10. Praising Kinyras

Pindar’s Pythian 2 contains the most elaborate allusion to Kinyras in early Greek literature and is our first explicit source for him as a familiar of Aphrodite and Apollo. [1] The latter relationship by itself readily suggests the musical and prophetic abilities credited to Kinyras elsewhere. [2] This natural inference, I shall argue here, is not mistaken, so that Pindar (ca. 518–440) equally becomes our earliest source for a musical Kinyras, while himself presupposing a tradition of untold antiquity.

The poet juxtaposes the Cypriot king with Hieron of Syracuse, an analogy that sheds light on both parties, and so contributes considerably to our understanding of Kinyras as a royal figure. At the same time, the immediate context of the comparison is musical, both figures being the subject of celebratory song. The verses, complemented by scholiastic notices and iconographic evidence, can be pressed to yield further insight about the musical—and specifically lyrical—aspect of Kinyras.

The poem, addressed to Hieron, alludes to a chariot-racing victory of controversial date and location, notwithstanding its traditional Pythian designation. [3] It is a complex work, the tone and meaning of which have occasioned much debate. Ancient allegations of rivalry between Pindar and Bakkhylides induced older scholars to infer a souring of relations between patron and poet, detecting discreet reprimands by the latter. [4] Later fashions discredited this idea as so much biographical fiction; Pindar’s decrying of envy becomes a well-developed generic theme—something that eminent men like Hieron inevitably attract. [5] One’s critical stance will color interpretation of the poem’s two mythological exempla—Kinyras and Ixion—and their relevance to Hieron. Both relate to kháris—that sense of gratitude for a good deed that compels reciprocal action. [6] Kinyras—who is associated with kháris surprisingly often in early sources—is presented concisely as a positive parallel to Hieron himself, and receives his due from those in whom he has aroused gratitude. [7] Ixion’s refusal to requite the favor shown him by the gods negates the motif and is developed at length. Yet Kinyras himself featured in some traditions as a dishonest double-dealer—kháris perverted, leading to his kingdom’s downfall; moreover, like Ixion, he was a sobering a case of “lawless coupling” (eunaì parátropoi, 35) “without the Graces” (áneu Kharítōn, 42), thanks to his unwitting incest with Myrrha. [8] Pindar seems to allude to these darker tales in Nemean 8, where he declines to elaborate. [9] It is therefore worth considering whether Pindar chose Kinyras precisely because the theme of kháris was ambivalently developed in his mythology. If so, the exemplum could contribute to a larger admonitory program by bridging the wholly positive Locrian maidens (see below) with the wholly negative Ixion. I shall return to this point below.

For now we may concentrate on the more obviously favorable. The relevant verses are as follows: The passage has been closely analyzed for linguistic nuance and historical context in a recent study by B. Currie. [12] Two main questions arise. What did Hieron do to earn Kinyras-like gratitude? And why has Kinyras, of all possible mythical figures, been chosen to mirror the tyrant?

The scholia adduce the infamous episode of the Locrian maidens, otherwise known from Justin’s epitome of Pompeius Trogus (Augustan era), who in turn probably drew on fourth-century historical sources: Hieron saved the city of Locri from attack and destruction by Rhegion between 478–476, with the Locrians allegedly vowing to prostitute their maiden daughters to Aphrodite if they prevailed. [13] This passage has been much debated. Currie, attempting to harmonize textual and archaeological evidence, concludes that the vow was indeed made and executed. Hieron should be connected, he argues, with the construction of the Ionic temple, dated to ca. 480–470, which lies just outside of Locri, and a reorganization of Aphrodite’s cult there, specifically the institution of a festival of deliverance (sōtēría) in which the maidens fulfilled their promise and celebrated Hieron in choral-song “before the temple.” [14] The crucial point that allies Kinyras and Hieron, he suggests, is the Cypriot king’s associations with ‘sacred prostitution’ at Paphos. [15]

This complex thesis will raise eyebrows in the current critical climate, highly skeptical of all references to ‘sacred prostitution’ (in various forms). [16] But Currie’s reconstruction of a celebratory choral context at Locri can stand. [17] I shall consider in detail below its implications for Cypriot choral-lyric in the cult of Kinyras. But note first that, if the analogy is strictly pressed, we should be dealing with female Cypriot choruses—an idea that distinctly resonates with the lyre-playing and dancing women who grace the Cypro-Phoenician symposium bowls. [18] One should also emphasize the traditions of Kinyras as founder of Aphrodite’s temple in Paphos, as this is a strong parallel for Hieron’s presumed building initiative at Locri. [19]

