 31–​32, 140 Bermingham, Ann, 19–​20 Boehringer, Erich, 51–​52 Bookidis, Nancy, 76–​77, 79–​80 Budelman, Felix, 206–​7 Bundy, Elroy, 2–​3 Bury, John, 128–​29 Buxton, Richard, 20–​21 Callimachus, 82, 84, 110–​11 Carthaginians, 34–​35, 106, 133–​34, 164, 180–​81, 182–​83, 189–​90,  225 Chromius, 36–​37, 41–​43, 55–​56, 57, 60, 65–​66, 70–​71, 117–​19, 121–​22, 126–​27, 128–​29, 130, 132–​36, 142, 149–​50,  225–​27 coinage, 15–​16, 28–​29, 31, 33, 38, 49, 51–​56, 77–​79, 82–​85, 127, 141, 143–​45, 147, 159–​60, 182–​83, 184, 186, 189–​93, 194–​95, 199, 212, 218, 232–​33,  242–​43 Cole, Susan, 74–​75 Cosgrove, Denis, 19–​20

Crab, as civic symbol of Akragas, 28–​ 29, 189–​93, 232, 242–​43 Cretans, 29, 181–​82, 206–​7, 226–​27,  229–​30 Crete, 94–​95, 233–​34, 245 Cultural Poetics, 3–​4 Cumae, 133–​34, 161–​64, 165 Battle of, 114, 133–​34, 164–​65, 243 Currie, Bruno, 21–​22, 24–​25 Cyrene, 5, 9–​10, 11–​17, 74–​75, 139, 174, 202, 219–​20, 249 D’Alessio, Giambattista, 123 Daniels, Stephen, 19–​20 dedications, 5–​6, 38–​39, 101–​2, 106, 125, 184, 186, 201 Deinomenes (son of Hieron), 142, 165,  172–​73 Deinomenids, 5–​7, 8–​9, 15, 25–​27, 28, 30, 33, 36–​37, 50–​51, 53–​54, 57–​58, 73–​74, 76, 77, 78–​80, 83–​84, 93–​ 94, 116–​17, 121–​23, 125, 126–​28, 129–​ 30, 131–​32, 135, 136, 137, 141, 142–​43, 146–​47, 164–​65, 174, 179 Delos, 42–​43, 44–​45, 118 Delphi, 5–​6, 12–​13, 15–​17, 70–​71, 101–​2, 106, 125, 136, 149–​50, 156–​57, 172, 184, 185–​86, 193, 194 Delphic Apollo/​Delphic Oracle, 12–​13,  50–​51 Demarete, 181 Demeter and Persephone, 28, 30–​31, 35, 41–​42, 48, 54, 60–​61, 68n121, 73, 137, 146–​47, 181–​82, 184–​85, 194,  247–​48 temples of, 34–​35, 106–​7, 111–​12, 125, 182n22 Dorian/​Dorians, 25, 28, 37–​38, 68–​69, 71, 138, 142, 150, 172–​78, 186, 187, 204–​5, 224–​25, 229–​30, 233–​34, 238,  246–​47



