Studies in Ancient Literature

This course will serve as an introduction to the poetry of Pindar, especially the epinikia.  We will be concerned with formal issues of genre, structure, performance mode, and occasion, as well as with broader issues of epinikion’s imbrication in various religious, cultural, economic, and ideological systems.  We will survey the various scholarly approaches to Pindaric epinikion since Bundy, and, if time permits, I would like to work on epichoric clusters or dossiers of poems—e.g., Theban odes, Aeginetan odes, odes for Sicilian tyrants.