The Measures of Praise: Structure and Function in Pindar's Second Pythian and Seventh Nemean Odes 9783666251825, 3525251823, 9783525251829

Citation preview

HYPOMNEMATA 83

VÖR

HYPOMNEMATA UNTERSUCHUNGEN ZUR ANTIKE UND ZU IHREM NACHLEBEN

Herausgegeben von Albrecht Dihle/Hartmut Erbse/Christian Habicht Hugh Lloyd-Jones/Günther Patzig/Bruno Snell

HEFT 83

VANDENHOECK &. RUPRECHT IN GÖTTINGEN

GLENN W. MOST

The Measures of Praise Structure and Function in Pindar's Second Pythian and Seventh Nemean Odes

VANDENHOECK & RUPRECHT IN GÖTTINGEN

CIP-Kuiztitelaufnahme

der Deutschen

Bibliothek

Most, Glenn W.: The measures of praise: structure and function in Pindar's Second Pythian and Seventh Nemean odes/Glenn W. Most. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1985. (Hypomnemata,· Η. 83] ISBN 3-525-25182-3 NE: GT

© Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht in Göttingen 1985 - Printed in Germany. Ohne ausdrückliche Genehmigung des Verlages ist es nicht gestattet, das Buch oder Teile daraus auf foto- oder akustomechanischem Wege zu vervielfältigen. Satz: Dörlemann-Satz GmbH & Co. KG, Lemförde. Druck: Hubert &. Co., Göttingen

FOR MY MOTHER AND BROTHER

Preface This book is a revised version of a longer work that was accepted as a dissertation in 1980 by the Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften of the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen. It has been shortened in part by the separate publication of extended discussions of certain issues; the interested reader is referred to these forthcoming articles in the appropriate footnotes. Since completing this manuscript, I have returned to the issue of poetic unity in another article, examining the place of that issue in ancient and modern poetics and offering a brief interpretation, along the lines proposed here, of Pindar's Eleventh Pythian: "Des verschieden Gesinnten Sinnesverbindung. Zur poetischen Einheit der Alten," in K. Gloy and E. Rudolph, ed. Einheit als Grundfrage der Philosophie: Ein Sammelband (Darmstadt 1985). The most pleasurable part of such a study is the rendering of thanks to those who made it possible. In this case, my debts are many and large. Various versions of the manuscript were typed, with good humor and accuracy, by C. Bolton, E. Busch, Μ. Lehr, Μ. Maier, and Α. Sauer: my thanks to all. As for my scholarly indebtedness, Pindaram quisquis studet, ceiatis ope Daedalea nititur pennis. I have had the benefit of numerous Daedaluses (none of whom is to be blamed for my own lapses): teachers, friends, and colleagues in five countries, too many to name here, but all gratefully and individually remembered. Preliminary versions of parts of Chapter One were delivered as lectures in Philadelphia, Urbino, and Rome, and of Chapter Two in Lille: I acknowledge with gratitude the opportunity to try out ideas on these sympathetically critical audiences. With regard to the publication of this book, I am grateful to Albrecht Dihle and the other editors of Hypomnemata for their support and suggestions, and to Princeton University for its generous subsidy. Seven friends in particular read sections of this work and supplied many helpful criticisms. Albrecht Dihle was always ready to provide me the benefit of his extraordinary familiarity with the whole of Greek culture; Adolf Köhnken, in discussion and correspondence, saved me from many errors and tried to save me from more,· Luigi Enrico Rossi offered encouragement and suggestions on numerous points of detail and on general issues; Jean Bollack discussed with me in depth a number of problems in both the Second Pythian and the Seventh Nemean; Konrad Gaiser read through both versions and gave me suggestions and criticisms of great value,· and Charles Larmore saved 7

me from many errors and infelicities as well as providing me a forum, over many years, to try out ideas and discuss problems. But my greatest debt is to Richard Kannicht, the adviser for the dissertation, who supported the project from the beginning, offered encouragement, advice, and criticism throughout its course, and subjected its first written form to an exhaustively careful and sceptical examination that has contributed much towards whatever improvements are to be found in this final version. Finally, Isolde Schwarz fostered this work from its beginning: to her also it is dedicated. Florence, July 1984

8

Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction 1.1 Difficulties 1.2 Strategies 1.3 Questions of Method: The First Isthmian Chapter Two: The Second Pythian 2.1 Preliminaries 2.2 Χάρις 2.2.1 2.2.2 2.2.3 2.2.4 2.2.5

Hieron (1-12) Gratitude (13-20) Ixion (21-48) Praise and the Limits of Mortality (49-56) Hieran (57-67)

2.3 A Supplement on Supplements 2.3.1 2.3.2 2.3.3 2.3.4 2.3.5

Poet and Victor (67-71) Knowledge and Slander: The Individual (72-80) Sincerity and Dishonesty: The Political Order (81-88) Piety and Envy: The Cosmic Order (88-96) Poet and Victor (96)

2.4 Final Remarks Chapter Three: The Seventh Nemean 3.1 Preliminaries 3.2 Figura 3.2.1 Sogenes (1-10) 3.2.2 Victory and Song (11-52) 3.2.2.1 Counter-Examples: Odysseus and Ajax (20-30) 3.2.2.2 Example: Neoptolemus (31-52)

3.3 Fulfillment 3.3.1 Thearion (54-60) 3.3.2 Victory and Song (61-105) 3.3.2.1 Poet and Praise (61-69) 3.3.2.2 Poet and Victor (70-105)

3.4 Final Remarks

11 11 25 42 60 60 68 68 72 76 86 92

96 96 101 Ill 118 119

121 133 133 134 134 141 148 157

182 182 186 186 191

209

9

Chapter Four: Conclusion

214

Bibliography

219

Indices I. Index locorum antiquorum II. Index verborum graecorum

223 223 234

DIAGRAMS I. II A. II B. III.

10

Compositional Structure of Isthmian I Compositional Structure of Pythian 2 Conceptual Structure of Pythian 2 Compositional Structure of Nemean 7

56 69 72 135

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

1.1 Difficulties Pindar seems, for us, to be the very paradigm of poetic difficulty. The development of European lyric poetry, at least over the past two centuries,1 has been decisively influenced on a number of occasions by the model of Pindar as an esoteric poet, one in whom clarity of thought - whether because of the frenzy of overpowering inspiration, the constraints of personal provincialism or of archaic and pre-logical patterns of association, or dependence upon situations and generic expectations whose details are irretrievably lost - is mantled over by so thorough an obscurity of expression, that the meaning of individual phrases is already often impenetrable and the organization of poems as wholes scarcely imaginable. It is no accident that it should have been Hamann, himself celebrated for his obscurity, who, by introducing Pindar to the young Herder,2 was ultimately responsible for the propagation of the view of Pindar as a drunken dithyrambist. This view, represented briefly by Herder himself3 and reflected in the "Halbunsinn" 4 of Goethe's "Wandrers Sturmlied",5 helped determine in general the self-definition of the Sturm und Drang poet. A generation later, Hölderlin's austere and intensive study of Pindar resulted not only in a group of extraordinary translations and commentaries, but also in his monumental hymns and fragments of the first years after the turn of the century. Finally, in our own century, von Hellingrath's rediscovery of Hölderlin's translations and his vatic ' Pindar's influence on the Renaissance lyric is also extensive (cf. for example Ronsard), but here he seems not to have been valued primarily for his obscurity. 1 Cf. O. Regenbogen, Kleine Schriften (Munich 1961) 530. ' J.G. Herder, Über die neuere Deutsche Litteratur. Zwote Sammlung von Fragmenten (1767), IV.B.2 (especially 1.325ff. Suphan). On the other hand, Herder's assessment of the Fourth Pythian two years later is far more sober, cf. Ktitische Wälder (1769), Drittes Wäldchen, Β (3.444ff. Suphan). Cf. in general R. Nünlist, Homer, Aristoteles und Pindar in der Sicht Herders (Bonn 1971) 91-112, who emphasizes the non-dithyrambic elements in Herder's view of Pindar. 4 J.W. Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit 3.12. ! Cf. on this poem Regenbogen, op. cit. (n.2) 520-39.

11

interpretations of their and of Pindar's style6 contributed to the individual but comparable transformation, in poets like George and Rilke, from a greater degree of perspicuity and directness to a new symbolic density and syntactic compression. Indeed, the words Voltaire addressed to Pindar, in an ode celebrating the Empress Catherine's donation of a carrousel, were to be fulfilled in an even more ironic mode than the French satirist had intended: Sors du tombeau, divin Pindare, Toi qui celebras autrefois Les chevaux de quelques bourgeois Ou de Corinthe ou de Megäre; Toi qui possedas le talent De parier beaucoup sans rien dire, Toi qui modulas savamment Des vers que personne n'entend Et qu'il faut toujours qu'on admire.7 Voltaire's prayer was punished by being answered: but who was the Pindar whom he conjured up from the tomb and whose shade has since haunted modernity? This question may be put, less provocatively and more concretely, in other terms: how was Pindar regarded in antiquity? Was he considered, not only by us, but also by the Greeks and Romans, to be a poet of exceptional difficulty? When the evidence is examined, it turns out that there was not one strand in the ancient reception of Pindar, but instead two: a scholarly tradition (to which we shall return shortly) and a literary one. Within this latter, the question of how difficult Pindar was thought to be admits of a clear and perhaps surprising answer: Pindar is discussed by many ancient poets, prose writers, and literary theorists - and not one provides ever even the slightest hint that Pindar's poetry might offer any obstacle whatsoever to the understanding. This fact has been so little recognized,8 and has 6 N . von Hellingrath, Pindar-Übertragungen von Hölderlin. Prolegomena zu einer Erstausgabe (Diss. Munich 1910). ' Ode XVII, in Voltaire, Oeuvres Competes. Nouvelle Edition (Paris 1877) 8.486. 8 Indeed, the contrary is generally claimed to be the case, for example in literary histories (e.g., Schmid-Stählin 606), studies of Pindar (e.g., Wilamowitz, Pindaros 449, 451), and analyses of obscurity in Greek literature (e.g. W . Rhys Roberts, Dionysius of Halicamassus: On Literary Composition [London 1910) 335). Only M . Fuhrmann, "Obscuritas. Das Problem der Dunkelheit in der rhetorischen und literarästhetischen Theorie der Antike," pp. 47-72 in W . Iser, ed., Immanente Ästhetik - Ästhetische Reflexion. Lyrik als Paradigma der Moderne = Poetik und Hermeneutik 2 (Munich 1966), here pp. 71-72, comes closer to the truth. Much of the material is collected in Schmid-Stählin 615-20; cf. also M . Brozek, " D e scriptoribus Latinis antiquis Pindari laudatoribus et aemulis," Eos 59 (1971) 101-7; Irigoin, Histoire du texte de Pindare

12

important enough implications, that it may be worthwhile briefly to summarize the relevant ancient testimony.9 The earliest poet who refers to Pindar speaks of a decline in the popularity of his poems: Eupolis wrote of them as being ήδη κατασεσιγασμένα ύπό της των πολλών άφιλοκαλίας10. While it is occasionally implied that this loss of interest may in part have been due to Pindar's difficulty/ 1 it must be stressed that Eupolis himself makes no suggestion of this kind and operates, not with the opposition of easy vs. difficult, but rather with that of an aristocratic ideal of beauty and moral perfection (άφιλοκαλίας) vs. the vulgarity of the masses (των πολλών),· furthermore, the context in Athenaeus, who supplies this paraphrase, suggests that what is at issue is simply a felt lack of relevance to immediate concerns or to present tastes,12 and elsewhere the same Eupolis spoke of Stesichorus, Alcman, and Simonides as being old-fashioned.13 Pindar, then, seems to have been rejected by many Athenians (though perhaps not so much by those committed to an aristocratic ethos) in the second half of the fifth century for being, not too difficult, but simply obsolete; yet that this was not the case for all Athenians is testified to by Aristophanes' comedies, which presuppose among the audience a familiarity with at least some of Pindar's poems.14 Among (probably) later15 Greek poets, Corinna 11-20; I. Opelt, "Die christliche Spätantike und Pindar," ByzF 2 (1967) 284-98; Wilamowitz, Pindaros 445ff. ; and P. Wilson, "Pindar and his Reputation in Antiquity," PCPhS 26(1980] 97-114. ' The following pages make no claim to provide an exhaustive account of Pindar's reception in antiquity, but rather merely to offer an outline of that reception's structure. Hence merely textual allusions to Pindar's poetry (e.g., Eur. IT 385-91, cf. P. 1) or variations of Pindaric expressions (e.g., Soph. Phil. 946-47, cf. P. 8.95-96) are ignored in favor of explicit discussions of Pindar, and among these the emphasis is placed, not so much upon passages which draw information from the content of Pindar's poetry (as, e.g., often in Strabo: such authors ignore the very possibility that Pindar might be obscure), as rather upon those which express or imply a judgement of his style. 10 Eupolis Frg. 366 Kock, apud Athen. Deipn. 1.3a. 11 E.g., Norwood, Pindar 182. 12 The fragment is cited in the context of Athenaeus' praise for Larensis, who studied ancient political and religious ceremonies (such as the ordinances of Romulus and of Numa Pompilius), which were no longer the object of public instruction and which he therefore had to investigate on his own, with the help of his enormous library (Athen. Deipn. 2b-3b). Clearly, such antiquities are neglected, not because of their intrinsic difficulty, but because they are no longer reflected in contemporary political or religious institutions. 13 Eupolis Frg. 139 Kock, apud Athen. Deipn. 14.638d. The relevance of this passage is noted by Irigoin, Histoire du texte de Pindare 12-13, and by Schmid-Stählin 617, n.6. 14 Pindar Frg. 76 (cf. Aristoph. Ach. 637ff., Equ. 1323, 1329); Frg. 89 (cf. Equ. 1264ff.) ; Frg. 105a (cf. Av. 926ff.) ; Frg. 105b (cf. Av. 941ff.) ; perhaps also Frg. 189 (cf. Vesp. 308). On these passages, cf. Irigoin, Histoire du texte de Pindare 13-16. The satire in the Birds is directed neither at Pindar himself nor at poetic obscurity (946).

