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Success in athletics required considerable investment, of resources and of time. For equestrian competitors, it was usually other people’s time, but serious gymnastic competitors dedicated their youth to training, as well as to regular travel for competition. Athletics was certainly a lifestyle, but it was not a diversion; it was a central route to prestige and political power. Kings, tyrants, and aristocrats used athletic victories to justify their positions of power. This meant not only investing in their own competition in equestrian contests, but also making a home for successful émigrés. Astylus of Croton joined Gelon’s expansion of Syracuse in 485/4 after his first two Olympic crowns, but before his next five, while Ergoteles settled in Theron’s Himera after being exiled from Cnossus, but before all of his eight panhellenic wins.⁶¹ Athletics could also be used to articulate relations among the elites, as less famous festivals or less prestigious events provided venues for lieutenants or lesser leaders to compete. Thus, while Hieron of Syracuse competed in the chariot and horseraces at Olympia and Delphi, his lieutenants competed in the chariot races at Sicyon and Nemea, or the mule-cart race at Olympia.⁶²

Victories also enhanced the standing of those who sought power, as Athens’ history demonstrates: Cylon used an Olympic victory to foment an unsuccessful coup in the seventh century; the elder Cimon transferred his second Olympic chariot win to the tyrant Pisistratus in return for being recalled from exile, but when he won a third victory, after Pisistratus’ death, Pisistratus’s sons killed him; and Alcibiades used his Olympic victory in 416 (celebrated in an epinician ode commissioned from Euripides) to push for an invasion of Sicily, with himself in pole position to claim the expected gratitude.⁶³ Relative status was worked out in many communities often in particular athletic events, without coups, invasions, or murders: Aeginetans jostled for position through combat events in the fifth century, and Spartans through chariot racing—a reminder that athletic cultures varied across the Greek world.⁶⁴

Epinician certainly mentions special distinctions, such as Pherenicus’ pseudo-dustless victory for Hieron, or the 25 panhellenic victories accrued by one Aeginetan family (Pindar, Nem. 6.58–61), and sometimes odes include more powerful figures from outside the victor’s family within the ode (Pindar, Ol. 6.93, Pyth. 10.5, 64), but the overwhelming impression given is of unity, within cities and across cities, rather than competition, hierarchy, and a struggle for position. The different Aeginetan clans appear in their odes as part of unified elite, bound by shared values, shared history, and shared interests, and, while Hieron is evoked as the ruler of Syracuse in a victory ode for one of his commanders, he is pictured more as his friend than his king, hosting his victory celebration when it reaches Sicily (Pindar, Ol. 6.92–100). In epinician, all victors belong to the same elite panhellenic club.

Athletics certainly offered an effective means for those at the margins to claim a place at the center of Greek world. Marginalization came in different forms—ethnic, political, geographical, or social—but the more prestigious athletic festivals provided a venue where one could not only compete against others to stake a claim to priority within the aristocracy, but, more simply, share in the activities of the interstate aristocracy and claim a place within it. Epinician both recorded this participation, and reinforced through its very form the claim to a place in the interstate aristocracy. It was a truly panhellenic form, fitting patrons from all around the Greek Mediterranean into a limited repertoire of shared mythical paradigms and gnomic wisdom, and representing in its melodies an interstate synthesis of local instrumental traditions. The very figure of the epinician poet articulated a panhellenic vision: his authority was rooted not in his voicing of local tradition but in his capacity to move between communities and speak for himself, separate from a chorus.⁶⁵

There seems to have been a formal process at Olympia through which competitors might be called upon to prove their Greekness,⁶⁶ but this served more to affirm the fundamental Greekness of those taking part than to exclude entrants. Competitors whose Greekness was in question in some way could thus use athletic competition to burnish their credentials, and among the patrons of epinician Psaumis of Camarina, victor of Pindar’s Olympians 4 and 5, likely belongs in this category. His strange name, garbled by scholiasts and compilers of victor lists, indicates Sicel connections.⁶⁷ More usually a competitor’s Greekness was threatened by his values or conduct, rather than his ancestry. The victories and odes of both Arcesilas, king of Cyrene, and the great Diagoras served to mitigate their close connections to Persia: Arcesilas’ family owed its position to Persian backing and were effectively client kings of the Persians,⁶⁸ and Diagoras’ family were surely supported by the Persians and may have ruled as kings until Rhodes was forced into the Delian league.⁶⁹ In itself, tyranny or kingship could seem un-Greek in the wake of the Persian wars, so epinician was a popular choice with kings, tyrants, and those with monarchy or tyranny. Such odes served not to obscure tyranny or kingship, but to normalize them as regular parts of the Greek institutional landscape. Hieron’s tyranny owed nothing to foreign powers, but he and his circle, and his fellow west Greek tyrants were particularly keen users of epinician.⁷⁰

A third kind of marginalization that athletics and odes helped to combat was geographical distance. Athletics provided the opportunity to be seen on the mainland and to affirm a place in the interstate aristocracy. Known epinicians largely celebrate victors from the mainland or at least from nearby islands, with the obvious exception of the significant contingent of west Greek odes, but others from the geographical fringes who commissioned odes include Cyreneans (an aristocrat called Telesicrates as well as Arcesilas), the Rhodian Diagoras, and a civic official from Tenedos.⁷¹ Different kinds of marginalization overlap, with tyranny and kingship often coinciding with distance from the center and subordination to Persia. It should also be noted that Hieron did not begin the vogue for odes in the west: his commissions were preceded by odes from Pindar for Xenocrates of Acragas, odes from Simonides for Anaxilas of Messene and Rhegium, and Astylus of Croton and Syracuse, and odes from Ibycus for victors from Leontini and perhaps Syracuse.⁷²

Epinician was also a useful means for social climbers to claim a place in the aristocracy. Whether the prizes available in local festivals would have allowed anyone from a household that could not afford to purchase any additional labor to find their way into the elite is highly unlikely, but there were many households in a typical Greek community that lay outside the aristocracy, but had sufficient wherewithal to hire labor or have tenants or slaves. The heads of these households could afford to serve as hoplites, and could, if they chose, dedicate the necessary time and resources to athletic competition.⁷³ Some of these athletes, particularly those generating the most wealth, will have sought entry into the local elites, and commissioning an epinician was one way to claim that place. Such social mobility is difficult to trace for certain, but there are some promising candidates from among epinician’s patrons.

