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ning energy of the first Pythian, or to the marvellous picturesqueness of the fourth Pythian. We imagine Pindar to be a strictly unique poet; he seems to have been as peculiar amongst his own countrymen-gópavтov xao' "Exλavas-as he has remained ever since. Corinna, indeed, his preceptress, must be named; but nothing of hers has come down to us, nor does much seem to have survived her own time. Nor, as far as we know, was her method similar to that of her pupil-rival; it seems to have been more like that of Stesichorus, who excelled in a peculiar combination of the epic and lyric styles, which, upon a former occasion, we said might have been something like the manner exhibited in the Kehama. But Pindar, although he followed the advice and example of Corinna in introducing narration in his odes, did so upon truer principles of lyric poetry; his narrative parts are not epical and ending in themselves, but very evidently emanating from the theme of the ode, and serving to explain or adorn it. And we have always thought that Pindar meant himself to hint this difference in his practice from that of his predecessors, by those commendations of brevity with which he so frequently concludes a piece of history or fable:

μακρά μοι νεῖσθαι κατ' ἀμαξιτόν· ὥ

ρα γὰρ συνάπτει· καί τινα

οἶμον ἴσαμι βραχύν

πολλοῖσι δ' ἅγημαι σοφίας ἑτέροις.—IV. Pyth. 439.

'Long for me the beaten track;

For closes fast the hour;

And some shorter path I ken;

And many else there be, the followers of my lore.'-Cary.

Moore's version of the last line is,

' And wisdom follows where I lead.'

Surely the meaning has been mistaken by both. We understand the bold poet to say here, as he says elsewhere often enough,—' I excel many others in this craft or talent-copia-this knack of doing multum in parvo.' In other places he says:

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τὰ μακρὰ δ ̓ ἐξενέπειν

igúns μe relμòs-the law or principle of the ode

ὧραι τ' ἐπειγόμεναι.—IV. Nem. 53.

πάντα δ ̓ ἐξειπεῖν, ὅσ ̓ ἀγώνιος Ερμᾶς

Ηροδότῳ ἔπορεν ίπποις, ἀφαι

ρεῖται βραχύ μέτρον ἔχων

vos.-I. Isth. 85.

"This my brief song forbids to tell.'-Cary.

No; it is the Hymn having short space for such narrations,'

as in the preceding passage, where Mr. Cary translates Teμòs

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our statute.' Moore has it, correctly and spiritedly,

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Pindar repeats this sort of remark, in different words, in almost every ode preserved to us, and especially remembers it before or after telling a story. If he erred in prolixity of narration in the beginning of his career, as Plutarch's anecdote* would seem to prove, certainly no poet ever corrected a fault more completely than he did. The oiuos ẞpaxús of Pindar may be studied by historians and orators as well as by poets; it is the perfection of conciseness and graphic precision withal. Perhaps it may be said with confidence, that in Pindar the distinct thoughts bear a larger proportion to the number of words used, than in any other poet-with the exception of Shakspeare in his Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece. Yet, after taking notice of a few peculiar ellipses and unusual usages of the prepositive particles, the competent reader finds less difficulty in the mere construction of Pindar's sentences than of those of most of the other great writers of independent Greece. Not to mention Thucydides-can any one, after due comparison, charge half as much involution and abruptness of phrase upon these Epinician Odes as upon the tragic chorusses-especially those in the Agamemnon and Choephora? It may be the effect of great admiration and dutiful study; but to us the Pindaric odes seem written in characters of light, and we feel, speaking humbly, as if we apprehended their spirit and meaning as well as those of any other of the precious works of the high Greek muse, which the hand of time has spared.

In proceeding now to lay open, in the summary manner which the length of our preceding remarks renders necessary, what seems to us to be the Pindaric method discoverable in these Odes-we must make our sincere acknowledgments to Professor Dissen, for the pleasure and instruction which we have received from an attentive perusal of his very ingenious preface to the edition of Pindar mentioned at the head of this article. It can be no deduction from the value of our humble commendation to say that we cannot assent to all the ramifications of his theory, nor that the main foundations of it were not new to our minds. On the contrary, we tender it as a proof of the truth of the theory itself in general, that independent scholars-unequal surely in everything, excepting a profound admiration of the great poet in question-should see, or seem to see, precisely the same leading lines in the construction of his poems. The professor has worked out and applied his principles with that resolute industry and patient devotion, which

*De Glor. Athen. Reiskę. vii. p. 320.

SO

so honourably distinguish the Germans, and which, we say it in sorrow, are so signally deficient in most of the works of our modern English scholars.*

As long as any one acquiesces in the vulgar reason assigned for Pindar's fables and histories-namely, that the poe was obliged to have recourse to them for materials of his poems; as long as he agrees with Cowley in thinking, that the second Olympic, or any other of the Epinician Odes, consists more in digressions than in the main subject,-so long, in our judgment, such a person will remain in utter ignorance of the manner and subject of those extraordinary poems. It is said that the incidents of an individual contest in the games could not afford matter for repeated odes of victory. But it must surely be admitted, that if Pindar had thought it proper for the occasion, such powers as his might at least have succeeded in the description of one chariot race-one boxing match-or one quinquertium. Does any one seriously believe that such a poet as Pindar-s copious, so varied, so picturesque-could not find in the struggle and accompaniment of an Olympic or Pythian contest in that glorious age of Greece, what a scarcely greater poet had found in the Funeral Games of Patroclus ?what a much inferior poet was afterwards to find in those of Anchises? Have we duly considered, and passed before our mind's eye, the august spectacle of one of these assemblies the tens of thousands of Greeks of every race, met again at the end of four years, on the sacred plain-from the islands--from Asia-from Africa-from Sicily-the sword thrown aside for this and this alone-the twelve altars burning on either side of the course-the grove of Hercules-the tomb of Pelopsthe foaming Alpheus-the fane of Jove the oath-bound candidates the inviolable judges-the struggle, the agony, the wreath, and the triumph? Could not such a glorification of gymnastic virtue as this have furnished forth imagery and sentiment for one ode, or several odes, or even a considerable part of all the odes which were demanded of the poet? Whereas, with the partial exception of the V. Pythian, to Arcesilaus, Pindar does not, as far as we remember at this moment, vouchsafe five lines in any one

