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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
Isthmians 3 and 4 have not fared well at the hands of critics. Norwood judged them (taken together) as spurious, Wilamowitz as ‘artistically insignificant.’ Most discussions have focussed on the problem of whether they form one ode or two and on the fortunes of the Cleonymid clan to which the victor, Melissus of Thebes, belonged. Of recent interpreters, Köhnken stresses the significance of the myth of Ajax for the unity of the composition, but, like most scholars, ignores the pyres of the children of Heracles at the end, a passage to which I shall pay particular attention later (as if to confirm the de gustibus of Pindaric criticism, these lines were Norwood's final proof of the inauthenticity of the ode). Thummer's commentary is helpful for the relation of I. 3 to I. 4 and for the topoi of epinician praise, but he attempts no full critical study. McNeal has offered a good analysis of the architecture of I. 4, but in his search for formal unity underestimates the quality of Pindar's poetic language and indeed finds I. 4 not ‘particularly noteworthy for any unique images.’
The ‘unity’ of this work, as of most Pindaric odes, lies not merely in a ‘program’ or a rhetorical structure of encomium (which is not to deny their importance) but in the interaction of the formal elements in that encomiastic armature with imagery, myth, and conventional symbols of success and failure in Pindaric diction (e.g. light, flowers, gold). Repetitions of words or themes, recurrent metaphors, and parallel thought-patterns and image-patterns also help shape and clarify the ode's organic coherence as it proceeds from its beginning to its end. All this is to say that Pindaric poetry, despite the special circumstances of epinician festival and encomiastic convention, is ultimately not different from any other poetry and (subject to obvious limitations and qualifications) is amenable to the same analytical techniques. I should not want to throw out the Bundy with the bath water, only remind us that every bathtub obeys those fundamental laws of hydraulics which make plumbing possible.
1. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U., Pindaros (Berlin 1922) 340Google Scholar; Norwood, Gilbert, Pindar, Sather Classicial Lectures 19 (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1945) 172–75Google Scholar.
2. Köhnken, Adolf, Die Funktion des Mythos bei Pindar (Berlin and New York 1971) 87–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3. Norwood (above, note 1) 173.
4. Thummer, Erich, Pindar. Die Isthmischen Gedichte (Heidelberg 1969) 2. 55ffGoogle Scholar.
5. McNeal, R. A., ‘Structure and Metaphor in Pindar's Fourth Isthmian,’ QUCC 28 (1978) 135–56Google Scholar; the quotation is from p. 156.
6. I have in mind the work of Schadewaldt and Bundy: see below, notes 7-8.
7. See Young, David C., ‘Pindaric Criticism,’ in Calder, W. M. III and Stern, J., Pindarosund Bakchylides, Wege der Forschung 134 (Darmstadt 1970) 87fGoogle Scholar.
8. For a good critical appraisal of Bundy's achievement and limitation see Young (preceding note) 86-88; see also Bernadini, Paola, QUCC 2 (1966) 171f.Google Scholar; Lee, H. M., ‘The “Historical” Bundy and Encomiastic Relevance in Pindar,’ CW 72 (1978/1979) 65–70Google Scholar; Lefkowitz, Mary, ‘Pindar's Nemean XI,’ JHS 99 (1979) 49ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9. Good surveys of the evidence and of the various positions may be found in Thummer (above, note 4) 2.55-57; Kohnken (above, note 2) 87-94; for earlier views see Mezger, F., Pindars Siegeslieder (Leipzig 1880) 275–81Google Scholar. The majority of interpreters believe that I.3/4 is a single work; McNeal (above, note 5) and Privitera (next note) do not. The metrical evidence has been recently reconsidered by Lidov, J. B., ‘The Poems and Performance of Isthmians 3 and 4,’ CSCA 7 (1974) 173–85Google Scholar, who arrives at a sort of compromise position: though conceived as a whole, the odes also give an indication of their separateness as celebrating two victories by the distinctive rhythm of I.4.1 (pp. 179f.).
10. Privitera, G. A., ‘Le vittorie di Melisso nelle Istmiche III e IV,’ Helikon 18/19 (1978/1979) 3–21Google Scholar, points out that I.3.9ff. could imply that both the Nemean and the Isthmian victory were won in a horserace, whereas the victory in the pancration alluded to at I.4.48ff. is not attached to a specific festival. See also Bury, J.B., The Isthmian Odes of Pindar (London 1892) 168Google Scholar. Still, Privitera's explanation (which even so does not entirely detach the two odes: p. 21) does not fully account for the fact that the putative chariot victory at the Isthmus celebrated in I. 4 is left so vague (I. 4.2; cf. 14), whereas the pancration is described specifically and vividly (I.4.48ff.) and leads into the myth of Heracles and Antaeus (56ff.).
