Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/379

Rh time long previous to the foundation of the city. The legend related that when Hercules came into Italy he was hospitably received on the spot, where Rome was afterwards built, by the Potitii and the Pinarii, two of the most distinguished families in the country. The hero, in return, taught them the way in which he was to be worshipped ; but as the Pinarii were not at hand when the sacrificial banquet was ready, and did not come till the entrails of the victim were eaten, Hercules, in anger, determined that the Pinarii should in all future time be excluded from partaking of the entrails of the victims, and that in all matters re- lating to his worship they should be inferior to the Potitii. These two families continued to be the hereditary priests of Hercules till the censor- ship of App. Claudius (b. c. 312), who purchased from the Potitii the knowledge of the sacred rites, and entrusted them to public slaves, as is related elsewhere. [Potitia Gens.] The Pinarii did not share in the guilt of communicating the sacred knowledge, and therefore did not receive the same punishment as the Potitii, but continued in ex- istence to the latest times. (Dionys. i. 40; Serv. ad Virg. Aen. viii. 268 ; Festus, p. 237, ed. Mdl- ler ; Macrob. Saturn, iii. 6 ; Liv. i. 7 ; Hartung, Die Religion der Romer, vol. ii. p. 30.) It has been remarked, with justice, that the worship of Hercules by the Potitii and Pinarii was a sacrum gentilitium belonging to these gentes, and that in the time of App. Claudius these sacra privata were made sacra publica. (Niebuhr, Hist of Ronie, vol. i. p. 88 ; Gottling, Gesch. der Rom. Staatsverf. p. 178.)

The Pinarii are mentioned in the kingly period [PiNARiA, No. 1 ; PiNARius, No. 1], and were elevated to the consulship soon after the com- mencement of the republic. The first member of the gens, who obtained this dignity, was P. Pina- rius Mamercinus Rufus in B. c. 489. At this early time, Mamercinus is the name of the only family that is mentioned : at a subsequent period, we find families of the name of Natta, Posca, Rusca, and ScARPUs, but no members of them obtained the consulship. On coins, Natta and Scarpus are the only cognomens that occur. The few Pinarii, who occur without a surname, are given below.

 PINA'RIUS. 1. Mentioned in the reign of Tarquinius Superbus (Plut. Comp. Lye. c. Num. 3.)

2. L. PiNARius, the commander of the Roman garrison at Enna in the second Punic war, b. c. 214, suppressed with vigour an attempt at insur- rection which the inhabitants made. (Liv. xxiv. 37—39.)

3. T. PiNAKius, is only known from his having been ridiculed by the orator C.Julius Caesar Strabo, who was curule aedile, b. c. 90. (Cic. de Or. ii. 66.).

4. T. PiNARius, a friend of Cicero, who men- tions him three or four times {ad Ait. vi. 1. § 23, viii. 15, ad Fam. xii. 24). In one passage {ad Q. Fr. iii. 1. § 6), Cicero speaks of his brother, who was probably the same as the following person [No. 5].

5. L. PiNARius, the great-nephew of the dic- tator C. Julius Caesar, being the grandson of Julia, Caesar's eldest sister. In the will of the dictator, Pinarius was named one of his heirs along with his two other great-nephews, C. Octavius and L. Pinarius, Octavius obtaining three-fourths of the property, and the remaining fourth being divided between Pinarius and Pedius. Pinarius after- wards served in the army of the triumvirs in the war against Brutus and Cassius. (Suet. Cues. 83 ; Appian, i?. C. iii. 22, iv. 107.)

6. Pinarius, a Roman eques, whom Augustus ordered to be put to death upon a certain occasion. (Suet. Aug. 27.)

 PI′NDARUS, the greatest lyric poet of Greece, according to the universal testimony of the ancients. Just as Homer was called simply, Aristophanes , and Thucydides , in like manner Pindar was distinguished above all other lyric poets by the title of. Our information however respecting his life is very scanty and meagre, being almost entirely derived from some ancient biographies of uncertain value and authority. Of these we possess five; one prefixed by Thomas Magister to his Scholia on the poet; a second in Suidas; a third usually called the metrical life, because it is written in thirty-five hexameter lines; a fourth first published by Schneider in his edition of Nicander, and subsequently reprinted by Böckh along with the three other preceding lives in his edition of Pindar; and a fifth by Eustathius, which was published for the first time by Tafel in his edition of the Opuscula of Eustathius, Frankfort, 1832.

Pindar was a native of Boeotia, but the ancient biographies leave it uncertain whether he was born at Thebes or at Cynoscephalae, a village in the territory of Thebes. All the ancient biographies agree that his parents belonged to Cynoscephalae; but they might easily have resided at Thebes, just as in Attica an Acharnian or a Salaminian might have lived at Athens or Eleusis. The name of Pindar's parents is also differently stated. His father is variously called Daiphantus, Pagondas, or Scopelinus, his mother Cleidice, Cleodice or Myrto; but some of these persons, such as Scopelinus and Myrto, were probably only his teachers in music and poetry; and it is most likely that the names of his real parents were Daiphantus and Cleidice, Avhich are alone mentioned in the "Metrical Life" of Pindar already referred to. The year of his birth is likewise a disputed point. He was born, as we know from his own testimony (Fragm. 102, ed. Dissen), during the celebration of the Pythian games. Clinton places his birth in Ol. 65. 3, B. C. 518, Böckh in Ol. 64. 3, B. C. 522, but neither of these dates is certain, though the latter is perhaps the most probable. He probably died in his 80th year, though other accounts make him much younger at the time of his death. If he was born in B. C. 522, his death would fall in B. C. 442. He was in the prime of life at the battles of Marathon and Salamis, and was nearly of the same age as the poet Aeschylus; but, as K. O. Müller has well remarked, the causes which determined Pindar's poetical character are to be sought in a period previous to the Persian war, and in the Doric and Aeolic parts of Greece rather than in Athens; and thus we may separate Pindar from his contemporary Aeschylus, by placing the former at the close of the early period, the latter at the head of the new period of literature. One of the ancient biographies mentions that Pindar married Megacleia, the daughter of Lysitheus and Callina; another gives Timoxena as the name of his wife; but he may have married each in succession. He had a son, Daiphantus, and two daughters, Eumetis and Protomacha.

The family of Pindar ranked among the noblest 