ix. 80). Here we see the exulting sense of inborn strength, in many other places we perceive the feeling of conscious art—as in the phrase δαιδάλλειν, so apt for his method of inlaying an ode with mythical subjects, or when he compares the opening of a song to the front of a stately building (Ol. vi. 3). Pindar's sympathy with external nature was deeper and keener than is often discernible in the poetry of his age. It appears, for example, in his welcome of the season when “the chamber of the hours is opened, and delicate plants perceive the fragrant spring” (fr. 53, Bergk 4, 75), in the passage where Jason invokes “the rushing strength of waves and winds, and the nights, and the paths of the deep” (Pyth. iv. 195), in the lines on the eclipse of the sun (fr 84, Bergk,4 107), and in the picture of the eruption, when Etna, “pillar of the sky, nurse of keen snow all the year,” sends forth “ pure springs of tire unapproachable” (Pyth i. 20) The poet’s feeling for colour is often noticeable —as in the beautiful story of the birth of Iamus—when Evadne lays aside her silver pitcher and her girdle of scarlet web; the babe is found, “its delicate body steeped in the golden and deep purple rays of pansies” (Ol. vi 55).
The spirit of art, in every form, is represented for Pindar by χάρις—“the source of all delights to mortals” (Ol. i. 30)—or by the personified Charites (Graces). The Charites were often represented as young maidens, decking themselves with early flowers-the rose, in particular, being sacred to them as well as to Aphrodite In Pindar's mind, as in the old Greek conception from which the worship of the Charites sprang. the instinct of beautiful art was inseparable from the sense of natural Sculpture.beauty The period from 500 to 460 B.C., to which most of Pindar's extant odes belong, marked a stage in the development of Greek sculpture. The schools of Argos, Sicyon and Aegina were effecting a transition from archaic types to the art which was afterwards matured in the age of Pheidias. Olympia forms the central link between Pindar's poetry and Greek sculpture From about 560 B.C. onwards sculpture had been applied to the commemoration of athletes, chiefly at Olympia. In a striking passage (Nem. v. ad. init.) Pindar recognizes sculpture and poetry as sister arts employed in the commemoration of the athlete, and contrasts the merely local effect of the statue with the wide diffusion of the poem “No sculptor I, to fashion images that shall stand idly on one pedestal for aye; no, go thou forth from Aegina, sweet song of mine, on every freighted ship, on each light bark.” Many particular subjects were common to Pindar and contemporary sculpture Thus (1) the sculptures on the east pediment of the temple at Aegina represented Heracles coming to seek the aid of Telamon against Troy—a theme brilliantly treated by Pindar in the fifth Isthmian; (2) Hiero’s victory in the chariot-race was commemorated at Olympia by the joint work of the sculptors Onatas and Calamis; (3) the Gigantomachia, (4) the wedding of Heracles and Hebe, (5) the war of the Centaurs with the Lapithae, and (6) a contest between Heracles and Apollo, are instances of mythical material treated alike by the poet and by sculptors of his day The contemporary improvements in town architecture, introducing spacious and well paved streets, such as the ςκυρωτὴ ὁδός; at Cyrene (Pyth. v 87) suggests his frequent comparison of the paths of song to broad and stately causeways (πλατεῖα πρόσοδοι—ἐκατόμπεδοι κέλευθοι, Nem. vi. 47, Isthm. vi. 22). A song is likened to cunning work which blends gold, ivory and coral (Nem. vii. 78). Pindar's feeling that poetry, though essentially a divine gift, has a technical side (σοφία), and that on this side it has had an historical development like that of other arts, is forcibly illustrated by his reference to the inventions (σοφίσματα) for which Corinth had early been famous He instances (1) the development of the dithyramb, (2) certain improvements in the harnessing and driving of horses, and (3) the addition of the pediment to temples (Ol. xiii. 21)
In the development of Greek lyric poetry two periods are broadly distinguished During the first, from about 600 to 500 B.C., lyric poetry is local or tribal—as Alcaeus and Sappho write for Lesbians, Alcman and Stesichorus for Dorlans During the second period, which takes its rise in the sense of Hellenic unity created by the Persian wars, the lyric poet addresses all Greece. Pindar and Simonides are the great representatives of this second period, to which Bacchylides, the nephew of Simonides, also belongs. These, with a few minor poets, are classed by German writers as die universalen Meliker. The Greeks usually spoke, not of “lyric,” but of “melic” poetry (i.e. meant to be sung, and not, like the epic, recited), and “universal melic” is lyric poetry addressed to all Greece. But Pindar is more than the chief extant lyrist. Epic, lyric and dramatic poetry succeeded each other in Greek literature by a natural development. Each of them was the spontaneous utterance of the age which brought It forth. In Pindar we can see that phase of the Greek mind which produced Homeric epos passing over into the phase which produced Athenian drama. His spirit is often thoroughly dramatic-witness such scenes as the interview between Jason and Pelias (Pyth. iv.), the meeting of Apollo and Chiron (Pyth. ix), the episode of Castor and Polydeuces (Nem. x.), the entertainment of Heracles by Telamon (Isthm. v.). Epic narrative alone was no longer enough for the men who had known that great trilogy of national life, the Persian invasions; they longed to see the heroes moving and to hear them speaking. The poet of Olympia, accustomed to see beautiful forms in vivid action or vivid art, was well fitted to be the lyric interpreter of the new dramatic impulse. Pindar has more of the Homeric spirit than any Greek lyric poet known to us. On the other side, he has a genuine, if less evident, kinship with Aeschylus and Sophocles. Pindar's work, like Olympia itself, illustrates the spiritual unity of Greek art.
