Page:Pindar (Morice).djvu/56

42 whose whole style and subject-matter are influenced by his peculiar surroundings, will fail to exert their due effect on readers perplexed at every turn by allusions which they do not understand, sentiments into which they do not enter, and modes of expression for which nothing in their previous literary studies has prepared them.

"Un chantre de combats à coups de poing," says Voltaire; and the modern reader, who finds that races, boxing-matches, and wrestlings do in truth supply the chief occasions of Pindar's poetry, will certainly be haunted with a feeling that no treatment, however skilful, could convert such occasions into suitable themes for lofty verse. How could they excite in a poet those deep and genuine emotions of which true poetry is the expression, and which in other ages have been awakened only by great national triumphs and reverses, or by circumstances of absorbing personal interest, the crash of empires or of creeds, the throes of political and religious and moral convulsions in nations or in individuals, the fervours of religion, the raptures and the torments of love?

To justify Pindar's choice of themes, it is not enough to show that there was a demand on the part of his patrons for poetry on such subjects. It must be shown also that athletic contests did, as a matter of history and for sufficient reasons, excite in the Greeks of his day a genuine enthusiasm, and invest themselves with associations which might well furnish matter for poetry. We may not, after all, find ourselves able to share this enthusiasm, but we shall be