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Rh ing between the once friendly houses of Deinomenes and Ænesidamus—the rashness, the violence, and the disregard of natural ties and obligations involved in the whole transaction—are rebuked by implication in the poet's strictures on Ixion. Yet Pindar's warnings are conveyed with such tact that the Ode never ceases to seem an encomium. He dwells on the innate nobility of Hiero's character, and he urges the king to escape his temptations, not by becoming better, but by being what he is:—

Flattery and evil counsels, he hints, are putting Hiero into a false position. Let him be himself, and no further reformation will be needed. Was ever an unpalatable warning conveyed with more consummate tact? The very reproach assumes the guise of a compliment. The censor is at the same time a panegyrist.

No less delicately does Pindar hint his disapproval of another defect in Hiero's character, a tendency to avarice. He enlarges, not on the evil effects of the vice, but on the advantages of the virtue which is its opposite, and contrives simultaneously to pay tribute to the magnificence of Hiero's position:—

Wealth is thine, and bounty more may its powers unfold:

Sovereign thou of mighty nation, and tower-crowned town!

Boasteth any, that ever Hellas in days of old

Bare a son as peerless in wealth, or in high renown?

—Empty his vaunt, his labour lost!