\"On the Impossibility of Centaurs: The Reception of Pindar in the Roman Empire\", in Receiving the Komos. Ancient and Modern Receptions of the Victory Ode, eds. P. Agocs, C. Carey

$Page 1: \"On the Impossibility of Centaurs: The Reception of Pindar in the Roman Empire\", in Receiving the Komos. Ancient and Modern Receptions of the Victory Ode, eds. P. Agocs, C. Carey$
ON THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF CENTAURS: THE RECEPTION OF PINDAR

IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE

IAN RUTHERFORD 1. Introduction. Pindar as cultural icon

Pausanias the Periegete visiting Thebes reports that he saw several items connected with Pindar: his tomb, a statue of Hermes he dedicated, and his house, the very one that Alexander spared. Next to the house he saw the temple of the Great Mother, purporting to be the very one that Pindar mentions in the Third Pythian. That temple was only open one day a year, but, by a stroke of divine providence, Pausanias happened to be visiting on that very day. Now, it is beside the point whether this was Pindar’s real house or not (it is perhaps more likely that enterprising exegetai had created one to exploit the market).1 But what this shows is that there was an infrastructure. This was on the Grand Tour of Greek culture, to be fitted in along with other gems of Boeotian history such as the site of the Battle of Plataea. Not quite a Pindar-theme-park, but close. It was the fate of Pindar to become a cultural icon. Elsewhere in the Greco-Roman world one might find visual representations of the famous poet. In 1993 such a bust of Pindar was identified among the intellectuals and philosophers at late antique Aphrodisias, and it had earlier models.2 Pausanias mentions a statue of Pindar at Athens (much later Libanius uses Pindar’s relationship with Athens as the basis for a declamation theme: the Thebans stoned Pindar for praising Athens and someone proposes that the Athenians campaign against the Thebans themselves).3 And Pindar’s poetic initiation as a baby forms the theme of one of Philostratus’ ecphraseis: ‘I suppose you are surprised that these bees are painted with such detail, for the proboscis is clearly to be seen, and the feet and wings and the colour of their garb are as they should be, since the painting gives them the many hues with which nature endows them’.4 In view of that one might have expected to find in the Roman Empire a close engagement with Pindar’s poetry, but one would be disappointed. Literary appreciations of Pindar are thin on the ground in this period. On the one hand we have Horace’s

1 The scepticism that Slater 1971 expressed may well be justified. 2 Himmelmann 1993; on representations of intellectuals in general, see Zanker 1995. 3 Similarly, in the second of two declamations he wrote for the Ionians Himerius claims to imitate Pindar, who performed at Athens for visiting Ionians in the orthios nomos (Or. 59-60), a mini-narrative perhaps derived from some lost biographical tradition. See on this Völker 2003, p. 325 n. 31. 4 Imagines 2.12. No ancient representation corresponding to it survives. A 17th century engraving on the subject is reproduced in Bougot, Lissarrague, and Hadot 1991, p. 82. On the bee-episode in the Vitae, see Lefkowitz 1981, p. 59.

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Offprint from BICS Supplement-112 Copyright The Institute of Classical Studies University of London 2010

94 RECEIVING THE KOMOS

evocation and rejection in Odes 4.2 of the torrential and uncontrollable power of Pindar, which seems to have exerted a huge influence on the modern European perception of Pindar and of the lyric genre in general;5 specifically Horace is thinking of Pindar as a model for Jullus Antonius’ imminent celebration of Augustus’ military successes. Celebrating military triumph is not the subject of any particular Pindaric genre, but it is recognisably close to the epinician and an explicit theme in the First Pythian where Pindar relates Hieron’s triumphs over the Carthaginians (in 480 BC) and over the Etruscans (in 474 BC). It was the First Pythian also which was the focus of the sophist Favorinus, reported by Aulus Gellius in his Attic Nights, 17.10, when he argued that Virgil, wanting to emulate Pindar’s account of Etna in that ode, composed his own ecphrasis of the eruption of Etna in Aeneid 3, but that it paled in comparison with Pindar’s, being unrealistic and full of pointless conceits.6 Notice that the surprising implication of Favorinus’ criticism from a modern point of view is that Pindar is a controlled and artistic writer, quite the opposite of the implication of Horace in Odes 4.2, at least as Horace’s judgment was taken in the European tradition.7 Imitations of Pindar are also rare in this period. Part of the reason must be that this is a culture where prose rules. When Dio of Prusa wants to commemorate the life of the boxer Melancomas, he does it in prose (Or. 28, 29). When Philostratus wants to challenge the Homeric version of the Trojan War, in terms not dissimilar to some of Pindar’s reevaluations of the Homeric tradition, he does it in the colourful prose of the Heroicus.8 Menander Rhetor’s epideictic oratory, which corresponds in terms of function to Pindaric odes, is also prose, although Menander cites Pindar occasionally, as in the Sminthiakos Logos.9 Of course, the change from poetry to prose had begun much earlier on, with Isocrates, but it got even more entrenched in this period. Even when Imperial writers claim to imitate Pindar in poetry, it is not the complex metrical structures of Pindaric odes, but simpler stanzaic or stichic structures, as in