13

certainly censured Myrtis (presumably a contemporary of Pindar)16 for her having dared, though a woman, to compete with Pindar;17 if the anecdote reported by Plutarch may be thought to have had some basis in Corinna's poetry, then she may well have criticized Pindar for using not enough (and/or perhaps too many) myths.18 And various epigrams in the Greek anthology call Pindar Πιερικάν σάλπιγγα, τον εύαγέων βαρϋν ύμνων / χαλκευτάν,1' claim that Έκλαγεν έκ Θηβών μέγα Πίνδαρος,20 or term the poet ίμερόεις.21 References to Pindar among the Latin poets tend to be somewhat less specific: he is the greatest of the lyric poets, as Homer is of the epic poets. Representing the boundary of highest achievement in his genre, he approaches as close to the status of an epic poet as a lyricist is permitted. For Propertius, he is the greatest dithyrambist;22 for Martial, the greatest lyricist;23 for Statius, the "regnator lyricae cohortis".24 Such general tributes need not imply familiarity with Pindar's works among their authors, but are, precisely for this reason, nonetheless important for our purposes, for they indicate what features were likely to have been associated with Pindar in the culture of ancient non-specialists: sublime loftiness, but not obscurity. This impression is confirmed by a few texts of more detailed content. Petronius contrasts Sophocles, Euripides, "Pindarus nouemque lyrici", whose simple and natural styles are taken to represent an ideal of literary beauty, with the bloated and obscure eloquence of his own day.25 In another poem from the Silvae, Statius speaks of Pindar's regularity (presumably with regard to his meters) and opposes Pindar, together with Homer, Hesiod, and the archaic lyric poets, to the labyrinthine obscurities of Callimachus, Lycophron, Sophron, and Corinna, which only the highly educated reader can penetrate.26 But it is of course

The date of Corinna is controversial; I incline towards the Hellenistic period. Cf. D.L. Page, ed., Corinna (London 1953] 31 n. 1. " Corinna 664 (a) PMG. 1! Plutarch, Mor. 347F-48A. " Anth. Pal. 7.34.1-2 (Antipater of Sidon), cf. Anth. Plan. 305 (Antipater, perhaps the same). 20 Anth. Pal. 9.571.1 (anonymous); for another anonymous catalogue of the nine lyric poets with Pindar as the first, cf. Anth. Pal. 9.184. !l Anth. Pal. 9.809.1 (Cyrus); for the pleasure Pindar provided both foreigners and his fellow-countrymen, cf. Anth. Pal. 7.35 (Leonidas). " Prop. 3.17.39-40. " Mart. 8.18.5-6. 14 Stat. Silv. 4.7.5; cf. also Silv. 1.3.101. 15 Petr. Sat. 2.4. " Stat. Silv. 5.3.147-58. The reference in lines 151-52 to Pindar's meters may represent an implicit polemic against Hor. Car. 4.2.11-12. 15

16

14

Horace whose reception of Pindar is most celebrated among Latin poets.27 In the third epistle of his first book, Horace inquires concerning the current activities of the promising young poet Titius, who, following Callimachean precept, has preferred to dare to write Latin poetry in Pindaric meters rather than to imitate more vulgar models.28 The context shows that Pindar is the loftiest goal a Latin lyricist can set himself,29 but the dangers which such a goal are implied to offer reside clearly not in any intrinsic difficulty in the Greek poet himself but instead in the process of transforming features of his poetry into Latin verse: it is evidently less easy to reproduce the complicated metrical schemes of the Pindaric triad in the intransigent material of the Latin language than to compose, for example, Alcaic or Sapphic strophes in Latin.30 This is also part of the point of Horace's influential recusatio, "Pindarum quisquis" (Car. 4.2).'1 Here Horace's refusal to compose a poem in honor of Augustus is explained with reference to the limitations of his own poetic talent, in contrast with which Pindar's genius - as witnessed on the one hand by the variety of poetic genres in which he excelled, on the other by the sublime torrent of his utterance in every genre - is emphasized in a majestic period which, itself imitating Pindar's sweep, rolls through five strophes. The difficulty which deters Horace resides not in any obscurities which Pindar's poetry presents to the reader's understanding, but rather merely in the attempt to imitate Pindar in Latin. That Pindar is said to rush along like a mountain torrent means that his effect upon the reader is so compelling that one does not pause to analyze individual details but is instead swept along by an overwhelming grandeur; that Pindar employs neologisms and non-responsive meters in his dithyrambs32 evidently provides no stumblingblock to comprehension, for his torrent is so powerful that the reader " Cf. in general E. Harms, Hoiaz in seinen Beziehungen zu Pindar (Diss. Marburg 1936), and recently N.T. Kennedy, "Pindar and Horace/' A Class 18 (1975] 9 - 2 4 . " Hor. Epist. 1.3.9-14; for the poetological water imagery of line 11, cf. Callim. Ep. 2 8 . 3 - 4 Pf. " In the immediately preceding lines (7-8), Horace has asked who will write of the achievements of Augustus; the implication is that Pindaric Titius would be up to such a task; and in line 14, the alternative genre in which he might be active, tragedy, is likewise superior to lyric poetry. 50 This metrical interpretation of the passage is supported by the terminology of Horace's references to his own poetry, e.g. Car. 3.30.13-14, Epist. 1.19.23-33. " On this poem cf. e.g. E. Fraenkel, Das Pindargedicht des Horaz, SB Heidelberg 1932/33:2 (Heidelberg 1933), and Horace (Oxford 1957) 4 3 2 - 4 0 ; Harms, op. cit (n.27), 55-61. " "seu per audacis noua dithyrambos/uerba deuoluit numerisque fertur/lege solutis" (10-12). By the former are presumably meant in particular Pindar's compound adjectives; the latter claim has been disproved by the papyri of Pindar's Second Dithyramb (Frg. 70b).

15

passes even through these without hesitation. The stress is uniquely upon a sublimity which surpasses the limits set to ordinary mortals "uelut amnis, imbres / quern super notas aluere ripas" (5-6): the slightest hint of any obscurity of expression or difficulty of understanding would weaken Horace's praise and endanger his recusatio. Among historians and philosophers, Herodotus cites with approval the beginning of Pindar's famous νόμος ode, finding it confirmed empirically, for example by an experiment conducted by Darius.33 Plato quotes Pindar frequently34 but discusses him rarely. In the Meno, Pindar's assertion of the immortality of the soul as the foundation for the necessity of acting justly in this life is quoted in evidence as the λόγος αληθής και καλός of a θείος poet,35 while, in the Republic, Cephalus says, with reference to Pindar's description of the hopes of the righteous, χαριέντως... εΰ οΰν λέγει θαυμαστώς ώς σφόδρα.36 On the other hand, later in the same treatise, the version of the myth of Asclepius found in Pindar's Third Pythian and in the tragedians is rejected as blasphemous.37 A century later, Arcesilaus reportedly admired Pindar for his ability to provide the reader with eloquence and an abundance of quoteable words and phrases.38 Later still, Plutarch suggests that Pindar tends to praise himself too much, though the praise is fully justified,39 and asserts that the poet's myth of Caeneus used to be attacked as being implausible.40 And Seneca attacks those credulous philosophi who believed wrongly, on the sole basis of Pindar's testimony, that the island Delos was never shaken by earthquakes.41 But, as we would expect, it is the rhetoricians who provide the most detailed literary evaluations of Pindar. The earliest,42 and by far the most penetrating analyses which have survived are those of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, for whom Pindar is one of the prime " Hdt. 3.38. 34 E.g., Pind. Frg. 169 (cf. Gorg. 484Bf., Laws 3.690B, 4.714E); for other examples, see the following notes. On the relation between Plato and Pindar in general, cf. E. des Places, Pin dare et Platon (Paris 1949), especially 169-79. 35 Meno 81Bff. (cf. Pind. Frg. 133). 36 Rep. 1.331A (cf. Pind. Frg. 214). 37 Rep. 3.408B. 38 Diog. Laert. 4.31. 39 Plut. Mor. 539C. 40 Plut. Mor. 1057D. 41 Sen. Nat. 6.26.2. 42 To preclude a possible misunderstanding: Aristotle lists as one of the four causes of τά ψυχρά inappropriate and especially compounded epithets, which create obscurity (Rhet. 3.3.1405b33-35) and are particularly characteristic of dithyrambic poets (1406b 1-2); but here he certainly means, not Pindar, but rather the later dithyrambic poets whom Aristophanes too had attacked.

16

representatives of the austere style. This style is characterized briefly in the Demosthenes (38-39): it seeks το σεμνόν rather than τό κομψόν, prefers long words with long syllables, does not shun hiatus or clashing consonant combinations, employs dignified rhythms and figures, avoids periodic style and clausulae, polysyndeton, the definite article, and the repetition of similar grammatical constructions. The effect of such features is a solemn and austere dignity, not without an archaic charm and a natural simplicity.43 Among historians, Thucydides is the master of this style; among poets, Aeschylus and (with the exception of his partheneions and similar poems) Pindar.44 The same features are listed in Chapter 22 of the De Compositione Verborum; this time they are exemplified by the beginning of a Pindaric dithyramb for the Athenians, of which Dionysius asserts, ταϋθ' ότι μεν έστιν ισχυρά και στιβαρά και αξιωματικά και πολύ τό αύστηρόν έχει τραχύνει τε άλύπως καί πικραίνει μετρίως τάς άκοάς άναβέβληταί τε τοις χρόνοις και διαβέβηκεν έπι πολύ ταΐς άρμονίαις καί ού τό θεατρικόν δή τοϋτο και γλαφυρόν έπιδείκνυται κάλλος άλλά το άρχαικον εκείνο και αύστηρόν, άπαντες άν εΰ οίδ ότι μαρτυρήσειαν οί μετρίαν έχοντες α'ίσθησιν περί λόγους.45 This general claim is substantiated by a close phonological analysis of the dithyramb's first sentence; here much attention is paid to the difficulties the mouth experiences in pronouncing the various combinations of vowels and consonants, 46 but there is no mention of any obstacles the mind encounters in understanding their meaning. Elsewhere, Dionysius criticizes Plato's dithyrambic style as less appropriate for philosophy written in prose than for poetry like Pindar's,47 and compares passages from the Menexenus unfavorably with a fragment of Pindar's, finding that the latter, although as a poet he paid more attention to μέλος and ρυθμός than to λέξις, nevertheless succeeded in writing words which are κάλλιον and γενναιότερον than Plato's.48 But that Dionysius is far from advising against a tactful imitation of Pindar is made clear by a last passage, which offers striking parallels to the statement of Arcesilaus mentioned above:

13 Dion. Hal. Dem. 38, 39 (1.211.16-20, 212.10-13, 212.25-213.2 Usener-Radermacher). 44 Dion. Hal. Dem. 39(1.213.14-19). 45 Dion. Hal. De comp. verb. 22 (2.100.10-101.2). 46 E.g., Dion. Hal. De comp. verb. 22 (2.103.3ff.). 47 Dion. Hal. Dem. 7 (1.142.2-5). The precise nature of the criticism Dionysius appends to his citation from Pindar's Ninth Paean is made irrecoverable by a lacuna in the text. 41 Dion. Hal. Dem. 26 (1.184.20-185.14).

