example of ainos ('praise'), a word used in Pindar’s diction to designate the occasionality of his medium; more specifically, ainos is an affirmation, a marked speech-act, made by and for a marked social group

comment on the theme of phuē conveying 'a natural and spontaneous enthusiasm that is divinely inspired' in epinician songmaking, which is contrasted with the foil of artificial glorification

comment on the seer Teiresias, who declares the will of Zeus, being described as 'prophētēs of Zeus' – a relic of an earlier and undifferentiated stage when Teiresias was generally known as a mantis (the middleman between the source of inspiration and the prophētēs, the recomposer of the inspired message in poetic form), that is the stage where the prophētēs was the mantis

example of the word kamatos designating the life-and-death struggles of heroes (in this case, the Labors of Herakles)

comment on Herakles being described as olbios, when he is immortalized on Olympus after performing his Labors: the word olbios ('blissful') conveys the image of material security, but it tends to restrict this image – in a way that plousios ('rich') does not – to ulterior contexts of bliss in an afterlife

comment on the Homēridai, a corporation of rhapsodes who traced themselves to an ancestor called Homēros and were associated with the earliest phases of rhapsodic transmission of Homeric poetry

comment on the text of Pindar making a specific equation between rhapsodes and the Homēridai, a corporation of rhapsodes who traced themselves to an ancestor called Homēros and were associated with the earliest phases of rhapsodic transmission of Homeric poetry

comment on the beginning of the composition describing the prooemium of a performance without being a prooemium itself, in that no divinity has been directly invoked to start the performance

comment on the notion of rhapsōidos ('rhapsode') as 'he who stitches together the song,' made explicit in these lines

comparandum for N.05.025-026 in terms of the phraseology (proper syntax and rhetorical strategy) associated with attested prooemia

Mullen (1982) citing Fränkel [1975] on the song and a possible da capo repetition of its concluding sentence, calling upon the chorus to start, 'so that all the spectators lining the streets along the route might hear it in its entirety'; Kurke (1988) shifting the emphasis from performance to composition, observing the 'looping effect' of an ending that proceeds into the beginning; comment on the lyric ending that comes full circle to a Homeric beginning

comment on the self-reference, at the end of the composition, to the prelude that is supposedly getting under way at the poem’s beginning

analysis of the diction of Pindar presenting an idealized picture of a prooimion as if performed: the chorus members are described, five lines into the composition, as if waiting for the voice of the Muse, which is to be their cue to start the performance (001-012), the Muse is then invoked to start (ἄρχε, 010) the humnos ('song,' 011), while the 'I' of the lyre player, the persona of the composer, distributes the song to the chorus members and to the lyre (011-012)

reference to a different interpretation of N.03.011-012 by Hubbard (1987b)

comment on the myth of the daughters of Asopos, which served to validate an alliance between Thebes and Aegina

example of kamatos ('ordeal') used programmatically in Pindar’s diction to designate the hardships of preparing for and engaging in athletic competition

comment on the proteroi ('men of the past') referring to the tellers of the tradition; further reference to Nagy (1979) and Hubbard (1985) on the possibility of translating proteroi as the subject matter of the tradition, that is, understanding the 'men who came before' as the heroes who receive the kleos in the diction of Pindar’s ainos

example of a song’s self-reference to the Aeolian mode corresponding to the actual composition of the ode in Aeolic meter

comment on the word euphrosunē ('mirth') referring programmatically to the actual occasion of performing poetry and song in the medium of Pindar, which calls itself ainos

paraphrase of Mullen (1982); analysis of the pattern of Pindar relinquishing choral leadership, either literally, to another specified person who has taken Pindar’s place in training and leading the chorus, or, as in this instance, as a rhetorical strategy: if the victor’s father were still alive, he would be the choral lyric poet for this occasion

example of a song’s self-reference to the Lydian mode corresponding to the actual composition in Aeolic meter; comment on the Lydian mode perhaps being adaptable to more than one native metrical tradition (Aeolic and Doric)

