Bacchylides is a lesser known lyric poet who like Pindar wrote athletic victory odes. Although he’s often disparaged when compared to Pindar I think this is a kind of unwarranted snobbery especially if you want to learn about ancient Greek aristo ideals. Short thread:

https://twitter.com/costin_eats/status/1701417471100559824

This is a typical and relatively in tact ode to Hieron tyrant of Syracuse for his sponsorship of a winning chariot team at Olympia. As in Pindar’s odes, these would be commissioned to celebrate a victory…continuation of more ancient bards’ celebrations of battle victories

Libanius was one of the last great pagan thinkers of antiquity, lived 4th C AD; in his Apology of Socrates he has Anytus, Socrates’ accuser, make the claim that Socrates was fond of using this passage from Pindar to teach young men violent lawlessness and disregard for justice.

Whether Socrates actually was using this passage, in this form for this purpose is interesting but a separate question from fact that this appears to be a popular accusation from multiple sources, and possibly grounded in popular tradition…

My grandfather from my Jewish side speaking at a Communist Party rally some time in the late 1930's I think. After the war he was one of the founders of the first Communist regime in Romania. I believe he did mostly something related to propaganda. He is the one speaking. Here he is getting ready to speak. He's the one in the middle, looking down. I think he was quite handsome!