Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/109

Rh PINDAR jpute Among the Greeks of his own and later times, Pindar was pre-eminently distinguished for his piety towards the reece. g j s ( e {icr ey geo-TaTo&amp;lt;&amp;gt;, cnict. vit.). He tells us that, &quot;near to the vestibule &quot; of his house (-n-ap eynw irpoOvpov, Pyth. iii. 77), choruses of maidens used to dance and sing by night in praise of the Mother of the Gods (Cybele) and Pan deities peculiarly associated with the Phrygian music of the flute, in which other members of Pindar s family besides the poet himself are said to have excelled. A statue and shrine of Cybele, which he dedicated at Thebes, were the work of the Theban artists, Aristomedes and Socrates. He also dedicated at Thebes a statue to Hermes Agoraios, and another, by Calamis, to Zeus Ammon. The latter god claimed his especial veneration because Gyrene, one of the homes of his vEgid ancestry, stood &quot;where Zeus Ammon hath his seat,&quot; i.e., near the oasis and temple (Aios eV *A/x/xwvos $e//,e$Aois, Pyth. iv. 16). The author of one of the Greek lives of Pindar says that, is &quot; when Pausanias the king of the Lacedaemonians was use burning Thebes, some one wrote on Pindar s house, Burn area. no j. ^ e ] louse o f pindar the poet ; and thus it alone escaped destruction. &quot; This incident, of which the occasion is not further denned, has been regarded as a later inven tion. 1 Better attested, at least, is the similar clemency of Alexander the Great, when he sacked Thebes one hundred and eight years after the traditional date of Pindar s death (335 B.C.). He spared only (1) the Cadmeia, or citadel, of Thebes (thenceforth to be occupied by a Macedonian garrison) ; (2) the temples and holy places ; and (3) Pindar s house. While the inhabitants were sold into slavery, exception was made only of (1) priests and priestesses ; (2) persons who had been connected by private ena with Philip or Alexander, or by public ma with the Macedonians ; (3) Pindar s descendants. It is probable enough, as Dio Chrysostom suggests (ii. 33, 25), that Alexander was partly moved by personal gratitude to a poet who had celebrated his ancestor Alexander I. of Macedon. But he must have been also, or chiefly, influ enced by the sacredness which in the eyes of all Hellenes surrounded Pindar s memory, not only as that of a great national poet, but also as that of a man who had stood in a specially close relation to the gods, and, above all, to the Delphian Apollo. 2 Upwards of six hundred years after Pindar s death, the traveller Pausanias saw an iron chair which was preserved among the most precious treasures of the temple in the sanctuary at Delphi. It was the chair, he was told, &quot; in which Pindar used to sit, whenever he came to Delphi, and to chant those of his songs which pertain to Apollo.&quot; Mar During the second half of Pindar s life, Athens was rising to that supremacy in literature and art which was ens&amp;gt; to prove more lasting than her political primacy. Pindar did not live to see the Parthenon, or to witness the mature triumphs of Sophocles ; but he knew the sculpture of Calamis, and he may have known the masterpieces of ^Eschylus. It is interesting to note the feeling of this great Theban poet, who stands midway between Homeric epos and Athenian drama, towards the Athens of which Thebes was so often the bitterest foe, but with which he himself had so large a measure of spiritual kinship. A few words remain from a dithyramb in which he paid a glowing tribute to those &quot; sons of Athens &quot; who &quot; laid the shining foundations of freedom &quot; (TraiSes A$ava&amp;lt;W e/3a/Wro 1 Schaefer, Demosthenes und seme Zeit, iii. 119. a It will be remarked that history requires us to modify the state ment in Milton s famous lines: &quot; The great Emuthian conqueror bade spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower Went to the ground.&quot; Indeed, the point of the incident depends much on the fact that the temples and Pindar s house were classed together for exemption. 