comment on the personal immortalization of Achilles after death on the island of Leuke, which is also the myth espoused by the Aithiopis and anchored in local cult in the territory of Olbia

comment on the concept of habros ('luxuriant') transcending mere ploutos ('wealth') by its inherent quality of sensuality; example of the adjective being applied to the seductive Hippolyta, who is described in the specific context of a 'Potiphar’s Wife' story: having tried and failed to seduce Peleus, she then slanders him to her husband

comment on Aiakos being the only king ever to rule Aegina, since none of his three sons remained a resident of the island: Phokos was killed by the other two, and his sons went to Phokis, while the other two brothers, Peleus and Telamon, went into exile for the murder

analysis of the association of prooimion and nomos in a specifically choral context of kitharōidiā (021-026): Pindaric diction presents a khoros ('chorus') of Muses (023) who are specifically singing (ἄειδ’ 022), and in their midst is the god Apollo himself, taking control as he strikes up a lyre that is heptaglōssos ('having seven languages,' 024), leading the choral performance of 'all sorts of nomoi' (παντοίων νόμων, 025); the chorus of Muses is represented as performing not just the subsequent nomoi (021-026) but also the prooimion that is expected to introduce a nomos (although the word prooimion is not used in the passage, the phraseology of the Muses’ paraphrased words (025-026) is in accordance with the proper syntax and rhetorical strategy of attested prooemia)

comment on the seven-string lyre, presented as a symbol of Panhellenic systematization of local song traditions, allowing Apollo to lead the choral performance of 'all sorts of nomoi' (παντοίων νόμων, 025)

comment on the language of Pindar making it explicit that logioi ('masters of speech') are parallel to aoidoi ('masters of song') in their function of maintaining the kleos ('glory') of men even after death, and implying that this activity of both logioi and aoidoi is a matter of apodeixis ('public presentation')

comment on the explicit parallelism of logoi ('words') and aoidai ('songs') - ἀοιδαὶ καὶ λόγοι - analogous to the parallelism of logioi and aoidoi, attested elsewhere in Pindar (e.g. P.01.092-094); alternatively, the reading aoidoi and logioi (ἀοιδοὶ καὶ λόγιοι) is possible here as well

comment on the fuction of logioi ('masters of speech') to confer kleos: in this case, the lineage of Achilles, the Aiakidai, can go on 'publicly presenting' (apodeiknumenoi) their achievements even after death by virtue of the public display implicitly conferred by the logioi, who are described here in the language of Pindar as a source of kleos

And it [= the name of the lineage of the Aiakidai, especially the name of Achilles] leapt at the Ethiopians, now that Memnon would not be coming back safely [to his troops]. Heavy combat fell upon them [= the Ethiopians] in the person of Achilles hitting the ground as he stepped down [kata-bainein] from his chariot. That was when he killed [Memnon] the son of the luminous dawn-goddess, with the tip of his raging spear.

Pindar Nemean 6.48-53

comment on Pindar, in his own words, following in the path of epic with his epinician themes

In the island state of Aegina, which is the setting for this song, the heroes Aiakos and his descendants, the Aiakidai, were worshipped as cult heroes. For the people of Aegina, that is, for the Aeginetans, a particularly important representative of the heroes known as the Aiakidai was Ajax (Aias). The hero cults of Aiakos and the Aiakidai in Aegina can be expected to be different in some ways from the cults of these heroes in other places, since ancient Greek rituals of hero cult were distinctly epichoric, that is, local and localized. A central idea in this song is that Pindar’s songmaking is a medium that conveys alētheia ‘truth’, which is supposedly singular and absolute, as distinct from mūthoi ‘myths’, which are supposedly multiple and relative. The absolutism of Pindaric songmaking is contrasted in this song with what is imagined negatively as relativism in Homeric poetry.

