"Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar is by far the greatest." This judgment by Quintilian in his first-century-A.D. survey of Greek poets, Institutio Oratoria, was the standard evaluation of Pindar throughout antiquity and helps to explain why a substantial portion (about one-fourth) of his work has survived through a continuous succession of manuscripts, while only bits and pieces of the other lyric poets remain. What little is known about Pindar is derived from his own poems and from five brief accounts of his life, the earliest of which was written on a papyrus dating from the third century A.D. and the latest of which is from the Byzantine period. Although these biographies contain some fanciful material and many contradictions, one can, by careful sifting, arrive at the following probable information.

Pindar was born in Cynoscephalae, a village on the outskirts of Thebes in the district...