Let us leave Locri and consider the conjunction of Kinyras and Hieron more generally. The scholia conjecture that, while Kinyras was consecrated as hierophant for the two gods, Aphrodite and Apollo, Hieron’s father was responsible for transferring cultic rites from Cyprus to Sicily; or that Deinomenes was himself of Cypriot ancestry. [20] The latter is probably biographical fiction; the former less obviously so. [21] Modern scholars have pointed out that Kinyras and Hieron were both priest-kings—the latter being hierophant of Demeter and Persephone. [22] Others suggest that Hieron, victorious at the Pythian games, could resemble Kinyras in enjoying the favor of Apollo. [23]

Certainly the comparison with Hieron guarantees that Kinyras is regarded here as a king. That he is simultaneously priest of Aphrodite confirms the Paphian dynastic legend already for the fifth century (see Chapter 16). Yet the poet’s general terms show that Kinyras is envisioned as a pan-Cypriot figure; and it is this island-wide stature that justifies the parallel with Hieron. The Syracusan tyrant, as “lord and master of many well-garlanded cities and an army,” dominates his own large island, reproducing a Golden Age like that of Kinyras on Cyprus. [24] A scholiast aptly suggests that the Cypriots celebrated Kinyras “either as founder/leader (arkhēgétēn) of the island, or as its most fortunate (eudaimonéstaton) king and greater than those before him.” [25]

A further point of contact probably relates to Kinyras’ proverbial connections with seafaring. [26] Pindar’s awareness of this dimension is seen in Nemean 8, were he parallels the “blessed fortune” of the honorand (Deinias of Aegina) with that which “freighted Kinyras with riches once upon a time in Cyprus on the sea.” [27] Here the Cypriot king’s immense wealth is quite logically linked to seafaring. The same association suits Hieron, who inherited one of the two largest fleets in the Greek world—some two hundred ships at the time of the Persian Wars, built up by Gelon for use against his Sicilian neighbors and Carthaginian rivals. [28] Hieron himself won a famous naval victory against the Etruscans at Cumae in 474, and other such actions may be presumed. [29]

Pindar’s two allusions, though concise and disconnected, reveal a consistent view of the Cypriot king. In Nemean 8, Kinyras exemplifies “wealth” which is “more stable” for having been “planted with a god’s favor.” Further details clarify that Aphrodite is the deity in question. [30] The idea is conventional; but when applied to Hieron’s own prosperity in Pythian 2 it brings further point to the comparison with Kinyras. [31] Hieron’s fortune is so great, Pindar claims there, that nobody in ancient Hellas was so exalted in wealth or honor. [32] Similarly, Kinyras was ranked among such wealthy kings of legend as Kroisos, Midas, and Sardanapalos; and even here Kinyras was exceptional since, by one proverb, “Rich was Midas, but thrice as rich Kinyras.” [33] In a further popular saying, someone particularly well-to-do was “richer than Kinyras.” [34] Pindar’s point is therefore that Hieron has achieved and exceeded the highest prosperity known to myth and legend. Yet the poet may include an insurance policy against divine envy by specifying Hieron’s peer group as Hellas, whereas Kinyras belonged, like Kroisos, Midas, and Sardanapalos, to its oriental periphery. [35] They all experienced catastrophic reversals-of-fortune, so that the wealth of an eastern monarch was something better avoided. Thus Kinyras, despite his virtues and prosperity, could equally serve as a conventional admonition about the instability of fortune and the enduring importance of reputation (like Kroisos in Pythian 1). [36]

