Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/112

Rh J02 p i N P I N Manu scripts and ture 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 (Isihm. 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 /Eschylus and Sophocles. Pindar s work, like Olympia itself, illustrates the spiritual unity of Greek art. The fact that certain glosses and lacuna? are common to all our MSS. of Pindar make it probable that these MSS. are derived from a common archetype. Now the older scholia on Pindar, which editions, appear to have been compiled mainly from the commentaries of Didymus (circ. 15 B.C.), sometimes presuppose a purer text than ours. But the compiler of these older scholia lived after Herodian (160 A.D. ). The archetype of our MSS., then, cannot have been older than the end of the 2d century. Our MSS. fall into two general classes : (1) the older, representing a text which, though often corrupt, is comparatively free from interpolations ; (2) the later, which exhibit the traces of a Byzantine recension, in other words, of lawless conjecture, down to the 14th or 15th century. To the first class belong Parisinus 7, breaking off in Pyth. v. ; Ambrosianus 1, which has only 01. i.-xii.; Mediceus 2; and Vati- canus 2, the two last-named being of the highest value. The edilio priiiccps is the Aldine, Venice, 1513. A modern study of Pindar may be almost said to have begun with Heyne s edition (1773). Hermann did much to advance Pindaric criticism. But Augustus Boeckh (1811-22), who was assisted in the commentary by L. Dissen, is justly regarded as the founder of a scientific treat ment of the poet. The edition of Theodor Bergk (Poet. Lyr.) is marked. by considerable boldness of conjecture, as that of Tycho Mommsen (1864) by a sometimes excessive adherence to MSS. A recension by W. Christ has been published in Tcubner s series (1879). The edition of J. W. Donaldson (Cambridge, 1841) has many merits; but that of C. A. M. Fennell (Cambridge, 1879-83) is better adapted to the needs of English students. The transla tion into English prose by Ernest Myers (2d ed., 1883) is excellent. Pindar s metres have been analysed by J. H. Schmidt in Die Kunstformen der Griechischcn Pocsie (Leipsic, 1868-72). For esti mates of Pindar see the histories of Greek literature by G. Bern- hardy, K. 0. Miiller, Nicolai, and & Burnouf. (R. C. J.) PINE (Pinus, Gr. TUTVS), a name given by the ancients to some of the resinous cone-bearing trees to which it is now applied, and, as limited by modern botanists, the designation of a large genus of true conifers (Abietime), differing from the firs in their hard woody cone-scales being thickened at the apex, and in their slender needle-shaped leaves growing from a membranous sheath, either in pairs or from three to five together, each tuft representing an abortive branch, springing from the axil of a partially deciduous scale-leaf, the base of which remains closely adherent to the stem. The numer ous male catkins are generally arranged in dense whorls around the bases of the young shoots ; the anther-scales, surmounted by a crest-like appendage, shed their abund ant pollen by longitudinal slits ; the two ovules at the base of the inner side of each fertile cone-scale develop into a pair of winged seeds, which drop from the opening scales when mature as in the allied genera. The pines are widely distributed over the north temperate zone, in the southern portions chiefly confined to the mountains, along which, in Central America, a few are found within the tropic ; in more northern regions they frequently form extensive forests, sometimes hardly mingled with other trees. Their soft, straight-grained, resinous, and often durable wood gives to many kinds a high economic value, and some are among the most esteemed of timber trees. Of the two-leaved species, P. sylvestris, the pine of northern Europe, may be taken as a type. When growing in perfection it is one of the finest of the group, and perhaps the most picturesque of forest trees ; attaining a height of from 70 to 120 feet, it is of conical growth when young, but in maturitj acquires a spreading cedar or mushroom-like top, with a straight trunk of from 2 to 4 feet in diameter at the base, and gnarled twisted boughs, densely clothed at the extremities with glaucous green foliage, which contrasts strongly with the fiery red-brown bark. The leaves are rather short, curved, and often FIG. 1. Scotch Fir (Pinus sylrestris). a, male flower and young cones ; b, male catkin ; c, d, outer and inner side of antlier-scale. twisted ; the male catkins, in dense cylindrical whorls, fill the air of the forest with their sulphur-like pollen in May or June, and fecundate the purple female flowers, which, at first sessile and. erect, then become recurved on a lengthening stalk ; the ovate cones, about the length of the leaves, do not reach maturity until the autumn of the following year, and the seeds are seldom scattered until the third spring ; the cone scales terminate in a pyramidal recurved point, well-marked in the green state and in some varieties in the mature cone, but in others scarcely projecting. P. sylvestris is found, in greater or less abund ance, from the hills of Finmark and the plains of Bothnia to the mountains of Spain and even the higher forest-slopes of Etna, while in longitude its range extends from the shores of the North Sea to Kamchatka. Nowhere more abundant than in the Scandinavian peninsula, this tree is the true fir (fur, fura) of the old Norsemen, and still re-