Pindar's Heroic Athletes: Between Ajax and Odysseus in a Victory Ode for Melissus of Thebes
Not merely celebrating athletic feats with his iconic victory odes, Pindar also engages his audience in broader questions of what constitutes virtue, excellence, and wisdom.
Just like in modern times, sports were a big deal in Ancient Greece. Not just athletic events, most ancient sports competitions were tied to the worship of a specific deity, so they even had religious significance. You’ve probably heard of the Olympics, but there were other games too. The main ones were:
The Olympic Games at Olympia, honoring Zeus
The Pythian Games at Delphi, honoring Apollo
The Isthmian Games, at Corinth, honoring Poseidon
The Nemean Games at Nemea, honoring Zeus
(There were smaller regional/local events as well.) At each of the games, there were all kinds of athletic events, such as racing, horseback riding, wrestling, chariot riding, and something called the pankration, which was basically a combination of boxing and wrestling.
There were prizes, of course. But if you wanted to go the extra mile, you could also pay to have somebody write you a victory ode, which was essentially a song composed in your honor.
The most famous Greek writers of epinician (i.e., victory) odes we know of are Pindar and Bacchylides. Living in the late 6th and early 5th centuries BCE, these two were highly sought-after by aristocratic patrons commissioning odes for their children, other family members, or themselves.
What a way to mark an athletic victory! I only wish we could hear what these odes would have sounded like. But reading them will have to be enough.
And it is helpful being able to read them instead of just listen to them, because there’s a lot there! These victory odes generally discuss the actual event itself only in brief; most of the song is devoted to mythological storytelling that is intended as a kind of exemplum for the victorious hero in question.
In today’s essay, we’re going to be taking a closer look at a particular poem of Pindar’s, Isthmian 4, composed for a certain Melissus of Thebes, who was victorious in the pankration at the Isthmian games (hence the title). In particular, we’ll see how intricate the mythological references are in Pindar’s odes. Indeed, Pindar is known as one of the trickiest Greek authors to read, not only because of his elaborate style, but also because of his nuanced use of narrative and myth to celebrate his patrons.
Isthmian 4 is a little bit funny because its main mythological scene is the story of Ajax, the valiant Trojan War hero who infamously ended his own life after losing a competition for Achilles’ armor to the much more cunning Odysseus; after making a pretty speech to the Greeks, Odysseus persuades them to give him the armor, even though Ajax was closer to Achilles and a better warrior. Pindar writes (Isthmian 4.30-42):
Indeed, obscurity and lack of reputation belong to those who try nothing. But there is an indistinctness of fortune even of those who strive, before they reach the peak goal; for the end goal gives some of some things and some of other things. Indeed, the skill of lesser men sometimes overtakes and overwhelms the better man. You know the might of Ajax: he impaled his mighty body on his own sword, staining it with blood late at night, and therefore he holds blame for the sons of the Greeks, however many went to Troy. But Homer has given him honor among humans, who, having set straight all the virtue of that man, declared it for later poets to play, in accordance with his staff of divinely-inspired words. For the thing that has been uttered goes forth in immortality, if someone should say something well; and the shining beam of fine deeds has gone upon the all-fruitful earth and through the sea, always unquenchable.
τῶν ἀπειράτων γὰρ ἄγνωτοι σιωπαί.
ἔστιν δ᾽ ἀφάνεια τύχας καὶ μαρναμένων,
πρὶν τελος ἄκρον ἱκέσθαι·
τῶν τε γὰρ καὶ των διδοῖ {τέλος}.
καὶ κρέσσον’ ἀνδρῶν χειρόνων
ἔσφαλε τέχνα καταμάρψαισ’· ἴστε μάν
Αἴαντος ἀλκάν, φοίνιον τὰν ὀψίᾳ
ἐν νυκτὶ ταμὼν περὶ ᾧ φασγάνῳ μομφὰν ἔχει
παίδεσσιν Ἑλλάνων ὅσοι Τροίανδ’ ἔβαν.
ἀλλ’ Ὅμηρός τοι τετίμακεν δι’ ἀνθρώπων, ὃς αὐτοῦ
πᾶσαν ὀρθώσαις ἀρετὰν κατὰ ῥάβδον ἔφρασεν
θεσπεσίων ἐπέων λοιποῖς ἀθύρειν.
τοῦτο γὰρ ἀθάνατον φωνᾶεν ἕρπει,
εἴ τις εὖ εἴπῃ τι· καὶ πάγ-
καρπον ἐπὶ χθόνα καὶ διὰ πόντον βέβακεν
ἐργμάτων ἀκτὶς καλῶν ἄσβεστος αἰεί.
Although Odysseus isn’t expressly discussed in the poem, aside from the snide remark that “the skill of lesser men sometimes overtakes and overwhelms the better man,” he still has an undeniable presence.
Let’s jump back to how Pindar addresses Melissus at the start of the ode (Isthmian 4.1-3):
By the will of the gods, O Melissus, there is a myriad path in every direction for me to pursue your virtues in song, for you showed resourcefulness in the Isthmian games.
