Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/96

 An ode is sent over the sea "like Phoenician merchandise" (, Pyth. ii. 67). The poet's mind is a register of promised songs, in which a particular debt can be searched out: |  "read me where the son of Archestratus [an Olympian victor] is written in my memory" (Ol. xi. 1). Ample praise, long deferred, is, payment with interest (ib. 9). The trainer who faithfully conveys the poet's thoughts to the chorus is (Ol. vi. 91), "an upright envoy, interpreter from man to man of the Muses with the beauteous hair": the point of  being that the message would not be intelligible if carried by one who was not in exact possession of Pindar's ideas. The cithern is invoked as |  (Pyth. i. 1), "witness for Apollo and the Muses with violet locks, whose thou art": cp. Ol. ix. 98, |, "the tomb of lolaus [at Thebes] and Eleusis by the sea is witness to his glories."

In other connections also Pindar can use homely images, which link his lofty style with the idiom and proverbial philosophy of daily life. Thus:— | (Ol. vi, 8); "yea, let the son of Sostratus know that in this sandal he hath his foot, by grace divine": i.e. stands in this case. One recalls the famous ,