Victory ode

The epinikion or epinicion (plural epinikia or epinicia, Greek ἐπινίκιον, from epi-, "on," + nikê, "victory") is a genre of occasional poetry also known in English as a victory ode. In ancient Greece, the epinikion most often took the form of a choral lyric, commissioned for and performed at the celebration of an athletic victory in the Panhellenic Games and sometimes in honor of a victory in war. Major poets in the genre are Simonides, Bacchylides, and Pindar.

Since the poets most often call their victory songs hymnoi (ὕμνοι), it has been conjectured that hymns for Herakles, honored as the founder of the Olympic Games, were the original model for the athletic epinikion. Victory odes are also associated with the Dioscuri; Pindar uses the term "Castor-song" (Καστόρειον), and Polydeuces (Pollux), the mortal twin of Castor, was a boxer.

Although the best-known epinikia appear to have been composed for a chorus, they may have originally been performed by a soloist. Pindar says that a lyric by Archilochus was sung at Olympia, and a scholiast to the passage gives a quotation. The performance of these songs seems to have led in the 6th century BC to aristocratic commissions for more elaborate numbers.

The earliest epinikia, surviving only in fragments, were composed by Simonides of Ceos in the 520s BC. Simonides was the first professional poet known to write odes in honor of victorious athletes at the games; in antiquity, he was also notorious for being the first poet to charge a fee for his services. The epinikia of Bacchylides were formerly considered lost and were known only from quotations in other authors, until the discovery in the late 19th century of a papyrus manuscript containing fifteen of his odes. Pindar's four surviving books of epinikia, called one of "the great monuments of Greek lyric," correspond to each of the four major festivals of the Panhellenic Games: Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean. Many of Pindar's odes can be identified by event, champion, and year.

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