Ἔστι μοι θεῶν ἕκατι μυρία παντᾷ κέλευθος,
ὦ Μέλισσ’, εὐμαχανίαν γὰρ ἔφανας Ἰσθμίοις,
ὑμετέρας ἀρετὰς ὕμνῳ διώκειν·
Here, the reader is invited to think of the Odyssey in particular. The “myriad path in every direction” is reminiscent of Odysseus’s many wanderings and adventures, a facet of his heroic persona to which the Odyssey’s opening directly refers to (ἄνδραπολύτροπον, 1). The syntactic structure of Isthmian4.1 also mirrors the opening of the Odyssey, with a two-syllable word in the first position followed by μοι (moi) in the second position in the line (cf. the Odyssey’s opening andra moi ennepe, Mousa, “speak to me of the man, Muse…”), strengthening the intertextual link between the two.
Here, both Pindar and Melissus get to “be” Odysseus in some sense. Like Odysseus, Pindar as poet has myriad paths to traverse. At the same time, Melissus’s display of eumachania also aligns him with a fundamentally Odyssean quality, which naturally reflects back on Pindar himself.
Poet and poetic subject therefore embody two different aspects of Odysseus’ character: his wandering and his resourcefulness. In Isthmian 4, Pindar is somehow both Homer and Odysseus, and Melissus is somehow both Ajax and Odysseus. This opening makes for the seed of a heroic characterization for Melissus that will be developed in the remaining part of the ode. This characterization oscillates between the two heroes, and yet these same analogies are never clear-cut.
Although the opening plays up Melissus’s resourcefulness, Pindar emphasizes his own eumachania too: he must clearly choose the best poetic path to “pursue” Melissus’s virtue, and use his own inventiveness to appropriately celebrate Melissus’s achievement.
The ode’s denouement stresses this dual characterization of Melissus. It is in this final description of the victor that Pindar uses the slippery adjective ὀνοτὸς to describe Melissus (Isthmian 4.60-69):
May we happen upon kindly Muses to kindle that torch of songs for Melissus too, the shoot of Telesias’ line, a worthy garland of the pancratium. For, in the toil, he is in his heart like the daring of loud-roaring wild lions, but with regard to his intelligence, he is a fox, which wards off the swoop of the eagle by rolling on its back; but it is necessary that one do everything to blot out his enemy. For he did not take as his lot Orion’s physical form; he is not much to look out, but he is heavy in might to meet with.
προφρόνων Μοισᾶν τύχοιμεν,
κεῖνον ἅψαι πυρσὸν ὕμνων
καὶ Μελίσσῳ, παγκρατίου στεφάνωμ’ ἐπάξιον,
ἔρνεϊ Τελεσιάδα. τόλμᾳ γὰρ εἰκώς
θυμὸν ἐριβρεμετᾶν θηρῶν λεόντων
ἐν πόνῳ, μῆτιν δ’ ἀλώπηξ,
αἰετοῦ ἅ τ’ ἀναπιτναμένα ῥόμβον ἴσχει·
χρὴ δὲ πᾶν ἔρδοντ’ ἀμαυρῶσαι τὸν ἐχθρόν.
οὐ γὰρ φύσιν Ὠαριωνείαν ἔλαχεν·
ἀλλ’ ὀνοτὸς μὲν ἰδέσθαι,
συμπεσεῖν δ’ ἀκμᾷ βαρύς.
The comparison of the toiling Melissus to a lion evokes the comparison made between Ajax and a lion in the Iliad, connecting back to the central Ajax myth that we glossed over earlier.
When Melissus is described as “not much to look at,” moreover, the audience is prompted to think back on the earlier gnomic statement, about how the skill of lesser men at times overwhelms men who are better, and reassess it. Upon first hearing this assertion, the listener might assume that Melissus or his family are the “greater men” to whom the line refers. However, Melissus besting a bigger opponent might fit the words equally well, and so in that regard Melissus is made parallel with Odysseus—who, for all his role in Ajax’s death, is hardly an unsuitable or shameful heroic exemplum. Just as Pindar passes over Orion as a potential mythic comparison, he creates an opportunity for the reader to supply another.
There is, however, one particular hero who was also “not much to look at,” more famously so than Heracles: Odysseus. On several occasions, Athena makes Odysseus taller and more handsome, as it is his guile and not his physical form that make him so impressive.
In the Iliad, for example, Odysseus is described as being a head shorter than Agamemnon (3.194-195); in the same passage, Antenor notes that, in addition to his smaller stature, Odysseus does not carry himself with much grandeur or authority. As Antenor puts it: “At that point, we were not so amazed then, when we saw Odysseus’ form,” οὐ τότε γ᾽ ὧδ᾽ Ὀδυσῆος ἀγασσάμεθ᾽ εἶδος ἰδόντες, 3.224). It is only when Odysseus begins to speak that his full power is revealed, and his words come forth “like snowflakes” (3.205-224). Perhaps, in addition to Melissus, Pindar once again makes an identification between Odysseus and the poet: unlike the athlete, the poet’s physical form is irrelevant, and indeed the poet himself is largely absent for much of the ode; still, his glorious words make an impact that is ultimately greater than any physical feat.
