Talk:Pindar

message: The present article on Pindar reflects ignorance of the primary sources and at best a certain naivete about the scholarly literature. Any uninformed reader who comes here in search of basic, reliable information will be misled. The author repeats ancient tall tales that no serious person believes. He claims certain things are "now believed" to be the case, as if reporting a scholarly consensus, when in fact one scholar has now argued that they are the case. He doesn't give a clue about what's interesting or essential about Pindar. He is ungrammatical. In short, somebody should just delete this while making a silly face.
I'll come back and fix it myself when I get time.
In the meantime, my nominee for a decent starting point for a general article on Pindar's life and the context and content of his poems would be the introductory matter in W.H. Race's two-volume translation of 1997 in the Loeb Classical Library series. Like most scholars of ancient Greek literature, Race properly gives all ancient anecdotes about Pindar the status of made-up unless and until we have reason to take them seriously. Race explains succinctly the Rube Goldberg reasoning behind what people go around citing as fact about Pindar, such as his life dates. It's not as though you can go down to the Theban city hall and look it all up. Not all but nearly all ancient dates are inferences from data that is questionable to start with. The best you can say for various sets of life dates that are commonly given for Pindar is that they might as well be right, as long as they allow Pindar to be old enough to compose poems in 498 BC and not dead yet in 446 BC. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mstarli (talk • contribs) .
:"The author" is the 1911 Britannica, for the most part. I don't like the article either, but it's a decent reflection of the scholarly consensus of the early 20th century. So, your criticisms apply not only to this article, but most scholarship on Pindar. Not that you're wrong--Pindar scholarship before Bundy's work in the late '60s was a mess. Your suggestion to start with Race's introduction is a good one, I think. Another source on the unreliability of ancient biographical traditions in Mary Lefkowitz's Lives of the Greek Poets (her First-Person Fictions might also be a good source for this article). --Akhilleus (talk) 06:16, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know much about Pindar myself, but I was wondering how one is objectively the greatest poet? If I prefered one of the other nine poets, what would happen?!??! - Kyle543 19:37, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

text: No one would notice. --Wetman 03:04, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article needs replacing 

message: "Pindar is to be conceived, then, as standing within the circle of those families for whom the heroic myths were domestic records." A sense of aristocratic flattery and courtly propaganda is missing from this impossiblly opaquee assertion, rather typical of the article as a whole, which is very much as if written by the Wikipedian just above. How can a sensible adult assessment of Pindar be arrived at: every commonplace  will be tagged "original research" or "POV" by those who have never read a word of Pindar in translation or given the subject a moment's thought. How could an adult get a word in edgewise? --Wetman 03:04, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Naively literal 

message: elsewhere in wikipedia (see Antikythera Mechanism) the following appears :-
 Pindar, one of the nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, said this of Rhodes in his seventh Olympic Ode:
    "The animated figures stand
    Adorning every public street
    And seem to breathe in stone, or
    move their marble feet." 
Why does this rhyme in English  ...street    ...feet?  Surely he spoke Greek
--83.105.33.91 12:48, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:   rhymes in english ! 

message: Hello all. I was redirected to Pindar from Pindarus; I was searching for Pindarus because he is named as an actor criticised for his "extravagant style of acting" by Aristotle in his Poetics (1462a?). I know that the tragic poets also often performed in their plays, but we're talking about two different people, right? Can anyone confirm or better yet point to any other sources on the actor? Many thanks, DionysosProteus (talk) 15:38, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: They're different people with the same name. Greek Πίνδαρος is Latinized as Pindarus; while the poet is universally known as Pindar in English, the actor is usually called Pindarus or Pindaros. For more info on the actor you might start by looking at Pat Easterling, Greek and Roman Actors: Aspects of an Ancient Profession (Cambridge 2002). --Akhilleus (talk) 16:34, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pindar and Pindarus? 