5 The image of the river may come from Pindar himself (fr. 274); contrast the orderly Pindar of Statius, Silv. 5.3.153 (qua lege recurrat / Pindaricae vox flexa lyrae). European reception: Hamilton 2004, Shankman 1988, and see the paper of Wilson in this volume. Notice that no ancient critic says that Pindar is obscure, and that view is not attested till the late Byzantine period with Eustathius: Fuhrmann 1966, Kambylis 1991b (although the notion of obscurity could be inferred from Pindar’s own statements). 6 Holford-Strevens 2003, p. 234 n. 50; Berthold 1981. 7 For the gigantomachy theme, Innes 1979; Hardie 1986, pp. 85-6. 8 For example, the theme of Odysseus as Homer’s paignion (c. 25) sounds like N.8; and Homer’s rejection of Palamedes (c. 33), which recalls the sentiment attributed to Pindar by Aelius Aristides (3.478; Pindar fr. 260) that it is unreasonable that Palamedes who was Odysseus’ intellectual superior lost out to him. 9 Russell and Wilson 1981, pp. 207-09, citing O.2.


IAN RUTHERFORD: ON THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF CENTAURS 95

Statius, Silv. 4.7 (Sapphics) or Synesius, Odes 8 (telesilleans, discussed below).10 And when athletic victories are commemorated in verse, the form is invariably epigram.11 A rare case of explicit acknowledgement of a Pindaric model comes from Nonnus who claimed to be inspired by Pindar at the start of the second half of his epic Dionysiaca. Book 25 begins with a statement that the poet will follow Homer in omitting most of the conflict and narrating only the final year and then declares that he will dedicate the second half of the work to the city of Thebes, which inspires him, and whose source is Pindar:

Pindarevh" fovrmiggo" ejpevktupe Dwvrio" hjcwv

The Dorian sound of the Pindaric phorminx resounds

This is doubly appropriate: the divine subject of Nonnus’ poem, like Pindar, is from Thebes, and Pindar composed some of the best known poems on Dionysiac themes. But the degree of Pindaric influence in Books 25-48 of that poem is very limited;12 and Nonnus’ homage to Pindar is perhaps most significant as a further testimony to the enduring cultural capital attaching to Pindar’s name.

2. Recycled Citations

If imitation is lacking, citations of Pindar are present in abundance in all the major prose authors. Most educated people at this time probably experienced Pindar in the form of quotable tags, especially since opportunities for hearing the performance of a whole poem were more or less remote. In popular experience, literary texts are experienced after distillation into memorable fragments. The logical extension of that process is the collection of quotable quotes, neatly arranged in categories, along the lines of the anthology of Stobaeus (5th century AD), who includes about twenty citations from Pindar.13 For example, in the section Peri; tw`n ta; qeia eJrmainovntwn kai; wJ" ei[h ajnqrwvpoi" ajkatavlhpto" hJ twn nohvtwn kata; th;n oujsivan ajlhvqeia (‘On those who interpret divinity, and that truth of intellectual entities is in truth unintelligible for

10 We hear of one writer only who imitated him: Apollonius from Laodikeia in Syria, among whose accomplishments, according to the ecclesiastical historian Sozomenos, were translating early Jewish history into Greek hexameters, and ‘imitating the lyre of Pindar’. Nothing by him survives, unfortunately, unless he is the author of an extant hexameter translation of the Psalms (in PG 33) which contains a few imitations of Pindar (qeodmhvtwn ajretavwn), but only a few (cf. Golega 1960). 11 Moretti 1957. 12 Elsewhere in Nonnus there are fewer traces of Pindar than one might have imagined. A Pindaric tone might have been expected in the Funeral Games of Dion. 37, held in honour of the obscure Cretan hero Opheltes (surely a reminiscence of the historical Nemean Games, which honoured a different Opheltes: Chuvin 1991; Fragoulis 1999; Vian 1998), which contains a catalogue of competitions, but there is very little that looks Pindaric, except a reference to the contest at Pellene. Two other Pindaric features may show up in Nonnus: i. brusqueness in narrative (Hopkinson 1994, p. 27; Vian 1976, p. xxvii); and ii. revision of myth: Callimachus already shows signs of this (Fuhrer 1988), but it seems to occur in Nonnus also, e.g. a propos of Aktaion in 44.290; cf. Simon 2004 ad loc, pp. 190-91. Both these features were adapted by Hellenistic writers, so that Nonnus’ claim to imitate Pindar may be similar to the Hellenistic tone that many modern critics have detected in him. 13 On Stobaeus and lyric poetry in general, see D. Campbell 1984.



