Greek Notions of the Past in the Archaic and Classical Eras

PINDAR AND THE RECONSTRUCTION
OF THE PAST

The past holds a central and prominent position in Pindar’s poetry as a whole. Even his Epinicians, whose overarching concern is the praise of contemporary victors, are rich repositories of local traditions and myths with a wider geographic and cultural scope. The Pindaric past covers a vast period which spans from the very beginnings and formation of the world up to the Persian Wars and contemporary reality. Nonetheless, the great majority of Pindar’s stories concern illud tempus,1 that is, the remote mythical past. This said, it should be noted that Pindar makes no great distinction between what we would nowadays call spatium mythicum and spatium historicum. He never disputes the historicity of the mythical period, but endows mythical data and historical events with equal validity.² A telling example of his outlook is the recital of ancient Theban stories which opens Isthmian 7 and which functions as ‘an epitome of Theban history’, as Young aptly called it.³ Here Pindar begins with a reference to Demeter and Dionysos and their relationship to Thebes, progresses to Theban heroes, and finally comes down to his own time through a reference to the Theban Aegeidai, thus linking myth and history in a continuum. What should be stressed at the outset is that Pindar’s mythical detours are not generated by his desire to report the past per se, but rather serve as a kind of eulogistic device. Being an encomiast, Pindar’s aim is to praise, extol and glorify contemporary victors. Accordingly, his narration of the past is always triggered by the current occasion and seeks to interpret forms and institutions of the present; in other words, the reconstruction of the past in Pindar is first and foremost prescriptive and explanatory.4 Furthermore, this is the reason why most of the stories he narrates refer to the birth of heroes, the colonisation of cities, the establishment of hero cults, rituals and athletic games, and other inventions.⁵ Whereas some of these accounts had a panhellenic appeal (e.g. the myth of Heracles), Pindar’s self-exhortation in Nem. 3.31 to ‘search at home’ (οἲκοθεν μάτευε) underpins the whole epinician corpus; as a result, most of his material is derived from local lore and is associated, in one way or another, with the victors’ family and/or their home towns.

In what follows, I will attempt to examine a few aspects of this intricate and fascinating Pindaric epinician past.⁶ My discussion will be divided into two parts. In the first part I will focus on the temporal perspective of Pindar’s narratives and the relationship he tries to establish between past and present. I will then research Pindar’s sources: more particularly, I will concentrate on the way in which he acquires his information about the past, with particular emphasis on his comments and views on the transmission of the past and the reliability of tradition.

1 LOCATING THE PAST IN THE TIMELINE

One striking thing about Pindar is his disregard for placing events in a temporal framework. For instance, he never specifies the interval that separates the moment of the narration and the moment of the story. The transition from the present to the past is usually made through the indefinite conjunctions τότε, ὅτε and especially ποτε, followed by a relative pronoun.7 Despite the vagueness of the above conjunctions, Pindar shows no particular interest in providing a somewhat more specific location of events in the sphere of the past. As a result, events are always presented as ‘floating’ in a kind of ‘ageless past’.⁸ Even in the case of recent historical events, where a more precise chronology could be easily provided, Pindar prefers to locate these events by employing the indefinite ποτε in lieu of a more specific temporal term. In Pyth. 3, for example, the victory of Hieron’s horse Pherenikos, which occurred just a few years before the composition of the ode, is said to have taken place ‘once upon a time’ (ἕλεν . . . ποτέ, 74).⁹

A similar stance is adopted in relation to the various temporal levels within a particular mythical story. Not only does Pindar radically alter the order and chronological sequence of events, but he also refrains from designating their extent and duration. In fact, in many cases the transition from one temporal level of a story to the other is achieved through the repetition of the indefinite ποτε. In Ol. 7, for instance, in line 30 ποτε refers to the period of the colonisation of Rhodes by Tlepolemos; at line 34 it refers to an earlier period, when Athena was born; and at line 71 it refers to an even earlier period, when Helios united with Rhodes. The effect is more poignant in Pyth. 4, where ποτε occurs eight times, each time referring to a different temporal level. Occasionally ποτε is accompanied by spatial adverbs (πρόσθε ποτέ, Ol. 10.31, and ὄπιθεν οὐ πολλόν, Ol. 10.35–6), which contribute nothing, however, to the more precise dating of events. Furthermore, the chronological terms used in a handful of cases are also quite vague and indefinite. In Pyth. 11 we are told that Agamemnon returned from Troy χρονίῳ, while in Ol. 1.46 Ganymede’s transfer to Olympos is said to have taken place δευτέρῳ χρόνῳ. In Pyth. 2.58 the locution ἑκὰς ἐών most probably gives in spatialised terms the temporal distance that separates Pindar from Archilochus, once again without specifying the interval.10 This overall lack of temporal perspective, in conjunction with Pindar’s tendency to resort to anachronies by distorting and altering the chronological sequence of events, creates difficulties; and it sometimes leads to hermeneutic aporias. A salient example is Ol. 3, where the unspecified lapse of time between Herakles’ two journeys to the Istrian Land has caused debate and led a number of scholars to conflate the two journeys into one.¹¹

The only instance where Pindar offers a more precise (in terms of chronology) narrative is Pyth. 4, a poem that celebrates the chariot victory of the king of Kyrene, Arkesilas IV. Here, not only does Pindar designate the temporal interval that separates the story, as he narrates from the performative now, but he also defines the intervals between the different stages of the story. We learn, for instance, that a lapse of twenty years intercedes between Jason’s birth and his arrival at Iolkos (εἲκοσι δ’ ἐκτελέσαις ἐνιαυτούς, 104), and that there is an interval of five days between his meeting with Pelias and the beginning of the Argonautic expedition (131–3). We are also informed that the Argonauts were carrying the Argo across land for twelve days (δώδεκα ἁμέρας, 25–6). What merits particular attention, however, is the use of genealogical chronology, the only instance throughout the Epinicians where Pindar resorts to the use of generations in order to reckon time. As he declares, eight generations separate Arkesilas from Battos, progenitor of his clan and founder of Kyrene (παισὶ τούτοις ὄγδοον θάλλει μέρος Ἀρκεσίλας, 65); twenty-seven generations separate Battos from the Argonauts (ἑβδόμᾳ καὶ σὺν δεκάτᾳ γενεᾷ, 10); and there are three generations separating Kretheas from Jason. Pindar also adds that, if the clod of earth given by Triton to the Argonaut Euphamos (from whose race came Arkesilas’ ancestors) had not been washed away prematurely, the colonisation of Kyrene would have taken place thirteen generations earlier and would have coincided with the Danaans’ forced migration from the Peloponnese (47–9).12

The temporal perspective adopted in Pyth. 4 is noticeable, not only because it is at odds with Pindar’s overall practice, but also because of its particularly detailed chronological specificity. Even though Pindar was a fervent advocate of inborn excellence and laid much emphasis upon lineage, this is the only instance where he designates the full length of a victor’s genealogy. Not only this, but he also attempts to locate the various events of the story by means of generations. He even goes so far as to designate the temporal point at which the colonisation of Kyrene could have taken place! Undoubtedly, Arkesilas must have provided Pindar with the details of his genealogical lineage.¹³ The crucial question concerns the chronology of the other events. Given that the reconciliation between the journey of the Argonauts and the Battiads (the clan of king Arkesilas) was most probably Pindar’s invention, what was his criterion for locating the various events of his account in the timeline? Considering that the first systematic attempts to map the past appear later, with Herodotus and Hellanicus, shall we assume that the designation of the intervals between the events in Pyth. 4 is arbitrary and circumstantial? Would it be far-fetched to propose that Pindar’s genealogical construction was based on a certain kind of genealogical chronology that was in use during the fifth century? Could we suppose the existence of a genealogical framework with some fixed landmarks indicating significant events, such as the Trojan War and the Dorian invasion?14 Of course, such a genealogical framework would presuppose the use of an ‘average’ genealogy for its construction. Pindar’s much younger contemporary Herodotus informs us of the Egyptian standard of three generations per century (each generation equalling 33.3 years); and it seems that he himself used this standard for at least some of his own calculations in the Histories.¹⁵ Considering the geographical proximity of Kyrene and Egypt, could we assume that Pindar used a similar standard for his own genealogical reckoning in Pyth. 4? Even though, prima facie, this suggestion may seem merely conjecture, if we attempt to convert the genealogies of Pyth. 4 into years by using an ‘average’ genealogy, the results are indeed striking and thought-provoking. Twenty-five generations equal approximately 800 years, eight generations equal 233 years and four generations make 100 years.¹⁶ Given that the ode was performed around 462 BCE, this places the Argonautic expedition as far back as 1300 BCE, the colonisation of Kyrene by Battos as 700 BCE and the Danaans’ migration from the Peloponnese as 1200 BCE. We know that the colonisation of Kyrene took place around 650 BCE, while in antiquity the conjectural date of the Trojan War, which was considered to have taken place one or two generations after the Argonautic expedition, was the thirteenth or early twelfth century.¹⁷ Furthermore, we also know that the Dorian invasion of Greece must have taken place between 1200 and 1100 BCE. Certainly, this correspondence might be sheer coincidence. It is, however, striking and, if nothing else, it does invite us to think more carefully about the forms of chronological reckoning that were in use before Herodotus and his contemporaries.18

