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viii composition he is said to have been chiefly indebted to the instructions of Corinna; against whom, however, when a competitor for the prize, it was his fate to be adjudged inferior in no fewer than five contests: but this perhaps is as much to be attributed to the personal charms of his fair rival as to her poetical superiority; since in the other Grecian assemblies, which did not allow of female competitors, he was almost invariably declared victorious. He also received instruction from Simonides of Ceos, at that time the most celebrated lyric poet in Greece. He was contemporary with Æschylus, and senior to Bacchylides, having flourished one hundred and fifty years later than Alcman, one hundred after Alcæus, and fifty after Stesichorus, and surpassed them all in lyrical excellence. Of his numerous compositions, consisting of hymns in honour of the gods, pæans to Apollo, dithyrambics to Bacchus, funeral songs, and odes to the victors at the four great festivals of Greece, the latter only have been preserved to us, with the exception of some considerable fragments, one especially of great poetical beauty on the solar eclipse, cited by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and the opening verses of a fine dithyrambic hymn.

One slight effort of Pindar's juvenile muse has also escaped the ravages of time, but not sufficiently