SOURCE: "The Epinician Speaker in Pindar's First Olympian: Toward a Model for Analyzing Character in An cient Choral Lyric." Poetics Today, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1984, pp. 377-98.

In the essay below, Rubin describes various roles played by the poet-persona of the "First Olympian, " revealing a correlation between the mythic and non-mythic roles of the poet.

How does Pindar, fifth century B.C. composer of encomia for victors (epinicia), depict the actions of the figure of the poet in his odes? How do the depictions of this figure correspond to the actual activities of Pindar in the real world? What poetic argument is Pindar making by depicting the figure of the poet as he does?

These are some of the issues which I address in a longer treatment of the roles played and the rhetorical and linguistic devices used by what I call the Epinician (E-) speaker—the poet figure in...