Odes By Pindar

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Odes have been used throughout time to entertain, engage, inspire, celebrate, and explore. This ranges from odes written by Pindar a classical poet from ancient Greece to odes written in the 19th and 20th century by female poets such as Emily Brontë and Sylvia Plath. The ode is first and foremost a poem that consists of a subject or object being addressed by a narrator; usually the poet themselves. The imperative ‘must’ in the question suggests that the grandness of the ode is necessary for it to be considered an ode and connotations of the word ‘grand’ propose that the ode must endure a feeling of magnificence, spectacle, and importance. Walker’s quote ‘We have constantly looked high, when we should have looked high – and low’ demonstrates …show more content…
Quitilian writes on Pindar ‘of the nine lyric poets Pindar is by far the greatest… his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich exuberance of his language… and his rolling flood of eloquence’ . Pindar was usually paid by a family member of a victor at the Olympic games to write a song in honour of the champion’s achievements. These victory odes came with a sense of occasion and grandiosity due to the level of accomplishment that was being written about. In ‘Olympian 1’ Pindar had been commissioned to write about Hieron of Syracuse and his victory in the single horse race at the Olympic games in Delphi. As a choral ode Olympian 1 would have been sung by a chorus at an event celebrating Hieron. Pindar implements a triadic structure consisting of strophe then an antistrophe as counterbalance to work with the strophe, and finally the epode which summarised the previous lines in a different metre. The structured harmonious flow of lyrics which were set to music and performed theatrically show the magnificence of Pindar’s ode. Pindar references the Greek Gods in this ode: ‘god is overseer to your ambitions… cherishing them as his own’ . The word ‘cherishing’ conjures images of God caring for Hieron as a father would for his son, suggesting that God personally watches over and guides Hieron conveys a sense of spectacle and importance in the ode. Pindar also repeatedly compares Hieron’s victory to the story of Pelops: ‘Syracusan knight and king, blazoned/ with glory in the land of Pelops:/ Pelops, whom earth cradling Poseidon loved’ . These lines increase Hieron’s splendour by associating him with the mythical story of Pelops and suggest that Hieron shares a similar familiarity with the Gods. As critic Adolf Köhnken points out ‘Pindar thus puts Hieron’s and Pelops’ glory on the same level: they are equally glorious’ .The dramatic

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