Erick's Reviews > The Extant Odes of Pindar

Pindar had what one might almost call a “double bus” imagination wherein he suddenly transposes even the etymological meaning of his lauded victors’ names in his poems and their deeds to signify vast forgotten epochs of beings and events purported in Myth by that same etymological meaning and deed.

I have used him to help in understanding the *order* - only hinted at in Apollodorus’ Library - of certain incidents in the Greco-Roman Mythical narrative; and he has been invaluable for that, a great keystone. His cleverness makes one’s hair stand on end.

Alexander the Great (truly more a Platonist one day we will find, even though trained by Aristotle) revered Pindar as a sort of man with inner god in him. His father’s house regularly banqueted with Pindar’s household I have found record.

Alot of what Alexander had to do to set order in Greece to his south before setting off upon the world had to do with some groups trying to gain control of Greece’s decision making process religiously as to when to go to war. The Priests associated with Pindar were the last left in that region preserving the old ways (never must it be merely over money was the contention); it was a region he had to attack as they were trying to academically and mercantilistically co-opt this religious process. He protected those Priests alone in that bloodbath. So it shows how important they were to him.

Also I discovered a record Alexander the Great’s main war general for Egypt presented an ornate plaque to a certain city in Egypt that revered Amun Rah above all; a plaque showing, per Pindar, that the Greek’s Ammon Zeus is the same in order and teaching as the Egyptians’ Amun Rah.*

*[I haven’t found if all the words of that plaque are recorded somewhere but elsewhere, in Hesiod and Ovid, I have found Ammon Zeus is said to be the manifestation of God and beinghood some time after the initial Theogony but yet in the early Hyboreal Olympian era; before the time of Belus Zeus and the Numakos; even before the Gigantomachy].

P.D. wrote: "Pindar had what one might almost call a “double bus” imagination wherein he suddenly transposes even the etymological meaning of his lauded victors’ names in his poems and their deeds to signify vast forgotten epochs of beings and events purported in Myth by that same etymological meaning and deed."

Interesting theory. I don't have access to the underlying Greek so that wasn't an obvious connection. I would like to see more evidence of that for the individual odes and how etymology plays into Pindar's mythologizing. That he found particular myths relevant for those occasions is undoubtedly the case. I am certainly open to seeing evidence for why he chose those particular myths.

There's some interesting theories you list there.

Looking back at Pindar I think you are generally correct; he will just jump to ancient myths directly without split after talking of his athletes yet sometimes in ways that are relevant to the occasions. But there are frequently lengthy transitions with double meanings too in the wording of such things.

As a background to just one example (to attempt to show this as you requested), Proclus in his commentary on Plato’s Timaeus speaks of the encircling ocean on either side of the earth (the eastern and western Pacific) and a middle ocean between them, the Atlantic, where three greater sized isles in the north atlantic numbered among the 7 isles in the Atlantic (after the great event we all know of) arose, one of these 3 being called Poseidon. He says these were to have arisen some time just after Athena Isle, called (H)Ellene, sprang from Headland Belus Zeus Land there when Belus Zeus land (I argue Broceliand of northern lore called Beleriand by T. and Boars Land in the Vishnu Purana) was destroyed or smashed into.

In light of all this, is all of the following pure coincidence then when Pindar speaks of true events his “Aletheas” victors certainly achieved in his day...yet in a strangely symbolic manner possibly hearkening back to this geo-mystery of old up in “Septen-Trionas” (the old name on all maps for the North we still find into the 1700’s AD on maps)? =

“At Pytho, he hath the fame of the single and the double foot-race, won within the circuit of the self-same sun; and, in the same month, at *rocky Athens* did one *swift day fling o'er his hair three fairest crowns of victory,* and seven times was he victorious at the festival of *Athena Hellotis.* In *Poseidon's* games *between* the seas...”

And so on.

I just see nods all over his works to certain epochs and geo-mysteries which, if you didn’t already know them, it would be very annoying trying to believe anyone saying he is speaking of them but if you did know them it would be absolute torture trying to show people they are there, akin to that old cartoon where someone finds a wonderful singing toad that never sings when people are around but only when it is alone with the finder. Such was his cleverness I believe he had that made him unique.

Well hope that helps some. Awesome you are reading such things.

Oh, here are my notes on some of the Alexander stuff showing his families connection and reverence to Pindar and his teachings by their appointed ones (which by implication show Plato’s connection to Pindar as Plato’s main student or turncoat was Alexander’s teacher directly).

Ptolemy Lagus dedicated a plaque to Egyptian Thebes from Greek Boietian Thebes own Pindar the poet. On it it speaks of:
“The Prominent Garden of Zeus Amon Lord of Olympus.” This Connects Egyptian Karnak’s Ammun with that of Zeus Amon and both with a primordial Ogygia “of the sceptre of Eros” as a common unifying parentage. Many ellenic writers speak of the far North as Ogygia so this is of great importance.

in question, however, it appears in line 53,
“To lie upon the prominent garden of zeus”
 (Bowra 1965). Although this line seems to bear no unusual imagery, a scholiast
remarked on the passage,
the fact that Ammon is considered to be Zeus Amon lord of Olympus
(Drachmann 1997, 228, 90.c).
42
 This hymn, which appears as fr. 36 in Maehler (1989, 12) and as
fr. 17 in Bowra (1965) is perhaps one of the most important pieces linking both of the Thebes
together as it equates Amun, the god of Egyptian Thebes, with Zeus through a Greco-Egyptian connexion to Boeotian Thebes.

http://www.academia.edu/15916635/Rede...

P.D. wrote: "...Proclus in his commentary on Plato’s Timaeus speaks of the encircling ocean on either side of the earth (the eastern and western Pacific) and a middle ocean between them, the Atlantic, where three greater sized isles in the north atlantic numbered among the 7 isles in the Atlantic (after the great event we all know of) arose, one of these 3 being called Poseidon. He says these were to have arisen some time just after Athena Isle, called (H)Ellene, sprang from Headland Belus Zeus Land there when Belus Zeus land (I argue Broceliand of northern lore called Beleriand by T. and Boars Land in the Vishnu Purana) was destroyed or smashed into... I just see nods all over his works to certain epochs and geo-mysteries which, if you didn’t already know them, it would be very annoying trying to believe anyone saying he is speaking of them..."

Some of the lore among the Greeks I do find fascinating. I remember Plutarch saying that Kronos was imprisoned in the British Isles somewhere. One wonders if, like the Hebrews did in Midrash, the Greeks often had recourse to odd linguistic and etymological parallels in order to make these odd connections. Certainly some works like Cornutus' Greek Theology indicate that such was common practice by the philosophical age. The other possibility is simply that much of that stemmed from oral tradition. The latter would give these traditions the stamp of antiquity; but the former would not. That doesn't negate that there may have been some archetypal inspiration at work in these attempts at etymological meaning; but it makes the notion of antiquated tradition difficult. I wouldn't necessarily negate the validity of either, but we should at least acknowledge some of these issues.