The Landscape and Heritage of Pindar's Olympia

The Landscape and Heritage of Pindar’s OlympiaChristopher Eckerman

Classical World, Volume 107, Number 1, Fall 2013, pp. 3-33 (Article)

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Classical World, vol. 107, no. 1 (2013) Pp.3–33

The Landscape and Heritage of Pindar’s Olympia

Christopher Eckerman

ABSTRACT: Olympia provided Pindar with material that he could use in his narratives of praise, and Pindar manipulated the primeval landscape, the ancient man-made monuments, and the mythological heritage of Olympia. Whether using Alpheios, the hill of Kronos, the Pelopion, or the ash altar of Zeus, Pindar weaves rich connec-tions between the heritage-laden physical landscape of Olympia and his patrons, so that his patrons can bolster their social status. Sim-ilarly, Pindar composes myths that revolve around the origins of Olympia, astutely connecting ancient and contemporary practice to reinforce the importance of the present moment’s ideological rela-tionship to the past.

I. Introduction

Of all the authors of ancient Greece, perhaps no one was a greater rhet-orician than Pindar, who manipulated myth, gnomai, landscape, and the gods incessantly in his odes to bolster the prestige of his patrons.1 This paper focuses on the landscape, monuments, and myth of Olympia in Pin-dar’s discourse, and I argue that Olympia was never an existential given in Pindar’s odes, but rather a phenomenon on which he drew to suit the social, personal, and political needs of his patrons.2 Neither Pindar nor

1 It was E. Bundy (Studia Pindarica [Berkeley and Los Angeles 1962] 3) who pro-pounded the famous dictum, “There is no passage in Pindar and Bakkhulides that is not in its primary intent encomiastic—that is, designed to enhance the glory of a particular patron.” For a corrective rejoinder, see G. Huxley, Pindar’s Vision of the Past (Belfast 1975) 9, 45.

2 As Huxley (above, n.1) 28 asserts, “To modify myth is to change the poetical recon-struction of the past. Such alterations are necessary if mythical events are harmoniously to prefi gure the contemporary world of the poet, and the motive for making them is as much political as moral.” On the politics of Panhellenic performance, S. Harrell (“King or Private Citizen: Fifth-Century Sicilian Tyrants at Olympia and Delphi,” Mnemosyne 55 [2002]

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Bacchylides mentions contemporary or near-contemporary monumental architecture in the sanctuary, such as the Heraion or specifi c treasuries, and this lack of engagement with the contemporary sanctuary suggests that the epinician poets were concerned with evoking Olympia as a site of heritage. More specifi cally, Pindar’s odes connect their patrons with the antiquity of Olympia and thereby legitimate contemporary practice, since “antiquity conveys the respect and status of antecedence, but more important perhaps, underpins the idea of continuity . . . the past vali-dates the present by conveying an idea of timeless values and unbroken narratives that embody what are perceived as timeless values.”3 The four phenomena that are evoked (Alpheios, the hill of Kronos, the Pelopion, and the ash altar of Zeus) share elements of divinity and antiquity. As constructions of nature, the hill of Kronos and the river-god Alpheios are primeval. As constructions of man, the Pelopion and the ash altar of Zeus are as close to primeval as Olympia could offer, since they were the earliest substantial structures developed within the sanctuary. The integration of Alpheios, Kronos, Pelops, and Zeus into the landscape of Olympia creates particularly sacred space, and Pindar imbues his odes with sacredness and heritage by evoking these phenomena.

All the odes in which Olympia features prominently were com-posed for colonial patrons, and this was not happenstance. The status of Olympia made the sanctuary a suitable topic for colonial victors, and accordingly myth for colonists frequently revolves around the Panhel-lenic sanctuaries. When Pindar narrated a myth about Olympia or men-tioned one of its monuments, colonists could connect to one of the most prominent sanctuaries on the Greek mainland and thereby reaffi rm their Hellenicity, whether as patron, family member of the victor, or member of the general Greek audience.4 This is true of Olympian 1, for Hieron of

450–51) notes that “Participation in Panhellenic contests, especially equestrian competi-tions, and the erection of dedications in the Panhellenic sanctuaries were political acts.”

3 G. J. Ashworth and B. Graham, “Senses of Place, Senses of Time and Heritage,” in G. J. Ashworth and B. Graham, eds., Senses of Place: Senses of Time (Burlington, Vt., 2005) 8–9.

4 As C. Calame (“Narrating the Foundation of a City: The Symbolic Birth of Cyrene,” in L. Edmunds, ed., Approaches to Greek Myth [Baltimore 1990] 293) notes, “There are then autochthony myths whereby continental cities give root to their inhabitants in the ground on the motherland. But there also exist ‘marine’ autochthony myths that aim to give terrestrial roots to islands fl oating at sea, before causing continental peoples, capable of founding human civilization, to emigrate there.” On Hellenicity, see J. Hall, Hellenicity (Chicago 2002).


Eckerman | Landscape and Heritage of Pindar’s Olympia 5

Syracuse, whose myth focuses on Pelops’ chariot competition at Olym-pia; of Olympian 3, for Theron of Akragas, whose myth focuses on Her-akles’ foundation of Olympia; of Olympian 6, for Hagesias of Syracuse, whose myth focuses on Iamos’ origins in Olympia; and of Olympian 10, for Hagesidamos of Western Lokroi, whose myth focuses on Herakles’ foundation of Olympia. All the myths, then, that foreground Olympia were written for Sicilian colonists, and Pindar’s narratives fi t squarely within a broader contemporary matrix in which colonists from Magna Graecia were constructing bonds with Olympia, partially to reaffi rm their Hellenicity.5 As Malkin remarks, “One should not be surprised that the list of victors in the ancient Olympic and Pythian Games included so many Greeks from the west. They wanted that Greekness and enhanced the importance of the notion while practicing it.”6 But it was not only colonists who benefi ted from association with Olympia, and I turn now to Alpheios to see how Pindar uses Olympia’s river god both to enrich the landscape of Olympia and to endow his patrons with status.7

II. Alpheios

The heritage of Olympia is uniquely intertwined with its local river god, Alpheios. Like other river gods, Alpheios is the son of Okeanos and Tethys, and his importance can be seen by the fact that he is evoked second, after the Nile, in Hesiod’s catalogue of rivers (Theog. 337–345) and by the fact that Homer mentions him on several occasions, both as a geographic marker and as a divinity.8 Among the extant epinician poems, Pindar evokes Alpheios fi fteen times, and Bacchylides does so

5 For an illuminating case study of the Deinomenids, see Harrell (above, n.2).6 See I. Malkin, “Networks and the Emergence of Greek Identity,” in Mediterranean

Historical Review 18 (2003) 71.7 For the role of Olympian 1’s etiological myth on Pelops’s chariot race at Olym-

pia see J. Davidson, “Olympia and the Chariot Race of Pelops,” in D. Phillips and D. Pritchard, eds., Sport and Festival in the Ancient Greek World (Oakville, Conn., 2003) 101–22.

8 Il. 2.592, 5.545, 11.712, 726, 728; Od. 3.489, 15.187. The Homeric references to Alpheios emphasize three characteristics: his well-known status as a landscape marker, his divinity, and his procreative power as a god, father of Ortilochos. It was with Alpheios that Herakles cleansed the Augean stables (Apollodorus 2.5.5, Diodorus Siculus 4.13.3), and Pliny the Elder (Natural Histories 4.14) reports that Alpheios was navigable upon his lower end from the coast to Olympia.


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eight times.9 Both poets construct Alpheios as an epichoric divinity of Olympia, where he would be displayed prominently on the eastern ped-iment of the temple of Zeus.10 With Alpheios, Pindar animates the land-scape of Olympia, and the use of a landscape divinity in the evocation of a sacred space reaffi rms the importance of this space, since, as the geographer Lily Kong has noted, “if sacredness is not inherent, atten-tion must be paid to how place is sacralized.”11 If divinities inhabit the spaces where victors win, victors benefi t all the more, since the divini-ties inhabiting these landscapes are implicit supporters of competition and explicit granters, at least partially, of the victories that take place around them.

III. Horses speeding beside Alpheios

Pindar and Bacchylides both use a motif, previously unrecognized, of victorious horses running beside Alpheios. Bacchylides mentions Alphe-ios and swift-running horses in his third ode, composed for Hieron of Syracuse in response to his tethrippon victory at Olympia in 468 B.C:12

[ ] [ ]

, , �’ -] [ ] .

] ] �’

, ] [ ] .

