_PINDAR._
His Life.--Legends connected with him.--The Qualities of
his Poetry.--The Olympic Games.--Pindar's Professional
Character.--His Morality.--His Religious Belief.--Doctrine
of a Future State.--Rewards and Punishments.--The Structure
of his Odes.--The Proemia to his Odes.--His Difficulty and
Tumidity of Style.
Pindar, in spite of his great popularity among the Greeks, offers no
exception to the rule that we know but little of the lives of the
illustrious poets and artists of the world. His parents belonged to the
town of Cynoscephalæ; but Pindar himself resided at Thebes, and spoke
of Thebes as his native place--#Thêba mater ema#. That his father was
called Daiphantus appears tolerably certain; and we may fix the date
of his birth at about 522 B.C. He lived to the age of seventy-nine;
so that the flourishing period of his life exactly coincides with the
great Persian struggle, in which he lived to see Hellas victorious.
He had three children--a son, Daiphantus, and two daughters, Eumetis
and Protomache. His family was among the noblest and most illustrious
of Thebes, forming a branch of the ancient house of the Ægeidæ, who
settled both at Thebes and Sparta in heroic times, and offshoots from
whom were colonists of Thera and Cyrene. Thus many of the heroes
celebrated by Pindar, and many of the illustrious men to whom he
dedicates his odes, were of his own kin. Genius for the art seems to
have been hereditary in the family of Pindar, as it was in that of
Stesichorus and of Simonides; therefore, when the youth showed an
aptitude for poetry, his father readily acceded to his wishes, and sent
him to Athens to learn the art of composing for the chorus from Lasos,
the then famous but now forgotten antagonist of the bard of Ceos.
Before his twentieth year, Pindar returned to Thebes and took, it is
said, instruction from the poetesses Myrtis and Corinna. To this period
of his artistic career belongs the oft-told tale, according to which
Corinna bade her pupil interweave myths with his panegyrics, and when,
following her advice, he produced an ode in which he had exhausted
all the Theban legends, told him #têi cheiri dein speirein, alla mê
holôi tôi thylakôi#--that one ought to sow with the hand and not with
the whole sack. Against both Myrtis and Corinna, Pindar entered the
lists of poetical contest. Corinna is reported to have beaten him
five times, and never to have been vanquished by her more illustrious
rival. Pausanias hints that she owed her victories to her beauty, and
to the fact that she wrote in a broad Æolic dialect, more suited to the
ears of her judges than Pindar's Doric style. The same circumstance
which insured her this temporary triumph may have caused her ultimate
neglect. The fragment we possess of Corinna--
#memphomê de kê ligouran Mourtid' hiônga
hoti bana phous' eba Pindaroio pot' erin.#
"I blame the clear-voiced Myrtis for that, a woman, she contended
against Pindar," is curiously at variance with her own practice. Its
Æolisms prove how local and provincial her language must have been.
The history of Pindar's life is the record of his poetical
compositions. He was essentially a professional artist, taking no
active part in politics, and studying to perfect his poetry all through
the perilous days of Salamis and Platæa--like Michael Angelo, who went
on modelling and hewing through the sack of Rome, the fall of Florence,
the decline of Italian freedom, with scarce a word to prove the anguish
of his patriot soul. Pindar, unlike his fellow-countrymen, did not
side with the Persians, but felt enthusiasm for Athens, the #ereisma
Hellados# (buttress of Hellas), as he calls her in a dithyramb[104]
(Fr. iv.). For this he was made Proxenos of Athens, and received a
present of 10,000 drachmas. It is said that the Thebans fined him
for his implied reflections upon them, and that Athens paid the debt.
These facts, if true, testify to the post of honor which a mighty
poet occupied in Hellas, when the _vox et præterea nihil_ of a bard,
inspired indeed by Muses, but dependent on a patron for his bread, was
listened to with such jealous ears by the rulers of great cities. The
last Isthmian ode shows in what a noble spirit Pindar felt the dangers
of Hellas during her deadly strife with Persia, and how he could
scarcely breathe for anxiety until the stone of Tantalus suspended over
her had been arrested. In the Proemium he says:
"For Cleander and his prime of beauty let some one, O ye
youths, bear the glorious meed of toil to the splendid portals
of his sire Telesarchus, the revel-song, which pays him for his
Isthmian victory and for his might in Nemean games. For him I
too, though grieved in soul, am asked to call upon the golden
Muse. Freed as we are from mighty griefs, let us not fall into
the bereavement of victorious crowns, nor nurse our cares;
but ceasing from vain sorrows, spread we honeyed song abroad
thus after our great trouble: forasmuch as of a truth some god
hath turned aside the stone of Tantalus which hung above our
heads--intolerable suffering for Hellas. Me verily the passing
away of dread hath cured not of all care; yet it is ever better
to notice what is present: for treacherous time is hung above
the lives of men, rolling the torrent of their days. Still,
with freedom on our side, men can cure even these evils; and it
is our duty to attend to wholesome hope."
Pindar passed his time chiefly at Thebes, where his home was. But
he also visited the different parts of Greece, frequently staying
at Delphi, where the iron chair on which he sat and sang was long
preserved; and also journeying to the houses of his patrons--Hiero
of Syracuse, and presumably Theron of Agrigentum, and perhaps, too,
Alexander of Macedon. Olympia must have often received him as a guest,
as well as the island of Ægina, where he had many friends. Odes were
sent by him to Cyrene, to Ceos, to Rhodes--on what tablets, we may
wonder, adorned with what caligraphy from Pindar's stylus, in what
casket worthy of the man who loved magnificence? The Rhodians inscribed
his seventh Olympian--the most radiant panegyric of the sea-born isle
of Helios--in letters of gold on the walls of their temple of the
Lindian Athene. In the midst of his artistic labors, and while serving
many patrons, Pindar, as we shall see, preserved his dignity and
loftiness of moral character.
Pindar is said to have died in the theatre at Argos, in the arms of
Theoxenos, a youth whom he loved passionately, and whom he has praised
in the most sublime strains for his beauty in a scolion, the fragment
of which we possess.[105] Anacreon choked by a grape-stone; Sophocles
breathing out his life together with the pathetic lamentations of
Antigone; Æschylus killed on the sea-shore by the eagle whose flight
he had watched; Empedocles committing his fiery but turbid spirit to
the flames of Etna; Sappho drowning her sorrows in the surf of the
Leucadian sea; Ibycus, the poet-errant, murdered by land-robbers;
Euripides torn to pieces like his own Pentheus; Archilochus honored in
his death by an oracle that cursed his battle-foe; Pindar, amid the
plaudits of the theatre, sinking back into the arms of his Theoxenos
and dying in a noontide blaze of glory--these are the appropriate and
dramatic endings which the literary gossips among the Greeks, always
inventively ingenious, ascribed to some of their chief poets. _Se non
son veri, son ben trovati._
Some purely legendary details show the estimation in which
Pindar was held by his countrymen. Multitudes of bees are said to have
settled on his lips when he was an infant. Pan chose a hymn of his and
sang it on the mountains, honoring a mortal poet with his divine voice.
