Page:Pindar (Morice).djvu/91

Rh have more consistently applied the maxim, "Ars est celare artem."

Connected with this peculiarity of Pindar's is another, the practice of continually alluding to myths without working out their incidents. Thus he delays the development of his main legend to touch by the way on a dozen others; or he begins a story, and then drops it with some allusion to the necessary limits of his Ode, or even with no excuse at all. Sometimes, before commencing his real theme, he affects to hesitate in his choice of a subject—he speaks like the victim of an embarras de richesse. "There is this story before me, and that, and that—which am I to choose?"

Whither then down the torrent's flow

Our swift stone speed we?"

Modern readers, who find in these passages only obscure allusions to tales of which they know little, may well complain of them as needless additions to the already sufficient difficulties of Pindar's poetry. They will naturally consider that a story which is worth mentioning is worth telling, and be repelled by the seemingly exorbitant demands which Pindar makes on the mythological knowledge of his readers. But we must remember the audiences whom the poet in the first instance addressed. The ancient legends of their houses were to them no mystery to be unravelled by commentators. Every slight allusion of the Ode recalled to them some glorious tradition, some hero of