Given Pindar’s purposeful contrast between Hellas and the Orient, it is probably significant that he refers to the composition and dispatch of his ode as follows: Poet as navigator and poem as voyage are again conventional ideas. [38] But the ethnographic detail stands out. For Bowra, who considered the work a “poetic letter” rather than a proper choral ode, “Phoenician merchandise” effectively means “on approval.” [39] I suggest rather that it takes its point from the earlier Kinyras exemplum, given the Cypriot king’s treatment as a virtual Phoenician in some strands of tradition. [40] The poet, in singing of Hieron, does so like the Cypriots who praise Kinyras in a “well-sounding hymn” (euakhéa hýmnon). The parallel nature of their activity, resulting logically from the exemplum itself, [41] is emphasized by the poet through well-placed verbal echoes. Pindar’s description of his poem as a kháris-gift (70) recalls the kháris that motivates the Cypriots in their celebration of Kinyras. [42] And since Pindar’s own musical kháris-gift was a product of “the seven-toned lyre,” he implies that the Cypriots also venerated their ancient king through choral lyric. Now in Pindar’s later statement “I shall embark on a well-flowered naval-expedition, resounding about your virtue,” the phrase amph’ aretâi / keladéōn clearly echoes the earlier keladéonti … amphì Kinýran, of the Cypriot singers’ own praise-songs. [43] Yet, whereas they can praise their king in their own territory, Pindar’s song must be shipped to Syracuse: the “Phoenician merchandise” is thus a virtual Cypriot song dispatched by Pindar—temporarily assuming the guise of a Cypriot lyre-singer—to Hieron, that new Kinyras. The poet’s maritime metaphor, reinforced by reference to the “Kastor-song,” equally recalls Pindar’s treatment of Kinyras in Nemean 8, where the king grew wealthy from seafaring: Hieron will be enriched by Pindar’s musical ‘merchandise’. [44]

That Pindar places himself in the position of a Cypriot lyre-singer executing royal praise calls for closer examination of the Kinyras passage in its own right—that is, divorced from its immediate context and treated as an ethnographic idyll. The poet sketches a vivid cultic scene, evoking the sight and sound of celebration in a few deft strokes. Pollákis (‘often’) shows that Pindar envisages the Cypriot praise-songs (phâmai) as an ongoing custom, not a single occasion. [45] This is given further substance by Kinyras as “priest of Aphrodite” and “beloved of Apollo,” which conforms to a pattern of early epichoric ‘heroes’ who were connected to the cults of female gods and eventually absorbed by male Olympians who wore their names as epithets. The phenomenon brings further point to Apollo’s title Kenyristḗs, the preconditions for which were therefore already established in Pindar’s own day, and probably before (see below). [46] The poet thus assumes a sanctuary-setting of Cypriot ‘Aphrodite’ where Kinyras played a role, just as we find at Classical Paphos (see Chapter 16). This would be a natural venue for the development of cult-narratives, helping account for the rich (if lamentably terse) notices that survive about Kinyras, his family, and associates. [47] The Cypriot king was the center of his own mythological cycle, giving the phrase “about Kinyras” (amphì Kinýran) one immediate point. [48]

Admittedly Pindar’s phâmai does not directly denote a musical form; the word’s basic meanings are an ‘utterance prompted by the gods’ and ‘reputation’ (that is, what people are saying). [49] Yet this is linked to the basic function of a praise-poet, whose divinely inspired songs secure such ‘fames’. [50] This explains the parallel construction between the “Cypriots’ phâmai” and the “well-sounding hymn(s)” (euakhéa hýmnon) with which other unnamed singers celebrate their own patrons. So Pindar definitely alludes to a Kinyras song-tradition. It is precisely this which gives the exemplum weight: not only are Hieron’s “friendly deeds” worthy of similar praise-poetry, they are great enough to endure the centuries and secure imperishable fame—the essential self-justification of the professional praise-singer. [51]

By contrast with Aphrodite, the presence of Apollo adds nothing essential to the picture. It is rather a Panhellenizing gloss on Kinyras himself—an alternative expression of the cultural encounter that underlies the fatal musical contest. [52] Pindar’s Apollo, who “loved” (ephílēse) Kinyras, emphasizes cultural sympathies. One scholiast denies that Kinyras was Apollo’s beloved (erṓmenos)—an idea perhaps inspired by parallels like Hyakinthos. [53] Another states that Kinyras was the Olympian’s son—a seemingly banal solution that may nevertheless reflect a specific dynastic construction developed by the Kinyrad kings of Paphos and/or Salamis, integrating themselves into a Panhellenic framework. [54]

A third commentator supposes that Apollo loved Kinyras “either as an archer or as a musician.” [55] Neither suggestion grows obviously from the Pindaric text, and one may suspect that the scholiast has simply brought forward bow and lyre as being Apollo’s main attributes—an ancient pairing, firmly entrenched in epic diction. [56] Yet the scholion prompts comparison with a remarkable Cypriot vase dated to the ninth or eighth century and discovered near Marion, bordering the kingdom of Paphos to the north (Figure 17). [57] One side shows a lyre-player seated, surrounded by quadrupeds like an Orpheus, and playing an instrument of at least six strings; that he is enthroned is suggested by the chair’s monumental proportions. The other side shows him (or a twin?) returning from the hunt, leading a captive bull; he carries a quiver of arrows on his back.