Pindar’s disregard for a temporal perspective in his narratives about the past was interpreted by Herman Fränkel and his followers as an indication of his archaic mentality and his inability to perceive the past as an extended continuum.¹⁹ Yet Pindar’s stance does not testify to his ‘primitivism’; rather, it is premised by the etiquette of the epinician genre. As the example of Pyth. 4 makes clear, Pindar was perfectly capable of adopting a temporal perspective in his narratives if he wished. However, chronology and the dating of the past were not the point. Pindar’s primary concern was not to map the past by resorting to genealogical time-reckoning or synchronisations, but rather to draw analogies between past and present, and to stress the continuity between these two temporal units.²⁰

2 PAST AND PRESENT

Pindar does not refer to the past and present as ‘past’ and ‘present’; he does, however, designate these two temporal entities by using different vocabulary and terminology. When he refers to the past and his ancestors or predecessors in general, he usually employs the temporal adverbs πάλαι and πρότερον, and terms such as οἱ παλαιότεροι, οἱ παλαίγονοι and οἱ πρότεροι. Things associated with the past are normally defined by the adjective παλαιός, its derivatives and compounds, as well as by the adjective ἀρχαῖος. Whereas both παλαιός and ἀρχαῖος have primary reference to time and appear to share virtually the same semantic range, they are not interchangeable.21 Ἀρχαῖος is employed when Pindar wants to stress the ‘oldness’ of something; therefore it is not used in relation to the past in general but merely to the remote/mythical past. In contrast, παλαιός can designate the whole spectrum of the past. As far as the present is concerned, Pindar normally refers to it by using the adverb νῦν, while things related to the present are often designated with the comparative and superlative form of the adjective νέος.22

Leaving terminology aside, let’s move on and discuss briefly the relationship that Pindar registers between past and present. In Homer the past is absolute and superior to the present (‘chronotope of historical inversion’).²³ In Il. 12.445–9 we hear that people of old could lift stones that not even two people in the present can lift, while the stories of Nestor leave it to be inferred that the past of the past had been even greater and superior.²⁴ In the Hesiodic myth of ages the past also stands for a golden age, with the present being merely its degenerated form. In Pindar the relationship between past and present is seen from a new perspective and is given a different spin; Pindar collapses the qualitative distance between these two temporal entities, and the present is now seen as continuing, repeating and renewing forms of the past. Reference to cities named after their heroic founders, expressions in the form of ‘even now’, mythical genealogies which come down to the present,²⁵ the setting up of explicit parallels between present-day victors and mythical heroes: all these serve to bridge the temporal gap between past and present. Pindar’s faith in the permanence and transcendent nature of certain values, especially his belief in the notion of inner excellence (phya) and the unfailing prosperity and eudaimonia of aristocratic families, also serve as a hinge between ‘then’ and ‘now’.²⁶ In some cases the continuity between past and present is also mapped spatially: in Ol. 6.71–3, for instance, the Iamids are depicted travelling along a conspicuous road, while in Nem. 2.6–7 the victor walks on the path inscribed by his fathers (πατρίαν . . . καθ’ ὁδόν).

But the past in Pindar is often portrayed as being immanent in the present in a more direct and forceful way. It is portrayed as still living in the present, and as having a share in it. On many occasions Pindar invokes mythical heroes as if they were still alive,27 while in Pyth. 8 he even claims that the Argive mantis Amphiaros (or according to others, his son Alkman) prophesied to him as he travelled to Delphi. Finally, the deceased are also claimed to have a share in the present. As Pindar says in Ol. 8.78–80: ‘And for those who have died there is also some share in ritual observances, nor does the dust bury the cherished glory of kinsmen.’²⁸

Undoubtedly, the similarity that Pindar establishes between past and present conjures up cyclic ideas of time, where the past is seen as the subject of periodic re-establishment and the present receives its value and raison d’ être through association with it. In light of this, it is not surprising that Pindar is often cited as the Greek exemplum par excellence of the cyclical view. As Toohey remarks vis-à-vis Pindar’s victory odes: ‘Pindar’s epinicians perhaps provide the earliest and most striking example of a conception of mythology that relies on a cyclical, non-linear concept of time.’²⁹ Because of this Pindar has been repeatedly criticised for lacking historical consciousness and evolutionary reason, and for holding a strongly deterministic view of the world.

Yet a more careful look at the Epinicians reveals that these (still dominant) allegations about Pindar’s ‘archaic mentality’ and his narrow and parochial outlook should be reconsidered, in so far as the cyclical view of history that the poems evoke is merely one side of the coin. In the victory songs recurrence is seen as an incremental rather than a merely cumulative process; the present may be very similar to the past, but at the same time it is also new and takes us a step forward. Besides, it is not irrelevant that Pindar portrays time (chronos) as a force which rushes forward, is irreversible, and brings destruction and forgetfulness. Even though Pindar often explicitly defines events and actions as predetermined, and ascribes the causality of events to external factors such as time, the Gods, Fate, Necessity and Fortune, his figures are not presented as mere playthings at the mercy of these transcendental forces, but as being partly responsible for their actions and deeds. Even when an event is fated, this does not perforce eliminate an agent’s free will or constrain his choices, as he can also respond and adapt to these. In fact, on some occasions the gods are forced to intervene in order to ensure that a fated event will be actualised. So, in Pyth. 4 the Pythia must remind Battos of Medea’s prophecy regarding the colonisation of Kyrene, and in Pyth. 5 Apollo must intervene and protect Battos from the lions so that ‘he might not fail to fulfil his oracles’ (60–2). This semi-openness of time is also manifested in the ‘counterfactuals’, that is, in those cases where Pindar refers to possibilities that existed at a given point in the past but were not actualised.30 Mention should also be made here of the notion of kairos, which plays a central and prominent role in Pindar. In a world where everything is determined a priori, kairos would have no place and would have lost its meaning, in so far as it is based on human action and decision, and permits man to control and harness contingency.³¹ What is more, Pindar keeps emphasising that, just like heroes who through their actions altered, destroyed, created anew and left concrete traces in the material world within which they lived, present-day victors will leave their own individual trail in space and time. Accordingly, in the victory songs man is visualised as having a share in the development and change of events, and as being not merely part but also creator of history.³²

The linear dimension of time which crops up in the Epinicians is significant, for it puts the dynamics between past and present in a new perspective. Despite its similarities with the past, the Pindaric epinician present is not entirely in its grip, but retains its own particularity. Far from passively repeating forms of the past, the present is portrayed as actively continuing and increasing the glory of the past.³³ In fact, I would even dare to say that it is allocated an almost equally significant place next to it. Whereas it is true that the exemplary nature and paradigmatic value of the Pindaric past rely on a sense of its superiority, this past is never ‘walled off’ or cast as superior to the present, as is the case in Homer and Hesiod. How else could we explain Pindar’s claim in Pyth. 2 that no king of old was greater than Hieron in the present, or his assertion in Ol. 13 that the victor ‘has attained what no mortal man ever did previously’?34 What does the opening of Isthm. 2, where Pindar compares contemporary and old poetry, indicate if not change and a step forward? Taking into account all the above, one could say that in the Epinicians past and present share not a one-way but a reciprocal relationship: the present does not just passively find itself being glorified with the glamour of the past, but contributes to empower and increase this glamour through its own lustre and light.