mankind’) he included fr. 61, from a paean, and fr.209, the claim that physicists ajtelh` sofivaı karpo;n drevpein (‘pluck the imperfect fruit of wisdom’).14 Prose authors like Plutarch and Aristides may have read Pindar in the papyrus roll to some extent, but there was a strong tendency for writers to cite the fragments that had already been cited by earlier writers. Thus, of the eight or so passages of Pindar cited by Plato, all are re-cited several times by later writers, including writers from our period. It could be that Plato just happened to hit on the most striking passages, but it is perhaps more likely that citation by early writers like Plato has the effect of giving these passages a special status. People cite them because Plato cited them, and they cite them from him.

Table: Plato’s citations of Pindar

P.3.54-57 Asclepius bribed: much cited by early Christian writers; references in Turyn 1948 ad loc.

fr. 105a suvne" o{ toi levgw ‘Understand what I say to you!’ (already in Aristophanes, Av. 926ff.): cited by Strabo, 6.2.3; Gregory of Nazianzus, ep. 1114.

fr. 169 novmo" oJ pavntwn basileuv" ‘Custom, king of all’ (already in Herodotus): cited by Aelius Aristides, Clement.

fr. 209 ajtelh sofiva" karpo;n drevpein ‘to pluck the ineffectual fruit of wisdom’: Stobaeus etc.

fr. 213 povteron divkai teico" u{yion h] skolivai" ajpavtai" ajnabaivnei ‘whether [people] climb the higher wall through righteousness or through crooked deceptions’: Cicero, Maximus of Tyre, Schol. Pindar, Pa.

fr. 214 glukei`av oiJ kardivan ajtavlloisa ghrotrovfo" sunaorei ∆Elpiv", a} mavlista qnatw`n poluvstrofon gnwvman kuberna/ ‘With him dwells Hope, the nurse of old age who nourishes the heart, who especially governs the much-wandering judgement of mortals’: much cited.

fr. 292 hJ diavnoia pevtetai ta" te ga" ujpevnerqe... oujranou q∆ u{per ‘His intelligence flies above the earth ... and above the sky’: Clement, Porphyry, Iamblichus.

Equally, if one takes any citation from a Greek text from the Roman Empire, it is often possible to show that the author has probably drawn the citation from an earlier prose author who cites it, and, given that most of the earlier writings are lost, there must in

14 Fr. 209: possibly already in Plato, Rep. 5, 6, p. 457b. Other references in Stobaeus: 3.10 peri; ajdikivaı P.3.54; 3.11 peri; ajlhqeivaı O.l.10, 65; N.5.30; P.1.165; fr. 205; 3.38 peri; fqovnou P.1.164; 4.5 peri; ajrchı kai; peri; tou` o{poion crh; ei\nai to;n a[rconta N.4.51; 4.9 polevmou fr. 110 (hyporchema); 4.10 e[painoı tovlmhı O.1.129; 4.16 hJsucivaı fr.109 (hyporchema); 4.35 peri; luvphı O.7.30; 4.39 eujdaimoniva fr. 134; 4.45 o{ti dei ta;ı me;n eujtucivaı profaivnein, ta;ı de; ajtucivaı kruvptein, kai; ojrqw`ı kecrhsqai toiı parou`si fr.42 (hymn); 4.58 o{ti pleiston meta; qavnaton hJ mnhvmh diarrei tavcewı fr. 160.



