Tao Te Ching
Pindar Πίνδαρος
522 – 443 BCE
Archetype of poetry
One of the always-praised but almost never-read writers, Pindar wasn’t even popular during his lifetime though he was sought out and paid high sums for eulogies. Although only a small fragment of his odes remain and none of his music and dance displays; enough of the creative artistry and complex, beautiful structures survive to give Pindar an immortal place in world literature. He became popular again during the Byzantine Era and again when his style was emulated for the revived 1896 Olympic Games, the Athens Olympics in 2004, and the London Olympics in 2012. Horace thought anyone trying to imitate Pindar would be like Icarus, sure to fail. The splendor of his imagery, imagination, and style have brought some modern scholars to regard his work as “an archetype of poetry.”
Eras
Western
Egyptian Civilization (3150 – 305 BCE)Greek Civilization (480 – 146 BCE)
The Axial Age, “The Great Leap of Being” (800 – 200 BCE)
Chinese
Eastern Zhou 東周 (770 – 256 BCE)Spring and Autumn period 春秋时代 (770 – 476 BCE)
Warring States period 春秋时代 (476 – 221 BCE)
Unlisted Sources
Quotes by Pindar (10 quotes)
“Creatures of a day! What is anyone? What is anyone not? A dream of a shadow is our mortal being. But when there comes to men a gleam of splendor given of heaven, then rests on them a light of glory and blessed are their days.”
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“Even for the feeble, it is an easy thing to shake a city to its foundation, but it is a sore struggle to set it in place again.”
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“Dear to a man is his own home city, his comrades and kinsmen. But to foolish men belongs only a love for things afar.”
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“But dwelling with the glorious gods in ease
A tearless life they pass,
Whose joy on earth it was
To keep their plighted word.”
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“Every gift which is given, even though is be small, is in reality great, if it is given with affection.”
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“Not every truth is the better for showing its face undisguised; and often silence is the wisest thing for a man to heed.”
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“Seek not, my soul, the life of the immortals; but enjoy to the full the resources that are within thy reach.”
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“The days that are still to come are the wisest witnesses.”
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“Success for the striver washes away the effort of striving.”
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Quotes about Pindar (6 quotes)
“Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar is by far the greatest, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich exuberance of his language and matter, and his rolling flood of eloquence, characteristics which, as Horace rightly held, make him inimitable.”
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“Pindar astounds, but Homer brings the more sustaining cup. One is a fountain of prodigious ascent; the other, the unsounded purple sea of marching billows.”
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“[Pindar’s poetry is like] A river bursting its banks and rushing down a mountain with uncontrollable momentum, rain-saturated, churning, and chanting thunder.”
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“Pindar is the last spokesman for the Greek aristocracy and the greatest after Homer…Of all the Greek poets, he is the most difficult to read, and of all the poets there ever were, he is the most impossible to translate… his poetry the most like music… a Bach fugue, a Beethoven sonata”
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“His narratives are swift and vivid, his simple morality is sincere, and the splendor of his language lifts to a passing grandeur even the humblest themes.”
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“Me, in whose breast no flame hath burned
Life-long, save that by Pindar lit.”
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