The ode begins with a
priamel, where the rival distinctions of water and gold are introduced as a foil to the true prize, the celebration of victory in song.[7]Ring-composed,[8] Pindar returns in the final lines to the mutual dependency of victory and poetry, where "song needs deeds to celebrate, and success needs songs to make the
areta last".[9] Through his association with victors, the poet hopes to be "famed in sophia among Greeks everywhere" (lines 115-6).[1] Yet a fragment of
Eupolis suggests Pindar's hopes were frustrated, his compositions soon "condemned to silence by the boorishness of the masses".[10][11]
Pelops
At the heart of the ode is Pindar's "refashioning" of the
myth of
Pelops, king of
Pisa, son of
Tantalus, father of
Thyestes and
Atreus, and
hero after whom the
Peloponnese or "Isle of Pelops" is named.[9] Pindar rejects the common version of the myth, wherein Tantalus violates the
reciprocity of the feast and serves up his dismembered son Pelops to the gods (lines 48-52); Pelops' shoulder is of gleaming ivory (line 35) since
Demeter, in mourning for
Kore, unsuspectingly ate that part.[12][13] Instead Pindar has Pelops disappear because he is carried off by
Poseidon.[12][14] After his "erotic
complaisance", Pelops appeals to Poseidon for help, "if the loving gifts of
CyprianAphrodite result in any gratitude" (lines 75-76);[15] the god grants him a golden chariot and horses with untiring wings (line 87); with these Pelops defeats
Oenomaus in a race and wins the hand of his daughter
Hippodameia, avoiding the fate of death previously meted out upon a series of vanquished suitors.[13]
In Homo Necans,
Walter Burkert reads in these myths a reflection of the
sacrificial rites at
Olympia.[12][13] The cultic centres of the sanctuary were the altar of
Zeus, the
stadium, and the tomb of
Pelops, where "now he has a share in splendid blood-sacrifices, resting beside the ford of the
Alpheus" (lines 90-93).[13] According to
Philostratus, after sacrifice and the laying of the consecrated parts upon the altar, the runners would stand one
stadion distant from it; once the priest had given the signal with a torch, they would race, with the winner then setting light to the offerings.[13][17] Pindar, subordinating the
foot race to that of the
four-horse chariot, "could reflect the actual
aetiology of the Olympics in the early 5th century [BC]".[12][18]
Patronage
According to
Maurice Bowra, the main purpose of the poem is "Pindar's first attempt to deal seriously with the problems of
kingship", and especially "the relations of kings with
the gods".[5]Hieron, "Pindar's greatest patron" and honorand in four odes and a now-fragmentary
encomium,[9] is likened to a
Homeric king, as he "sways the sceptre of the law in
sheep-rich Sicily" (lines 12-13).[5] Pindar incorporates the ideology of xenia or hospitality into his ode, setting it in the context of a choral performance around Hieron's table, to the strains of the
phorminx (lines 15-18).[19] Yet the poet keeps his distance; the central mythological episode is concerned with
chariot racing, a more prestigious competition than the single horse race;[12] and Pindar warns Hieron that there are
limits to human ambition (line 114).[5]
English translations
Olympian 1, translated into English verse by Ambrose Philips (1748)
Olympian 1, translated into English verse by C. A. Wheelwright (1846)
Olympian 1, translated into English prose by Ernest Myers (1874)
Cairns, Francis (1977). "'ΈΡΩΣ in Pindar's First Olympian Ode". Hermes. 105 (2): 129–132.
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Eckerman, Chris (2017). "Pindar's Olympian 1, 1-7 and its Relation to Bacchylides 3, 85-87". Wiener Studien. 130: 7–32.
doi:
10.1553/wst130s7.
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Farenga, Vincent (1977). "Violent Structure: The Writing of Pindar's Olympian I". Arethusa. 10 (1): 197–218.
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Nagy, Gregory (1986). "Pindar's Olympian 1 and the Aetiology of the Olympic Games". Transactions of the American Philological Association. 116: 71–88.
doi:
10.2307/283911.
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Segal, Charles Paul (1964). "God and Man in Pindar's First and Third Olympian Odes". Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. 68: 211–267.
doi:
10.2307/310806.
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