By what name would the painter have known this figure? Bow and lyre make the Classicist think first of Apollo. Yet the Greeks had no monopoly over this ancient idea. We have seen a probable example from Ugarit in the Tale of Aqhat. [58] There is also Kinyras’ syncretism with Kothar, Aqhat’s bow-maker. [59] The bow is besides an attribute of the WS god Resheph, who was equated with Apollo by Phoenician-Cypriots. [60] But a fourth-century bilingual inscription from Tamassos qualifies both Apollo and Resheph as ‘Alashiyan’, so that we must also assume a pre-Greek, pre-Phoenician figure whose powers overlapped with theirs. [61] The vase vividly illustrates the problem of isolating indigenous gods in the Cypriot iconographic record. It would be no less reckless to suppose that the painter intended Apollo and Apollo alone, than to insist upon seeing only Kinyras here. This situation is familiar from the many exotic titles born by Apollo on Cyprus from the Classical period onwards; for despite the diversity and strangeness of these epithets, the Cypriots themselves were evidently prepared to see one god with many faces. [62] The two that come most readily to mind in the present case are Hylátēs (the ‘woodsman’), attested from the fourth century; and of course Kenyristḗs. [63] And yet the vase is centuries older than the epigraphic evidence for Apollo’s insular cult-titles.

The ultimate age of the Olympian’s association with Kinyras cannot be determined; Pindar merely provides a terminus ante quem. It may have developed very early indeed, if Apollo was imported to the island during Aegean migration in the twelfth and eleventh centuries, when comparisons with pre-Greek divinities will have been quickly drawn. [64] While Apollo is not attested in Linear B, recent scholarship on his Anatolian background indicates that he was indeed of BA antiquity. [65] Certainly by the Archaic period Apollo was known on the island. His name is found in a sixth-century inscription fragment from Paphos (Rantidi). [66] And a seventh-century tripod dedicated by a Cypriot to Apollo at Delphi, along with other contemporary evidence for a Cypriot aristocratic presence there at this time, shows that the Olympian’s cult was influential on the island. [67] The laurel spray and eagles that appear on some fifth-century Paphian coins have been interpreted as Apollonian symbols, and later fifth-century types from Marion seem to show Apollo’s head accompanied by the king’s name. [68]

Given this early evidence, and Apollo’s traditional guise as lyre-player, his identification or association with Kinyras surely goes back into the Archaic period—whether the connection was made by Aegean Greeks seeking to understand the peculiarities of Cypriot cult, Greek-Cypriots under Panhellenizing influence, or both. [69]

While the ancient suggestion that Apollo loved Kinyras “as a musician” is in itself too bland to inspire much confidence, another scholiast makes a crucial contribution:

This could hardly have been inferred from the poem alone, for Pindar’s “Cypriots’ songs” suggests pandemic reverence, not the narrower customs of musicians. [71] But of course the latter group will have been essential in practice. The musicians’ Kinyras is therefore a genuine tradition. Once this is appreciated, Apollo’s affection for Kinyras becomes readily intelligible, just as the scholiast saw. [72] And because Kinyras enjoyed his musical praise in a formal cultic setting, his honors were akin to those of a god.

Let us reexamine the passage with this in mind. First, one may read amphí in its literal spatial sense (‘around, about’), and so interpret the Cypriot praise-songs as those of a festival chorus of traditional circular shape, with ‘Kinyras’ in the center. In early Greek choral lyric, this was the position typically occupied by the musician, sometimes at an altar, whose playing led the dance. [73] The arrangement is seen in many Cypriot terracotta figure-groups, probably going back to the pre-Greek period. [74] Pindar’s allusion to choral space was caught by one scholiast: “The hymns of the Cypriots often dance around (perí) Kinyras”. [75] Note that hýmnos (drawn from the poet’s own text) is properly used of divine praise-songs, typically to the lyre in Apollonian contexts; and that perí permits the same ambiguity between ‘about’ and ‘around’ as amphí. [76] As noted above, Pindar’s parallel with the Locrian maidens makes it very likely that female choruses are imagined here, just what one finds in the Cypro-Phoenician bowls, the Hubbard amphora, and other Cypriot representations, where again a circle dance is assumed. [77]

