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130 sion of carrying his Ode to Syracuse and training the chorus there. First, he calls his chorus-master "a Muses' mission-staff," alluding to a Greek practice of rolling paper spirally along a stick, and then writing a despatch upon it. When the paper was unrolled, the letters on it appeared, of course, scattered in confusion over it. The receiver rolled the paper once more round a similar stick, and was thus able to read it. It formed, in fact, a rude anticipation of our "cipher-despatches." Æneas, as interpreting Pindar's inspirations to the chorus, is compared to the stick by whose help the despatch was read. For a similar reason Pindar further addresses Æneas as the "mixing-bowl," from which the wine of song is ladled out into those smaller vessels, the members of the chorus, through which at last it reaches Agesias and his friends.

Last follow praises of Syracuse and Hiero, whom he pictures as welcoming Agesias, newly returned in triumph from Stymphalus—returned "home from a home." Agesias, with his double citizenship, Syracusan and Stymphalian, recalls to Pindar the image of a vessel doubly moored at stern and prow, defying the utmost fury of the elements. And still maintaining this little allegory, he prays the deities of the ocean to bring that vessel home with joy:—

Grant, god of the seas, fair journey to these;—

And bid my songs new blooms of grace unfold!"

Diagoras of Rhodes, for whom the Seventh Olympian Ode was written, belonged to a noble, and, in older days, even a royal family in that island. Two curious