Robert Maxwell Ogilvie on Pindar

“Pindar was a lyric poet of vehement intensity. His principal surviving works are epinikia, choral odes to be sung in honour of victories at the athletic festivals. In them he expressed attitudes which, however conventional or unoriginal at the time, had much in common with the new outlook of the Romantics. His themes are glory, beauty, nobility, freedom: the glory of athletic prowess, family achievement, the beauty of physical perfection, the nobility of breeding or heroism, the great gestures, such as Hiero's victory over the Etruscans or the Athenian victories in the Persian Wars, which secured national freedom.”

“Goethe and Holderlin in Germany were obsessed by the power of Pindar—Goethe ranked him second only to Homer—and composed lyrics which echo much of the Pindaric spirit. In England Gray was the first to respond to the call. His Pindaric odes, with their urgency and passion, foreshadow bolder flights that were to come. Shelley's Ode to Naples is divided into ten irregular stanzas marked epode, strophe and antistrophe and characterized by the lively transitions and unrestrained imagery of Pindar. The Ode to the West Wind and Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality stand in the same tradition. The suitability and appeal of Pindar penetrated to the schools and Universities.”