Subject Index

Dougherty, Carol, 12–​13, 56–​57, 85, 169, 176, 203 Ducetius, 142–​43,  234–​35 Eckerman, Christopher, 24–​25, 249 Eisenfeld, Hanne, 187–​89, 215–​16 Eleusis, 80–​81, 87, 90–​91, 92, 108–​9 Elis, 33, 37, 54–​55, 64–​65, 66–​69, 72 Elliger, Winfred, 23 Enna, 82–​89, 90, 124 Epinician genre of, 2–​3, 4, 21–​22, 25–​26, 31, 116, 206–​7,  215–​16 performance of, 4, 7, 9–​10, 21–​22, 24, 25–​27, 28, 31–​32, 41–​42, 43–​44, 61–​62, 68–​69, 114, 117–​18, 119, 122, 129, 130, 131–​32, 138, 140–​41, 144–​ 45, 149–​50, 151–​52, 159–​60, 161–​63, 165–​66, 167–​69, 171–​72, 175, 176, 177, 212–​13, 226–​27, 228–​29, 231–​ 32, 233–​34, 245, 248–​49 Ergoteles, 29, 225–​27, 234–​35, 246–​48 Etruscans, 61, 133–​34, 164–​65, 243 fertility, 54–​55, 60, 75, 77–​78, 80–​82, 83–​84, 86, 87, 88–​89, 100, 102–​3, 104, 113, 117–​19, 120–​21, 123–​24, 126, 128–​29, 133, 135, 137, 169, 209–​10, 214,  215–​16 Fischer–​Hansen, Tobias, 44 Foley, Helene, 80, 81 Foster, Margaret, 37–​38, 57, 63–​64 foundation of cities, 8, 12–​15, 16–​17, 35–​36, 41–​42, 50–​51, 56–​58, 63–​64, 70, 79–​80, 106, 113–​14, 137–​39, 142, 150–​51, 152, 169–​70, 171, 180, 199–​ 200, 202–​3, 223, 226 founder heroes, 12–​16, 37, 142, 171–​72, 174, 187, 203, 221–​22 refoundation, 57–​58, 202–​3, 219–​20,  242

281

Gamoroi, 33–​34, 38, 57–​58, 102–​3, 186 Geertz, Clifford, 31–​32 Gela, 8–​9, 33–​34, 52–​53, 57–​58, 76–​77, 95–​97, 100–​1, 102, 127, 174, 180, 184–​85, 190–​91, 198–​99,  241 Gelas, river, 127, 198–​99, 205, 206–​7 Gelon, 8–​9, 33–​36, 41–​42, 52–​55, 57–​58, 63–​64, 77–​78, 94–​104, 106–​7, 111–​12, 116, 117, 125, 127–​28, 139, 164, 165, 180–​81, 182–​83,  184–​86 Gentili, Bruno, 163–​64, 221 Giangiulio, Maurizio, 16–​17 Gilhuly, Kate, 17 Green, Peter, 105–​6 Hagesias, 36–​37, 48, 57–​58, 70–​ 71, 80, 109–​10, 136, 220–​21, 225–​27,  230–​31 Hamilcar, 34–​35,  127–​28 Hamilton, Richard, 232 Harrell, Sarah, 7 Hebe, 117–​18, 133, 134 Hephaistos, 79–​80,  166–​68 Herakleidai, 173–​76, 187 Herakles, 12, 73–​74, 88–​94, 117–​18, 132, 135–​36, 187–​88, 195–​96,  232–​33 Hieron, 6–​9 , 25, 28, 29, 33–​3 4, 35–​ 38, 41–​4 2, 46–​4 8, 55–​5 6, 57–​5 8, 60, 62–​6 4, 68–​7 2, 73, 79–​8 0, 84–​8 5, 91, 93–​9 4, 96–​9 7, 107–​8 , 109–​1 6, 118, 120–​2 3, 124, 125–​2 6, 128–​2 9, 130, 131, 132–​3 6, 137–​3 9, 141, 142–​5 2, 157, 158, 161–​6 2, 163–​6 5, 169–74, 177–​7 8, 179, 181, 183–​8 7, 202–​3 , 204–​5 , 218, 221–​2 2, 223, 224–​2 6, 229, 230–​3 1, 234–​3 5, 237–​3 8, 243–​4 4, 246–​4 7,  248 Himera (battle of) 5–​6, 34–​35, 105–​6, 107, 111–​12, 125, 127–​28, 165, 180–​81, 182–​83, 197–​98,  209

