Pindaro e Atene: committenze, memoria cittadina e pindaristophanizein

The article assembles, analyzes and discusses those texts which reveal the presence of Pindar's verse in 5th century B.C. Athens, both during the poet's life and after his death: the poems (seven or eight) composed for Athenians, references to Athens in Pindar's works, quotes, parodies and allusions in the comedies of Aristophanes. Although it is not possible to date precisely each poem that refers to Athens, the elements available induce a concentration on the most consistent part of Pindar's production - possibly the totality - between the beginning of the poet's activity (ca. 500 B.C.) and the period around the Persian Wars. In the following decades, the relationship seemed to fade. What is more, Aristophanes' successive reminiscences display an detached attitude, not without obsequious praise but already refering to a world conceived as faraway, antiquated, comical. From the surviving material emerges, among other aspects, the fact that the poetical memory of Pindar's verse survives above all in relation to Athenian contemporary or recent historical events.