11. Christ, Wilhelm, Pindari Carmina (Leipzig 1896) 341Google Scholar: the second part (I. 4) ‘egregiis orationis luminibus splendet,’ whereas the first part (I. 3), ‘quod quasi corollarii vice fungitur, admodum exile et ieiunum est.’ Yet I. 3.15-19 are more impressive.
12. Woodbury, L., ‘Pindar, Isthmian 4.19f.,’ TAPA 78 (1947) 371–75Google Scholar, strongly in favor of Hartung's emendation, poikila (with chthōn) rather than the mss. poikilōn (with mēnōn).
13. The non-hybridized rose (which is all the ancients were likely to know) was probably a deep pink rather than the deep red that we (thanks to Mendelian cross-breeding) associate with roses. With I. 4.19f. and the symbolism of roses we may compare the light-dark imagery of one of the Threnoi, frag. 114 a. 2 Bowra (129 Snell), where a triumph of sorts over the nox perpetua of death is also involved. Roses also have associations with the victory over death through poetic immortality: cf. Sappho's ‘roses of Pieria,’ frag. 55 LP and the ‘wise singers’ blossoms of roses' in Antigenes (?) frag. 1 Diehl; in an epinician context cf. Simonides frag. 506 Page; also Sappho frag. 2.6 LP.
14. For good remarks on the contrasts of light and dark in this passage see Woodbury (above, note 12) 368-75 and McNeal (above, note 5) 146f. On the use of such contrasts as a foil in the structure of encomiastic praise see Bundy, E. L., ‘Studia Pindarica II: The First Isthmian Ode,’ UCPCP 18.2 (1962) 49–50Google Scholar.
15. See Thummer (above, note 4) 2.63, who describes aiōn as ‘the lifetime (Lebenszeit) which is measured out to the individual human being through fate.’
16. See Fränkel, Hermann, ‘Man's “Ephemeros” Nature According to Pindar and Others’ TAPA 11 (1946) 131–45Google Scholar, especially 132-34 (‘A mortal is, body and soul, at the mercy of any one day,’ 141); also Vivante, Paolo, ‘On Time in Pindar,’ Arethusa 5 (1972) 111, 114–16Google Scholar; Vermeule, Emily, Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry, Sather Class. Lect. 46 (Berkeley Los Angeles 1979) 24Google Scholar with note 39, p. 216. For the motif of alternating seasons cf. N. 6. 8-11 and N. 11. 39-43; for kylindesthai (‘rolling on’) and the instability of human fortunes cf. O. 12.6.
17. Wilamowitz (above, note 1) 337; see Bowra, C. M., Pindar (Oxford 1964) 115fGoogle Scholar. and 408. Méautis, Georges, Pindare le Dorien (Neuchatel 1962) 307Google Scholar pushes the historical allegorizing a stage further in interpreting Ajax' death in I. 4. 36ff. as a reference to the dangers facing Thebes, isolated becausing of her medizing policy, after Plataea.
18. Rosenmeyer, T. G., ‘On Snow and Stones,’ CSCA 11 (1978) 211ff.Google Scholar, points out the frequent association of niphas, ‘snow’, in early Greek poetry with the hostiity and destructiveness of nature: cf. Homer, Il. 10.5ff., 12.156ff. and 278ff., 15.170ff., 19.357; Aeschyl. frag. 199 N2 (326 Mette); Pindar, Paean 9.14. For the connotations of trachys cf. Paean 2. 21 (Bowra).
19. See Köhnken (above, note 2) 99-100.
20. Cf. the leaf image of O. 12.15 and of course the famous simile of falling leaves in Iliad 6.146ff. See in general Nisetich, F. J., ‘The Leaves of Triumph and Mortality: Transformations of a Traditional Image in Pindar's Olympian 12,’ TAPA 107 (1977) 258–64Google Scholar; Nagy, Gregory, The Best of the Achaeans (Baltimore 1979) 178ffGoogle Scholar. For the image in a more positive sense cf. P. 9.123-25. Note the adjective ‘with lovely flowers,’ euanthēs, for the vulnerability of life in I. 7. 34. For Pindar's floral and vegetation imagery in general see Duchemin, Jacqueline, Pindare, poète et prophète (Paris 1955) 238ff.Google Scholar; Bowra (above note 17) 228f.; Verdenius, W. J., ‘Pindar's Twelfth Olympian Ode: A Commentary,’ Zetesis (Festschrift E. De Strijcker) (Antwerp and Utrecht 1973) 340Google Scholar.
