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ments and inventions.73 He is aware that the art is not static, that it has evolved; and he regards himself as a commanding figure in his time, entitled to depart from tradition, whether in mythological matters or in musical and poetic technique. His advertisement of a modern style of dithyramb has been noticed above. In a paean he calls upon Apollo and Memory, the mother of the Muses, to sound the song, 'not following the rutted carriageway of Homer, but with different horses drawing the Muses' soaring car'.74 Somewhere he expressed surprise at the neglect of a certain melodic mode, presumably while using it himself.75 And in his Third Olympian ode he vaunts his discovery of a 'shining new manner' of fitting the celebration of Theron's victory at the Games into the 'Dorian shoe' represented by the noble's concurrent celebration of the Dorian Theoxenia festival.76 |
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Pindar composed songs for various kinds of occasion: paeans for regular festivals or special situations; dithyrambs; processionals for male or female choirs; songs for private celebrations; dirges, hymns, etc. It is the Epinician Odes, honouring victors in sporting events, that are best represented in what survives of his work.77 It was customary for the victor's friends to honour him with songs in a festive setting, but those who employed a poet of Pindar's rank got something special: an elaborate composition of up to a hundred lines (in one exceptional case, three hundred), in long strophes usually arranged on the triadic system. The rhythms were either of the dactylo-epitrite type or variations on iambic or aeolic sequences, often highly complex and as difficult to analyse as anything in Greek poetry. Pindar repeatedly characterizes his own music as poikilos, 'intricate, variegated', sometimes in association with verbs expressing craftsmanship, 'plait', 'weave', 'build (as a wall)'.78 This intricacy |
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73 Hesiod and Homer quoted, Isth. 6. 67, Pyth. 4. 277; literary comment on Homer, Nem. 7. 21, Isth. 3. 55, fr. 347; biographical lore. frs. 264-5 (authorship of Cypria); Archilochus quoted, Ol. 9. 1; literary-biographical comment, Pyth. 2. 54; Alcman, POxy. 2389 fr. 9 (if Pindar is the author of the quotation); Olympus, fr. 157; Terpander, frs. 125, 126a; Polymnestus, fr. 188; Sakadas, fr. 269; Xenocritus(?), fr. 140b. 4 (invention of Ionian mode); Arion(?), Ol. 13. 18 (Corinthian origin of dithyramb). |
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74Paean 7b = fr. 52h. The reference may be to a new form of the legend rather than to a novel style, but the attitude'avoid the beaten track'is significant. Cf. also Ol. 1. 36, 9. 48, Nem. 8. 20. |
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75 Fr. 275. |
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76Ol. 3. 1-9. We cannot identify the novelty or the Dorian component in the combination. |
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77 See p. 22. |
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78Ol. 3. 8, 4. 2, 6. 86f., Nem. 4. 14, 5. 42, 8. 15, fr. 179, 194. 2; Kaimio, 149. For a detailed survey of Pindar's musical references see ibid. 146-62. |
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