282

Subject Index

Himera (city), 2, 5, 29, 89, 90, 91, 114, 124, 127–​28, 181, 191–​93, 226–​27, 234–​35, 242–​43, 246, 247–​48, 249 Himera (nymph), 231–​33 Hinz, Valentina, 74–​75 Hipparis (River), 240–​41 Hippokrates, 33, 127, 241 Hubbard, Thomas, 25–​26, 62–​63, 65–​66,  141 Iamus, 37–​38, 48 Inessa, 142–​43,  234–​35 Isthmia, 62, 124–​25, 187, 209 Jenkins, Kenneth, 189–​90 Kadmos, 207–​8,  217–​18 Kallipolis, 33, 60n104 Kamarina (city), 2, 5, 8–​9, 29, 33–​34, 57–​58, 97, 157, 174, 184–​85, 226–​27, 234, 247–​48, 249 Kamarina (nymph), 239–​40, 241, 242–​43,  246–​47 Karkinos (poet), 82 Katane, 8–​9, 35, 60n104, 111n122, 139, 142–​43, 164, 175 Killyroi,  57–​58 Köhnken, Adolf, 1 Kore, see Demeter and Persephone Kowalzig, Barbara, 36–​37, 54, 85 Kraay, Colin, 39–​40 Kronos, 214–​15, 216–​17,  244–​45 Kurke, Leslie, 2–​3 Kyane (spring), 75–​76, 85, 88–​90, 92, 93–​94, 110–​11, 133,  135–​36 Land-​myth, 138–​39, 158, 171, 177–​78,  246–​47 Leontini, 8–​9, 33, 35, 52–​53, 78–​80, 85, 113–​14, 139, 142, 170–​71 Letrini, 66, 67–​69 Luraghi, Nino, 57–​58, 96–​97, 111–​12, 174

Malkin, Irad, 57–​58, 138–​39, 185–​86 Marconi, Clementi, 38–​39 Megara Hyblaea, 33–​34, 57–​58, 97, 184–​85 Midas of Akragas, 108–​9, 187, 193, 194, 227n6 Mitchell, W.J.T., 20 mixed populations, 8–​9, 15, 33–​34, 35–​ 36, 57, 58–​64, 171–​72, 176, 224–​25, 235–​36,  238 Montagna di Marzo, 77 Moretti, Luigi, 129 Morgan, Kathryn, 7–​8, 138, 162–​63, 183–​ 84, 218, 225–​26 Morgantina, 77, 83–​84, 124 Morrison, Andrew, 7, 123, 124, 131, 151–​52 Mullen, William, 22–​23, 24 Naxos, 8–​9, 33, 35, 113–​14, 139, 142 Nemea, 41–​42, 55–​56, 65–​66, 71, 118, 124–​25, 128–​29,  132–​33 Nicholson, Nigel, 7–​8, 147, 157, 184, 226–​27, 230,  237–​38 Nike/​Victory, 143–​44, 190–​91,  242–​43 Nora, Pierre, 20 Oanos, river, 240–​41 Oedipus, 208–​9, 214 Olympia, 5–​6, 31, 32–​33, 37–​39, 40–​42, 45–​46, 49–​50, 51–​52, 53–​57, 61–​62, 66–​68, 72, 73–​74, 77–​78, 101–​2, 112–​13, 116–​17, 118, 125, 126, 128–​30, 132–​33, 134–​35, 184, 187–​88, 189, 194–​95, 196, 204, 209, 226, 233, 234–​35, 239–​40, 245–​48,  249 Ortygia, 31, 32–​33, 36–​37, 38–​40, 41–​50, 51–​52, 54–​57, 58, 60, 61–​62, 70, 72, 76, 77–​78, 109–​10, 117–​22, 129–​31, 134,  247–​48 Pavlou, Maria, 200–​1 Peloponnese, 11, 27, 28, 31, 32–​33, 37–​ 38, 40–​42, 44, 48–​49, 63, 71–​72,