It is equally possible to connect amphí + DN with a regular device of early Greek lyre-poetics, describing the god ‘about’ whom one is singing. Several examples from Homer and the Homeric hymns show that the phrase had general application. [78] Yet the professional interests of kithára-singers (kitharōidoí) meant that Apollo was so invoked especially often. This led to the semi-technical expression amphianaktízein for the act of calling upon ‘Lord’ (ánax) Apollo at a musical outset—a protocol so standard that kitharōidoí became known as amphiánaktes. [79] Such an epicletic force to amphí in our Pindar passage is made perfectly possible by keladéonti (‘resound’), which, referring basically to the production of loud sound, commonly described celebratory singing addressed to god, hero, or man, especially in citharodic contexts. [80]

I suggest therefore that amphì Kinýran both gives the subject of the “Cypriots’ songs,” and evokes the lyric environment in which they transpired. This would provide an attractive context for Apollonios of Rhodes’ amphì kinȳrómenai, which several ancient lexica construed as a compound verb, “play music, sing,” deriving it “from the kinýra.” [81] While this word/expression, like the simple kinȳ́resthai, just as readily connotes ‘lament’, I have argued that the Apollonios passage is purposefully ambivalent between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ connotations, reflecting the two main performance moods of the kinýra. [82] The same duality would readily apply to songs about Kinyras himself, since the Cypriot king, as father of Adonis and many other ill-fated children, was well qualified to bestow or receive lyric-laments (see Chapter 12). Note that Pindar’s keladéonti, translated above as ‘sing’, is also found of mournful outcries. [83]

The proposed semantic duality, with the “Cypriots’ songs” both about Kinyras and performed around Kinyras, is harmonized by the lyrist himself who, by singing hymns about a god, leads an encircling chorus in bringing that power into the space they circumscribe. [84] (The audience creates a second concentric circle.) It is a mimetic ritual where the performer, in the Aegean, ‘played Apollo’—whose most familiar guise, after all, was kitharōidós. Such enactments must have been seen as sufficiently magical for kitharōidoí like Terpandros and Arion to perform the civic catharses and city-foundation rituals that are surprisingly abundant in Greek legend, music-historiography, and other sources. [85]

Pindar implies a comparable conception of ritual performance on Cyprus, where the distinction between ‘Kinyras’ and ‘kinyrist’ vanishes. This idea is corroborated by further implications of “our kenyristḗs Apollo.” As Cayla rightly stresses, the epithet adheres to a well-attested pattern of agent-words in -stēs/-stas or -dēs/-das and verbs in -zein built upon divine names and cult-titles, and relating to cultic societies that celebrated the root-figure. Many such groups are found in Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman-era inscriptions. [86] From Cyprus itself one may note Damatrízein (glossed by Hesykhios as “to gather in the fruit of Demeter”); [87] and the Basiliastaí (‘Celebrants of the King’, perhaps garrison soldiers) attested at Old Paphos and Lapethos in connection with the Ptolemaic ruler cult in the early first century. [88]

A Kenyristḗs Apollo can therefore be not only a kinýra-player but “un fidèle de Kinyras, qui honore Kinyras, qui participe au culte de Kinyras.” [89] It is no great leap to see this Apollo as embodying the function of the Kinyradai of Paphos. [90] There are strong parallels with various musical ‘clans’ from the Greek world: ‘Musaists’ (Mousaïstaí) of Rhodes and Macedonia; [91] the Homeridai of Chios and the Kreophylidai of Samos, well-known rhapsode-guilds; [92] and especially lyre-clans like the ‘motherless’ Ametorídai (purveyors of erotic kithára-songs in the context of Cretan rites-of-passage), [93] and the Eumolpidai of Eleusis and the Euneidai at Athens. [94] There are also the Thamyríddontes (< *thamyríddein = *thamyrízein) of an early fourth-century inscription from Thespiai in Boeotia. [95] These functionaries, probably not a standing body but periodically appointed, [96] clearly evoke Thamyris (or Thamyras), the legendary lyre-singer who was blinded for rivaling the Muses (a myth perhaps representing a competing regional tradition, or epic competition itself). [97] They evidently presided over a “hero-cult for Thamyris himself in the valley of the Muses.” [98]

