Nature, Art, and Learning in Pindar

The purpose of this paper is to briefly reexamine the relationship between nature (φυά), art (τέχνα), and learning (μανθάνειν) in Pindar, and to argue that it has more in common with the Homeric than with the sophistic conception. The three notions are fundamental for an account of Pindaric poetics (and politics), and the basic relationship between them may seem obvious: nature is presumably opposed to art, which one must learn. Pindar famously derided learners (μαθόντες) in favor of φυά (O. 2.86); he and his audience must have likewise scorned τέχνα. “Certainly one of the most common polarities in Pindar is that of nature and art, φύσις and τέχνη.” So wrote Hubbard (1985, 107) in what became the standard treatment. Hubbard’s invocation of both φύσις, which Pindar uses only twice and perhaps only to mean “physique,” and τέχνη, a form which Pindar neglects altogether in favor of the dialectal equivalent τέχνα, could raise worries about an anachronistic application of the later polarity. Hubbard was somewhat alive to this concern, writing (1985, 107-108), “Even though physis and technē do not possess the degree of abstractness for Pindar that they do for the later sophists, the antithesis between inborn and cultivated qualities, or nature and nurture, is nevertheless very real for him.” An antithesis between nature and learning cannot be doubted—at least for some poems, most famously O. 2 and O. 9. And Pindar’s role as a paragon of natural genius as opposed to learned technique has been definitive for his reception since antiquity. Is it right, however, to assume a tight correlation between art and learning, τέχνα and μανθάνειν, in Pindar’s own texts? Is it right to assume a polar opposition not only between φυά and μανθάνειν, but also between φυά and τέχνα? Scholarship on the history of the concept of τέχνη concluded long ago that the archaic notion does not presuppose acquisition through human teaching: instead, τέχνη can be the result of heredity, or the gift of a god; see e.g. Kube (1969, 15). It has too rarely been appreciated that Pindar’s notion is itself rather archaic. But Dickson (1986) and Nicholson (2005) have argued for that conclusion, and their arguments can be strengthened. Pindar himself writes, for instance, of the σύγγονοι τέχναι or “innate arts” of a seer (P. 8.60). Tellingly, that phrase has been ignored by much of the scholarship on τέχνη generally and on Pindar, Hubbard (1985) included. However, concerning the representation of the seer’s τέχνα, Maslov (2015, 196) concluded, “Pindaric mantikê is thus rooted in the heroic age and resolutely removed from the contemporary world.” As we will see through an examination of the relevant passages, the same can be said of Pindaric τέχνα more generally, which is not correlated with either the disparagement or the rare praise of learning, but remains absorbed in the idealized dynamics of divine gifts and φυά.