The poet Pindar celebrated the Alcmaeonid's temple in Pythian 7. 8-9 and he also provided details of the third building ( Paean 8.

Pindar was not commissioned to celebrate Hieron's subsequent victory in the chariot race at the Olympic Games in 468 BC – this, the most prestigious of Hieron's victories, was however celebrated by Bacchylides ( Ode 3 ).

In fact, in the same year that both poets celebrated Pherenicus's Olympic victory, Pindar also composed an ode for Theron of Acragas ( Olympian 2 ), in which he likens himself to an eagle confronted with chattering ravens – possibly a reference to Bacchylides and his uncle.

Of the former class, the epithalamia of Catullus, founded on an imitation of Pindar, present us with examples of strophe, antistrophe and epode ; and it has been observed that the celebrated ode of Horace, beginning Quem virum aut heroa lyra vel acri, possesses this triple character.

Pindar celebrated the Panhellenic athletic festivals in vivid odes.

That Zeus was the god in honour of whom the games were afterwards celebrated is stated by Pindar.

Respecting the time of the year at which the Nemean games were celebrated, the Scholiast on Pindar merely states that they were held on the 12th of the month of Panemos, though in another passage he makes a statement which contradicts this assertion.

Here in Greek mythology Heracles overcame the Nemean Lion of the Lady Hera, and here during Antiquity the Nemean Games were played, in three sequence, ending about 235 BCE, celebrated in the eleven Nemean odes of Pindar.

Ergoteles, whose victory at the Olympic games is celebrated by Pindar, was a citizen, but not a native, of Himera.

It appears likely that Sappho's poetry was largely lost through action of the same indiscriminate forces of cultural change that have left us such paltry remains of all nine canonical Greek lyric poets, of whom only Pindar ( whose works alone survive in a manuscript tradition ) and Bacchylides ( our knowledge of whom we owe to a single dramatic papyrus find ) have fared much better.

Ultimately, however, Bacchylides and Pindar share many of the same goals and techniques – the difference is largely one of temperament:

Soon he was competing with Pindar for commissions from the leading families of Aegina and, in 476 BC, their rivalry seems to have reached the highest levels when Bacchylides composed an ode celebrating Hieron's first victory at the Olympian Games ( Ode 5 ).

Pindar also composed a celebratory ode for this victory ( Pindar's Pythian Ode 1 ), including however stern, moral advice for the tyrant to rule wisely.

Scholiasts are the only authority for stories about rivalry between Simonides and Pindar at the court of Hieron, traditionally used to explain some of the meanings in Pindar's victory odes ( see the articles on Bacchylides and Pindar ).

A chariot race was also said to be the event that founded the Olympic Games ; according to one legend, mentioned by Pindar, King Oenomaus challenged his daughter Hippodamia's suitors to a race, but was defeated by Pelops, who founded the Games in honour of his victory.

Other classicists, including Peter Levi, also claim a later date for her, based on her mythological references, which are from a later date, and the absence of any contemporary accounts corroborating her victory over Pindar.

This metric system originated in ancient Greek poetry, and was used by poets such as Pindar and Sappho, and by the great tragedians of Athens.

Bacchylides's image of the poet as an eagle winging across the sea was not original – Pindar had already used it earlier ( Nemean Odes 5. 20 – 21 ).

On the other hand, the variants " Eleuthia " ( Cretan ) and " Eleuthō " ( used by Pindar ) suggest a possible connection with " eleutheria " ( freedom ), in which case the word may simply mean " Deliverer ", with an obvious association to childbirth.

The tyrant's apparent preference for Bacchylides over Pindar on this occasion might have been partly due to the Cean poet's simpler language and not just to his less moralizing posture, and yet it is also possible that Bacchylides and his uncle were simply better suited to palace politics than was their more high-minded rival.

Simonides later introduced his nephew to ruling families in Thessaly and to the Sicilian tyrant, Hieron of Syracuse, whose glittering court attracted artists of the calibre of Pindar and Aeschylus.

According to a scholiast on Pindar, he once acted as peace-maker between Hieron and another Sicilian tyrant, Theron of Acragas, thus ending a war between them.

