Pindar's Twelfth Olympian and the Fall of the Deinomenidai

Abstract

The ode celebrates a number of victories (all of them, as we shall see, in the δόλιχοϲ, the ‘long’ race) won by a certain Ergoteles, of Himera in Sicily. It is not in any proper sense an Olympian at all: the first victory mentioned was at Olympia, which is why the ode was classified by Aristophanes of Byzantium among the Olympians; but the most recent of the victories, the immediate occasion of the ode, was won not at Olympia but at Pytho. The ode begins with an invocation of Fortune, and a prayer that she should protect the victor's city. From this it proceeds, in the regular fashion of the Greek hymn, to a statement of Fortune's power; and this statement then merges into a gnomic passage on the instability and unpredictability of human affairs, from which in turn we emerge to the victor and to his changing fortune and final success.

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