Abstract
Years after his return from Sicily, Pindar sent a poem, the second. Isthmian ode, to his intimate friend Thrasyboulos of Acragas. The poem was entrusted to a musician Nikesippos who was to conduct the performance of Pindar's work in Acragas. The proem of this epistolary poem consists of 13 verses, where the poet discloses two figures of the Muses, setting the empoverished Muse of the present in contrast to the Muse of the ancient poets. The passage has been often quoted since antiquity to mean that Pindar is here bitterly attacking Simonides' proverbial love of wealth. Or, others assert that in a veiled way the poet is asking Thrasyboulos for a promised payment. However, under closer examination of Pindar's own words here and elsewhere, neither of these interpretations seems to have an adequate foundation. The present article attempts to decipher the true meaning the poet intended to convey to Thrasyboulos through the Moisa image. The article tries to show that, in the light of Pindar's own experience with Thrasyboulos and Sicilian despots, the Moisa image of the Isthmian 2 reflects a meaning more deeply rooted in the poet's inner world. The two figures of Moisa, the past and the present, may represent the two distinct phases in Pindar's enthusiasm for the poetic mission. The first Moisa of old is the memory of a care-free, enthusiastic poet of the sixth Pythian, while the Moisa of the present casts the disillusioned shadow of his later experience in Sicilian courts. This protest forces its way to us through the barriers of archaic language. In this picture, the Moisa ergatis is the strongest form of expression that Pindar's art and age allowed him to describe the harsh dissonance between the vast tradition of the past and the overpowering impact of the new economic polity. Neither to us nor to Thrasyboulos will his message have failed, because this oxymoron is still only too evidently with us.
