Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/187

Rh his turn. For what if Phalaris had really wished him to decline mentioning his name? Stesichorus knew the world well enough, that those sort of requests are but a modest simulation; and a disobedience would have been easily pardoned. In the seventy-fourth letter, he proclaims and glories to his enemy Orsilochus, that Pythagoras had stayed five months with him: why should he then seek to conceal from posterity the twelve years' familiarity with Stesichorus? Pindar, exhorting Hiero, the tyrant of Syracuse, to be kind to poets and men of letters, tells him how Croesus had immortal praise for his friendship and bounty to them, but the memory of that cruel and inhospitable Phalaris was hated and cursed everywhere. How could Pindar have said this, had he heard of his extraordinary dearness with Stesichorus? for their acquaintance, according to the letters, was as memorable and as glorious, as that of Croesus with Æsop and Solon. So that Pindar, had he known it, for that sole kindness to his fellow poet, would have forborn so vile a character. Plato, in his second Epistle, recounts to Dionysius some celebrated friendships of learned men with tyrants and magistrates: Simondes' with Hiero