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| birth_date = {{circa|518 BC}} <ref>''The Greek and Roman critics'': "The odes of Pindar (518-438B.C.), written for the most part to celebrate victories in athletic contests, are interspersed with moral and philosophical reflections"</ref>
| birth_place = [[Cynoscephalae (Boeotia)|Cynoscephalae]], [[Boiotia]]
| death_date = {{circa|438 BC|lk=no}} (aged approximately 80)
| death_place = [[Argos, Peloponnese|Argos]]
| occupation = [[Lyric poet]]
}}
'''Pindar''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|p|ɪ|n|d|ər}}; {{lang-grc-gre|Πίνδαρος}} {{Lang|grc-Latn|Pindaros}}, {{IPA-el|píndaros|}}; {{lang-la|Pindarus}}; {{circa|518 BC}} – {{circa|438 BC}}) was an [[Greek lyric|Ancient Greek lyric poet]] from [[Thebes, Greece|Thebes]]. Of the [[Western canon|canonical]] [[nine lyric poets]] of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. [[Quintilian]] wrote, "Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar is by far the greatest, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich exuberance of his language and matter, and his rolling flood of eloquence, characteristics which, as [[Horace]] rightly held, make him inimitable."<ref>[[Quintilian]] [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Quintilian/Institutio_Oratoria/10A*.html#1.61 10.1.61]; cf. [[Longinus (literature)|Pseudo-Longinus]] [http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/longinus/desub011.htm#xxxiii 33.5] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110806092832/http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/longinus/desub011.htm#xxxiii |date=2011-08-06 }}.</ref> His poems can also, however, seem difficult and even peculiar. The Athenian comic playwright [[Eupolis]] once remarked that they "are already reduced to silence by the disinclination of the multitude for elegant learning".<ref>''Eupolis'' F366 Kock, 398 K/A, from Athenaeus 3a, (''[[Deipnosophistae]]'', epitome of book I)</ref> Some scholars in the modern age also found his poetry perplexing, at least until the 1896 discovery of some poems by his rival [[Bacchylides]]; comparisons of their work showed that many of Pindar's idiosyncrasies are typical of archaic genres rather than of only the poet himself. His poetry, while admired by critics, still challenges the casual reader and his work is largely unread among the general public.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Some Aspects of Pindar's Style|author=Lawrence Henry Baker|journal=The Sewanee Review|volume=31|issue=1|year=1923|jstor=27533621|pages=100–110}}</ref>
Pindar was the first Greek poet to reflect on the nature of poetry and on the poet's role.<ref>Gerber, p. 261</ref> Like other poets of the Archaic Age, he has a profound sense of the vicissitudes of life, but he also articulates a passionate faith in what men can achieve by the grace of the gods, most famously expressed in the conclusion to one of his [[Epinikion|Victory Odes]]:<ref>de Romilly, p. 37</ref>
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