To Be or Not to Be Yourself : The Epilogue (vv. 67‒96) of Pindar’s Pythian 2 Revisited

In this paper, the notorious epilogue of Pindar’s Pythian 2 is examined. It is suggested that the heterogenous gnomic material presented here should not be taken at face value, neither as a breviary of Epinician conventions nor as an iambic zoo of animal lore, but taken as a cognitive experience, whereby the ʽIʼ reflects itself through a mirror of contrastive ʽnon-Iʼs. Hence, the exhortation to self-cognition (v. 72), a long-standing crux, receives a poignant meaning with an etymological turn. This process seems to be part of the tradition of rulers’ encomia (Appendix).