17

ζηλωτός δέ και Πίνδαρος ονομάτων και νοημάτων εϊνεκα/ και μεγαλοπρεπείας και τόνου και περιουσίας κατασκευής και δυνάμεως, και πικρίας μετά ηδονής" και πυκνότητος και σεμνότητος, και γνωμολογίας και έναργείας, και σχηματισμών και ήθοποιίας και αύξήσεως και δεινώσεως' μάλιστα δέ των εις σωφροσύνην και εύσέβειαν και μεγαλοπρέπειαν ήθών.49 What modern critic would think to praise Pindar's ένάργεια?50 For the author of the treatise On the Sublime, Pindar, in contrast to Bacchylides, is a paradigm for the blaze of lofty genius which, though it often inexplicably is extinguished and fails miserably, is nevertheless certainly to be preferred to faultless mediocrity. 51 The criticisms of Hermogenes are more specific: that tropes, which, if used in moderation, can help create an impression of majesty (σεμνότης), provoke in excess the danger that a discourse might become harsher (σκληρότερος), coarser (παχύτερος), and almost cheap or mean (σχεδόν ευτελέστερος); examples are provided by the sophists, tragedians, and such tragic poets as Pindar.52 In contrast, the Roman rhetoricians speak of Pindar almost exclusively in terms of praise.53 Quintilian, echoing Horace, writes, "nouem uero lyricorum longe Pindarus princeps spiritu, magnificentia, sententiis, figuris, beatissima rerum uerborumque copia et uelut quodam eloquentiae flumine." 54 And Aulus Gellius provides55 an extended comparison (also transmitted by Macrobius 56 ) between Pindar's description of Etna in the First Pythian and Virgil's in the third book of the Aeneid, demonstrating in each detail the former's superiority. The traditional estimation of Pindar as being swollen and unnatural is, indeed, repeated: 57 but in this case Virgil, in his attempt to out-do the Greek poet, exceeds him in both defects. Where Pindar 49

Dion. Hal. De imitatione B.VI.II (2.204.19-205.7). For ένάργεια, Dion. Hal. Lysias 7 (1.14.17-15.1), D e m . De elocut. 209ff.; and G. Zanker, "Enargeia in the Ancient Criticism of Poetry," R h M 124 (1981) 2 9 7 - 3 1 1 . While the term primarily denotes visual vividness rather than conceptual clarity, it seems hardly to be capable of application to any poet k n o w n for obscurity of expression. In this passage έναργείας is the editors' certain correction of the transmitted ενεργείας. 51 [Longinus] De sublim. 33.5 Perhaps the defects meant are those listed at 3.3-4.1. " Hermog. περί ίδέων 1.6 (249.4ff. Rabe). " Cicero mentions Pindar vaguely at Orator 1.4 and De fin. 2.34.115; that he hadread at least s o m e of him, if only perhaps in anthologies, is suggested by Epist. ad Att. 10.10.3, 12.5.1, 13.38.2, 41.2. " Quintil. Inst. orat. 10.1.61; that Quintilian may have been familiar with at least s o m e of Pindar is suggested by 8.6.71 (where his summary of part of one of Pindar's hymns seems confirmed by a papyrus, cf. Snell ad Pind. Frg. 33a) and 10.1.109 (our sole source for Pind. Frg. 274). 55 Aul. Gell. Noct. Att. 17.10. 56 Macrob. Sat. 5.17.7-14. 57 Aul. Gell. 17.10.8, cf. Macrob. 5.17.8. 50

18

aims only at the truth of empirical observation, Virgil is concerned exclusively with the attempt to produce grandeur by the sounds of words;58 the result is that where Pindar describes clearly ("luculente dixit"), Virgil piles together coarsely and immoderately ("crasse et immode congessit"), uses harsh and improper metaphors ("duriter et άκύρως transtulit"), heaps up emptily and futilely ("uacanter accumulauit et inaniter").59 Obscurity here is not attributed to Pindar, but instead to Virgil: "neque non id quoque inenarrabile esse ait et propemodum insensibile, quod 'nubem atram fumare' dixit 'turbine piceo et fauilla candente'."60 This, then, is the testimony of what we may term the literary reception of Pindar in antiquity. It is by no means entirely favorable: the poet is blamed for many faults: but never for difficulty. He is reproached with being inaccurate or blasphemous in his content, bombastic, harsh, or almost vulgar in his style, inappropriate in his use of myths or of figural language; but these are all defects of taste or knowledge, not of perspicuity: they are manifested as lapses in the appropriateness of one or another of the features he employs in order to communicate what he wishes to say, but it is never suggested that they might impede the transparency of that communication. Pindar's meaning is always clear - even when the means he uses to express it are rejected as tasteless. How is this to be explained? We might be tempted to attribute this failure to assert that Pindar is difficult to the vanity of the authors involved: perhaps they wish simply not to concede they have problems understanding Pindar and prefer instead to charge him with faults of taste? Or ought we to assume that obscurity was not a weapon in the conceptual arsenal of ancient criticism? Neither recourse can be accepted. Not only is obscurity, τό ασαφές or obscuritäs, a clearly defined and closely analyzed problem in rhetorical treatises at least from Aristotle to Quintilian;61 not only are a number of authors, from Heraclitus to Persius, conventionally termed obscure in antiquity." What is more, many of the same writers who discuss Pindar without ever suggesting he might be difficult have no hesitancy in asserting the obscurity of other authors. Thus, for example, Aristophanes brings characters onto the stage who complain of the obscurity of Aeschylus" 51

Aul. Gell. 17.10.11-12, cf. Macrob. 5.17.11. " Aul. Gell. 17.10.13-16, cf. Macrob. 5.17.12. 60 Aul. Gell. 17.10.17, cf. Macrob. 5.17.13. " E.g., Aristot. Rhet. 3.5; Quintil. Inst. Rhet. 8.2. Cf. in general Fuhrmann, op. cit. (n.8), 55-69; Roberts, op. cit. (n.8), 335ff. " Cf. the list in Fuhrmann, op. cit. (n.8), 70-72, which, though incomplete (Epicurus for example is missing), is the most helpful survey of the material. " Arist. Ran. 923-34 (Euripides).

19

and of Cinesias;64 Statius, as noted above, contrasts Pindar with the obscurity of Callimachus, Lycophron, Sophron, and Corinna; 65 Horace, who breathes no hint of Pindar's obscurity, is prepared to concede his own,·66 Plato speaks of the difficulty of understanding the Heracliteans 67 and Simonides,68 and in the Protagoras offers a model example of the problems attendant upon the interpretation of the latter;69 Dionysius of Halicarnassus examines and denounces in a number of passages the obscurities of Thucydides 70 and Demosthenes,·71 Cicero mentions the difficulty of Heraclitus,72 Plato,73 Thucydides,74 Epicurus,75 and Euphorion,·76 Quintilian, who admires Sallust's brevity, warns against the obscurity to which it can lead.77 That the difficulty of Pindar, which seems to obtrude itself so insistently upon us, apparently escaped the notice of his literary reception in antiquity is hence a problem we cannot circumvent so easily: we must try a different tack. Perhaps some light can be cast on this problem by a further consideration, one which might, indeed, at first seem instead to obscure it altogether. For the sketch of the ancient reception of Pindar offered above was radically incomplete in one important regard. All of the authors mentioned in the preceding pages had this in common: that they were not by profession readers of Pindar, but instead had other occupations and interests - poetry, history, rhetoric - into which Pindar could be introduced on occasion as a strategic example but for which Pindar himself was not a permanent and decisive concern,· it is to this feature I have attempted to call attention by terming this tradition the literary reception of Pindar. But, alongside this tradition, beginning somewhat later but continuing at least as long, exists another strand of the reception of Pindar which we may term his scholarly reception, composed of those professional readers of the poet whose income was, at least in part, 64

Arist. Av. 1382 (Pisthetairus). Stat. Silv. 5.3.151-52, 156-58. 66 Hor. AP 25-26. 67 Plat. Theaet. 179Eff. " Plat. Rep. 1.332B. 69 Plat. Protag. 339Aff. ,0 E.g., Dion Hal. Lys. 4(1.12.14-17 Usener-Radermacher); Dem. 10(1.148.20-149.3); Thuc. 9(1.336.13ff., 337.18f£), 24(1.363.8-9), 51(1.410.15-17); De imitatione B.VI.III (2.207.10-11). " E.g., Dion. Hal. Lys. 4(1.12.14-17); Dem. 35(1.206.14-19). " Cie. De nat. deor. 1.26.74, 3.14.35; De fin. 2.5.15. 73 Cie. De fin. 2.5.15. 74 Cie. Brutus 7.29, 17.66; Orator 9.30. 75 Cie. De fin. 2.5.15. 76 Cie. De div. 2.64.133. 77 Quint. Inst. orat. 4.2.45, 8.3.82. 65

20

derived from their cataloguing, editing, and commenting the poet.78 What, perhaps more than anything else, characterizes this scholarly tradition, whose invaluable traces are preserved for us in the ancient scholia, is the conviction, shared (whatever their disagreements of detail) by all its members, of Pindar's profound difficulty. In the Pindar scholia, words like άδηλος, αίνιγμα, αίνιγματωδώς, αίνίττεσθαι, άμφιβάλλειν, αμφιβολία, αμφίβολος, ούκ άργώς, ασάφεια, διαπορεΐν, (ητεΐν, κρύπτειν, ύποδηλοΰν, ύπονοεϊν, υπόνοια, ύποσημαίνειν, ύποφαίνειν recur with an almost depressing regularity;79 the numerous controversies, some beginning already before Aristarchus 80 and continuing at least through Didymus, 81 are further testimony to the difficulty these scholars experienced in coming to an agreement about what it was exactly Pindar was trying to say,· when on occasion words like σαφής or φανερός appear in the scholia,82 they are never innocent characterizations of a basic intelligibility attributed to Pindar's poetry, but instead are introduced strategically by one group of scholars to support their own interpretation at the expense of some other, whose very existence belies the asseveration of clarity. Already the ancient scholars found it necessary to offer simple prose paraphrases of a poetry which, left to speak in its own words, would obviously not have been entirely understandable; 83 and Eustathius, who analyzes the nature of Pindar's obscurity at some length,84 offers an elegant formulation for the attitude implied not only by many individual passages in the scholia, but indeed by their very existence:

" On various aspects of this tradition, cf. H.T. Deas, "The Scholia Vetera to Pindar," HSPh 42 (1931) 1-78; P. Feine, "De Aristarcho Pindari interprete," Comm. Phil. Ien. 2 (1883) 253-328; Frankel, "Schrullen"; Ε. Horn, De Aristarchi studiis pindaricis (Diss. Greifswald 1883); Irigoin, Histoire du texte de Pindaie; Κ. Lehrs, Die Pindarscholien. Eine kritische Untersuchung zur philologischen Quellenkunde (Leipzig 1873); Wilson, op. cit. (n.8). " Cf. the relevant entries in the indices, 3.362-63, 378-96 Dr. ,0 Against the occasional suggestion that the scholarly interpretation of Pindar only begins with Aristarchus (so e.g. Horn, op. cit. [n.78] 9f.), cf. e.g. Schol. ad N. 1.49c (discussed below). " While Didymus' compilation of his predecessors and his own contributions to the interpretation of the poet are certainly the last major achievement in ancient Pindaric scholarship, nevertheless the fact that Didymus' own suggestions are occasionally criticized (e.g., Schol. ad I. 2.19a) indicates that the problems continued to be discussed after him. 12 Cf. the entries in the indices, 3.392, 395 Dr. " Cf. Lehrs, op. cit. (n.78), 52f. This is already true of Theon's commentary to Pythian 12, preserved in a second century papyrus (P. Oxy. 2536) first edited by E.G. Turner, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Part XXXI (London 1966) 16-22 and Plate III; cf. M. Treu, "Theons Pindarkommentar (Pap. Oxy. 2536)," pp. 62-85 in. J.L. Heller, ed., Serta Turyniana (Urbana-Chicago-London 1974), e.g. 81, 83. »4 Eustath. prooem. 6ff. (Schol. 3.288ff. Dr.).