The Mother of the gods took up her dwelling at his door. Lastly, we
have the famous story of the premonition of his death in dreams--a
legend of peculiar significance, when we remember that Pindar, like Sir
Thomas Browne, believed that "we are more than ourselves in our sleep,"
and wrote:
All by happy fate attain
The end that frees them from their pain;
And the body yields to death,
But the shape of vital breath
Still in life continueth;
It alone is heaven's conferring:
Sleeps it when the limbs are stirring.
But when they sleep, in many dreams it shows
The coming consummation both of joys and woes.[106]
Just before his death, then, Pindar sent to inquire of the oracle of
Ammon what was best for man; and the answer, which he had already
himself anticipated in his commemoration of Trophonius and Agamedes,
was--Death. Meanwhile Persephone appeared to him in his sleep, and
told him that he should praise her in her own realm, although on earth
he had left her, alone of the blest gods, unsung. Ten days afterwards
he died. The hymn which Pindar composed for Persephone in Hades was
dictated to a Theban woman by his ghost--so runs the tale--and written
down. After his death, Pindar received more than heroic honors. They
kept his iron chair at Delphi; and the priest of Phoebus, before he
shut the temple gates, cried, "Let Pindar the poet go into the banquet
of the god." At Athens his statue was erected at the public cost. At
Thebes his house was spared in the ruin of two sieges:
Lift not thy spear against the Muse's bower;
The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground.
At Rhodes, as we have seen, an ode of his was sculptured on the temple
walls of Pallas. Throughout the future, as long as Greek poetry
endured, he was known emphatically by the title of #ho lyrikos#.
Pindar was famous, as these semi-mythical stories about his infancy and
old age indicate, for piety. Unlike Horace, who calls himself _Parcus
deorum cultor et infrequens_, Pindar was a devout and steadfast servant
of his country's gods. He dedicated a shrine or #matrôon# near his
own house to the Mother of the gods, a statue to Zeus Ammon in Libya,
and one to Hermes in the Theban agora. The whole of his poetry is
impregnated with a lively sense of the divine in the world. Accepting
the religious traditions of his ancestors with simple faith, he adds
more of spiritual severity and of mystical morality than we find in
Homer. Yet he is not superstitious or credulous. He can afford to
criticise the myths like Xenophanes and Plato, refusing to believe
that a blessed god could be a glutton. In Pindar, indeed, we see the
fine flower of Hellenic religion, free from slavish subservience to
creeds and ceremonies, capable of extracting sublime morality from
mythical legends, and adding to the old glad joyousness of the Homeric
faith a deeper and more awful perception of superhuman mysteries. The
philosophical scepticism which in Greece, after the age of Pericles,
corroded both the fabric of mythology and the indistinct doctrines of
theological monotheism, had scarcely yet begun to act.
Passing to the poetry of Pindar, we have a hard task before us. What
can be said adequate to such a theme? What can be left unsaid of the
many thoughts that ought to be expressed? At the time of Pindar's
youth, lyrical poetry in Greece was sinking into mannerism. He, by
the force of his originality, gave it a wholly new direction, and,
coming last of the great Dorian lyrists, taught posterity what sort of
thing an ode should be. The grand pre-eminence of Pindar as an artist
was due in a great measure to his personality. Frigid, austere, and
splendid; not genial like that of Simonides, not passionate like that
of Sappho, not acrid like that of Archilochus; hard as adamant, rigid
in moral firmness, glittering with the strong keen light of snow;
haughty, aristocratic, magnificent--the unique personality of the man
Pindar, so irresistible in its influence, so hard to characterize,
is felt in every strophe of his odes. In his isolation and elevation
Pindar stands like some fabled heaven-aspiring peak, conspicuous from
afar, girdled at the base with ice and snow, beaten by winds, wreathed
round with steam and vapor, jutting a sharp and dazzling outline into
cold blue ether. Few things that have life dare to visit him at his
grand altitude. Glorious with sunlight and with stars, touched by rise
and set of day with splendor, he shines when other lesser heights
are dulled. Pindar among his peers is solitary. He had no communion
with the poets of his day. He is the eagle; Simonides and Bacchylides
are jackdaws. He soars to the empyrean; they haunt the valley mists.
Noticing this rocky, barren, severe, glittering solitude of Pindar's
soul, critics have not unfrequently complained that his poems are
devoid of individual interest. Possibly they have failed to comprehend
and appreciate the nature of this sublime and distant genius, whose
character, in truth, is just as marked as that of Dante or of Michael
Angelo.
Since I have indulged in one metaphor in the vain attempt to enter
into some _rapport_ with Pindar, let me proceed to illustrate the
Pindaric influence--the impression produced by a sympathetic study of
his odes upon the imagination saturated with all that is peculiar in
his gorgeous style--by the deliberate expansion of some similes, which
are by no means mere ornaments of rhetoric, but illustrations carefully
selected from the multitude of images forced upon the mind during a
detailed perusal of his poetry. One of the common names for Pindar is
the Theban Eagle. This supplies us with the first image, which may be
conveyed in the very words of Dante:[107]
"In dreams I seemed to see an eagle hovering in air on
wings of gold, with pinions spread and ready to swoop. I
thought I was on the spot where Ganymede was taken from his
comrades and borne aloft to the celestial consistory. I
pondered--peradventure the great bird only strikes this hill,
and peradventure scorns to snatch elsewhere his prey. Then it
seemed to me that, after wheeling a while, it swooped, terrible
like lightning, and caught me up into the sphere of flame; and
there I thought that it and I both burned; and so fiercely did
the fire in my imagination blaze, that sleep no longer could
endure, but broke."
This simile describes the rapidity and fierceness of Pindar's spirit,
the atmosphere of empyreal splendor into which he bears us with
strong wings and clinging talons. Another image may be borrowed from
Horace,[108] who says,
Fervet immensusque ruit profundo Pindarus +ore+;
likening the poet to a torrent, unrestrained, roaring to the woods
and precipices with a thunderous voice. This image does not, like the
other, fix our attention upon the quality peculiar to Pindar among all
the poets of the world--splendor, fire, the blaze of pure effulgence.
