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146 restoration to his native town, when the victory of Arcesilas suddenly opened to him a possibility—a bare possibility, it was true, but still a possibility—of a change in his fortunes. Pindar had been commissioned to address Arcesilas in a triumphal Ode. Might not the poet be induced to seize this favourable opportunity of saying a word in season on behalf of his unhappy friend? This hint of Damophilus's hopes was not lost on the generous Pindar, and its result was the composition of the Fourth Pythian Ode.

The rhetorical skill and tact exhibited by Pindar in pleading the cause of his friend would have done credit to the most accomplished professional advocate. The whole Ode is a connected argument of the most powerful and convincing character; yet it is not till the conclusion is reached, that it is perceived to be an argument at all. It opens with magnificent compliments to Arcesilas and Cyrenè; it proceeds to set forth in the most vivid and picturesque form a series of heroic legends recalling all the proudest memories of the house of Battus; it sketches a noble ideal of the true hero-king, and finds in Arcesilas the realisation of that ideal, the physician of his state, the restorer of times which are out of joint, the creator of that civil order which a fool can disturb, but which a wise man only can birng into being. Yet all the while, surely but secretly, in every compliment, in every myth, in every maxim, the poet is gradually paving the way towards his final conclusion,—that gentleness and not force is the true secret of greatness; that the ties of kinship should prevail over the memory of past quarrels; and