Thucydides and Pindar Historical Narrative and the World of Epinikian Poetry

The thesis of this book is twofold. First, it argues for a relationship between the worlds described or presupposed by Thucydides in his History, and by Pindar, chiefly but not only in his 'epinikian' poetry-the odes he wrote for victors in the great games. Second, it argues that ancient literary critics were right to detect stylistic similarities between Thucydides and Pindar, the two great exponents of the 'severe style' in prose and verse respectively. That Thucydides was influenced by epic and tragedy would now be generally agreed. But the important and pervasive aspect of Greek life described and celebrated by epinikian poetry features directly, if occasionally, in Thucydides, in a way that the literal world described by Homer and Sophocles does not. So it is reasonable to expect the same competitive language and concepts to feature in both writers, and they do. The relationship between Pindar and Thucydides has not so far been acknowledged in modern scholarship.

Simon Hornblower is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at University College London.