principle be a strong possibility that the vast majority, if not all, of such citations are drawn from an earlier source.15 The reasons for citing Pindaric fragments are as many and various as the sorts of things Pindar writes. One can thus use Pindar to illustrate more or less contrary positions, as Plutarch shows in De Audiendis Poetis.16 Citing poetry can give a writer an air of being educated in the Greek classics. Another motivation is aesthetic, to achieve a certain stylistic effect (indeed, ancient rhetoricians like Hermogenes recommend the citation of poetry for this purpose). A citation is a particularly striking way to begin a work, or to finish it.17 Occasionally, writers cite Pindar to take issue with him. Maximus of Tyre begins one of his moral discussions (Or. 12, ‘Revenge’) with a citation of the morally suspect question posed by fr. 213, (povteron divkai [or divka] teicoı u{yion h] skolivaiı ajpavtaiı ajnabaivnei

ejpicqovnion gevnoı ajndrwn, divca moi novoı ajtrevkeian eijpein ‘Does the mortal race of men climb the higher wall through righteousness or through crooked deceptions [Or: Is a wall higher through justice/is justice a higher wall, or does the race of mortal men climb it through crooked designs]. I am in two minds how to answer the question truly’). The first two lines of this frag-ment had earlier been cited by Plato’s Adeimantos (Rep. 2.365b) who is making the argument that justice is not an absolute value, but worth pursuing only for the sake of outward appearance. Maximus takes issue with the idea that such a question could even be asked, and rewrites the passage in accordance with ethical propriety.18 Similarly, Aelius Aristides goes out of his way to correct the implication of a Pindaric statement about the geography of the Egyptian town Mendes,19 and elsewhere comes close to taking issue with the prima facie implication of the novmoı oJ pavntwn basileuvı fragment (fr. 169a) that divine law takes the form of violence towards innocents like Geryon, but he redeems Pindar by suggesting that the lines are not to be taken as serious advice, but an expression of indignation (... scetliavzwn ...).20 He bases this

15 Cf. also fr. 165 about the length of the life of nymphs, cited twice by Plutarch, but going back to Charon of Lampsacus. 16 21a: the citations are: I.4.48 (do anything to defeat an enemy) and I.7.47 (unjust behaviour comes to a bad end). 17 Maximus of Tyre, Or. 12 (fr. 213 at start; see below); Plutarch, Whether Fire is More Useful than Water: 955d (O.1.1 at start); id. Conspectus: the Stoics talk more paradoxically than poets: 1057d (fr. 167 [Kaineus] at start); id. Whether Old Men should Engage in Public Affairs 783b (fr. 228). Allusions at beginning and ending: Garner 1990. 18 Maximus’ paraphrase begins: kai; divkai (or divka) teicoı u{yion, which seems to imply that he interprets line 1 of the original fragment as an independent question: ‘Is a wall higher through justice/ is justice a higher wall?’ (cf. the translation in Trapp 1996, p. 108). 19 Fr. 201, Aelius Aristides Or .48.112; Pindar describes Mendes as pa;r krhmno;n qalavssaı ‘by the sea-cliff’; the same passage cited by Strabo, 17.1.19, who cites it for the more memorable reason that Pindar describes goats having sex with women, a detail that Aristides ignores; cf. also Herodotus 2.46; Lloyd 1975-88, vol. 2, p. 216; Derchain 1999. 20 It is not clear whether Aristides means that fr. 169a amounts to a complaint that divine law condones Heracles’ outrageous acts or to an ironic dismissal of the idea that it might. Scetliasmovı and irony: Hermog. p.id.2.7.8.



argument on another Pindaric fragment (fr. 81), in which the speaking subject praises Geryon in comparison to Heracles.21 A different sort of redemption is offered, in the most spectacular critique of Pindar in this period, by Galen, who playfully criticizes Pindar’s views of the origin of centaurs in the Second Pythian:22

If Pindar as a poet accepts the myth of the Centaurs, we should be indulgent, but if he speaks as an intelligent man, pretending to understand what is beyond the grasp of ordinary mortals, we must censure his claims to wisdom when he dares to write:

. . . [Centaurs] Who lay with the Magnesian mares at the foot of Pelion Thence was born a wondrous race, like to both who gave them birth. The mother gave them their lower parts, the sire the parts above. (P.2.44-8)

However, knowing that the muse of poetry needs the marvelous more than all her other ornaments, we concede you, O Pindar, the right to sing and recount legends; for you wish not to teach, I suppose but to astonish, charm and enchant your hearers. But we who are concerned with truth rather than legends know well that the substance of man is utterly unable to mingle with that of a horse.