Suicide of Ajax, from the Eurytios Krater (Corinthian column-krater from Cerveteri, ca. 600 BCE; Louvre E 635). Digital illustration by Wikimedia Commons user Perhelion, after a 19th-century French lithograph in the Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

Pindar’s Nemean 7 is to me one of his most exquisite compositions. For literary critics, however, the compactness and precision of Nemean 7 make this song a most intimidating work of art. What I offer here is merely a modest attempt at a start in interpreting some of the song’s most radiant moments.

In this context, the name Aiakidai can refer either to the heroes called by that name or to the elites of Aegina who claimed the Aiakidai as their ancestors. See also the comment at N.7.70.

The noun mnēmosunē ‘memory’, N.7.15, is personified here as the goddess of poetic memory, and this goddess Memory is associated with light as opposed to its opposite, which is associated with darkness.

Etruscan bronze figurine (cista handle): the suicide of Ajax. 5th century BCE, 2nd quarter. Once on loan to the Antikenmuseum Basel (Kä 531), now reverted to a private collection. Drawing by Valerie Woelfel.

The songmaking of Pindar pictures Homeric poetry at N.7.21 as a kind of logos ‘wording’ that is relative, not absolute, so that the pathā ‘experiencing’ of experiences by Odysseus at N.7.21 cannot be matched neatly by the words that are used in Homeric poetry to tell about these experiences. There are more words and fewer experiences to match the words. To put it another way, there are far too many more words that tell about the experiences of Odysseus than there are real experiences to be actually told. Thus, the excess wording cannot be matched by real experiences. To highlight the excessiveness of the wording, both logos ‘wording’ and the contrasting pathā ‘experiencing’ are presented here in the singular, not in the plural, and this singularization accentuates the force of πλέον’ (pléona) ‘more’ at N.7.20 as applied to λόγον (lógon) ‘word’ at N.7.21 by contrast with πάθαν (páthān) at N.7.21. The ‘moreness’ is accentuated by a one-on-one contrast that shows how the first ‘one’ is far more than the second ‘one’. The use of the word pathā ‘experiencing’ here can best be appreciated in the context of O.01.005: polla … pathen algea ‘he [= Odysseus] experienced [paskhein] many pains’. So, in the Homeric Odyssey, the multitude of experiences is being highlighted. In the song of Pindar, by contrast, it is the multitude of words about the experiences. The problem with these words in Homeric poetry is that they convey mūthoi ‘myths’, N.7.23, which are multiple and relative. See again the general comment at N.7.1–90. There is an outer zone of pseudea ‘falsehoods’, N.7.22, which envelop the inner core of a poetic truth that the songmaking of Pindar claims for itself.

ἐγὼ δὲ πλέον’ ἔλπομαι λόγον Ὀδυσσέος ἢ πάθαν | διὰ τὸν ἀδυεπῆ Ὅμηρον· | ἐπεὶ ψεύδεσί οἱ ποτανᾷ <τε> μαχανᾷ σεμνὸν ἔπεστί τι· σοφία δὲ | κλέπτει παράγοισα μύθοις. τυφλὸν δ’ ἔχει | ἦτορ ὅμιλος ἀνδρῶν ὁ πλεῖστος. εἰ γὰρ ἦν | ἓ τὰν ἀλάθειαν ἰδέμεν, οὔ κεν ὅπλων χολωθείς | ὁ καρτερὸς Αἴας ἔπαξε διὰ φρένων | λευρὸν ξίφος

I think that the wording [logos] in connection with Odysseus is greater than his experiencing [pathā], all because of Homer, the one with the sweet words. Poised on top of his falsehoods [pseudea] and winged inventiveness there is a kind of majesty; [poetic] skill [sophiā], misleading in myths [mūthoi], is deceptive. Blind in heart are most men. For if they could have seen the truth [alētheia], never would great Ajax, angered over the arms [of Achilles], have driven the burnished sword through his own heart.

