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 and Athens, he had a special relationship with the Sicilian tyrants and the Aeginetan aristocratic families, but his reputation was Panhellenic. Some of Pindar's odes allude to the most relevant historical event of his lifetime: the Persian invasion, which was put to an end by Greek victories at Salamis in 480 and Plataia in 479. In odes for the Sicilian victors, Pindar emphasized the triumphs of the local rulers against the Carthaginians (Himera, 480) and the Etruscans (Kyme, 474). Ancient biographies of Pindar, in which he is described as theophilés (loved by the Gods), highlight certain "prodigious" episodes of his life. The biographies claim, for example, that a bee made a honeycomb on his mouth as he was sleeping on Mount Helikon (a symbol of his inspiration), that the goddess Demeter reproached him for having ignored her in his hymns, and that the god Pan was heard singing one of Pindar's songs in the mountains near Thebes.
The ancient editors classified the Pindaric poems into seventeen books containing hymns, paeans (a variety of hymn, mostly in honor of Apollo), dithyrambs (Dionysiac hymns), processional odes, maiden songs and others "separate from the maiden songs," dance-odes, eulogies, dirges, and victory odes.
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