Subject Index

73–​74, 78, 92, 129–​30, 134–​35, 137, 142, 171–​72, 173–​75, 176, 187, 202–​3,  240–​41 Pelops, 37–​38, 98–​99, 187, 202–​3, 221–​ 22, 240–​41, 249 Persephone, see Demeter and Persephone Phalaris, 138, 138n2, 180 Philistus,  84–​85 Phillips, Tom, 56 Phlegra, 133–​34,  163–​64 Plouton, 82, 85–​87, 88–​89, 90, 120–​21 Polignac, François de, 74–​75 political instability, 2, 8–​9, 13–​14, 15–​16, 32–​34, 35–​36, 59–​60, 61, 95–​96, 102–​3, 123, 181, 199–​200, 225, 228–​31,  233–​35 Polyneices, 208, 210 Polyzelos, 35, 181 Psaumis, 29, 157, 224, 225–​27, 234, 247 Pytho, 156, 161, 167 Race, William, 209–​10 Rhea, 80–​81, 203–​4, 215, 216–​17 Rhodes, 4–​5, 9–​10, 22–​23, 139, 202, 205–​7, 210–​11,  220–​21 ritual performance, 26–​27, 31–​32, 84–​ 85, 122, 133, 140, 165–​66, 231–​33 ritualization, 140 Rutherford, Ian, 219–​20 Schadewaldt, Wolfgang, 2–​3 Schipporeit, Sven, 84–​85 Segal, Charles, 159–​60 Semele,  207–​8 Shapiro, Alan, 76, 92–​93 Sikels, 2, 18, 29, 33, 35–​36, 56–​57, 59–​ 60, 87, 88–​89, 123, 124, 142–​43, 170–​71, 234–​36,  238 Simonides, 6–​7,  79–​80 Slater, William, 133–​34, 219–​20 Sparta, 116, 164–​65

283

Spartans, 5, 92, 98–​99, 103 Steiner, Deborah, 23–​24 Swan, as a symbol of Kamarina, 242–​43 Syracuse, 2, 5–​7, 8–​9, 15–​16, 27, 28–​29, 30, 73, 137, 141, 142–​43, 146, 149–​50, 170–​72, 173–​74, 179, 180–​81, 183–​ 86, 187, 202–​3, 221–​22, 225–​26, 230–​31, 234–​35, 246, 247–​48, 249 Olympieion,  75–​76 Piazza Archimede, 76 Piazza della Vittoria, 34n20, 75, 76, 106 Tartarus, 153–​56,  160–​62 Taygetos, Mt., 173, 175, 176 Teiresias, 11, 117–​18, 132–​34 Telines, 94–​97, 102–​3, 104, 106, 146–​47 Terillus, 180–​81, 191 territorial myth, 138–​39, 185–​86 Thebes, 4, 9–​10, 11–​12, 14–​15, 22–​23, 108–​9, 132–​34, 186–​87, 207–​8, 209–​11, 214, 220–​21, 249 Theron, 15, 28–​29, 34–​35, 125, 127–​28, 129, 179, 180, 183, 187–​93, 194–​95, 205, 211–​13, 216–​18, 219, 223, 225–​ 26, 229–​30, 232, 233–​34, 243–​44 Thersandros,  208–​11 Thesmophoria, 110–​11, 180 Thrasybulus, 35, 142–​43, 234–​35 Thrasydaeus, 114, 181, 189–​90, 230,  233–​34 Timaeus, 55–​56, 82–​83, 93–​94, 105, 205 Tuan, Yi–​Fu, 18, 165–​66 Vattuone, Riccardo, 101–​2 White, Donald, 95–​96 Willcock, Malcolm, 1 Worman, Nancy, 17 Xenokrates, 185–​86, 187–​88, 193,  209–​10

284

Subject Index

Zankle, 33 Zeus, 11, 60–​62, 79–​80, 113–​15, 117–​19, 120–​21, 122, 123, 124, 126, 130, 132–​ 36, 172, 175–​76, 177, 182–​83, 189–​ 90, 195–​96, 204–​5, 213–​15, 216–​18, 220–​21, 238–​39,  248–​49 Aitnaios, 41–​43, 48, 57, 70–​71, 109–​12, 114, 117–​18, 142, 176, 179, 218, 237, 238–​39,  246–​47

Atabyrios,  181–​82 Battle with Typho, 28, 138, 150, 152, 158, 171, 177–​78, 246–​47 Eleutherios,  227–​28 Olympian, 125, 182–​83, 189–​90, 197–​98,  203–​5 Sōter,  244–​46 temple of Olympian Zeus, Akragas, 182–​83