Olympian and Pythian Odes

9. Yet one more department must be mentioned—one in which Pindar attained the highest excellence. Simonides, his rival, touched tenderer chords in the θρῆνος lament, or “lament,” and the
9. θρῆνος. fragment that tells of Danaë’s lullaby to Perseus, the noble tribute to those who died at Thermopylai, are among the most precious remains of Greek poetry. But Pindar’s θρῆνοι struck a higher key, and at the sound of his music the gates of the world beyond roll back. The poet becomes a hierophant.

III.

A song of victory is as old as victory itself, and only younger than strife, “the father of all things.” The unrenowned dung-hill rooster original: "ἐνδομάχας ἀλέκτωρ", spoken of by Pindar, chanted his own epinikion before the flood. Old songs of victory are familiar to us from the Bible—Miriam’s song, Deborah’s song, the chorals of virgins that sang “Saul hath slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands.” Pindar himself mentions the old μέλος melody/song of Archilochos, a hymn on the heroes of the games, Herakles and Iolaos, the tinella kallinikos a refrain of triumph, the “See the conquering hero comes,” which was chanted by the victor’s friends in default of any special epinikion. No one who has read the close of the Acharnians of Aristophanes is likely to forget it.

There were singers of epinikia before Simonides and Pindar, but we shall pass over the obscure predecessors of these two princes of Hellenic song, to whom the full artistic development of the lyric chorus was peculiarly due, pausing only to point out to the beginner in Pindar, who is ordinarily more familiar with the tragic chorus than with any other, the fundamental difference between tragic and lyric. The tragic chorus has been called the ideal spectator, the spectator who represents the people. It is the conscience, the heart of the people. In the best days of the drama the chorus follows every turn
Lyric chorus. of the action, heightens every effect of joy or sorrow by its sympathy, rebukes every violation of the sacred law by indignant protest or earnest appeal to the powers