PINDAR (Gr. Ilivbapos, c. 522-443 B.c.), the great lyric poet of ancient Greece, was born at Cynoscephalae, in Boeotia, at the time of the Pythian games (fr. 175,
193)i, which is taken by Bockh to be 522 B.C. He would thus be some thirty four years younger than Simonides of Ceos. He was the son of Daiphantus and Cleodice (or Cleidice). The clan of the Aegidae tracing their line from the hero Aegeus—belonged to the "Cad mean" element of Thebes, i.e., to the elder nobility whose sup posed date went back to the days of the founder Cadmus. Pindar stood, that is, within the circle of those families for whom the heroic myths were domestic records. He had a personal link with the memories which everywhere were most cherished by Dorians, no less than with those which appealed to men of "Cadmean" or of Achaean stock. And the wide ramifications of the Aegidae throughout Hellas rendered it peculiarly fitting that a member of that illustrious clan should celebrate the glories of many cities in verse which was truly Panhellenic.
Pindar is said to have received lessons in flute-playing from one Scopelinus at Thebes, and afterwards to have studied at Athens under the musicians Apollodorus (or Agathocles) and Lasus of Hermione. In his youth, as the story went, he was defeated in a poetical contest by the Theban Corinna—who, in reference to his profuse employment of Theban mythology, is 'The references are to the edition of Pindar by C. A. M. Fennell (i8o .-oc)), and the fourth edition of Bergk's Poetae lvrici said to have advised him "to sow with the hand, not with the sack." There is an extant fragment in which Corinna reproves another Theban poetess, Myrtis, "for that she, a woman, con tended with Pindar" (art gava g(a Ilcv61cpoco ror' gpcv)
—a sentiment which hardly fits the story of Corinna's own victory. The facts that stand out from these meagre traditions are that Pindar was precocious and laborious. Preparatory labour of a somewhat severe and complex kind was, indeed, indispensable for the Greek lyric poet of that age. Lyric composition demanded studies not only in metre but in music, and in the adaptation of both to the intricate movements of the choral dance (Opxnarcid).
Several passages in Pindar's extant odes glance at the long technical development of Greek lyric poetry before his time, and at the various elements of art which the lyrist was required to temper into a harmonious whole (see, e.g., 0/. iii. 8, vi. 91, xiii. i8,
xiv. 15; Pyth. xii. 23, etc.). The earliest ode which can be dated (Pyth. x.) belongs to the twentieth year of Pindar's age (502 B.c.) ; the latest (Olymp. v.) to the seventieth (452 B.c.
He visited the court of Hiero at Syracuse; Theron, the despot of Acragas, also entertained him ; and his travels perhaps included Cyrene. Tradition notices the special closeness of his relations with Delphi: "He was greatly honoured by all the Greeks, because he was so beloved of Apollo that he even received a share of the offerings; and at the sacrifices the priest would cry aloud that Pindar come in to the feast of the
His wife's name was Megacleia (another account says Timoxena, but this may have been a second wife), and he had a son named Daiphantus and two daughters, Eumetis and Protomache. He is said to have died at Argos, at the age of seventy-nine, in 443 B.C.
Among the Greeks of his own and later times Pindar was pre-eminently distinguished for his piety towards the gods. He tells us that, "near to the vestibule" of his house (Pyth. 78), choruses of maidens used to dance and sing by night in praise of the Mother of the Gods (Cybele) and Pan—deities peculiarly associated with the phrygian music of the flute, in which other members .of Pindar's family besides the poet himself are said to have excelled. A statue and shrine of Cybele, which he dedicated at Thebes, were the work of the Theban artists, Aristomedes and Socrates. He also dedicated at Thebes a statue to Hermes Agoraios, and another, by Calamis, to Zeus Ammon. The latter god claimed his especial veneration because Cyrene, one of the homes of his Aegid ancestry, stood "where Zeus Ammon hath his seat," i.e., near the oasis and temple (Pyth. iv. i6). The author of one of the Greek lives of Pindar says that, "when Pausanias the king of the Lacedaemonians was burning Thebes, some one wrote on Pindar's house, 'Burn not the house of Pindar the poet', and thus it alone escaped destruction." This incident, of which the occasion is not further defined, has been regarded as a later invention'.