But it does suggest another characteristic, which is the stormy
violence of his song, that chafes within its limits and seems unable
to advance quickly enough in spite of its speed. This violence of
Pindar's style, as of some snow-swollen Alpine stream, the hungry Arve
or death-cold Lutschine, leaping and raging among granite boulders, has
misled Horace into the notion that Pindar's odes are without metrical
structure:
numerisque fertur
Lege solutis:
whereas we know that, while pursuing his eagle-flight to the sun, or
thundering along his torrent-path, Pindar steadily observed the laws of
strophe, antistrophe, and epode with consummate art. A third figure may
be chosen from Pindar[109] himself.
"As when a man takes from his wealthy hand a goblet foaming
with the dew of the grape, and gives it with healths and
pledges to his youthful son-in-law to bear from one home to the
other home, golden, the crown of his possessions, gracing the
feast and glorifying his kinsman, and makes him in the eyes of
the assembled friends to be admired for his harmonious wedlock:
so I, sending outpoured nectar, the Muse's gift, to conquering
heroes, the sweet fruit of the soul, greet them like gods,
victors at Olympia and Pytho."
Then, too, he adds: "With the lyre and with the various voices of
flutes[110] I have come with Diagoras across the sea, chanting the
wave-born daughter of the Cyprian goddess and the bride of Helios,
island Rhodes." In this passage we get a lively impression of some of
the marked qualities of Pindar. Reading his poetry is like quaffing
wine that bubbles in a bowl of gold. Then, too, there is the picture
of the poet, gorgeously attired, with his singing-robes about him,
erect upon the prow of a gilded galley, floating through dazzling
summer-waves towards the island of his love, Rhodes or Sicily or
Ægina. The lyre and the flute send their clear sounds across the sea.
We pass temple and citadel on shore and promontory. The banks of oars
sweep the flashing brine. Meanwhile the mighty poet stretches forth
his golden cup of song to greet the princes and illustrious athletes
who await him on the marble quays. Reading Pindar is a progress of
this pompous kind. Pindar, as one of his critics remarks, was born
and reared in splendor; splendor became his vital atmosphere. The
epithet #philaglaos#, which he gives to Girgenti, suits himself. The
splendor-loving Pindar is his name and title for all time. If we search
the vocabulary of Pindar to find what phrases are most frequently
upon his lips, we shall be struck with the great preponderance of all
words that indicate radiance, magnificence, lustre. To Pindar's soul
splendor was as elemental as harmony to Milton's. Of the graces, Aglaia
must have been his favorite. Nor, love as he did the gorgeousness of
wealth, was it mere transitory pomp, the gauds and trappings of the
world, which he admired. There must be something to stir the depths of
his soul--beauty of person, or perfection of art, or moral radiance,
or ideal grandeur. The blaze of real magnificence draws him as the sun
attracts the eagle; he does not flit moth-like about the glimmer of
mere ephemeral lights.
After these three figures, which illustrate the fiery flight, the
torrent-fulness, the intoxicating charm of Pindar, one remains by
which the magnetic force and tumult of his poetry may be faintly
adumbrated. He who has watched a sunset attended by the passing of a
thunderstorm in the outskirts of the Alps; who has seen the distant
ranges of the mountains alternately obscured by cloud and blazing
with the concentrated brightness of the sinking sun, while drifting
scuds of hail and rain, tawny with sunlight, glistening with broken
rainbows, clothe peak and precipice and forest in the golden veil
of flame-irradiated vapor; who has heard the thunder bellow in the
thwarting folds of hills, and watched the lightning, like a snake's
tongue, flicker at intervals amid gloom and glory--knows in Nature's
language what Pindar teaches with the voice of Art. It is only by a
strained metaphor like this that any attempt to realize the _Sturm und
Drang_ of Pindar's style can be communicated. In plainer language,
Pindar, as an artist, combines the strong flight of the eagle, the
irresistible force of the torrent, the richness of Greek wine, the
majestic pageantry of Nature in one of her sublimer moods.
Like all the great lyrists of the Dorian school, Pindar composed odes
of various species--hymns, prosodia, parthenia, threnoi, scolia,
dithyrambs, as well as epinikia. Of all but the epinikian odes we
have only inconsiderable fragments left; yet these are sublime and
beautiful enough to justify us in believing that Pindar surpassed his
rivals in the threnos and the scolion as far as in the epinikian ode.
Forty-four of his poems we possess entire--fourteen Olympians, twelve
Pythians, eleven Nemeans, seven Isthmians. Of the occasions which led
to the composition of these odes something must be said. The Olympian
games were held in Elis once in five years, during the summer: their
prize was a wreath of wild olive. The Pythian games were held in
spring, on the Crissæan plain, once in five years: their prizes were a
wreath of laurel and a palm. The Nemean games were held in the groves
of Nemea, near Cleonæ, in Argolis, once in three years: their prize
was a wreath of parsley. The Isthmian games were held at Corinth,
once in three years: their prize was a wreath of pine, native to the
spot. The Olympian festival honored Zeus; that of Pytho, Phoebus;
that of Nemea, Zeus; that of the Isthmus, Poseidon. Originally they
were all of the nature of a #panêgyris# or national assembly at the
shrine of some deity local to the spot, or honored there with more
than ordinary reverence. The Isthmian games in particular retained a
special character. Instituted for an Ionian deity, whose rites the men
of Elis refused to acknowledge, they failed to unite the whole Greek
race. The Greek games, like the Schwing-feste and shooting-matches of
Switzerland, served as recurring occasions of reunion and fellowship.
Their influence in preserving a Panhellenic feeling was very marked.
During the time of the feast, and before and after, for a sufficient
number of days, to allow of travellers journeying to and from Olympia
and Delphi, hostilities were suspended throughout Hellas; safe-conduct
was given through all states to pilgrims. One common feeling animated
all the Greeks at these seasons: they met in rivalry, not of arms on
the battle-field, but of personal prowess in the lists. And though
the various families of the Hellenic stock were never united, yet
their games gave them a common object, and tended to the diffusion of
national ideas.
Let us pause to imagine the scene which the neighborhood of Olympia
must have presented as the great recurring festival of the Greek race
approached--a festival in the fullest sense of the word popular, but
at the same time consecrated by religion, dignified by patriotic
pride, adorned with art. The full blaze of summer is overhead; plain
and hill-side yield no shade but what the spare branches of the olive
and a few spreading pines afford. Along the road throng pilgrims and
deputies, private persons journeying modestly, and public ambassadors
gorgeously equipped at the expense of their state. Strangers from
Sicily or Cyrene or Magna Græcia land from galleys on the coast of
Elis. Then there are the athletes with their trainers--men who have
been in rude exercise for the prescribed ten months, and whose limbs
are in the bloom of manly or of boyish strength. Sages, like Gorgias
or Prodicus or Protagoras, are on their way, escorted by bands of
disciples, eager to engage each other in debate beneath the porticos of
the Olympian Zeus. Thales or Anaxagoras arrives, big with a new theory
of the universe. Historians like Herodotus are carrying their scrolls
to read before assembled Hellas. Epic poets and rhapsodes are furnished
with tales of heroes, freshly coined from their own brains or conned
with care from Homer. Rich men bring chariots for racing or display;
the more a man spends at Olympia, the more he honors his native city.
