Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/77

 the Syracusan Hiero's wife that it is better to be than : and his avarice is again a subject of allusion in Arist. Eth. N. iv. 2 ad fin., as well as in Aristophanes, Pax, 697 f. This illustration of Pindar's might be further recommended by the fact that elsewhere he uses  figuratively of the front or opening of a poem. In Nem. viii. 37:— | | : "Some pray for gold and some for boundless land; mine be it to have pleased my folk e'en till I lay my limbs in earth, still praising things worthy of praise, but sowing censure for evil doers." It is, I venture to think, a mistaken cynicism which would regard this utterance as conventional. Rather may we believe that one of Pindar's distinctions among contemporary poets was just the desire to raise his art, by the free and earnest exercise of original genius, above the reproach of a sordid servility,—from which, as Aristotle shows, even such a man as Simonides was not exempt. We may infer this, not merely from detached texts, but from Pindar's poetry as a whole, and from the spirit which study can discern to be the animating and dominant influence. He claims that he is independent—giving praise only where it is due. Note, as illustrating this, a well-marked trait of the Odes—Pindar's insistence on the merit of the trainer or the charioteer, even where this might somewhat detract from the lustre of the victor for whom the