ABSTRACT
Time holds a prominent place in Pindar’s work, especially in his Epinikians. In addition to chronos, which is personalized, depicted in constant movement and emphatically dubbed “the father of everything” (Olympian 2.17), Pindar uses a number of other temporal terms to indicate different forms of time. This chapter focuses on the notion of aiōn, a term that signifies a limited and confined period of time closely related to human life. Whereas in ancient Greek aiōn is a masculine noun, Pindar uses the term as a feminine in three instances: in Pythians 4 and 5, and in Nemean 9. Even though the use of aiōn as a feminine is not peculiar to Pindar, it is argued that Pindar’s predilection for the feminine gender is not merely circumstantial and symptomatic of metrical causes, but that it might be subtler and more intricate.
