Dithyrambs for Athens

Leofranc Holford-Strevens

• Soliciting Darkness: Pindar, Obscurity and the Classical Tradition by John T. Hamilton
  Harvard, 348 pp, £17.95, April 2004, ISBN 0 674 01257 7
• The First Poets: Lives of the Ancient Greek Poets by Michael Schmidt
  Weidenfeld, 449 pp, £20.00, April 2004, ISBN 0 297 64394 0

The Theban poet Pindar (c.520-446 BC), though he wrote much else, is principally known for his magnificent odes, known as epinicians, in praise of athletic victories by aristocrats and tyrants, nowadays esteemed less than Athenian democrats and Macedonian monarchs, but no worse than their counterparts in later ages who patronised poets, painters and composers still admired. In his day as in ours adulation was bestowed on sporting champions, who were held to confer glory on their cities as their modern counterparts do on their countries, though there was no shift from noble amateurs to plebeian professionals such as we have seen within the last hundred years. Pindar’s language is sometimes obscure to those who have not ventured beyond tragedy and Homer, since they need to look up rather more words; his thought is frequently compressed.