The article focuses on the role of Pindar’s poetry as an assurance of divine care for man, and thus as an incentive to man to transcend his entrapment in the transience of the everyday moment. The shadowy dream of human ephemerality is illuminated by divine grace (χάρις), conveyed through the psychagogic power of poetry in the poet’s voice – sweeter than honeycomb. For Pindar, God is not only the Guardian and the Steward (θεὸς ἐπίτροπος), who ‘prepares everything for us mortals’ (fr.141), but also the ‘mighty Father’ and ‘the most excellent Artist’ (ἀριστοτέχνα πάτερ), who grants the poet his poem. In this light, attentiveness to the religious origin of Pindar’s poetry, in addition to the mythical and factual details of the epinikia, can still spur us to a spiritual ascent toward the divine Guardian.
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