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Pindar and his reputation in antiquity*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Penelope Wilson
Penelope Wilson
Affiliation:
New Hall, Cambridge
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Extract

‘Pindar was incredibly admired and honour'd among the Ancients, even to that degree, that we may believe they saw more in him than we do now.’ Abraham Cowley's rather ingenuous statement, introducing in 1656 a significantly curtailed translation of Horace, Odes 4.2, retitled ‘The Praise of Pindar’, pinpoints what was to become a dominant tension in Pindaric criticism, in the attempt to reconcile the reputation (drawn largely from Horace, with Quintilian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, ps.-Longinus and many others in support) with the reality of the extant texts. The critical debate about Pindar has often read like a literary application of the tale of the Emperor's clothes: on the one side, in the words of an eighteenth-century Frenchman, ‘le sang froid’ is a poor judge of ‘l'enthousiasme’, and on the other, in the words of John Wolcot, the English Peter Pindar, some moderns ‘suspect his reputation, concluding it all to be a fable, invented by some idle enthusiast who was incapable of distinguishing between sense and sound, noise and sublimity, the bold thunder and the rumbling wheel-barrow’. In an age which saw itself as struggling to recreate the taste of antiquity, many were prepared to make the act of faith involved in accepting the ‘Horatian’ and ‘Longinian’ Pindar as a model of unapproachable poetic sublimity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 26 , 1980 , pp. 97 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

NOTES

1. Poems, ed. Waller, A. R. (1905) 180Google Scholar.

2. Fraguier, Claude, ‘Le Caractère de Pindare’, Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions et de Belles-lettres 2 (1717) 38: [Wolcot]Google Scholar, Monthly Review n.s. 11 (1793) 449–50Google Scholar.

3. Quoted in Spence, Joseph, Observations, anecdotes, and characters of books and men, ed. Osborn, J. M. (1966) I 225Google Scholar.

4. See, for example, Irigoin, Jean, Histoire du texte de Pindare (1952), esp. 11–121Google Scholar; Pindar, ed. Snell-Maehler, II (1975) 196-213 (‘index fontium’); des Places, E., Pindare et Platon (1949)Google Scholar; Brozek, M., ‘De Scriptoribus Latinis Antiquis Pindari Laudatoribus et Aemulis’, Eos 59 (1971) 101–107Google Scholar; Wilkinson, L. P., ‘Pindar and the Proem to the Third Georgic’, Festschrift K. Büchner, ed. Wimmel, W. (1970) 286–90Google Scholar – to mention only a few of the more general treatments. The full bibliography is already considerable.

5. Quint. Inst. orat. 10. 1. 61.

6. On the Sublime 33.5 (tr. D. A. Russell).

7. For a bibliography of the topic of Horace and Pindar, see Waszink, J. H.. ‘Horaz und Pindar’, Antike und Abendland 12 (1966) 111Google Scholar n. 1: and see also more recently Cairns, F., ‘Horace Odes 1.2’, Eranos 69 (1971) 68–88Google Scholar, and ‘Splendide mendax: Horace, Odes 3.11’. G&R 22 (1975) 129–39Google Scholar.

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9. Kennett, B., The lives and characters of the ancient Grecian poets ed. 2 (1735) 73Google Scholar.

10. See especially Lefkowitz, Mary, ‘The Influential Fictions in the Scholia to Pindar's Pythian 8’, CP 70 (1975) 173–85Google Scholar, and ‘Pindar's Lives’, Classica et Iberica: Festscrift Marique (1975) 79–87Google Scholar; Young, D. C., Pindar Isthmian 7, Myth and exempla (1971) 29–30Google Scholar n. 99, makes the point about distribution of interest in the scholia among earlier scholars.

11. On the composition of the scholia see Deas, H. T., ‘The Scholia Vetera to Pindar’, HSCP 42 (1931) 1–78Google Scholar.

12. Texts cited in this paper are Pindari Carmina cum fragmentis, ed. Snell-Maehler, (1971)Google Scholar and Scholia vetera in Pindari Carmina, ed. Drachmann, A. B. (1903-27: repr. 1969)Google Scholar. References to the scholia follow the ancient colometry; I have added references by volume and and page to Drachmann's edition.

13. Epinikion (1974) 16–17Google Scholar, and passim. Cf. Thummer, E., Pindar: Die Isthmischen Gedichte I (1968) 82–102Google Scholar, ‘Lob für den Dichter und seine Kunst’.

