This collection of notes on Pindar's odes comes from a manuscript at Patmos, published by Semitelos in 1875. It mixes old scholia with later Byzantine comment, in part by Thomas Magister, the scholar of the early fourteenth century, and Alexander Phortius: the notes on the Pythian odes are headed as the scholia of the most learned Magister. Most of the material is school comment: short glosses that give a plainer Greek word for Pindar's, prose paraphrases of whole passages, etymologies and notes on grammar and vowel quantity, with longer notes on myth and on the games.
The notes follow the four books of odes, each ode headed by its book and number. The Olympian notes begin with the first ode's opening on water and paraphrase the story of Pelops and Oenomaus word by word. The Pythian notes, the fullest of the four, begin with the origin of the games in the war on Kirrha and tell the stories of Jason's single sandal and of Perseus and Medusa. The Nemean and Isthmian notes are much shorter, mostly single-word glosses with an occasional longer note on local festivals such as the Iolaia at Thebes or the Minyeia at Orchomenus.
Pindar Commentary Scholia on Pindar (Selections/Glosses): summary and contents (PDF)
Pindar Commentary Scholia on Pindar (Selections/Glosses): summary and contents (Markdown)
Contents
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Ὀλυμπιονῖκαι Olympian Odes
These glosses on the Olympian odes start with the first ode's opening, that water is best: they explain the comparison with the other elements, derive words such as gold and night, and note the quantity of the vowel in hydōr. Pelops's defeat of Oenomaus and his marriage to Hippodameia are paraphrased word by word before the second ode, and the last glosses reach the ode for Xenophon of Corinth and the fourteenth, where Pindar sings Asopichus in the Lydian mode.
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Πυθιονῖκαι Pythian Odes
Headed as the scholia of the most learned magistros, the notes on the Pythian odes begin with the origin of the games: the Thessalian Eurylochus and the Amphictyons crushing the people of Kirrha, who ambushed travellers to the oracle, and the name Pytho, from the rotting of Apollo's serpent. On the fourth ode they tell how Jason arrived with one sandal, and they end with Perseus, Medusa and Polydectes turned to stone, after Pherecydes.
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Νεμεονῖκαι Nemean Odes
Single-word glosses run through all eleven Nemean odes, ode by ode, with an occasional longer note: on the fourth, that the Iolaia were held at Amphitryon's tomb; on the sixth, the difference between the great periodic games and local festivals such as the Heraia at Argos, the Iolaia at Thebes and the Basileia in Euboea. The tenth ode's Argos and Hera Teleia are explained with a quotation from Aristophanes's Women at the Thesmophoria.
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Ἰσθμιονῖκαι Isthmian Odes
The Isthmian glosses expand the first ode's list of games into a note on local contests: the Minyeia at Orchomenus, the Eleusinia, the Protesilaia in Thessaly and the Basileia and Geraistia in Euboea. Later glosses explain the festival of Heracles and its sacrificial flame burning through the night, the sprinkling of Aegina with praise, a youth lost in war, and the stone of Tantalus, glossed simply as danger.