Greek melic poetry is characterized by its pragmatic features. It is thus natural to find strong differentiation within it: this is what we mean by the word genre in this context. Pindar’s genres are distinguished by their occasion, whether ‘secular’ or cultic; by their mode of performance; and by the identity of the chorus. These distinctive elements could overlap to produce hybrids. When Pindar’s oeuvre was gathered and catalogued during the Alexandrian period, each ode needed to be sorted into a ‘genre’, as indicated by its dominant characteristics. Of the seventeen books into which Pindar’s work was subdivided, the four books of epinicians have reached us practically intact by way of medieval transmission; of the other books, fragments of various lengths come from the papyri or indirect transmission, posing very different problems. In the case of the papyri, the main difficulty lies in the material conditions of fragmentation and legibility. When it comes to indirect transmission, we must consider the intentions of the quotation and the reliability of the witnesses, which is greater if stylistic or grammatical in nature, lesser if philosophical or otherwise ideological.