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B. P. Maslov
KÁvro^ávrisg AeXyol in Pindar's paeans?
In his admirable recent study of the Pindaric paean, Ian Rutherford points to the "great importance" of mantike in the surviving fragments: the sheer number of manteis mentioned in Pindar's paeans, compared to his epinikia or indeed to any body of archaic lyric poetry, may even suggest that "there was a convention of mentioning seers in naiavsf.1 The precise nature of this generic convention, which (given the performance-context of these poems) must have had significance for local Apolline cults, deserves closer examination. In particular, I would like to draw attention to two interrelated issues: Pindar's peculiar representation of the Delphic mantike and the use of genealogical myths to subsume diverse mantic practices at local shrines under the aegis of the Delphic oracle.
The Delphic oracle and its pronouncements are ubiquitous in the Pindaric corpus, yet little can be gleaned from it as to the logistics of oracular consultation. Pythian IV, which is exceptional among the epinikia in more than one respect, is apparently the only poem in which, in two elaborate periphrases, a female priestess who speaks for the god is mentioned (xpvazwv Aïoç akrwv nâpedpoç ¡¿gsa in l. 4, ^¿Xiaaa AeÀpiç in l. 60). Elsewhere, Pindar designates the speaker of the oracles as Apollo himself, in keeping with the epigraphic practice.2 The attempt to occlude human mediation in the communication with the god does not, however, impugn the significance of the particular cult as an institutional guarantee of the
1 Rutherford, I. Pindar's Paeans: A Reading of the Fragments with a Survey of the Genre. Oxford, 2001. P. 173-4. To the best of my knowledge, L. Athanassaki's dissertation, which does not discuss the paeans, is the only extensive study of mantike in Pindar (Mantic Vision and Diction in Pindar's Victory Odes. Ph.D. Diss. Brown Univ., 1990).
2 As J. Fontenrose (The Delphic oracle: Its Responses and Operations. Berkeley, 1978, p. 212) remarks, "the formula in inscription seems to be always o S-eog (or 'AnoXXwv) e'xews; only one inscription mentions the Pythia in the formula Kara Tag ^avrsiaq t^c, n^raf."
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KÀuTo^âvTisç AsAyol in Pindar's paeans?
oracular truth. In view of this, the role of the Delphians, thought of collectively as the keepers of the sanctuary, assumes a significance that has not, I believe, been fully appreciated. I am referring to the Pindaric loci where Delphi and the Delphians are assigned the epithet xXvTo^avrig (the word only attested in Pind.). The best known of these passages is the opening apostrophe of Paian VI (1-6)3:
n@og 'OXv^mov Aioq vs, xpuvea
KkuTo^avTi nu%i, Xivvo^ai Xagirsv-
vi'v ts xai vvv 'Aqqodhq,, hv Za^ew ^s <Sei;ai xpovw koidi^ov nisgBwv ngo^aTav
Rutherford translates xXvTo^avTi as "famed for seers" and does not comment on the problem which, in his commentary, L. R. Farnell seems to have seen when he suggested that the epithet could be understood to refer to Pytho "being personified herself as a 'great prophetess' or a famous mantis" (ad loc.). Indeed, if we believe that there was only one mantis of Apollo at Delphi, the Pythia, the epithet, if taken to mean hXvto, ^avrsvt, is somewhat problematic.4 However, in two other passages, Pindar seems to refer to the entire population of Delphi as "famed seers of Apollo". This is how I would read the phrase xXuto! ^avrisg in the beginning of Paian VIII (1-4).
3 I quote Rutherford's text for the paeans; for other genres, I use the text printed in Pindari Carmina cum Fragmentis, ed. Snell-Maehler (Leipzig, 1989).
4 On mantic practices at Delphi, Amandry's monograph is still foundational (Amandry, P. La mantique apollinienne à Delphes: Essai sur le fonctionnement de l'oracle. Paris, 1950); his argument (p. 25ff) for cleromancy at Delphi (not involving, however, other manteis beside the Pythia) has been disproved by Fontenrose (op. cit. p. 219-223). Two more recent important contributions to the reconstruction of the operation of the Delphic oracle are: Price, S. Delphi and divination. In: Greek religion and society, ed. P. Easterling and J. V. Muir. Cambridge, 1985. 128-54. Maurizio, L. Anthropology and spirit possession: a reconsideration of the Pythia's role at Delphi. JHS 115 (1995): 69-88.
KXvtoi ^avTisg AnoXXwvog, eyw ^ev meg %%vog meg t' wxsavou Qz^tdog t' sm[
Rutherford glosses this striking apostrophe as follows: "These were probably mythological seers associated with Delphi, such as Tenerus and Branchus. In that case, this address might be equivalent to an invocation to the Muses, appealing to the seers for divine wisdom" (216). But Teneros is, first and foremost, a Theban seer, whereas Branchus is associated with Didyma, not Delphi (see e.g. Maurizio, op. cit. p.85, n.97); these figures seem to be out of place in a kletic address opening a poem performed at Delphi. Most importantly, however, Rutherford does not take into account fr. 192:
schol. Pind. P.4.4. dvvaTat dz xal Toug AzXqoug Xeyziv ztbqm^i yap AnoXXwvfiag auToug npoanjopevf
AsXpol Sa^io-Twv iuftvwvj ^avTteg AnoXXwvifiai
Here all Delphians are designated as Apollo's progeny and the manteis of his divine decrees. (If we change, with Turyn, St^iorwv to Bb^itwv the statement is analogous to that applied to Teneros at Pai. IX. 41-45). This parallel suggests that the apostrophe at the beginning of Paian VIII is equivalent not to an invocation to the Muses (here uniquely replaced by the seers), but rather to an invocation of the land and its inhabitants (cf., e.g., the beginning of Paian VI). In this context we should consider the final occurrence of the epithet xXvTo^avTig in another fragmentary passage in Paian X (17-22).
