IN THE SHADOW OF PRAISE: EPINICIAN LOSERS AND EPINICIAN POETICS

Abstract

While athletic competition relies on comparison (the necessary similarity of opponents, rules, conditions of victory), epinician poetry claims superlative fame and similarly singular victors. By addressing all explicit and implicit instances of losers and losing, and by paying close attention to epinician language (particularly boasts and litotes), this article deconstructs the naturalized binary of winner/loser in the poetry of Pindar and Bacchylides. Athletic competition, which is structured around similarity, problematizes the matchless fame of epinican and therefore epinician poetry, paradoxically, must work against the essential elements of the very action (i.e., sporting victory) that it purports to celebrate.