The categories here are the familiar ones of ancient literary criticism.23 It is quite possible that the use of this passage of Pindar was already established in Hellenistic philosophy dealing with the same theme.24 A common motive for citation from Pindar is as a sort of religious authority, a development understandable in view of Greek paganism’s lack of any other definitive sacred books. From early on Pindar is regarded as a poet of reliable religious attitudes. Plato, who is generally intolerant of the religious teachings of the poets, faults Pindar only once, for his account of Asclepius succumbing to a bribe in P.3.54-7 (although there he leaves it open whether Pindar’s mistake is to represent a god as morally weak or a morally weak man as a god).25 The same attitude is manifested in texts from the Second Sophistic. Pausanias cites him as an authority on myth: Pivndaroı – o{tw/ pistav (‘Pindar – a trustworthy source’ Paus. 4.2.7).26 Plutarch too cites him for religious doctrine: for example, he adduces passages from the Threnoi in Consolatio ad Apollonium as authoritative guides to aspects

21 Or. 2, 229. Fr. 81 is not cited in any other extant source, but needless to say this does not prove that Aristides read it in the original. 22 P.2.44-48 cited in Galen, On the Usefulness of the Parts, 3; 154-5 in May’s translation. 23 Cf. the Stoic Strabo, Geog. 1.2.3-9 on Eratosthenes (conveniently available in Russell and Winterbottom 1972, pp. 300-305). 24 For Hellenistic background, cf. Lucretius 5.878-91 with Campbell 2003, pp. 140-45. 25Rep. 3, 408b. The citation of fr. 213 at Rep. 2, 365b indicates that Plato believed that Pindar’s text was in line with the amoral views espoused by Adeimantos, but there the reference is to justice rather than to piety. 26 Lynkeus could see through a tree-trunk, an allusion to N.10.61.



of the afterlife.27 One of Plutarch’s favourite theological tags from Pindar is the description of Apollo as ajganwvtatoı (‘most gentle’), now known to be from a Prosodion (fr. 52q).28 Another popular tag in imperial prose is the description of Zeus as ajristotevcnhı (‘having the best art’) (fr. 57), cited first by Dio in extant writings, but surely borrowed from some philosophical source before him; it is re-cited in many later writers, and also alluded to in one of Synesius’ hymns (see below).29 Similarly, Aelius Aristides cites Pindar for Athena’s position at the right hand of Zeus (fr. 146; Hymn to Athene [Or. 37, 6]); and near the end of his Hymn to Zeus (43.30) refers to him (fr. 145/35a Schroeder) for the opinion that Zeus alone was qualified to sing his own praises since he ‘has a greater portion’. ‘For Pindar’, he says, ‘has expressed this better than anything else said about Zeus by anyone’. As has been noticed, this sentiment is likely to be derived from the part of the so-called ‘Hymn to Zeus’ where Zeus brought the Muses into being at the gods’ request (a passage Aristides himself cites elsewhere as proof of the power of the word).30 A different aspect of Pindar’s authority on sacred matters in this period is illustrated by the Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry who is said to have written a monograph on Pindar’s account of the sources of the River Nile (peri; tw`n kata; Pivndaron tou Neivlou phgwn). It seems likely that the reference is to the Pindaric fragment about the deity who presides over the Nile, mentioned twice by Philostratus and once in a scholion on Aratus’ Phainomena (fr. 282), a testimony that contrasts radically with the ration-alizing and scientific theories about the Nile familiar to us from Greek writers.31 We know that in his commentary on Plato’s Timaeus Porphyry reported as an Egyptian doctrine the idea that the Nile ‘spouts up’ from the earth, rather than being the result of melting snow in the distant south, and it seems likely that in his treatise on Pindar he developed that idea, possibly applying the same allegorical technique that he uses in his extant writing On the Cave of the Nymphs.32 The early Christian writers might have been expected to reject Pindar as a representative of the values of traditional Greek paganism.33 Occasional examples of direct criticism are found, as when Clement of Alexandria criticizes the implication of Pindar in a fragment from an unknown poem (fr. 217: glukuv ti kleptovmenon mevlhma Kuvpridoı) that stolen love is sweet.34 But more often, they have a more charitable attitude towards the statements of Greek writers about religion because they see them as ultimately derived from Jewish religion. To take an example from Clement again, in the Stromata (5.14), he

27 Fr. 129 at Cons. Ad Ap. 35, 120c; fr. 131b at Con. Ad Ap. 35, 120c. 28 In de E apud Delphos (21, 394b), de or. 7, 413c; adv. Epic. 22, p.1102e. 29 Dio Prus. Or. 12, 81ff.; five times in Plutarch; twice in Clement. 30 Or. 2, 420; Turyn 1948 ad loc; Wilamowitz 1922, p. 190 n.1. On Pindar in Aelius Aristides’ Hymn to Serapis, see Vassilaki 2005. 31 Bonneau 1964, 232-34; Porphyry fr. 421T in Smith 1993. I hope to discuss Porphyry’s treatise more in a future paper. 32 Porphyry, In Platonis Timaeum F14 Sodano. 33 Opelt 1967. 34 Clem. Alex. Paedag. 3.72.1 (1, 275St.). The context is Proverbs 9.13-18a.



combines the opening of Nemean 6 with the ajristotevcnaı pavter tag (fr. 57, 5.39, 394.25ff.):

And more mystically the Boeotian Pindar, being a Pythagorean, says: ‘One is the race of gods and men, And from one mother both have breath;’ that is, from matter; and he names the one creator of these things, whom he calls ‘Father, chief artificer’, who furnishes the means of advancement on to divinity, according to merit.