The suicide of Ajax, resulting from his failure in a competition with Odysseus over possessing the armor of the dead Achilles, is being blamed here on the wording of epic poetry about Odysseus—and on the wording of Odysseus himself as quoted by epic poetry. The wording is linked with the crafty Odysseus, as retold with commensurate craft by Homer, who is seen here as the poet of epic in general. And this wording is described as going far beyond the bounds of alētheia ‘truth’, N.7.25, to which most are ‘blind’ without the poetic vision that is claimed by Pindar’s song, N.7.23–24. There is in this song an uncompromising unified vision that defends the true value of heroes from the compromised complexities of mūthoi ‘myths’, which are conveyed by the words of Homer. The fame of the great hero Ajax, grounded in the local hero cult of the Aiakidai on the island of Aegina, is threatened by the mūthoi ‘myths’ of Homeric poetry and rescued by the alētheia ‘truth’ of Pindaric song. A single absolute alētheia ‘truth’ is being contrasted here with the multiplicity of mūthoi ‘myths’, which are deceptive because they are mutually contradictory, like the falsehoods told by or even about Odysseus. Pindaric song is dismissing Homer as a perpetuator of such mūthoi ‘myths’ as told by Homer. This is not to say that the poetics of Pindar can dismiss epic itself: Homer is being slighted here only to the extent that he is being accused of becoming a perpetuator of words spoken about or even by Odysseus. I should add that the figure of Odysseus, whenever he is being quoted by epic, speaks not in the mode of epic but rather as a master of multiple meanings, a man of craft whose discourse is described by epic itself as ainos ‘coded wording’, O.14.508.

τιμὰ δὲ γίνεται | ὧν θεὸς ἁβρὸν αὔξει λόγον τεθνακότων

Honor [tīmē] becomes the possession of those who get wording [logos] told about them, when they are dead, that is made great [auxein] and luxuriant [habros] by the god [theos].

The word habros ‘luxuriant’ applies here to victors who are already dead—but who are immortalized by songs that are sung in their praise. Although the immortalization is expressed here in material terms of luxury, the secureness of this materiality becomes transcendent by way of the song, which is not tied down by material concerns.

ᾤχετο δὲ πρὸς θεὸν | κτέατ᾽ ἄγων Τροΐαθεν ἀκροθινίων· | ἵνα κρεῶν νιν ὕπερ μάχας | ἔλασεν ἀντιτυχόντ᾽ ἀνήρ μαχαίρᾳ. | βάρυνθεν δὲ περισσὰ Δελφοὶ ξεναγέται

And he [= Pyrrhos/Neoptlolemos] went to the god | bringing the riches of first-fruit offerings from Troy. | And there a man with a mákhaira smote him | as he got into a quarrel over slices of meat. | And the Delphians, conductors of guests [xenoi], were greatly vexed.

This myth tells about the death of Pyrrhos/Neoptolemos inside the sacred precinct of Apollo. The hero is killed in the course of a quarrel over slices of meat. The death of Pyrrhos /Neoptolemos is tied to rituals of sacrificing sheep at Delphi by way of a special kind of makhaira ‘dagger’. In this case, it is the hero himself who is killed, struck by a man wielding a makhaira. In Pindar Paean 6.117–120, we find a comparable but different version of the myth about the death of Pyrrhos/Neoptolemos: in that version, it is Apollo himself who kills the hero.

What follows is an epitome from Nagy 2011§§67–68:

{§67.} In Nemean 7, which follows the version of the myth as accepted in the island state of Aegina, it is made explicit that Neoptolemos was killed while he was wrangling over honorific portions of sacrificial meat, krea, N.7.42, and in this version the killing was done by a man who wielded a makhaira or ‘sacrificial knife’, N.7.42. As we know from another poetic source, the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 535–537, the makhaira was the sacrificial implement conventionally used for the ritual slaughter of sheep at Delphi as also for the ritual cutting of portions of the victims’ meat (BA 135 §22n1). In Paean 6, which follows the version of the myth as accepted in Delphi, it is made explicit that the god Apollo himself, within his own sacred precinct or temenos, personally killed Neoptolemos while the hero was wrangling with the god’s amphipoloi ‘attendants’ over timai ‘honors’ that Neoptolemos as the main sacrificer claimed were his due, lines 84–86. In the version of the narrative as Pindar gives it here in Paean 6, the tīmai ‘honors’ are not specified. In Nemean 7, on the other hand, we have seen that the honors are specified as honorific portions of sacrificial meat, krea, N.7.42, and we have also seen that the killing in this version is done not directly by the god Apollo but by a man who wields a makhaira or ‘sacrificial knife’, N.7.42.

