Pindar was a Greek poet who lived from approximately 518 to 438 BCE, during the transition from the Archaic to the Classical period. He was born near Thebes into an aristocratic family, which connected him to the elite patrons who commissioned his work. Trained in choral poetry, he traveled widely across the Greek world, from Sicily to mainland Greece, composing for powerful rulers and victorious athletes.

His surviving works are the Epinician Odes, victory poems celebrating winners at the four major athletic festivals: the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian Games. These odes are structured in complex, formal patterns of stanzas. His vast output of other poetry, including hymns and songs for religious ceremonies, is almost entirely lost, surviving only in fragments.

Pindar is regarded as the greatest master of Greek choral lyric poetry. According to modern scholars, his victory odes are crucial historical sources for understanding the values of the ancient Greek aristocracy, blending themes of innate talent, human effort, divine favor, and the power of poetry to grant lasting fame. His dense, allusive style and profound treatment of human limits and divine will were highly influential, admired by later poets in both Greece and Rome. His works were preserved through medieval manuscripts and frequent quotation by ancient authors.