Pindar

Pindar was born in Thebes in 518 BCE. Famous in his lifetime, and not one to be modest about his own prowess, he wrote to order for patrons in Greece itself and in the much wider Hellenic world around the Mediterranean. The earliest dated poem in his long career was written in 498 and the latest in 446.

Almost all of his surviving work takes the form of poems in praise of victors at the games at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea and the Isthmus of Corinth, where a win brought lasting fame at home and great prestige throughout the Greek world. The poems have nothing in common with sports journalism. They come from a world in which success was believed to depend, not so much on thorough training and luck, as on aristocratic breeding and pedigree, divine favour and, in the case of the more expensive events such as the chariot race, wealth and the preparedness to spend it for the glory of self and city.

The victory poems account for perhaps a quarter of Pindar’s work, which also included Paeans to Apollo, dithyrambic poems to Dionysus, processional hymns, works for girls’ choir, choral works with dancing, encomia in praise of individuals, drinking songs and funeral dirges. He had a high reputation among Roman poets in later centuries, including Horace and Catullus, who had much fuller access to his work than is available to us.