3 THE PINDARIC MUSE

Let’s now move on to the second part of the chapter, where we will examine the way in which Pindar acquires his information about the past. Homer typically ascribes his knowledge of the past to the transcendent vision of the Muse. As Andrew Ford remarks, in Homeric poetry the transmission of any information about the past comes ‘vertically’, directly from the Muses, and not ‘horizontally’, through poetic and historical influence.35 In Pindar the Muse still occupies a significant and prominent place. Yet the activities she patronises are quite distinctive and differ from the ones that characterise her epic counterpart. A closer look at Pindar’s invocations to his Muse reveals that his are not requests for information about what is distant and gone, but rather appeals to her to join the performance and assist with the creation of the song.³⁶ To be more precise, Pindar raises a question regarding the past five times throughout the epinician corpus: in Ol. 13, Isthm. 4, Pyth. 4, Ol. 10 and Pyth. 11. Notably, with the exception of Pyth. 4, the Muse is not explicitly addressed in any of these questions.³⁷ What is more, whereas these requests are modelled on the Homeric ones in terms of style, content and diction, either the questions raised are rhetorical, and therefore remain unanswered, or the answer is provided from a source other than the Muse.38 In Ol. 10, for example, Pindar asks for the first victors at Olympia and then provides a catalogue listing their names accompanied by their home-land and the event in which they excelled. The catalogue’s lack of elaboration and aesthetic value, however, seems to suggest that Pindar had probably derived his information from an authoritative source, most likely a victory list kept at the site of the games.³⁹

In the light of the above, it would not be far fetched to say that the Pindaric Muse is associated more with the skilful composition of song and the commemoration of the present than with the remembering of the past, as is commonly believed.⁴⁰ The new attributes that Pindar ascribes to the Muse are indicative of her new role and transformation: far from standing still and issuing information about the past, the Pindaric Muse ploughs (ἀρόσαι, Nem. 10.26), welds gold with ivory (κολλᾷ χρυσὸν ἔν τε λευκὸν ἐλέφανθ’ ἁμᾶ, Nem. 7.78), tends weapons (καρτερώτατον βέλος ἀλκᾷ τρέφει, Ol. 1.112) and swells hymns (αὔξῃς οὖρον ὕμνων, Pyth. 4.3), while in Isthm.1 she is even attributed with wings (πτερύγεσσιν ἀερθέντ’ ἀγλααῖς / Πιερίδων, 64–5). In other words, she creates, alters, transforms and is highly energetic and active, features which arguably distinguish her from the static epic Muse. The only instances where Pindar associates the Muse with mere song are Pyth. 3.89–91 and Nem. 5.5.22–3, where he recounts the weddings of Peleus and Kadmos, at which the Muses were present, and Isthm. 8.57–8, where the Muses are depicted mourning over Achilles’ dead body. Interestingly, however, the Muses that feature in these examples are the epic, not the epinician, ones.

4 TRADITION

The new role that Pindar assigns to his Muse leads naturally to the question: if the Muse ceases to be the main source of information about the past, from where or whom does Pindar acquire his information? As will become clear in what follows, this role is now taken over by tradition.41 Pindar very often resorts to tradition and leaves it to be inferred that his knowledge of the past is based on nothing more immediate than verbal narratives. Attributions to tradition are normally introduced with the verbs φασί and λέγεται (both in the singular and in the plural), and locutions such as λόγος ἐστι, φάτις ἐστι, λεγόμενόν ἐστι.⁴² Even though Pindar occasionally refers and credits gnomai to specific poets, such as Homer and Hesiod,⁴³ most often his attributions to tradition remain anonymous. Even when it can be surmised with some certainty that he draws on a specific poetic work, Pindar chooses to camouflage the name of his poetic predecessor with a φασί statement. In Pyth. 6.21–3, for instance, he says that his laudandus Xenokrates upholds the precept which ‘they say (φαντί) that Philyra’s son once gave to the mighty son of Peleus in the mountains’. From the scholia⁴⁴ we learn that the precept which follows is drawn from The Precepts of Cheiron, a work attributed to Hesiod.⁴⁵ Yet Pindar omits any reference to him and chooses instead to attribute his narrative to the unspecified φαντί (21).⁴⁶ Some Pindarists have attempted to narrow down such appeals, arguing that all references to the πρότεροι should be understood as allusions to literary predecessors and not to tradition in general. Despite this being both a possible and a plausible reading, there is nothing in these passages which favours this over a more general interpretation; in fact, one could even suggest that Pindar deliberately leaves such attributions quite vague so that he can have his cake and eat it too. On the one hand, by attributing a narrative to tradition in general he presents it as the canonical account, not merely as a version entertained by a particular poet. On the other hand, by leaving it to be inferred that he derives his accounts from earlier poets, Pindar stresses his knowledge of the previous poetic tradition and establishes himself in a line of transmission, thus elevating his status qua poet. Besides, we should bear in mind that, unlike Homer, who clearly values poetic over other oral discourses,47 Pindar never draws a sharp line between the two but rather classifies everything under the heading of ‘tradition’.⁴⁸

Now, how are we to explain Pindar’s tendency to ground his narratives on tradition, and what purpose do these φασί statements serve? Mackie has recently argued that Pindar’s appeals to tradition serve to indicate ‘that mythic narrative is not the official or the primary province of an epinician poet’.⁴⁹ Certainly, this is a plausible interpretation. Yet the sheer fact that Pindar does not ascribe information to tradition passively but engages with it actively and, at times, even critically renders Mackie’s remark problematic. Rather, I would propose that by presenting his accounts as socially acceptable and believed, Pindar seeks to legitimise and confer authority on his discourse.⁵⁰

The ability of such φασί statements to authorise an account has significant implications, especially when local and less well-known stories favoured by the victor’s clan or home town are concerned. Exemplary in this respect is Ol. 6, an ode that celebrates Hagesias, a member of the family of the Iamids. Here the mythical narrative focuses on the story of the seer Iamos, son of Evadne and Apollo, and progenitor of the clan of the Iamids. The family had an Arkadian origin, as the mother of Iamos was from Arkadia. In Pindar’s epoch the most famous Iamid was Teisamenos of Elis, who happened to be granted Spartan citizenship. In order to insert this new Spartan element into the ancestry, Pindar presents Pitana (the homonymous heroine of a Spartan city) as the mother of Evadne and grandmother of Iamos.⁵¹ This new component of the story is introduced by a φασί statement. Thus, Pindar manages to present the recent insertion into the Iamid genealogy as already traditional and socially authoritative.⁵² By introducing local or ancestral myths with an inherently limited scope with a φασί statement, Pindar suggests that they are well known and widespread stories shared not only by the victor’s family and fellow citizens, but also by all Greeks. In this way Pindar confirms the truthfulness of such lesser-known myths, and at the same time contributes to their establishment as canonical accounts. There is, however, another equally significant implication: by presenting these myths as ‘canonical’, Pindar manages to safeguard their dominance and authority not only in the present but also in the future, as the present tense of the verbs φασί and λέγεται guarantees that these accounts will be ‘current’, alive and dominant in the reports of men forever. In every future reperformance the version embraced and voiced by Pindar in the present will be the one shared by all.

