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Epinician Rituals in Pindar’s Fourth and Fifth Olympians: Shaping and Preserving Identities in Song

  • Lucia Athanassaki

    Lucia Athanassaki is Professor of Classical Philology Emerita at the University of Crete. She has published extensively on Greek Lyric (Pindar in particular) and Tragedy with emphasis on the interface between performance and the visual arts. She has been progressively drawn into the literature and material culture of the Graeco-Roman period. Her recent work includes Plutarch’s Cities, co-edited with F.B. Titchener (OUP 2022), Lyric and the Sacred, co-edited with A.P.M.H. Lardinois (Brill 2025), numerous articles on Stesichorus, Pindar, Horace, Plutarch, and Dio Chrysostom, and in preparation a book length study entitled Euripides’ Athens: Art, Myth, and Leadership.
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Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Greece and Rome
This chapter is in the book Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Ancient Greece and Rome

Abstract

Taking one or more athletic victories as their starting point, epinician songs commemorate the kleos and achievements of the honorand, his family, and his homeland. As has been noted, however, through a variety of poetic devices epinician poets idealize individuals and communities. Inscribed rituals (e.g., processions, sacrifices, epinician feasts) are an important poetic device whereby poets bridge the differences between local and Panhellenic customs and identities. This paper will focus on two epinician songs, Olympian 4, composed by Pindar in honor of the Olympic victory of the Camarinaean Psaumis, and Olympian 5 for the same victor, composed in all likelihood by an imitator of Pindar, and will explore the role of inscribed epinician rituals at Olympia and Camarina in shaping individual and communal identity and in bridging the distance between the local and the Panhellenic modus vivendi.

Abstract

Taking one or more athletic victories as their starting point, epinician songs commemorate the kleos and achievements of the honorand, his family, and his homeland. As has been noted, however, through a variety of poetic devices epinician poets idealize individuals and communities. Inscribed rituals (e.g., processions, sacrifices, epinician feasts) are an important poetic device whereby poets bridge the differences between local and Panhellenic customs and identities. This paper will focus on two epinician songs, Olympian 4, composed by Pindar in honor of the Olympic victory of the Camarinaean Psaumis, and Olympian 5 for the same victor, composed in all likelihood by an imitator of Pindar, and will explore the role of inscribed epinician rituals at Olympia and Camarina in shaping individual and communal identity and in bridging the distance between the local and the Panhellenic modus vivendi.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Contents VII
  4. Abbreviations
  5. List of Figures XIII
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Greece
  8. Into the Woods: Reading the Iliad with Boeotian Cult 17
  9. Epinician Rituals in Pindar’s Fourth and Fifth Olympians: Shaping and Preserving Identities in Song 35
  10. Repeat, Remember: Ritual and Literature (Horace; Sappho, Alcaeus; Homer, Sophocles, Epicurus, Callimachus, Vergil) 47
  11. Ritual, Meter, and Cultural Memories of Megatheism: A New Case for Sarapis as the God of Hyssaldomos’ Verse-Inscription from Mylasa 71
  12. Part II Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Rome
  13. Georgics 4: Vergil on the Rites of Poetry and Philosophy at the Dawn of a New Era 97
  14. Horace’s Ritual Song in Augustan Rome: The Sacred Poet as an alter princeps 119
  15. Divining Identity in Seneca’s Oedipus 139
  16. Part III Performing Identity
  17. Call the Witnesses: Athenian Citizenship Practice at the Crossroads of Memory, Ritual, and Identity 153
  18. Embodied Memory in the Panathenaia 169
  19. Ritual Against Memory: Managing the Ancestors in Ancient Rome 195
  20. Part IV Trauma and Memory
  21. Aeneas’ tropaeum: Collective Trauma and Commemoration in Vergil’s Aeneid 213
  22. Broken Hospitality and Traumatic Memory in the Funerals of Vergil’s Pallas and Valerius Flaccus’ Cyzicus 237
  23. Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Prudentius, Peristephanon and Paulinus of Nola, Natalicia 271
  24. Part V Women, Ritual and Memory
  25. Remembering Female Names: Crisis, Ritual, and Collective Identity Formation in Ancient Greek Epic Poetry 289
  26. Ritual Lament, Memory, and Identity in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy 307
  27. Memory, Ritual, and the Politics of Closure in Tacitus, Ann. 3.76 323
  28. Part VI Places
  29. Treasuries, Identity, and Politics 337
  30. Ancient Greek Construction Rituals, Tradition, and the Articulation of Communal Identities 355
  31. Ritual, Memory, and Identity: The Case of Theoriae 385
  32. Pomponius Mela’s Hercules: Preserving Phoenician Ritual Memory and Identity 405
  33. List of Contributors 423
  34. Index Rerum
  35. Index Locorum
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111197456-003

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Contents VII
  4. Abbreviations
  5. List of Figures XIII
  6. Introduction 1
  7. Part I Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Greece
  8. Into the Woods: Reading the Iliad with Boeotian Cult 17
  9. Epinician Rituals in Pindar’s Fourth and Fifth Olympians: Shaping and Preserving Identities in Song 35
  10. Repeat, Remember: Ritual and Literature (Horace; Sappho, Alcaeus; Homer, Sophocles, Epicurus, Callimachus, Vergil) 47
  11. Ritual, Meter, and Cultural Memories of Megatheism: A New Case for Sarapis as the God of Hyssaldomos’ Verse-Inscription from Mylasa 71
  12. Part II Ritual, Poetics, and the Past: Rome
  13. Georgics 4: Vergil on the Rites of Poetry and Philosophy at the Dawn of a New Era 97
  14. Horace’s Ritual Song in Augustan Rome: The Sacred Poet as an alter princeps 119
  15. Divining Identity in Seneca’s Oedipus 139
  16. Part III Performing Identity
  17. Call the Witnesses: Athenian Citizenship Practice at the Crossroads of Memory, Ritual, and Identity 153
  18. Embodied Memory in the Panathenaia 169
  19. Ritual Against Memory: Managing the Ancestors in Ancient Rome 195
  20. Part IV Trauma and Memory
  21. Aeneas’ tropaeum: Collective Trauma and Commemoration in Vergil’s Aeneid 213
  22. Broken Hospitality and Traumatic Memory in the Funerals of Vergil’s Pallas and Valerius Flaccus’ Cyzicus 237
  23. Memory, Ritual, and Identity in Prudentius, Peristephanon and Paulinus of Nola, Natalicia 271
  24. Part V Women, Ritual and Memory
  25. Remembering Female Names: Crisis, Ritual, and Collective Identity Formation in Ancient Greek Epic Poetry 289
  26. Ritual Lament, Memory, and Identity in Euripides’ Trojan Trilogy 307
  27. Memory, Ritual, and the Politics of Closure in Tacitus, Ann. 3.76 323
  28. Part VI Places
  29. Treasuries, Identity, and Politics 337
  30. Ancient Greek Construction Rituals, Tradition, and the Articulation of Communal Identities 355
  31. Ritual, Memory, and Identity: The Case of Theoriae 385
  32. Pomponius Mela’s Hercules: Preserving Phoenician Ritual Memory and Identity 405
  33. List of Contributors 423
  34. Index Rerum
  35. Index Locorum
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