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 advanced phase of democracy. The government of Thebes at the time of the Persian wars had been, in the phrase of Thucydides, a ,—an oligarchy of a narrow and non-constitutional type; this had been replaced, after the repulse of the Persian invasion, by an (Thuc. iii. 62). The latter phrase well expresses, as I conceive, the shade of Greek political life most congenial to Pindar. See the suggestive passage in Pythian xi. (478 B.C.) 53: |  | : "in polities I find the middle state crowned with more enduring good; therefore praise I not the despot's portion; those virtues move my zeal which serve the folk." One in whom pride of ancestry fostered a reverence for the traditions of Dorian civil life could have as little liking for absolutism as for the rule of the mob; and that Pindar felt such reverence is well seen in the passage which speaks of Hiero as having founded Aetna (the restored Catana), in the laws of the Hyllic rule: "yea," adds the poet, "and the Dorian sons of Pamphylus and of the Heracleidae, dwelling under the cliffs of Taygetus, are ever content to abide by the ordinances of Aegimius" (Pyth. i. 63). When Pindar speaks of the royal lot