Page:Pindar (Morice).djvu/48

34 ply materials for a tolerably exhaustive and consistent memoir. But on closer examination we find that the evidence furnished by these biographies is by no means of such a character as to deserve unquestioning acceptance. The earliest of them can scarcely have been compiled before the eleventh century of our era—more than fourteen hundred years after the death of their subject. And though they clearly all embody a literary tradition of far greater antiquity, yet even this tradition cannot possibly be traced back beyond a period separated by at least a full century from the latest date which can be assigned for Pindar's death. The earliest authority to whom any of their statements can be traced was Chamæleon of Heraclea, a philosopher trained by Aristotle in that Peripatetic school which was the cradle of Greek literary biography. But Chamæleon himself belongs to an age separated by several generations from that of Pindar. His 'Book on Pindar,' therefore, even if it were still extant, would not possess the value of a genuine contemporary record. We should require to be satisfied, before admitting its authority, that it was based upon older and authentic accounts of the poet's life. But it is highly improbable that any such account in writing existed before the Peripatetic period, Chamæleon can scarcely have had before him much evidence beyond such as was embodied in oral traditions current among the learned of his own day, Pindar was, no doubt, to these something more than a mere name: they had a fairly distinct conception of his personality, and a general idea of the outlines of his life. But this