Page:Odes of Pindar (Myers).djvu/15

Rh Of Pindar as a poet it is hard indeed to speak adequately, and almost as hard to speak briefly, for a discussion of his poetical characteristics once begun may wander far before even a small part has been said of what might be. To say that to his poetry in supreme degree belong the qualities of force, of vividness, of intoxicating splendour, of the majesty of a lofty style, the expression of a high personality, of a mastery of rhythm and metre and imaginative diction, of an intensely Hellenic spirit modified by an unmistakable individuality, above all of a pre-eminent rapidity as of an eagle's flight or of very lightning—to say all this would be to suggest some of the most obvious features of these wonderful odes; and each of these qualities, and many more requiring exacter delineation, might be illustrated with numberless instances which even in the faint image of a translation would furnish ample testimony. But as this introduction is intended for those who purpose reading Pindar's poetry, or at any rate the present translation of it, for themselves, I will leave it to them to discover for themselves the qualities which have given Pindar his high place among poets, and will pass on to suggest briefly his claims to interest us by reason of his place in the history of human action and human thought.

We know very little of Pindar's life. He was born in or about the year B.C. 522, at the village of Kynoskephalai near Thebes. He was thus a citizen of Thebes and seems to have always had his home there. But he travelled among other states, many of which have been glorified by his art. For his praise of Athens, 'bulwark of Hellas,' the city which at Artemision 'laid the foundation of freedom,' the Thebans are said to have fined him; but the generous Athenians paid the fine, made him their Proxenos, and erected his statue at the public cost. For the magnificent Sicilian princes, Hieron of Syracuse and Theron of Akragas, not unlike the Medici in the position they held, Pindar wrote five of the longest of his extant odes, and probably visited them in Sicily. But he would not quit his home to be an