The fact that Pindar is a ‘Pythagorean’ is in line with Clement’s general belief that Pythagoreanism is a form of Greek religion specially indebted to Judaism. Other Pindaric passages that Clement cites approvingly are:35

fr. 30: the fragment about Zeus and Themis from the so-called ‘Hymn to Zeus’: Str. 5.14, 418.23ff.36

fr. 61, fr.140d, fr.141: the omnipotence of god: Str. 5.14, 413, 14ff.37 fr. 108b: making night during the day: Str. 5.14, 393.14ff. fr. 169: law master of everything: Str. 1.28.111.9; 2.4, 122.21 fr. 227: work brings success: Str. 4.7 270.18 fr. 233: nothing is credible to unbelievers (pisto;n a[pistoiı oujdevn), linked strangely to

Matthew 21.22: ‘Whatever you ask for in prayer, believing, you shall receive’. fr. 180: discretion in speech: Str. 1.10, 32.14 fr. 292: the everywhere-traveling human soul: Str. 5.98, 391.16; cited first by Plato,

Theaet. 173e, and reused many times by writers of this period.38

More rarely, Clement seems to use Pindar in the traditional way as a stylistic embellishment, for example applying the ajristotevcna pavter tag to the creator deity (Protrep. 10), and, most spectacularly, at Paed. 2.10, 223.24, where he says of Jesus Christ that he ‘shines conspicuous in gold’ (wJı cruso;ı diaprevpei), a clear reminiscence of the second line of the First Olympian.39 3. The Triumph of the Victory-Ode

From the point of view of the study of the reception of Pindar, the crucial thing about the Empire is that this is the period during which we move from seventeen books to four. The

35 Stefanescu 1960. 36 The fragment comes just before Clement cites Bacchylides 15.51-6. On the question whether the ‘Hymn to Zeus’ is correctly identified as such, see now D’Alessio 2007. 37 Fr. 61 from a Paean, also cited by Stobaeus; Ecl. 2.1.8 (2, 4 Wachsmuth-Hense) 38 Porph. de abstin. 1.36; Iamblich. protre. 14; Eusebius, PE 12.25; allusions at Galen, Protrep. 1 (MG1, p.2 Kuehn); Marcus Aurelius 2.13 etc; Turyn 1948, ad 249. 39 ‘And if the Word, speaking of the Lord through David sings (Ps. 44.9ff.): ‘The daughters of kings made you glad by honour; the queen stood at your right hand, clad in cloth of gold, girt with golden fringes’, it is not luxurious raiment that he indicates; but shows the immortal adornment, woven of faith, of these that have found mercy, that is, the Church; in which the ‘guileless’ Jesus ‘shines conspicuous as gold’ and the elect are the golden tassels’. Cf. fr. 124c: an illustration (1.21, 64.5); fr. 194: the first words of the Paedagogus.



thirteen lost books included all the ‘religious’ genres, a surprising development, perhaps, in view of the tendency to cite Pindar as a religious authority in this period.40 And the same change shows up in patterns of citation, allowance being made for the fact that many fragments are re-cited from other authors rather than from the texts directly. Wilamowitz’s desperate suggestion was that this curtailment of the edition was done by a shadowy grammarian called Palamedes of Elea, mentioned by Athenaios in the Deipnosophistai and credited by the Suda with a hypomnema on Pindar.41 Irigoin, in his monumental study of the transmission of the Pindar text, suggested two factors that may have been involved:42 a) that the epinicia were perceived as more human; and b) that the popularity of athletic competitions may have shaped people’s expectations. He also suggested c) that the selection of the epinicia was a deliberate editorial decision, since the evidence indicates that the selection did not reflect ‘public taste’ (because so many authors of the 2nd century AD still cite from all the genres), but rather a ‘concerted design’.43 I am not sure that there is a problem here. For one thing, the crucial period when the other genres are discarded now seems to be the 3rd century or later rather than the 2nd. For another thing, citation from the full range of Pindaric genres in prose authors need not be taken as reflecting public taste in this period, since prose authors may well have for the most part drawn their citations not from the books of Pindar in circulation but rather from earlier prose-authors. The chances are that the second of Irigoin’s options is right. Athletic culture flourished in this period. We now know that the Olympics were still going strong right to the end of the 4th century AD, in this way actually outliving other aspects of pagan religion.44 Athletic culture enjoyed a longevity equal or greater to this in Asia Minor,45 and it also flourished in Roman Egypt.46 One cannot do better than cite Louis Robert here:47

