Echoing the Eleusinian World: Eleusinian Topoi and Sounds in Pindaric Epinician Poetry

Abstract The spheres of Eleusinian mystery cults and of the Panhellenic games have numerous points of contact, from a lexical point of view, as well as on the level of imagery, more particularly with reference to their respective soundscapes. The familiarity that Pindar and his audiences share with these two contexts seems to emerge throughout the epinician odes. Focusing on the Pindaric corpus, this article highlights the similarities and analogies that could have led the poet to put together (and to draw inspiration from) the Eleusinian mysteries with their jargon on the one hand, and the lexicon and imagery of eulogy embedded in the reality and representation of the Panhellenic games on the other. My double objective is to analyze this common repertoire of terminology and images, evoked by Pindar and recognizable to his audiences, and to shed fresh light on Pindar’s engagement with Eleusinian mysteries through a textual approach. More generally, what I attempt to demonstrate in this paper is that the Eleusinian world resonates in Pindaric epinician poetry.