Biography of pindar poets and poetry

The links between poetry and religion were tight in ancient Greece, and Pindar c. Born in Cynoscephalae near Thebes and educated in Thebes and Athens, he had a special relationship with the Sicilian tyrants and the Aeginetan aristocratic families, but his reputation was Panhellenic. Some of Pindar's odes allude to the most relevant historical event of his lifetime: the Persian invasion, which was put to an end by Greek victories at Salamis in and Plataia in In odes for the Sicilian victors, Pindar emphasized the triumphs of the local rulers against the Carthaginians Himera , and the Etruscans Kyme , The biographies claim, for example, that a bee made a honeycomb on his mouth as he was sleeping on Mount Helikon a symbol of his inspiration , that the goddess Demeter reproached him for having ignored her in his hymns, and that the god Pan was heard singing one of Pindar's songs in the mountains near Thebes.

The ancient editors classified the Pindaric poems into seventeen books containing hymns, paeans a variety of hymn, mostly in honor of Apollo , dithyrambs Dionysiac hymns , processional odes, maiden songs and others "separate from the maiden songs," dance-odes, eulogies, dirges, and victory odes.

Pindar god

The victory odes were grouped, according to the kind of contest they celebrated, as Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian, or Nemean a class to which two odes of a different origin have been added. Although the essential aim of the victory odes is to praise the victor and his exploits, the religious elements that pervade them can be explained in terms of the festivals, which were dedicated to the important gods Zeus Olympian and Nemean , Apollo Pythian , and Poseidon Isthmian.

The poems' religious elements also reflect the belief that victory was proof of a divine predilection for the victor and his family, as well as the ritual context of the celebration that followed the triumph, and the immortalizing power of poetry. The poet contributed to this extraordinary religious atmosphere through a wide range of means: music and choreography; formal resources, such as poetical and rhetorical devices that shared traits with religious hymns or prayers; maxims; and mythical narratives or allusions.

More than half of Pindar's forty-six victory songs begin with a short prayer or an invocation to a divinity.