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Weaving and triumphal shouting in Pindar, Pythian 12.6–12
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
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‘Flute’, as Jenny Strauss Clay notes, is a mistranslation of αὐλ⋯ς since the ancient Greek aulos consisted of ‘two reed mouthpieces and two pipes, sometimes of different lengths, played simultaneously. Its dual structure permitted antiphonal execution; one pipe could produce the melody, the other, some sort of accompaniment or perhaps a drone.’ She believes (perhaps correctly) that the dual structure and dual sound of the aulos are implicit in the following passage in which Pindar describes Athena‘s invention of the art of playing this instrument (P. 12.6–17).
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References
1 Clay, J. S.,‘Pindar's Twelfth Pythian: reed and bronze’, AJPh 113 (1992), 519–25, at 520.Google Scholar
2 Kohnken A., ‘Two notes on Pindar’, BICS 25 (1978), 92–6, at 92, believes that Tp‘nov avoev refers to a cry for help, Perseus’ third and crucial cry for help to Athena, when he is trying to defend himself against Medusa's sisters.
3 C. Segal, ‘Perseus and the Gorgon: Pindar Pythian 12.9–12 reconsidered’, AJPh 116 (1995), 7–17, at 7. The word in brackets is not in Segal's translation; the omission of it or of an equivalent was surely an oversighGoogle Scholar
4 Clay (n. 1), pp. 522–3, maintains that Perseus' victory cry does not occur until after he gets to Seriphos, i.e. significantly after the Gorgons' lament. She does not explicitly state when and where Athena invents the art of playing the aulos. But her theory entails that this too does not occur until after Perseus' return to Seriphos. By Clay's theory, then, the sounds that Athena produces simultaneously on the flute she herself never hears simultaneously. Segal holds that Perseus' victory cry occurs when and where he kills Medusa. I am not sure that there is any such shout, but if there is, I am sure that Segal is right about when and where it occursGoogle Scholar
5 Some, I suspect, would hold that it does not even suggest it. If they are right and if therefore the dual structure of the aulosis irrelevant, then SiairXegaio'carries the meaning which Boeckh gives it: artificiosis nexibus flexibusque componens.See A. Boeckh, Pindari opera quae supersuntvol. II, part 2 (Leipzig, 1821), p. 544.Google Scholar
6 Clay (n. 1), p. 523. Her italics
7 Besides Hdt 4.67.2, cited below, the only passage (to my knowledge in which 
certainly means ‘interweave’ is from the love letters by the fifth-century A.D. rhetorician Aristaenetus 
1.25). The verb does not occur in Homeric epic or the extantworks of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Thucydides, Lysias, Xenophon, Isocrates, Demosthenes, or Isaeus.
8 Some follow Maas in reading in place of
which would entail that the prayer is for only the victor. But the additional dative iv hardly makes the passage any easier; cf. C. Carey, A Commentary on Five Odes of Pindar (Salem, NH, 1981), p. 176.
9 In the citation from Aristophanes
is perhaps used without an object,
being adverbial and perhaps dependent on 
The participial phrase, however, seems to me to function in place of a direct object. I therefore consider this usage of
to be essentially the same as that in the other passages where its object is a word denoting a period of time.
10 This is in fact the most common usage of
is perhaps used without an object,
being adverbial and perhaps dependent on 
which justifies Carey's comment on
‘usually a virtual synonym of
See Carey (n. 8), p. 176.
11 Taylor, Cf. A. E., A Commentary on Plato's Timaeus (Oxford, 1928), pp. 174–5: ’The complete domination of the cosmic soul over “its” body... is expressed by saying that the soul is everywhere inwoven into the texture of the body... If we tried to take the imagery au pied de la lettre, we should have to suppose that the
before its body existedGoogle Scholar
12 Martin captures this sense in translating
of the aulos counterpoints the joyful achievement with the resounding dirge of the Gorgons.'
13 Segal (n. 3), p. 14. The word in brackets is not found in Segal's text, but I suspect was accidentally omitted. Cf. Clay (n. 1), p. 523: ‘At the moment of victory, when the goddess has rescued her favourite from his toils
of the aulos counterpoints the joyful achievement with the resounding dirge of the Gorgons.’
