The Praise of Theron and his Brother in Pindar's
Second Olympian

Monessa F. Cummins (Grinnell College)

Scholarship on Olympian 2, a poem composed by Pindar for the four-horse chariot-victory of Theron of Akragas in 476 BCE, has often focused on Pindar's portrayal of the afterlife in the last half of this poem (e.g., Hampe, Lloyd-Jones, Nisetich). I propose to analyze, instead, lines 46-51, the mid-point of the poem, where Pindar praises Theron both for his own Olympian victory and for the chariot-victories of his brother. Scholarly comment on these lines has been limited either to cursory paraphrase (e.g., Hurst 128, Fitzgerald 56, Lloyd-Jones 251, Nisetich, 5-6, Cole 564, Willcock 149-50) or to discussion of the number and type of victories which Pindar describes (e.g., Boeckh II:2 127-28, Bernardini, 130-32). Very little has been written about the thematic significance of these lines within the context of the poem. Yet these lines form the climax of the first half of the poem: Theron and his brother are the third pair of siblings from the house of Kadmos to experience extremes of fortune. Their ὄλβος compares to that of Semele and Ino (22-30), and contrasts with the πῆμα a of Eteokles and Polyneikes (41-42). The parallels and contrasts between these three pairs are not exact, and narration of their fates prompts gnomic moralizing which gradually reveals the same principle at work in the contemporary house of the Emmenidai and in the more distant house of Kadmos: Fate drives god-sent ὄλβος and πῆμα in alternation upon men (18-22; 23-24; 35-37).

Pindar's decision to characterize the extreme felicity and suffering of the house of Kadmos in terms of the attainment of identical fates by siblings presents a rhetorical difficulty: Pindar must celebrate the victories of Xenokrates, Theron's brother, together with those of Theron himself (46-52) in a way that gives sufficient scope to Xenokrates' victories but does not, at the same time, challenge the primacy of the victor as the laudandus of the poem. Pindar achieves this aim, in part, by describing the victories of Xenokrates in terms which continually deflect attention to Theron. Thus, the ambiguity of Pindar's praise, upon which scholars have commented, is a means of negotiating the tension between praise of the collective success of the oikos to which each brother contributes, and praise of the laudandus.

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