Women, we need not doubt, are also on the road--Hetairæ from Corinth
and Cyprus and Ionia. Sculptors show models of their skill. Potters
exhibit new shapes of vases, with scrolls of honeysuckle wreathing
round the pictured image of some handsome boy, to attract the eyes of
buyers. Painters have their tablets and colors ready. Apart from these
more gay and giddy servants of the public taste, are statesmen and
diplomatists, plenipotentiaries despatched to feel the pulse of Hellas,
negotiators seeking opportunities for safe discussion of the affairs
of rival cities. Every active brain, or curious eye, or wanton heart,
or well-trained limb, or skilful hand, or knavish wit may find its fit
employment here. A mediæval pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella or
St. Thomas of Canterbury was nothing to this exodus of wit in Greece.
As they approached Olympia, a splendid scene burst upon the travellers'
eyes--the plain of Elis, rich, deep-meadowed, hoary with olive-trees.
One cried to the other, There is the hill of Cronion! There is the
grove of Altis! Thither flows Alpheus to the sea! Those white and
glittering statues are the portraits of the victors! That temple is
the house of everlasting Zeus; beneath its roof sits the Thunderer
of Pheidias! Every step made the journey more exciting. By the bed
of the Alpheus, tawny in midsummer with dusty oleander-blossoms, the
pilgrims passed. At last they enter the precincts of Olympian Zeus: the
sacred enclosure is alive with men; the statues among the trees are
scarcely more wonder-worthy in their glittering marble than are the
bodies of the athletes moving beneath them. The first preoccupation
of every Greek who visited Olympia was to see the statue of Zeus. Not
to have gazed upon this masterpiece of Pheidias was, according to a
Greek proverb, the unhappiness of life. In this, his greatest work,
the Athenian sculptor touched the highest point of art, and incarnated
the most sublime conception of Greek religious thought. The god was
seated on his throne; but, even so, the image rose to the height of
forty feet, wrought of pure ivory and gold. At his feet stood figures
symbolical of victory in the Olympian games: among them the portrait
of Pantarkes, himself a victor, the youth whom Pheidias loved. In
designing his great statue the sculptor had in mind those lines of
Homer which describe Zeus nodding his ambrosial locks, and shaking
Olympus. That he had succeeded in presenting to the eye all that the
Greek race could imagine of godlike power and holiness and peace was
attested not only by the universal voice of Hellas, but also by the
Romans who gazed as conquerors upon the god. Lucius Paulus Æmilius,
we are told, after the battle of Pydna, swept Greece, and coming to
Olympia, saw the Pheidian Zeus. He shuddered, and exclaimed that he
had set mortal eyes upon the deity incarnate. Yet Paulus was a Roman
trampling with his legionaries the subject states of fallen Hellas.
Cicero proclaimed that Pheidias had copied nothing human, but had
carved the ideal image existing in an inspired mind.
Zeus, it must be remembered, was the supreme god of the Aryan race,
the purest divinity of the Greek cultus. He was called Father, Sire
of gods and men. Therefore his presence in the Panhellenic temple was
peculiarly appropriate and awe-inspiring. We may imagine the feelings
of an athlete coming to struggle for the fame of his own city, when
he first approached this statue in the august Olympian shrine. The
games were held at the time of a full moon; through the hypæthral
opening of the temple roof fell the silver rays aslant upon those
solemn lineaments, making the glow of ivory and gold more solemn in the
dimness of a wondrous gloom.
Presidents chosen from the people of Elis, and named Hellanodikai,
awarded the prizes and controlled the conduct of the games. From
their decision, in cases of doubt, there was a final appeal to
the assembly of Elis. In the morning the heralds opened the lists
with this proclamation:[111] "Now begins the contest that dispenses
noblest prizes; time tells you to delay no longer." When the runners
were ready, the heralds started them with these words, "Put your
feet to the line and run." At the end of the day they cried, "Now
ceases the contest that dispenses noblest prizes; time tells you to
delay no longer." The victor was crowned with wild olive, and led by
his friends to the Temple of Zeus. On the way they shouted the old
Archilochian chorus, #tênella kallinike#, to which Pindar alludes in
the beginning of his 9th Olympian: "The song of Archilochus uttered
at Olympia, the triple cry of Hail Victorious! was enough to conduct
Epharmostus, leading the revel to the Cronian hill with his comrades.
But now, from the far-darting bows of the Muses, approach Zeus of the
blazing thunder and the holy jutting land of Elis with these mightier
shafts." Sacrifice and banquet took place in the evening; and happy was
the athlete who, in this supreme moment, was greeted by Pindar with
attendant chorus and musicians of the flute and lyre. Three Olympians,
which seem to have been composed and chanted on the spot, survive--the
4th, the 8th, the 10th. The proemia to these odes, two of which are
remarkably short, indicating the haste in which they had been prepared,
sufficiently establish this fact. "Supreme hurler of the thunderbolt
that never tires, Zeus! Thy festival recurring with the season brings
me with sound of lyre and song to witness august games." "Parent of
golden-crowned contests, Olympia, mistress of truth," etc. But it
could not be expected that the more elaborate of Pindar's compositions
should be ready on such occasions. It usually happened that the victor
either found Pindar at Olympia, or sent a message to him at Thebes,
and bespoke an ode, adding gifts in accordance with the poet's rank
and fame. Then Pindar composed his epinikian, which was sung when
the conqueror returned to his own city. The ode would be repeated
on successive anniversaries at banquets, sacrificial festivals, and
processions in honor of the victory. The ninth Olympian, which has
been already quoted, was, for example, sung at a banquet in honor of
Epharmostus of Opus, after the altar of Ajax, son of Oïleus, had been
crowned. Pindar, as we find from frequent allusions in the odes, had
such a press of work that he often delayed sending his poems at the
proper time, and had to excuse himself for neglect. In the second
Isthmian he records a delay of two years. We may add that he did not
disdain to accept money for his toil. In the eleventh Pythian he says:
"Muse, it is thy part, since thou hast contracted to give thy voice for
gold, to set it going in various ways." In the proemium to the second
Isthmian he somewhat bitterly laments the necessity that made him sell
his songs:
"The men of old, Thrasybulus, who climbed the chariot of the
gold-crowned Muses, and received a famous lyre, lightly shot
their arrows of honey-voiced hymns in praise of boys, of him
whose beauty kept the summer bloom of youth, that sweetest
souvenir of Aphrodite throned in joy. For the Muse as yet loved
not gain, nor worked for hire, nor were sweet and tender songs
with silvered faces sold by Terpsichore. But now she bids
us keep the Argive's speech in mind; and verily it hits the
truth--that money, money, money makes the man. He spoke it when
deserted of his riches and his friends."
