Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/239

Rh war; calling it "The Pillar of Greece, brilliant Athens, the worthy theme of poets." But the causes which determined his poetical character are to besought in an earlier period, and in the Doric and Æolic parts of Greece; and hence we shall divide Pindar from his contemporary Æschylus, by placing the former at the close of the early period, the latter at the head of the new period of literature.

Pindar's native place was Cynocephalæ, a village in the territory of Thebes, the most considerable city of Bœotia. Although in his time the voices of Pierian bards, and of epic poets of the Hesiodean school had long been mute in Bœotia, yet there was still much love for music and poetry, which had taken the prevailing form of lyric and choral compositions. That these arts were widely cultivated in Bœotia is proved by the fact that two women, Myrtis and Corinna, had attained great celebrity in them during the youth of Pindar. Both were competitors with Pindar in poetry. Myrtis strove with him for a prize at public games: and although Corinna said, "It is not meet that the clear toned Myrtis, a woman born, should enter the lists with Pindar :" yet she is said (perhaps from jealousy of his growing fame) to have often contended against him in the agones, and to have gained the victory over him five times. Pausanias, in his travels, saw at Tanagra, the native city of Corinna, a picture in which she was represented as binding her head with a fillet of victory which she had gained in a contest with Pindar. He supposes that she was less indebted for this victory to the excellence of her poetry than to her Bœotian dialect, which was more familiar to the ears of the judges at the games, and to her extraordinary beauty. Corinna also assisted the young poet with her advice; it is related of her that she recommended him to ornament his poems with mythical narrations, but that when he had composed a hymn, in the first six verses of which (still extant) almost the whole of the Theban mythology was introduced, she smiled and said, "We should sow with the hand, not with the whole sack." Too little of the poetry of Corinna has been preserved to allow of our forming a safe judgment of her style of composition. The extant fragments refer mostly to mythological subjects, particularly to heroines of the Bœotian legends; this, and her rivalry with Pindar, show that she must be classed not in the Lesbian school of lyric poets, but among the masters of choral poetry.

The family of Pindar seems to have been skilled in music; we learn from the ancient biographies of him that his father, or his uncle, was a flute-player. Flute-playing (as we have more than once remarked