Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 16.djvu/47

* PINCKNEYA. 31 PINDAR, found in low or swampy land in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. It belongs to tlie natural order Kubiacca-, has large oval leaves, and beau- tiful terminal c-lusters of purple-spotted flowers. It is used by the country people as a substitute for quinine. PINC-PINC, or TINC-TINC. A small South African Ijird i('isli<:ijla ttxlrix), so called from its ringing metallic cry, often repeated as it hovers in the air. It is chiefly but wrongly known as the alleged builder of a wonderful nest, the real fabricator of which is the cotton-bird (n-v.). PIN'DAR (Gk. nhiapci, Findaros). The most famous of Greek lyric poets. He was bom near Thebes in Bceotia,"c.522 B.C., and probably died soon after 445, the date of his latest known poera. A consen'ative in politics and religion, a singer of the athletic prowess of the old -Eolian and Dorian nobilitj', he seems to belong to a more ancient order than that of the great Athenians of the fifth century B.C. Apart from the magnificence of his style, the chief points of interest in Pindar for us are that : ( 1 ) He was before the recovery of Bacchylides from an Egj"p- tian papj'rus the only Greek lyric poet who could be studied in a considerable body of work; (2) he is the representative of a provincial, colonial, and in some ways larger Greece than that in which we are wont to see only a foil to Periclean -Xthens; (.3) he is the first extant Greek writer to proclaim the immortality of the soul and to portray a future judgment; (4) he shows us the Greek myths in transition from their treatment by Hesiod, the older epic, and the lost lyrics of Ptesichonis to the forms which they assumed upon the Attic st,ige. Only the outline of his life is known. His earliest e.xtant ode. the tenth Pythian, dates from about his twentieth year, before which time he is said to have studied under the best musical and poetic masters of Athens and Thebes, and to have been the pupil or the rival of the Boeotian poetesses, Myrtis and Corinna. An early poem overladen with mythic ornament, is said to have called forth from the latter the famous admoni- tion: "One should sow with the hand and not with the whole sack." Pindar's family belonged to the noble clan of the .Egeids which had wide- spread connections in Thera, Sparta, and Cyrene. His deep religious feeling caused him to cultivate intimate relations with the priesthood of the great shrines, especially that of Delphi, where his name was publicly honored for centuries. He seems to have traveled widely to all parts of the Greek world from which his national reputation brought him commissions. At the court of Hiero in Syracuse he may have witnessed the famous eruption of Mount Etna, so magnificently de- scribed by him in the first Pythian and by .Eschy- lus in the Prometheus Bound. He composed hynms or encomia for the priests of Ammon; for Alexander of Maccdon, Arcesilaus of Cyrene, Theron of Agrit'entum, Hiero of Syracuse, and for the noblest families of Thessaly, Rhodes. Cor- inth, .-Egina, Athens, and Tenedos. Xo other Greek poet has so wide a geographical range. Xonc presents so viviil a picture of the dazzling diversity of greater Hellas; none so adequately expresses the underlying spirittial imity pre- served by the common language and religion, and the tradition of the great Panhellenic temples and games. His Hellenic patriotism has been questioned because he says so little of Marathon and Salamis and in prai.se of Athens. .s a citi- zen of a "Medizing' iState, he could hardly have said more. Tradition has it that he said too much to please the Thebans, who fined him for the line cited from a lost dithyramlj; "O splen- did, violet-crowned, glorious Athens, famed in song, pillar of Hellas, city divine." The legend adds that the reward bestowed by the Athenians more than paid the fine. Pindar and his contemporary Simonides represent the culmination of the Greek choral lyric composed with music to be sung by trained choruses of youths and maid- ens, as distinguished from the f)ersonal lyric of a Sappho or Alca-us recited or half chanted to a slight accompaniment on the strings. Only frag- ments remain of Pindar's hymns to the gods, p;eans, dithyrambs, processional odes, dancing songs, dirges, and encomiums. But we possess practically entire the four books of his Epinician or triumphal hx-mns composed in honor of the vic- tors at the four gre.it national games — the Olym- pian, Pythian, Isthmian, ami Xemean. The victor in the Olympic games received such honors as Rome and the modern world would bestow only upon the triumphant soldier. The victory was celebrated on the spot by festivities generally im- promptu, and later at the victor's home by tri- umphal processions, banquets, and serenades often repealed for many anniversaries. If the victor was rich or had wealthy yiatrons, a Pindar, Si- monides. or Bacchylides would be commissioned to vnrWe a special hymn to be sung during the procession or at the banquet by a trained chorus of his comrades. A large part of such a poem was conventionally predetermined. The victor, his clan, and his city must be celebrated. The great commonplaces of athletics, the praise of youthful pluck and endurance and of the beauty of young manhood, must be touched tipon. There must be a word of admonition to moderation, and perseverance in well-doing: a prayer for the con- tinued blessing of heaven, a deprecation of the 'jealousy,' whether of gods or men. which Greek feeling attached to all preeminence. The poet's task was to ennoble this commonplace by stately and melodious utterance, to transfigure the whole in the light of the splendor and magnificence of the Olympian or P-thian festival, to raise the petty and personal into relation with the larger life of Hellas, to exhibit the transient success of the hour as the natural flowering of the glorious tradition of family, clan, and city. To this end Pindar employs the myth, which fills the central portion of the ode and often seems to have little connection with the immediate theme, but which closer study shows to be chosen with an art that we can sometimes only divine, either to express the dominant mood of the occasion or to connect the hero with the mythic past. The English read- er may compare the treatment of the legend of the golden fleece in the fourth Pythian with the leisurely epic handling of the same theme in Morris's Jjife and Death of Jnxon. It is customary to describe Pindar's sublimity by comparing him to the eagle or the lonely Al- pine peak. His style is untranslatable and inde- scribable. Horace compares it to a torrent that has burst its banks. Boileau, Cowley, Gray, and