The fact that certain glosses and lacunae are common to all cur MSS. of Pindar make it probable that these MSS. are derived from a common archetype. Now the older scholia on Pindar, which appear to have been compiled mainly from the commentaries of Didymus (c. 15 B.C.), sometimes presuppose a urer text than ours. But the compiler of these older scholia lived after Herodian (A.D. 160). The archetype of our MSS., then, cannot have been older than the end of the 2nd century. Our MSS. fall into two general classes: (1) the older, re resenting a text which, though often corrupt, is comparatively free from interpolations; (2) the later, which exhibit the traces of a Byzantine recension, in other words, of lawless conjecture, down to the 14th or 15th century. To the first class belong Parisinus 7, breaking off in Pyth. v.; Ambrosianus I, which has only Ol. i.-xii.; Mediceus 2; and Vatlcanus 2-the two last-named being of the highest value. The editio princeps is the Aldine (Venice, 1513). A modern study of Pindar may be almost said to have begun with C. G. Heyne's edition (1773). Hermann did much to advance Pindaric criticism. But August Bockh (1811–1821), who was assisted in his commentary by L. Dissen, is justly regarded as the founder of a scientific treatment of the poet. The edition of Theodor Bergk (Poetae lyrici graeci, new ed. by O. Schroder, 1900) is marked by considerable boldness of conjecture, as that of Tycho Mommsen (1864) by a sometimes excessive adherence to MSS A recension b W. Christ has been published in Teubner's series (2nd ed., 1896) , also with Prolegomena and commentary (1896), and by O. Schroder (1908). The complete edition of J. W. Donaldson (1841) has many merits; but that of C. A. M. Fennell (1879–1883; new ed., 1893–1899) is better adapted to the needs of English students. The Olympia and Pythia have been edited by B. L. Gildersleeve (1885), the Nemea and Isthmia by J. B. Bury (1890–1892); the Scholta by E. Abel (1890, unfinished) and A B Brachmann (1903) There is a special lexicon by J. Rumpel (1883). The translation into English prose by Ernest Myers (2nd ed, 1883) is excellent; verse translation by . C. Baring (1875), and of the Olympian Odes by Cyril Mayne (1906). Pindar's metres have been analysed by J. H. H. Schmidt, in Die Kunstformen der griechischen Poeste (Leipzig, 1868–1872). On Pindar generally, see monographs by A. F. Villemain (1859), L. Schmidt (1862), G. Lubbert (1882), A Croiset (1880), Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur (1898); and the little volume by F. D. Morice in Blackwood's Ancient Classics for English Readers. exhaustive bibliographical information on the earlier literature will be found in Engelmann, Scriptores graeci (1881); see also L. Bornemann, in Bursian's Jahresbericht, (cxvi. 1904), with special reference to chronological questions and Pythta, i, ii., iii. Some considerable fragments of the paeans were discovered in 1906 by B P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt (see Oxyrhynchus papyri, pt. v. pp. 24–81); some critical notes will be found in Classical Review, Feb. 1908 (A. E. Housman). (R. C. J.; X.)
PINDARICS, the name by which was known a class of loose and irregular odes greatly in fashion in England during the close
