Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/241

Rh ambition, which his courtiers well knew how to turn to a bad account. Pindar exhorts him to tranquillity and contentedness of mind, to calm cheerfulness, and to clemency, saying to him : "Be as thou knowest how to be; the ape in the boy's story is indeed fair, very fair; but Rhadamanthus was happy because he plucked the genuine fruits of the mind, and did not take delight in the delusions which follow the arts of the whisperer. The venom of calumny is an evil hard to be avoided, whether by him who hears or by him who is the object of it; for the ways of calumniators are like those of foxes." Pindar speaks in the same free and manly tone to Arcesilaus IV., king of Cyrene, who afterwards brought on the ruin of his dynasty by his tyrannical severity, and who at that time kept Damophilus, one of the noblest of the Cyreneans, in unjust banishment. "Now understand the enigmatic wisdom of Œdipus. If any one lops with a sharp axe the branches of a large oak, and spoils her stately form, she loses indeed her verdure, but she gives proof of her strength, when she is consumed in the winter fire, or when, torn from her place in the forest, she performs the melancholy office of a pillar in the palace of a foreign prince . Thy office is to be the physician of the country: Pæan honours thee; therefore thou must treat with a gentle hand its festering wounds. It is easy for a fool to shake the stability of a city; but it is hard to place it again on its foundations, unless a god direct the rulers. Gratitude for these good deeds is already in store for thee. Deign therefore to bestow all thy care upon the wealthy Cyrene ."

Thus lofty and dignified was the position which Pindar assumed with regard to these princes; and he remained true to the principle which he so frequently proclaims, that frankness and sincerity are always laudable. But his intercourse with the princes of his time appears to have been limited to poetry. We do not find him, like Simonides, the daily associate, counsellor, and friend of kings and statesmen; he plays no part in the public events of his time, either as a politician or a courtier. Neither was his name, like that of Simonides, distinguished in the Persian war; partly because his fellow-citizens, the Thebans, were, together with half of the Grecian nation, on the Persian side, whilst the spirit of independence and victory were with the other half. Nevertheless the lofty character of Pindar's muse rises superior to these unfavourable circumstances. He did not indeed make the vain attempt of gaining over the Thebans to the cause of Greece; but he sought to appease the internal dissensions which threatened to destroy