* Dr. Arnold's Thucydides and the Museum Philologicum of Cambridge are the only very recent exceptions that occur to us from this general imputation of sciolism and want of zeal; but, if we may judge from a few sheets which have come into our hands, another work is about to appear which will go far to vindicate the name of English scholarship from the disrepute into which it has lately fallen. We allude to Mr. Mitchell's annotated edition of the Acharnenses of Aristophanes-(the first only, we hope, of a complete series of that poet's comedies)-in which we recognize profound and varied erudition, combined with manly and sagacious views of life and manners, and an English style not easily to be surpassed for clearness, energy, or grace.

ode

ode to a notice of the incidents of the particular contest in question. He generally mentions the victor in the barest way possible; a line or two-a figure an epithet-suffices. He just designates the place and the species of game, and says no more about it. If the Epinician Hymn had been generally considered as a poem devoted to an eulogistic description of the winner's own prowess, would Pindar have been so unskilful as not to comply with the expectation of his patrons ;-and if so, would his odes upon such occasions have been so anxiously sought and so universally admired?

The truth, we venture to say, is, that the object and intention of the Epinician Hymn have been totally mistaken. We have been angry with a circle for not being square. The candidates for victory in the great games of Greece were persons in whom a whole state was deeply interested; in many instances, where there was great promise of gymnastic excellence, the expenses of the ten months' preparatory training-in the gymnasium at Elis-were borne by the public treasury; and when the victor's name was proclaimed by the heralds, those of his city-his tribe-and his father, were especially remembered. Every Rhodian-perhaps every one of Doric blood-partook in the glory of Diagoras. The Olympic wreath was, according to Cicero, little less honourable than a Roman triumph. The napos, or festive procession homewards, was the inviolable object of generous envy to the tribes among which it passed; and the breach in the wall through which the victor entered his native city, was left for a season unrepaired, as a mark of the common glory of himself and his country. There was a solemn celebration of the happy event in which the whole city joined, and the anniversary was observed in the family, and perhaps tribe of the winner, for generations afterwards. He was entitled to the first place in all spectacles, received costly presents from the magistrates, and was at many places, as in Athens, maintained for life at the public charge. The Epinician Hymn was composed to be chanted upon the most solemn occasions-sometimes at the banquets given by the victor at Olympia itself, at the termination of the games, but more commonly, as we see expressed by Pindar himself, sent by the poet afterwards, and intended to be performed by the practised band of histrionic musicians, who accompanied the nuos to the native city of the victor. The details of the particular contest were unimportant-would have been irrelevant in such a public solemnity. It was the Olympic victory itself the being victor where excellence only could win the palm that constituted the glory of Hiero and Arcesilaus. Syracuse and Cyrene shared the glory; the victor was their countrytheir names had been proclaimed in the ears of all the

man;

Greeks,

Greeks, and the chaplet-more precious than gold-was suspended in their temples. The Epinician Hymn was sung in public, at stated periods, for years afterwards; and it was well remembered, that petty circumstances of conflict, though interesting to some at the moment, would certainly become tiresome and meaningless in course of time. Hence the hymn which was destined to immortalize the victor and his country was based upon themes of enduring interest; it assumed a sublime aspect; it lifted its voice to heaven in prayer and praise, and spoke the language of prophecy to the remotest posterity of its audience.

It is curious to observe how evidently accident has contributed to the vulgar criticism on Pindar. There can be very little doubt that the sort of circumstantial narrative of the particular contest, the absence of which in the Epinician Hymns is charged as a fault upon the poet, was in fact contained in those lighter compositions, the Hyporchemata, Encomia, and Scolia, which were not designed for public recitation-but were strictly meant for family songs. All Pindar's works of this kind have perished, and the consequence has been, that the modern reader, ignorant of the fine degrees and distinctions of eulogistic celebration amongst the Greeks, takes the Epinician Hymn to be intended for what a poem on a horse-race would now be-looks for false starts, bolting, and neck and neck—and is sorely blanked at finding the praises of Hercules or Pelops instead. There is one fragment of the Hyporchema preserved, which seems to be descriptive of some rough contest:πολλὰ δἕλκε ̓ ἔμβαλε νωμῶν

τραχὺ ῥόπαλον τέλος δ ̓ ἀείραις πρὸς στιβαρὰς σπάραξε πλευράς,

αἰὼν δὲ δι ̓ ὀστέων ἐῤῥαίσθη.

So much for the general scope of the Epinician Ode. Let us now advert more particularly to Pindar's mode of constructing such an ode, as far as it is discoverable generally from the specimens remaining to us. In the first place, the praise of the victor and his success seems to have been resolved in the poet's mind into an exaltation of the causes or conditions of the success, and these he appears to distinguish as gymnastic or military virtue-avdpía-or wealth and prosperity founded on the bounty of the gods-Bos. One or the other of these two-either simple, or compounded with some similar or contrasted quality-will be found, upon minute examination, to constitute the key-note of every ode; and upon this general principle of adoption, that in the odes addressed to wrestlers, pugilists, pancratiasts, and runners in armour, the fundamental position or subject spirit-sententia-is manly energy; whereas, in the odes addressed to the curule victors, who were for the most part men of high station, and did not personally interfere in the race, the theme is the fortune and splendour of the princely

state,

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