{§68.} In both versions, Neoptolemos as the main sacrificer to Apollo at Delphi becomes instead the main sacrificial victim of the god, slaughtered in the god’s own sacred precinct just as sacrificial sheep are slaughtered there. As we see from this shared feature, the two versions of the myth have in common the central idea that the violent death of this hero resulted from a ritual of sacrificial slaughter that went wrong, very wrong. Such an idea is typical of an aetiology, by which I mean a myth that explains and even confirms the stability of a ritual or of some other such institution by narrating a primordial event of instability in the mythical past. An aetiology, in other words, follows a pattern of mythmaking where something goes wrong in a myth and has to be corrected in a seasonally recurring ritual. In such a pattern, the myth functions as the aetiology for the ritual.

... ἐχρῆν δέ | τιν᾽ ἔνδον ἄλσει παλαιτάτῳ | Αἰακιδᾶν κρεόντων τὸ λοιπὸν ἔμμεναι | θεοῦ παρ᾽ εὐτειχέα δόμον, ἡροΐαις δὲ πομπαῖς | θεμισκόπον οἰκεῖν ἐόντα πολυθύτοις

... but it had to be that | one of the royal Aiakidai be inside the most ancient grove | for all time to come, by the well-built abode of the god, | and that he should have-for-his-abode [oikeîn] as the one which presides | over the Heroes’ Processions, which are distinguished by | many sacrifices

In Pindar's words, the main cult hero of Delphi was destined to be one of the Aiakidai, and the chosen one turned out to be Pyrrhos/Neoptolemos, son of Achilles, son of Peleus, son of Aiakos.

ξεῖνός εἰμι· σκοτεινὸν ἀπέχων ψόγον, | ὕδατος ὥτε ῥοὰς φίλον ἐς ἄνδρ’ ἄγων | κλέος ἐτήτυμον αἰνέσω

I am a guest [xenos]. Keeping away dark blame [psogos] and bringing genuine [etētumon] glory-of-song [kleos], like streams of water, to a man who is near and dear [philos], I will praise [= verb aineîn] him.

A xenos ‘guest’ is someone who is bound by the ties of reciprocity between guest and host, and this reciprocity is signaled here by the adjective philos ‘near and dear’, N.7.62, as applied to the host. A host needs to feel obliged by his own sense of moral nobility to treat even a stranger as a guest: that is how the word xenos needs to mean ‘stranger’ as a prelude, as it were, to the meaning ‘guest’. A stranger is presumed by his host to become a guest—unless something goes wrong in the ritualized process of hosting. Such ties that bind are presupposed to exist between poet and patron. Here the collective voice of the performance re-enacts the voice of the poet as he speaks to his patron. As the laudator addresses the laudandus, he claims control over a kleos ‘glory of song’ that is etētumon ‘genuine’. The epithet etētumon ‘genuine’ highlights the truth-value of local traditions grounded in ritual. By way of simile, the directing of kleos as the ‘glory’ of song from the laudator toward the laudandus is being compared here to releasing a flow of water to activate the vitality of plantlife. And the patron, as the laudandus, is philos ‘near and dear’ not only to the poet as the laudator whom he hosts as his special guest but also to all others who attend his hosting, since they are becoming interconnected to the patron and to the poet and to each other: we see here poetic communication by way of community.

