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 ix. 80). Here we see the exulting sense of inborn strength, in many other places we perceive the feeling of conscious art—as in the phrase , so apt for his method of inlaying an ode with mythical subjects, or when he compares the opening of a song to the front of a stately building (Ol. vi. 3). Pindar's sympathy with external nature was deeper and keener than is often discernible in the poetry of his age. It appears, for example, in his welcome of the season when “the chamber of the hours is opened, and delicate plants perceive the fragrant spring” (fr. 53, Bergk 4, 75), in the passage where Jason invokes “the rushing strength of waves and winds, and the nights, and the paths of the deep” (Pyth. iv. 195), in the lines on the eclipse of the sun (fr 84, Bergk,4 107), and in the picture of the eruption, when Etna, “pillar of the sky, nurse of keen snow all the year,” sends forth “ pure springs of tire unapproachable” (Pyth i. 20) The poet’s feeling for colour is often noticeable —as in the beautiful story of the birth of Iamus—when Evadne lays aside her silver pitcher and her girdle of scarlet web; the babe is found, “its delicate body steeped in the golden and deep purple rays of pansies” (Ol. vi 55).

The spirit of art, in every form, is represented for Pindar by —“the source of all delights to mortals” (Ol. i. 30)—or by the personified Charites (Graces). The Charites were often represented as young maidens, decking themselves with early flowers-the rose, in particular, being sacred to them as well as to Aphrodite In Pindar's mind, as in the old Greek conception from which the worship of the Charites sprang. the instinct of beautiful art was inseparable from the sense of natural beauty The period from 500 to 460, to which most of Pindar's extant odes belong, marked a stage in the development of Greek sculpture. The schools of Argos, Sicyon and Aegina were effecting a transition from archaic types to the art which was afterwards matured in the age of Pheidias. Olympia forms the central link between Pindar's poetry and Greek sculpture From about 560 onwards sculpture had been applied to the commemoration of athletes, chiefly at Olympia. In a striking passage (Nem. v. ad. init.) Pindar recognizes sculpture and poetry as sister arts employed in the commemoration of the athlete, and contrasts the merely local effect of the statue with the wide diffusion of the poem “No sculptor I, to fashion images that shall stand idly on one pedestal for aye; no, go thou forth from Aegina, sweet song of mine, on every freighted ship, on each light bark.” Many particular subjects were common to Pindar and contemporary sculpture Thus (1) the sculptures on the east pediment of the temple at Aegina represented Heracles coming to seek the aid of Telamon against Troy—a theme brilliantly treated by Pindar in the fifth Isthmian; (2) Hiero’s victory in the chariot-race was commemorated at Olympia by the joint work of the sculptors Onatas and Calamis; (3) the Gigantomachia, (4) the wedding of Heracles and Hebe, (5) the war of the Centaurs with the Lapithae, and (6) a contest between Heracles and Apollo, are instances of mythical material treated alike by the poet and by sculptors of his day The contemporary improvements in town architecture, introducing spacious and well paved streets, such as the ; at Cyrene (Pyth. v 87) suggests his frequent comparison of the paths of song to broad and stately causeways (, Nem. vi. 47, Isthm. vi. 22). A song is likened to cunning work which blends gold, ivory and coral (Nem. vii. 78). Pindar's feeling that poetry, though essentially a divine gift, has a technical side, and that on this side it has had an historical development like that of other arts, is forcibly illustrated by his reference to the inventions for which Corinth had early been famous He instances (1) the development of the dithyramb, (2) certain improvements in the harnessing and driving of horses, and (3) the addition of the pediment to temples (Ol. xiii. 21)

In the development of Greek lyric poetry two periods are broadly distinguished During the first, from about 600 to 500, lyric poetry is local or tribal—as Alcaeus and Sappho write for Lesbians, Alcman and Stesichorus for Dorlans During the second period, which takes its rise in the sense of Hellenic unity created by the Persian wars, the lyric poet addresses all Greece. Pindar and Simonides are the great representatives of this second period, to which Bacchylides, the nephew of Simonides, also belongs. These, with a few minor poets, are classed by German writers as die universalen Meliker. The Greeks usually spoke, not of “lyric,” but of “melic” poetry (i.e. meant to be sung, and not, like the epic, recited), and “universal melic” is lyric poetry addressed to all Greece. But Pindar is more than the chief extant lyrist. Epic, lyric and dramatic poetry succeeded each other in Greek literature by a natural development. Each of them was the spontaneous utterance of the age which brought It forth. In Pindar we can see that phase of the Greek mind which produced Homeric epos passing over into the phase which produced Athenian drama. His spirit is often thoroughly dramatic-witness such scenes as the interview between Jason and Pelias (Pyth. iv.), the meeting of Apollo and Chiron (Pyth. ix), the episode of Castor and Polydeuces (Nem. x.), the entertainment of Heracles by Telamon (Isthm. v.). Epic narrative alone was no longer enough for the men who had known that great trilogy of national life, the Persian invasions; they longed to see the heroes moving and to hear them speaking. The poet of Olympia, accustomed to see beautiful forms in vivid action or vivid art, was well fitted to be the lyric interpreter of the new dramatic impulse. Pindar has more of the Homeric spirit than any Greek lyric poet known to us. On the other side, he has a genuine, if less evident, kinship with Aeschylus and Sophocles. Pindar's work, like Olympia itself, illustrates the spiritual unity of Greek art.

PINDARICS, the name by which was known a class of loose and irregular odes greatly in fashion in England during the close