Christopher Waldo (University of Washington)
This paper argues for a metapoetic reading of the mythological narrative of Ixion in Pindar’s Pythian 2. While previous scholarship (Carey 1981, Most 1985, Morgan 2015) has largely viewed this passage as a negative exemplum warning Hieron of Syracuse against the excesses of tyrannical power and stressing his moral superiority by contrast, I contend that Pindar presents Ixion as a poet of sorts, whose reproductive transgressions mirror the discursive transgressions characteristic of the genre.
Pindar begins this mythological account with the stark image of Ixion affixed to a winged wheel and announcing in his torment that one should “frequently repay one’s benefactor with gentle acts of recompense” (24). Several features of this passage suggest a metaphorical identification of Ixion with Pindar. The placement of the gnomic statement in Ixion’s mouth effectively commingles the sinner’s voice with that of the poet, and the mention of a benefactor evokes Pindar’s own relationship with Hieron, who commissioned the victory ode. We might reasonably, then, construe these “gentle acts of recompense” as Pindar’s poems for Hieron.
The mythological narrative itself elaborates the procreative legacy of Ixion’s disastrous lust for Hera. Zeus fashions a false Hera as a temptation for Ixion, who sleeps with the apparition, siring a monstrous child called Kentauros. This creature subsequently mates with Magnesian mares, producing the race of centaurs. We might understand these transgressive acts of reproduction as instantiating a metapoetic commentary on the production of poetry, especially since the false Hera strongly recalls the eidolon of Helen, Stesichorus’ famous mea culpa for his poetic indiscretion against Helen. The genre of epinician is obsessed with its own discursive transgressions. Scholars (Jebb 1905, Schadewalt 1928, Mackie 2003) have long drawn attention to the break-off formulas with which Pindar and Bacchylides often conclude their mythological narrations. Many of these frame the preceding account as an overstepping of the bounds of decorum, providing a corrective transition back to the primary task of praising the athletic victor. The figures of Kentauros and his hybrid progeny represent the risks inherent in poetic discourse, which include the possibility of slander, a recurrent theme throughout the poem.
There is no one correct interpretation of a mythological exemplum, and I would suggest that recent scholarship has been too narrow in its focus on Ixion’s applicability to Hieron. A metapoetic reading of this narrative might allow for a better appreciation of epinician’s self-fashioning as a newcomer on the poetic stage in the early decades of the 5th century BCE.