Author: PINDAR
Biography:
PINDAR (b c. 518 BCE: OCD)
Pindar, born into an aristocratic family of Thebes in Boeotia, Greece, was given his first important poetic commission for a victory ode when he was 20 and composed his last in 446 BCE. Tradition has it that he lived to be 80 (c. 438). Almost nothing is known about his personal life. Of his works, only the body of great odes--choral victory songs--survives intact, though fragments of other poems were recorded. His patrons were the ruling houses of the day throughout the Greek world from Macedonia to Africa and from Sicily to Asia Minor. Of the eleven translators involved in this bibliography, seven have headnotes of their own (H. F. Cary, J. L. Girdlestone, E. B. Greene, A. Moore, H. J. Pye, W. Tasker, and C. A. Wheelwright); one is prior (Gilbert West); one is outlined under Horace (William Green); and two require brief biographies here. Francis Lee (1766-1826) of Lancashire, BA (1789) and MA (1792) of St. John’s, Cambridge, was ordained deacon in 1789 and priest in 1792. He held minor curacies before his appointment as chaplain in ordinary to the Prince of Wales in 1803. On 9 July 1804 he married Catherine Ball in London. They had a son in 1806 but separated and Lee won a suit against her lover in 1810 and a divorce in 1811. In 1808 he issued the first volume of a projected fifty-volume collection of translations of Greek authors, but only that and this Pindar appeared. He shot himself on 23 May 1826 in London while “dangerously insane” (ACAD) and was buried at St. James, Piccadilly. James Banister or Bannister was baptised in Bristol, Gloucestershire, on 17 Jan. 1750, the son of James and Ann Banister. He published his edition of Euripides in 1780 before entering St. Alban Hall, Oxford, at the age of 32 in 1783. He did not proceed to a degree but was ordained deacon and priest in 1784. He settled eventually in Devon, where he was vicar and then rector at Iddesleigh. His translation of Pindar appeared in 1791 and in 1803 he published Directions for the Study of Divinity. On 16 Dec. 1807 he married Barbara Cecilia Seton at Bideford, Devon; they do not appear to have had children. He died at Iddesleigh on 19 Oct. 1822. (OCD 4 Mar. 2025; Harvey; findmypast.com 4 Mar. 2025; ACAD; Alumni Oxonienses; CCEd 4 Mar. 2025; Morning Advertiser 24 May 1826; Exeter Flying Post 7 Nov. 1822) HJ