z^ov t[
tiv ^sv[ na]g ^iv s^lv ds na[g xelvodg Zsux^sitra n[p]o^M^[iog uwv sti Tz^[e]f tov an[ xXvTo^avTieg tm $[
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KÀuTopâvTisç АгАфо! in Pindar's paeans?
Following Rutherford's tentative reconstruction, Apollo is the speaker who pronounces a genealogical prophecy; his location is in all likelihood different from the location of xslvoi. Apollo may thus be prophesying, through the Delphic oracle, a future rape that will occur elsewhere, perhaps in the maiden's native land. We are further told "she (or—if we read Te^[a]i— you) will bear a son in front of an altar"; as to the location of the altar, we are in complete uncertainty (note that, if we take na[@ xslvodg with Zsux^sTva, it does not have to be different from that of the speaker). Finally, in ll. 21-22 certain xXvTo^avTisg are mentioned who presumably take care of the child. As Rutherford notes, the expression "seems to be peculiar to Delphi" and suggests that "the seers of Delphi" are meant. I would suggest that xXvTo^avTisg here stands for the Delphians as a collective body; in this case, the delta that is preserved in the same line may belong to A[sXpol.
For the mythic pattern, we could compare Euripides' Ion where Kreusa, raped by Apollo on the Athenian Acropolis, exposes the child in the hope of paternal intervention. Hermes conveys Ion to Delphi where he is brought up by the Pythia. At the sanctuary, Ion gains some mantic expertise (enough to reveal the plot, staged by the unknowing Kreusa, to poison him), wg hv !sgwi ^¿vtsvIv t' hvSXoTg Tqaqsig (1190).5 Hermes is similarly instrumental in the myth of Kyrene as told in Pythian IX: Kyrene is transferred by Apollo from Thessaly to North Africa, where she bears a child (ll. 59ff) which Hermes, having snatched it immediately after birth ylXag uno ^aTegog brings to the Horai and Gaia who bestow on him immortality as well as manifold cultic functions.
The closest parallel to the genealogical prophesy in Paian X, as noted by Rutherford, is the story of Teneros' birth as it is told in Paian IX (38-43):
Xnavsuw, ¿xa/oXs, Moivalaig kv[ahi3s!g Tz%va[i]vi
5 Note the parallelism, in this formulation, between the sanctuary and the plurality of manteis; the latter may designate the Delphians as a collective body.
Xewrwiov ■ [•] ■ ■ ■ о . . [. .] .
hv ф T^VSQOV suguftiav Ъгу,'п[ш . . h^aigsrov ngo^arav £T£x[sv Xh%si кора 'Oxsavou MsXia aho, nv^i[s
We may note that Teneros is linked not just to Apollo (as his son), but specifically to the Pythian Apollo (note the epithet ПиЗ-rfs). Several dictional clues also suggest that we are invited to imagine the Ismenion as a Theban replica of the shrine of the Pythian Apollo in Delphi. The dative plural ^h^iaaiv 'divine ordinances' is used in Pyth.IV.54 of Apollo's prophecies in Delphi; possibly (coni. Turyn) we are also to read bs^irwv in fr. 192. The designation of the Theban Ismenion, not an oracular institution sensu stricto, as a xsnar^giov (commonly used of the Delphic oracle) may also be relevant.6
We might also compare, as a final Pindaric parallel, Olympian VI. Quite in keeping with the concept of mantike as it is expressed in the paeans, Pindar grounds the authority of the most distinguished mantic clan in Greece, the Iamids, by linking their eponymous ancestor, genealogically, to Apollo and, ideologically, to the Delphic oracle. Pindaric concept of mantic authority is thus at odds with both mantike tekhnike and mantike entheos (the two types of divination traditionally distinguished since Plato). It is affiliation with the Pythian Apollo, rather than a seer's technical skills or his state of possession, that must lie at the origin of any mantic institution. Local mantic practices are thus validated, in Pindar, by myth rather than cult: the access to truth that they claim is conditioned by their quasi-filial ties to the Delphic oracle, itself populated by Apollo's scions.7
6 In Pindar, this word is attested, apart from Pai.9, in 0l.6.70 where it is apparently (the force of the word is disputed) applied to Zeus' shrine at Olympia as well as in fragmentary contexts, in Pai.6.71 and Pai.7.18.
7 Pausanias (2.35.2, 2.24.1) reports that the Argive poetess Telesilla related the foundation of the shrine of Apollo Pythaieus in Argos by Pythaieus, a son of Apollo coming from Delphi. While W. S. Barrett (Bacchylides, Asine and Apollo Pythaieus // Hermes 82 [1954], p. 439) is probably right to regard the story as a late invention, it furnishes another example of the mythical pattern at work in Pindar and Euripides.
