§ 2
A peculiar position is taken up by Pindar. Two contrasted views of the nature, origin, and destiny of the soul seem to be combined in his mind with equal claim to authority.
In the Victory Odes allusions predominate which imply an agreement with the popular view expressed in the sayings of poets and the presuppositions of the cult of souls and the worship of Heroes. After its separation from the body, the soul disappears into the underworld.[22] The piety and affectionate memory of relatives and descendants remains as a link between the dead and the living;[23] whether the soul itself is still conscious of any connexion with the world of the living seems uncertain.[24] Its power is over and done with—it is certainly no condition of blessed happiness into which it has entered. Only the glorious name, the fame that is honoured in song, rewards the great deeds of the virtuous after death.[25]
An exalted state of being, after their departure from this earth, is attributed to the Heroes alone. The belief in the existence, importance, and power of these illuminated spirits holds complete sway;[26] it emerges in lively reality from the words and narrations of the poet throughout all his work. Moreover, the ancient conception—in reality rendered untenable by the belief in Heroes—that only with the undivided union of body and soul is complete life imaginable, is discernible in many allusions and stories of Translation that imply that conception. Amphiaraos, the most illustrious of those who have been translated to everlasting life, is specially dear to the heart of the Theban poet, and is glorified more than once in the language of unaffected faith in such miracles.[27] But, further, even when death has occurred in the meantime, elevation to a higher life remains possible—even beyond the heights of the “Hero”. Semele lives for ever, though she died under the crash of the thunder-bolt.[28] The barrier between men and gods is not insuperable; we can distantly approach the immortals not only in greatness of mind, but in bodily vigour.[29] One mother gave birth to both races, though the gulf between them is indeed a deep one; man is nought—a shadow’s dream-image; for the gods the brazen heavens remain for ever as an unconquerable stronghold.[30] Only a miracle of divine interference with the lawful and normal course of nature, can raise the individual soul to the everlasting life of the gods and Heroes.
Such visions as these could be indulged in by one who still [415] kept his feet firmly fixed upon the ground of popular belief. And yet side by side with them in Pindar’s works are to be found descriptions of quite another order in which is expressed, with elaborate fullness and dogmatic exactitude, a complete doctrine of the nature, destiny, and fate of the soul; passages in which, in spite of some little poetic licence in detail, a well ordered and, in the main, consistent whole is pictured.
The Soul, the “Image of Life”, the other Self of the living and visible man, sleeps while the limbs of man are active; when the individual is asleep it shows him dream-visions of the future.[31] This psyche[32] which during the waking and conscious hours of the man is itself lying in the darkness of unconsciousness, is far from being the totality of mental powers gathered together in a single creature, or at any rate, in a single concept, such as the philosophers as well as the everyday use of the word at that period understood by the name “psyche”. Here, again, the name once more denotes the double of mankind dwelling within the living man such as it was known to primeval popular belief and to the Homeric poems. A theological meaning has, however, been added to it. This “Image” of man, we are told, “is alone descended from the gods,” and with this the reason also is discovered why the soul-image alone after the destruction of the body by death remains alive.[33]
Derived from the gods and therefore eternally exempt from destruction, everlasting and immortal, the soul is none the less condemned to finiteness; it dwells within the mortal body of man. This is the result of the “ancient guilt” of which, quite in the manner of theological poetry, Pindar also speaks.[34] After the death of the body it is to await in Hades the stern sentence that “One” shall pronounce over its earthly deeds.[35] For the condemned there is in store “affliction past beholding”[36] in deep Tartaros, “where the slow rivers of murky night spit out endless darkness,” and forgetfulness encloses the victims.[37] The just enter into the subterranean places of bliss where the sun gives them light when he has set upon earth.[38] In flowery meadows they enjoy an existence of resplendent idleness, such as only the Greek imagination, nourished amid the artistic surroundings of Greek life, could describe without falling into emptiness and futility.
But the soul has not even so found its last resting place. It must again give life to a body and not until it has completed upon earth a third faultless life can it hope for an end of its earthly course of being.[39] The conditions of each new life [416] upon earth depend upon the degree of purity that the soul has achieved in its previous lifetimes. When at last the Queen of the Underworld considers that its “ancient guilt” has been atoned for, she sends forth the souls after the ninth year[40] of their last sojourn in Hades once more to live in the upper world, this time in happiness. Here they pass through one more lifetime as kings, mighty men of valour, and Wise Men.[41] Then at last they escape from the necessity of earthly rebirth. As “Heroes” they are honoured among men;[42] and they have therefore entered into a state of higher being which the popular belief of Pindar’s time ascribed not only to the souls of the great ancestral figures of the past, but also to many who had departed hence in more recent times after a life of valour and service.[43] Now they are beyond the reach of Hades as much as of the world of men. Faith seeks them in “Islands of the Blest” far out in Okeanos; thither, to the “Citadel of Kronos” they travel on the “Way of Zeus”[44] and enjoy, in company with the great ones of the past, under the protection of Kronos[45] and his assessor Rhadamanthys, a life of bliss for ever undisturbed.
Such conceptions of the origin, fortunes, and ultimate destiny of the soul, the more they diverge from commonly held opinions, the more certainly must they be regarded as being part of the private and real persuasion of the poet himself. The poet, who on other occasions when he makes passing and casual reference to the things of the next world accommodates himself to the traditional view, gives himself up willingly to such hopes and aspirations where the circumstances of his song provided an opportunity of dealing at length with such matters—especially in hymns of mourning for the dead. He may have paid attention in such poems to the special opinions of those who were to be the first hearers of his song. Theron, the ruler of Akragas, to whom was dedicated the second Olympian Ode of Victory that deals so fully with the hope of bliss to come, was an old man whose thoughts might well be occupied with the life after death.[46] In this case, therefore, we may presume perhaps the special interest of the person whose praises are sung in these reflections that lead so far away from the commonly accepted view of the Soul.[47] But that Pindar, proud and self-willed, conscious of specific knowledge and proud of that consciousness, should have given expression to strange doctrine so foreign to popular ideas simply out of complaisance to another’s will, and in subservience to another man’s belief—that is quite unthinkable. It is rather the substance of what he believes himself [417] and has achieved by his own struggles that in a solemn hour he reveals for a moment to like-minded friends.
The different elements out of which Pindar has composed his special view are not hard to distinguish. He is following theological doctrine in what he tells of the divine origin of the soul, its wanderings through several bodies, the judgment in Hades, the special place assigned to the just, and that of the wicked. But it is layman’s theology that he is propounding; it does not bind itself to a single unalterable formula, and betrays throughout that its exponent is a poet. Pindar, throughout the whole of his poetic activity, combines the office of singer with that of professional teacher, more especially where he has to speak of the things of an invisible divine world. But for all his didactic professionalism he remains the poet, for whom as depository and trustee of the Myth it is out of the question to abandon the traditional, whether in legend or belief. His task is to keep pure what has been handed down to him, to make it more profound, perhaps to supplement and complete it, but with all this to justify it. Thus, poetic legend and popular belief enter even into his theologian’s doctrine of the Soul; the Islands of the Blest, the elevation of man to Hero—these were things he could not give up.