[39] O. ii, 75 ff.
[40] fr. 133 ἐνάτῳ ἔτεϊ. What is meant is beyond all question “after the expiration of an ennaëteris” (period of 99 months, i.e. 8 years and 3 intercalary months), a period which besides being familiar as a cycle of religious festivals (Apolline specially but not exclusively) also occurs in the ancient procedure of atonement for murder as the period of self-banishment and servitude in a foreign land undergone by the murderer. Apollo after slaying Python serves μέγαν εἰς ἐνιαυτόν (i.e. an ennaëteris) in the house of Admetos (i.e. the god of the lower world) and then returns purified (Müller, Dorians, i, 338); in the same way Herakles serves Eurystheus (at least a trace of this is found in [Apollod.] 2, 5, 11, 1; see Müller, Dorians, i, 445).—After the murder of Iphitos Herakles has to serve as bondsman to Omphale (peculiar in this case is the combination of this species of atonement for murder with the buying-off of the relatives of the murdered man [Apollod.] 2, 6, 2, 5; D.S. 4, 31, 5). At the end of this period of service he is once more “pure” (ἁγνὸς ἦν S., Trach. 258).—Kadmos after slaying the dragon and the Σπαρτοί serves Ares (the chthonic?) for an ἐνιαυτός of eight years [Apollod.] 3, 4, 2, 1; Müller, Orchomen. 213.—Hippotes after the murder of Mantis has to fly the country δέκα ἔτη [Apollod.] 2, 8, 3, 3.—On the analogy of this custom the gods, too, who have broken an oath sworn by the Styx are banished nine years from the rest of the Olympians (and confined to Hades, since menial service of the χθόνιοι is the essential idea of all such ἀπενιαυτισμός), Hes., Th. 793 ff.: Orph. fr. 157. With a reminiscence of this expiatory banishment Pindar makes the souls at the conclusion of their earthly pilgrimage (which is itself a banishment) undergo a final period of penance in Hades for an ennaëteris, at the end of which the ποινή for the ancient crime is regarded as completely paid off.—The life on earth and the period in Hades which follows is regarded as an exile of the souls (on account of serious crime).—Such an idea was most natural if the real home of the soul was thought of as being [445] a divine (not earthly) country; the idea occurs quite clearly in Empedokles (certainly uninfluenced by the brief allusions of Pindar); see above, chap. xi, [n. 75.]
[41] fr. 133. The similarity to the promises made by Emped. fr. 146 (457 f.) is immediately apparent, but is not to be explained by imitation of Pindar by Emped., but simply by the similarity of imaginative outlook which led to similar results in the two cases.—Elevation to the rank of Hero is the reward which next awaits the man who is born a king, according to this view. Very remarkable is the manner in which Pindar, O. ii, 58–62, effects the transition to his eschatological statement: the man who possesses πλοῦτος ἀρεταῖς δεδαιδαλμένος knows the future, viz, what we are then told about the fate of the soul hereafter. This assertion, which seems to attribute to the virtuous Great Man at once a higher and a profounder knowledge, is perhaps best explained by the allusions of fr. 133. He who has reached this highest stage of earthly happiness must deduce from that very circumstance that for him now it is fated after another death to become a Hero. He therefore knows that everything, indeed, happens that is related in ll. 63–74, but that before him in particular lies that which follows in ll. 75 ff.; and this is to be regarded as the real import of what the man in question “knows”, 62, while the rest, 63–74, is only added for the sake of completeness. Theron, therefore—for it is he who is alluded to throughout—may be assured beforehand that after death he will be gathered to the Heroes. This is what Pindar means to say here, or at least to give the συνετοί to understand 91 ff. As a matter of historical fact Theron was worshipped with ἡρωϊκαὶ τιμαί after his death, D.S. xi, 53, 2.