In spite of his appeals to tradition, Pindar also frequently adopts a polemical stance towards earlier authorities, censuring their unreliability and treachery. Whereas time (chronos) is irreversible and the past an unchanging reality,53 stories about the past vary (πολλὰ γὰρ πολλᾷ λέλεκται, Nem. 7.20) and often provide distorted reflections of reality. Accordingly, Pindar often repudiates traditional stories that he considers have been incorrectly handed down. The best example is Ol. 1.36, where he openly declares that his account will force the established story of Pelops to be considered from a new perspective (υἱὲ Ταντάλου, σὲ δ’ ἀντία προτέρων φθέγξομαι, Ol. 1.36).⁵⁴ In a similar vein is Ol. 7.21, where Pindar once again declares that he will ‘correct’ (διορθῶσαι)⁵⁵ the standing tradition about the beginnings of Rhodes and tease out what really happened. It is impossible to say whether this new version was Pindar’s own invention or a story with local scope. At any rate, the Rhodians were so pleased with their new ‘straightened out’ past that they inscribed the ode on the temple of Athena at Lindos in golden letters.⁵⁶

To be sure, Pindar was not the first to criticise tradition openly. Apart from Homer and Hesiod, whose criticisms are always veiled, and a few scattered examples among the lyric poets, the most celebrated reproaches of tradition are credited to Herakleitos⁵⁷ and the elegiac poet Xenophanes.⁵⁸ What distinguishes Pindar from his predecessors and peers is that apart from engaging critically with tradition, he also explicitly discusses the three factors which he believes contribute to the wrong transmission of the past and the formation of ‘false stories’: envy (φθόνος),59 the limitations of mortal knowledge and – last but not least – poetry.⁶⁰

Considering how highly he values tradition, Pindar’s critical stance towards it seems contradictory. Why does he decry tradition’s unreliability and deceptive character and, most importantly, why does he draw attention to poetry’s contribution to the falsification of the past? Pindar’s moral judgements of the myths he narrates have been interpreted by many scholars as an indication of his prudery and tendency to moralise tradition in order to reveal the real truth.⁶¹ Even though this is a possible explanation, we must not forget that Pindar’s aim and primary concern are to provide not an accurate but a ‘usable’ account of the past, an account that would meet the expectations of his laudandus and audience.⁶² This is not to say that his claims about the truthfulness of his poetry are merely a pretence, but rather that the ultimate yardstick against which he chooses what to remember and what to forget is not truthfulness but ‘appropriateness’.⁶³ This is starkly articulated in the ‘hush passages’ where Pindar refuses to recount certain unflattering aspects of the past which could be offensive to the gods or certain heroes.⁶⁴ It is important to remember that in these cases Pindar does not dispute the facts and truthfulness of these events, but merely treats them as parts of the past that should be forgotten and remain unspoken. Besides, as he emphatically declares in Nem. 5.16–18, ‘for not every exact truth / is better for showing its face, / and silence is often the wisest thing for a man to observe’.

In order to appreciate Pindar’s stance better, it would be instructive to examine it in conjunction with the conventions of the epinician genre and, most importantly, the way in which he seeks to portray his encomiastic persona. It is true that despite the new role assigned to his epinician Muse, in most scholarly discussions Pindar is still referred to as a ‘vatic poet’ and a ‘proclaimer of the Muses’. This is not fortuitous, in so far as Pindar often styles himself as mantis (Dithyramb 75.13 and Parthenion 1.5–6), prophatas (Paean 6.6), herald of wise verses (Dithyramb 2.24), attendant of the gods (Paean 5.45) and ‘priest of the Muses’ (fr. 150 and 52f.6). However, what we tend to overlook is that all these references occur in the fragments (cult poetry), not in the victory songs. This cannot and should not be taken as an insignificant detail.

In a nutshell, in the Epinicians Pindar is not the priestly figure of the fragments, whose role is that of the mediator between gods and men, but instead assumes a more active and energetic role: that of the maître du temps. He is the one who through his song can rewrite the past and secure for the present a place in the future by erecting for it a poetic monumentum aere perennius.65 Through his song Pindar ensures that the victors’ good reputation will not be distorted by φθόνος and πάρφασις, and that the right kleos will be propagated in the future.⁶⁶ Even if someone tries to distort the truth and corrupt the victors’ name with false stories, Pindar’s poetry will serve as the safety valve for the true account; due to his high status as a poet and the authority of his poetry, Pindar’s versions will be perceived by future generations as ‘a mirror’ of their past, as he nicely puts it in Nem. 7.14–16.⁶⁷ Paradoxically Pindar must both honour tradition and at the same time criticise and challenge it if he is both to be part of tradition and to have a special place within it. Only if he presents himself as unique within tradition can he confirm that his versions and no one else’s will determine the shape of the present in the future and the judgements of posterity. This also seems to explain why even when he openly acknowledges his dependence on tradition, he is at pains to underline the distinctive character of his poetry.68 But whereas Pindar’s stance towards tradition and the past is premised by his role as a panegyrist, we should not forget that he did not live in a vacuum. The recurrent comments on the fluidity and unreliability of tradition, on his selective ‘remembering’ and on the malleability of the past seem to reflect a broader contemporary and lively discussion about the Vergangenheit and its transmission. Besides, it can scarcely be a coincidence that Herodotus and the first historiographers lived during roughly the same period.

Thanks go to John Marincola for his invitation to the Leventis Conference, and to the audience there for their suggestions and remarks; also to the J. F. Costopoulos Foundation for its generous financial support, which enabled me to conduct the research for this chapter. Last but not least I thank my PhD supervisor, Robert Fowler, for many stimulating discussions on the notion of time in Pindar.

1    The phrase was first used by M. Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, tr. W. R. Trask (New York: Pantheon Books, 1954), in order to indicate the sacred time of origins when the world was first created.

2    On the Greek view of myth and history see among others C. Brillante, ‘History and the historical interpretation of myth’, in L. Edmunds (ed.), Approaches to Greek Myth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), pp. 91–140, at pp. 93ff; T. Harrison, Divinity and History: The Religion of Herodotus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), pp. 197–207.

3    D. C. Young, Pindar Isthmian 7: Myth and Exempla (Leiden: Brill, 1971), pp. 16–18. On the cluster of myths that opens Isthm. 7 see, among others, R. Sevieri, ‘Cantare la città: Tempo mitico e spazio urbano nell’ Istmica 7 di Pindaro per Strepsiade di Tebe’, in P. A. Bernardini (ed.), Presenza e funzione della città di Tebe nella cultura greca: Atti del Convegno Internationale, Urbino 7–9 Luglio 1997 (Pisa and Rome: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali, 2000), pp. 179–92; P. Agócs, ‘Memory and forgetting in Pindar’s Seventh Isthmian’, in L. Doležalová (ed.), Strategies of Remembrance: From Pindar to Hölderin (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2009), pp. 33–91.

4    G. Huxley, Pindar’s Vision of the Past (Belfast: Author, 1975), p. 43.

5    Birth of heroes: Iamos (Ol. 6.35–45); Aristaios (Pyth. 9.59–65); Asklepios (Pyth. 3.38–46). Foundation/colonisation of cities: Pyth. 4, 9 (Kyrene); Ol. 7 (Rhodes). Institution of athletic games: Ol. 10 (Olympic games); Nem. 9 (Nemean games). Cults of heroes: Ol. 1; on allusions to hero cults in Pindar see B. Currie, Pindar and the Cult of Heroes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

6    Even though scholars tend to examine Pindar’s epinician and cult poems together, the way in which Pindar treats time and establishes the relationship between past and present in these two poetic genres differs considerably. On this see M. Pavlou, ‘Past and present in Pindar’s religious poetry’, in A. P. M. H. Lardinois, J. H. Blok and M. G. M. van der Poel (eds), Sacred Words: Orality, Literacy and Religion (Orality and Literacy in the Ancient World 8; Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 59–78.

7    See e.g. τότε (Nem. 9.11); ὅτε (Ol. 7.55); ποτε (Ol. 3.13, Ol. 9.9; Pyth. 1.16, 9.5; Nem. 8.18, 9.13; Isthm. 1.13). The transition to the past can also be achieved through the use of the temporal adjectives παλαιός (Pyth. 9.105) and ἀρχαῖος (Nem. 1.34).

8    G. Genette, Narrative Discourse, tr. J. E. Lewin (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), p. 220.

9    See also Isthm. 8.65; Nem. 6.36, 42; Nem. 9.52; Nem. 10.25. D. C. Young, ‘Pindar Pythian 2 and 3: Inscriptional ποτε and the “poetic epistle”’, HSCP 87 (1983), pp. 31–42, at p. 36, suggests that in these instances ποτε has a future point of view, not a present one; in other words, it does not indicate distance in time from the moment of the narration, but rather reflects the viewpoint of later audiences on the victory. He calls this ποτε ‘inscriptional’ as it is often used in inscriptions in the same sense. Even though I agree with Young’s observation, in my view it is also significant to consider the impact that this ‘inscriptional’ ποτε would have upon the current audience; through the use of ποτε recent events are put on a par with the mythical events of the past and are ‘traditionalised’, so to speak. In this way the temporal distance between past and present seems to collapse and the audience is invited to experience time as a unity. Another thing that should be stressed is that only a few instances of ποτε in Pindar pertain to the ‘inscriptional’ ποτε. Whenever ποτε refers to the distant mythical past, its vagueness suggests a significant remove in time; see C. Carey, ‘Prosopographica Pindarica’, CQ 39 (1989), pp. 1–9, at p. 8.