message: I added a quote from Horace and a translation by James Michie. The tranlsation includes the word 'christen' but at least it's lower case c and it's a good poetic effect - it is certainly surprising in the context but Pindar himself is not without surprises (though anachronism isn't usually one of them). In fact I think Michie captures Pindar better than Horace does. Horace without a hair out of place even in Sapphic mode doesn't quite communicate the island vigour of Pindar. I intend doing a bit of editing on this article. I won't wax lyrical. I think there is room for mention of the myths and maybe I'll start with that. Or maybe I'll lose interest. We'll find out! Amphitryoniades (talk) 07:42, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pindar and Horace 

message: I intend writing the biography back to front, beginning with Pindar's death and ending with his birth. Pindar himself sometimes reversed the sequencing of mythical stories and this will give the reader a taste of the Pindar medicine. There are some bits of info in the biography that don't quite seem right to me and I'll delete them if I can't find sources to back them up. The article tells us that Pindar was proxenos of the Athenians. I find that hard to believe. I think he was actually a proxenos of Aegina, where he had many friends. Also the article lists the names of his daughters and wife - this is not sourced and I wonder what unlikely source it is based on. I suspect the source is Plutarch, his fellow-Theban and a man who never let the facts get in the way of sentimentality. Amphitryoniades (talk) 23:41, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Just to let you know that all your work to improve the Pindar article is really appreciated.  :)  --Chaleyer61 (talk) 05:06, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess Amphitryoniades isn't very encyclopaedic! Neither am I (our viewpoints are generally identical). But I'm sure he won't stop anyone who wants to rewrite any part of this article, and neither will I. If you want to put this article in the usual chronological order, go ahead! However, I certainly will stick my nose in if anybody edits out appropriate information. We don't actually know much about Pindar's life and a proper biography needs to point out how unreliable the ancient sources are and why they are considered unreliable. If the reader goes away feeling how confusing the picture is, then she/he has a pretty good picture of the state of recent scholarship.  The information is already there in the article. You just need to reorder it. While you are at it, you might as well re-order Pindar's poems chronologically, since he wasn't very encyclopaedic either. (:?) Sir Gawain McGarson (talk) 04:03, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  biography 

message: My current edit features a translation by Conway of Pythian2, addressed to Hieron, including these words: Grown fat on the harsh words of hate. (barulogois echthesin piainomenon) My edit characterizes this description as highly individual, even eccentric, but I've just come upon these words by Bacchylides (frag3), also to Hieron, in 'Greek Lyric Poetry' by Campbell: grows fat with envy (phthonoi piainetai). Pindar's poem predates Bacchylides' poem and maybe this is an example of Bacchylides acting like the thieving raven or ape that Pindar complains about. On the other hand, maybe the image of growing fat on hate/envy didn't originate with Pindar but has some pedigree. It could be a reminder to stick close to sources and not to extrapolate from sourced comments by scholars (which is what I did there). Anyhow, there is a handful of bonafide scholars here at Wiki and they might know something about the pedigree of growing fat on hate/envy. I might have to redraft the relevant passage. 
In fact, there are other echoes of Pindar's Pythian2 in Bacchylides' frag3 - the repetition theos...theos in Pindar's stanza is echoed by Bacchylides as theon theon. I guess B is taking an ironic swipe at P, rather than stealing. But it strongly suggests that Pindar's image Grown fat on the harsh words of hate really is his own invention and isn't borrowed from other sources - otherwise B wouldn't bother apeing him. Amphitryoniades (talk) 04:27, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diet of hate/envy 

message: I've spent a bit of time on this article and I'm not satisfied that all my decisions have been good ones. I almost seem to be trying to rival Pindar in perversity and obscurantism at times. Anyhow, I won't object to anyone substantially rewriting it. Amphitryoniades (talk) 06:19, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not so sure 

message: A red-letter contributor cited a paper about Pindar's influence on Theocritus. I deleted it because it was badly placed and wrongly formatted and yet it looks as if it could be very interesting. It should be reinstated as soon as there is a section on Pindar's influence. So far, I haven't found anything else about his influence on other poets. He was the crowning glory of Greek lyrical poetry - and an admired dead end. Here is the Theocritus link: http://www.jstor.org/pss/261689. So now we need a section on P's influence. Amphitryoniades (talk) 12:40, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Theocritus 

