HKB
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Often appears with: revolution and the fall of states · tyranny and despotism · thrasydaios · thebes and ismenian shrine · the city and urban life · temples, shrines, and sacred places · supply, logistics, and encampment · sardinia campaign · pannonia and attila · opposition to tyranny and envy · myth and the gods of the nations · monarchy and royal succession
Usually: narrative (4) · detachment (2) · reflection (1) · crisis of belief (1) · injustice endured (1) · the fall of the great (1) · curiosity (1) · indignation (1) · praise (1) · reverence (1)
“O Apollo, sweet is the end when men attain thereto, and the beginning availed more when it is speeded of a god.” Pindar, The Extant Odes of Pindar · observation
“By this shameful abdication, he protracted his life about five years, in a very ambiguous state, between an emperor and an exile, till he was assassinated at Salona by the ungrateful Glycerius.” Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · vivid
“He soon discovered, before the end of the first year, that the lessons of perjury and ingratitude, which a rebel must inculcate, will be resorted to against himself; and that the precarious sovereign of Italy was only permitted to choose, whether he would be the slave, or the victim, of his Barbarian mercenaries.” Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · insight
In Sardinia Caius proves military competence and frugality, persuades towns to clothe the soldiers, then returns to Rome after senators offend African ambassadors; censors find him injured, and he contests further charges.
Caius? There is no escape; one life and one death is appointed for us both, to spend the one and to meet the other, in the service of the people." Caius was no sooner arrived in Sardinia, but he gave exemplary proofs of his high merit; he not only excelled all the young men of his age in his actions against his enemies, in doing justice to his inferiors, and in showing all obedience and respect to his superior offic…
Glycerius, supported by Gundobald, is crowned in Italy after Anthemius’s death, but Julius Nepos is eventually recognized; Nepos then flees from Orestes’s advancing “Barbarian” forces and is later assassinated at Salona.
Whilst the vacant throne of Italy was abandoned to lawless Barbarians, 112 the election of a new colleague was seriously agitated in the council of Leo. The empress Verina, studious to promote the greatness of her own family, had married one of her nieces to Julius Nepos, who succeeded his uncle Marcellinus in the sovereignty of Dalmatia, a more solid possession than the title whic…
Gibbon describes the post-Attila kingdoms north of the Danube and the mercenary “confederates” in Italy, then gives Orestes’s career and his role in pushing his son Augustulus onto the Western throne.
Malchus, apud Phot. p. 172. Ennod. Epigram. lxxxii. in Sirmond. Oper. tom. i. p. 1879. Some doubt may, however, be raised on the identity of the emperor and the archbishop.] The nations who had asserted their independence after the death of Attila, were established, by the right of possession or conquest, in the boundless countries to the north of the Danube; or in the Roman provinces between the r…
Procopius continues the Artemis/Comana origin story: Orestes seeks an oracle’s command, builds Artemis temples at first in the Taurian-like land then in Cappadocia, cuts his hair, and names Golden Comana for the escape from affliction.
temple which has existed even to my day in the city of Comana is not the one "Among the Taurians." But I shall explain how this temple came into being. When Orestes had departed in haste from the Taurians with his sister, it so happened that he contracted some disease. And when he made inquiry about the disease they say that the oracle responded that his trouble would not abate until he built a temple to Artemis in …
Pindar addresses the mythic and civic patrons of Thebes and the Ismenian shrine, calls on Semele and Ino Leukothea, recounts Orestes’ tragic cycle, and then returns to praise Thrasydaios and his family’s modest, durable excellence.
to be that Thorax, who engaged Pindar to write it for Hippokleas, and perhaps Hippokleas himself, belonged to the family of the Aleuadai, who were descended through Herakles from Perseus. This ode is the earliest entire poem of Pindar's which survives. He wrote it when he was twenty years old. The simplicity of the style and manner of composition are significant of this. But there can scarcely be said to be traces h…