21. I.7.16-21 shares with I. 4.23-26 the implicit notion of the poet's task as bringing deeds and their doers from the darkness of oblivion, with its associations of sleep and death, into the light of Truth, Aletheia, with its luminosity, energy, and vitality (cf. the proems of O. 10 and N. 7; N. 8. 32-42): hence the correlation of ‘sleep’ (heudei) with ‘unremembering’ (amnamones) in 7.7.16 and the implicit link, in the following lines, of awakening with the revitalizing liquid of ‘song's glorious streams’ (I.7.19) and the vegetative imagery of ‘bloom’ aōtos (7.7.18). For the implications of the antithesis between Aletheia and Lethe see Detienne, Marcel, Maîtres de vérité dans la Grece archaïque (Paris 1967) 21–27Google Scholar.
22. See Puelma, Mario, ‘Die Selbstbeschreibung des Chores in Alkmans grossem Partheneion-Fragment,’ MH 34 (1977) 9–19Google Scholar.
23. See Thummer (above, note 4) ad loc. (2.69).
24. Farnell, L. R., The Works of Pindar (London 1930–1932) ad I. 4. 69fGoogle Scholar. (2.356); the scholion (117 Drachmann) has a different explanation, including a connection of myrtle with funeral celebrations.
25. Cf. also amaurōsai, ‘obliterate,’ 7. 4. 52; Köhnken (above, note 2) 103 and 115; Vermeule (above, note 16) 25.
26. For this larger sense of ‘myth’ in Pindar see Young, David C., Pindar, Isthmian 7, Myth and Exempla, Mnemosyne Suppl. 15 (Leiden 1971) 34–46Google Scholar.
27. Cf. schol. 104g Drachmann; Farnell (above, note 24) ad I. 4. 63 (2.355). One wonders if the emphasis on the children's mother in 70 is an oblique allusion to the filicide.
28. See Duchemin (above, note 20) 193ff.; Finley, John H. Jr., Pindar and Aeschylus, Martin Classical Lectures 14 (Cambridge, Mass. 1955) 193ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thummer (above, note 4) ad I. 1. 1 (2.10).
29. Cf. the elaborate contrasts between Peleus, Cadmus, and their descendants in P. 3. 86-106.
30. ‘Von malerischer Anschaulichkeit, wie N. 8. 23,’ remarks Mezger (above, note 9) ad loc. (p.283); also Köhnken (above, note 2) 109f. For the problem of the construction see schol. 58a Drachmann; Wilamowitz (above, note 1) p. 338, note 3; Farnell (above, note 24) ad loc.
31. See Wilamowitz (above, note 1) 340, note 1: ‘Gerüstet heissen sie, weil man sich die Hereon so denkt, auch wenn sie als Geister umgehen’; also Thummer (above, note 4) ad loc.
32. I would find in pankarpos more than the ‘pictorial value’ or ‘delight in his picture of contrasts’ suggested by Woodbury (above, note 12) 372. On the theme of vegetative growth and mortal vulnerability implied in the image see also note 20, above.
33. For these contrasts of ‘praise’ and ‘blame’ cf. O. 10.5, N.8.41; Bacchyl. 13.199ff.
34. See Nagy (above, note 20) chap. 10.
35. For the journey-motif in the poem see Norwood (above, note 1) 269f.; McNeal (above, note 5) 142ff.; Péron, J., Les images maritimes de Pindare (Paris 1974) 72-75 and 198–99Google Scholar.
36. The parallel between 41 and 65 is noted without comment by Mezger (above, note 9) ad loc. Köhnken (above, note 2) 111 also observes the repetition of the perfect form, bebaken, ‘has gone,’ in I. 4. 45b.