21

και ώς απρόσιτος μεν και θΰρας έπιτεθειμένας έχων τοις δ φασι βεβήλοις τά εις άγροικίαν, τοις γε μην συνετοΐς άείδων χαρίεντα, οι τό λαβυρινθώδες της έν αύτω φράσεως και τοις πολλοίς άδιόδευτον άπευθυνουσι και τάς έλικας περιοδεύοντες έως και ένδοτάτου εΐτ' αύθις άνελίττουσι και οϊκοι κατ' έμφρονα νοϋν αποκαθίστανται.85 Those of us who sympathize with the ancient scholars' difficulties in understanding Pindar's epinicians will derive little comfort from Eustathius' remark that the reasons why it was these poems that were Pindar's most popular were that they were more concerned with human affairs, contained fewer myths - and were less obscure.86 We thus find two traditions of reception of Pindar in antiquity, one entirely convinced of his obscurity, the other apparently unaware of even such a possibility. Within each of these two strands, ideas and formulations seem to be communicated regularly from generation to generation: we have seen that Arcesilaus' words are varied by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and that Horace's judgement influences Quintilian's; on the other side, the scholars who inherit the text of Pindar from their predecessors find that their legacy includes also a set of often insoluble problems, for which they can propose new hypotheses but with regard to whose ultimate clarification they can scarcely have felt much confidence. On the other hand, between these two traditions there seems to exist no communication whatsoever: neither are the scholars' dilemmas mentioned by members of the literary tradition, nor do the scholars themselves seem particularly concerned with the uses to which Pindar is put by these latter. To be sure, the literary readers of Pindar are familiar with the fact that he headed the canon of nine lyric poets established by the Alexandrian editors; and, to be sure, the scholia on Pindar employ on occasion the same kinds of judgements of style we have found to be characteristic of the literary tradition: 87 but such features are elements of the general culture of the educated in antiquity, and do not of themselves imply any closer familiarity on the part of members of one tradition with those of another. How is this cleavage to be explained? It might be thought that at least part of the answer should be sought in what might be termed

85

Eustath. prooem. 6 (Schol. 3.289.2ff. Dr.|. " Eustath. prooem. 34 (Schol. 3.303.8ff. Dr.|. " Cf. e.g. indices 3.362-63 Dr. s.v. ευ, κακώς, καλώς, μεγαλοπρεπέστερον, σκληρός, ψυχρευσάμενος,· also G. Calvani Mariotti and G. Derenzini, "Commenti agli Epinici di Pindaro," SCO 26 (1977) 157-86; more generally, "Materiali per u n lessico della critica letteraria della grecita," SCO 26 (1977) 129-248, and N.J. Richardson, "Literary Criticism in the Exegetical Scholia to the Iliad: A Sketch," CQ 30 (1980) 265-87.

22

Pindar's rhetorical difficulty. It is indeed a generic fact of Pindar's poetry that it is intended to be splendid: it seeks to impose itself upon the attention and at least to impress, perhaps even to overwhelm, every listener and reader. To attain this end, Pindar has available a number of means. Invocations to the gods, gnomes concerning the permanent conditions of human existence/ 8 ornamental epithets,89 neologisms, even adjectives and substantives denoting brilliance, tend, inter alia, to contribute to this effect of grandeur. Pindar himself asserts that this is part of the function of the preludes to his poems in the opening of the Sixth Olympian: Χρυσέας ύποστάοαντες εύτειχεΐ προθύρω θαλάμου κίονας, ώς δτε θαητόν μέγαρον, πάξομεν" αρχομένου δ' έργου πρόσωπον χρή θέμεν τηλαυγές. (Ο.6.1-4) Yet another of his means is rhetorical difficulty: a wide variety of rhetorical figures90 - especially metonymy, metaphor, synecdoche, litotes, enallage, but there is none he neglects - is combined with dislocations of traditional grammar 91 - for example, lack of parallelism, or exchange of subject and predicate - in order to render the expression more complicated. We may guess that such rhetorical techniques may have made understanding Pindar's poetry more difficult for some members of his original audiences, just as they sometimes do for us. But we cannot be certain of this: it seems hazardous to underestimate the degree to which members of an oral culture long accustomed to traditional poetic devices might be capable of appreciating a density of figural texture, even when performed orally, that later scholars will find obscure (one thinks of the analogous situation in the dramas of Aeschylus, or even of Shakespeare). Such listeners, if there were any, will have taken the obscurity to be the profundity of grandeur; and there will certainly have been others, possessing a greater familiarity with such poetry or a more agile intelligence, for whom it will always have been possible to reverse conceptually the poet's transformation of literal meaning into figural expression in order to arrive at a plausible version of the former. That some in the audience understood, or seemed to, will have deterred others from advertising their ignorance. A celebrated passage in Pindar's Second Olympian (πολλά μοι ύπ' άγκώνος ώκέα βέλη / ένδον έντι φαρέτρας / φωνάεντα συνετοΐσιν ές δε το πάν έρμανέων / χατίζει " Cf. Eustath. prooem. 7 (Schol. 3.288.13ff. Dr.); and, in general, H. Bischoff, Gnomen Pindars (Würzburg 1938). " Cf. Eustath. piooem. 16 (Schol. 3.291.12ff. Dr.). 90 Cf. Eustath. prooem. 9 (Schol. 3.288.29ff. Dr.). " Cf. Eustath. piooem. 1 If. (Schol. 3.290.2ff. Dr.).

23

O.2.83-86) has often been taken to assert just such a differentiation within his audience; and while such an interpretation of these lines is surely mistaken/2 and while Pindar himself (unlike, interestingly, Bacchylides93) never even hints that his poetry might be hard for anyone to understand, the general point may well be correct. However many of Pindar's original listeners understood him with ease, it would be rash to deny the strategic importance of Pindar's consideration for them: the pleasure they might be expected to have derived from his poems would have been due partly to a self-complacent confidence that they belonged to the few rather than the many (this is the rhetorical equivalent of Pindar's generically grounded thematic claim for the superiority of the aristocratic ethos), partly to a specular participation in the process of composition which might well have provided the delight of an imaginary identification of recipient with poet (this is the equivalent of Pindar's assertion of the consanguinity of poet and victor). This is a familiar phenomenon for which, mutatis mutandis, Quintilian provides an acute analysis: Ingeniosa haec et fortia et ex ancipiti diserta creduntur, peruasitque iam multos ista persuasio, ut id demum eleganter atque exquisite dictum putent quod interpretandum sit. Sed auditoribus etiam nonnullis grata sunt haec, quae cum intellexerunt acumine suo delectantur, et gaudent non quasi audierint sed quasi inuenerint. (Quintil. Inst. orat. 8.2.21) Yet this is an intellectual pleasure, one for which the first moment, that of frustration at a liminary obscurity, is only acceptable if it can be redeemed by a second moment, in the penetration to a conceptual clarity: understanding must be deferred, but it dare not be annulled if the audience are not to reject this poetry with legitimate aversion. Hence this rhetorical difficulty in Pindar is indeed often real, but always restricted: if, in this regard, Pindar is difficult, it is only so that the pi easure of understanding him may become all the greater: εί πόνος ήν, τό τερπνόν πλέον πεδέρχεται (Ν.7.74). It may be, then, that greater importance attaches in this context to another kind of difficulty which we may term hermeneutic: it resides in the possibility that certain kinds of obscurities might pose themselves not only for the interpreter, but also because of him - that is, that such obscurities are not so much an intrinsic feature of a literary text, as rather a product of the specific questions and presuppositions a method of interpretation brings to bear upon the

" Cf. my "Pindar O. 2 . 8 3 - 9 0 " (forthcoming). " Bacch. 3.85.

24

text. Difficulties can not only be found: they can also be manufactured, and they may nonetheless be painfully real for the interpreter. We may illustrate this possibility with two examples. On the one hand, the very interpretative innovation which succeeds in explaining the problems for which it was designed tends thereby to open up new difficulties which are on principle aporetic within the terms of that interpretation: for example, the Parry-Lord hypothesis of the oral composition of the Homeric poems provides a cogent explanation for the frequent formulaic repetitions which had often disturbed earlier readers; yet in so doing it renders virtually insoluble the dilemma of how that orally composed poetry was transformed into the written texts transmitted to us. On the other hand, certain difficulties of detail only become apparent when particular premises are admitted: thus the mistaken interpretation of Aristotle's Poetics which required that the tragic hero be marked by some character flaw that contributes to and makes explicable his downfall provoked the difficulty of finding some such flaw in every tragic hero - even at the cost of considerable interpretative violence. Why Pindar is viewed by modernity as a particularly difficult poet is a question which exceeds the bounds of the present study. But it may be that this last consideration can contribute towards explaining why, already in antiquity, his reception was marked by such an extraordinary cleavage. Perhaps the literary tradition approached him with different questions and expectations from those applied by the scholarly tradition: perhaps, that is, it was the very methodology of the ancient scholars which was in part responsible for their conviction that he was obscure. Had these scholars read Pindar differently, they would surely have encountered difficulties: but they might not have found him difficult. To investigate this possibility, we must examine the hermeneutic assumptions of the ancient scholia.

1.2 Strategies The proposal that the methodology of the ancient scholars be reexamined may strike some readers as rather odd. After all, has not much of the progress of modern Pindaric studies been achieved precisely through their gradual emancipation from the scholia? Especially in the last decades, considerable attention has been focused upon the deficiencies of ancient literary scholarship: upon its wild biographical speculations, casual attitude to evidence, and so on. Increasingly, what has been questioned has been not so much the individual scholium, but instead precisely the general methodology 25

underlying all the scholia.1 Thus, in Pindar studies, Bundy (who urges that, "if I am right to any appreciable degree, then the methods employed in studying the odes have been wrong and we must start anew"2), makes no secret of those he finds responsible for the error he has been summoned to dispel: both parts of his important Studia Pindarica begin and end with polemic references to "the authors of our scholia and the moderns who approve their methods," 3 and the latter are clearly identified as in particular the historico-biographical school of which Wilamowitz is the most prominent representative. If Bundy is right, then the history of Pindaric scholarship, from the beginnings to us, has only two epochs: one uniting interpreters ancient and modern, from the ancient scholars at least through Wilamowitz, in an uninterrupted conceptual unity; and a second which begins with Bundy, has, except for the texts, nothing in common with the former, and can for that very reason unequivocally demonstrate and overcome its mistakes. A claim of such imposing dimensions deserves at least some consideration. We may take as an example for the issues involved a passage from the First Isthmian. Here Pindar, having asserted that he will delay completion of a Paean for Ceos in order to celebrate the Isthmian victory of Herodotus of Thebes, expresses confidence that, with the gods, he will accomplish both hymns, that for Apollo and that for the Isthmus, which has honored with victory the race of Cadmus, an athletic glory for the fatherland, έν φ και τον άδείμαντον Άλκμήνα τέκεν / παΐδα, θρασεΐαι τόν ποτε Γηρυόνα φρΐξαν κύνες [I. 1.12-13); in the next words, Pindar breaks off with an άλλά and proceeds to yoke Herodotus to a hymn to Castor or to Iolaus. Why this brief mention of Herakles? And why, once Pindar had decided to mention Herakles, the choice of this labor in preference to any of the eleven others or to none at all? The scholiasts were apparently troubled only by Pindar's pluralization of what previous tradition had declared was Geryon's single hound: for this problem of detail they were able to propose an illuminating solution, to which we will return shortly.4 It was left for modern scholars to pose those more delicate questions. Four hypotheses may illustrate, not the variety of answers that have been given, but rather

' E.g., D. Fehling "Zwei Lehrstücke über Pseudo-Nachrichten (Homeriden, Lelantischer Krieg)," RhM 122 (1979) 193-210; Frankel, "Schrullen"; M.R. Lefkowitz, "The Influential Fictions in the Scholia to Pindar's Pythian 8," CPh 70 (1975] 173-85, The Lives of the Greek Poets (Baltimore 1981); W.J. Slater, "Pindar's House," GRBS 12 (1971) 141-52; S. West, "Chalcenteric Negligence", CQ 64 (1970) 288-96. ! Bundy, Studia 2.92; accepted e.g. by Thummer ed. 1.10. 3 Bundy, Studia 1.33 (and cf. 1.1, 2.35, 48 n. 38, etc.). 4 Schol. ad I. 1.15b.

