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The Ideal Courtier: Pindar and Hieron in Pythian 2
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
There is some audacity in adding to the formidable list of articles on Pythian 2, which raise the questions of the structure or thematic coherence of the ode, of its specific occasion and of its relation to Pindar's biography. In this paper my aim is the circumscribed one of showing how a correct analysis of the final section of the poem (lines 72–end) can lead us to a better understanding of the nature of Pindar's poetry, and of the way in which he adapts his laudatory stance to the circumstances and status of the addressee.
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References
1 Pindaros (Berlin, 1922), p. 293Google Scholar.
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9 Redfield, J. M., Nature and Culture in the Iliad (Chicago, 1975), p. 129Google Scholar. There is a parallel, ‘si parva licet componere magnis’, in one of the Tswana Praise poems translated in Schapera, I., Praise Poems of Tswana Chiefs (Oxford, 1965), p. 155Google Scholar: ‘I praised a fine man, the Disperser, Phedi's brother: I said, if you want a village, first make it rain…’. Cf. also Carey, C. J., Maia n.s. 32 (1980), 148Google Scholar.
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11 Quomodo adulator…51c.
12 312c 1–dl.
13 Sect, XXIII; p. 126 in the Penguin edition.
14 op. cit. in n. ll, 69f–70b.
15 It is possible that Solon fr. 24 West was advice to Croesus, or was interpreted as such by his biographers: Lefkowitz, M., Lives of the Greek Poets (London, 1981), p. 45Google Scholar.
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18 Theognis 215–19. Cf. the recommendations of ποικιλία, 213 f., 1071 f.
19 52ab. Du Bellay, J., Les Regrets CXLIIGoogle Scholar cautions his ‘cousin’ against ‘double estre en paroles…Pour acquérir le bruit d'estre bon courtisan’.
20 I hope to develop this theme at greater length elsewhere.
21 cf. n. 34, below.
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25 Univ. Calif. Publ. in Class. Philol. 18 (1962), 1Google Scholar ff. and 35 ff.
26 N. 4. 39–43, with CQ n.s. 2 (1976), 192Google Scholar; N. 1. 24 with QUCC n.s. 2 (1979), 65–70Google Scholar.
27 Scholia II. 54 (naming Bacchylides).
28 Schroeder.
29 Dissen, Burton.
30 Wilamowitz.
31 For the ‘hortatory’ first person cf. N. 4. 36–43 and art. cit. in n. 26, P. 11. 54, N. 8. 35–7; Lloyd-Jones, , JHS 93 (1973), 124Google Scholar n. 96 and works cited there. Cf. also Damane, M. and Sanders, P. B., Lithoko: Sotho Praise Poems (Oxford, 1974), p. 19Google Scholar: ‘A seroki may, in his imagination, temporarily identify himself with the chief.’
32 If εἶμι is to be read here, the future is gnomic in effect, as often in English: cf. Goodwin, W. W., Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb (London, 1889), §67Google Scholar.
33 I. 2. 43, O. 6. 74–81, P. 1. 85, al.
34 Arist.Rhet. 1356a 1–7: τν δ δι το λόγομ ποριζομένων πιστέων τρία εἴδη ἔστιν… δι μν οὖν το ἤθους, ταν οὔτω λεχθῇ λόγος στε ξιόπστον ποισαι τν λέγοντα τοις γρ πιεικέσι πιστεύομεν μλλον κα θττον. Horace, Ars P. 330Google Scholar ff. asks how a man can be a good poet if his soul is corrupt: ‘an, haec animos aerugo et cura peculi cum semel imbuerit, speremus carmina fingi posse linenda cedro et levi servanda cupresso?’ See also Isoc, . Nicocles 30Google Scholar; and Russell, D. A., Criticism in Antiquity (London, 1981), pp. 81–3Google Scholar and Buchheit, V., Untersuchungen zw Theorie des Genos Epideiktikon von Gorgias bis Aristoteles (Munich, 1960)Google Scholar, sect. 3 B2.1.
35 Note 5.
36 See for example lines 323–8, loyalty even in the face of slander; 415, hard to find a loyal friend; 979–82, desire for true friendship, deeds not words.
37 On polar expressions and modes of thought in early Greek see Lloyd, G. E. R., Polarity and Analogy (Cambridge, 1966)Google Scholar. Goody, J., The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 112–14Google Scholar, argues that such pairing of opposites is characteristic of a literate culture, being based on the application of ‘formulae’. His ‘formulae’ seem however to differ from those of Milman Parry with which he equates them; in so far as polar expressions are formulaic they are relics of an oral mode of composition, analogous to those Homeric similes which abandon their point of departure to delight in their own abundance.
38 Lloyd-Jones, , The Justice of Zeus (California, 1971), p. 40Google Scholar, citing this passage and Archilochus fr. 94 (= 177 West). This is identified, like Solon's behaviour as a wolf among dogs (fr. 35 West), as the conduct of a good citizen by Lefkowitz, Mary R., The Victory Ode (New Jersey, 1976), p. 29Google Scholar; cf. The Lives of the Greek Poets (London, 1981), p. 42Google Scholar.
39 cf. Young, D. C., Three Odes of Pindar (Mnem. suppl. 9, 1968)Google Scholar.
40 ‘Hermogenes’ Prolegomena (Rhet. Graeci 4. 11 Walz): λέγεται τι τοσοτον ὠμότητι χρήσατο στε προστάξαι τοῖς Συρακοσίοις μηδ ϕθέγγεσθαι τ πράπαν λλ δι ποδν κα χειρν κα μμάτων σημαίνειν τ πρόσϕορα κα ὧν τις ν χρείᾳ γένοιτο, ἔνθεν κα τν ρχηστικν λαβεῖν τς ρχάς τῷ γρ ποκεκλεῖσθαι λόγουτοὺς Συρακοσίους μηχανντο σχήματι δεικνύειν τ πράγματα. See Freeman, E. A., History of Sicily 2 (Oxford, 1891), p. 542Google Scholar.
41 e.g. N. 3. 19–21, O. 3. 43 f.
42 It is however a commonplace that Fortune rules even the great; cf. Machiavelli, , The Prince xxv, Hor. C. 1. 35. 5–12Google Scholar.
43 This echoes the earlier dismissal of the stance of Archilochus (55), which was followed by the statement of Hieron's excellence, ploutein, etc. Here, envy is dismissed as irrelevant or short-sighted, in view of mutability.
44 On the interpretation see QUCC n.s. 2 (1979), 75–7Google Scholar; there is no consistent metaphor here: the envious do not wound themselves with a plumbline; the two images are linked by a pun.
45 On this proverb see A.Ag. 1624 and Fraenkel's note; fr. adesp. iamb. 13D.
46 P. 3. 107 ff.
47 cf. Schapera, op. cit. in n. 9, p. 245.