Chromius, the Sicilian patron of Pindar’s Nemeans 1 and 9, can be characterized as a highly competent soldier of fortune who secured great wealth, status, and prominence under Gelon and Hieron, marrying one of their sisters, racing chariots, and becoming the regent of Aetna. Some soldiers of fortune were aristocrats (as Hagesias, the victor of Pindar’s Olympian 6), but Chromius’ odes give no evidence of aristocratic forebears and make no mention of prior family athletic competition.⁷⁴ Psaumis of Camarina was likely another soldier of fortune from outside the aristocracy. He amassed his wealth under Hieron, and, after the democratic ructions of the 460s, settled in the newly refounded Camarina and used his wealth to mount a major assault on the equestrian competitions at Olympia, entering horse, chariot, and mule-cart races, and winning the last two.⁷⁵ Finally, the family of Argeios of Ceos, the victor celebrated by Bacchylides 1 and 2, may have sought to use athletics and epinician as a way to join the island’s elite. Much of the long first ode does not survive, but we learn from it that the victor’s father, Pantheides, provided medical care, and there is no indication of earlier athletic activity. The central myth concerned the first king of Ceos, and the ode claims that Argeios is descended from him (Bacch. 1.140–142). If this was widely considered true, the family presumably already belonged to its city’s aristocracy, but the claim of such ancestry itself, a claim impossible to prove or disprove—together with the epinician ode, the Isthmian victory, and the family’s generous hospitality—may represent a concerted effort by a family grown wealthy from providing medical care to claim aristocratic status.⁷⁶

All these potentially marginalized patrons were welcomed into epinician’s club, with the result that epinician should be considered a tool for constituting a more expansive version of the interstate aristocracy, and not just reaffirming or protecting existing networks and connections (see Węcowski (Chapter 5) in this volume). Yet, although it constitutes a more expansive aristocracy, epinician promoted a profoundly aristocratic vision of excellence. Excellence is represented as something that is inborn and inherited, even in odes for those born outside the aristocracy, so that, as Peter Rose observes, “birth is the determining principle of everything worth having”: “One must walk on a straight road and contend through one’s nature. For in action strength counts, while in planning the wisdom of those whom the inborn foresight of the future follows” (Nem. 1.25–28), Pindar declares in an ode for the soldier of fortune Chromius.⁷⁷ A broad trend can be seen in all athletic memorials to frame victory as a family possession and a family achievement. Victor statues almost always include the name of the victor’s father as well as the victor; many describe earlier family victories or are dedicated alongside statues of other victors from the family.⁷⁸ The narratives that depict some athletes as heroes sometimes replace their mortal fathers with gods: Euthymus, the son of Astycles, becomes the son of the river Caecinus, Theogenes, son of Timosthenes, becomes the son of Heracles, and Diagoras, the son of Damagetus, becomes the son of Hermes.⁷⁹ The notion of inherited excellence was articulated particularly insistently by Pindar’s odes, which repeatedly link “the specific achievement of the victor, his immediate origin in his own family, and his more remote origin in the mythically evoked heroes of his homeland, and, finally, the origin of both those heroes and the present victory in divine favor.”⁸⁰

While the odes articulate an aristocratic ideology, they also address themselves to the criticisms such as those of Xenophanes that reflect a civic point of view. Victory is described as glorifying and benefitting the victor’s city, as well as the victor, his family, and the larger interstate aristocracy that epinician constitutes, almost as a kind of liturgy. The victor and his family are described as men of hard work and moderation (rather than leisure and excess) who identify with their civic community as well as their family and class. Thus Olympian 5, the ode by an unknown poet for Psaumis of Camarina, speaks of the victor as “increasing your city, Camarina” (Ol. 5.4) by his offerings and competition at Olympia, and as “setting up delicate glory for you [Camarina]” by his victory, as he announced both his father Acron and his “newly founded seat” (Ol. 5.7–8). The ode goes on to describe how he has built houses for the newly founded city, “leading out of helplessness into light this people of townsmen” (Ol. 5.14), and how those who succeed through “hard work and expenditure” (Ol. 5.15) in risky enterprises (a designation vague enough to cover both equestrian competition and town-building) are considered wise “by their fellow citizens” (Ol. 5.16). Pindar’s Isthmian 6.63–71 promotes the same vision of shared interests: the family’s victors sustain the clan of the Psalychidae and the house of the immediate victor’s maternal grandfather; yet all are pointedly located in this “god-beloved city,” and the immediate victor’s father is described as “bringing to his own town an ornament for all to share”—presumably the victories of his sons—and “beloved for his beneficence to guests, pursuing moderation in judgment and holding fast to moderation.”⁸¹ Wherever epinician looks, it sees harmony; victories may exemplify and prove the truth of aristocratic ideals, but victors serve the interests of the city as a whole.