“Pindar Mythologus and Theologus,” offers a methodological introduction to the central themes and approaches of the monograph. After articulating the case for recognizing theology in the victory odes and reviewing earlier approaches to immortality in the epinician corpus, it offers an orientation to the methodologies of lived religion, approaches to Pindar’s epinician myths, and an evaluation of contemporary conceptions of mortality and immortality with an emphasis on hero cult. As a contrast to the subsequent case studies of figures who blur the boundary between mortality and immortality, an analysis of Pelops in Olympian 1 establishes an example of exalted mortality in Pindar. An overview of the following case studies rounds off the chapter.

“The Dioskouroi in Existential Crisis,” deals with Nemean 10 and its extended mythical narrative. That myth is an aitiology of the entry of Kastor and Polydeukes into immortality, framed as a choice made by Polydeukes between claiming immortality for himself or sharing both mortality and immortality with his brother. I argue that Pindar’s epinician aitiology intervenes in and revalues enduring ambiguities surrounding the relationship of the Dioskouroi to mortality and immortality by valorizing Polyedeukes’ perspective, which privileges the parameters of mortal experience. This case study emphasizes the resonances evoked by the structure of the ode itself between the disorientation of the Dioskouroi from mortal experience and from the surrounding contexts of the ode.

“Asklepios and the Limits of the Possible,” interrogates Asklepios’ presence in Pythian 3 through the lens of interwoven generic frameworks, arguing that these function as a critical lens for the depiction of Asklepios’ changing cultic status and its activation within Pindar’s theological project. I focus on the ode’s extended Asklepian myths, arguing that they that they alternate between depicting Asklepios as an embodiment of failed human overreach and failure and as a superhuman healer by oscillating between the structures of negative epinician exemplum and cult hymn. These interwoven Asklepian identities require the ode’s recipient, an ailing Hieron of Syracuse, to understand his own aspirations and limitations in light of Asklepios’ identities, divided into mortal and immortal strands by Pindar’s modeling. The ode encourages Hieron, as mortal worshipper, to seek Asklepios’ healing, while himself aspiring, as epinician victor, to immortality in song.

“The Isolation of Amphiaraos,” argues that Pindar generates tensions between Amphiaraos’ contemporary status as a Theban oracle and his identity as the noble Argive seer portrayed in epic and tragedy, in order to establish Amphiaraos as a site of contestation between modes of human and divine exaltation. In Nemean 9, Pindar contrasts Amphiaraos as underdetermined oracle with two figures defined by types of immortality also potentially available to the victor: Adrastos, who enjoys immortality in cult and Hektor, who enjoys poetic immortality in epic song. In Pythian 8, Pindar localizes this modeling more explicitly in the exaltation of epinician praise by first setting up Amphiaraos as a disoriented oracular voice, removed from the reciprocal systems of epinician exaltation, then reestablishing his right to participate in those systems by assimilating him to the contemporary model of the Aiginetan pater laudandi, thus reorienting him to his humanity.

“Herakles Looks Back at the World,” argues that in Isthmian 4 and Nemeans 3 and 4 Pindar deploys Herakles’ biography as a framework for theological modeling by foregrounding the apotheosis as a salient feature of Herakles’ epinician identity. The motif of the pillars of Herakles informs the significance of the apotheosis, characterizing Herakles’ unparalleled passage from mortality to immortality as a break within the arc of his life, rather than as a reward analogous to the praise and exaltation enjoyed by the victor. This modeling emphasizes that the victor’s epinician exaltation belongs to the world of human experience, defined by mortality, a world that Herakles leaves behind with his apotheosis. The chapter emphasizes how Pindar’s theological modeling plays on the tensions and congruencies that develop between the depictions of Herakles within an ode and those already in play in the local landscape, demonstrating the distinct resonances evoked by the matrix of pillars and apotheosis at Thebes (Isth. 4) and at Aigina (Nems. 3 and 4).

“Exaltation at Akragas: Herakles, the Dioskouroi, and Theron,” argues that in Olympian 3 Pindar’s theological modeling brings Herakles and the Dioskouroi together with the victor, Theron, tyrant of Akragas, ininto an intricate network of divine and mortal relationships. Theron’s place within this network, as established and celebrated by the ode, praises him for his exceptional privilege and his corresponding achievement in bathing his city in piety and exaltation. This is a differently flavored theology of mortality, cut to the needs of one of the most powerful men of the Greek world, but it ultimately articulates the same distinction between Theron’s mortality and the immortality of his patrons that is modeled elsewhere in the epinician corpus by demonstrating that his privileged closeness to Herakles and the Dioskouroi is only exceptional, and thus meaningful, in light of his mortality.

The concluding chapter, “An Invitation,” exhorts readers to further theological readings of Pindar’s victory songs and of lyric poetry more broadly. Nemean 6 is analyzed as an example of the susceptibility of Pindar’s victor songs to theological readings, even when the boundary-blurring figures whose identities challenge the categories of mortality and immortality are absent.