37. Note too the recurrences of ‘Thebes’ in I. 3. 12, I. 4.7, I. 4.57.
38. Norwood (above, note 1) 173 finds this metaphor a sign of ‘gross literary taste.’ Schol. 110c (Drachmann) was more restrained and more useful: comparing the passage with Iliad 1.317, he finds Pindar ‘harsh’ (sklēros). We should contrast this passage with N. 9.23f., where the smoke of the funeral pyres of the failed warriors who attacked Thebes bears the signs of fragility and mortality (leukanthea, ‘white-flowered’) and is part of a grisly and mournful ‘feasting’ of sorts as they ‘fatten’ it with their bodies. Here too the celestial fire of Zeus' lightning ‘conceals’ the prophet Amphiaraus in the ‘deep-bosomed earth’ (N. 9. 25).
39. For the image cf. O. 6.76,1. 6.63f.; also N. 3. 77ff. See Duchemin (above, note 20) 74 and 252ff. The image may also have associations of administering drugs or medicines: see Thummer (above, note 4) ad loc.; Bowra (above, note 17) p. 270 with note 2.
40. The verb erēmoō, ‘lay bare,’ has particular associations of family loss and desolation: cf. P. 3. 97 and P. 4. 269, of the houses of Cadmus and Oedipus respectively.
41. Compare the ‘most thronged altar’ of O. 1. 93, which is also part of a movement from the ‘deserted (erēmos) sky’ at the beginning, O.1.6b.
42. On the importance of these ‘panhellenic gatherings’ in contrast to the local festivals see Privitera (above, note 10) 10.
43. Finley (above, note 28) 69 seems to have sensed the connection between O. 1 and I. 4 but does not develop it.
44. On the vegetative imagery see McNeal (above, note 5) 143; also above, note 20. Cf. also the ‘tokens’ or ‘proofs’ (martyria) borne on the winds in I. 4. 9-10.
45. On this aspect of Pindar's religious sense see Fränkel, H., ‘Pindars Religion’ (1927) in Calder, and Stern, (above, note 7) 254–55Google Scholar; G. Rudberg, ‘Zu Pindaros' Religion’ (1945) ibid. 264.
46. Like that of Mezger (above, note 9) 286: ‘Whoever combines wealth and the fame of victory and at the same time stays free of pride has true happiness and is worthy of praise in song.’
47. Köhnken (above, note 2) 97 speaks of a ‘wave-like’ movement (‘wellenförmig’) in the first half of the ode. We may think too of Pindar's motifs of ‘weaving’ for his poetry.
48. See McNeal (above, note 5) 154. For such architectural images see Bowra (above, note 17) 20-22. Bundy (above, note 14) notes that orthoō often forms part of the poet's authority for truth as an epinician topos (2.53).
49. See McNeal (above, note 5) 144.
50. See, e.g., Kirkwood, G. M., ‘Nemean 7 and the Theme of Vicissitude in Pindar,’ Poetry and Poetics from Ancient Greece to the Renaissance: Studies in Honor of James Hutton, Cornell Studies in Classical Philology 38 (Ithaca, N.Y. 1975) 68ffGoogle Scholar.
51. McNeal (above note 5) 145; see Duchemin (above, note 20) 280.
52. See Segal, C., ‘Arrest and Movement: Pindar's Fifth Nemean,’ Hermes 102 (1974) 397–411Google Scholar.
53. Vernant, J.-P., Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs3 (Paris 1974) 2, 77fGoogle Scholar.
54. This more solemn aspect of Pindaric song is neglected by Kakridis, J. T., ‘Die 14. olympische Ode: Ein Beitrag zum Problem der Religiosität Pindars,’ Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturmssenschaft 20 (1979) 141–47Google Scholar; in his otherwise excellent study of O. 14 he stresses only the Charites' association with a luminous world of Olympian song, but not the corresponding descent to the dark underworld.
55. See in general Havelock, E. A., Preface to Plato (Cambridge, Mass. 1963Google Scholar) and The Greek Conception of Justice (Cambridge, Mass. 1978), passimGoogle Scholar; for the lyric poets see Gentili, Bruno, ‘L'interpretazione dei lirici greci arcaici nella dimensione del nostro tempo,’ QUCC 8 (1969) 7–21, especially 14fGoogle Scholar.
56. Vernant (above, note 53) 1.87. Traces of the ‘modern’ notion of a more highly individualized and personalized ‘memory’ may be found in Hellenistic poetry, e.g. Theocr. Idyll 7.69f. The ultimate modern form is the total privacy of recollection on the psychoanalyst's couch: see Freud, Sigmund, ‘Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through,’ Complete Psychological Works, Standard Edition, 12 (London 1958) 147–56Google Scholar.
57. I gratefully acknowledge a Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for 1981-82, during which this essay was written.
