Abstract
This essay examines the earliest quotations of Pindar in order to shed light on the social and historical dynamics through which he first emerged as a classic author. Pindaric quotations from the classical period point to his stratified and multi-faceted reception: as a figure within popular memory, as an emblem of elite culture and as an intellectual ancestor. Indeed, a capacity to appeal to different audiences for different but interconnected reasons was integral to his canonisation. The earliest Pindaric quotations already bespeak his culturally privileged status, which was expressed and perpetuated in different ways over the centuries but which was established as a social fact from remarkably early on. A search for the deepest roots of the classicisation of Pindar, it is argued, has to go all the way back to his poetry.
Acknowledgements
This article began as a chapter for a volume which, sadly, will not be published. I am most grateful to Matthew Wright for inviting me to think about quotation culture and for much enlightening digital discussion about that topic. For comments on previous versions of this essay I am also indebted to Peter Agócs, Robert Fowler, Richard Hunter, Adrian Kelly, Tom Nelson, William H. Race, Patricia Rosenmeyer and an audience in Louvain.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Intertextuality in Early Greek Poetry: The Special Case of Epinician
- Classicising ‘Pindar’: Quotation, Canonisation and Early Reception
- A Triangle in the Law-court: Speakers-Opponents-Audiences and the Use of the Imperative
- New Epistomia from Eleutherna
- Porphyry and ancient scholarship on Iliad 10.252–253: Edition, translation and discussion
- List of Contributors
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Intertextuality in Early Greek Poetry: The Special Case of Epinician
- Classicising ‘Pindar’: Quotation, Canonisation and Early Reception
- A Triangle in the Law-court: Speakers-Opponents-Audiences and the Use of the Imperative
- New Epistomia from Eleutherna
- Porphyry and ancient scholarship on Iliad 10.252–253: Edition, translation and discussion
- List of Contributors