99 Kprrn-lS&quot; e Aet ^epias, fr. 77, Bergk, 4th ed.), while Athens itself is thus invoked : & rat Xnrapal KOL ioo-Tt^avot Kai dotoi/xoi, EAAaSos epeicrjU.a, KAeii/at A.6avai, &ai/j.6viov n-ToXieOpov. Isocrates, writing in 353 B.C., states that the phrase EAAaSos epeio-^a, &quot;stay of Hellas,&quot; so greatly gratified the Athenians that they conferred on Pindar the high distinction of Trpofevux (i.e., appointed him honorary consul, as it were, for Athens at Thebes), besides present ing him with a large sum of money (Antid. 1G6). One of the letters of the pseudo-^Eschines (Ep. iv.) gives an improbable turn to the story by saying that the Thebans had fined Pindar for his praise of Athens, and that the Athenians repaid him twice the sum. 3 The notice pre served by Isocrates less than one hundred years after Pindar s death is good warrant for the belief that Pindar had received some exceptional honours from Athens. Pausanias saw a statue of Pindar at Athens, near the temple of Ares (i. 8, 4). Besides the fragment just mentioned, several passages in Pindar s extant odes bespeak his love for Athens. Its name is almost always joined by him with some epithet of praise or reverence. In alluding to the great battles of the Persian wars, while he gives the glory of Plataea to the Spartans, he assigns that of Salamis to the Athenians (Pyth. i. 75). In cele brating the Pythian victory of the Athenian Megacles, he begins thus : &quot; Fairest of preludes is the renown of Athens for the mighty race of the Alcmseonidoj. What home, or what house, could I call mine by a name that should sound more glorious for Hellas to hear ? &quot; Refer ring to the fact that an ^Eginetan victor in the games had been trained by an Athenian, he says xprj 8 a-rr A.6avav TfKTov d8Xr)Tal&amp;lt;Tiv Z(jifj.fv (Kern. . 49) ; &quot; meet it is that a shaper of athletes should come from Athens &quot; where, recollecting how often Pindar compares the poet s efforts to the athlete s, we may well believe that he was thinking of his own early training at Athens under Lasus of Hermione. Pindar s versatility as a lyric poet is one of the Works, characteristics remarked by Horace (Carm. iv. 2), and is proved by the fragments, though the poems which have come down entire represent only one class of compositions the Epinicia, or odes of victory, commemorating suc cesses in the great games. The lyric types to which the fragments belong, though it cannot be assumed that the list is complete, are at least numerous and varied. 1. &quot;f/jivoi, Hymns to deities as to Zeus Ammon, to Persephone, Frag- to Fortune. The fragmentary VJJLVOS entitled Tj/Bcuots seems to nients. have celebrated the deities of Thebes. 2. Uaiaves, Pssans, expres sing prayer or praise for the help of a protecting god, especially Apollo, Artemis, or Zeus. 3. Ai6vpa/j.&oi, Dithyrambs, odes of a lofty _and impassioned strain, sung by choruses in honour of Dionysus (cp. Find., 01. xiii. 18, ral Aiwvvo-ou iro6ev Qttyavtv ffuv 0oridTa, Xdptrts 8i9vpd/j.f}&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;, where Pindar alludes to the choral form given to the dithyramb, circ. 600 B.C., by Arion, /SoTjAarrjs, &quot;ox-driving,&quot; perhaps meaning &quot;winning an ox as prize &quot;). 4. npo&amp;lt;r68ia, Processional Songs, choral chants for worshippers approaching a shrine. One was written by Pindar for the Delians, another for the .fflginetans. 5. flapOfvia, Choral Songs for Maidens. The reference in Find. Pyth. iii. 77 to maidens worshipping Cybele and Pan near the poet s house is illustrated by the fact that one of these UapBtvia invoked &quot; Pan, lord of Arcadia, attendant of the Great Mother, watcher of her awful shrine&quot; (fr. 95, Bergk). 6. tiropx^a.ra, Choral Dance- Songs, adapted to a lively movement, used from an early date iii the cult of Apollo, and afterwards in that of other gods, especially Dionysus. To this class belongs one of the finest fragments (107), written for the Thebans in connexion with propitiatory rites after an eclipse of the sun, probably that of April 30, 463 B.C. 7. EyKw/j.ia, Songs of Praise (for men, while tip-voi. were for gods), to be sung by a KU^OS, or festal company. In strictness fjKu&amp;gt;fj.iov was the genus of which eiriviKiov was a species ; but the latter is more conveniently treated as a distinct kind. Pindar wrote encomia for Theron, despot of Acragas, and for Alexander I. (son of Amyntas), king of Macedon. 8. Z/coAia, Festal Songs. The 3 Compare Jebb, Attic Orators, vol. ii. p. 143. ~