PINDAR’S SEVEN NEMEAN ODE: FOREWORD, TRANSLATION, AND COMMENT

In the victory odes written for the Aeginetan athletes, Pindar constantly draws upon mythological characters associated with Aegina. Th ese are: Aeacus, fi rst king of Aegina, and the Aeacidae, his descendants (Peleus, Telamon, Ajax, Achilles, and Neoptolemos). Nemean 7, dedicated to Sogenes, winner in boys’ pentathlon, is no exception: the mythological segment incorporated into the epinikion deals with Neoptolemos. At the time of Pindar, Neoptolemos was commonly known for his bloodthirsty escapades during the fi nal stage of the Trojan war: according to the Cyclic poets, he murders Priam at the altar of Zeus and throws Astyanax, the son of Hector and Andromache, from the city wall; it is the murder of Priam that incurs the wrath of Apollo in Pindar’s own Paean 6, which predates Nemean 7. In the preamble to the translation of Nem. 7, I demonstrate how Pindar’s account alters the more conventional perception of Neoptolemos: for instance, the poet doesn’t mention Neoptolemos’s atrocities; rather, aft er his premature death at the hands of the priest of Apollo, Neoptolemos becomes a “rightful overseer of processions honoring heroes” in Delphi (tr. W. Race), virtually Apollo’s helper. I argue that Pindar’s presentation of Neoptolemos may inspire Sogenes and his father Th earion, who commissioned the epinikion, to entrust the poet with the project of celebrating Sogenes’s athletic triumph, as Pindar promises the victorious athlete everlasting glory, akin to the one possessed by Neoptolemos.