On the Relevance of Orestes in Pindar's Eleventh Pythian

OVER THE CENTURIES Pindar's Eleventh Pythian Ode, and particularly the myth presented therein, have stimulated considerable controversy and confusion.' A common presumption has been that the poet himself, whether through contrivance or carelessness, is responsible for the obscurity. That sort of presumption was gently challenged almost a century ago by Gildersleeve, who made the eminently sensible observation that our imperfect understanding of the ode might be due to the loss of much of the information possessed by the poet and his original audience.2 The state of our knowledge and appreciation of the poem has in fact progressed since Gildersleeve's day through the labours and insights of several critics,3 but this is hardly to suggest that the entire ode stands at last in a clear and unobstructed light, and the process of elucidation will perhaps never be satisfactorily completed. And so, in an attempt to make a contribution to a continuing enterprise rather than in any expectation of providing definitive solutions to all of the problems in the ode, I offer the following remarks on the significance of some of the mythic material in the Eleventh Pythian. The poem begins with an invocation to various heroines of Theban cult, who are invited to assemble at the temple of Ismenian Apollo for the purpose of celebrating, inter alia, the Pythian victory of the Theban youth Thrasydaeus in the boys' foot-race (1-14). Since these verses have always been recognized as appropriate in their own right to the occasion and

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