Melissus therefore seems to have an Odysseus-like body type as well as an Odysseus-like intelligence, as he is “a fox with regard to his intelligence” (μῆτιν δ’ ἀλώπηξ), μῆτις (mētis) being a quality famously associated not only with foxes, but also with Odysseus. The next folkloric comparison in this passage also manifests an unspoken comparison with Odysseus, although in a different way: like the fox, who “wards off the swoop of the eagle by rolling on its back,” so too is Melissus able to ward off his enemy, presumably in the context of a wrestling match. If Odysseus is like a fox in his cunning intelligence, the famous ending scene of the Odyssey also makes him like an eagle. Although Athena has tried to stop a confrontation between Odysseus and the parents of the ill-fated suitors, Odysseus at first ignores her guidance: “Much-suffering, radiant Odysseus shouted terribly, and having gathered himself he swooped like a lofty-flying eagle (σμερδαλέον δ᾽ ἐβόησε πολύτλας δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς, / οἴμησεν δὲ ἀλεὶς ὥς τ᾽ αἰετὸς ὑψιπετήεις, Od. 24.537-538).
In this analogy, Melissus the fox is the one who avoids—not resembles—Odysseus the eagle, which perhaps returns the audience to the original prima facie comparison of Melissus and/or his family being like Ajax and their opponents being like Odysseus. At the end of the poem, like at its beginning, Melissus both is and is not an Odysseus-like figure.
The resulting effect is that Melissus actually resembles neither Ajax nor Odysseus, strictly speaking, but a hybrid of the two. Just as he, foxlike, “avoids the swoop of the eagle,” he also avoids the unheroic aspects of Odysseus’s character; at the same time, his ability to overcome his opponent ensures that he is similarly unlike the worst version of Ajax, the one who was disgraced to the point of choosing to die by suicide.
Melissus is therefore a contemporary hero of a different kind. Although he is certainly linked to a glorious past, as Pindar establishes for the audience in the first part of the ode, he is also free from the potentially negative associations that may stem from the ambiguous mythological comparisons with Odysseus and Ajax alike.
With Melissus happily squared away and depicted in the best possible light, the “Odysseus” identification in this poem ultimately settles on somebody else: Pindar himself. However, in keeping with the style of the rest of the poem, Pindar does not make this comparison an express one, and indeed, as the audience comes to the end of the ode, Pindar leaves behind his Odyssean persona to instead identify with Athena, Odysseus’ divine ally. As in the beginning of the poem, in which Pindar declares that he has a certain (Odyssean) ability to traverse many paths (Isthmian 4.1), so too here are the unspoken comparisons with Odysseus and Athena one that the audience must infer. At the very end of the poem, Pindar reiterates Melissus’s achievements, but also devotes some attention to Melissus’s trainer, Orseas (Isthmian 4.69-74):
There, his head white with myrtle, this man displayed two victories, and a third victory in the boys’ contest before, having put his trust in the much-counseling intelligence of his trainer, the helmsman who guides the tiller; now, along with Orseas, I will sing in his honor, dripping pleasing grace upon him.
ἔνθα λευκωθεὶς κάρα
μύρτοις ὅδ᾽ ἀνὴρ διπλόαν
νίκαν ἀνεφάνατο παίδων <τε> τρίταν
πρόσθεν, κυβερνατῆρος οἰακοστρόφου
γνώμᾳ πεπιθὼν πολυβούλῳ· σὺν Ὀρσέᾳ δέ νιν
κωμάξομαι τερπνὰν ἐπιστάζων χάριν.
Just as the trainer guides Melissus to victory, the poet guides Melissus’s victory to fame and therefore true glory. Without Pindar’s “much-counseling intelligence,” moreover, Orseas’s own would remain obscure. While Pindar overtly praises Orseas, he also praises himself. There is another parallel for Pindar as well: the phrase τερπνὰν ἐπιστάζων χάριν (terpnan epistazōn charin) also evokes the points in the Odyssey in which Athena enhances Odysseus’s appearance, which also makes an important connection with the description of Melissus as “not much to look at.” Strikingly, one of the ways in which Athena makes Odysseus look more impressive is by pouring charis over him, just as Pindar drips charis onto Melissus and Orseas.
Like Melissus, Pindar’s characterization shifts with a fluidity that makes it almost imperceptible until the literary transformation is complete: he is no longer Odysseus, but Athena. The poem’s ending on the wordχάρινleaves the audience with this image, and the audience is left with the realization that they have now traveled on myriad paths of song, and arrived at a destination that celebrates the achievement of the poet almost more than it celebrates the achievement of the victor—and yet Pindar has orchestrated this journey with so much grace that his praise of Melissus cannot be questioned.
Pindar is a challenging author! Tricky to read and tricky to analyze. I love how he takes a task that should be simple—praise a victorious athlete—and weaves in mythological references and allusions to make the ode so much more nuanced. I hope you enjoyed reading, and I would love to hear from you in the comments!
Take care until next time,
MKA
I'm sure is not even close to the real experience, but you need to listen to Petros Tabouris, he has some songs of the odes and is absolutely wonderful. I'm a little obsessed with his music.