This argument for kenyristḗs Apollo as “the one who celebrates Kinyras” is not incompatible with a concurrent interpretation as the ‘kinýra-player’. [99] A kinyrist venerated Kinyras precisely by playing the instrument from which the Cypriot king took his name. The title recalls our attention to the lyre itself—just as the Ugaritian pantheon text makes plain, through its determinatives, that Kinnaru’s flesh was wood. [100] This conflation accords perfectly with the phenomenon of divinized instruments. One effected the god’s epiphany by playing the kinýra in the appropriate ritual setting and so assuming the role of kenyristḗs—of Kinyras himself. He thereby gives voice to, and receives it from, the instrument, which is thus as central to the celebration as its player. If we seem to have come a long way from Pindar, recall the apostrophe of Pythian 1, where the lyre is virtually personified and celebrated for powers one might rather attribute to the lyrist: Only change phórminx to kinýra and one arrives at a fundamental aspect of the Cypriot celebrations “about Kinyras” to which Pindar alludes.

The idea of ‘Kinyras in performance’ becomes much more tangible when confronted with the rich music iconography of Cyprus, which extends our chronological horizons far beyond the literary record. We may begin with two model-shrines showing lyre-players in clear cult contexts. [102] Both pieces are thoroughly Cypriot, incorporating older stylistic elements going back to comparable LBA specimens of both the Levant and Aegean. Their provenance is unknown, with no compelling reason to assume a special Paphian connection. [103] After all, the goddess had many other cult centers throughout the island—Amathous, Kition, Golgoi, Idalion, Tamassos, Lapethos, and Salamis, to cite only the more prominent. [104] The models therefore indicate that hieratic lyre-playing was a general feature of Cypriot cult.

The presence of ‘Aphrodite’ is especially clear in the first model, from perhaps the seventh century (Figure 18). [105] At the center of this complex composition is a tapering, fenestrated pillar surmounted by birds. Its general shape evokes the aniconic representation of the Paphian goddess that appears on coins of the Roman era (also apparently adorned with birds, perhaps representing sculpted ornaments). [106] The pillar’s identification as a ‘dove-cote’ [107] lets it be confidently linked with ‘Aphrodite’, whose sacred birds are well known. [108] This conforms to a wider regional pattern, which Lucian also attests for his ‘Syrian Goddess’ of Hierapolis (Manbog), in whose cult doves were held to be sacred or even divine. [109] On Cyprus, they are linked to Kinyras himself through the aetiological myth of Peleia/Pelia. [110]

Four figures have been placed around the pillar. Three dancers occupy half the perimeter, facing the shrine. Opposite is a lyrist, whose back is to the pillar. Yet he stands so close that his ‘interest’ in it is clear, and this is reinforced by a cauldron at his side, presumably containing an offering. The configuration has several effects. First, the pillar-shrine is clearly the primary object of adoration. Yet the lyrist himself enjoys secondary focus, since, with his back to the dancers, and indeed the pillar itself, they become background for his performance. He controls the viewer’s entrance into the cultic circle—a Master of Choral Ceremonies who mediates between ‘audience’ and god.

The second model has been variously dated between the eleventh and seventh centuries (Figure 19). [111] It is a rounded, rectangular house-shrine, with three windows, damaged door, and missing roof. Against one of the inner walls sits the lyre-player. Near the opposite wall is a broken stump, probably the base of an offerings table. Two rough figures on the outer walls peer through window and door, as though glimpsing a sacred mystery; two more have been lost, and another probably peeked through a vent above. [112] Their collective gaze shows that here too the object of veneration is the shrine itself and the deity for whom it stands. [113] But the composition, like that of the pillar-shrine, serves to isolate the lyrist within a sacred space, which he alone is worthy to enter.

In both scenes then the lyrist is a secondary focus, so that while he is as an intermediary to the divine, his own numinosity must not be underestimated. Boardman aptly applied the Homeric expression ‘divine singer’ (theîos aoidós) to these musicians: It was left to Mlynarczyk to connect these shrines with Kinyras and the Paphian kings in their role of “High Priest of the Queen.” [115] But we must not forget Boardman’s intuition about the lyrist’s own divinity.