The Aeginetan patrons of Pindar were a closed and specially privileged group within their own aristocratic communities, tracing themselves back to the lineage of heroes known as the Aiakidai. See the comment at N.7.10. In the Aeginetan odes of Pindar, as here at N.7.70, the noun patrā means not ‘fatherland’ but ‘patriliny’, referring to a given branch of aristocrats claiming descent from the Aiakidai. Here at N.7.70, the name of the patriliny is Euxenidai.

Here at N.7.74 the word ponos refers to the ‘ordeal’ of the poet whose competitive production of a victory ode is a formal compensation for the ‘ordeal’ of the athlete in competing to win a prize, which in turn is a formal compensation for the primordial death of a hero.

ἔα με· νικῶντί γε χάριν, εἴ τι πέραν ἀερθείς | ἀνέκραγον, οὐ τραχύς εἰμι καταθέμεν.

Your indulgence, please! If I—to reciprocate the victor—shouted something out loud [anakrazein] as I soared too far up, I am not unversed in bringing it back down.

The wording here, marking a festive occasion of celebration, is cognate with the wording we we read at O.14.462–467:

|462 κέκλυθι νῦν, Εὔμαιε καὶ ἄλλοι πάντες ἑταῖροι, |463 εὐξάμενός τι ἔπος ἐρέω· οἶνος γὰρ ἀνώγει, |464 ἠλεός, ὅς τ’ ἐφέηκε πολύφρονά περ μάλ' ἀεῖσαι |465 καί θ’ ἁπαλὸν γελάσαι καί τ' ὀρχήσασθαι ἀνῆκε, |466 καί τι ἔπος προέηκεν, ὅ πέρ τ' ἄρρητον ἄμεινον. |467 ἀλλ' ἐπεὶ οὖν τὸ πρῶτον ἀνέκραγον, οὐκ ἐπικεύσω.

|462 Listen to me now, Eumaios and all you other companions! |463 Speaking proudly [eukhesthai], I will tell you an utterance. The wine is telling me to do so. |464 Wine, distracting as it is, impels even the thinking man to sing |465 and to laugh softly. And it urges him on to dance. |466 It even prompts an utterance that may be better left unsaid. |467 But now that I have shouted out loud [anakrazein], I will not suppress it.

example of a song’s possible self-reference to the Lydian mode corresponding to the actual composition in Doric (dactylo-epitrite meter); comment on the Lydian mode perhaps being adaptable to more than one native metrical tradition (Aeolic and Doric)

comment on the voice of Pindar – the voice of ainos – indignantly condemning the multiplicity and deceitfulness of mūthoi that led to the undoing of the hero Ajax

comment on the negative implications of the word mūthos in Pindaric discourse

comment on Kirkwood’s (1984) general argument that Pindar’s poetry praises the noble only and blames the base only; analysis of the epinician ainos, as a double-edged mode of discourse, being able to admonish or blame as well as praise: the pattern of restriction on the range of blame (to the base only) is a specialization from earlier and less differentiated phases of ainos, where one man’s praise proved to be another man’s blame

It can be said in general that athletic festivals were aetiologically motivated by myths that told of the pollution resulting from a hero’s disastrous death. In the case of the three other most prestigious athletic festivals besides the Olympic Games in the Peloponnesus, which was the region recognized by all Hellenes as the cradle of their ancient Hellenic civilization, the relevant foundation myths are as follows:

• Pythian Games, founded by the Amphiktyones in compensation for the killing of the Python by Apollo : ἐπὶ τῷ Πύθωνος φόνῳ, ‘in compensation for the killing of the Python [by Apollo]’ (Aristotle F 637.16).

• Isthmian Games, founded by the hero Sisyphus in compensation for the death of the infant hero Melikertes, who was also known as Palaimon: τὸν ἀγῶνα ἐπ’ αὐτῷ, ‘the competition [agōn] in compensation for [epi] him’ (Pausanias 2.1.3).