( . 3.1–8)

9 Pindar: O. 1.20, O. 1.92, O. 2.13, O. 3.22, O. 5.18, O. 6.34, O. 6.58, O. 7.15, O. 8.9, O. 9.18, O. 10.48, O. 13.35, N. 1.1, N. 6. 18, I. 1.66; Bacchylides: 3.7, 5.38, 5.181, 6.3, 8.27, 11.26, 12.43(?), 13.193; see too fr. 20c, l.11. A fragment of Simonides pre-serves a reference to Alpheios (POxy. 2430, fr.131), and a scholiast on Theocritus (1.117) notes that Ibycus wrote about the famed cup that, if thrown into Alpheios at Olympia, would come up in Arethusa on Ortygia; see Str. 6.2.4, 8.3.12.

10 See J. Barringer, “The Temple of Zeus at Olympia, Heroes, and Athletes,” Hesperia 74 (2005) 211–41.

11 L. Kong, “Mapping ‘New’ Geographies of Religion”: Politics and Poetics of Mo-dernity,” Progress in Human Geography 25 (2001) 213.

12 Text and translations (with occasional alterations) of Pindar and Bacchylides are based on those of Race and Campbell in their respective Loeb editions.



You, Clio, who give sweet gifts, sing of Demeter who rules over grain-rich Sicily and of her Daughter who is crowned with violets, and of Hi-eron’s swift horses who ran at Olympia. For they sped with preeminent Victory and with Splendor beside wide-eddying Alpheios, where they made Deinomenes’ prosperous son get the victory crown.

With these opening lines of the poem, the fi rst image of Olympia that the audience develops is Hieron’s four horses and chariot speeding “beside wide-eddying” ( �’ ) Alpheios, in the company of personifi ed Victory and Splendor, as the horses win the tethrippon competition.

Bacchylides evokes Alpheios similarly in his fi fth ode, also written for Hieron of Syracuse’s victory of 476 at Olympia, this time in the keles competition with Pherenikos:

�’

.

( . 5.37–40)

Gold-armed dawn saw chestnut-maned Pherenikos, the colt that runs like a storm, who won beside wide-eddying Alpheios.

Pherenikos, victorious at both Olympia and Delphi, was Hieron’s prized colt, and the depiction of Pherenikos winning “beside” ( �’) Alpheios adds vividness to the narration, as the audience imagines Pherenikos in the hippodrome beside Alpheios at Olympia.13 As in the previous ode, Bacchylides graces Alpheios here with the epithet “wide-eddying” ( ), which adds splendor to both Alpheios and the Olympian landscape, and encourages the audience to imagine Alpheios as a pow-erful river.

Pindar uses the same motif in Olympian 1, which, like Bacchylides 5, was composed for Hieron of Syracuse for his victory with Pherenikos at the same keles competition:

�’,

,

13 On Pherenikos, see Bacchylides’ lavish praise (5.37 –49, 182–186; fr. 20C.8–10); D. Gerber, Pindar’s Olympian One: A Commentary (Toronto 1982) 44–45.


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�’ ,

,

· (O. 1.17–23)

Well, take the Dorian lyre from its peg, if in any way reciprocity for Pisa and Pherenikos has put sweetest thoughts in your mind, when [Phere-nikos] sped beside Alpheios, giving his limbs ungoaded in the race, and joined to victorious power his master, Syracuse’s horse-loving king.

Pindar, then, here too positions Pherenikos “beside” ( �’) Alpheios.Both Pindar and Bacchylides use with Alpheios in either the

dative or accusative to stress the close spatial connection between Al-pheios and the respective horses, and the topography of Olympia has motivated this motif: Alpheios fl ows from the east to the west, parallel to (i.e., “beside”) the unexcavated, perhaps washed away, hippodrome, which was located immediately south of the stadium.14 In addition to a faithful rendering of the landscape, however, the “Alpheios-horse” motif also develops a structural analogue: just as Alpheios cuts through the landscape constantly, so too the victorious horses run beside him inde-fatigably. Landscape and competitive practice at Olympia mirror one another and thereby reaffi rm one another. Pindar and Bacchylides cele-brate Olympia and its competitions, in both the present and the past, by linking contemporary, powerful horses, such as Pherenikos, with prime-val, powerful Alpheios.

IV. Alpheios and Arethusa

In addition to evoking Alpheios as a landscape divinity in relation to equestrian competitions, Pindar uses the myth of Alpheios and Arethusa to construct a link between Syracuse and Olympia for his colonial pa-tron, Chromios of Syracuse/Aitna.15 Alpheios famously chased Arethusa to Syracuse because he wanted to have intercourse with her, and at

14 See S. Miller, Ancient Greek Athletics (New Haven 2004) 93; U. Sinn, Olympia: Cult, Sport, and Ancient Festival (Princeton 2000) 73–75.

15 On Chromios, see B. Braswell, A Commentary on Pindar, Nemean One (Fribourg 1992) 27–28.



Ortygia Arethusa burst forth as a fountain, where Alpheios mingled his water with her.16 The beginning of Nemean 1 contains an invocation to Ortygia, the island connected by a mole to Syracuse, in her guise as Arethusa, the “holy up-breath” of Alpheios:

, , ,

,

, · (N. 1.1–5)

Alpheios’ holy up-breath, Ortygia, offspring of renowned Syracuse, couch of Artemis, sister of Delos, from you a sweetly worded hymn rushes to render mighty praise for storm-footed horses, a deed of re-quital for Zeus of Aitna.

Pindar begins this poem, as he regularly does, with a striking word, (a syncopated form of with nasal assimilation).

With , Pindar embodies Alpheios, since the audience imagines Alpheios personifi ed, holding his breath as he travels under the Ionian Sea, until he fi nally is able to gasp for breath, having reached Ortygia and come up for air. The prefi x -, furthermore, focuses attention on Alpheios coming “up and out” of the water. Translations such as “resting place” (e.g., LSJ s.v.) for , then, scarcely do it justice. More-over, due to the large amount of porous limestone schist in Arkadia and Elis, Alpheios disappears underground several times in the Peloponnese and then reappears on the surface. Accordingly, the geology of the north-ern Peloponnese, with Alpheios disappearing and reappearing within the Elean and Arkadian landscape, motivated the creation and plausibility of the myth of Alpheios traveling underground to meet Arethusa.17

16 Believing the story of Alpheios and Arethusa, Pausanias (5.7.1–5) refers to an ora-cle of Apollo that mentions Alpheios mingling his waters with Arethusa at Ortygia. Strabo, on the other hand, disavows the tale of Alpheios and Arethusa, asserting that Alpheios empties into the ocean and therefore could not reappear at Syracuse with his waters (i.e., his divine body) intact (6.2.4). Pliny the Elder affi rms the tale’s veracity (2.225).

17 On the geology of Olympia, see M. Higgins and R. Higgins, A Geological Com-panion to Greece and the Aegean (Ithaca 1996) 67–69. On underground Greek rivers, see W. S. Barrett Euripides Hippolytus (Oxford, 1964) 184–85. As Pausanias remarks. “It


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Carol Dougherty argues that Alpheios’ travel to Syracuse here func-tions as a precursor to the Greeks’ colonial movement from mainland Greece to the western colonies and that the erotic conquest of Arethusa symbolizes the mingling of Greeks and natives.18 I would like to build on Dougherty’s reading by suggesting that Alpheios provides here not only a geographic analogue to the Greeks’ colonial movement to the west, but that he also provides the western Greeks with a fi gurative bond to the east, back to mainland Greece,19 since the myth of Alpheios and Arethusa reinvigorates the colonists’ relationship to the mainland.20 Pindar’s use of the myth of Alpheios and Arethusa is particularly striking since it links Chromios’ Sicily with Olympia, although Nemean 1 was composed for a victory at the Nemean games.21 Pindar similarly manipulates Alpheios in Olympian 6 when he lies regarding the geography of Alpheios. There, Pin-dar says that Evadne, mother of Iamos, lives in Phaisana in Arcadia (l.34) with her foster-father Aipytos, and adds that Evadne and Aipytos dwell beside Alpheios (l.34). Phaisana in fact was in northern Arkadia, and Alpheios fl ows through southern Arkadia.22 The rhetorical importance of this lie has been overlooked: by having Alpheios fl ow through northern Arkadia, Pindar establishes a geographical link connecting Phaisana, his patron’s home (Syracuse), and Olympia. The manipulation of the land-scape in this passage parallels Pindar’s manipulation of Evadna’s family tree, as Huxley has noted.23 The link to Olympia via Alpheios in Nemean 1, for Chromios of Aitna, and the link to Olympia via Alpheios in Olym-pian 6, for Hagesias of Syracuse, are not surprising, since connections

is known that Alpheios differs from other rivers in exhibiting this natural peculiarity: he often disappears to reappear again” (8.54.2).

