Abstract
Pindar’s epinikia challenge their original audiences to play the role of the “savvy interpreters” of these complex choral praise poems. Their interpretive skillfulness enables them to overcome obstacles purposively set by the poet. The ideal interpretation, an “entextualized” and overarching “metapragmatic interpretant,” is not static since these odes invite their hearers to vicariously travel alongside the deictically calibrated narrative ego and, equipped with insight drawn from interwoven exemplary myths and gnomic maxims, to insure that momentary praise for victors leads to their widespread if not immortal “glory” (kleos). The central argument of the article is that the odes develop an extended analogy between athletic prowess/victory and poetic excellence/performance that links the generation of kleos with the potential for recontextualized reperformances. This semiotically mediated “pragmatic” process is originally modelled by the poetic ego and then sequentially constructed and enacted/performed by savvy interpreters, including later readers.