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28 noble patron, grateful for the opportunity of distinguishing himself, yet modestly conscious that he deserves the confidence placed in him:—

"In friendly Thorax rests my trust, who, toiling for my grace,

Hath yoked this car of song with steeds in fourfold trace,

And gives me guidance back for guidance, love for love."

By "yoking the four-horse car of song," the poet means in plain prose, "giving the commission to produce this Ode, with its four ternaries of Strophe, Antistrophe, and Epode." From this time to the day of his death an endless succession of similar commissions streamed in upon him from all parts of Greece. His fame flew east and west, north and south, from Rhodes to Sicily, and from Thessaly to Cyrene on the far-off coast of Africa. The royal families of Agrigentum and Syracuse supplied him with liberal patrons, and he is believed to have been more than once received as an honoured guest in the palace of Hiero, who for eleven years, from B.C. 478 to B.C. 467, reigned in the latter city. Throughout this period, and for about ten years after it, Pindar's genius appears at its greatest height. Afterwards we seem to trace a certain decline of vigour. Yet there are noble passages in his later poems: and even the latest have their own peculiar charm of serenity and kindliness,—a tranquil sunset, as it were, succeeding not unmeetly to the fiery splendours of his noontide course.