18 C. Dougherty, The Poetics of Colonization: From City to Text in Archaic Greece (Oxford 1993) 68–69.

19 On river gods and colonialism in Greco-Roman discourse, see the apposite com-ments of P. Jones, Reading Rivers in Roman Literature and Culture (Lanham, Md., 2005) 42–47.

20 Interpreters of Nemean 1 in search of “unity” and thematic relevance have pointed out that Herakles serves as a positive analogue to Chromios and that the “accomplish-ments of both [Herakles and Chromios] are presented as the manifestation and proof of god-given virtue”; see J. Petrucione, “The Role of the Poet and His Song in Nemean 1,” AJP 107 (1986) 35.

21 Compare how Bacchylides refers to the Deinomenid offerings at Delphi in his third poem (17–21), although the poem was composed for an Olympic victory.

22 G. Hutchinson, Greek Lyric Poetry: A Commentary on Selected Larger Pieces (Ox-ford, 2001) 389.

23 Huxley (above, n.1) 29.



to Olympia are always valuable. The intertwining, then, of Alpheios and Arethusa in Nemean 1 and Alpheios and Phaisana in Olympian 6 incor-porates colonial Magna Graecia into the matrix of mythological heritage that Alpheios and mainland Greece offered.

V. Alpheios as Sign

Pindar and Bacchylides use Alpheios in catalogues and prayers for vic-tories on several occasions, and religious bonds are thereby created with Alpheios.24 These several passages share common markers of prayer: the invocation of Zeus (or Calliope in the case of Bacchylides 5); the use of patronyms (Kronian, B.5, O.2) and matronyms (Rhean, O.2); the use of names indicating functions (Savior, O.5); and several references to the sedes of the god.25 Alpheios, embedded within these prayers and invo-cations, is no mere topographical feature, but rather a powerful divinity who plays a prominent role in Olympia’s religious landscape.

At the end of Bacchylides’ fi fth poem, Alpheios appears in an invo-cation to Calliope:

,

· ,

�’ , ,

�’ ]

] < > -

] . (B.5.176–186)

White-armed Calliope, halt your well-made chariot here: sing in praise of Zeus, son of Kronos, Olympian ruler of the gods, and of tirelessly fl owing Alpheios, and of the might of Pelops, and of Pisa, where famous

24 O. 7.14, O. 9.18, O. 13.32–46, N. 6.17–21, I. 1. 64–67, B, 6.3, B, 8.27, B, 11.26, B 12.43 (?), B 13.193.

25 For further discussion of hymn and prayer, see J. Bremer, “Greek Hymns,” in H. Versnel, ed., Faith, Hope, and Worship (Leiden 1981) 193–215; S. Pulleyn, Prayer in Greek Religion (Oxford 1997).


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Pherenikos sped to victory in the race and so returned to well-towered Syracuse bringing Hieron the leaves of good fortune.

In the immediate context of Zeus, Pelops, and Pisa, the reference po-sitions Alpheios in his Olympian context. Whereas Bacchylides uses the adjective “broad-swirling” ( ) in both the examples of the “Alpheios-horse” motif, discussed above, here he uses the phrase “tirelessly fl owing” ( ). In the context of powerful horses, Bacchylides’ “broad-swirling” stresses, analogous to that of the horses, Alpheios’ size and strength, while here, when positioning Alpheios among other divinities, Bacchylides chooses “tirelessly fl owing” to stress Alpheios’ immortal nature. Pindar uses Alpheios similarly in prayers in O. 2 and O. 5, and, in O. 8, he invokes the Altis itself, the sanctuary at Olympia, positioned on the banks of Alpheios:26

�’ �’ , -

· , �’ .

(O. 8.9–11)

O sanctuary of Pisa with beautiful trees27 beside Alpheios, receive this celebration and the wearing of crowns; for great fame is always his whom your illustrious prize attends.

Pindar could have described the Altis in numerous ways, but he chooses to refer to it here by its location next to Alpheios, thereby providing the Altis with grandeur and solemnity, linking it to Alpheios’ divinity and primeval existence in the heritage-laden landscape of Olympia.

The belief in landscape divinities allowed Greeks generally and Pin-dar specifi cally to envision the world in a manner starkly different from

26 O. 2.12–15: �’ , / �’ , / /

(“O son of Kronos and Rhea, ruling over your abode on Olympus, over the pinnacle of contests, and over the course of Alpheios, cheered by my songs graciously preserve their ancestral land for their children still to come”): O. 5.17–19: ,

/ �’ , (“Savior Zeus in the clouds on high, you who

inhabit Kronos’ hill, and honor broad-fl owing Alpheios and the sacred cave of Ida, as your suppliant I come, calling to the sound of Lydian pipes”).

27 “with lovely trees” is a reference to the famous olive trees of Olympia.



the way it is viewed in the West today. Modern geographers emphasize the manufactured character of landscapes, which are places as perceived by human beings,28 and a modern Western axiom underlies this con-struction, namely that a human views or imagines an inanimate section of the earth. This assumption, however, is problematic in relation to ancient Greek landscape, since for most Greeks, experiencing the world with a different epistemology, parts of the earth, such as springs and rivers, were divinities.29 Alpheios, accordingly, complicates Western no-tions of landscape by forcing us to consider human interaction with the surrounding environment not in terms of animate beings (humans) and an inanimate object (water), but rather in terms of human beings and divinities. In the case of Greek river gods, power and gender relations also are present within the physical landscape, since humans interact with river gods in myth and ritual. When Pindar uses Alpheios, then, he develops Olympia as an animate landscape, mirroring the dominant dis-course of Greek myth and ritual, and he celebrates the primeval nature of Olympia’s landscape, which has Alpheios embodied therein.30

VI. The Ash Altar of Zeus and Its Oracle

And now he [Pelops] partakes of splendid blood sacrifi ces as he re-clines by the course of Alpheios, having his much attended tomb beside the altar thronged by visitors.

(O. 1.90–93)31

The fame of the temple was originally owing to the oracle of Olympian Jove; yet after that had ceased, the renown of the temple continued, and increased, as we know, to a high degree of celebrity, both on ac-count of the assembly of the people of Greece, which was held there, and of the Olympic games, in which the victor was crowned. These games were esteemed sacred, and ranked above all others.

(Str. 8.3.30)32

28 For an overview, see J. Wylie, Landscape (London 2007) 17–93.29 On river gods in Greco-Roman literature and culture, see Jones (above, n.19). On

nymphs, see J. Larson, Greek Nymphs: Myth, Cult, Lore (Oxford 2001).30 The ubiquitously applied defi nite article “the” is misleading when used with river

gods, since if we say “the Alpheios,” we cognitively supply “river,” thereby stripping Al-pheios of his divinity.

31 �’ / ,/ ,/ ·

32 The Geography of Strabo, H. C. Hamilton, tr. (London 1903).


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The two quotations above provide examples of the importance of the altar and its ancient oracle at Olympia. Pindar refers to the altar of Zeus as “thronged by visitors” ( , O. 1.93), while Strabo notes that the fame of the temple of Zeus derived from the importance of the altar’s oracle. The altar of Zeus was not a built structure but rather a heap made from the ashes and bones of sacrifi cial victims. Archaeological fi nds indicate that cultic practice at the altar goes back to at least the tenth century BC, while historical notices relate that the oracle was consulted for important military campaigns and that seers from the oracle were taken on trips outside the sanctuary for consul-tation in both colonization movements and military campaigns. The readers of Zeus’ prophecy at the ash altar, moreover, were members of aristocratic families, the Iamidai and the Klytidai, who traced their descent back to Apollo and Amphiaraos. The ash altar, then, can reso-nate particularly for colonists and for elites, and when Pindar refers to the altar, he bolsters the prestige of his patrons by linking them to it.33 For example, Pindar composed Olympian 6 for his patron Hagesias, an Iamid, and Olympian 6’s myth focuses on Iamos, his gift of prophecy from his father, Apollo, as well as Iamos’ family’s stewardship of the oracle at the ash altar of Zeus. Pindar, then, seamlessly links his patron Hagesias with the landscape and heritage of Olympia with Olympian 6’s etiological myth, which celebrates Hagesias’ connections to the or-acle and ash altar of Zeus.

