Pindar's Poetry, Patrons, and Festivals

A collection of essays, by a stellar team of authors, about the praise (`epinikian') poetry of the classical poets Pindar and Bacchylides. The social and physical, as well as the literary, background to these poems celebrating athletic victory is explored in light of the latest archaeological and sociological insights.

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Ancient sport made a huge if indirect contribution to the literature of ancient Greece, since some sixty poems by Pindar and Bacchylides ('epinikian odes'), written to commemorate victories, survive from the Classical period. This book is a collection of essays about that literature, and about the social and physical context for which it was written. The editors assembled an internationally distinguished team of speakers for the original 2002 seminar series held in London, and these papers form the backbone of the book. But to ensure coherence and comprehensive coverage, they have commissioned three further papers, and have themselves written a long thematic Introduction. The result is a stellar team of authors, and a book which looks at an important literary phenomenon in light of the latest archaeological and sociological insights, as well as evaluating the poetry both as poetry and as a performance genre with distinctive characteristics.