SOURCE: "The Artistry of the First Pythian Ode." The Classical Journal, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 7, April, 1943, pp. 401-412.

In the excerpt below, Schoder analyzes the "First Pythian," highlighting the structure, myths, and imagery of the ode.

When Pindar was a child, a swarm of bees from Mt. Helicon fashioned about his tiny lips a fragrant honeycomb. So at least it is reported, and no one who has fought his way up the sheer peaks of Pindar's odes to pluck at last the "outpoured nectar, the Muses' gift, the sweet fruit of the poet's mind" will wish to disbelieve it. For Pindar's songs have a charm, a vigorous, soaring, brilliant power which no other steward of Pierian treasures has merited to wield. The universal reaction to his genius has been an awed amazement at such virtuosity of fancy, of language, and of rhythm. His words reveal such taut explosiveness of...