Home is the Hero: Deixis and Semantics in Pindar Pythian 8

Abstract

Pythian 8, probably the last epinikion Pindar composed, is unusual in the way it points elsewhere: of all the odes for Aiginetan victors, only this one fails to employ a myth related to the family of Aiakos. Instead, through its central narration of an Argive tale and through a complex network of pathways, the poem ties the victor’s home island to a number of other landscapes. Even more ambitiously, through several elaborate figural systems, Pindar maps out a vast parallel space within which gods, heroes, athletes, kings, mortals, and poets interact. The poetic construction of such a cosmos produces a vivid sense of powerful contiguities at work in the world. 1 But how does it all happen? The specific technique employed to bring about this effect, the means by which Pindar builds his triumphant, unifying assertion, is worth articulating. Not only is such an investigation of this much-studied ode still lacking; the explication may provide a useful tool for reading other archaic Greek poetry. For Pythian 8, pushing, as it does, the limits of choral poetic art, demands that we, in turn, expand our critical horizons to find new ways to understand and describe its ancient artistry. Invoking the notion of deixis is one step along this road. 2