26

the basic strategies that have provoked them. Dissen,5 invoking the principle of sufficient reason, rejects the notion that these words might be an empty and inexplicable ornamentation, and finds inadequate the suggestion that they might simply be offering an example where after all none is required. Only if a highly specific historical situation is imagined as the context for Pindar's utterance can the reference be given a satisfactory motivation: and Dissen finds this in the supposition that Thebes was in the midst of preparations for a war: only in this manner can the emphasis upon the fearlessness of a local hero, at whom even Geryon's hounds shuddered, be explained. Wilamowitz 6 is prepared to accept the possibility that a reference to Herakles here might be mere poetic ornamentation, but senses a particular allusion in the specific detail that Geryon's hounds offered the hero no resistance: on the assumption that Herodotus' fellow-citizens might have carped at the lack of social tact he displayed in acting as his own charioteer, the opposition between Herakles and the shameless dogs can be interpreted as a warning example to the Thebans: Pindar and Herodotus are as noble and fearless as Herakles, anyone who dares criticize them is as rash and cowardly as a dog. Bundy,7 on the other hand, refrains from any such historical hypothesis: for him, "this is an instance of the use of (comparative) irrelevance as foil", that is, the climax which will shortly be reached in the naming of the victorious Herodotus must be delayed momentarily after the reference to that victory in the six garlands, if the effect of the series which has begun in the opposition Delos vs. Thebes, and has been pointed in the references to Apollo and the Isthmus, is not to be impaired; and Herakles, whose achievements and deification make him appropriate subj ect matter for any epinician, is a highly apt foil in this case because, as the most renowned Theban hero, his rejection as subject for praise in favor of Herodotus casts additional reflected glory upon the victor; Geryon's hounds serve merely to emphasize Herakles' comparative irrelevance here, reminding the audience as they do of the limits of human attainment, beyond which the poet will not go, preferring instead to turn to the victor. Finally, Thummer8 criticizes the groundless biographical speculations offered in explanation of this passage by previous critics and sees the lines as fully justified by Pindar's desire to praise the victor's city (by naming its most glorious hero) and the victor himself (by correlating his own

Boeckh Exphc. 481, 485. ' Wilamowitz, Pindaros 334-35. ' Bundy, Stadia 2.43-44. « Thummer ed. 2.14-15 ad I. 1.12f. 5

27

achievement with that of Herakles),· again, the hounds are interpreted as a geographic metaphor for the limits of human attainment. Clearly, the four modern scholars listed fall into two groups: whatever their differences in detail or emphasis, Dissen and Wilamowitz, like Bundy and Thummer, share a body of methodological premises which unites them as allies in opposition to the other pair. The affinities need not be entirely conscious to those who are governed by them9 yet they operate nonetheless, and perhaps for that very reason, with rigorous severity. Both pairs respond to what they perceive to be the same difficulty, but in diametrically opposed manners. Dissen and Wilamowitz begin by isolating the passage in question from its context in the poem: because they cannot understand its point within the immediate context, which is one of praise for the victor Herodotus, and because Pindar drops the motif of Herakles as soon as he has mentioned it, these scholars feel entitled to sever its connections to its neighbors and to consider it as an isolated dilemma. The principle of sufficient reason, nihil est sine ratione (itself a necessary regulative ideal for any interpretation whatsoever), is interpreted by them in a causal sense: the peculiarities of the phenomenon can only be accounted for if it can be regarded as the effect of some prior cause. This cause is then sought outside of the domain of the poem itself in the historical situation of the poem's utterance. To explain the uniqueness of the effect, the postulated cause must be similarly unique: for the very notion of a plurality of different causes producing a single and self-identical effect seems self-contradictory to them. The basis for this hypothesized cause is provided by a combination of two factors: on the one hand, the information concerning the situation of utterance which can be gleaned from the poem itself,· and, on the other, entirely external texts, ones that, because they are extra-generic and non-poetic, can be assumed to yield reliable and unambiguous historical data (in this case, Herodotus 5.77ff. for Dissen10 and 9.69 for Wilamowitz11). The reconstitution of the historical situation is then supported not only by this passage, whose obscurity is revealed to be a veiled reference to that situation, but also by various other hitherto problematic parts of the same poem:12 here too the principle of isolation is obeyed,

9 Thus, while Thummer makes little secret of his admiration for Bundy (Thummer ed. l.lOff.), Wilamowitz makes even less of one of his contempt for Dissen (Wilamowitz, Pindaros 7-8). 10 Boeckh Explic. 530. " Wilamowitz, Pindaros 331 n.3. 12 Dissen cites I. 1.1, 23, 50 (Boeckh Explic. 481), Wilamowitz 7. 1.41-45, 67-68 (Wilamowitz, Pindaros 333).

28

inasmuch as the various passages in the same poem enter into no determinate relations with one another (just as it is not explained why these passages and not others are chosen), but are instead, in each case, individually determined by the postulated situation. W e may summarize this method as follows: the phenomenon's uniqueness is explained causally as referentiality to a postulated external fact: but what is called referentiality is in fact merely the reversal of a causal relation invented by the interpreter. Bundy and Thummer, on the other hand, undertake enormous exertions in order to prevent the passage from being isolated from its immediate context: but for them the only direct relations the passage enters into with regard to other parts of the same poem are those it bears to the sentence immediately preceding and to that immediately following itself.13 These critics interpret the doctrine, nihil est sine ratione, in a teleological sense: the existence of the phenomenon is determined with regard to that purpose for whose fulfillment it is the means. Thus, the passage is interpreted instrumentally in two different ways: on the one hand, it bears a relation to the purpose of the poem as a whole, which is presumed to be the praise of the victor, and fulfills this purpose more or less directly; on the other, it is related strictly to what precedes and what follows as a mediating factor which helps these other parts to perform their functions (which are again, directly or indirectly, the praise of the victor). Whereas the causal nexus establishes an interrelation between two unique phenomena, the relation of means and ends is by nature multivalent: the same end can be achieved by a number of different means, just as, in different situations, the same means can be used to different purposes. Hence it is not the uniqueness of the phenomenon which is emphasized by the interpreter, but rather its typicality: the supposition that the passage be determined with reference to its purpose requires support from parallels in which the same purpose can be demonstrated to be achieved by more or less similar means. T h e criterion for the admissibility of such parallels is generic: in the first instance Pindar's other poems can be used, in the second those of Bacchylides, and as a last resort any text of which it can be plausibly asserted that it is comparable inasmuch as its purpose is praise, i.e. "enkomia from Homer to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address".14 In summary: the phenomenon's conventionality is interpreted teleologically as performance of a postulated immanent function: but what is called

13 To be sure, the passage also functions indirectly as a foil to the name-cap; we shall return to this aspect later. " Bundy, Studio 1.3.

29

conventionality is in fact merely the repetition of parallels constituted as such by the interpreter. Put in these terms, the opposition is clearly less one between two historically localizable schools of criticism as rather one between two competing interpretative strategies which are permanently available: confronted by something we do not understand in a text, we may either seek parallels for it within an evidentiary canon or else attempt to explain it, in its uniqueness, as the effect of some cause. That is, we always understand texts by locating them within a genre of similar texts,· and the process of understanding consists in part of adducing analogies from inside the genre or causes from outside it. The two strategies share the same premises and in fact supplement one another. For both, the utterance does not bear its meaning in itself, but only acquires meaning in its dependence upon a postulated ratio (whether that ratio is understood as effective cause or as final cause is a secondary issue); for both, a fundamental cleavage separates the inside of the text from the outside of the world of facts (whether the interpreter defines his role as that of transgressing this boundary, by causally relating fact to text, or upholding it, by functionally parallelling text to text, is again subsidiary); for both, uniqueness and conventionality, or, more generally, identity and repetition, are posited as mutually exclusive contradictory opposites (so that, even though both groups are careful to assert on occasion the theoretical possibility that particular utterances might partake of both sides of the opposition,15 nevertheless their interpretative practice always consists of deferring to infinity the effective intervention into their discourse of that side of the opposition they reject). By the same token, neither side is free of grave handicaps. Dissen and Wilamowitz are obliged to invent, on the basis of pure hypothesis, a highly specific historical situation for the reconstitution of whose details there will on principle always be too little evidence, and to endow this speculative creation with an autonomy with regard to the poem for the determination of whose truth no criteria can be alleged. Bundy and Thummer must reduce the rich variety of the actual utterances of Pindar to as small as possible a group of basic forms which can then be endlessly varied:16 but their premises preclude for them the possibility of explaining not only why one form is preferred to another at any particular point but also, and more importantly, why the concrete manifestation of one of these forms in any one case displays its uniquely specific details. If the former engage in a kind of historical allegory,17 the latter tend 15 16 17

30

E.g., Wilamowitz, Pindaros 336-7; Thummer ed. 2.32 ad 1. 1.60-63. This is particularly obvious in Thummer ed. 1.19-158 ("Analyse der Epinikien"). Cf. Young, "Pindaric Criticism" 9ff.

inevitably towards a mechanical formalism. The former's advantage of not forgetting the uniqueness of their object is balanced by the latter's being able confidently to declare, hypotheses non jingo, and both are afflicted with symmetrical deficiencies: if the former's temerity blinds them to the riskiness of their speculations, the latter's timidity makes them incapable of recognizing the banality of their parallels; the former have difficulties with the fact of conventionality, the latter with that of referentiality.18 Furthermore, both groups premise their interpretations upon a particular version of unity, but in both cases their conception is clearly unsatisfactory. With regard to Wilamowitz, it is often claimed that the adherents of the historico-biographical method rejected altogether the notion of poetic unity/9 and it is indeed the case that Drachmann,20 Wilamowitz,21 and others of this persuasion polemicized against the unitarians and regarded themselves as methodological χωρίζοντες. But in fact the unity they deny is a particular historical version of poetic unity,22 and they are firmly convinced that each Pindaric poem has at least the minimal kind of unity that consists in its identifiable uniqueness; but they locate this latter unity, not in the poem itself, but rather in the historical context from which they take it to have issued. For each poem is constructed a single historical situation in which all of the various elements which are thought to contradict one another in the text are dramatically unified in a coherent mise en scene. The particular functions attributed to the poet, his patron, the victor's city, and others if necessary (e.g., the poet's rivals), are correlated with one another by introducing plausible psychological mechanisms to produce, as it were, a second text, this time dramatic rather than lyric, in which the discourse of one of the actors (the poet) can be assigned an unmistakeable and aesthetically satisfying role. This is the hermeneutic motivation for the concentration upon the situation of commission which Drachmann advocated23 and Wilamowitz practiced; and it is this strategy that permits the members of this " Disputed by H.M. Lee, "The 'Historical' Bundy and Encomiastic Relevance in Pindar," C W 7 2 (1978) 6 5 - 7 0 ; but cf. E. Cingano, "Problemi di critica pindarica," QUCC N.S. 2 (1979) 169-82, here 170-71. " E.g., Köhnken, Funktion des Mythos 2; Schadewaldt, Aufbau lf.; Young, "Pindaric Criticism" 38ff., 43ff., 52ff., etc. 10 Drachmann, Moderne Pindarfortolkning passim, e.g. 68ff. ! l Wilamowitz, Pindaros 9. For other examples, cf. Young, "Pindaric Criticism" 47ff. On Wilamowitz, cf. in general L.E. Rossi, "Rileggendo due opere di Wilamowitz: Pindaros e Griechische Verskunst," ASNP 3.3.1 (1973) 119-45. 22 In general, this is the unity of Dissen's "Grundgedanke", discussed below. 23 Drachmann, Moderne Pindarfortolkning 148ff.

31

school, from L. Schmidt24 through Wilamowitz and his more recent followers,25 to organize these individual dramatic scenes along the temporal axis of a more or less coherent narrative in order to determine Pindar's development. The decisive objection to any such strategy was already formulated in Aristotle's criticism of Plato's doctrine of Ideas: that, so far from explaining things in the world accessible to our senses, they instead simply multiply the problems.26 As for Bundy, the limitation of the internal inter-relations of parts of a poem to those obtaining among neighbors leads to the curious notion of linear unity:27 since the essence of the poem is taken to be its praise of the victor, everything that is not directly praise of him is interpreted as a form of delay of that praise, and the poem is reduced to a series of retarding moments, of greater or lesser relevance to this central purpose, whose function is merely to come into being, linger for a moment, and then vanish so as to yield place to the next retardation. It is no accident that Bundy begins his studies with an analysis of the priamel,28 for in this device such a process may most plausibly be claimed to take place,· and Bundy asserts the presence of the same process in the First Isthmian with exemplary clarity: It must be clear that this is the moment (viz. 7. 1.52f.) for which the ode, as epinikion, exists. The opening foil promised us Herodotos, but he yielded place in the first crescendo to Kastor and Iolaos,· the second crescendo promised us Herodotos again, but he yielded place to his father Asopodoros ; the foil of lines 41-51 promised us Herodotos, and whetted our enthusiasm to hear of his exploits; now at last we shall hear of them. It is true that the preliminaries have enhanced his glory, but it is equally true that the approach in these lines is tentative, that in them the laudator is still selecting his theme. The first and second crescendos are foil for the third, and έοικε corrects in particular, as χρή had chastened in general, the comparative irrelevance of Asopodoros and the pair Kastor and Iolaos as compared to the achievements of Herodotos' agonistic success.29 Of all imagineable interpretative concepts, "foil" is perhaps the least useful, for it asserts merely that something is not the essential " L. Schmidt, Pindars Leben und Dichtung (Bonn 1862). " E.g., G. Coppola, Intioduzione a Pindaro (Rome 1931); Finley, Pindai and Aeschylus; Portulas, Lectura de Pindar; Schadewaldt, Aufbau. 26 Aristot. Metaph. 1.9, 13.4-5. 27 Bundy, Studia 1.2, 2.91 f. 21 Bundy, Studia 1.4ff. In a certain sense, for Bundy every poem of Pindar's is an extended priamel. 29 Bundy, Studia 2.68-69; cf. 2.76-77.

