PIN'DAR (Gk. ITIV6apos, I'indoros). The most famous of Greek lyric poets. He was born !war Thebes in Bceotia, c.522 B.C.. and probably died after 415, the date of his latest known poem. A conservative in politic; and religion, a singer of the athletic prowess of the old .Eolian and Dorian nobility, he seems to belong to a more ancient order than that of the great Athenians of the fifth century n.e. Apart from the magnificence of his style. the chief points- of interest in l'indar for its are that: (1 ) He was before the recovery of Bacchylides from an Egyp tian papyrus the only Greek lyric poet who could he studied in a considerable body of work: (2) he is the representative of a provincial, colonial, and in some ways larger Greece than that in which we are wont to see only a foil to Periclean Athens: (3) he is the first extant Greek writer to proclaim the immortality of the soul and to portray a future judgment: (4) he shows us the Greek myths in transition from their treatment by Ilesiod, the older epic, and the lost lyrics of Stesicho•us to the forms which they assumed upon the Attic stage.
Only the outline of his life is known. His earliest extant ode. the tenth Pythian. dates from about his twentieth year, before which time he is said to have studied under the best musical and poetic masters of Athens and Thebes, and to have been the pupil o• the rival of the Boeotian poetesses, Myrtis and Corinna. An early poem overladen with mythic ornament, is said to have called forth from the latter the famous admoni tion: "One should sow with the hand and not with the whole sack." Pindar's family belonged to the noble clan of the -Egeids which had wide spread connections in Thera, Sparta, and Cyrene. Ili- deep religious feeling caused him to cultivate intimate relations with the priesthood of the great shrines, especially that of Delphi, where his name was publicly honored for centuries. He seems to have traveled widely to all parts of the Greek world from which his national reputation brought him At the court of Hier° in Syracuse he may have witnessed the famous eruption of Mount Etna, so magnificently de scribed by hint in the first Pythian and by .Eschy his in the Prometheus Bound. He composed hymns or eneoinia for the priests of Ammon., for Alexander of Macedon, Areesilaus of Cyrene, Theron of Agrigentum, lliero of and for the noblest families of Thessaly. Rhodes. Cor inth, .:Egina. Athens. and Tenedos. No other Greek poet has so wide a geographical range. None presents so vivid a picture of the dazzling diversity of greater Hellas: none so adequately expresses the underlying spiritual unity pre served by the common language and religion, and the tradition of the great Panhellenic temples and games. His Hellenic patriotism has been questioned because lie says so little of Marathon and Salamis and in praise of Athens. As a citi zen of a *Medizine-' State, he could hardly have said inure. Tradition has it that he said too much to please the Theban;. who lined him for the line cited from a lost dithyramb: "0 splen did. violet-crowned. glorious Athens. famed in song, pillar of Hellas, city divine." The legend add- that the reward bestowed by the Athenians more than paid the tine.
Pindar and his contemporary Simonides represent the culmination of the Greek choral lyric composed with music to be sung by trained choruses of youths and maid ens. as distinguished from the personal lyric of a Sappho or Aleams recited or half chanted to a slight accompaniment on the strings. Only frag ments remain of Pindar's hymns to the g,Kls. paean;, dithyramb.:. processional odes. dancing songs, dirges, and encomiums. But we possess
practically entire the tour hook, of his Epinieian or triumphal hymns composed in honor of the vic tors at the four great national games—the olym plan, Pythian, Isthmian. and Yemeni'. The victor in the Olympic games reef ved such honors as Rome and the modern world would bestow only upon the trimnphant soldier. The victory was celebrated on the -pot by festivities generally im promptu. and later at the victor's home by tri umphal processions, banquets, and serenade- often repeated for many anniversaries. If the victor was rich or haul wealthy patrons. a Pindar. Si sir Bacchylides would be commissioned to write a special hymn to be sung during the procession or at the banquet by a trained chorus of his comrades. A large part of such a poem was conventionally predetermined. The victor. his clan, and his city must he celebrated. The great commonplaces of athletics. the praise of youthful pluck and endurance and of the beauty of young manhood. insist be touched upon. There must he a word of admonition to moderation, and perseverance in well-doing: a prayer for the con tinued blessing of heaven, a deprecation of the `jealousy.' whether of gods or men. which Greek feeling attached to all preeminence. The poet's task was to ennoble this commonplace by stately and melodious utterance, to transfigure the whole in the light of the splendor and magnificence of the Olympian or Pythian festival, to raise the petty and personal into relation with the larger life of Hellas, to exhibit the tran-ient success of the hour as the natural flowering of the glorious tradition of family, elan, and city. To this end Pindar employs the myth. which tills the central portion of the ode and often seems to have little connection with the immediate theme, but which closer study shows to be chosen with an art that we can sometimes only divine. either to express the dominant mood of the occasion or to connect the hero with the mythic past. The English read er may compare the treatment of the legend of the golden fleece in the fourth Pythian with the leisurely epic handling of the same theme in Morris's Life and Death of Jason.
It is customary to describe Pimlar's sublimity by comparing hint to the eagle or the lonely Al pine peak. His style is untranslatable and inde scribable. Horace compares it to a torrent that has burst its banks. Boileau, Cowley, Gray. and the long line of eighteenth-century authors of Pindaric 11111.: thought to reproduce it by jerky, irregular rhythms, abrupt transitions. and bom bastic diction. Alatthew Arnold praises it as the grand style in Myers's beauti ful translation into archaiiii-g English prose re produces the matter excellently. but hardly the manner. It is grand style in simplicity" doubtless. But l'indar's simplicity is compatible with an "intoxication of style." a polysyllabic :-,10111 idly. a eyel.qw:in phrase architecture, a ka leidoscopic (lash of metaphor, and above all an organ roll of word music which no modern tongue can compass. The best translation is that of Myers. Carey is the most readable of the•older translators in verse. The chief editions are those of li1tckh (the foundation). Schneidewin-Dissen. Christ ('fenlua•r text, and larger edition with Latin notes), Fennell. Gildersleeve (Olympian and Pythian Odes). The best comment and criti cism will be found in Croiset's Pindare (2d ed..
Paris. 1886) in Fracearoli, Le (Ali di Pindaro IV erona , 1894 1 ; in Jebb, Levi ores on 11 Poetry ( London, 1893), and his paper in the third volume of the .loarnal of Hellenic .Studies, and in Gildersleove's Introduction.