40 On the survival of the victory odes in papyri of the later Roman empire, cf. Ucciardello’s study in this volume. 41Athenaios 9.397a; C. Wendel RE s.v. 2513; Irigoin 1952, 72; Wilamowitz 1921, p. 186 n. 125; Förster 1875. 42 Irigoin 1952, pp. 96-97. 43 Although in contradiction to that he also says that Lucian does indeed show a tendency to cite from the epinicia. 44 Previously, the latest dateable Olympic victory was Ol. 264 = AD 277; two isolated ones: Philoumenos from Philadelphia and Prince Varazdats of Armenia (Moretti 1957, n 943 and 944). List of victors after 385: SEG 50, 463; Archaeologische Entdeckungen (DAI) 2.95; SEG 51, 541; SEG 45, 412; 48.553; Ebert 1994, pp. 238-41; Decker and Verhoeven 1991. 45 Mitchell 1990 (on Wörrle's edition of the Oinoanda decree); Van Nijf 1999 and 2001; Newby 2005, pp. 246-55. 46 See Perpillou-Thomas 1993. Egyptian Hermopolis was a particular centre for athletes (Drew-Bear 1988), and Menander Rhetor seems to imply that in this respect Hermopolitans were the new Aeginetans (1.361.3: Russell and Winterbottom 1981, pp. 60-1): Aijginhtai me;n ga;r ejpi; ajqlhtikh`i kai; ÔErmoupolitai megalofronou`si. Russell and Wilson 1981, p. 262, take a different view, but cf. the sensible comment of van Minnen 2002, p. 298. 47 Robert 1982, p. 38 (= Opera Minora Selecta vol. 6, p. 712).



Sous l’Empire ce fut une prolifération de nouveaux concours. La paix augustéenne s’étendit partout et, pour la plupart des provinces grecques, elle se prolongea fort avant dans le IIIe siècle. Ce fit une explosion agonistique ...

This interest in athletic competitions went far beyond the organization of the competitions themselves. The metaphors of competition and victory in the games pervaded the mentality of the period.48 In particular, the agonistic culture also appealed to early Christianity.49 Robert again:50

Les Pères du IVe siècle, comme avaient fait Saint Paul, Clément d’Alexandrie et le Juif d’Alexandrie Philon, utilisent les images agonistiques pour les exhortations morales

The agonistic culture even found its way into the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible: one of the regularly recurring Psalmodic titles, lamnassēah, which seems to mean something like ‘for the preeminent one’, probably the chief musician, confused the Greek translators: while the Septuagint regularly has eijı to; tevloı, the contributors to Origen’s Hexapla interpret it as something to do with victory: Aquila regularly renders tw/ nikopoiw/, while Symmachus has ejpinivkioı, and Theodotion sometimes gives eijı to; ni`koı.51 One early Christian writer, Gregory of Nyssa, constructed a theory of how to interpret the Psalms on the basis of these mistranslated titles, arguing that they illustrate the principle that life is a stadium, a competition, a wrestling match with evil, and that its aim to secure victory through virtue.52 Gregory never mentions Pindar or the panhellenic games in his work on the Psalms (or anywhere else, for that matter), but that is likely to have been the general context for his interpretation. One late text that seems to link Christianity, the epinician and Pindar is the 8th Hymn of Synesius, on the apotheosis of Christ. The form is, if not the grand triads of Pindaric odes, at least lyric: stichic telesilleans, with a three-line refrain, repeated twice. Notice in particular the description of the ascent of Christ, which the aither celebrates with an epinician song (36-40):

aijqh;r de; gelavssaı sofo;ı aJrmonivaı pavthr ejx eJptatovnou luvraı ejkeravssato mousikavn ejpinivkion ejı mevloı

And with a laugh Aither, wise father of harmony, mixed a cup of music from the seven-toned lyre to be a victory song.

48 See the excellent studies of König 2005 and Newby 2005; athletics as a metaphor in Neo-platonism: Dombrowski 1987. 49 Mitchell 1990, p. 191; for aspects of the vocabulary, Merkelbach 1975, pp. 108ff. and 1989. See also Combes 1997. 50 Robert 1982, p.45 = OGM 6, p.719. 51 On this, see Delekat 1964, pp. 283-90; Hiebert 1986, 131. 52 See Heine 1995, à propos of Gregory 2.2.14-16.



