In both form and content, Pindar’s poetic words “quoting” a dead hero’s vision of a living hero are the words of a mantis ‘seer’, as we can see clearly from the wording of the hero Amphiaraus, who is imagined {102|103} as speaking from the dead when he envisions the blazon on the shield of his son, the hero Alcmaeon:
φυᾷ τὸ γενναῖον ἐπιπρέπει | ἐκ πατέρων παισὶ λῆμα
By inherited nature, the noble purpose [lēma] shines forth from fathers [pateres] to sons. [17]
- Line 40, near the beginning (second verse) of the messenger’s initial speech: ἥκω σαφῆ τἀκεῖθεν ἐκ στρατοῦ φέρων ‘I have come bringing things that are clear [saphē] from the army back there’; the messenger describes himself as a ‘viewer’, katoptēs, of the things happening there (line 41).
- Line 67, at the second-to-last verse of that same speech: the messenger refers to the visions that he brings to Eteocles as σαφηνείᾳ λόγου ‘clarification [dative] of speech’
- Line 82, in the initial part of the chorus’ initial song: ἄναυδος σαφὴς ἔτυμος ἄγγελος ‘the clear [saphēs] and genuine messenger’ (with reference to the chorus’ actual vision of the dust rising toward the aether, as a sign of the oncoming doom). [21]
Just as this concretized vision of the story of Ilion—and of the Iliad itself—is imagined as unchanging and permanent, so too is the kleos or poetic ‘fame’ of epic that radiates from the words of the seer Calchas as directly “quoted” by Odysseus in Iliad II 323–332. In the words of the seer himself, as we already saw at II 324, ἡμῖν μὲν τόδ᾿ ἔφηνε τέρας μέγα μητίετα Ζεύς ‘Zeus the Planner made as a vision for me this great omen [teras]’. Then Calchas goes on to prophesy that the kleos of this omen [teras] will never perish:
ὄψιμον ὀψιτέλεστον, ὅου κλέος οὔποτ᾿ ὀλεῖται
[… this teras], late in coming, late in coming to fulfillment [telos], and its kleos will never perish
In this mantic light, let us take one last look at the vision of the shield of Alcmaeon in the “micro-epic” of Pindar’s Pythian 8. The visualization of the drakōn, which I have already quoted earlier, is seen as a positive sign in the words of interpretation emanating from the dead seer, which I have also already quoted. This time, however, I will quote simultaneously the vision and the interpretation that immediately precedes it: {109|110}
Just as the sign on the shield gives a positive meaning to the drakōn ‘snake’ in Pindar’s Pythian 8, so also the interpretation by the seer gives a positive meaning to the lēma ‘purpose’ of the fathers. [34] This positive meaning resurfaces dramatically near the conclusion of the Pindaric ode, as the voice of the poet declares:
The question remains: where, then, is the dream of this negative shade? At an earlier moment in the Seven, Eteocles speaks of the ara ‘curse’ of his father Oedipus (695), and the chorus speaks of this curse as an Erinys (700) that needs to be exorcised with the help of the gods (699–701); then there is talk of an unnamed force to which the chorus refers simply as daimōn ‘daemon’ (705), an entity that needs to be averted from acting on his lēma ‘purpose’ (706). The daemon needs to be averted because it is still ‘boiling’ (708: ζεῖ), says the chorus. Eteocles responds:
ἐξέζεσεν γὰρ Οἰδίπου κατεύγματα
ἄγαν δ᾿ ἀληθεῖς ἐνυπνίων φαντασμάτων
ὄψεις, πατρῴων χρημάτων δατήριοι
Yes, it [the daimōn] boiled over in wrath with the curses [kateugmata, from eukhomai] [41] of Oedipus!
All too true are the visions [opsis plural] of apparitions-in-dreams [en-hupnia], [42]
—visions of dividing the father’s property.
Aeschylus Seven 709–711