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112 consequences of presumption, avarice, and trust in seductive advisers—this is not the immediate and obvious occasion of the story. Hiero was suffering from a painful and dangerous illness, and apparently had invited the poet to visit him. This leads Pindar to express a wish that he could call back from their graves the old masters of Greek leechcraft, to furnish his friend with the relief which he seeks in vain from the degenerate practitioners of his own day. "Could I but reawaken Asclepius, or his teacher Chiron," says the poet, "how gladly would I cross the seas to Hiero, and bring him Health as well as Songs!"

Oh, if still within his grot

Dwelt Chiron sage, and this my lay

Had spells to bind his soul, him had I won

E'en now to send such healer to the good,

(Of Phœbus or his sire, some true-born son!)

My bark should cleave the Ionian foam, and seek the hospitable home

Of Ætna's chief, by Arethusa's flood."

And in this connection Pindar relates the whole story of Asclepius, the son of Phœbus, miraculously rescued from the flames of his mother's funeral pyre, trained—like Jason and Achilles and many another youthful hero—in the hospitable cave of Chiron, appearing afterwards as the most skilled physician of his day, healing the sick, and even at last raising the dead,—an interference with the prerogative of Zeus which was punished by the instant destruction of both the Healer and his patient.