• Nemean Games, founded by the heroes known as the Seven against Thebes in compensation for the death, by snakebite, of the infant hero Arkhemoros, who was also known as Opheltes: ἄθλησαν ἐπ’ ᾿Αρχεμόρῳ, ‘they [= the Seven] endured ordeals [āthloi] in compensation for Arkhemoros’ (Bacchylides 9.12). In poetic terms, the antidote for the prototypical snakebite is the singing of ep-aoidai, ‘incantations’ (Pindar Nemean 8.49), and such songs (aoidai means ‘songs’) counteract the deadly venom by celebrating athletic victories that are won at the Nemean Games in compensation for the prototypical death (Nemean 49-53).

comment on Pindaric diction presenting the medium of epinician praise poetry as existing even before the Seven against Thebes: by implication, praise poetry was praising heroes even before the events recorded by epic

comment on the special appropriateness of athletics to praise poetry, illustrated by Pindar’s claim that epinician praise poetry had existed even before epic: the Seven against Thebes are represented as having engaged in an athletic contest specifically before they embarked on their famous war; this athletic contest, serving as prototype for the Nemean Games, would have been celebrated by the prototype of Pindar’s current Nemean Ode in honor of the current victor at the Nemean Games

comment on the Nemean Games being the most recent and therefore the least Panhellenic of the four major athletic festivals, which explains the status of the Nemeans as originally the last book of epinician odes, and the last three of the odes in that book celebrating victories won not at the Nemean Games: Nemean 9 celebrates a victory in chariot-racing at Sikyon

analysis of an exception to the general rule that Pindar’s songs consistently avoid metrical patterns of spoken poetry: at the beginning of each strophe of the composition is a metrical sequence that matches dactylic hexameter in its initial and final word boundaries, but clashes with the primary caesura patterns of hexameter

The death of Amphiaraos is a most telling example. In the version of the relevant myth as retold by Pausanias (1.34.2), Amphiaraos is riding back home on his war chariot after the defeat of the Seven against Thebes, when suddenly the earth opens up underneath and swallows him - speeding chariot and horses and all; and, at the spot where this engulfment happened, there is a hieron, ‘sacred space’, where worshippers of the hero come to consult him, though Pausanias reports that there is some disagreement about matching the place of the ritual consultations with the actual place of the engulfment. In any case, the engulfment of Amphiaraos by the earth is a sign of his death and of his subsequent return from death as a cult hero. In the Odyssey (15.247 and 253), the death of Amphiaraos after the expedition against Thebes is made explicit, though it is only implicit in the references to the engulfment of this same hero as narrated in the songs of Pindar (Olympian 6.14; Nemean 9.24-27, 10.8-9). The poetic reticence we see in Pindar’s songs about mentioning the actual death of Amphiaraos at the moment of his engulfment by the earth is a sign, I argue, of a keen awareness about the subsequent resurrection of the hero.

example of the praise poetry of Pindar pointedly equating the kleos of victorious athletes with the kleos of heroes as they are known from the epic, not merely confirming the extension of the genealogies of powerful families into the heroic past

example of the kleos of Pindar’s epinician lyric poetry momentarily collapsing the distinction between hero and victorious athlete, in this case drawing into an explicit parallel the kleos of the hero Hektor and the kleos of the victorious Chromios

comment on the praise of Pindaric song not being restricted to the victorious men and boys who were subjects of the poet’s here and now, the way the epic of Homeric poetry is restricted to heroes: the word kleos in Pindar’s praise poetry applies equally to the man of the present and the hero of the past, and what is being praised about the man of the present, such as the athlete, is ideologically parallel to what is being praised about the hero

comment on the Nemean Games being the most recent and therefore the least Panhellenic of the four major athletic festivals, which explains the status of the Nemeans as originally the last book of epinician odes, and the last three of the odes in that book celebrating victories won not at the Nemean Games: Nemean 10 celebrates a victory at the Heraia of Argos

comment on the Nemean Games being the most recent and therefore the least Panhellenic of the four major athletic festivals, which explains the status of the Nemeans as originally the last book of epinician odes, and the last three of the odes in that book celebrating victories won not at the Nemean Games or even any athletic festivals: Nemean 11 celebrates a patron’s installation as councilor