The reference to epinician is probably enough to bring Pindar to mind,53 but in case it is not, there are a couple of striking reminiscences of Pindaric language as well: when Christ rises, the Sun recognizes the ajristotevcnan (fr. 57 again) mind of god (l. 53) and then he reaches heaven where ajkamantovpodaı Time (l. 63) does not dwell, but ageless Aion only: the epithet ajkamantovpodaı (‘with untiring foot’) is only otherwise found in Pindar.54 In this context it is worth returning to the significance of Nonnus’ homage to Pindar at the start of Book 25 of the Dionysiaca and to the question what sort of Pindaric poetry Nonnus might be thinking of. Both Thebes and Dionysus vaguely suggest the dithyramb. And it is worth bearing in mind that a conceptual link between the dithyramb and military triumph may be implied in the routine use by writers from this period of the Greek word qriavmboı which is formally and semantically close to diquvramboı, as an equivalent to the Latin ‘triumphus’.55 However, elsewhere in the Dionysiaca, the most striking reminiscence of Pindar comes in the course of the narrative of the battle between Zeus and the hundred-handed Typhoeus in the opening books, where Zeus is aided by the young Kadmos (another Theban singer) who plays music to distract the monster while Zeus retrieves his weapons. The key-text here is a dialogue between Typhoeus, who asks Kadmos to sing his imminent victory over Zeus, and Kadmos who complies (Dion. 1.486-8):

baio;n ejmh`ı suvriggoı ejqavmbeeı h\con ajkouvsaı: eijpev, tiv ken rJevxeiaı, o{tan sevo qwkon ajeivsw eJptatovnou kiqavrhı ejpinivkion u{mnon ajravsswn

You liked the little tune of my pipes, when you heard it; tell me, what would you do when I strike out a song of victory, epinikion, on the harp of seven strings?

Two things suggest Pindar: first, as Philip Hardie points out, the word ejpinivkion in this line surely triggers Pindaric associations by itself.56 And given that, we can hardly avoid the intertext of the description of Typhoeus buried under Etna in the First Pythian (the monster’s intolerance of divine music there is, as Hardie observes, an attitude he develops only after his defeat). The combination of ‘epinician’ and ‘gigantomachy’ here is striking, and suggests that in Nonnus’ mind the true subject of Pindaric epinician is not athletics, but the cosmic struggle between divine authority and monstrous insurrection (a result,

53 Cf. on Nonnus, Dion. 1.488, discussed below. 54 O.4.1, O.3.3, O.5.3. Another possible Pindaric resonance is in the word ejfavmeroı at line 12 of the same hymn (though the same word is also found at Pros Paionion Peri tou Dorou 5. 141, 11: an epigram on an astrolabe cited from Ptolemaios AP 9.577). Citations of Pindar in Synesius: P.9.87 cited at Ep. 150, 268.7 Garzya; Phala Enc. 13,6 ‘if it is possible to obtain the prayer of Pindar and live ajpo; tw`n oijkeivwn’, which is generally taken as a mistake for Bacchylides 1.167 (so in Lamoureux and Aujoulat 2004; Maehler 1982-97 ad loc.; Terzaghi cites O.5, 23 and O.12.19, but N.3.30 is more appropriate from the Pindaric corpus). On Dreams 13, 172.15 Terzaghi, cites fr. 214, a secondary citation from Plato’s Republic, clearly; the end of Aiguptioi: cites O.1.34-5; c.10 (82): fr. 105. 55 Versnel 1970, pp. 16ff.; Cairns 1972, pp. 96-97; I discuss this further in Rutherford forthcoming. 56 Hardie 1986. The monster’s fondness for music is something that can be paralleled in the Hurro-Hittite Kingship of Heaven Cycle, which may well have influenced earlier Greek myths and narratives about Zeus and Typhon: see Rodriguez 2002, p. 151 n.10.



perhaps, of taking the opening of the First Pythian as definitive for the genre).57 Read against this background the song Nonnus is thinking of at the start of Book 25 is as likely to be an epinician as a dithyramb (precisely the same slippage of the epinician genre from athletic victory to military triumph we observed in Horace Odes 4.2).58

57 Gigantomachy is not, in fact, such a big theme in the rest of Pindar, though cf. P. 8.15ff. On a misattribution of gigantomachy to Pindar in a Byzantine source see D’Alfonso 2004. 58 Thanks to Bruno Currie and Lucia Prauscello.


Documents

\"On the Impossibility of Centaurs: The Reception of Pindar in the Roman Empire\", in Receiving the Komos. Ancient and Modern Receptions of the Victory Ode, eds. P. Agocs, C. Carey