Pindar, who lived less than a century afterwards, expressly associates this instrument of torture with the name of the tyrant.

* Aetna: A Sicilian city founded by the Greek tyrant Hieron I, it is fancifully mentioned by the young poet ( line 926 ) while he addresses Pisthetaerus in the manner of the illustrious bard Pindar addressing Hieron ( Pindar fragment 94 ).

Pindar in some fragments speeks for the immortality of the souls, which may spent in Elysion a happy eternity.

** Aristophanes of Byzantium, Greek scholar, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship, but also for work on other classical authors such as Pindar and Hesiod.

Liddell Scott provides other sources for the shortened form of this verb, including Acusilaus ( 5th century BC ), Joannes Laurentius Lydus ( 4th century AD ) and the Scholiast on Aeschylus, Eumenides, who cites Pindar relating how the earth tried to tartaro " cast down " Apollo after he overcame the Python.

He has often been compared unfavourably with his contemporary, Pindar, as " a kind of Boccherini to Pindar's Haydn ", yet the differences in their styles doesn't allow for easy comparison and " to blame Bacchylides for not being Pindar is as childish a judgement as to condemn ... Marvel for missing the grandeur of Milton.

Like Simonides and Pindar, however, Bacchylides composed lyrics to appeal to the sophisticated tastes of a social elite and his patrons, though relatively few in number, covered a wide, geographical area around the Mediterranean, including for example Delos in The Aegean Sea, Thessaly to the north of mainland Greece and Sicily or Magna Graecia in the west.

There is an ancient tradition, upheld for example by Eustathius and Thomas Magister, that he was younger than Pindar and some modern scholars have endorsed it, such as Jebb, who assigns his birth to around 507 BC, whereas Bowra, for example, opted for a much earlier date, around 524 – 1 BC.

Plutarch is the only ancient source for this account and yet it is considered credible on the basis of some literary evidence ( Pindar wrote a paean celebrating Ceos, in which he says on behalf of the island " I am renowned for my athletic achievements among Greeks " 4, epode 1, a circumstance that suggests that Bacchylides himself was unavailable at the time.

Bacchylides has often been compared unflatteringly with Pindar, as for example by the French critic, Henri Weil: " There is no doubt that he fails of the elevation, and also of the depth, of Pindar.

* Barrett, W. S., Greek Lyric, Tragedy, and Textual Criticism: Collected Papers, edited for publication by M. L. West ( Oxford & New York, 2007 ): papers dealing with Bacchylides, Stesichorus, Pindar, and Euripides

His last effort in this line was his Epistle to Peter Pindar ( Dr. John Wolcot ) ( 1800 ), inspired by personal enmity, which evoked a reply, A Cut at a Cobbler and a public letter in which Wolcot threatened to horse-whip Gifford.

If the stories of rivalry are true, it may be surmised that Simonides's experiences at the courts of the tyrants, Hipparchus and Scopas, gave him a competitive edge over the proud Pindar and enabled him to promote the career of his nephew, Bacchylides, at Pindar's expense.

The third, as described by Pindar, was created by the gods Hephaestus and Athena, but its architectural details included Siren-like figures or ' Enchantresses ', whose baneful songs eventually provoked the Olympian gods to bury the temple in the earth ( according to Pausanias, it was destroyed by earthquake and fire ).

* Pindar, Olympian Odes 9 ( 466 BC )

* Pindar, Odes Olympian 7

Pindar mentioned this tradition in his First Olympian Ode, only to reject it as a malicious invention: his patron claimed descent from Tantalus.

* Pindar, Olympian Ode I

* Pindar, Olympian Ode, I ( 476 BCE )

As Pindar conceived the myth-element in his third Olympian Ode, " the doe with the golden horns, which once Taygete had inscribed as a sacred dedication to Artemis Orthosia ", (" right-minded " Artemis ) was the very Cerynian Hind that Heracles later pursued.

Gildersleeve edited in 1885 The Olympian and Pythian Odes of Pindar, with a brilliant and valuable introduction.

* L056 ) Pindar: Volume I. Olympian Odes.