[42] fr. 133. There is according to Dissen a contradiction between fr. 133 and O. ii, 75 ff.: in the latter three periods of life on earth are necessary before the final departure, in fr. 133 only two. This variation would be got rid of if we could adopt the interpretation given by Ty. Mommsen, adnot. crit. Olymp. 30, and assert that in O. ii also Pindar only speaks of two earthly lives with a single residence in Hades intervening. But the words ἐς τρὶς ἑκατέρωθι μείναντες, 75–6, can hardly bear any other interpretation than “three times on each of the two sides” (not: “on both sides—once on that side, twice on this side: total three times”). At the same time there is nothing in fr. 133 to prevent us taking the same number of lives (three as a minimum) to be implied there too. We are not there told that the birth as kings, etc., must always be the one to follow the first birth: in this case also two earlier lives may have gone before.
[43] See above, chap. iv, [§ 8].
[44] ἔτειλαν Διὸς ὁδὸν παρὰ Κρόνου τύρσιν, O. ii, 77. What exactly is to be understood by the “way of Zeus” was presumably clearer to the συνετοί versed in the mythology of mysticism for whom Pindar is here writing, than it is to us. It must mean (as Boeckh supposes) the way which Zeus treads in order to reach that Island, far to the West in Okeanos, inaccessible as the Land of the Hyperboreans to ship or traveller on foot; it is a special ἀθανάτων ὁδός like that which leads to Homer’s grotto of the Nymphs, ν 112. Acc. to Bergk, Opusc. ii, 708, it is “certain” that Pindar means the Milky Way. Along this the gods travel to the house of Zeus, Ovid, M. i, 168; and Orpheus in the same way fr. 123, 17 Ab., speaks of the θεῶν ὁδοὶ οὐρανιώνων in the heavens. But the souls could only be made to travel along the Milky Way if their habitation was placed in the sky as it often was later. So, as Bergk points out, following Lob., Agl. 935, [446] the Empedotimos of Herakld. Pont. calls the Milky Way ὁδὸς ψυχῶν τῶν ᾇδην τὸν ἐν οὐράνῳ διαπορευομένων ap. Philop. in Arist., Mete., p. 117, 10 Hayd.; see above, chap. ix, [n. 111]. But Pindar situates his μακάρων νῆσος in the Ocean (78): it is difficult to see how the souls could arrive there on the Milky Way from the place where they find themselves after death. (We may surely acquit Pindar of the later fancies about an Okeanos in the heavens.) Q.S. iii, 761 ff. (cited by Tafel) knows of a special way belonging to the gods which leads from heaven down to the Ἠλύσιον πεδίον. But the way by which the souls reach the μακάρων νῆσος does not, like that way, begin in heaven. We should rather think of some way only passable for gods and spirits leading from the inhabited world over the pathless Ocean to the latter’s “sources” far in the West.
[45] In O. ii, 84–5, it is certainly Kronos who is meant (as Didymos took it, though he gave an absurd interpretation of the passage) and not Zeus as Aristarchos imagined. The exceedingly corrupt and (owing to the intrusion of glosses) unmetrical lines are beyond certain restoration: the emendations of the Byzantine scholars give the required sense.—What happened to the incorrigibly wicked? In accordance with the theory of the soul’s Transmigration two alternative views as to their fate were possible: they might be regarded as passing from body to body unceasingly (Empedokl.) or as doing penance by suffering eternal punishment in Hell (as with Plato and others). The circumstances in which he alludes to these matters do not give Pindar any special occasion to declare himself for either view. He has only to speak of the final condition of the just; the fate of the ἀσεβεῖς is left in semi-obscurity. Something about the matter is, however, said in fr. 132; ψυχαὶ ἀσεβέων hover under the vault of heaven that covers the earth (γαίᾳ either corrupt or grammatically bad Greek), while the pious above the vault of heaven (ἐπουράνιοι) sing to the “Great Blessed One”. Everything in this is un-Pindaric, the inadequacy and even incorrectness of the language (μολπαῖς ἐν ὕμνοις), the unconcealed monotheism of the phrase μάκαρα μέγαν, the