14. Cf. the discussion by Young, D. C., Three Odes of Pindar (1968) 27–68Google Scholar.

15. On the distinction between envy and boredom as an aesthetic offence, see Bundy, E. L., ‘The “Quarrel between Kallimachus and Apollonios”’, CSCA 5 (1972) 88–90Google Scholar.

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17. The ‘laboriousness’ of gathering honey is a central point of Horace's comparison of himself with a bee (Odes 4. 2. 27-32, with a possible allusion to Simonides fr. 593), but there is no evidence for this association in Pindar, who never explicitly compares the poet with a bee, although honey is a favourite image for him of fluency and sweetness. Cf. Waszink, J. H., Biene und Honig als Symbol des Dichters und der Dichtung in der griechisch-romischen Antike (1974)Google Scholar: Waszink does not deal with this scholium. On the later early Christian associations with milk and honey, see Spitz, Hans-Jorg, Die Metaphorik des geistigen Schriftsinns: ein Beitrag zur allegorischen Bibelauslegung des ersten Christlichen Jahrtausends (1972) 178–9Google Scholar.

18. Deas (n. 11) 67.

19. On the Sublime 21.1 (of the smoothness of polysyndeton), 33. 5 (of Pindar).

20. Cf. Arist, . Poet. 17Google Scholar, and D. W. Lucas ad loc. (1972) 176-9.

21. Deas (n. 11) 8.

22. On a similar point of propriety, compare the commendation of Pindar's reticence over the seduction of Cyrene in Pythian 9 (119a: II 232).

23. On the Sublime 16.2.

24. Cf. Plato's ironical or pejorative use of , Phdr. 238d, Hp. Ma. 292c.

25. Cf. Arist, . Rhet. 3. 2. 2Google Scholar; Poet. 22. Tryphonos, (Spengel, , Rhet. Gr. III (1856) 191Google Scholar) .

26. Thomas Gray in his generally dry and derivative MS notes on Pindar (BL Add. MS 36817) allows himself a rare expression of literary appreciation here: ‘an Example of fine Expression and poetic Painting, equal to anything I have met with’. It is perhaps unfair to suggest that this is also a translation?

27. appears once in paraphrase (P. 4. 530b), and (0. 10. 68a) should probably read .

28. Cf. Lefkowitz, ‘Pindar's Lives’ (n. 10).

29. E.g. Bundy, E. L., Studio Pindarica I: The eleventh Olympian ode (1962) 33Google Scholar.

30. Lefkowitz, , ‘Influential Fictions’ (n. 10) 177Google Scholar.

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32. , Spengel, , Rhet. Gr. III 438Google Scholar.

33. Theocr. 17. 1-12; Horace, , Odes 1. 12Google Scholar.

34. Aretius, , Commentarii absolutissimi in Pindari Olympia Pythia Nemea Isthmia (1587)Google Scholar; Erasmus Schmid's edition was published in 1616. Janet Fairweather points out that there is a parallel in the absence of reference to Aristotle's large-scale analytical ideas of tragedy, such as peripeteia, in the Sophoclean scholia.

35. For its use cf. Hermagoras 1. fr. 1 (ed. D. Matthes 3.25); Quint. Inst. orat. 3. 3. 1.

36. (as opposed to is the regular term for a theme limited by time, place, persons, etc.: its Latin equivalent is usually causa (cf. Quint. Inst. orat. 3. 5. 7; Cic., De or. 2. 16. 65Google Scholar). Its use here suggests an interesting awareness of – and scepticism about – the possible importance of the role of Pindar's patrons in selecting material for the odes.

37. For Carey, C., ‘A Commentary on Five Odes of Pindar’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Cambridge (1976) 149Google Scholar.

38. On Didymus as a scholar see, in addition to works cited by Irigoin and Deas, Pfeiffer, R., History of classical scholarship from the beginnings to the end of the Hellenistic age (1968) 274–9Google Scholar.

39. Pindari opera quae supersunt, ed. Boeckh, A. [with Dissen, L.], III (1821, repr. 1963) 358Google Scholar.

40. On the ambiguity of the phrase ‘encomiastic purpose’, see Slater, W. J., ‘Doubts about Pindaric interpretation’, CJ 72 (1977) 197Google Scholar.