Pindar: Selected Odes

ISBN-13: 9780856686689 / Starogrecki / Twarda / 1996 / 224 str.

Stephen Instone

Opis

Pindar's Odes, blending beauty of poetic form and profundity of
thought, are one of the wonders of Ancient Greece. Composed in
the first instance to commemorate athletics victories, they fan
out like a peacock's tail to illuminate with brilliant subtlety
and imagination the human condition in general, and how our
moments of heroic achievement are inevitably tempered by our
mortal frailties. This edition aims to make for the first time a
selection of these wonderful, but complex, poems accessible and
enjoyable not only to scholars and advanced students but
especially to sixth-form students and non-Classicists (including
anyone interested in Pindar's influence on English poetry). While
particular attention is paid to elucidating Pindar's cryptic
chains of thoughts and to explaining the significance of the
myths in the odes, much greater help than usual in this series is
given with translating the Greek. The selection, which contains
Pindar's most famous poem (Olympian 1) and two particularly
charming mythical stories (in Pythian 9 and Nemean 3),
illustrates Pindar's range and variety by including odes
commemorating victors at each of the four major games. Greek text
with translation, commentary and notes.