The ash altar of Zeus also plays a prominent role in Olympian 8, where Pindar mentions men’s interrogation of Zeus:

, ,�’ , -

, �’

,

.

33 On the oracular sacrifi ce, see scholion to O. 6.7 (ed. Drachmann) with refer-ence to Dicaearchus (FGH, fr. 14). On traveling Iamids, see Herodotus (5.44.2–5.45.5, 9.33–35); Sinn (above, n.14) 19; Hutchinson (above, n.22) 372. The oracle at Olympia was overshadowed thanks to the priority given to the athletic games and due to the ev-er-increasing renown of Delphi. Pausanias provides an extended description of the ash altar (5.13.8–5.13.11).



·�’ �’ ,

- . ,

�’ . (O. 8.1–11)

O mother of the golden-crowned games, Olympia, mistress of truth, where men who are seers examine burnt offerings and test Zeus of the bright thunderbolt, to see if he has any word concerning mortals who are striving in their hearts to gain a great success and respite for their toils; but men’s prayers are fulfi lled in return for piety. O sanctuary of Pisa with beautiful trees on Alpheios, receive this celebration and the wearing of crowns. Great fame is always his whom your illustrious prize attends.

This introductory passage of Olympian 8, particularly the invocation of Olympia/Pisa, has led many commentators to assume that the poem was written for performance at Olympia.34 Deictic markers, however, sug-gest that the fi rst performance of the ode was held at Aigina, the home polis of the victor.35 Assuming that the poem was fi rst performed on Ai-gina, Burnett rightly suggests that the call to Pisa in this poem is “a wish to please a hypothetical distant audience as well as the present [Aeakid] one.”36 The description of inquiry at the ash altar and the evocation of Olympia or Pisa represent, then, an appropriation of Olympia’s heritage through its ancient ash altar in the interest of the patron during the per-formance of this ode at Aegina. As Nicholson and Crotty point out, the proem’s emphasis on “trial” thematically connects with the praise of the patron’s trainer, Melesias, whose training appears as a sort of prophecy later in the ode. 37

34 B. Gildersleeve (Pindar: The Olympian and Pythian Odes [New York 1885] 192) says that “the song seems to have been sung immediately after the victory during the pro-cession to the altar of Zeus in the Altis.” So also C. A. M. Fennell, Pindar: The Olympian and Pythian Odes (Cambridge, 1893) 66; F. Mezger, Pindars Siegeslieder (Leipzig 1880) 375; Bundy (above, n.1) 81.

35 See lines 25 and 51. On the performance of epinician poetry at Panhellenic sanc-tuaries, see C. Eckerman, “Was Epinician Poetry Performed at Panhellenic Sanctuaries?” GRBS 52 (2012) 338–60.

36 A. Burnett, Pindar’s Songs for Young Athletes of Aigina (Oxford 2005) 208. 37 N. Nicholson, Aristocracy and Athletics in Archaic and Classical Greece (Cam-

bridge 2005) 142–43; K. Crotty, Song and Action: The Victory Odes of Pindar (Baltimore 1982) 23–26.


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VII. The Hill of Kronos

The hill of Kronos was an important landscape marker for the sanctu-ary at Olympia in the early classical period, but the name and symbolic power of the hill go back at least to the eighth century, when the sanc-tuary was becoming a site of Panhellenic pilgrimage.38 The hill, around 500 feet high, is imposing, and its position immediately north of the Altis made it an important topographical referent at Olympia.39 It ap-pears in several Pindaric odes, and its impressive size motivates Pindar to use it as a primary referent in the landscape as well as to use it sym-bolically as an analogue to preeminent human and divine stature and as a metapoetic analogue to poetic stature.

In Olympian 6, when Apollo leads his son Iamos to Olympia, the hill of Kronos denotes the place where the sanctuary will be founded, and, with Apollo’s reference to it, Pindar develops a pun, which has previously gone unnoted. At the hill of Kronos, Apollo grants Iamos a “twofold treasury of prophecy” ( ): an immediate bestowal of prophetic powers as well as a perquisite, control of the prophetic oracle at Zeus’ ash altar, when Herakles arrives and founds the sanctuary (65–70). Pindar plays with the word “treasury” ( ) here, since Apollo and Iamos stand at the hill of Kronos, where the poet’s audience knows the historical treasuries at Olympia will be located. The monumental hill of Kronos and the wealthy treasur-ies that will skirt its southern foot, accordingly, bestow grandeur on the ancient Olympian landscape.

In Olympian 10, Herakles names the hill at Olympia after Kronos, thereby creating sacred space:

·

38 On the development of the site from the tenth to eighth centuries, see C. Morgan, Athletes and Oracles: The Transformation of Olympia and Delphi in the Eighth Century BC (Cambridge, 1990) 287. For its later development, see M. Scott, Delphi and Olympia: The Spatial Politics of Panhellenism in the Archaic and Classical Periods (Cambridge 2010) On pilgrimage see J. Elsner and I. Rutherford, eds., Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity: Seeing the Gods (Oxford 2005); M. Dillon, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in Ancient Greece (London, 1997).

39 In addition to the passages discussed below, see O. 3. 21–23, O. 5. 17–19, O. 8. 15–18, O. 9.1–4. Pausanias provides a detailed description of the hill of Kronos (6.20.1).



, , .

(O. 10. 49–51)

And [Herakles] gave the hill of Kronos its name, because before that it had none, when during Oinomaos’ reign it was drenched with much snow.

One of the fundamental acts that all colonizers or explorers, such as Her-akles, do when they come upon unknown territory is name it, and Shep-ard even suggests that “an environment without place-names is fearful.”40 Pindar does not suggest that Herakles experiences fear in this unknown landscape, but he does act as a colonist, making the unfamiliar familiar, and Pindar envisions the foundation of Olympia elsewhere as a colonial enterprise. In Olympian 1, for example, Pindar refers to Pelops as a col-ony founder, saying, “fame shines for [Hieron] in the colony of brave men founded by Lydian Pelops” ( /

, 23–24). The reference to the Peloponnese as a “colony” ( ) is a striking and purposeful oxymoron since the Peloponnese was the Greek motherland par excellence, and, as Athanassaki and Nagy note, Pindar’s construction of the Peloponnese as a colony of Pelops links the colonial enterprise of Pelops with the colonial enterprise of Olym-pian 1’s patron, Hieron of Syracuse.41 Similarly, Pindar uses “founded” ( ) purposefully at Olympian 10. 25, where the verb resonates with colonial foundations,42 when Herakles founds Olympia, and, as Dougherty notes, the ktisis topos plays a prominent role in epinician po-etry.43 By naming the hill after Kronos, a primeval Greek deity, the Greeks added antiquity and heritage to their sanctuary at its loftiest spot.44 As a

40 P. Shepard, Man in the Landscape: A Historic View of the Esthetics of Nature (Athens, Ga., 1967) 41.

41 L. Athanassaki, “Transformations of Colonial Disruption into Narrative Continu-ity in Pindar’s Epinician Odes,” HSCP 101 (2003) 121–22; G. Nagy, Pindar’s Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past (Baltimore 1990) 293–313.

42 �’ , / ; “But the ordinances of Zeus have prompted me to sing of the

choice contest, which Herakles founded with its six altars by the ancient tomb of Pelops.”43 O. 7, P. 1, P. 4, P. 5, P. 9; Bacchylides 11; C. Dougherty, “Archaic Greek Founda-

tion Poetry: Questions of Genre and Occasion,” JHS 114 (1994) 41–43.44 An interest in the name is shown by Huxley (above, n.1) 17, who writes, “‘it was

drenched with a great snowstorm’ emphasizes the exposed position of the anonymous hill,


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colonist, then, Herakles domesticates the wilderness and appropriates it to mainstream Greek sociocultural traditions through naming and thereby adds a manipulable heritage to the site.45 As the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan notes, “naming is power—the creative power to call some-thing into being.”46

The physical geography of the protruding hill of Kronos, further-more, encourages Pindar to develop analogies related to superlativeness. Pindar uses the hill of Kronos to emphasize his own poetic greatness, po-sitioning himself at the “conspicuous” or “easily viewable” ( ) hill of Kronos,47 in the hoped-for future, when his patron Hieron will win the chariot race ( , l. 110):

,

�’ .

· �’ · �’ -

.

