Pindar

Number 3 in my ancient Greek literature Odyssey. This collection of poems in praise of sporting success serendipitously coincided with the 2024 Paris Olympics. Makes you wonder what the original Olympians would have thought of our modern version of their event. Too many clothes and not enough chariot-racing, probably.

These are songs that would have likely been accompanied by music and dance, so it's almost impossible to get a true idea of their original intent just by reading from a book, show more especially in translation.

Additionally, the works are so thick with references to people, places and myths that they can be difficult to parse from 2000+ years in the future. Praise for Pindar tends to focus on the momentum in his poetry, but my reading was slow and jerky as I checked the notes and tried to interpret his lines.

As I continued, I made a conscious effort to read faster, and didn't have to stop so often to double-check the names and references. The work turned out to be much easier to appreciate that way. show less

If you judged this book by its cover and picked it up hoping for some rough man-love, think again, Buster.

What we have here are the texts of commissioned chorus pieces. Divorced from the original Greek poetry, music and performance, I'm not sure that you could call them literature. There is the occasional great turn of phrase. It's worth underlining them, hidden as they are amongst the chaff. Personally I don't think there's enough of them to rescue Pindar as a poet. The fact that rich show more athletes would buy poems comparing them to the gods I find unspeakably vulgar.

On the other hand the paper used for this edition is nice. There is a good introduction and notes. The translation is clear. It's essentially prose which has had it's lines broken so that it looks like poetry. Happily Verity makes no further pretence towards poetry.

The 5 star rating is for the amount of time the poems have survived. Well done, boys! show less

This was an extremely intriguing and interesting ancient Greek text (odes based on mythology and so forth.) Pindar's style stands out as a epitome of what ancient Greece was capable of nurturing and bringing forth amongst its ranks. Pindar is quite a poet, and his inventive and powerful focus brings a deeper sense of meaning to what he is writing about. Overall, a great book for those interested in the classics- and those into poetry in general.

4 stars.

Some of them were a bit incomprehensible, but overall, they were really nice. Rather than being poems that you just let the ambiance wash over you, these are poems that you need to reflect on.