Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/242

220 Thebes during the war, by admonishing his fellow citizens to union and concord : and after the war was ended, he openly proclaims, in odes intended for the Æginetans and Athenians, his admiration of the heroism of the victors. In an ode, composed a few months after the surrender of Thebes to the allied army of the Greeks (the seventh Isthmian), his feelings appear to be deeply moved by the misfortunes of his native city; but he returns to the cultivation of poetry as the Greeks were now delivered from their great peril, and a god had removed the stone of Tantalus from their heads. He expresses a hope that freedom will repair all misfortunes: and he turns with a friendly confidence to the city of Ægina, which, according to ancient legends, was closely allied with Thebes, and whose good offices with the Peloponnesians might perhaps raise once more the humbled head of Bœotia.

§ 3. Having mentioned nearly all that is known of the events of Pindar's life, and his relations to his contemporaries, we proceed to consider him more closely as a poet, and to examine the character and form of his poetical productions.

The only class of poems which enable us to judge of Pindar's general style are the epinikia or triumphal odes. Pindar, indeed, excelled in all the known varieties of choral poetry; viz. hymns to the gods, pæans and dithyrambs appropriate to the worship of particular divinities, odes for processions, songs of maidens , mimic dancing songs , drinking songs , dirges , and encomiastic odes to princes , which last approached most nearly to the epinikia. The poems of Pindar in these various styles were nearly as renowned among the ancients as the triumphal odes; which is proved by the numerous quotations of them. Horace too, in enumerating the different styles of Pindar's poetry, puts the dithyrambs first, then the hymns, and afterwards the epinikia and the threnes. Nevertheless, there must have been some decided superiority in the epinikia, which caused them to be more frequently transcribed in the later period of antiquity, and thus rescued them from perishing with the rest of the Greek lyric poetry. At any rate, these odes, from the vast variety of their subjects and style, and their refined and elaborate structure,—some approaching to hymns and pæans, others to scolia and hyporchemes,—serve to indemnify us for the loss of the other sorts of lyric poetry.

We will now explain, as precisely as possible, the occasion of an epinikian ode, and the mode of its execution. A victory has been gained in a contest at a festival, particularly at one of the four great games most prized by the Greek people, either by the speed of horses, the