32

moment without in the least indicating in what regard or to what degree it is not so: to reduce a poem to praise for the victor and foil for that praise tells us nothing more than that the poem is composed of elements of both sorts. So too, for those who are fond of pomegranates, the world may be thought of as being composed of pomegranates and of foil for pomegranates. That Bundy interprets the allusion to the hounds of Geryon as "an instance of the use of (comparative) irrelevance as foil"30 indicates that his method does not permit him to determine what its specific relevance is: he is indeed able to ascertain "irrelevance"; but the business of the interpreter is to explain what is meant by "(comparative)".31 That these two strategies are permanently available alternatives has been disguised in the past decades by their polemic elevation to the status of dogma; recognition of this fact may suggest a certain scepticism with regard to Bundes claim to be radically innovative. And indeed, when we return to the discussions of this sentence in the First Isthmian from which we began, we note a curious fact: the question to which the ancient scholars responded in interpreting this passage was not the same as the one which has so troubled modern ones; but the answer they gave witnesses to a methodology which bears striking resemblances to that, not of Dissen and Wilamowitz, but rather of Bundy and Thummer. Why does Pindar speak of Geryon's hound in the plural? The ancient scholars look for their answer not to some external fact which might causally explain this effect, but instead see in this detail a characteristic strategy of Pindar's: it is his εθος to do violence to myths when it serves his purpose.32 An έθος is a habit which manifests itself in the frequency with which, under certain circumstances, the same action will be repeated,33 and, to whomever the ultimate source of this scholium is to be attributed, he had clearly observed, first, that such a deformation of a traditional myth is no isolated phenomenon in Pindar, but rather one for which numerous parallels can be cited, and second, that such deformations are not a random violence but instead are always performed in order to achieve some purpose which the scholar can identify. And the scholiast's determination of that purpose here remains entirely within the immanent purposiveness of the present poem: the plural lends a greater dignity to what might otherwise have seemed the triviality of Herakles frightening a single dog. 30

Bundy, Studia 2.43. Cf. the remarks on "bestimmte Negation" in G.W.F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik 1 = Theorie Werkausgabe 5 (Frankfurt a.M. 1969) 49. " Schol. ad I. 1.15b: εθος τω Πινδάρω πρός τό έαυτοϋ συμφέρον και τάς ιστορίας βιάζεσθαι. " Cf. Aristot. Rhet. 1.10.1369b6-7, 11.1370a6-9. 11

33

Might Bundy's portrayal of the scholiasts' methodology turn out after all to have been one-sided? Bundy implies that Wilamowitz' interpretative methods have been anticipated by ancient scholarship: might not Bundy's also have been? A valuable piece of evidence from the ancient scholia suggests that this may indeed have been the case. The First Nemean, like the First Isthmian, alludes at one point suddenly and unexpectedly to a myth of Herakles [Ν. 1.33ff.) ; and here the ancient scholars directed their attention not to a matter of detail, but instead to the question of the motivation for the allusion as a whole: διαπορεϊται τίνι αφορμή εις τους περί 'Ηρακλέους λόγους παρήλθε. μηδεμίαν γαρ έχειν εις τά παρόντα Ήρακλέα οίκείωσιν.34 According to Aristarchus, some thought that the poet had been directly commissioned to include a mention of Herakles; this Aristarchus rejects as implausible, and he suggests instead that Pindar always praises those who are superior by nature rather than by instruction, and that Herakles is one such. This is in turn rejected as implausible, for no account can thereby be given for why Pindar should have chosen precisely this opportunity to praise those who are superior by nature, nor for why the hero's slaying the snakes as an infant should be the myth chosen to indicate this; hence Chairis proposes that Herakles is named because, just as the hero won immortality and the hand of Hebe in return for his labors, so too Chromius won wealth in return for his exertions on behalf of Hieron. But this too is rejected on the grounds that, on this interpretation, we should expect an explicit reference to all of Herakles' labors and accomplishments and to his apotheosis; hence Chrysippus says the allusion is motivated by the fact that Chromius won his victory at the Nemean games, and that the Nemean lion had been slain by Herakles. But Pindar says nothing of the lion ; so thatDidymus hypothesizes that, just as Herakles' triumph as a child augured well for his future successes, so too this first victory for Chromius might be thought to presage a glorious athletic future for him. Evidently, the ancient controversy is structurally identical with our contemporary one. Faced by an anomaly, Aristarchus (like Bundy and Thummer) cites parallels from the works of Pindar to support the claim that the poet always prefers natural superiority, and rejects as implausible a historicist hypothesis that would explain the phenomenon with reference to a putative external cause. Like those of his contemporary allies, Aristarchus' observation is true, perhaps 34 Schol. ad N. 1.49c ; on this scholium, cf. Drachmann, Moderne 9f.; Horn, op. cit. (1.1 n.78]; 55f. ; P. Wilson, op. cit. (1.1 n.8), 108-9.

34

Pindarfortolkning

trivially so, but can tell us nothing about why Pindar chose to instantiate his general tendency in this particular case. Hence Aristarchus' proposal is rejected by a number of other ancient scholars, who (like Dissen and Wilamowitz) invent, on the basis of an interpretation of the present text, a hypothetical situation, for which no evidence exists outside this poem, but which can nevertheless be granted an adequate explanatory power.35 Aristarchus was renowned in antiquity for the "analogist" hermeneutical principle, Όμηρον έξ Όμηρου σαφηνίζειν;36 and whether or not this rule is to be attributed to him in this lapidary form,37 it clearly corresponds to his general method: the domain in which explanations are sought is the poet's own works, and the technique is that of parallelization and regularization. Later scholars, on the other hand, especially Didymus, read widely in historical sources, and often bring the information they have thus gathered to bear upon the interpretation of individual passages in Pindar: a causal explanation with reference to historical or geographical realia is vouched for by the unambiguous clarity of external, i.e. extra-generic texts.38 It is no accident that Aristarchus is criticized so often, particularly by Didymus, for not being historical enough or for making suggestions which were unsupported by external evidence.39 On the level of methodology,40 there has been no progress whatsoever from Aristarchus' predecessors to Bundes followers, and Bundy himself is entirely inscribed within the tradition from which he is at such pains to free himself. We may formulate this conclusion " Chrysippus' suggestion is ignored here, as it could not explain why the myth of Herakles does not appear in every Nemean ode. 36 Cf. Schol. D ad Horn. 11. 5.385, and, for this formula, Porph. Quaest. Horn. 297.16. Cf. in general P. Boudreaux, Le texte d'Aristophane et ses commentateurs (Paris 1919) 72ff. ; Horn, op. cit. (1.1 n.78), 9f.; Irigoin, Histoire du texte de Pindare 54f. ; Κ. Lehrs, De Aristarchi studiis homericis' (Leipzig 1882) 46,162,· A. Ludwich, Aristarchs homerische Textkritik nach den Fragmenten des Didymos dargestellt und beurteilt |Leipzig 1884-85) 2.108ff., 228ff. ; Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship 203, 225ff. ; A. Roemer, Die Homerexegese Aristarchs in ihren Grundzügen (Paderborn 1924) 16f. ; M. vanderValk, Researches on the Text and Scholia of the Iliad (Leiden 1964) 2.177f., 227f., 231f. ; Wilamowitz, Euripides Herakles 1.156. " Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship 2251. attributes this formulation to Porphyry; C. Schäublin, "Homerum ex Homero", MH 34 (1977) 2 2 1 - 2 7 , attempts to rescue it for Aristarchus. Both agree on its appropriateness (cf. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship 226). " Cf. Boudreaux, op. cit. (1.2 n.36), 106f., 108f., 126f., 137; Irigoin, Histoire du texte de Pindare 57, 60, 69ff. ; Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship 276. 35 E.g., Schol. ad O. 3.1d, 5.27b, 6.158b-c N. 1.3. Cf. Irigoin, Histoire du texte de ; Pindare 56. Yet Aristarchus does in fact sometimes offer geographical or historical explanations (e.g. Schol. ad O. 2.15, 5.10; P. 4.8, 7.18; N. 2.13, 6.21), apparently freely inventing the alleged facts (cf. the sections on these scholia in Horn, op. cit. [1.1 n.78[). " Not, of course, in all regards.

35

more generally: a tradition may be obliterated by being forgotten, but it cannot be overcome by being rej ected. Every rejection of a tradition is itself traditional, and the critic who proclaims most confidently his emancipation is the one who alone is blind to his chains. But if a tradition cannot be repudiated, it may at least be theorized: and such an investigation of the strategic premises which have organized the academic study of Pindar may contribute, not towards the repudiation of the results obtained by generations of Pindaric scholars, but rather towards the disclosing of interpretative possibilities obscured by the complacency of dogma, the weight of authority, and the inertia of habit. Most of the traditional methodology of Pindaric studies, from the ancient scholars to our own century, has been characterized by three inter-related interpretative strategies: 1. atomization,· 2. monofunctionalism,· and 3. restrictive privileging. Although each depends upon the others, it will be convenient to discuss them in this order. Atomization fragments the poetic text into the smallest possible units of meaning: insofar as the interpreters are not phonologists or lexicographers, these units tend to be, not the syllable or the single word (though they may also be reduced to this point), but instead the minimal syntactical unit, the single phrase. Each phrase is isolated not only from more distant parts of the same text, but also as far as possible from its immediate neighbors, and poses itself to the interpreter as a single and irreducible dilemma. 41 In this first step, all these elements are accorded the same status: no atom can, at this stage, be accorded any kind of dominance (e.g. determinative or explanatory effectiveness) with regard to any other: for if that were possible the dominant element could be further resolved into at least two parts, that which expressed itself as the existence of this element and that which exerted an influence upon some other element, and would therefore notbe an atom. The singleness of being of the units of the atomized text is thus bound up with their methodological equivalence (for each presents a problem which the interpreter is called upon to answer) and their isolation from one another (for the problem is in each case unique): the monads of this text have no windows. Hence the text presents itself in the minimal conceivable form of temporality, that of the pure succession of unconnected 41

Cf. Lefkowitz, "The Influential Fictions," op. cit. (1.2 n.l), 177, who stresses the constraints imposed by the format of the papyrus roll; but the importance of pedagogical considerations should not be overlooked.

36

instants: phrase after phrase, problem after problem, the parts of the text move across the interpreter's field of vision as though on an assembly-line; but at the end, after all the individual atoms have been examined, what he finds is a heap of units, not a text. The briefest inspection of the ancient scholia reveals that, in this tradition, the atomization of the text is achieved by its lemmatization: at the limit, the entirety of the poetic text is reproduced within the scholia by the accumulation of lemmata,·42 each lemma is considered separately and is accorded its own explanation; the autonomy of each means that the sources of explanation may be located, with entire indifference, in external data, parallels from this poet or others, or other units of the same text: in no case can the preference for one source be proven or applied to others, but it is merely rendered plausible from instance to instance. There is no evidence that any ancient scholar ever wrote a continuous discursive treatise attempting to interpret a poetic text as a coherent whole, as distinguished from a lemmatic commentary explaining one after the other a series of difficult points within the text:43 the ancient scholarly υπομνήματα were collections of scattered observations,44 Aristarchus' commentary on Homer gave a separate treatment for each problem and depended upon the user's having to hand a text of the poet in which he could follow the interpreter line for line,45 and even the ancient εκδόσεις may have been nothing more than a scholar's marginal annotations to existing copies of texts.46 This technique of atomization continues with undiminished force through modern times: it is most apparent in the scholarly commentary, where concentration upon detail is rarely related systematically to the interpretation of the whole and sometimes replaces altogether this latter; but, as we have seen, it plays no less important a role in the works of such scholars as Wilamowitz and Bundy. To be sure, a certain amount of atomization is unavoidable: many of the difficulties of Pindar's, as of any text, consist in questions of syntax which can only be treated at the level of the individual sentence, and the process of understanding, in part at least, is synthetic, working up from the details, rather than deductive, working down from the whole. Hence the danger lies not so much in atomization per se as 42 That this limit is not always achieved in practice is due in part at least to historical process of condensation and omission w h i c h has intervened between activity of the ancient scholars and the transmitted scholia. 43 Cf. Wilamowitz, "Pindars siebentes nemeisches Gedicht" 148. 44 On the meaning of this term, cf. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship 29; on differences between Aristarchus' συγγράματα and υπομνήματα, and on the nature of latter, ibid. 212ff. 45 Cf. H. Erbse, "Über Aristarchs Iliasausgaben", Hermes 87 (1959) 2 7 5 - 3 0 3 . 16 So B.A. van Groningen, "ΕΚΔΟΣΙΣ", Mnemosyne 4.16 (1963) 1-17.