Yet we must not suppose that Pindar sang slavishly the praise of every
bidder. He was never fulsome in his panegyric. He knew how to mingle
eulogy with admonition. If his theme be the wealth of a tyrant like
Hiero, he reminds him of the dangers of ambition and the crime of
avarice. Arcesilaus of Cyrene is warned[112] to remit his sentence
of banishment in favor of a powerful exile. Victors, puffed up with
the pride of their achievements, hear from him how variable is the
life of man, how all men are mere creatures of a day. Handsome youths
are admonished to beware of lawlessness and shun incontinence. Thus
Pindar, while suiting his praises to the persons celebrated, always
interweaves an appropriate precept of morality. There was nothing that
he hated more than flattery and avarice, and grasping after higher
honors than became his station. In him more than in any other poet were
apparent the Greek virtues of #eukosmia#, #sôphrosynê#, and all the
moral and artistic qualities which were summed up in the motto #mêden
agan#.[113] Those who are curious to learn Pindar's opinions on these
points may consult the following passages:[114] Nem. viii. 32; id.
vii. 65; Pyth. xi. 50; Isthm. vii. 40; id. v. 14; and, lastly, Pyth.
x. 22, which contains this truly beautiful description of a thoroughly
successful life, as imagined by a Greek:
"That man is happy and song-worthy by the skilled, who,
victorious by might of hand or vigor of foot, achieves the
greatest prizes with daring and with strength; and who in his
lifetime sees his son, while yet a boy, crowned happily with
Pythian wreaths. The brazen heaven, it is true, is inaccessible
to him; but whatsoever joys we race of mortals touch, he
reaches to the farthest voyage."
With this we may compare the story of happy lives told by Croesus to
Solon, and the celebrated four lines of Simonides: "Health is best for
a mortal man; next, beauty; thirdly, well-gotten wealth; fourthly, the
pleasure of youth among friends."
Closely connected with Pindar's ethical beliefs were his religious
notions, which were both peculiar and profound. Two things with
regard to his theology deserve especial notice--its conscious
criticism of existing legends, and its strong Pythagorean bias, both
combined with true Hellenic orthodoxy in all essentials. One of the
greatest difficulties in forming an exact estimate of the creed of a
philosophical Greek intellect is to know how to value the admixture
of scientific scepticism on the one hand, and of purer theism on the
other. About Pindar's time the body of Hellenic mythology was being
invaded by a double process of destructive and constructive criticism.
Xenophanes, for example, very plainly denounced as absurd the
anthropomorphic Pantheon made in the image of man, while he endeavored
to substitute a cult of the One God, indivisible and incognizable.
Plato still further developed the elements suggested by Xenophanes.
But there was some inherent incapacity in the Greek intellect for
arriving at monotheism by a process of rarefaction and purification.
The destructive criticism which in Xenophanes, Pindar, and Plato had
assailed the grosser myths, dwindled into unfruitful scepticism. The
attempts at constructing a rational theosophy ended in metaphysics.
Morality was studied as a separate branch of investigation, independent
of destructive criticism and religious construction. Meanwhile the
popular polytheism continued to flourish, though enfeebled, degenerate,
and disconnected from the nobler impulses of poetry and art. In Pindar
the process of decadence had not begun. He stood at the very highest
point which it was possible for a religious Greek to reach--combining
the æsthetically ennobling enthusiasm for the old Greek deities with so
much critical activity as enabled him to reject the grosser myths, and
with that moderate amount of theological mysticism which the unassisted
intellect of the Greeks seemed capable of receiving without degeneracy
into puerile superstition. The first Olympian ode contains the most
decided passages in illustration of his critical independence of
judgment:
"Impossible is it for me to call one of the blessed ones
a glutton: I stand aloof: loss hath often overtaken evil
speakers."
Again:
"Truly many things are wonderful; and it may be that in some
cases fables dressed up with cunning fictions beyond the true
account falsify the traditions of men. But beauty, which is the
author of all delicious things for mortals, by giving to these
myths acceptance, ofttimes makes even what is incredible to be
credible: but succeeding time gives the most certain evidence
of truth; and for a man to speak nobly of the gods is seemly;
for so the blame is less."
These two passages suffice to prove how freely Pindar handled the
myths, not indeed exposing them to the corrosive action of mere
scepticism, but testing them[115] by the higher standard of the healthy
human conscience. When he refuses to believe that the immortals were
cannibals and ate the limbs of Pelops, he is like a rationalist avowing
his disbelief in the savage doctrine of eternal damnation. His doubt
does not proceed from irreligion, but from faith in the immutable
holiness of the gods, who set the ideal standard of human morality.
What seems to him false in the myths he attributes to the accretions of
ignorant opinion and vain fancy round the truth.
The mystical element of Pindar's creed, whether we call it Orphic or
Pythagorean, is remarkable for a definite belief in the future life,
including a system of rewards and punishments; for the assertion of
the supreme tribunal of conscience,[116] and, finally, for a reliance
on rites of purification. The most splendid passage in which these
opinions are expressed by Pindar is that portion of the second Olympian
in which he describes the torments of the wicked and the blessings of
the just beyond the grave:
"Among the dead, sinful souls at once pay penalty, and the
crimes done in this realm of Zeus are judged beneath the earth
by one who gives sentence under dire necessity.
"But the good, enjoying perpetual sunlight equally by night and
day, receive a life more free from woes than this of ours;
they trouble not the earth with strength of hand, nor the water
of the sea for scanty sustenance; but with the honored of the
gods, all they who delighted in the keeping of their oath pass
a tearless age: the others suffer woe on which no eye can bear
to look. Those who have thrice endured on either side the grave
to keep their spirits wholly free from crime, journey on the
road of Zeus to the tower of Kronos: where round the islands
blow breezes ocean-borne; and flowers of gold burn some on
the land from radiant trees, and others the wave feeds; with
necklaces whereof they twine their hands and brows, in the just
decrees of Rhadamanthus, whom father Kronos has for a perpetual
colleague, he who is spouse of Rhea throned above all gods.
"Peleus and Cadmus are numbered among these: and thither was
Achilles brought by his mother when she swayed the heart of
Zeus with prayer: he who slew Hector, the invincible firm
pillar of Troy, and gave Cycnus to death and Eo's Æthiopian
son."
The following fragments from threnoi[117] translated by Professor
Conington further illustrate Pindar's belief in a future state of weal
or woe:
They from whom Persephone
Due atonement shall receive
For the things that made to grieve,
To the upper sunlight she
Sendeth back their souls once more,
Soon as winters eight are o'er.