(O 1.108–114)

And unless he should suddenly depart, I hope to celebrate an even sweeter success with a speeding chariot, having found a helpful road of

but not even Pindar can explain why Herakles called the hill after Kronos, whom Zeus had displaced in Olympos rather than after Zeus himself, the hero’s father.”

45 W. Fitzgerald (Agonistic Poetry: The Pindaric Mode in Pindar, Horace, Hölderlin, and the English Ode [Berkeley and Los Angeles 1987] 121) notes that enunciation plays an important thematic role in this ode, and Herakles’ naming of the hill recalls the nar-rator’s exhortation at the beginning of the ode, requesting that the name of the victor be read out loud ( / , /

, 1–3). 46 Y. Tuan, “Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative-Descriptive Approach,”

Annals of the Association of American Geographers 81 (1991) 684–96, 688.47 Although translators and commentators regularly interpret to mean

sunny vel sim, here means “conspicuous,” “easily viewable,” and Pindar chooses the adjective because the hill is prominent in the landscape. Exhibiting diectasis, the adjec-tive derives from and , a resolved form of (e.g. Il. 10.466), a deverbative adjective from . Homer uses regularly of Ithaka’s visibility (Od. 2.167, 9.121). See also Gerber (above, n.13) 167.



words when coming to Kronos’ easily visible hill. And now for me the Muse tends the strongest weapon in defense: others are great in various ways, but the summit is crowned by kings.

Though it has been previously unnoted, the gnome in lines 113 and 114, “the summit is crowned by kings” ( �’ /

), develops out of the reference to the hill of Kronos in the immediately preceding lines, since it was “crowned” with an altar for Kronos.48 Pindar introduces his “conspicuous” relationship to the Muse, who cares for him personally ( /

), and he then introduces the generalizing gnome, “the sum-mit is crowned by kings” ( �’ / ). The gnome should be read metapoetically, since Pindar claims a special re-lationship with the Muse, and the audience may deduce that Pindar ac-cordingly “crowns” the summit of poetry.

Pindar relates the gnome not only to himself, however, but also to Hieron. By positioning the gnome immediately after his prayer for another Olympic victory for Hieron (110) and immediately after his reference to the “conspicuous hill of Kronos,” Pindar introduces the technical term basileus ( ), which reverberates with Hieron as basileus ( ) of Syracuse,49 and the imagery devoted to loft-iness ( �’ ) furthermore reasserts the peak imag-ery that Pindar introduces early in the ode with relation to Hieron who “culls the summits of all achievements” (

). Pindar regularly uses “summit,” , metaphorically to de-note the “best,”50 and the root - at lines 13 and 113 adds thematic ring-composition to the ode. As Gerber notes, the association of poets and kings in this passage recalls Hesiod’s Theogony 94–96, where the narrator emphasizes that poets are from the Muses and Apollo and that kings are from Zeus.51 Pindar, then, artfully develops Hesiod’s image of superlativeness in the realms of kingship and poetics by adding another realm of the superlative, namely that of the hill of Kronos’ physical su-periority in the Olympian landscape.

48 See Paus. 6.20.1.49 On Pindar’s depiction of Hieron as basileus, see Harrell (above, n.2) 440–41.50 Gerber (above, n.13) 35.51 Gerber (above, n.13) 169.


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VIII. Colonizing and Sexing Olympia

Although it has gone unnoted by commentators,52 there is widespread sexual imagery in Olympian 3, when Herakles, as part of his colonial foundation of Olympia, plants olive trees in the Olympian landscape. Olympia seems like a naked garden ( , 24) to Herakles, and Olympia’s nakedness as well as her state of subjection ( , 24) to the piercing rays of Helios rouses (or arouses) Herakles ( , 25) to travel to the Hyperboreans in order to fetch their olive trees and plant ( , 34) them at Olympia. Herakles inseminates the femi-nized Olympia with olive trees to mark his territory and to obstruct the invasive rival male, Helios. This is the fi rst example in Western litera-ture of a male having intercourse, symbolically at least, with a feminized landscape, but Pindar elsewhere feminizes and creates sexual relation-ships with the land. In Pythian 4, for example, after Aphrodite captures Medea with love magic, Medea feels a “longing for Hellas” (

, l. 218) rather than what would be expected, a longing for Jason. Furthermore, as Segal has shown, the sexualization and subjugation of Cyrene’s colonial landscape plays a prominent role in Pythian 4, and, as Calame points out in regard to Pythian 4, “At the beginning of the ode Libya was already seen as a ‘productive’ land (karpophoros, 6), and within this frame the hill forming the acropolis of Cyrene could be de-fi ned as a breast (mastos, 8).”53 In addition, Athanassaki has studied the role of sexual union as a foundational topos in three epinician colonial narratives, Pythian 4, Pythian 9, and Olympian 7.54 Pindar’s sexualiza-tion of colonial Olympia in Olympian 3, then, participates in a matrix of odes that prominently intertwine colonial and erotic themes. The trope of the male’s feminization, sexualization, and subjugation of landscape, particularly colonial landscapes, will become a dominant one within Western literature and culture.55 Cross-culturally, landscape is often

52 No comment, for example, by W. Verdenius, Commentaries on Pindar, Volume 1, Olympian Odes 3, 7, 12, 14 (Leiden 1987); L. Farnell, The Works of Pindar (New York 1932); Gildersleeve (above, n.34); Fennell (above, n.34); Mezger (above, n.34).

53 C. Segal, Pindar’s Mythmaking: The Fourth Pythian Ode (Princeton 1986) 52–71; Calame (above, n.4) 289.

54 Athanassaki (above, n.41).55 On landscape as female, see G. Rose, “Looking at Landscape: The Uneasy Plea-

sures of Power,” in T. Barnes and D. Gregory, eds., Reading Human Geography: The Poetics and Politics of Inquiry (London 1997) 342–54.



feminized and sexualized to fulfi ll male ideological needs, and landscape is a productive term precisely because it provides a focal point through which we can interrogate a culture’s impositions on the land.

Pindar sexualizes Olympia with several words and phrases that have sexual connotations, and the abundance of sexual imagery in the passage assures us that the sexualization is intentional.56 By planting the olive at Olympia, Herakles is a benefactor to men, since he provides them with shade at the sanctuary, an important theme of the ode (14, 17), but he is also a benefactor to himself, since Helios’ sharp rays, blocked by the olive tree, no longer penetrate Olympia, and Herakles thereby usurps control over Olympia, having vanquished his male rival, Helios. The particularly relevant passages are lines 23 –26 and 33–34:

�’ �’ .

. �’

· (O. 3.23–26)

But as yet the land of Pelops in the vales of Kronos’ hill was not yet fl ourishing with beautiful trees. Without them, the garden seemed naked to him and subject to the piercing rays of the sun. Then it was that his heart urged him to go to the Istrian land.

Cross-culturally and within Greek culture specifi cally, gardens are regu-larly sexualized spaces. For example, within Pindar’s own corpus, Cyrene is the “garden of Aphrodite” ( , P. 5.24), and there has a sexual connotation. In line 24, Pindar refers to Olympia as a “naked garden” ( ), which is an oxymoron and accord-ingly all the more striking. Olympia’s nakedness makes her liable to be pierced, and Helios takes advantage of the situation, piercing her with his rays ( ). Pindar stresses the penetrative power of Helios’ rays with the adjective “sharp,” “piercing” ( ) and he furthermore posi-tions Olympia as a subordinate to Helios by using the verb , which denotes inferior status in social relationships.57 The subordination

56 For a stress on fertility, but not sexualization, in the ode, see C. Segal, “God and Man in Pindar’s First and Third Olympian Odes,” HSCP 68 (1964) 230–32.

57 See LSJ s.v.


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of the female, Olympia, to the male, Helios, positions Olympia squarely within the standard Greek sexual hierarchy.

Herakles, like a jealous lover, experiences an emotional urge ( , 25) that leads him to take action against his rival, Helios, and

Pindar stresses the immediacy of Herakles’ response to the situation with the emphatic particles ’: “right at that time” (25). Herakles’ response motivates Pindar to tell the tale of how Herakles had previ-ously seen Hyperborean olive trees when he went in search of the gold-en-horned doe (26–32) and how he realized later, when seeing Helios pierce Olympia, that the Hyperborean trees could shade Olympia and protect her from Helios’ piercing rays.58 Accordingly, after the digression on Herakles’ visit to the Hyperboreans, Pindar reasserts the sexual im-agery, having Herakles feel a longing to “plant” ( ) Hyperborean olive trees in Olympia:

.