14 (18) means simply ‘when’, not also ‘since’, as A. Kohnken, Die Funktion des Mythos bei Pindar (Berlin, 1971), p. 141, holds
15 (10) refers to the Gorgons' grief, not Perseus' troubles, as Kohnkenmaintains. See Kohnken (ibid., p. 131; and ‘Perseus’ Kampf und Athenes Erfindung Bemerkungen zu Pindar, Pythien 12)', Hermes 104 (1976), 257–65.
16 The explanations ofVOIMOS found in the scholia and in Plutarch, De Musica, ch. 7, may all be inaccurate, but there can be no doubt that the phrase refers to something familiar to Pindar's contemporaries
17 C. Segal, ‘The gorgon and the nightingale: the voice of female lament and Pindar's Twelfth Pythian Ode', in L. C. Dunn and N. A. Jones (edd.), Embodied Voices: The Representation of Female Vocality in Western Culture (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 17–34, argues that Pythian 12 also creates links between the old and the new in a different way—by linking the beautiful, ‘non-maternal, virginal, sister-figure’ (p. 20) Athena to the ugly, ‘Evil-Mother’ (p. 20) Medusa: ‘In the logic of the myth, Athena...acquires Medusa's attributes and transforms her monstrous maternity into a safer form’ (p. 26). As I see it, the ‘logic’ by which Medusa is transformed into Athena is the logic not ‘of the myth’ or of Pindar's poem but of Segal's own structuralist thought.
18 Clay(n. l), p.521
19 L. Dissen, Pindari Carmina Part II (Gotha, 1847), p.
20 U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Pindaros (Berlin, 1922), p. 146: ‘Schon ware es nicht, wenn Perseus "den dritten Teil der Schwestern erledigte", denn dann miiBte er das Ganze gewollt haben....Nun beachte man, daB fiopos [sic] und fioipa nicht ohne Bedacht nebeneinander stehen werden. Der seltsame Ausdruck "der dritte Teil der Schwestern" ist eben deshalb gewahlt, und sobald man die Worte nur richtig verbindet, ergibt sich das Trefflichste, "er brachte den dritten Teil der Schwestern as fioipa fur Seriphos".’
21 Kohnken (n. 2), p. 92, makes this point in defending his idea that rpirov is adverbial. Segal (n. 3), p. 11, argues to the contrary: ‘A synecdoche of this kind is not difficult or uncommon in Pindar, particularly as the head in early Greek literature often stands for the person (see LSJ s.v. KtaXri 1.2) and in Medusa's case particularly is closely identified with her whole figure.’ I think that the synecdoche is not impossible, but still counts against any interpretation which makes fiepos an object of ayutv
22 Cf. Kohnken (n. 2), p. 92: ‘syntax and effect of the
clause is impaired by μ⋯ρος being entangled with the preceding part of the sentence’.
23 Despite Kohnken (ibid.), the syntax is easier if fuepos in strict grammatical terms is part of only the main clause.
24 W. Schadewaldt, Der Aufbau des Pindarischen Epinikion (Halle, 1928), p. 308, n. 1.
25 Segal (n. 3), p. 10, n. 6. Segal also refers us to Il. 8.160, 15.321, 18.217, 21.328, but these passages are no more useful than those cited by Schadewaldt. Clay cites no passages at all.
26 The addressee is in no case severely wounded or down, rip in the first two passages refers to Diomedes, who in the second passage has been merely struck but not wounded, rrj in the third passage refers to Aphrodite, who has merely been nicked on the write
27 The three passages under discussion, and Il. 3.81, 4.508, 784, 6.66, 110, 8.160, 172, 227
28 I take Poseidon's shout in Il. 14.147 to be of this type. It is more of a battle cry than a victory shout.
29 Wilamowitz (n. 18), p. 146: ‘Sehen wir nun avaev, Perseus rief. Was rief er? Leuchtet nicht ein, daB er rief "Jetzt bekommen die Seriphier in einem Drittel der Gorgonen ihre ixotpa." Mit anderen Worten, ayoiv ist ayeiv.’ It is often said that Wilamowitz wished to emend aywv to ayeiv; cf. Segal (n. 3), p. 8; R. W. B. Burton, Pindar's Pythian Odes: Essays in Interpretation (Oxford, 1962), p. 28; D. E. Gerber, Emendations in Pindar 1513–1972 (Amsterdam, 1976), p. 96. If I understand Wilamowitz correctly, he merely wished to treat the participle as if it were an infinitive—but on what philological principle he does not say.