Pindar's Olympian 11 revisited post-bundy

Abstract

OLYMPIAN I 1 was one of two odes that E. L. Bundy selected to illustrate the generic and rhetorical aspects of Pindaric enkomia in his landmark Studia Pindarica (1962). In the second part of that study he twice referred to "linear development" in the design of Pindaric odes (1962, 36 and 91). Although he never precisely defined that term, his analysis was meant to show that each successive topic in an ode contributes directly or indirectly to its overall enkomiastic purpose. He often used musical terms such as "crescendo" and "diminuendo" to describe the build-up and release evident in the course of an ode, as well as terms like "focus," "specification," "tension," "relaxation," "emerge," "recede," "foil," and "climax," all of which depend upon sequential arrangement. Common sense tells us that these enkomiastic poems were performed (and heard) in linear progression from the first to last verse and so must have made sense-at least on one level-as