A sweet desire seized him to plant some of them around the twelve-lap turn of the hippodrome (O. 3.33–34).

Pindar uses a Homeric phrase, “sweet desire” ( ) to de-scribe Herakles’ urge ( ) to plant/inseminate ( ), and the verb is regularly used for sexual union and the procreation of children.59 Pindar’s “sweet desire” resonates particularly with two sexu-ally charged passages of the Iliad: a “sweet desire” for intercourse with Helen seizes ( ) Paris after Aphrodite saves him from Menelaus and deposits him in his bedroom (Il. 3.446), and, in the “Deception of Zeus” scene, after narrating his catalogue of women, Zeus explains to Hera that

58 The swift transition between Herakles’ “marveling at the trees” of the Hyper-boreans and his “longing” to plant them at Olympia has caused commentators to question whether Herakles made one or two trips to the Hyperboreans. For an extended list of view-points see E. Robbins, “Heracles, the Hyperboreans, and the Hind: Pindar, Ol. 3,” Phoenix 36 (1982) 295–96. There is temporal ambiguity between lines 32 (time frame A) and 33 (time frame B). Line 33, upon fi rst reading, seems temporally to belong with line 32, but, for the sake of the narrative’s logic, line 33 (time frame B) must occur when Herakles is back in Olympia to motivate his second trip to the Hyperboreans. For a discussion of this temporal ambiguity in detail, see A. Köhnken, “Mythological Chronology and Thematic Coherence in Pindar Third Olympian Ode,” HSCP 87 (1983) 49–63; D. Carne-Ross, Pin-dar (New Haven and London 1985) 54.

59 See LSJ s.v. 2.



a “sweet desire” has seized him to have intercourse with her (14.328). Particularly striking in both Paris’ and Zeus’ requests for intercourse with their wives is the statement that they have never felt a sexual longing any-thing like what they feel now (3.442–444; 14.315–327). In Olympian 3, Herakles similarly is overwhelmed with an unreasoned, emotional desire for action ( , l.25), when he sees Olympia pierced by Helios.

In addition to these explicitly sexual uses of “sweet desire” ( ), Homer also uses “sweet desire” in two passages where bonds of

domestic fi delity are stressed. In the Iliad (3.139), Iris casts into Helen a “sweet desire” for her former husband, for her home polis, and for her parents. In the Odyssey (22.500), after killing the suitors, Odysseus ex-periences a “sweet desire” for weeping when he recognizes the women of his household. In addition to the sexual intertexts noted above, these “do-mestic” intertexts may also be activated by Pindar’s audience, since they too are thematically relevant: Herakles constructs a long-term domes-tic relationship with Olympia by implanting in her the evergreen olive, which, in the form of the crown, will be “the fairest memorial of the con-tests at Olympia” ( , O.3.15).60

Herakles’ relationship with Olympia is productive and their off-spring, the olive crown, plays a prominent role in the ode. Pindar men-tions the crown on Theron’s head, “the crown(s) bound on his hair exact from me this divinely inspired debt” (

/ , 6–7), and he also nar-rates the crowning ceremony, at which Theron himself was crowned: 61

· �’ �’ ,

(O. 3.9–13)

And Pisa too bids me lift up my voice, for from there come divinely al-lotted songs to men, whenever one of them, in fulfi llment of Herakles’

60 Without considering the Homeric intertexts, Segal (above, n.56) 235 suggests that “Herakles’ wish to plant the trees about the Olympian racecourse is a ‘sweet desire’ ( ), sweet not only because its intent is benevolent but because its fulfi llment is made possible by the total gentleness of the divine order.”

61 See O. 2. 48–49: “For at Olympia [Theron] himself received the prize.” As Farnell, (above, n.52) 25, notes, the hair must refer to Theron, not to Pindar, the horses, or the members of the chorus.


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ancient mandates, the strict Aitolian judge places above his brows about his hair the gray-colored adornment of olive.

The crowning ceremony was one of the most important rituals at the festi-val since it allowed the victor an opportunity to celebrate his achievement before a formal audience.62 Furthermore, when the ode was performed in the home polis of the victor, the ode’s reference to crowning at the sanc-tuary foreshadows the ceremony at home at which a victor could dedicate his crown.63 The importance of the crown as a symbol is intricately tied into the ode since the olive crown will serve as a victor’s “fairest memento of the Olympic contests/struggles” (

), and Pindar’s language emphasizes the symbolic importance of the crown.64 As an “ornament” ( ), the olive both decorates the vic-tor and provides him with greater social standing, celebrating his connec-tion to Olympia, Herakles, and the Hyperboreans. As Fitzgerald notes, “Pindar’s narrative of Herakles and the olive is one of his most subtle and complex creations,” and the productive union of Herakles and Olympia, then, is eternally monumentalized in the olive crown, positioned on the head of the respective victor every four years.65

As noted above in relation to Alpheios and the hill of Kronos, verisi-militude regularly plays an important role in Pindar’s odes, and in Olym-pian 3 Herakles desires “to plant” Hyperborean trees specifi cally around the twelve-lap turn of the hippodrome (

, 33–34). It would make little sense for Pindar to specify that the trees were to be planted at the twelve-lap turn unless his contemporaries could see olive trees in this location. The twelve-lap turning post would be the western one in close proximity to the sanctuary itself,66 and, by

62 On the crowning ceremony at Olympia, see Paus. 5.12, 5.15, 5.20. 63 See L Kurke, The Traffi c in Praise: Pindar and the Poetics of Social Economy

(Ithaca 1991) 206–207.64 Pindar focuses on its color ( ) and, although Greek color terminology

is often diffi cult to clarify, scholars have recognized blues, greens, and greys in -; for discussion, see Verdenius (above, n.52) 17. As an epithet, the adjective adds grandeur to . Moreover, the olive had broad symbolic importance since this tree is an “ev-ergreen” plant and hence may serve as a symbol of immortality, just as the victor receives immortality through his athletic achievement in epinician discourse. On the symbolism of the olive, see Porphyry’s De antro nympharum (Sections 32 and 33); O. 8.83, N. 3.31.

65 Fitzgerald (above, n.45) 55; Segal (above, n.56) 235, 242–43.66 H. Lee, “Pindar, Olympian 3.33–34: “‘The Twelve-Turned Terma’ and the Length

of the Four-horse Chariot Race,” AJP 107 (1986) 162–74; L. Drees, Olympia: Gods, Art-ists, and Athletes (New York 1968) 96.



specifying the location where Herakles “plants” these trees, Pindar, as Greek mythographers regularly do, quite literally “grounds” his etiolog-ical myth in the landscape of Olympia and thereby adds credibility to it.

IX. Pelopion

The Pelopion, positioned immediately north of the temple of Zeus and immediately west of the ash altar of Zeus, was the tumulus that the Greeks of the historical period considered the cenotaph of Pelops, and it was here that Pelops received cult.67 As a reused Bronze Age tumulus,68 the Pelopion was part of a widespread cultural appropriation in which Bronze Age remains were recuperated in archaic and classical Greece for contemporary use, and, as Morgan notes, “the exploitation of conspicu-ously early material remains in several areas of Greece during the eighth century . . . may be interpreted in general terms as an attempt to legiti-mise land holdings or territorial claims by reference to past custom, using the most convenient perception of the past to justify the present.”69 As Kyrieleis writes, the construction of the Pelopion was “a conscious act to forge a connection with the venerable remains from prehistoric times.”70

In Olympian 1, Pindar uses the Pelopion to foster connections be-tween hero cult for Pelops and hero cult for his patron, Hieron of Syracuse:

�’ ,

, ·

(O. 1.90–93)

And now [Pelops] partakes of splendid blood sacrifi ces as he reclines by the course of Alpheios, having his much-attended tomb beside the altar thronged by visiting strangers.

67 Hero cult was practiced also at Isthmia for Melikertes/Palaimon, and at Nemea for Opheltes; similarly, at Delphi, Greek myth connected the origins of the sanctuary with Apollo’s defeat of Python. On hero cult and Panhellenic sanctuaries, see Nagy (above, n.41) 119–20.

68 H. Kyrieleis (“The German Excavations at Olympia: An Introduction,” in D. Phil-lips and D. Pritchard, eds., Sport and Festival in the Ancient Greek World [Oakville, Conn., 2003] 41–60) concludes that there was no continuity in cult between the Bronze Age and early Iron Age at the tumulus; although cultic activity occurred in the Bronze Age, “a gaping hiatus of a thousand years” (55) separates this activity from the post-Bronze Age sanctuary.