10    See W. J. Slater, Lexicon to Pindar (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969), s.v. ἑκάς; C. G. Brown, ‘Pindar on Archilochus and the gluttony of blame (Pyth. 2.52–5)’, JHS 126 (2006), pp. 36–46. It should be noted that many scholars maintain that the adverb ἑκάς here designates moral distance; see, among others, A. M. Miller, ‘Pindar, Archilochus and Hieron in Pyth. 2.52–56’, TAPA 111 (1981), pp. 135–43, at pp. 140–1.

11    The bibliography on this poem is vast; see the informative article by A. Köhnken, ‘Mythical chronology and thematic coherence in Pindar’s Third Olympian Ode’, HSCP 87 (1983), pp. 49–63, who also provides relevant bibliography.

12    The ‘Danaans’ were forced to leave the Peloponnese because of the Dorians’ invasion of Greece. Note that Pindar employs the term ‘Danaans’ to indicate the generation that lived in Greece before the Dorian invasion; see B. K. Braswell, A Commentary on the Fourth Pythian Ode of Pindar (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1988), ad Pyth. 4.48.

13    See M. Giangiulio, ‘Constructing the past: Colonial traditions and the writing of history. The case of Cyrene’, in N. Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 116–37, at p. 124, who, based on the affinities between the Pindaric and Herodotean version of the Battiad genealogy, argues for the existence of an earlier written version. See also R. Thomas, Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 172 n. 39.

14    Some had credited the construction of a kind of ‘genealogical backbone’ to Hekataios, even though this thesis does not find many advocates nowadays. See the discussion by L. Bertelli, ‘Hecataeus: From genealogy to historiography’, in Luraghi, Historian’s Craft, pp. 67–94, at pp. 89–94, who also provides relevant bibliography.

15    In 2.142–3 Herodotus reports that, according to the Egyptian priests, Egyptian human history has a depth of 341 generations. He then converts these generations into 11,340 years by using the Egyptian standard of three generations per century. Herodotus uses genealogical chronology around sixteen times in the Histories; yet there is no consensus on whether he used the Egyptian standard for all his calculations. See A. Mosshammer, The Chronicle of Eusebius and Greek Chronographic Tradition (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1979), pp. 105–11; J. Cobet, ‘The organization of time in the Histories’, in E. Bakker, I. J. F. de Jong and H. van Wees (eds), Brill’s Companion to Herodotus (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 387–412.

16    For the calculations it is important to keep in mind that ancient arithmetic was inclusive; therefore one needs to multiply the Egyptian standard by twenty-four, seven and three generations respectively.

17    Herodotus dates the Trojan War to the thirteenth century BCE (Hdt. 2.145.4). See also Eratosthenes of Kyrene (FGrHist 241 F 1a), who dates the Trojan War to 1183 BCE, 407 years before the first Olympiad of 776 BCE. Timaios of Tauromenium (FGrHist 566 F 125) places the Trojan War at the same period.

18    Whatever the case is, if my conjecture is valid, then some sort of chronological reckoning seems to have been in use even before Herodotus.

19    See, among others, H. Fränkel, ‘Die Zeitauffassung in der griechischen Literatur’, Beilagenheft zur Zeitschrift für Aesthetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 25 (1931); P. Vivante, ‘On myth and action in Pindar’, Arethusa 4 (1971), pp. 119–36; Vivante, ‘On time in Pindar’, Arethusa 5 (1972), pp. 107–31.

20    Like Pindar, Bacchylides shows no particular interest in the chronology of the events he narrates. The only exception is Ep. 11; but see R. Garner, ‘Countless deeds of valour: Bacchylides 11’, CQ 42 (1992), pp. 523–5.

21    Contrast I. Rumpel, Lexicon Pindaricum (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1883), and Slater, Lexicon to Pindar, both of whom translate παλαιός and ἀρχαῖος in a similar way without paying attention to this semantic nuance.

22    Ol. 1.90; Pyth. 1.17, 6.43; Ol. 9.49; Pyth. 8.33.

23    According to M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, tr. C. Emerson and M. Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 147–8, ‘historical inversion’ occurs when an Edenic past is measured against an inferior present. Bakhtin has wrongly applied this chronotope to all high genres of antiquity, including those of Pindar (15–18). In Homer there is a vague connection between the past and the present achieved through the heroes’ claims that their κλέος will remain ἄφθιτον among future generations (e.g., Il. 3.351ff, 6.352ff, 7.87ff; Od. 1.302).

24    See e.g. Il .1.261–7 and 2.707.

25    R. Fowler, Early Greek Mythography. Vol. I: Text and Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. xxviii. There are only a few examples where early historiographers continue their genealogies down into the historical period. See e.g. the Philaid genealogy (FGrHist 3 F 2) and the genealogy of Hippokrates (FGrHist 3 F 59).

26    Even though Pindar admits that interruptions of a family’s ‘prosperity’ are likely to occur, he stresses that such periods of ‘fallow’ last only for a short period of time.

27    See Ol. 1.36; Nem. 4.46–53; Isthm. 6.19. On the invocation to Pelops in Ol. 1 see L. Athanassaki, ‘Deixis performance and poetics in Pindar’s First Olympian Ode’, Arethusa 37 (2004), pp. 317–41.

28    See also Pyth. 5.96–103; Ol. 14.20–4.

29    P. Toohey, Melancholy, Love, and Time: Boundaries of the Self in Ancient Literature (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), p. 205.

30    See Pyth. 4.42–57; Nem. 10.83–8; Nem. 7.24–7; Isthm. 8.32–6.

31    Unlike chronos, kairos clearly depends on human action and decision and, as E. Csapo and M. Miller, ‘Democracy, empire, and art: Toward a politics of time and narrative’ in D. Boedeker and K. Raaflaub (eds), Democracy, Empire and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 87–126, at p. 103 observe, ‘permits one to triumph over contingency’.

32    Something similar occurs in Homer, where events are described as caused either by the god’s will or by human action. On ancient causality, see A. Lesky, ‘Divine and human causation in Homeric epic’, in D. L. Cairns (ed.), Oxford Readings in Homer’s Iliad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 170–202; R. Gaskin, ‘Do Homeric heroes make real decisions?’, in Cairns, Oxford Readings in Homer’s Iliad, pp. 147–69; cf. R. V. Munson, ‘ Ananke in Herodotus’, JHS 121 (2001), pp. 30–50, esp. pp. 31–3.

33    Nem. 5.8: Αἰακίδας ἐγέραιρεν ματρόπολίν τε; Nem. 3.12–17: χαρίεντα δ’ ἕξει πόνον / χώρας ἄγαλμα, Μυρμιδόνες ἵνα πρότεροι / ᾤκησαν, ὧν παλαίφατον ἀγοράν / οὐκ ἐλεγχέεσσιν Ἀριστοκλείδας τεάν / ἐμίανε κατ’ αἶσαν ἐν περισθενεῖ μαλαχθείς / παγκρατίου στόλῳ.

34    A similar statement is also to be found in Simonides 23 (Diels), where a present-day athlete is said to be braver than ancient heroes such as Polydeukes and Herakles.

35    A. Ford, Homer: The Poetry of the Past (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 95; see also E. L. Bowie, ‘Lies, fiction and slander in early Greek poetry’, in C. Gill and T. P. Wiseman (eds), Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1993), pp. 1–37, at p. 10.

36    See e.g. Ol. 3.4–6. In addition to the Muse other divinities are also invoked to help with the orchestration of the song; see Ol. 14; Ol. 2; Isthm. 7.

37    Examples of implicit invocations to the Muse occur in Homer as well (e.g. Il. 5.703; 8.273); see W. W. Minton, ‘Invocation and catalogue in Hesiod and Homer’, TAPA 93 (1962), pp. 188–212, at pp. 208–9; I. J. F. de Jong, Narrators and Focalizers: The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad (Amsterdam: Grüner, 1987), pp. 45–50.

