Whether Stranger Or Citizen:
Guest-Friendship in Pindar's Fourth Pythian

Mercedes O. Asp (University of Virginia)

Pindar’s fourth and fifth Pythian odes were both written on the occasion of the victory of Arcesilaus of Cyrene in the Pythian games of 462 BC.  While the fifth ode displays many of the tropes and themes commonly associated with the genre, the fourth, its sister-song, has been described as “spectacularly spring[ing] the conventions of the epinikion.”  The length and complexity of the fourth Pythian, moreover, haver spurred much discussion about the song’s original performance context.  The theory stands that the shorter, more standard fifth Pythian was intended for a broad audience at a public festival, while the more nuanced work was intended for a more elite audience in a more private setting: the royal court of the city of Cyrene.

While it may, in the end, be impossible to know for certain whether or not Pindar himself was present for the primary performances his odes, much less whether or not he ever performed them himself, the personal plea posited by Pindar on behalf of the Cyrenean exile Demophilos in the fourth Pythian creates a tempting allusion an actual historical event.  While many look to the fifth Pythian and its precise descriptions of the Cyrenean cityscape as evidence for Pindar’s presence in Cyrene during the victory celebration in 462, I propose instead a close reading of the fourth Pythian itself, in which I will explore how Pindar uses the theme of ξενία (in all of its many connotations) to tie together a long poem which many have seen as disjointed, and specifically how he uses the role of the citizen-stranger to set up the central mythological portion of the poem as a foil to the historical fact of both the plight of Demophilos and the guest-friendship (either real or imagined) between Pindar and Arcesilaus.  I will furthermore examine the artistry with which Pindar wields this theme in order to neatly braid both Cyrenean and Theban myth into his storytelling, creating a song which is at once supremely Cyrenean and supremely Theban.