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Rh character. Pindar addresses Arcesilas rather as the ideal king than as a beloved and well-known patron. We find in his language no traces of such an intimacy as undoubtedly existed between the poet and the kings of Syracuse and Agrigentum. Pindar's praises of Arcesilas were probably sincere: Carrhotus, the friend and kinsman of the young king, had doubtless drawn his picture in flattering colours. Yet, a few years later, we find the gross misrule of this very Arcesilas leading to his own ruin, and the final overthrow of the Battiad dynasty in Cyrenè.

The Fourth Pythian Ode is probably the very finest of all Pindar's extant works. It is by far his longest poem; indeed it is more than twice as long as any other Ode, and it exhibits from first to last, both in its plan and its execution, the most consummate skill of the poet. Pindar had a special reason for the elaborate care which he bestowed on the composition of this Ode, and it was a reason which did him honour. The poem was designed to serve a friend in need—to save him from the miseries of exile, and to recover for him the favour of his offended king.

Damophilus, a noble of Cyrenè and a member of the royal house, had for some unknown reason incurred the resentment of Arcesilas, and had been forced to flee his country. He took refuge, it would seem, in Thebes, and there formed a friendship with Pindar, whose pride in his own descent from the mythical house of Ægeus would doubtless make him ready to acknowledge a kinsman in the Ægid Damophilus. The exile had apparently long resigned all hope of