Publisher's Synopsis
The first chapter examines the form of the victory ode-an inherited form with its required, recurrent features-and shows how, in Pindar's hands, its disparate elements compose a complex, harmonious whole. The rest of the book consists of close readings of a dozen odes illustrating different aspects of Pindar's genius and the wide range of experience that this seemingly limited genre can cover.
Written to convey to the general reader the skill and power of Pindar's poetry, this book assumes no knowledge of the specialist literature. However, a number of Carne-Ross's interpretations do break fresh critical ground, and thus the book will also be of interest to scholars in the field.