Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/73

 wide deep" (Pyth. i. 20). The lines on the eclipse of the sun (frag. 74) are sublime. But it is not the moral sublimity of Aeschylus. Pindar never rises into the sphere of titanic battle between destiny and will. He is always of the earth, even when he is among the gods. For him, past and present are linked by the descent of men, through the heroes, from the gods; he is always thinking of the present in relation either to the heroic past, or to some change which the gods may have in store for the near future. His ethics are not subtle or original, but frankly express the common creed of "good men" in his time:, | (Pyth. ii. 83): "Friendship for friend: foe will I thwart as foe, wolf-like, with changeful course in crooked paths." An ingenious interpretation of the context would make this a sentiment condemned by Pindar. But it seems to be merely the common Greek maxim of his age, that all is fair in war. Compare Isthm. iii. 65, where he praises a man for being in courage a lion, in craft a fox, with the comment,—, "'tis well to worst a foe by any deed." Compare the utterances of Menelaus in the Ajax (1132f.), and of Creon in the Antigone (522).

§ 10. Pindar has much of the old epic tone, and cleaves to the old epic view of the poet as the inspired minstrel. On the other hand, he frequently evinces the sense that poetry has become an art