From those blessed spirits spring
Many a great and goodly king,
Many a man of glowing might,
Many a wise and learned wight:
And while after-days endure,
Men esteem them heroes pure.
And again:
Shines for them the sun's warm glow
When 'tis darkness here below:
And the ground before their towers,
Meadow-land with purple flowers,
Teems with incense-bearing treen,
Teems with fruit of golden sheen.
Some in steed and wrestling feat,
Some in dice take pleasure sweet,
Some in harping: at their side
Blooms the spring in all her pride.
Fragrance all about is blown
O'er that country of desire.
Ever as rich gifts are thrown
Freely on the far-seen fire,
Blazing from the altar-stone.
* * * * *
But the souls of the profane,
Far from heaven removed below,
Flit on earth in murderous pain
'Neath the unyielding yoke of woe;
While pious spirits tenanting the sky
Chant praises to the mighty one on high.
For Pindar's conception of the destinies of frail humanity, take this
sublime but melancholy ending to an ode[118] which has been full of
triumphant exultation: "Brief is the growing-time of joy for mortals,
and briefly, too, doth its flower fall to earth shaken by fell fate.
Things of a day! what are we--and what are we not! A shadow's dream is
man. But when the splendor that God gives descends, then there remains
a radiant light and gladsome life for mortals." Compare with this the
opening of the sixth Nemean:
"One is the race of men, and one the race of gods; from one
mother we both draw breath. But a total difference of force
divides us, since man's might is naught, while brazen heaven
abideth a sure seat for aye. Nevertheless, we are not all
unlike immortals either in our mighty soul or strength of limb,
though we know not to what goal of night or day fate hath
written down for us to run." #/
Passing to the consideration of Pindar purely as an artist, we may
first examine the structure of his odes, and then illustrate the
qualities of his poetry by reference to some of the more splendid
proemia and descriptions. The task which lay before him when he
undertook to celebrate a victory at one of the Greek games was this:
Some rich man had won a race with his chariot and horses, or some
strong man had conquered his competitors by activity or force of limb.
Pindar had to praise the rich man for his wealth and liberality,
the strong man for his endurance of training and personal courage
or dexterity. In both cases the victor might be felicitated on his
good-fortune--on the piece of luck which had befallen him; and if he
were of comely person or illustrious blood, these also offered topics
for congratulation. The three chief commonplaces of Pindar, therefore,
are #olbos, aretê, eutychia#, wealth or prosperity, manliness or
spirit, and blessings independent of both, god-given, not acquired.
But it could not be that a great poet should ring the changes only on
these three subjects, or content himself with describing the actual
contest, which, probably, he had not witnessed. Consequently Pindar
illustrates his odes with myths or stories bearing more or less closely
on the circumstances of his hero. Sometimes he celebrates the victor's
ancestry, as in the famous sixth Olympian, in which the history of the
Iamidæ is given; sometimes his city, as in the seventh Olympian, where
he describes the birthplace of Diagoras, the island Rhodes; sometimes
he dwells upon an incident in the hero's life, as when in the third
Pythian the illness of Hiero suggests the legend of Asclepius and
Cheiron; sometimes a recent event, like the eruption of Etna, alluded
to in the first Pythian, gives color to his ode; sometimes, as in the
case of the last Pythian, where the story of Medusa is narrated, the
legendary matter is introduced to specialize the nature of the contest.
The victory itself is hardly touched upon: the allusions to #olbos,
aretê, eutychia#, though frequent and interwoven with the texture
of the ode, are brief: the whole poetic fabric is so designed as to
be appropriate to the occasion and yet independent of it. Therefore
Pindar's odes have not perished with the memory of the events to which
they owed their composition.
Pindar's peculiar treatment of the epinikian ode may best be
illustrated by analyzing the structure of one or two of his poems. But
first take this translation of one of the shorter and simpler of the
series--the twelfth Pythian:
To thee, fairest of earthly towns, I pray--
Thou splendor-lover, throne of Proserpine,
Piled o'er Girgenti's slopes, that feed alway
Fat sheep!--with grace of gods and men incline,
Great queen, to take this Pythian crown and own
Midas; for he of all the Greeks, thy son,
Hath triumphed in the art which Pallas won,
Weaving of fierce Gorgonian throats the dolorous moan.
She from the snake-encircled hideous head
Of maidens heard the wailful dirges flow,
What time the third of those fell Sisters bled
By Perseus' hand, who brought the destined woe
To vexed Seriphos. He on Phorkys' brood
Wrought ruin, and on Polydectes laid
Stern penance for his mother's servitude,
And for her forceful wedlock, when he slew the maid
Medusa. He by living gold, they say,
Was got on Danaë: but Pallas bore
Her hero through those toils, and wrought the lay
Of full-voiced flutes to mock the ghastly roar
Of those strong jaws of grim Euryale:
A goddess made and gave to men the flute,
The fountain-head of many a strain to be,
That ne'er at game or nation's feast it might be mute,
Sounding through subtle brass and voiceful reeds,
Which near the city of the Graces spring
By fair Cephisus, faithful to the needs
Of dancers. Lo! there cometh no good thing
Apart from toils to mortals, though to-day
Heaven crown their deeds: yet shun we not the laws
Of Fate; for times impend when chance withdraws
What most we hoped, and what we hoped not gives for aye.
Here it will be seen that Pindar introduces his subject with a
panegyric of Girgenti, his hero's birthplace. Then he names Midas,
and tells the kind of triumph he has gained. This leads him to the
legend of Medusa. The whole is concluded with moral reflections on the
influence of fate over human destinies. The structure of the sixth
Pythian is also very simple. "I build an indestructible treasure-house
of praise for Xenocrates (lines 1-18), which Thrasybulus, his son,
gained for him; as Antilochus died for Nestor (19-43), so Thrasybulus
has done what a son could do for his father (44-46); wise and fair is
he in his youth; his company is sweeter than the honeycomb" (47-54).
One of the longest odes, the fourth Pythian, is constructed thus:
"Muse! celebrate Arcesilaus (1-5). Cyrene, Arcesilaus's home; its
foundation and the oracle given to Battus (5-69). The tale of the
Argonauts, ancestors of the founders of Thera and of Cyrene (69-262).
