Nemean 7.1-90

In the island state of Aegina, which is the setting for this song, the heroes Aiakos and his descendants, the Aiakidai, were worshipped as cult heroes. For the people of Aegina, that is, for the Aeginetans, a particularly important representative of the heroes known as the Aiakidai was Ajax (Aias). The hero cults of Aiakos and the Aiakidai in Aegina can be expected to be different in some ways from the cults of these heroes in other places, since ancient Greek rituals of hero cult were distinctly epichoric, that is, local and localized. A central idea in this song is that Pindar’s songmaking is a medium that conveys alētheia ‘truth’, which is supposedly singular and absolute, as distinct from mūthoi ‘myths’, which are supposedly multiple and relative. The absolutism of Pindaric songmaking is contrasted in this song with what is imagined negatively as relativism in Homeric poetry.