message: Things needing to be added:
*A section on fragments - some of Pindar's most famous and interesting sayings are in  fragments and the article needs a scholarly overview of their nature and transmission. I have Bowra's O.U.P. edition and I can drag some info out of it - numbers of fragments per genre, their sources - but not much, and its probably outdated now with so much material emerging from Egyptian rubbish bins.
*A section on Pindar's influence or lack of it.
*Information about the manuscript history of the victory odes. Amphitryoniades (talk) 22:40, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  To do 

message: This is a rather strangely put-together article. What's with the paragraphs in the middle section that begin Note:? Either these are "notes" that would be digressions in the body of the text, in which case they belong in footnotes, or they're a proper part of the body text, and Note: just means "nota bene," as in "I think this is important, but I don't really know how to structure the article to incorporate these observations." At any rate, not really WP convention. Cynwolfe (talk) 02:18, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The use of notes there is explained early in the biography section: "Some of the problematic aspects of this traditional approach are then illustrated in notes at the end of relevant paragraphs" i.e. The biography deals with two different approaches to Pindar's life, traditional and recent. They each have something to offer, so consigning the notes to mere footnotes is not appropriate in this case. If you have something better in mind, let's hear it. McOoee (talk) 02:48, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

text: I just checked out nota bene and I quote: "While "N. B." is often used in academic writing, "note" is a common substitute." So. McOoee (talk) 02:52, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

text: The comments above might indicate I'm not prepared to adapt. I have now removed 'note' and put the paragraphs in italics instead, which may be a better way to present things. At any rate, it might better suit your conventionally wired brain, and it shows off my aptitude for adaptability. McOoee (talk) 06:27, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: It might be more adaptable to rewrite these paragraphs as conventional prose—and easier for readers to follow, which is surely the more important criterion. If the paragraphs are meant to contrast a traditional view and a recent view, this needs to be made explicit throughout. An easy way of doing so is to attribute the various positions to the writers that hold them, e.g. "Bowra characterizes Pindar as such and such... In contrast, Bundy writes that Pindar's personality cannot be excavated from his poetry..." and so on. --Akhilleus (talk) 13:59, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: My point was that if Note: simply means nota bene, equivalent in English to "it should be noted that," then MOS discourages this type of construction. See WP:EDITORIALIZING. I don't consider this "editorializing" myself (I would describe "it should be noted" as appropriate to the didactic mode rather than encyclopedic writing, or merely as an unnecessary deixis), but that's the convention. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:16, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

text: The above criticisms are confined to one point of idiosyncratic structuring. The article is well-developed, uses fine sources such as Bowra, and reads engagingly. Perhaps in this case a class, all descending at once and making mischief? I see perfectly insane ratings all the time. But I the project ratings need updated too, so I'll be presumptuous and change G&R's. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:58, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

text: Sigh. I came here for an explanation for the odd structure of this article, only to find it is a peculiar style decision by one author. While the material, as Cynwolfe states, is solid & otherwise well-written, Wikipedia convention is that indented paragraphs are quotations, not contrary opinions. This article would be less puzzling if the material were better integrated. (No, I don't need an essay about Pindar to be as difficult as one of Pindar's poems -- any more than I need a commentary of Joyce's Finnegans Wake to be as difficult as that novel.) -- llywrch (talk) 06:47, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Note? 

message: I havve changed the translation to take out the words "man" and "he", and replaced them with the more faithful "anyone". (If anyone is interested, these lines are imitated in the epinician section of Pope's Dunciad.)Seadowns (talk) 12:25, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: A Dream of Shadow

message: Pindar and the Emergence of Literature by Boris Maslov, 2015, Cambridge University Press. Chronicle new book listing says: "Draws on such theorists as Alexander Veselovsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Olga Freidenberg in a study of the ancient Greek poet." Maybe of interest here...Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 19:56, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  New book 

message: Is there a source to the anecdote that appears in the old age and death section of this article about Persephone. I've quoted it below. I'm assuming that the person who added this is not suggesting that the goddess Persephone literally appeared to the dying poet, but the orign of this story (was it mentioned in the writings of later Greek poets/philsophers or did it first appear in the Roman era?) would be nice to know. 
"About ten days before he died, the goddess Persephone appeared to him and complained that she was the only divinity to whom he had never composed a hymn. She said he would come to her soon and compose one then. 2601:246:5300:D660:C367:B74B:3C2A:5AF7 (talk) 23:48, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Persephone question