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Bacchylides's Ode 5 includes, in addition to a brief reference to the victory itself, a long mythical episode on a related theme, and a gnomic or philosophical reflection – elements that occur also in Pindar's ode and that seem typical of the victory ode genre.
1 Ceos, off the coast of Attica; homeland of Bacchylides and his uncle, the poet Simonides. 2 Heracles. 3 Cerberus. 4 Meleager. Porthaon is his grandfather; his father is Oineus. 5 Heracles. Alcmene is his mother. 6 Heracles has both a divine father (Zeus) and a nominal mortal father (Amphitryon).
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A good example of all three is the encounter of Heracles with the ghost of Meleager in the underworld (ode 5), an episode treated also by Pindar (fragment 249a). Another memorable narrative is the story of the miraculous rescue of Croesus from the burning pyre (ode 3).
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
In Bacchyl ides' Ode 5 the plot is different in one important regard: it is rather Heracles himself, moved to tears by the recital of Meleager's story, who asks whether Meleager has a sister whom he might make his bride.
effective adaptation of the oral tradition, I have chosen Ode 5 as an illustration, because it draws on epic with which we are familiar, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Hesiod's Theogony. Ode 5, Bacchylides' First Olympian Ode for Hieron, begins with an invocation to his patron (I-6): EOLPE 7ZvpaKOUT'O iTrTro)vv-Wv CrparayE0 ,,Yqcc /-LEV tocTTEOaV
Ode 5 (Bacchyl. 5) commemorates Hieron's Olympic single-horse victory of 476, also the occasion of Pindar's Olympian 1 (Pind. O. 1). The brief Ode 4, apparently performed on the spot at Delphi ( Bacchyl. 4.4-5 ), celebrates the tyrant's 470 Pythian chariot victory, for which Pindar composed Pythian 1 , performed in Sicily ( Pind. P. 1.30 ).
McDevitt breaks down commentary on each ode into individual sections devoted to the victor and the event, the ode’s myth, as well as a synoptic summary and exegesis of the ode; thereafter follow line-by-line notes in English.