38    In Ol. 13 and Pyth. 11 the questions remain unanswered, while in Isthm. 5 the answer is presented as widely known. An answer to the question raised is provided only in Pyth. 4.

39    G. Norwood, Pindar (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945), p. 114.

40    This feature is not peculiar to Pindar but seems to apply to the lyric Muse in general; see M. Finkelberg, The Birth of Literary Fiction in Ancient Greece (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 163 n. 6.

41    R. Scodel, ‘Poetic authority and oral tradition in Hesiod and Pindar’, in J. Watson (ed.), Speaking Volumes: Orality and Literacy in the Greek and Roman World (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 109–38, at p. 123ff, was the first who drew attention to and discussed the significant role that tradition plays in Pindar. See also H. Mackie, Graceful Errors: Pindar and the Performance of Praise (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003).

42    See e.g. Ol. 7.54; Nem. 7.84; Pyth. 6.21. Such statements are rare in other lyric poets; see e.g., Alc. 42.1, 339.1; Sapph. fr. 166; Sim. 579.1.

43    See e.g. Homer: Pyth. 4.277–8; Hesiod: Isthm. 6.66–7. See also Pyth. 9.94–6. where a gnome is attributed to Nereus.

44    Schol. ad Pyth. 6.22 (Drachmann II, 197).

45    Hes. fr. 283 (M-W).

46    Bacchylides is normally declared to be more receptive of tradition because he acknowledges his literary predecessors by name; see D. Fearn, Bacchylides: Politics, Performance, Poetic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 20. Yet his attributions to tradition are by far fewer.

47    See e.g. the celebrated passage in Il. 2.485–6 where tradition is juxtaposed with the superior eyewitness knowledge of the Muses.

48    Scodel, ‘Poetic authority and oral tradition’, p. 125. It should be noted, however, that Pindar acknowledges the epistemic difference between seeing and knowing; see Nem. 4.91–2: ἄλλοισι δ’ ἃλικες ἄλλοι· τὰ δ’ αὐτὸς ἀντιτύχῃ, / ἔλπεταί τις ἕκαστος ἐξοχώτατα φάσθαι.

49    Mackie, Graceful Errors, p. 71.

50    Scodel, ‘Poetic authority and oral tradition’, p. 124.

51    See Huxley, Pindar’s Vision of the Past, pp. 29–30.

52    Something similar occurs in Ol. 9 for Epharmostos of Opous.

53    τῶν δὲ πεπραγμένων / ἐν δίκᾳ τε καὶ παρὰ δίκαν ἀποίητον οὐδ’ ἄν / Χρόνος ὁ πάντωνπατὴρ / δύναιτο θέμεν ἔργων τέλος (ο l. 2.15–17).

54    See, among others, J. G. Howie, ‘The revision of myth in Pindar Olympian 1’, PLLS 4 (1983), pp. 277–313.

55    On the meaning of διορθῶσαι see W. J. Verdenius, Pindar’s Seventh Olympian Ode: A Commentary (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1972), ad 21.

56    See schol . ad Ol. 7 (Drachmann I, 195).

57    In fr. 42 D–K Herakleitos argues that both Homer and Archilochos deserve to be expelled from the contests and be flogged, because their narratives abound in lies: see also frr. 56 and 57 D–K.

58    Xenophanes fr. 11. A. Gostoli, ‘La critica dei miti tradizionali alla corte di Ierone di Siracusa: Senofane e Pindaro’, QUCC 62 (1999), pp. 15–24, at p. 16, points out that such criticisms of tradition must have been common in the literary-philosophical circles of the fifth and sixth centuries. See also K. Freeman, The Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Companion to Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 94, who argues for a possible encounter between Xenophanes and Pindar at the court of Hieron in Syracuse.

59    Even though phthonos is a generic topos, it is significant that Pindar explicitly associates it not only with the distortion of the present, but also with the distortion of the past. See P. Bulman, Phthonos in Pindar (Berkeley and Oxford: University of California Press, 1992).

60    See e.g. Nem. 7.20–3: ἐγὼ δὲ πλέον’ ἔλπομαι / λόγον Ὀδυσσέος ἢ πάθαν διὰ τὸνἁδυεπῆ γενέσθ’ Ὅμηρον· / ἐπεὶ ψεύδεσί οἱ ποτανᾷ <τε> μαχανᾷ / σεμνὸν ἔπεστί τι· σοφία δὲ κλέπτει παράγοισα μύθοις. See also Ol. 1.28–9.

61    Cf. C. M. Bowra, Pindar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. 285–7; Howie, ‘Revision of myth’, esp. p. 299; C. Carey, ‘Pindar and the victory ode’, in L. Ayres (ed.), The Passionate Intellect: Essays on the Transformation of Classical Tradition Presented to Professor I. G. Kidd (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press, 1995), pp. 97–8. See also D. Loscalzo, ‘Pindaro tra μῦθος e λόγος’, in M. Cannatà Fera and G. B. d’ Alessio (eds), I Lirici Greci (Messina: Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Antichità dell’Università degli Studi di Messina, 2001), pp. 165–85, at p. 185: ‘Pindaro, in particolare, cerca nuove prospettive di interpretazione delle varianti del mito e in questo senso la sua poesia si profila come ermeneutica e quindi ha un valore attivamente etico.’

62    L. Pratt, Lying and Poetry from Homer to Pindar (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), esp. pp. 11–53 and 115–29.

63    Pratt, Lying and Poetry, p. 123.

64    Ol. 9.35–41; Nem. 5.14–18. See Norwood, Pindar, p. 80.

65    On the distinct ways in which Pindar pitches his epinician and religious persona see Pavlou, ‘Past and present’.

66    See G. M. Kirkwood, ‘Blame and envy in the Pindaric epinicion’, in D. Gerber (ed.), Greek Poetry and Philosophy: Studies in Honour of Leonard Woodbury (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984), pp. 169–83.

67    ἔργοις δὲ καλοῖς ἔσοπτρον ἲσαμεν ἑνὶ σὺν τρόπῳ, / εἰ Μναμοσύνας ἕκατι λιπαράμπυκος / εὕρηται ὕποινα μόχθων κλυταῖς ἐπέων ἀοιδαῖς.

68    Indeed, many of his accounts which are introduced with a φασί-statement are preceded by remarks or images which denote innovation. In Ol. 9.47–9, for example, Pindar proclaims that he will rehearse the story of the foundation of Opous with novelty; yet the account that follows is introduced with the verb λέγοντι (49). See also Nem. 7.77–9, 84.

