Agonistic Intertextuality: Studies in Pindar and Bacchylides

Abstract

This dissertation critiques the notion that the 5th century BCE praise poets Pindar of Thebes and Bacchylides of Ceos were natural adversaries. Both ancient and modern scholarship assumes a situation of competition between these authors as their odes routinely stress the composer’s poetic skill. I examine intertextual engagements in poems which Pindar and Bacchylides composed for the same victory celebration. By integrating literary, material, and social historical perspectives, I argue that such shared panegyric occasions trigger an interplay of polemic and complementarity in Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ songs. The six chapters analyze intertextual links in Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ poems for the victory celebrations of Pytheas of Aegina and Hieron of Syracuse. The first four chapters examine convergent and divergent communicative strategies in Pindar’s Nem. 5 and Bacchylides’ 13th Ode for Pytheas of Aegina. Chapters five and six examine laudatory strategies and proverbial wisdom in Pindar’s Ol. 1 and Bacchylides 5th Ode for Hieron of Syracuse. Chapter 1 analyzes the poets’ laudatory strategies in Nem. 5 and Bacchylides 13. I argue that Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ praise of named individuals reflects a historical circumstance in which different members of the same family hired each poet. I argue that this process of commissioning accounts for divergent communicative methods at various points in Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ poems for Pytheas. However, I also advance the claim that the shared panegyric occasion of Pytheas’ victory celebration triggers complementary laudatory strategies. The following chapters trace this form of poetic engagement in the poets’ proverbial wisdom, self-representations, and mythological narratives. Chapter 2 argues that Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ proverbs employ Aegina’s naval commercial network as a framework to conceptualize poetic dissemination. I furthermore suggest that Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ gnomai evince a poetics of mutual reinforcement. Pindar, for example, boasts that every ship departing from Aegina will transport the victor’s fame throughout the Greek world. Similarly, Bacchylides describes how Pytheas’ fame itself will steer his song during a naval journey to the world’s end. Taken together, these doubled references to the maritime diffusion of Pytheas’ glory reinforce each poet’s claim to worldwide poetic dissemination. Chapter 3 focuses on the singers’ self-representations. In the absence of clear intertextual engagements, I argue that Pindar and Bacchylides adopt radically different poetic stances and suggest that this reflects a circumstance in which each poet was hired by a different commissioner. Pindar represents himself as a newcomer to traditional Aeginetan athletic celebrations and emphasizes his poetry’s ethicality as a hallmark of his style. By contrast, Bacchylides arrogates three distinct voices for the performance of his poetry. I suggest that by praising Lampon’s xenia and expenditure for Pytheas, Bacchylides obliquely refers to the process of commissioning and represents himself as Pytheas’ hired celebrant. Chapter 4 traces intertextual engagements in the poems’ mythic sections. I argue that Pindar and Bacchylides offer complementary versions of the Aiakid family tree. Whereas Pindar focuses on the first generation of Aiakos’ descendants, Bacchylides narrates the exploits of the second generation at Troy. I argue that each poet’s mythopoeisis reflects the commissioning process and that a macro-textual vantage point presents audiences with a complete family tree of Aiakos’ descendants. Chapter 5 argues that Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ use of conventional encomiastic rhetoric embeds their poetry within the musical culture of Hieron’s court in Syracuse. Verbal and thematic correspondences in Ol. 1 and Bacchylides 5 create a composite encomiastic effect, whereby Hieron’s court appears as an all-inclusive literary hub. The chapter closes with a discussion of intertextual engagements between Bacchylides’ and Pindar’s praise of Hieron’s racehorse Pherenikos. I argue that complementary imagery and diction here glorify Hieron’s rule over Syracuse. Chapter 6 argues for intertextual entanglements in Pindar’s and Bacchylides’ proverbs for Hieron. I argue that the poets’ gnomai can be understood as comments on each poet’s own narratological technique. I also suggest that the poets’ gnomic statements function on an intertextual level. Pindar, for example, reflects extensively on the nature of poetry, truth, and human speech. He thereby describes how he will truthfully relate a story about Pelops. But Pindar’s is also applicable to Bacchylides’ narratological technique. Similarly, Bacchylides’ proverbs about bliss and human limitations function on an intra- and inter-textual level. His gnome about human limitations is applicable to the central myth of Bacchylides 5. But he also reflects on human bliss in terms that closely resemble Pindar’s praise of Hieron and Pelops’ prayer to Poseidon in Ol. 1