the the

the the

37

rather in a too thorough-going atomization, in one which loses sight of the restrictedness of its applicability and, by a vis inertiae, propels itself as far as possible to the detriment of other strategies. For it is only as a collection of physical signs that a text is the sum of its parts. As a discourse apprehended by humans, on the other hand, a text is subject to the hermeneutic circle: every part presupposes the whole, but the whole in turn presupposes every part. Thus the whole can never be arrived at simply by adding up all its parts. The complicated and multi-temporal process of remembrance and anticipation, the interplay of expectation's partial fulfillment and partial denial which constitutes every act of discursive reception and which results in no text's being either altogether incomprehensible or altogether predictable, is sacrificed if the text is reduced to a succession of atoms. Accumulation of parts is by no means the same as systematic coherence: and a dogmatic atomization forgets that the process of understanding is also in part hypothetico-deductive: that is, that it constantly constructs patterns of expectation on the basis of always inadequate information and constantly revises these patterns in the light of further data. As opposed to a tape-recorder, the reader or listener always makes guesses about what the next word or sentence will be: he is never entirely right, but he is rarely entirely wrong. Hence, for the human recipient, every element in a text is multifunctional, for it not only conveys to him a certain piece of information, but also, referring backwards, strengthens or weakens hypotheses he had formed to understand what had preceded, further clarifying or modifying what he had earlier comprehended and indicating the limits of that comprehension, just as, referring forwards, it makes more probable certain guesses, and less probable others, concerning the future development of the text. What, in the traditional methodology, has made the technique of atomization so inimical to this elementary insight has been the correlate dogma of monofunctionalism. Not only is the text reduced to a succession of atoms: furthermore, for each atom is allowed one and only one explanation. Where reports of extended controversies have survived in our scholia, they consist of a series of suggestions which are reported as mutually exclusive: the ratio for the phenomenon in question might be this or it might be that, but it could not be both. Thus, in the discussion of the myth of Herakles in the First Nemean, the explanations proposed by Aristarchus, Chairis, and Didymus - to name only these - might in fact easily be imagined as complementary to one another: the general appropriateness of a myth of Herakles might well reside in his exemplification of a natural superiority rewarded by extraordinary favor, while this particular myth could have been chosen for its optimism with regard to the future. Yet the 38

scholars in question are far less generous towards each other than we might wish: each imagines that his own hypothesis disproves that of his predecessor, for each thinks he has found, not only a necessary, but also the sufficient cause for the phenomenon. Are there sufficient causes in hermeneutics? They can scarcely be admitted if the hermeneutic circle sketched above is to be taken seriously: for each element's determination by the other elements and by the totality which is composed of the mutual determinations of all the elements means that no single sufficient cause could ever be isolated. In its most trivial form, the assumption of monofunctionalism leads to a hesitation on the part of the interpreter to accept the possibility, not only of grammatical ambiguity, but even of simple άπό κοινοΰ constructions: in questions of detail, he hesitates to admit a polyvalence which might well prove disruptive if transferred onto more general levels.47 For Eustathius, an oracular ambiguity of expression is characteristic of Pindar:48 but instead of seeing in this feature the possibility that a plurality of complementary meanings might be effectively correlated with one another, he, like the tradition to which he belongs, can recognize only the necessity of a choice between contradictory alternatives which can never be performed with full success and which therefore produces an impression of obscurity,· so too, άπό κοινοϋ is one of the sources of Pindar's difficulty listed by Eustathius.49 To be sure, part of every interpreter's task consists in the exclusion of impossible interpretations: but that many proposals are false cannot be taken to mean that only one can be true, and the most delicate of the interpreter's obligations resides in the differentiation between contradictory and complementary opposites and in the systematic correlation with one another of the latter. It is not recorded that any ancient scholar proposed a theory of the unity of the Pindaric epinician;50 but one sometimes feels that it is hard to find a modern scholar who has not. To an extent, of course, the problem of unity is provoked by Pindar himself: for much of his poetic effect is achieved by his avoidance of the ordinary, in language, in meter, in details of myth, in ways of thought, and he takes great pains to avoid giving the impression of straightforward coherence that we find, for example, in much iambic and elegiac poetry, and, to a lesser extent, in Bacchylides. But the problem of unity is made insoluble for much of modern Pindaric scholarship by the very 47 Exceptions include G. Lozza, "L'Ambiguita di linguaggio nelle Olimpiche di Pindaro," Acme 29 (1976) 163-78, and R. Renehan, "Conscious Ambiguities in Pindar and Bacchylides", GRBS 10 (1969) 217-28. " Eustath.piooem. 20 (= Schol. 3.293.4ff. Dr.). 49 Eustath. prooem. 12 (= Schol. 3.290.12ff. Dr.). i0 Cf. Drachmann, Moderne Pindarfortolkning 5 ff.

39

technique of atomization and dogma of monofunctionalism we have just discussed: once the text has been fragmented by the interpreter into univocal pieces, the question of how those pieces fit together poses itself with a particular urgency; and, by the same token, the methodology itself excludes the possibility of providing an answer. How is the unity whose abandonment was the inaugural gesture of these interpretations to be recuperated? The text's exhaustive reduction to a set of monofunctional atoms lends plausibility to the idea that that unity can only be achieved, if at all, by one or another of those atoms (for there is nothing else in the poem which could do this): hence, in a final step, one element or group of elements must be separated out from the others and elevated to a distinctive status which permits it to have, beyond the single function it acquires by virtue of being an atom, a second and even more important role of dominance within the poem, whereby it can prescribe to all the other elements their meaning without itself being determined in turn by them. This is the technique of restrictive privileging: one element not only signifies something outside the text, but also gives laws to all the other elements and thereby is alone capable of guaranteeing the text's unity. With one exception, all parts are merely parts, and are passively determined as such; but one part is also the whole, and faces both outwards towards the ratio for the whole to which it alone has access and inwards as the active determiner of all the parts. The history of Pindaric criticism since Boeckh is not free from bitter polemic - quite the contrary - yet much of that history is in fact nothing more than a succession of privilegings of one element or another; and no one privileging is theoretically superior to any other. Among the elements which have been restrictively privileged have been the following: 1. Gnome: Dissen's "Grundgedanke" is usually merely a Latin translation of one gnome in the poem, which is presumed to provide the "vinculum" by which all the other elements are bound.51 For example, the "Grundgedanke" of the Second Olympian52 is a loose translation of O. 2.19-24, while that of the Second Pythian53 is a close translation of P. 2.56. 2. Myth: Boeckh's interpretations allegorize a historical situation on the basis of the mythical narrative contained in the poem and see in this reference not only the purpose of the poem as a whole but also the ground of its unity: thus, the myth of Ixion in the Second Pythian is designed to warn Hieron against trying to kill Polyzelus Dissen ed. iiff.; cf. Young, "Pindaric Criticism" 5f. " Dissen ed. 28. " Dissen ed. 197. 51

40

in order to win his wife,·54 while the myth of Apollo and Cyrene in the Ninth Pythian is explained by its reference to Telesicrates' engagement to a Theban Aegid, whom he was planning to bring home as his wife.55 3. Image: Norwood takes one concrete particular mentioned in the course of the poem in a general symbolic sense which enforces a conceptual unity upon the rest of the elements in the text: the symbol of the First Pythian is the lyre (cf. P. 1.Iff.),56 that of the Second the measuring-line (cf. P. 2.90f.),57 that of the Tenth Olympian the pebble (cf. O. 10.9f.),58 that of the Eleventh Pythian the bee (cf. P. 11.30).59 4. Victor's Name: Bundy's adherence to "one master principle: there is no passage in Pindar and Bakkhulides that is not in its primary intent enkomiastic - that is, designed to enhance the glory of a particular patron"60 reduces the essence of the poem to the "name cap"61 in which that patron is directly designated, and which determines the function of every other passage in the poem as "foil". In each case, the element which is privileged is the only one allowed an irreducibly double function: Dissen's "Grundgedanke" is both a statement of a generally valid truth and the particular thought which unifies the poem; Boeckh's myth is both a version of heroic or divine events with its own narrative consistency and the veiled description of the imagined situation to which the whole poem corresponds; Norwood's ruling images are both concrete things named as such by the poem and general functions heavily laden with symbolic meanings,· Bundy's name cap is both one moment in the linear unity of the poem and the sole reference to the external situation of praise which alone validates the poem as a whole as an encomium. Yet the choice of which element is to be restrictively privileged is entirely arbitrary: the succession from critic to critic, from school to school, is not progress, but merely exchange: each choice tells us something about the poem, but much more about the critic, and there is no reason on principle to prefer one to another, for all are committed to the same basic premise that the guarantor of unity is present within the poem itself as one of its atoms. < " " " s· "

Boeckh Explic. 245. Boeckh, "Über die kritische Behandlung der pindarischen Gedichte" 395 f. Norwood, Pindar 102-105. Norwood, Pindar 187-90. Norwood, Pindar 110-14. Norwood, Pindar 124-27. 60 Bundy, Studia 1.3. " Bundy defines this term at Studia 1.5 n.18. 5

41

1.3 Questions of Method: The First Isthmian The present study is based upon the hypothesis that each poem of Pindar's is organized systematically as an immanent compositional unity whose form can be interpreted as being appropriate for its unique content. In this section, I shall attempt to clarify this working hypothesis in general terms and then to demonstrate it briefly with reference to the First Isthmian. The notion of "compositional form" depends upon the spatiotemporal concreteness of the art-work: while, for example, the parts of the product of the sculptor or painter are perceived by the viewer in the course of an indeterminate extended time (that is, they may be perceived in any of a large number of different sequences), the parts of the product of the writer or musician can only be perceived by the listener or reader in the course of a unidirectionally determinate extended time (that is, there is only one order in which they are normally to be performed, heard, or read, even if the activity of listening or reading is always open, by memory and anticipation, to what has preceded and what will follow).1 "Compositional unity" means fundamentally nothing more - and nothing less - than that the arrangement of these parts (in the latter case, their temporal sequence) is neither capricious nor arbitrary. In the case of a text to which we attribute compositonal unity, not only can none of its parts be exchanged against some part of another text without that substitution's being noticeable, but also none of its parts can be exchanged for one another without that substitution's being noticeable.2 That is, the sequence of the parts is not random. In a text which displays a high degree of compositional unity, not only the larger units, but even the smaller ones, will occur in a sequence which interpretation can demonstrate to be recognizeable. We may postulate as an ideal limit (one which will very frequently be disappointed in practice) that the interpreter can be held responsible for showing, not only why each word occurs (i.e. what it means), but also why it occurs when it does and not at another time. It may be proposed as a general hypothesis that a text may acquire compositional unity in either of two manners: in that a model of such unity is transferred to it from another source, or in that the unity is achieved by the inter-relation of the elements of the text among themselves. Certainly, the two may be combined; but that there is a distinction to be made beween them may be suggested by reference to 1 For various aspects of the literary temporality discussed here, cf. Hor. AP 42-5; G. E. Lessing, Laokoon, Chapter 16. 2 Cf. Aristot. Poetics 8.1451a 32-34.

42

the evident differences between, for example, Spinoza's Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrate and Hegel's Phänomenologie des Geistes. We may name the former applied, the latter immanent conceptual unity. Each can provide a high degree of compositional organization, and each has its specific virtue and defect: an applied model is usually more perspicuous (if only because it now must be transferred to a content for which it was not originally intended), but the justification for the transferral must always be supplied, as it is not self-evident, and is often problematic (for the justification can usually not be provided either within the final discourse or within that which has provided the model, but instead must come from a third, whose relation to the other two may be aporetic)·,an immanent unity has the advantage that it does not precede the elements of the text in which it is found (and thereby has a claim to a more indisputable validity), but is handicapped by the fact that it must be constituted entirely by internal references of the elements to one another (and hence may be overlooked if those elements are atomized and their interconnections severed). In the history of Pindaric scholarship, a number of proposals have been offered in support of various forms of compositional unity. We may begin by considering two models of applied unity: 1. Erasmus Schmid3 prefaces to each of the poems in his edition a "dispositionis σΰνοψις" in which all of its parts are analyzed in accordance with the rhetorical doctrine of the partes orationis: exordium, narratio, argumentatio, peroratio, with various subcategories. 2. Following Westphal's lead,4 Mezger5 proposed that almost every poem of Pindar's was organized in accordance with the parts of Terpander's nome: προοίμιον, έπαρχά, άρχά, κατατροπά, ομφαλός, μετακατατροπά, σφραγίς, έξόδιον, of which the first two and the last are absent more often than present. It is clear that the scholar who seeks to establish the compositional unity of Pindar's poems along these lines labors under serious difficulties. First, by a process of selection for whose legitimacy no guarantee can be given, he must derive his model from a source whose own clarity and reliability may not in fact lend themselves to his purposes: from among the large number of mutually contradictory

1 E. Schmid, ΠΙΝΔΑΡΟΥ ΠΕΡΙΟΔΟΣ hoc est Pindari lyncorum principis... ΌΛΥΜΠΙΟΝΙΚΑΙ, ΠΥΘΙΟΝΙΚΑΙ, NEMEONIKAI, ΊΣΘΜΙΟΝΙΚΑΙ... (Wittenberg 1616) passim. 4 R. Westphal, Prolegomena zu Aeschylus Tragödien (Leipzig 1869) 8 1 - 9 6 . s Mezger, Pindars Siegeslieder 23-30 and passim.

