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Chapter 5 - The Isolation of Amphiaraos

(Nemean 9, Pythian 8)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 November 2022

Hanne Eisenfeld
Affiliation:
Boston College, Massachusetts
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Summary

“The Isolation of Amphiaraos,” argues that Pindar generates tensions between Amphiaraos’ contemporary status as a Theban oracle and his identity as the noble Argive seer portrayed in epic and tragedy, in order to establish Amphiaraos as a site of contestation between modes of human and divine exaltation. In Nemean 9, Pindar contrasts Amphiaraos as underdetermined oracle with two figures defined by types of immortality also potentially available to the victor: Adrastos, who enjoys immortality in cult and Hektor, who enjoys poetic immortality in epic song. In Pythian 8, Pindar localizes this modeling more explicitly in the exaltation of epinician praise by first setting up Amphiaraos as a disoriented oracular voice, removed from the reciprocal systems of epinician exaltation, then reestablishing his right to participate in those systems by assimilating him to the contemporary model of the Aiginetan pater laudandi, thus reorienting him to his humanity.

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Pindar and Greek Religion
Theologies of Mortality in the Victory Odes
, pp. 152 - 199
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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