Table Of ContentSAMMLUNG WISSENSCHAFTLICHER COMMENTARE
PINDAR'S NEMEANS
A SELECTION
K G· SAUR MÜNCHEN LEIPZIG
PINDAR'S NEMEANS
A SELECTION
EDITION AND COMMENTARY
BY
W. B. HENRY
K G SAUR MÜNCHEN · LEIPZIG 2005
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PREFACE
This book is based on a doctoral thesis completed in 2001. If I were starting
afresh, I might well have preferred to include all the Nemeans, but the addition of
the remaining odes at this stage would have entailed a considerable delay, and I
have preferred to publish what is ready. There is at any rate nothing unusual in a
work of this kind: it is some time since a commentator writing in English tackled
a whole book of the epinicians. And of course the individual books were not
organized by the poet as units.
Three of my odes (4, 6, and 8) commemorate athletic victories won by
Aeginetan boys. These have a number of features in common, not least their
single-stanza introductions and their mythical narratives concerned, as expected,
with Aeacus and his line. But they do not follow a single pattern. While in the
first two of the group, Pindar introduces his victor straight after the proem, in N.
8, he moves at first into myth, and the victors are not mentioned until near the end
of the first epode. Indeed that ode gives little space altogether to the victors and
their family. No names are given apart from those of the victors themselves,
father and son. In N. 4 and 6, by contrast, numerous family members are
introduced, and the victor's family takes up a considerable part of each ode.
When we consider structural elaboration, on the other hand, it is N. 4 that stands
out from the group. Whereas the other two odes are organized on a fairly simple
plan, N. 4 displays considerable virtuosity in its central section, with the poet
skilfully maintaining suspense by creating and frustrating expectations: one may
suspect that he was encouraged to compose in a more exploratory vein here by
the knowledge that the victor's family included amateur musicians who could be
expected to listen receptively to a production more ambitious than any provincial
poet would have attempted.
The remaining two odes, N. 10 and 11, are from the appendix to the Nemeans
(originally the last book of the epinician odes), containing odes which, though felt
to belong with the epinicians, were not composed to commemorate victories in
the great games. Mil, for the inauguration of a local official on Tenedos, shares
material with N. 6, and is naturally studied alongside that ode. Ν. 10 stands alone
among the extant epinicians as being for an Argive victor. It includes, besides a
long catalogue of Argive mythical glories, the only extended narrative in the odes
assembled here, the famous myth of the Dioscuri, notable not least for its
extensive use of direct speech, an element otherwise unrepresented in this
selection. This ode may serve as a specimen of Pindar's composition on the
grandest scale.
It is impossible at this stage in Pindaric criticism to discuss everything that has
been published on any ode. I have been selective, but not, I hope, excessively so.
The student of Pindar is well served by published bibliographies: see especially
D. E. Gerber, A Bibliography of Pindar 1513-1966, Cleveland 1969; his
Emendations in Pindar 1513-1972, Amsterdam 1976 (supplemented at
Entretiens Hardt 31, 1985, 22-5); and his 'Pindar and Bacchylides 1934-1987',
Lustrum 31, 1989,97-269 and 32, 1990,7-98, 283-92 (index); also E. Thummer,
VI PREFACE
'Pindaros, 5. Bericht (1980-1992)', AAHG 49, 1996, 1-68. Among more recent
publications, two items of particular relevance are Gerber, 'Pindar, Nemean Six:
A commentary', HSCP 99, 1999, 33-91, and the treatment of N. 4 in Μ. M.
Willcock (ed.), Pindar, Victory Odes, Cambridge 1995,40-3, 91-109.
For the convenience of readers, I have included texts of the odes treated. The
only non-interpolated medieval manuscripts containing all five odes are Β (Vat.
gr. 1312; late xii AD) and D (Laur. 32,52; early xiv AD). For N. 4.1-68 and
6.38-44, there is also V, called Ρ in the scholia (Paris, gr. 2403; late xiii AD). I
have used Turyn's reports, together with those of Mommsen and Snell. Only one
papyrus has so far been published, Π41 (P. Berol. inv. 16367; i BC), containing
parts of N. 6.25-35, but it is expected that further papyri of the epinicians will
appear in a future volume of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. An apparatus of
testimonia is included, but I have not attempted to make a complete collection.
Titles are preserved in D for the first two of my odes, and titles of similar form
have been devised for the remainder. These do not go back to the poet, and I
have not felt obliged to adopt them here.
The metrical schemes included in the commentary are accompanied by brief
discussions of the stanza forms. In the case of N. 6, where there are many con-
troversial points, I have added a series of notes on individual lines of the scheme.
The metrical abbreviations are for the most part those of West, GM xi f., but I
have used docP for West's dod , and wil for wilamowitzianus, West's gl.
Related sequences are vertically aligned as far as possible, as in Snell's schemes
for the aeolic odes.
I have received invaluable advice and support from the supervisor of my
doctoral work, Dr. M. L. West. My examiners, Dr. Armand D'Angour and
Professor James Diggle, also made helpful comments. At a later stage, Professor
G. O. Hutchinson made some suggestions for the revision of my commentary on
N.II. I am grateful to them all.
While I was revising the work for publication, Dr. West and Dr. A. S. Hollis
most generously arranged for me to have access to unpublished work on Pindar
by the late Mr. W. S. Barrett. This has been of great value to me; a number of
points drawn from Barrett's work will be found below with due
acknowledgement.
My work on the dissertation in which this book originated was supported by a
three-year postgraduate studentship awarded by the Arts and Humanities
Research Board and by a Prize Scholarship awarded by Merton College, Oxford.
