Tuesday, May 07, 2024
Battle Cry
Pindar, fragment 78 Maehler, 66 Bowra (tr. William H. Race, with his note):
On the fragment as a whole see M.J.H. van der Weiden, The Dithyrambs of Pindar (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1991), pp. 216-220.
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Hear me, Battle Cry, daughter of War,The same (tr. Richard Stoneman):
prelude to spears, to whom men offer31
a holy sacrifice of death on behalf of their city.
31 A scholion on Aesch. Pers. 49 reports that this comes from a dithyramb. Scholion on a Rylands papyrus. "It is the 'Pindaric figure' (schema Pindaricum) as in θύεται ἄνδρες ('men offers')."
Κλῦθ᾿ Ἀλαλά, Πολέμου θύγατερ,
ἐγχέων προοίμιον, ᾇ θύεται
ἄνδρες ὑπὲρ πόλιος τὸν ἱρόθυτον θάνατον.
War-whoop, daughter of battle,On the so-called schema Pindaricum (plural feminine or masculine subject with 3rd person singular verb), see R.S. Haydon, "ΣΧΗΜΑ ΠΙΝΔΑΡΙΚΟΝ," American Journal of Philology 11 (1890) 182-192, and Pascale Hummel, La syntaxe de Pindare (Louvain: Peeters, 1993), pp. 57-63 (§§ 43-53). I don't have access to Hummel's book.
hear the prelude of swords,
while the men performed
for the city
the sacrificial slaughter.
On the fragment as a whole see M.J.H. van der Weiden, The Dithyrambs of Pindar (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1991), pp. 216-220.
