Pindar Summary

Pindar PINDAR. The links between poetry and religion were tight in ancient Greece, and Pindar (c. 518–c. 438 BCE) was no exception. Born in Cynoscephalae (near Thebes) and educated in Thebes an... Read more

Biography EssayThis judgment by Quintilian in his first-century- A.D. survey of Greek poets, Institutio Oratoria, was the standard evaluation of Pindar throughout antiquity and helps to explain why ... Read more

"Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar is by far the greatest." This judgment by Quintilian in his first-century-A.D. survey of Greek poets, Institutio Oratoria, was the standard evaluation of Pindar throug... Read more

In the following excerpt, Livingstone comments on Pindar's thought as representative of Hellenism. Pindar is writing for the society that existed in the early part of the fifth century; for ... Read more

In the excerpt below, Segal elucidates the significance of sending messages between the living and the dead in Pindar's odes. In a dithyramb for Thebes, Pindar calls himself an "outst... Read more

In the essay below, Baker discusses the figurative language, meters, rhetoric, and myths that comprise the style of Pindar's odes." There was once a time when Pindar was regarded by m... Read more

In the essay below, Freeman surveys Pindar's odes for the poet's own views about his art in many of its aspects. All writers are to some extent consciously interested in the technique... Read more

In the excerpt below, Vivante examines action in Pindar's odes as expressing fulfillment of mythic forms rather than individual feats. … If … we turn to ancient Greece, we find... Read more

In the following essay, Lefkowitz examines the vocabulary and diction of "Pythian 8," focusing on the proem, the encounter with Alcmeon, and the last stanza. I ought to begin by expla... Read more