Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T06:43:47.451Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Pindar as Innovator: Poseidon Hippios and the Relevance of the Pelops Story in Olympian 11

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Adolf Köhnken
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This paper will be concerned with Pindar's often-discussed innovations in the Pelops-Tantalos myth of the first Olympian, where Pindar explicitly rejects the traditional story of Tantalos' cooking his son Pelops and serving him up to the gods, one of whom inadvertently ate from the cannibalistic dish. Does Pindar really alter traditional features of a story from religious considerations only, as the communis opinio takes him to do? D. C. Young has recently drawn attention to the astonishing formal symmetry of the ode. As to the contents, however, the old charges against Pindar's poetry, inconsistency and irrelevance, still remain (‘His method and his conclusion are not easy to unravel’, Bowra says with regard to the central myth in O. I).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , December 1974 , pp. 199 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 199 note 2 See, e.g., Bowra, C. M., Pindar (Oxford, 1964), 56 ff.Google Scholar

page 199 note 3 Three Odes of Pindar, Mnemosyne Suppl. ix (1968), 121–3; see also Young, Pindar Isthmian 7 (1971), 37 f. with 11. 126.

page 199 note 4 Bowra, Pindar, 56.

page 199 note 5 Like the first stanza, the second, too, ends by proclaiming Hieron (cf. line II and line 22 ); and like the second stanza the third as well starts with a characteristic of Hieron (cf. line 12 and line 23 ).

page 199 note 6 Cf. lines 17–23 and 97–105 and see, e.g., N. 7. I1–16; cf. especially W. Schadewaldt,Aufbau des pindarischen Epinikion (1928), 277 with n. I; 278 n. I; 294 n. 2.

page 199 note 7 Cf. Young, Three Odes, loc. cit.; and already Fehr, K., Die MythenbeiPindar (1936), 107.Google Scholar

page 200 note 1 Three Odes, 123.

page 200 note 2 e.g. recently Young, Three Odes, 122.

page 200 note 3 Poseidon cannot have been part of the Pelops story before Pindar, as his love replaces the former cooking (lines 25 ff.; 36 ff.; 52) and his help for Pelops (71 ff.) presupposes his love: see below. For the meaning of line 26 see Kakridis, J., Philo logus, xxxix (1930), 475.Google Scholar

page 200 note 4 See, e.g., U. v. Wilamowitz, Pindaros (1922), 235 f.; Frankel, H., Didttung and Philosophie 2 (1962), 547;Google Scholar Bowra, Pindar, 57 ff.;—Thummer, E. (Pindar Isthmien, i [1968], 122) is, I believe, right in saying ‘Pindar erzählt diesen Mythos … nicht — wie vielfach angenommen wird — aus einem vertieften religiösen Empfinden …’, but he spoils Pindar's whole story by inaccurately paraphrasing: ‘Pelops, so erzählt er, wurde … von Zeus als Mundschenk in den Olympos entfiihrt': Pindar's point is precisely that not Zeus but Poseidon's love is responsible for Pelops' disappearing.Google Scholar

page 201 note 1 Cf. Bowra, Pindar, 380.

page 201 note 2 As Prof. Beattie has suggested to me, the prominent in line 36 should go with (central clause) as well as with (subordinate clause), and thus supply with the necessary object ( without object seems to be unparalleled).

page 201 note 3 Philologus, lxxxv (1930), 463 ff. Pindaros und Bakchylides (Wege der Forschung 334), edd. W. M. Calder/J. Stern, 1970, 175 ff.

page 203 note 1 Cf. in Pindar, e.g., P. 2. 12 (Hieron: )

page 203 note 2 Cf., e.g., Bacch. 17. 99 f., where Theseus dives into the realm of his father Poseidon,

page 203 note 3 For this correspondence cf. Young, Pindar Isthmian 7, 37 f., n. 126.

page 204 note 1 Cf. Kakridis, loc. cit., Pindaros and Bakchylides, 177 ff., who compares A 606 ff.

page 204 note 2 Pindaros, 234.

page 205 note 1 The short Tantalos story (for which see above p. 202) exactly in the centre of the myth and of the ode as a whole (54–64) illustrates that this favour can be lost, if a man honoured by the gods becomes presumptuous. Pindar's reference to the king (Tantalos) who did not appreciate the divine favour conferred upon him and lost it because of his presumption, is on the one hand certainly meant as a contrast which makes the favour of the gods enjoyed by Pelops and Hieron shine all the more brightly (so recently Young, Isthmian 7, 37 f.). On the other hand, however, the Tantalos story is also designed to remind the proud victor of the limits and the transitoriness of his good luck (a warning frequently found in Pindar, e.g. P. 12. 28–32; N). 1I. 46–8; cf. my Funktion des Mythos bei Pindar (1970, 149–53; 185 with n. 134). On the one hand we find the dreary life of Tantalos contrasted with the bright successful life of the victor (97–9 ) on the other hand we find the warning addressed to the victor not to take his good luck for granted (108 ) and not (like Tantalos, cf. 55–7) to try and surpass the limits that exist even for kings (113f. ). Consequently, Pindar ends his poem with the wish: here means ‘during this life’, ‘for the time of life coming’ (see my Funktion des Mythos, 148), corresponding to line 97 (cf. 59 ). The temporal accusative line 115 … seems to support G. Tarditi's explanation (‘Il di Tantalo’, Parola del Passato, xxxvi [1954], 209) of line 59 as accusative of temporal extension (in the case of Tantalos, however, ‘the time of life to come’ means ‘eternity’, because the gods gave him ‘eternal life’, 11). 63 f. .