We were excited to welcome back Maša Ćulumović for an Open House. The topic of the discussion is “Musical Heroes: A Discussion on Pindar’s Pythian 12.” The event took place on Friday, May 29, 2020 at 11:00 a.m. EDT and was recorded.
To get ready for the event, you might like to read:
Pythian 12, PDF handout (English, translated by Maša Ćulumović)
Pythian 12 (Greek), on Scaife
Maša Ćulumović invites us to think about the following questions:
- What is the relationship between musical and athletic contests in ancient Greece?
- Does Pindar address them differently or handle the praise of the victor in these skills (tekhnai) in different ways?
- What cultural and anthropological role did the pipes (auloi) play in ancient Greece?
- How are we to understand Pindar’s version of the invention of pipe music that originated in (female) lament? And why is that the appropriate aitiology to elaborate in a victory ode?
You can watch the video on our YouTube channel or view in the frame below.
Mentioned during this presentation:
- Delphic Preview, Festival of the Muses, June 19–20, 2020
- Reconstruction of the aulos and how it was played, video clip, from Rediscovering Ancient Greek Music
- Translations of Pindar: William Race.
More recent translations will be made available at the Center for Hellenic Studies. - William J. Slater. 1969. Lexicon to Pindar. Berlin. De Gruyter.
Available online at Perseus
For further Kosmos Society videos please visit the Watch page.
Maša Ćulumović
Maša Ćulumović is currently working on A Pindar Commentary in Progress, a digital CHS publication, which she is co-editing with Gregory Nagy. She has previously held positions at Furman University, University of Puget Sound, Miami University, and Brandeis University, and was a Postdoctoral Researcher directing an EU-funded project Poetics of Space in Ancient Greek Victory Odes. She has published on Pindar and is an editor of the CHS Classics@ volume on Ancient Lyric Poetry as well as a co-editor and a contributor to the proceedings of the Logic of Lists workshop to be published in the next Classics@ issue. Her ongoing project is the study of poetics of space, geography, and landscape in ancient epinicians.