69 Morgan (above, n.38) 12.70 Kyrieleis (above, n.68) 55.


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Hieron’s brother Gelon had received hero cult upon his death in 478, just two years before the victory celebrated in Olympian 1, and it was in the same year as Hieron’s Olympic victory, 476, that Hieron expelled the populations of Katane and Naxos and refounded the region as Aitna. Hieron’s refoundation led, as Diodorus Siculus recounts, to Hieron receiving hero-cult at Aitna after his death.71 With the repre-sentation of Pelops and the Pelopion at Olympia in Olympian 1, Pindar shapes a meaningful link between Pelops and Hieron and thereby con-structs Hieron and Pelops as prestigious analogues to one another.72

Furthermore, Pindar’s description of the Pelopion as a tymbos, “tomb” (Olympian 1.93) suggests that in the early fi fth century the Pelo-pion was an earthen mound,73 and Pindar preserves a record of the an-tiquity of the Pelopion, when Herakles founds the sanctuary of Zeus “beside the ancient monument of Pelops” in Olympian 10:

�’ ,

(O. 10.24–25)

But the ordinances of Zeus have prompted me to sing of the choice contest, which Herakles founded with its six altars beside the ancient tomb of Pelops.

71 On Hieron as founder of Aitna and his concomitant celebrations, see Dougherty (above, n.18) 88–98. On attempts by the Deinomenids to become founding heroes, see I. Malkin, Religion and Colonization in Ancient Greece (Leiden 1987) 287–89. On the further context of hero cult provided to founders of colonies, see Malkin (189–203); F. Polignac, Cults, Territory, and the Origins of the Greek City-State (Chicago 1995) 128–49; C. Antonaccio, “Colonization and the Origins of Hero Cult,” in R. Hägg, ed., Ancient Greek Hero Cult (Stockholm 1999) 109–21.

72 See D. Asheri, “Carthaginians and Greeks,” in J. Boardman et al., eds., The Cam-bridge Ancient History, Volume 4: Persia, Greece, and the Western Mediterranean (Cam-bridge 1988) 780. On hero cult and Pindar, see B. Currie, Pindar and the Cult of Heroes (Oxford 2005); Gerber (above, n.13) xv; W. J. Slater, “Pelops at Olympia,” GRBS 30 (1989) 485–501. In contrast, see W. J. Verdenius, Commentaries on Pindar, Volume 2, Olympian Odes 1, 10, 11, Nemean 11, Isthmian 2 (Leiden 1988) 1–2.

73 On the Pelopion, see Paus. (5.13.1–5.13–2). In the early fourth century BC, the Pelopion was a cultic space surrounded by a pentagonal ashlar wall. For an accessible overview to the several archaeological discussions of the Pelopion, see C. Antonaccio, An Archaeology of Ancestors: Tomb Cult and Hero Cult in Early Greece (London 1995) 170–76.



Just as the archaeological record places the Pelopion far in the past rel-ative to other monuments at Olympia, so too in the mythological re-cord Pindar places the Pelopion far in the past when he claims that the Pelopion was already at Olympia before the arrival of Herakles. Pindar thereby endows the Pelopion with especially primeval antiquity within the heritage-laden landscape of Olympia.

X. The body in motion—founding and performing Olympia

Having examined several individual phenomena (Alpheios, the hill of Kro-nos, the ash altar of Zeus, and the Pelopion) to see how Pindar manipulates them in his odes, and also how he constructs heritage and a meaningful connection to the Olympian landscape for crowned victors through the olive, we turn fi nally to Olympian 10, which depicts Herakles’ founda-tion of the Altis and the performance and celebration of the fi rst Olympic competitions. As Pred notes, it is important to think of place as “proces-sual,” something enacted through time and social practice, not as a static given, and Pindar’s depiction of Herakles’ foundation of Olympia and the fi rst performances held there link, through process, Pindar’s contemporar-ies with Olympia’s origins.74 In Olympian 10, Pindar describes Herakles’ foundation of Olympia with the spoils of his victory over king Augeas:

�’ �’

· �’

, ,

�’ ·

· , , .

(O. 10. 43–51)

Thereupon, Zeus’ valiant son gathered the entire army and all the booty at Pisa, and measured out a sacred precinct for his father most

74 A. Pred, “Place as Historically Contingent Process: Structuration and the Time-Ge-ography of Becoming Places,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 74 (1984) 279–97.


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mighty. He fenced in the Altis and set it apart in the open, and he made the surrounding plain a resting place for banqueting, and honored the waterway of Alpheios along with the twelve ruling gods. And he gave the hill of Kronos its name, because before that it had none, when, during Oinomaos’ reign, it was drenched with much snow.

The foundation of Olympia is a complicated, painstaking process, and Pindar specifi es several actions that Herakles undertakes to create the sanctuary. After the victory booty has been gathered, Herakles “measured out” ( ) a “sacred grove” ( ). As Verdenius notes,

denotes that Herakles used a stathme, “measuring-line,” to de-termine the appropriate space for the sanctuary, which specifi es particu-lar care for precision.75 Second, Herakles delineates the sanctuary (

), and the verb pegnumi emphasizes “the fi xation” of the Altis.76 We are to assume that Herakles marks the Altis with boundary stones, horoi, since a formal peribolos wall did not separate sacred from secular space at Olympia until the fourth century BC.77 Third, Herakles “sets [the sanctuary] apart in the open,” which is a cryptic phrase, appar-ently meaning that there was open space surrounding the formal sacred space.78 As Heidegger notes, “a boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing.”79 The boundary delineation at Olym-pia is a successful way to envision the sanctuary’s physical “presence” within the broader natural and cultural landscape. Fourth, Herakles creates a place for banqueting in the plain surrounding the Altis, and, since banqueting played an important role in Greek religious ritual from the Bronze Age forward, Herakles creates space that, when performed through banqueting, becomes culturally meaningful. This is signifi cant, since only through human action does the space function as a sanctu-ary; to use Pred’s term, it becomes “processual,” and, as Shelmerdine

75 Verdenius (above, n.72). 76 Lycurgus (fr. 73 Conomis) uses pegnumi to refer to the positioning of horoi as

geographic boundaries.77 Even then, only the south and west sides of the Altis were separated—the north

being bounded by the hill of Kronos and the east by the Echo Hall; see A. Mallwitz, Olym-pia und seine Bauten (Darmstadt 1972) 121–22.

78 On the frequency of measurement in this passage, see G. Kromer, “The Value of Time in Pindar’s Olympian 10,” Hermes 104 (1976) 432; G. Norwood, Pindar (Berkeley and Los Angeles) 113–14.

79 M. Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought (New York 1971) 152.



remarks, by linking feasting at Olympia with the present celebration, “the poet effectively perpetuates the cycle of piety shown and rewarded which he has made the focal point of his song.”80

Pindar shifts Olympian 10 in a new direction when he focuses on the creation of place through the performance of Olympia’s space at the fi rst Olympic contests. He tells of the six victories in the fi rst six contests and concludes the narrative with a celebratory revel, while providing the traditional prerequisite information required to commemorate a victory: name of victor, place of origin, and contest in which the victor competed:81

, , ;

, ,

· · ·

�’ , ·

�’

· { } ·

,

· �’ .

.

(O. 10.60–77)

Who then won the new crown with hands or feet or with chariot, after fi xing in his thoughts a triumph in the contest and achieving it in deed? The winner of the stadion, as he ran the straight stretch with his feet, was Likymnios’ son, Oionos, who came at the head of his army from Midea. In the wrestling Echemos gained glory for Tegea. Doryklos won the prize in boxing, who lived in the city of Tiryns, and in the four-horse

80 S. Shelmerdine, “Pindaric Praise and the Third Olympian,” HSCP 91 (1987) 79.81 On the catalogue of victors, see Farnell (above, n.52) vol. 2, 83.


30 Classical World

chariot race it was Samos of Mantinea, son of Halirothios. Phrastor hit the mark with the javelin, while with a swing of his hand Nikeus cast the stone a distance beyond all others, and his fellow soldiers let fl y a great cheer. Then the lovely light of the moon’s beautiful face lit up the evening, and all the sanctuary rang with singing amid festive joy in the fashion of victory celebration.

