Note 45 — Chapter XII · THE LAY AUTHORS

In O. ii, 84–5, it is certainly Kronos who is meant (as Didymos took it, though he gave an absurd interpretation of the passage) and not Zeus as Aristarchos imagined. The exceedingly corrupt and (owing to the intrusion of glosses) unmetrical lines are beyond certain restoration: the emendations of the Byzantine scholars give the required sense.—What happened to the incorrigibly wicked? In accordance with the theory of the soul’s Transmigration two alternative views as to their fate were possible: they might be regarded as passing from body to body unceasingly (Empedokl.) or as doing penance by suffering eternal punishment in Hell (as with Plato and others). The circumstances in which he alludes to these matters do not give Pindar any special occasion to declare himself for either view. He has only to speak of the final condition of the just; the fate of the ἀσεβεῖς is left in semi-obscurity. Something about the matter is, however, said in fr. 132; ψυχαὶ ἀσεβέων hover under the vault of heaven that covers the earth (γαίᾳ either corrupt or grammatically bad Greek), while the pious above the vault of heaven (ἐπουράνιοι) sing to the “Great Blessed One”. Everything in this is un-Pindaric, the inadequacy and even incorrectness of the language (μολπαῖς ἐν ὕμνοις), the unconcealed monotheism of the phrase μάκαρα μέγαν, the conception of the souls as having nothing else to do than sing to the One God, the whole idea that these blessed ones dwell “in heaven”. This last is an idea familiar to Greeks of a later period, nor is the division of souls into ὑπουράνιοι and ἐπουράνιοι unknown to them; cf. Epigr. Gr. 650, 9 ff. But Pindar cannot have written anything of the kind. It is even doubtful whether Clem. Al. who, Str. iv, 640 P., names as the author of the lines τὸν μελοποιόν, meant Pindar by the words: Theodoret. (Gr. Aff. C. viii, 599 C), who attributes the second half of the frag. to Pindar, had no other source but the same Clem. Al. But it may be doubted whether the whole is to be attributed to any Greek of the older faith. It has quite the appearance, as Zeller, Socr. and Socratics, p. 24, n. 3, strikingly suggests, of one of those Jewish forgeries in which Jewish monotheism and the ideas connected with it were to be fathered upon Greek antiquity. Welcker, Kl. Schr. v, 252 ff.; Götterl. i, 741 f., defends the fr. (and most unconvincingly connects the ψυχαὶ ὑπουράνιοι and ἐπουράνιοι of the fr. with the quite different δαίμονες ἐπιχθόνιοι and ὑποχθόνιοι of Hes., Op. 123 and 141). He thinks he can defend the genuineness of the lines (which had already been declared spurious by Dissen) by pointing to the words of Horace about Pindar’s θρῆνοι (O. iv, 2, 21): flebili sponsae iuvenem raptum plorat, et vires animumque moresque aureos educit in astra nigroque invidet Orco. Even supposing that this referred to the transport of the souls to the stars the witness of Horace thus given would only remove a single difficulty from a passage that has other overwhelming difficulties in profusion. But Horace says nothing of the transport of the “Soul” to the heavenly regions, vires, animus, mores, all these together refer not at all to the ψυχή but to the ἦθος and the ἀρεταί of the dead. Pindar, Horace means, rescues the memory of the nature and merits of the youth from decay: only the fame which the poet secures for him is under discussion. educit in astra and invidet Orco mean nothing more than: he rescues the memory of the dead from oblivion, exactly as in the epitaph quoted above, n. 20: οὑδὲ θανὼν ἀρετᾶς ὄνυμ’ ὤλεσας ἀλλά σε Φάμα κυδαίνουσ’ ἀνάγει δώματος ἐξ Ἀΐδα. Thus, it is least of all to be concluded from Horace’s words that Pindar transported the souls of the εὐσεβεῖς into the heavens (rather that in the θρῆνοι—as much as anywhere else: see above, n. 25—Pindar sometimes only recognizes the immortality of fame: of that alone does Horace speak).