Advice to Arcesilaus in the interest of Demophilus" (263-299). Here
the victory at Pytho is but once briefly alluded to (l. 64). The whole
ode consists of pedigree and political admonition, either directly
administered at the end, or covertly conveyed through the example of
Pelias. The sixth Olympian, which contains the pedigree of the Iamidæ,
is framed on similar principles. The third Pythian introduces its
mythology by a different method: "I wish I could restore Cheiron, the
healer and the tutor of Asclepius, to life (1-7). The story of Coronis,
her son Asclepius, and Hippolytus (7-58). Moral, to be content and
submit to mortality (58-62). Yet would that Cheiron might return and
heal Hiero (62-76)! I will pray; and do you, Hiero, remember that
Heaven gives one blessing and two curses, and that not even Cadmus
and Peleus were always fortunate (77-106). May I suit myself always
to my fortune!" (107-115). The whole of this ode relates to Hiero's
illness, and warns him of vicissitudes: even the episode of Coronis
and Asclepius contains a covert warning against arrogance, while it
gracefully alludes to Hiero's health.
The originality and splendor of Pindar are most noticeable in the
openings of his odes--the proemia, as they are technically called. It
would appear that he possessed an inexhaustible storehouse of radiant
imagery, from which to draw new thoughts for the commencement of his
poems. In this region, which most poets find but barren, he displayed
the fullest vigor and fertility of fancy. Sometimes, but rarely,
the opening is simple, as in the second Olympian: "Hymns that rule
the lyre! what god, what hero, what man shall we make famous?" Or
the ninth Pythian: "I wish to proclaim, by help of the deep-girdled
Graces, brazen-shielded Telesicrates, Pythian victor," etc. Rather
more complex are the following: Nem. iv., "The joy of the feast is the
best physician after toil; but songs, the wise daughters of the Muses,
soothe the victor with their touch: warm water does not so refresh and
supple weary limbs as praise attended by the lyre;" or again: Ol. xi.,
"There is a time when men have greatest need of winds; there is when
heaven's showers of rain, children of the cloud, are sorest sought
for. But if a man achieves a victory with toil, then sweet-voiced
hymns arise as the beginning of future fame," etc., etc. But soon we
pass into a more gorgeous region. "As when with golden columns reared
beneath the well-walled palace-porch we build a splendid hall, so will
I build my song. At the beginning of the work we must make the portal
radiant."[119] Or again: "No carver of statues am I, to fashion figures
stationary on their pedestal; but come, sweet song! on every argosy
and skiff set forth from Ægina to proclaim that Pytheas, Lampon's son,
by strength of might is victor in Nemean games, upon whose chin and
cheek you see not yet the tender mother of the vine-flower, summer's
bloom."[120] Or again: "Hallowed bloom of youth, herald of Aphrodite's
ambrosial pleasures, who, resting on the eyelids of maidens and of
boys, bearest one aloft with gentle hands of violence, but another
rudely!"[121] Or once again, in a still grander style:
"Listen! for verily it is of beauty's queen, or of the
Graces, that we turn the glebe, approaching the rocky centre
of the deep-voiced earth: where for the blest Emmenidæ and
stream-washed Acragas, yea, and for Zenocrates, is built a
treasure-house of Pythian hymns in the golden Apollonian vale.
This, no rain of winter, driving on the wings of wind the
pitiless army of the rushing cloud, no hurricane shall toss,
storm-lashed with pebbles of the uptorn beach, into the briny
ocean caves; but in pure light its glorious face shall speak
the victory that brings a common fame on thy sire, Thrasybulus,
and thy race, remaining in the windings of Crissean
valleys."[122]
We have already seen how Pindar compares his odes to arrows, to
sun-soaring eagles, to flowers of the Muses, to wine in golden
goblets, to water, to a shrine which no years will fret away. Another
strange figure[123] may be quoted from the third Nemean (line 76):
"I send to thee this honey mingled with white milk; the dew of their
mingling hangs around the bowl, a draught of song, flowing through the
Æolian breath of flutes." It will be perceived that to what is called
confusion of metaphors Pindar shows a lordly indifference. Swift and
sudden lustre, the luminousness of a meteor, marks this monarch of
lyric song. He grasps an image, gives it a form of bronze, irradiates
it with the fire of flame or down-poured sunlight.
To do justice to Pindar's power of narrative by extracts and
translations is impossible. No author suffers more by mutilation and by
the attempt to express in another language and another rhythm what he
has elaborately fashioned. Yet it may be allowed me to direct attention
to the rapidity with which the burning of Coronis (Pyth. iii. 38) and
the birth of Rhodes from the sea (Ol. vii. 54) are told in words the
grandest, simplest, and most energetic that could be found. This is the
birth of Iamos (Ol. vi. 39):
Nor could she hide from Æpytus the seed
Divine: but he to Pytho, chewing care,
Journeyed to gain for this great woe some rede;
She loosening her crimson girdle fair,
And setting on the ground her silver jar,
Beneath the darksome thicket bare a son,
Within whose soul flamed godhead like a star;
And to her aid the golden-haired sent down
Mild Eleithuia and the awful Fates,
Who stood beside, while from the yearning gates
Of childbirth, with a brief and joyous pain,
Came Iamos into the light, whom she therewith
Sore-grieving left upon the grass: amain
By gods' decree two bright-eyed serpents lithe
Tended, and with the harmless venom fed
Of bees, the boy; nor ceased they to provide
Due nurture. But the king, what time he sped
Homeward from rocky Pytho, to his side
Called all his household, asking of the son
Born of Evadne, for he said that none
But Phoebus was the sire, and he should be
Chief for his prophecy 'mid mortal men,
Nor should his children's seed have end. Thus he
Uttered the words oracular: and then
They swore they had not heard or seen the child,
Now five days old; but he within the reed
And thick-entangled woodland boskage wild,
His limbs 'mid golden beams and purple brede
Of gillyflowers deep-sunken, lay; wherefore
He by his mother's wish for all time bore
That deathless name. But when he plucked the flower
Of golden-wreathéd youth, he went and stood
Midmost Alpheus, at the midnight hour,
And called upon the ruler of the flood,
His ancestor Poseidon, and the lord
Of god-built Delos, praying that he might
Rear up some race to greatness. Then the word
Responsive of his sire upon the night
Sounded:--'Arise, my son, go forth and fare
Unto the land whereof all men shall share!'
So came they to the high untrodden mound
Of Cronion; and there a double meed
Of prophecy on Iamos was bound,
Both from the voice that knows no lie to heed
Immortal words, and next, when Herakles,
Bold in his counsels, unto Pisa came,
Founding the festivals of sacred peace
And mighty combats for his father's fame,
Then on the topmost altar of Jove's hill,
The seat of sooth oracular to fill.
