Can any modern poet beat the world record Pindar set 25 centuries ago?
by Stephen Burt Photo by Streeter Lecka / Getty Images You may not associate ambitious poetry with sports at all, much less with the Olympics, but Pindar certainly did. Perhaps the most-praised poet (besides Homer) in Greek antiquity, and one of the earliest poets for whom many complete poems survive, Pindar (5th century B.C.E.) celebrated in his best-known work the victors in ancient Greek athletic festivals. We now call those poems his epinician odes (from epi, “upon,” and nike, victory): Pindar seems to have written each one on commission—the sponsor whose chariot won the chariot-race, or the family of a winning boxer, paid Pindar to compose verse about the event, which was then performed, with music and dancing. Each of Pindar’s epinician odes designates in its title the games, the winner, and the event (e.g., Olympian, Theron of Akragas, chariot race). The odes honor both the aristocratic winner and his family or city-state, often by retelling an apposite myth. Pindar declares in
