Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/398

368 truth.” From a later Lyric poet—Simonides of Ceos (B.C. 556–468)—we have again some valuable remains, especially one beautiful hymn or dirge describing Danae afloat in the wooden chest with her infant son; and also a stanza of nine brilliant lines on the dead at Thermopylae—

But the lyric art was carried to its highest perfection by Pindar (about B.C. 521–442), of whose work, how- ever, we have only that part which consisted of hymns of Victory, that is, odes celebrating victors in the great games. Though a Boeotian, and residing at Thebes, Pindar was employed to write these odes by men of all states, and his plan was to say little about the individual victor, but to dilate upon the legends concerned, sometimes only remotely, with his native country or supposed ancestry. The influence of these poems was national just because of this detachment from a personal or local view of things. The legends were the common heritage of Greece, handed down from heroic times, and representing the highest aspirations of the people. They are also so represented as to soften or explain away those stories which attributed immoral or unjust actions to the