conception of the souls as having nothing else to do than sing to the One God, the whole idea that these blessed ones dwell “in heaven”. This last is an idea familiar to Greeks of a later period, nor is the division of souls into ὑπουράνιοι and ἐπουράνιοι unknown to them; cf. Epigr. Gr. 650, 9 ff. But Pindar cannot have written anything of the kind. It is even doubtful whether Clem. Al. who, Str. iv, 640 P., names as the author of the lines τὸν μελοποιόν, meant Pindar by the words: Theodoret. (Gr. Aff. C. viii, 599 C), who attributes the second half of the frag. to Pindar, had no other source but the same Clem. Al. But it may be doubted whether the whole is to be attributed to any Greek of the older faith. It has quite the appearance, as Zeller, Socr. and Socratics, p. 24, n. 3, strikingly suggests, of one of those Jewish forgeries in which Jewish monotheism and the ideas connected with it were to be fathered upon Greek antiquity. Welcker, Kl. Schr. v, 252 ff.; Götterl. i, 741 f., defends the fr. (and most unconvincingly connects the ψυχαὶ ὑπουράνιοι and ἐπουράνιοι of the fr. with the quite different δαίμονες ἐπιχθόνιοι and ὑποχθόνιοι of Hes., Op. 123 and 141). He thinks he can defend the genuineness of the lines (which had already been declared spurious by Dissen) by pointing to the words of Horace about Pindar’s θρῆνοι (O. iv, 2, 21): flebili sponsae iuvenem raptum plorat, et vires animumque moresque aureos educit in astra nigroque invidet Orco. Even supposing that this referred to the transport of the souls to the stars the witness of Horace thus given would only [447] remove a single difficulty from a passage that has other overwhelming difficulties in profusion. But Horace says nothing of the transport of the “Soul” to the heavenly regions, vires, animus, mores, all these together refer not at all to the ψυχή but to the ἦθος and the ἀρεταί of the dead. Pindar, Horace means, rescues the memory of the nature and merits of the youth from decay: only the fame which the poet secures for him is under discussion. educit in astra and invidet Orco mean nothing more than: he rescues the memory of the dead from oblivion, exactly as in the epitaph quoted above, [n. 20]: οὑδὲ θανὼν ἀρετᾶς ὄνυμ’ ὤλεσας ἀλλά σε Φάμα κυδαίνουσ’ ἀνάγει δώματος ἐξ Ἀΐδα. Thus, it is least of all to be concluded from Horace’s words that Pindar transported the souls of the εὐσεβεῖς into the heavens (rather that in the θρῆνοι—as much as anywhere else: see above, [n. 25]—Pindar sometimes only recognizes the immortality of fame: of that alone does Horace speak).
[46] O. ii celebrates the victory which Theron had won at Olympia in Ol. 76, but was probably written some time after that victory. Theron died Ol. 77, 1, or 76, 4.
[47] Sicily was rich in cults of χθόνιοι, in which Gelon, Hieron and their ancestors were hierophants, Hdt. vii, 153; Pi., O. vi, 95. So, too, Akragas the city of Theron (and the home of Empedoldes which also is not without its importance) was Φερσεφόνας ἕδος, Pi., P. xii, 2, having been given by Zeus to Persephone on her marriage, Sch. Pi., O. ii, 16 (as also had, in addition to other cities, Pindar’s native city Thebes, Euphorion, fr. 48; cf. Eur., Phoen. 684 ff. Theron’s family traced its descent from Eteokles the son of Oedipus). It is very possible that the hopes of a blessed immortality of the soul such as were fostered in many ways in the cult of the χθόνιοι and particularly in that of Persephone, should have been familiar to Theron from such a cult and attractive to him.
[48] The theological character of much of Pindar’s work makes knowledge of mystic doctrine not surprising in him. In fr. 137 he speaks of the Eleusinia (to which he otherwise owes nothing). In fr. 131, though the words are unfortunately most corrupt and probably contain lacunae as they have been transmitted, he speaks of the “releasing Initiations”, ὀλβία δ’ ἅπαντες αἶσα λυσίπονον τελετάν—this is the form of the words required by the metre (dactylo-epitritic), and thus (not τελευτάν) they appear in Plu., Cons. Apoll. 35, p. 120 D, and also in cod. Vatic. 139 (which I have collated).