After so much praise of Pindar's style, it must be confessed that
he has faults. One of these is notoriously tumidity--an overblown
exaggeration of phrase. For example, when he wants to express that
he cannot enlarge on the fame of Ægina, but will relate as quickly
as he can the achievements of Aristomenes which he has undertaken,
he says: "But I am not at leisure to consecrate the whole long tale
to the lyre and delicate voice, lest satiety should come and cause
annoy; but that which is before my feet shall go at running speed--thy
affair, my boy--the latest of the noble deeds made winged by means
of my art."[124] The imaginative force which enabled him to create
epithets like #Philaglaos#, #pamporphyros#, and to put them exactly in
their proper places, like blocks of gleaming alabaster or of glowing
porphyry--for the architectural power over language is eminent in
Pindar; the Titanic faculty of language which produced such phrases as
#ex adamantos ê sidarou kechalkeutai melainan kardian psychrâi phlogi#,
did also betray him into expressions as pompous and frigid as these:
#poikilophormingos aoidas ... schoinoteneia t' aoida dithyrambôn#.
These, poured forth by Pindar in the insolence of prodigality, when
imitated by inferior poets, produced that inflated manner of lyrical
diction which Aristophanes ridicules in Kinesias. The same may be said
about his mixed metaphors, whereof the following are fair examples:
#doxan echô tin' epi glôssâi akonas ligyras
ha m' ethelonta proselkei kallirooisi pnoais.#--Ol. vi. 82.
#Kôpan schason tachy d' ankyran ereison chthoni
prôirathe choirados alkar petras
enkômiôn gar aôtos hymnôn
ep' allot' allon hôte melissa thynei logon.#--Pyth. x. 51.
Nor are these the worst, perhaps, of the sort which might be chosen:
for Pindar uses images like precious stones, setting them together in a
mass, without caring to sort them, so long as they produce a gorgeous
show. Apparent incoherences, involving difficulty to the reader, and
producing a superficial effect of obscurity, constitute another class
of his alleged faults--due partly to his allusive and elliptical style,
partly to his sudden transitions, partly to the mixture of his images.
Incapable of what is commonplace, too fiery to trudge, like Simonides,
along the path of rhetorical development, infinitely more anxious to
realize by audacity the thought that seizes him than to make it easy to
his hearer, Pindar is obscure to all who are unwilling to assimilate
their fancy to his own. La Harpe called the Divine Comedy _une
amplification stupidement barbare_: what, if he had found occasion to
speak the truth of his French mind, would he have said about the Odes
of Pindar? Another difficulty, apart from these of verbal style and
imagination, is derived from the fact that the mechanism of Pindar's
poetry, carefully as it is planned, is no less carefully concealed. He
seems to take delight in trying to solve the problem of how slight a
suggestion can be made to introduce a lengthy narrative. The student is
obliged to maintain his attention at the straining-point if an ode of
Pindar's, even after patient analysis, is to present more than a mass
of confused thoughts and images to his mind. But when he has caught the
poet's drift, how delicate is the machinery, how beautiful is the art,
which governs this most sensitive fabric of linked melodies! What the
hearers made of these odes--the athletes for whom they were written,
the handsome youths praised in them, the rich men at whose tables they
were chanted--remains an impenetrable mystery. Had the Greek race
perceptions infinitely finer than ours? Or did the classic harmonies
of Pindar sweep over their souls, ruffling the surface merely, but
leaving the deeps untouched, as the soliloquies of _Hamlet_ or the
profound philosophy of _Troilus and Cressida_ must have been lost upon
the groundlings of Elizabeth's days, who caught with eagerness at the
queen's poisoned goblet or the by-play of Sir Pandarus? That is a
problem we cannot solve. All we know for certain is, that even allowing
for the currency of Pindar's language and for the familiarity of his
audience with the circumstances under which his odes were composed,
as well as with their mythological allusions, these poems must at all
times have been more difficult to follow than Bach's fugue in G minor
to a man who cannot play the organ.
FOOTNOTES:
[104] This and all references are made to Bergk's text of Pindar.
[105] See above, p. 303.
[106] Translated by Conington, from Fragment ii. of _Dirges_.
[107] _Purg._, ix. 19.
[108] _Carm._, iv. 2. Translated thus by Conington:
Pindar, like torrent from the steep
Which, swollen with rain, its banks o'erflows,
With mouth unfathomably deep,
Foams, thunders, glows.
[109] 7th Ol.
[110] Compare this with the passage in Pythian, iii. 68, where Pindar
describes himself #Ionian temnôn thalassan#.
[111] Bergk, _Poetæ Lyrici_, p. 1301.
[112] Pyth. iv. 263.
[113] These pregnant words imply self-government and self-restraint
in obedience to a high ideal of order and symmetry, as opposed to the
perils and the uncomeliness of extravagance.
[114] "Hateful of a truth, even in days of old, was treacherous
blandishment, attendant of wily words designing guile, mischief-making
slander, which loves to wrest the splendor of fame and to maintain the
unreal honors of ignoble men. Never may such be my temper, Zeus, my
father! but may I follow the plain paths of life, that, dying, I may
leave no foul fame to my children. Some pray for gold, and some for
vast lands; but I to please my countrymen, and so to hide my limbs
beneath the earth, praising where praise is due, and sowing blame for
sinful men. Virtue grows and blooms, like a tree that shoots up under
fostering dews, when skilled men and just raise it towards the liquid
air." ... "Among my fellow-citizens I look with brightness in my eye,
not having overstepped due bounds, and having removed from before my
feet all violence. May future time come kindly to me." ... "May I
obtain from Heaven the desire of what is right, aiming at things within
my powers in my prime of life. For finding, as I do, that the middle
status in a city flourishes with more lasting prosperity, I deprecate
the lot of kings." ... "Passing the pleasure of the days, I gently
glide towards old age and man's destined end; for all alike we die: yet
is our fortune unequal; and if a man seek far, short is his strength to
reach the brazen seat of the gods: verily winged Pegasus cast his lord
Bellerophon, who sought to come into the dwellings of the heaven, unto
the company of Zeus." ... "Seek not to be Zeus, ... mortal fortunes are
for mortal men."
[115] Compare for a similar freedom of judgment Antigone's famous
speech on the unwritten Laws.
[116] The conscience forms a strong point in the ethical systems
of many of the ancients, especially of Plato, of Lucretius, of
Persius--authors otherwise dissimilar enough as representing three
distinct species of thought. In mythology it receives an imperfect
embodiment in the Erinnyes, who, however, are spiritual forces acting
from without, rather than from within, upon the criminal. Purifying
rites belonged to the Mysteries, or #teletai#; they formed a prominent
feature in the ethics of Empedocles and Pythagoras, and an integral
part of the cult of Apollo and the nether deities. Philosophers like
Plato rejected them as pertaining to ceremonial superstition.
[117] Bunsen's _God in History_, vol. ii. pp. 144 and 136.
[118] Pyth. viii.
[119] Ol. vi.
[120] Nem. v.
[121] Nem. viii.
[122] Pyth. vi.
[123] Compare, too, Nem. vii. 11, 62, 77.
[124] Pyth. viii. 30.