Conclusions and Test Cases

Abstract

Chapter 5 explores the odes for Psaumis of Kamarina and Ergoteles of Himera. After a brief survey of the history of the two cities and the cultural context for the poems, the chapter then argues that Psaumis and Ergoteles offer contrasting examples of the way that Pindar mitigates the status of hybrid citizens in Sicily by writing the victors themselves into their local landscapes and civic ideology that is bound to the landscape. As examples of an immigrant (Ergoteles) and, at least possibly, a Greek of Sikel ethnicity (Psaumis), Ergoteles and Psaumis contrast with the tyrants Hieron and Theron. The poet, it suggests, emphasizes Psaumis’ control of both the landscape and cityscape of Kamarina in Olympian 4 and Olympian 5 and converts him into a quasi-mythical benefactor of the city. On the other hand, Ergoteles, an exiled Cretan, is integrated into the civic fabric of Himera through a bath in the hot springs of the Nymphs. This chapter proposes that Pindar’s emphasis on landscape in the Sicilian odes is a feature that transcends the divide between tyrant and non-tyrant victors. As in the odes for Syracusans and Akragantines, local landscapes in the odes for Kamarina and Himera participate in the formation of civic traditions. It argues, however, that in the cases of odes for victors who are themselves establishing their civic status the victor himself becomes affiliated with the local landscape through Pindar’s poetry.