43

ancient rhetorical classifications of the partes orationis,6 Schmid must select that model which can most easily be applied to Pindar, yet, if asked, he could not offer any more convincing explanation of his grounds for rejecting other potential models than that the demonstration of their relevance would demand greater exertions from the interpreter; Westphal and Mezger must construct a theory essentially on the basis of a single sentence in Pollux7 - one moreover which they find it necessary to emend8 - and have trouble deciding whether the total number of parts is three, five, seven, or eight, and whether transitions are really parts.9 Second, in order to guarantee their applicability, the models employed must be so generalized that they can be used, with suitable modification, not only for every Pindaric poem, but indeed for practically any text whatsoever: Schmid's model works far better for Cicero than for Pindar, while Westphal-Mezger's is reducible to the triviality that texts can have beginnings, middles, and ends, with transitions between them. And third, the burden of proving the applicability of this and only this model to the Pindaric texts is overwhelming; the very universality of the models employed means that the fact that the poems can be more or less successfully analyzed in their terms is a necessary, but by no means a sufficient justification; while claims of historical influence must be greeted with a certain scepticism: had Pindar read Quintilian? is Pollux to be trusted, or the influence of Terpander upon Pindar to be regarded as proven by independent historical evidence? Hence it is not surprising that various strategies for demonstrating an immanent compositional unity in Pindar's poems have also been proposed: 1. In the section of his introduction entitled "De dispositione partium", Dissen proposes models for the macroscopic compositional organization of Pindar's poems:10 for example, the structure of the Second Pythian is a ^ J ^ ^ b / 1 that of the Seventh Nemean a

j3_SP 96f. ; Marg, op.cit. (2.3 n.46) 14f. " E.g.,Farnelied. 131 adloc.;Gildersleveed.266adloc.;Schadewaldt,Aufbau68n.l; Wilamowitz, Pindaros 292 n.l. " Cf. A. W. H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility. Α Study in Greek Values (Oxford 1960) 3Iff., 46ff., 166ff. ; E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1951) 3ff. ; K. Latte, Kleine Schriften zu Religion, Recht, Literatur und Sprache der Griechen und Römer (Munich 1968) 3ff., 382ff. " E.g., Archil. 23.14-15 West, Solon 13.5 West; in Pindar, I. 4.52. For later developments, cf. Dihle, op.cit. (2.3 n.59) 61ff. ; K.. Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford 1974) 180-84.

115

uses deceptions, but rather by his use of them in all cases without regard to the specificity of his object. The wolf is the appropriate image for the unforgiving hostility of an αγαθός against his enemies, and as such is already used in Homer as a metaphor for noble violence:98 the stress that Pindar places here upon the wolf's method of attack contributes to its characterization as dangerous for its enemies. Clearly, these two courses of action which Pindar has available must also be understood ultimately in poetic terms: while Pindar may well have liked his friends, it is difficult to imagine him bodily attacking an enemy like a wolf. Instead, the form which his liking of his φίλοι takes is poetic, that of praise: the social relation of mutual reciprocity called φιλία is often used by Pindar to characterize the bonds between his patrons and himself," and the poetic consequence of those bonds is the kind of poetry exemplified by the Second Pythian. So too, Pindar's hostility with regard to his enemies may best be understood as a poetry of blame directed against them: just as he has already spoken disparagingly in this poem of Ixion, of Archilochus, of the folly of denying Hieron's supremacy in wealth and honor, of those who lack good judgement and of those who purvey slanders, so too the poetic form that Pindar's treatment of his εχθροί would take is invective.100 Thus the generic varieties of poetry of which Pindar is capable are determined by the occasion and the addressee in each case: encomium and epinician for his friends (who deserve it), invective for his enemies (who also deserve it).101 These lines are thus exactly equivalent to the hope that Pindar expresses in the Eighth Nemean, έγώ δ' άστοϊς άδών και χθονί γυΐα καλύψαιμ', αίνέων αίνητά, μομφάν δ' έπισπείρων άλιτροΐς. (Ν. 8.38-39)

" II 4.471,11.72,16.156,352,22.263 (andcf. 13.103); cf. Η. Frankel, Die homerischen Gleichnisse2 (Göttingen 1977) 62, 73. The only two passages which describe wolves as σαίνοντες [Od. 10.214-19, Horn. H.Ven. 69-70) do so in order to stress the miraculousness of a magic power: Circe's or Aphrodite's. Interestingly, Apollo is often invoked in tragedy as Λΰκειος to be a protective friend to one's friends and a dangerous enemy to one's foes (Aesch. Sept. 145, Suppl. 686; Soph. OT 203, El. 645, 655, 1379). " Cf. the discussion of N. 7.6Iff. in 3.3.2.1 below. 100 Cf. above 2.2.4 and 2.2 n. 73: invective against base enemies is, for Pindar, evidently not κακαγορία. 101 Cf. in general M. Detienne, Les maitres de vente dans la Gtece archaique2 (Paris 1973) 18-27; G. Dumezil, Idee,5 romaines (Paris 1969) 103ff., and Servius et la fortune. Essai surla fonction sociale de louange et de bläme et surles eMmente indo-europäens du cens romain (Paris 1943); and G. Nagy, "Iambos: Typologies of Invective and Praise", Arethusa 9 (1976) 191-205, and The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Baltimore and London 1979) 222-52.

116

That Pindar himself seems not ever to have composed full-scale invectives is irrelevant in this regard: he has already demonstrated in this poem his abilities in this genre, and his obvious preference to compose poems of praise for friends is at least economically, and perhaps also psychologically plausible. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that the form in which Pindar's self-definition is expressed here is fundamentally different from that which had appeared in the parts of the poem which had preceded the χαίρε. In the first half of the poem, we had found that the first person had been characterized exclusively as the immediate speaker of the present poem of praise: this was the voice that had asserted it must praise, that found parallels for itself in the public performances of songs of praise for Cinyras by the Cyprians and for Hieron by the maiden of Locri Epizephyrii, and that travelled, as the poem itself travelled, by ship from Thebes to Syracuse, from the location of victory to the scene of performance. At no point in this first half had there been any reference to Pindar as a contingent historic individual. Now, however, he defines his role in the first instance by means of social concepts, φιλία and έχθος, within a level of abstraction which we have found to be fundamentally socio-political in this antistrophe: here Pindar is primarily not specifically a poet but rather a socially determined individual bound with others in a network of social relations; only secondarily, and by no means explicitly, are consequences thereby given for the kinds of poetry he will compose. In general, we can distinguish in this way between epinician first-person statements (which refer to the present poem only) and autobiographical firstperson statements (which refer outside the poem, maybe true or false, and have a function within the poem) ; elsewhere too we shall find this distinction useful. What reasons might have prompted Pindar to append this long supplement, in which he thematizes his own role as social being in this manner, is a question that can only be indicated here but to which we shall revert at the end of the interpretation. But to return to the text: the last lines of this antistrophe confirm its political coloring, at the same time giving evidence for the superiority of the direct as opposed to the deceptive citizen: for while the latter can have a kind of success only under the condition that there are no αγαθοί in his company (and thus resembles the ape, whose success is confined to children), the success of the latter is independent of the particular social formation in which he happens to find himself (86-88). These lines may have a special application to Pindar. In the case of other Greek citizens of this period, who tended in general, except for extreme situations,102 to 102

E.g., the pan-hellenic festivals, or war.

117

remain in the city in which they were born, the lines mean that in each political formation it is the εύθΰγλωσσος άνήρ among its citizens who comes to prominence. But in the case of Pindar, who as a wandering poet was one of the few Greeks who at that time were required by their profession to engage in activities in a wide variety of different cities,103 the words may have a more specific meaning: Pindar, as an εύθυγλωσσος άνήρ, has a poetic success which is not limited to cities of one or another political formation (for example, among tyrants), but which instead is quite independent of the particular form of individual cities and repeats itself in all. In other words, Pindar attributes to himself pan-hellenic success104 - he is not a merely local poet, who sings the victories only of fellow-citizens - and explains this status with reference to that truthfulness which is kindly to friends and bitterly hostile to enemies.

2.3.4 Piety and Envy: The Cosmic Order (88-96) Thus the antistrophe has widened the scope of consideration of the relation between victory on the one hand and the choice between praise and blame on the other : instead of remaining on the level of the relations between individuals like the strophe, the problem has now been posed on the level of socio-political organizations. The result is clear: the specificity of the particular political formation is not a decisive factor: much more important is the moral integrity of the individual. But it is evident that the political level could never represent for Pindar the ultimate horizon for the analysis of human phenomena: for beyond the limit of the world of men exist always the gods, and determine by their very existence that limit. For Pindar to conclude his demonstration here would be almost impious: after the example of Ixion and the moral drawn from that myth, the notion that the choice between praise and slander, between directness and deception, might have nothing to do with the gods can scarcely be entertained.

The poet and merchant, perhaps alone in Pindar's age, continue the tradition of Odysseus, who πολλών ανθρώπων ΐδεν άστεα και νόον έγνω, and anticipate the sophists and the professional travellers (like Herodotus) of later generations. On aspects of the sociology of Greek choral lyric after Simonides, cf. S. Gzella, "The Competition among the Greek Choral Poets", Eos 58 (1969-70) 19-32, "Problem of the Fee in Greek Choral Lyrics," Eos 59 (1971) 189-202, "Pindar and Aegina", Eos 69 (1981) 5-19; and J. Svenbro, La Parole et Je matbie: Aux origines de la poetique grecque (Lund 1976) 162ff., 173ff. 104 Cf. O. 1.115-16, 9.21-27; P. 1.75-80; N. 5.Iff.; Dith. 2.23if.; Frg. 118. By contrast, Bacchylides' aspirations are far more modest (3.96-98).

118

Hence we might expect that, after the second step represented by the antistrophe, Pindar will make a third step in his analysis by elevating the problem to the level of the relations between gods and men; and this in fact is just what happens in the end of the antistrophe and the whole final epode. Here too, as in the antistrophe, Pindar begins and ends with a gnome of general import, and inserts in the middle an example: the difference is that, this time, the example is negative and confirms the general proposition per contraiium. The two gnomes express the superior power of the gods in comparison with mortals and the futility of any rebellion against the divine administration of the world: for the first gnome (88-89), Pindar appeals by implication to the authority of Homer, citing a phrase from the Odyssey,'01 and then returns to the Hesiodic language he had already made use of once (49ff.),· again, as in the antistrophe, the second gnome (93-96) inverts the first, expressing the basic notion of the supreme power of the gods, not again from the superior point of view of the gods' sovereignty in action, but instead this time from the inferior point of view of the necessary futility of any human rebellion against the gods. The perspectives of the two gnomes are complementary: their meanings are synonymous. The central example demonstrates the truth of their claims by supplying a futile counter-example: the failure of the envious (89-92), whom Pindar compares to those who pluck at a lengthy plumb-line and succeed only in wounding themselves.106 As in the antistrophe, the basic ring structure of gnome-example-gnome does not prevent Pindar from achieving smooth transitions between the three elements: the example of the envious is connected to the first gnome by the statement that they refuse to acknowledge the truth it contains, and leads to the final gnome which asserts in general terms the futility of the attempt which the example has illustrated in more specific terms,· and the set of gnomes as a whole leads to the subsequent prayer. 2.3.5 Poet and Victor (96) In a number of his epinicians, Pindar concludes with a prayer;107 and that the prayer should be uttered, as here, for the sake of the poet himself, is likewise by no means unparalleled in Pindar.108 The content, too, is familiar from other texts:10' in particular, the wish that Od. 4.78; cf. II. 5.407, 6.141; Callim. H. 2.25, etc. Cf. my article cited at n. 68. '