Pindar

Born around 518 BC in Thebes, Pindar became the first Greek poet to examine poetry itself and the poet's place in the world. His work captured Archaic Greece at the edge of its Classical turn—the old beliefs about fate's swings tempered by faith in what mortals might do with divine favor. Quintilian praised his "inspired magnificence" and "rich exuberance"; an Athenian comic playwright griped that audiences already found him too learned. The poems baffled even modern scholars until 1896, when a rival's rediscovered work proved many of Pindar's oddities were just how the genre worked. He died a…