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26 cation. The family of Pindar boasted an early connection with Sparta, and a descent from the hero Ægeus. So he tells us in an extant Ode,

From Sparta springs my own ancestral boast, as legends tell.

Sprung from thence, to Thera's land

(Heroes of Ægid stock) my fathers came."

But elsewhere he claims as his ancestress the Arcadian nymph Metope, mother of Thebe the mythical foundress of the Theban nation: he tells us of

My mother's mother bright, Stymphalus-sprung!

—Metope she, that Thebe bare."

His family, it is said, were musicians by inheritance, and excelled especially in flute-playing, the national art of Bœotia. Through that country the river Cephisus ran into the Copaic lake, and both river and lake were celebrated for the reed-beds from which the Theban flute-makers obtained their materials.

Pindar rapidly learned all that Scopelinus could teach him, and was then transferred by him to study the lyre at Athens under the eminent Dithyrambic composer, Lasus of Hermione. At the age of sixteen we hear of him still at Athens, installed, it would seem, on his own account as a trainer of choruses. Between this period and the performance of his earliest extant Ode (B.C. 502) he returned to Thebes, and met, as was mentioned in the preceding chapter, the poetess