1		The phrase was first used by M. Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, tr. W. R. Trask (New York: Pantheon Books, 1954), in order to indicate the sacred time of origins when the world was first created.
2		On the Greek view of myth and history see among others C. Brillante, ‘History and the historical interpretation of myth’, in L. Edmunds (ed.), Approaches to Greek Myth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), pp. 91–140, at pp. 93ff; T. Harrison, Divinity and History: The Religion of Herodotus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), pp. 197–207.
3		D. C. Young, Pindar Isthmian 7: Myth and Exempla (Leiden: Brill, 1971), pp. 16–18. On the cluster of myths that opens Isthm. 7 see, among others, R. Sevieri, ‘Cantare la città: Tempo mitico e spazio urbano nell’ Istmica 7 di Pindaro per Strepsiade di Tebe’, in P. A. Bernardini (ed.), Presenza e funzione della città di Tebe nella cultura greca: Atti del Convegno Internationale, Urbino 7–9 Luglio 1997 (Pisa and Rome: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali, 2000), pp. 179–92; P. Agócs, ‘Memory and forgetting in Pindar’s Seventh Isthmian’, in L. Doležalová (ed.), Strategies of Remembrance: From Pindar to Hölderin (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2009), pp. 33–91.
4		G. Huxley, Pindar’s Vision of the Past (Belfast: Author, 1975), p. 43.
5		Birth of heroes: Iamos (Ol. 6.35–45); Aristaios (Pyth. 9.59–65); Asklepios (Pyth. 3.38–46). Foundation/colonisation of cities: Pyth. 4, 9 (Kyrene); Ol. 7 (Rhodes). Institution of athletic games: Ol. 10 (Olympic games); Nem. 9 (Nemean games). Cults of heroes: Ol. 1; on allusions to hero cults in Pindar see B. Currie, Pindar and the Cult of Heroes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
6		Even though scholars tend to examine Pindar’s epinician and cult poems together, the way in which Pindar treats time and establishes the relationship between past and present in these two poetic genres differs considerably. On this see M. Pavlou, ‘Past and present in Pindar’s religious poetry’, in A. P. M. H. Lardinois, J. H. Blok and M. G. M. van der Poel (eds), Sacred Words: Orality, Literacy and Religion (Orality and Literacy in the Ancient World 8; Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 59–78.
7		See e.g. τότε (Nem. 9.11); ὅτε (Ol. 7.55); ποτε (Ol. 3.13, Ol. 9.9; Pyth. 1.16, 9.5; Nem. 8.18, 9.13; Isthm. 1.13). The transition to the past can also be achieved through the use of the temporal adjectives παλαιός (Pyth. 9.105) and ἀρχαῖος (Nem. 1.34).
8		G. Genette, Narrative Discourse, tr. J. E. Lewin (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), p. 220.
9		See also Isthm. 8.65; Nem. 6.36, 42; Nem. 9.52; Nem. 10.25. D. C. Young, ‘Pindar Pythian 2 and 3: Inscriptional ποτε and the “poetic epistle”’, HSCP 87 (1983), pp. 31–42, at p. 36, suggests that in these instances ποτε has a future point of view, not a present one; in other words, it does not indicate distance in time from the moment of the narration, but rather reflects the viewpoint of later audiences on the victory. He calls this ποτε ‘inscriptional’ as it is often used in inscriptions in the same sense. Even though I agree with Young’s observation, in my view it is also significant to consider the impact that this ‘inscriptional’ ποτε would have upon the current audience; through the use of ποτε recent events are put on a par with the mythical events of the past and are ‘traditionalised’, so to speak. In this way the temporal distance between past and present seems to collapse and the audience is invited to experience time as a unity. Another thing that should be stressed is that only a few instances of ποτε in Pindar pertain to the ‘inscriptional’ ποτε. Whenever ποτε refers to the distant mythical past, its vagueness suggests a significant remove in time; see C. Carey, ‘Prosopographica Pindarica’, CQ 39 (1989), pp. 1–9, at p. 8.
10		See W. J. Slater, Lexicon to Pindar (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969), s.v. ἑκάς; C. G. Brown, ‘Pindar on Archilochus and the gluttony of blame (Pyth. 2.52–5)’, JHS 126 (2006), pp. 36–46. It should be noted that many scholars maintain that the adverb ἑκάς here designates moral distance; see, among others, A. M. Miller, ‘Pindar, Archilochus and Hieron in Pyth. 2.52–56’, TAPA 111 (1981), pp. 135–43, at pp. 140–1.
11		The bibliography on this poem is vast; see the informative article by A. Köhnken, ‘Mythical chronology and thematic coherence in Pindar’s Third Olympian Ode’, HSCP 87 (1983), pp. 49–63, who also provides relevant bibliography.
12		The ‘Danaans’ were forced to leave the Peloponnese because of the Dorians’ invasion of Greece. Note that Pindar employs the term ‘Danaans’ to indicate the generation that lived in Greece before the Dorian invasion; see B. K. Braswell, A Commentary on the Fourth Pythian Ode of Pindar (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1988), ad Pyth. 4.48.
13		See M. Giangiulio, ‘Constructing the past: Colonial traditions and the writing of history. The case of Cyrene’, in N. Luraghi (ed.), The Historian’s Craft in the Age of Herodotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 116–37, at p. 124, who, based on the affinities between the Pindaric and Herodotean version of the Battiad genealogy, argues for the existence of an earlier written version. See also R. Thomas, Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 172 n. 39.
14		Some had credited the construction of a kind of ‘genealogical backbone’ to Hekataios, even though this thesis does not find many advocates nowadays. See the discussion by L. Bertelli, ‘Hecataeus: From genealogy to historiography’, in Luraghi, Historian’s Craft, pp. 67–94, at pp. 89–94, who also provides relevant bibliography.
15		In 2.142–3 Herodotus reports that, according to the Egyptian priests, Egyptian human history has a depth of 341 generations. He then converts these generations into 11,340 years by using the Egyptian standard of three generations per century. Herodotus uses genealogical chronology around sixteen times in the Histories; yet there is no consensus on whether he used the Egyptian standard for all his calculations. See A. Mosshammer, The Chronicle of Eusebius and Greek Chronographic Tradition (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1979), pp. 105–11; J. Cobet, ‘The organization of time in the Histories’, in E. Bakker, I. J. F. de Jong and H. van Wees (eds), Brill’s Companion to Herodotus (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 387–412.
16		For the calculations it is important to keep in mind that ancient arithmetic was inclusive; therefore one needs to multiply the Egyptian standard by twenty-four, seven and three generations respectively.
17		Herodotus dates the Trojan War to the thirteenth century BCE (Hdt. 2.145.4). See also Eratosthenes of Kyrene (FGrHist 241 F 1a), who dates the Trojan War to 1183 BCE, 407 years before the first Olympiad of 776 BCE. Timaios of Tauromenium (FGrHist 566 F 125) places the Trojan War at the same period.
18		Whatever the case is, if my conjecture is valid, then some sort of chronological reckoning seems to have been in use even before Herodotus.
19		See, among others, H. Fränkel, ‘Die Zeitauffassung in der griechischen Literatur’, Beilagenheft zur Zeitschrift für Aesthetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 25 (1931); P. Vivante, ‘On myth and action in Pindar’, Arethusa 4 (1971), pp. 119–36; Vivante, ‘On time in Pindar’, Arethusa 5 (1972), pp. 107–31.
20		Like Pindar, Bacchylides shows no particular interest in the chronology of the events he narrates. The only exception is Ep. 11; but see R. Garner, ‘Countless deeds of valour: Bacchylides 11’, CQ 42 (1992), pp. 523–5.
21		Contrast I. Rumpel, Lexicon Pindaricum (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1883), and Slater, Lexicon to Pindar, both of whom translate παλαιός and ἀρχαῖος in a similar way without paying attention to this semantic nuance.
22		Ol. 1.90; Pyth. 1.17, 6.43; Ol. 9.49; Pyth. 8.33.
23		According to M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, tr. C. Emerson and M. Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 147–8, ‘historical inversion’ occurs when an Edenic past is measured against an inferior present. Bakhtin has wrongly applied this chronotope to all high genres of antiquity, including those of Pindar (15–18). In Homer there is a vague connection between the past and the present achieved through the heroes’ claims that their κλέος will remain ἄφθιτον among future generations (e.g., Il. 3.351ff, 6.352ff, 7.87ff; Od. 1.302).
24		See e.g. Il .1.261–7 and 2.707.