The revision of the dissertation was one of the projects on which I worked while
holding a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship: I am most grateful to the
Academy for the award, and to the Provost and Fellows of Oriel College, Oxford,
for giving me a college association during the period of the Fellowship (2001-^1).
Finally, it is a pleasure to thank Frau Dr. Elisabeth Schuhmann of Saur for
agreeing to publish the book, and the Herculaneum Society, and in particular Dr.
Dirk Obbink and Professor David Armstrong, for allowing me the time to put the
finishing touches to it.
Oxford, January 2005 W. Β. H.
CONTENTS
Abbreviations, etc. IX
Text 1
Commentary 23
ABBREVIATIONS, ETC.
I refer by editor's name alone to the main editions of Pindar, listed on p. χ of the
first volume of the latest version of the Teubner text ('post Brunonem Snell edidit
Hervicus Maehler', Leipzig 1987; ii, 'edidit Hervicus Maehler', Leipzig 1989);
also to the editions by C. W. Ahlwardt (Leipzig 1820), A. Negris (Edinburgh
1835) and O. Höman (Leipzig 1876) and the edition of the Nemean and Isthmian
odes by C. A. M. Fennell (Cambridge 1883,21899). In the commentary on N. 6,
'Hermann" refers to the notes of G. Hermann in Heyne's 1798 edition,
'Hermann2' to those in Heyne's 1817 edition, and 'Hermann3' to his separate
edition of the ode, first published in 1844 (Opuscula viii, Leipzig 1877, 68-75).
'Schroeder' refers to Otto Schroeder's large edition of 1900 with the 1923
appendix. References to the scholia vetera are accompanied by Drachmann's
page and line; the volume number is omitted in the case of references to scholia
to the Nemeans in volume iii. Classical authors and texts are generally
abbreviated as in LSJ and its Revised Supplement and the Oxford Latin
Dictionary, journals as in L'Annie Philologique. For fragmentary works, I have
used the standard editions: for Pindar and Bacchylides, Snell-Maehler; for
Sappho and Alcaeus, Voigt; for other lyric poets, Page and Davies; for elegy and
iambus, West; for Hesiod, Merkelbach-West; for early epic, Bernabe and Davies;
for comedy, Kassel-Austin; for tragedy, TrGF\ for Callimachus, Pfeiffer; for
Posidippus' epigrams, Austin-Bastianini; for Nicander, Schneider; for historians,
Jacoby; for early mythographers, Fowler; for the Presocratics, Diels-Kranz.
Abel E. Abel (ed.), Scholia vetera in Pindari
Nemea et Isthmia, Berlin 1884
Barrett, Dionysiaca W. S. Barrett, 'The Oligaithidai and their
victories (Pindar, Olympian 13; SLG 339,
340)', in R. D. Dawe et al. (edd.),
Dionysiaca: Nine Studies ... Presented to Sir
Denys Page, Cambridge 1978, 1-20
Bowra C. M. Bowra, Pindar, Oxford 1964
Buck-Petersen C. D. Buck and W. Petersen, A Reverse
Index of Greek Nouns and Adjectives,
Chicago 1945
Chantraine P. Chantraine, Dictionnaire etymologique de
la langue grecque, Paris 1968-80
Denniston J. D. Denniston, The Greek Particles2,
Oxford 1954
Diggle, Euripidea J. Diggle, Euripidea, Oxford 1994
Diggle, Studies J. Diggle, Studies on the Text of Euripides,
Oxford 1981
DNP H. Cancik and H. Schneider (edd.), Der
neue Pauly, Stuttgart and Weimar
1996-2003
χ ABBREVIATIONS, ETC.
Drachmann, MP A. B. Drachmann, Moderne Pindar-
fortolkning, Diss. Copenhagen 1891
Fehling D. Fehling, Die Wiederholungsfiguren und
ihr Gebrauch bei den Griechen vor Gorgias,
Berlin 1969
Forssman B. Forssman, Untersuchungen zur Sprache
Pindars, Wiesbaden 1966
Frankel, D. u. Ph. H. Frankel, Dichtung und Philosophie des
frühen Griechentums2, Munich 1962
Friederichs C. Friederichs, Pindarische Studien, Berlin
1863
Gygli-Wyss B. Gygli-Wyss, Das nominale Polyptoton im
älteren Griechisch, Göttingen 1966
Headlam W. Headlam, On Editing Aeschylus, London
1891
KB R. Kühner, Ausführliche Grammatik der
griechischen Sprache, 1. Teil besorgt von F.
Blass, Hannover 1890-2
KG The same, 2. Teil besorgt von B. Gerth,
Hannover 1898-1904
LfgrE B. Snell et al. (edd.), Lexikon des früh-
griechischen Epos, Göttingen 1955-
LGPN P. M. Fräser and E. Matthews (edd.), A
Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, Oxford
1987-
LIMC Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae
Classicae, Zurich etc. 1981-99
LSAG L. H. Jeffery, The Local Scripts of Archaic
Greece2, Oxford 1990
LSJ H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English
Lexicon, 9th edition revised by Sir Henry
Stuart Jones, Oxford 1925-40. 'Rev.
Suppl.' refers to the Revised Supplement,
edited by P. G. W. Glare, Oxford 1996.
Maas, Resp. P. Maas, Die neuen Responsionsfreiheiten
bei Bakchylides und Pindar i and ii, Berlin
1914 and 1921 (= JPhV 39, 1913, 289-320
and 47, 1921, 13-31)
Mezger F. Mezger, Pindars Siegeslieder erklärt,
Leipzig 1880
T. Mommsen, Parerga Pindarica, Progr.
Mommsen, Parerga
Frankfurt 1877
F. A. Paley (tr.), The Odes of Pindar,
Paley
London and Edinburgh 1868