The representation of bodily performance in Olympian 10, both in Herakles’ foundation of the sanctuary and in the performance of the sanctuary through competition and celebration, is important for the con-struction of Olympia, since, as Casey notes,

. . . in the body and through it—by its unique signature—culture co-alesces and comes to term. It comes into its own there. Without em-bodiment, culture would be schematic in the pejorative sense of empty or sketchy. It would be a ghost of itself. By the same token, were it not to bear and express culture, to implicate and explicate it, would be itself a ghost: a reduced residue, an exsanguinated shadow, of its fully encultured liveliness.82

Since it is through the body that culture comes into being, Pindar’s rep-resentations of performance create culture by reaffi rming Olympia’s origins and contemporary agonistic practice, and Pindar’s ode, when performed as a speech act, re-performs the original competitions while celebrating its patron’s contemporary victory, thereby linking present and past. As Mackie notes, “the phrase , ‘even now,’ ‘now too,’ often effects a transition [in Pindaric epinician poetry] from past to pres-ent, suggesting that earlier events are a source, cause, or explanation for present-day ones. Thus, at the end of the myth of Olympian 10 (78), the poet says that he and his companions are “following even now” the “an-cient beginnings” laid out by Herakles, founder of the Olympic games,”83 and Pindar himself creates connections between past and present perfor-mance at Olympia.

Olympian 3 and Olympian 10 construct Olympia in similar man-ners. In Olympian 3, as noted above, Pindar weaves Olympic space into

82 E. Casey, “The Ghost of Embodiment: On Bodily Habitudes and Schemata,” in D. Walton, ed., Body and Flesh: A Philosophical Reader (Malden, Mass., 1998) 219–20.

83 H. Mackie, Graceful Errors: Pindar and the Performance of Praise (Ann Arbor 2003) 63. So too Fitzgerald (above, n.45) 123: “The shout that greeted the victors at the fi rst Olympic Games (72–73) still sounds in the present ode, in which the mythical event is reawakened.”



mythological space with the Olympic olive trees, derived from the Hy-perboreans, thereby providing a divine lineage for the olive crown of Pindar’s patron, Theron. A vertical relationship, then, between men and the gods is developed, and the three important spaces of the ode, the land of the Hyperboreans, Olympia, and Theron’s Akragas are mean-ingfully intertwined, as Segal has stressed.84 The myth of Herakles’ foundation of Olympia in Olympian 3 suits Pindar’s colonial patron, Theron of Akragas, particularly well, because Pindar connects Theron with the prestige of Olympia and because Herakles’ foundation of “co-lonial” Olympia is analogous to the foundation of a colonial polis, such as Theron’s Akragas. As Krummen notes in the analogous situation of Olympian 10, also a tale of Herakles’ foundation of Olympia, “Pindar selbst erzählt in diesem Sinne in Olympie 10, wie Herakles—gewisser-maßen so wie man eine Koloniestadt gründet—Olympie als Feststätte an einem zuvor ganz und gar unwirtlichen Ort einrichtet.”85 In addition, the crowning ceremony horizontally links generations of human perfor-mance on site. In Olympian 10, Pindar focuses on the sanctuary with Herakles’ construction of the Altis, developing a vertical relationship with men and the hero Herakles, while also focusing on foundational performances and celebrations at Olympia, a horizontal relationship that celebrates generations of human performance at Olympia. In both odes, Pindar shapes his narrative around accurate topographic markers such as the hill of Kronos and the river-god Alpheios to situate his ode in space with which his audience is familiar. Equally important in both poems are the mythological narratives that link present and past, the references to on-site phenomena, as well as the performances that occur at Olympia: the competitions (O.10), crowning ceremonies (O.3), and celebratory revels (O.10). that make Olympia a culturally rich space. While uniting the past and the present, Pindar intertwines myth, land-scape, and monument to make Olympia a culturally rich space that de-rives its importance from the ongoing performance and reproduction of the past that has occurred at its sanctuary since time immemorial.

84 Segal (above, n.56) 242–43.85 E. Krummen (Pyrsos Hymnon. Festliche Gegenwart und Mythisch-Rituelle Tradi-

tion als Voraussetzung einer Pindarinterpretation, Isthmie 4, Pythie 5, Olympie 1 und 3 [Berlin 1990] 264): “Pindar himself tells, in this manner, in Olympian 10, how Herakles, similar to how one founds a colonial polis, constructs Olympia as a festival site in a place previously completely uninhabited.”


32 Classical World

XI. Conclusion

Olympia was so prestigious both materially and discursively that it pro-vided Pindar with material he could appropriate and use strategically in his narratives of praise, and he manipulated the primeval physical landscape, the ancient man-made monuments, and the mythological heritage of Olympia in the interests of his patrons. Whether using Al-pheios, the hill of Kronos, the Pelopion, or the ash altar of Zeus, Pindar weaves rich connections between the heritage-laden physical landscape of Olympia and his patrons, so that his patrons can bolster their social status (as well as his own poetic status in relation to the hill of Kronos). Similarly, when he develops narratives about Olympia, Pindar composes myths that revolve around the origins of Olympia, astutely connecting ancient and contemporary practice to reinforce the importance of the present moment’s ideological relationship to the past, a relationship of deference, as made clear through contemporary cultural reproduction and emulation of the past. In fact, Pindar’s Olympian landscapes are ideologically conservative and allow little or no room for alternative ideologies that might question, for example, the absence of women, slaves, and non-Greeks from athletic performance or even question the purpose of agonistic performance. It is not a novel statement to assert that epinician ideology is socially conservative, but it is worth noting that this conservative ideology is played out in representations of the Olympic sanctuary itself. Pindar writes myth, not history, and the his-torical origins of Olympia are ultimately of little concern for Pindar, since heritage is based not on truth but on cultural memory.86 In his odes, Pindar venerates his patrons and their competitive interests by en-gaging with Olympia’s past and by skillfully developing what Olympia had to offer his patrons. To quote Pierre Nora, “the greater the origins, the more they magnifi ed our greatness. Through the past we venerated above all ourselves.”87

86 For a classic study of landscape and heritage, see D. Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge 1985). Note too the sentiment of Huxley (above, n.1) 33: “Pindar’s attitude to facts is not rigorously historical . . . myth is being used to interpret the present, and secondarily to describe the past.”

87 P. Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representation 26 (1989) 16.



The fi ndings of this paper are relevant, moreover, to recent work on deixis and performance studies in archaic Greek lyric.88 Pindar’s evocations of Alpheios, the hill of Kronos, the Pelopion, and the ash altar of Zeus, as well as his myths with Olympic themes, saturate his odes with references to Olympia, and the frequent evocation of Olym-pic space creates a spatial dialectic between Olympia and the place of fi rst performance, the home polis of the victor.89 Furthermore, as Currie points out, epinician diction frequently stresses the role of the broad populace in celebrating an epinician ode, and the public nature of the performance of epinician odes, regularly performed at public festivals, parallels the popular Panhellenic festivals, including the Olympic fes-tival.90 When relevant poems debut in the home poleis of the victors, then, the evocation of Olympic phenomena makes epinician audiences imagine Olympia and the performances that occur there; to use Felson’s phrase, audiences may be “vicariously transported” to Olympia during performance, thanks to Pindar’s deictic tactics.91 As Hubbard suggests, moreover, the performance of epinician odes may have taken place at anniversary celebrations in the Panhellenic sanctuaries, and Athanassaki stresses that Olympian 1’s subject matter and deictic maneuvers make it particularly suitable for reperformance at Olympia.92 Whenever an ode is reperformed, then, in the home polis of the victor, at Olympia, or elsewhere, Olympic space is activated and celebrated.93

THE UNIVERSITY OF [email protected]

88 On deixis and archaic Greek lyric, see N. Felson, ed., The Poetics of Deixis in Alcman, Pindar, and Other Lyric (Baltimore 2004).

89 Eckerman (above, n.35) points out that all Pindar’s odes were likely fi rst per-formed in the polis of the respective victor.

90 Currie (above, n.72) 63.91 See N. Felson, “Vicarious Transport: Fictive Deixis in Pindar’s Pythian Four,”

HSCP 99 (1999) 1–31.92 T. Hubbard, “The Dissemination of Epinician Lyric: Pan-Hellenism, Reperfor-

mance, Written Texts,” in C. Mackie, ed., Oral Performance and Its Context (Leiden 2004) 71–93; L. Athanassaki, “Deixis, Performance, and Poetics in Pindar’s First Olympian Ode,” Arethusa 37 (2004) 336–41.

93 B. Currie, “Reperformance Scenarios for Pindar’s Odes,” in C. Mackie, ed., Oral Performance and Its Context (Leiden 2004) 49–69.


The Landscape and Heritage of Pindar's Olympia

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