25		R. Fowler, Early Greek Mythography. Vol. I: Text and Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. xxviii. There are only a few examples where early historiographers continue their genealogies down into the historical period. See e.g. the Philaid genealogy (FGrHist 3 F 2) and the genealogy of Hippokrates (FGrHist 3 F 59).
26		Even though Pindar admits that interruptions of a family’s ‘prosperity’ are likely to occur, he stresses that such periods of ‘fallow’ last only for a short period of time.
27		See Ol. 1.36; Nem. 4.46–53; Isthm. 6.19. On the invocation to Pelops in Ol. 1 see L. Athanassaki, ‘Deixis performance and poetics in Pindar’s First Olympian Ode’, Arethusa 37 (2004), pp. 317–41.
28		See also Pyth. 5.96–103; Ol. 14.20–4.
29		P. Toohey, Melancholy, Love, and Time: Boundaries of the Self in Ancient Literature (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), p. 205.
30		See Pyth. 4.42–57; Nem. 10.83–8; Nem. 7.24–7; Isthm. 8.32–6.
31		Unlike chronos, kairos clearly depends on human action and decision and, as E. Csapo and M. Miller, ‘Democracy, empire, and art: Toward a politics of time and narrative’ in D. Boedeker and K. Raaflaub (eds), Democracy, Empire and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 87–126, at p. 103 observe, ‘permits one to triumph over contingency’.
32		Something similar occurs in Homer, where events are described as caused either by the god’s will or by human action. On ancient causality, see A. Lesky, ‘Divine and human causation in Homeric epic’, in D. L. Cairns (ed.), Oxford Readings in Homer’s Iliad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 170–202; R. Gaskin, ‘Do Homeric heroes make real decisions?’, in Cairns, Oxford Readings in Homer’s Iliad, pp. 147–69; cf. R. V. Munson, ‘ Ananke in Herodotus’, JHS 121 (2001), pp. 30–50, esp. pp. 31–3.
33		Nem. 5.8: Αἰακίδας ἐγέραιρεν ματρόπολίν τε; Nem. 3.12–17: χαρίεντα δ’ ἕξει πόνον / χώρας ἄγαλμα, Μυρμιδόνες ἵνα πρότεροι / ᾤκησαν, ὧν παλαίφατον ἀγοράν / οὐκ ἐλεγχέεσσιν Ἀριστοκλείδας τεάν / ἐμίανε κατ’ αἶσαν ἐν περισθενεῖ μαλαχθείς / παγκρατίου στόλῳ.
34		A similar statement is also to be found in Simonides 23 (Diels), where a present-day athlete is said to be braver than ancient heroes such as Polydeukes and Herakles.
35		A. Ford, Homer: The Poetry of the Past (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 95; see also E. L. Bowie, ‘Lies, fiction and slander in early Greek poetry’, in C. Gill and T. P. Wiseman (eds), Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1993), pp. 1–37, at p. 10.
36		See e.g. Ol. 3.4–6. In addition to the Muse other divinities are also invoked to help with the orchestration of the song; see Ol. 14; Ol. 2; Isthm. 7.
37		Examples of implicit invocations to the Muse occur in Homer as well (e.g. Il. 5.703; 8.273); see W. W. Minton, ‘Invocation and catalogue in Hesiod and Homer’, TAPA 93 (1962), pp. 188–212, at pp. 208–9; I. J. F. de Jong, Narrators and Focalizers: The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad (Amsterdam: Grüner, 1987), pp. 45–50.
38		In Ol. 13 and Pyth. 11 the questions remain unanswered, while in Isthm. 5 the answer is presented as widely known. An answer to the question raised is provided only in Pyth. 4.
39		G. Norwood, Pindar (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945), p. 114.
40		This feature is not peculiar to Pindar but seems to apply to the lyric Muse in general; see M. Finkelberg, The Birth of Literary Fiction in Ancient Greece (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 163 n. 6.
41		R. Scodel, ‘Poetic authority and oral tradition in Hesiod and Pindar’, in J. Watson (ed.), Speaking Volumes: Orality and Literacy in the Greek and Roman World (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 109–38, at p. 123ff, was the first who drew attention to and discussed the significant role that tradition plays in Pindar. See also H. Mackie, Graceful Errors: Pindar and the Performance of Praise (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003).
42		See e.g. Ol. 7.54; Nem. 7.84; Pyth. 6.21. Such statements are rare in other lyric poets; see e.g., Alc. 42.1, 339.1; Sapph. fr. 166; Sim. 579.1.
43		See e.g. Homer: Pyth. 4.277–8; Hesiod: Isthm. 6.66–7. See also Pyth. 9.94–6. where a gnome is attributed to Nereus.
44		Schol. ad Pyth. 6.22 (Drachmann II, 197).
45		Hes. fr. 283 (M-W).
46		Bacchylides is normally declared to be more receptive of tradition because he acknowledges his literary predecessors by name; see D. Fearn, Bacchylides: Politics, Performance, Poetic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 20. Yet his attributions to tradition are by far fewer.
47		See e.g. the celebrated passage in Il. 2.485–6 where tradition is juxtaposed with the superior eyewitness knowledge of the Muses.
48		Scodel, ‘Poetic authority and oral tradition’, p. 125. It should be noted, however, that Pindar acknowledges the epistemic difference between seeing and knowing; see Nem. 4.91–2: ἄλλοισι δ’ ἃλικες ἄλλοι· τὰ δ’ αὐτὸς ἀντιτύχῃ, / ἔλπεταί τις ἕκαστος ἐξοχώτατα φάσθαι.
49		Mackie, Graceful Errors, p. 71.
50		Scodel, ‘Poetic authority and oral tradition’, p. 124.
51		See Huxley, Pindar’s Vision of the Past, pp. 29–30.
52		Something similar occurs in Ol. 9 for Epharmostos of Opous.
53		τῶν δὲ πεπραγμένων / ἐν δίκᾳ τε καὶ παρὰ δίκαν ἀποίητον οὐδ’ ἄν / Χρόνος ὁ πάντωνπατὴρ / δύναιτο θέμεν ἔργων τέλος (ο l. 2.15–17).
54		See, among others, J. G. Howie, ‘The revision of myth in Pindar Olympian 1’, PLLS 4 (1983), pp. 277–313.
55		On the meaning of διορθῶσαι see W. J. Verdenius, Pindar’s Seventh Olympian Ode: A Commentary (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1972), ad 21.
56		See schol . ad Ol. 7 (Drachmann I, 195).
57		In fr. 42 D–K Herakleitos argues that both Homer and Archilochos deserve to be expelled from the contests and be flogged, because their narratives abound in lies: see also frr. 56 and 57 D–K.
58		Xenophanes fr. 11. A. Gostoli, ‘La critica dei miti tradizionali alla corte di Ierone di Siracusa: Senofane e Pindaro’, QUCC 62 (1999), pp. 15–24, at p. 16, points out that such criticisms of tradition must have been common in the literary-philosophical circles of the fifth and sixth centuries. See also K. Freeman, The Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Companion to Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 94, who argues for a possible encounter between Xenophanes and Pindar at the court of Hieron in Syracuse.
59		Even though phthonos is a generic topos, it is significant that Pindar explicitly associates it not only with the distortion of the present, but also with the distortion of the past. See P. Bulman, Phthonos in Pindar (Berkeley and Oxford: University of California Press, 1992).
60		See e.g. Nem. 7.20–3: ἐγὼ δὲ πλέον’ ἔλπομαι / λόγον Ὀδυσσέος ἢ πάθαν διὰ τὸνἁδυεπῆ γενέσθ’ Ὅμηρον· / ἐπεὶ ψεύδεσί οἱ ποτανᾷ <τε> μαχανᾷ / σεμνὸν ἔπεστί τι· σοφία δὲ κλέπτει παράγοισα μύθοις. See also Ol. 1.28–9.
61		Cf. C. M. Bowra, Pindar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. 285–7; Howie, ‘Revision of myth’, esp. p. 299; C. Carey, ‘Pindar and the victory ode’, in L. Ayres (ed.), The Passionate Intellect: Essays on the Transformation of Classical Tradition Presented to Professor I. G. Kidd (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press, 1995), pp. 97–8. See also D. Loscalzo, ‘Pindaro tra μῦθος e λόγος’, in M. Cannatà Fera and G. B. d’ Alessio (eds), I Lirici Greci (Messina: Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Antichità dell’Università degli Studi di Messina, 2001), pp. 165–85, at p. 185: ‘Pindaro, in particolare, cerca nuove prospettive di interpretazione delle varianti del mito e in questo senso la sua poesia si profila come ermeneutica e quindi ha un valore attivamente etico.’
62		L. Pratt, Lying and Poetry from Homer to Pindar (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), esp. pp. 11–53 and 115–29.
63		Pratt, Lying and Poetry, p. 123.
64		Ol. 9.35–41; Nem. 5.14–18. See Norwood, Pindar, p. 80.
65		On the distinct ways in which Pindar pitches his epinician and religious persona see Pavlou, ‘Past and present’.
66		See G. M. Kirkwood, ‘Blame and envy in the Pindaric epinicion’, in D. Gerber (ed.), Greek Poetry and Philosophy: Studies in Honour of Leonard Woodbury (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984), pp. 169–83.
67		ἔργοις δὲ καλοῖς ἔσοπτρον ἲσαμεν ἑνὶ σὺν τρόπῳ, / εἰ Μναμοσύνας ἕκατι λιπαράμπυκος / εὕρηται ὕποινα μόχθων κλυταῖς ἐπέων ἀοιδαῖς.
68		Indeed, many of his accounts which are introduced with a φασί-statement are preceded by remarks or images which denote innovation. In Ol. 9.47–9, for example, Pindar proclaims that he will rehearse the story of the foundation of Opous with novelty; yet the account that follows is introduced with the verb λέγοντι (49). See also Nem. 7.77–9, 84.