Nemean 7.20-27

ἐγὼ δὲ πλέον’ ἔλπομαι λόγον Ὀδυσσέος ἢ πάθαν | διὰ τὸν ἀδυεπῆ Ὅμηρον· | ἐπεὶ ψεύδεσί οἱ ποτανᾷ <τε> μαχανᾷ σεμνὸν ἔπεστί τι· σοφία δὲ | κλέπτει παράγοισα μύθοις. τυφλὸν δ’ ἔχει | ἦτορ ὅμιλος ἀνδρῶν ὁ πλεῖστος. εἰ γὰρ ἦν | ἓ τὰν ἀλάθειαν ἰδέμεν, οὔ κεν ὅπλων χολωθείς | ὁ καρτερὸς Αἴας ἔπαξε διὰ φρένων | λευρὸν ξίφος

I think that the wording [logos] in connection with Odysseus is greater than his experiencing [pathā], all because of Homer, the one with the sweet words. Poised on top of his falsehoods [pseudea] and winged inventiveness there is a kind of majesty; [poetic] skill [sophiā], misleading in myths [mūthoi], is deceptive. Blind in heart are most men. For if they could have seen the truth [alētheia], never would great Ajax, angered over the arms [of Achilles], have driven the burnished sword through his own heart.

The suicide of Ajax, resulting from his failure in a competition with Odysseus over possessing the armor of the dead Achilles, is being blamed here on the wording of epic poetry about Odysseus—and on the wording of Odysseus himself as quoted by epic poetry. The wording is linked with the crafty Odysseus, as retold with commensurate craft by Homer, who is seen here as the poet of epic in general. And this wording is described as going far beyond the bounds of alētheia ‘truth’, N.7.25, to which most are ‘blind’ without the poetic vision that is claimed by Pindar’s song, N.7.23–24. There is in this song an uncompromising unified vision that defends the true value of heroes from the compromised complexities of mūthoi ‘myths’, which are conveyed by the words of Homer. The fame of the great hero Ajax, grounded in the local hero cult of the Aiakidai on the island of Aegina, is threatened by the mūthoi ‘myths’ of Homeric poetry and rescued by the alētheia ‘truth’ of Pindaric song. A single absolute alētheia ‘truth’ is being contrasted here with the multiplicity of mūthoi ‘myths’, which are deceptive because they are mutually contradictory, like the falsehoods told by or even about Odysseus. Pindaric song is dismissing Homer as a perpetuator of such mūthoi ‘myths’ as told by Homer. This is not to say that the poetics of Pindar can dismiss epic itself: Homer is being slighted here only to the extent that he is being accused of becoming a perpetuator of words spoken about or even by Odysseus. I should add that the figure of Odysseus, whenever he is being quoted by epic, speaks not in the mode of epic but rather as a master of multiple meanings, a man of craft whose discourse is described by epic itself as ainos ‘coded wording’, O.14.508.