advanced phase of democracy. The government of Thebes at the time of the Persian wars had been, in the phrase of Thucydides, a δυναστεία οὐ μετὰ νόμων,—an oligarchy of a narrow and non-constitutional type; this had been replaced, after the repulse of the Persian invasion, by an ὀλιγαρχία ἰσόμονος (Thuc. iii. 62). The latter phrase well expresses, as I conceive, the shade of Greek political life most congenial to Pindar. See the suggestive passage in Pythian xi. (478 B.C.) 53: τῶν γὰρ ἀνὰ πόλιν εὑρίσκων τὰ μέσα μάσσονι σὺν | ὄλβῳ τεθαλότα, μέμφομ' αἶσαν τυαννίδων· | ξυναῖσιδ' ἀμφ' ἀρεταῖς τέταμαι, κ.τ.λ.: "in polities I find the middle state crowned with more enduring good; therefore praise I not the despot's portion; those virtues move my zeal which serve the folk." One in whom pride of ancestry fostered a reverence for the traditions of Dorian civil life could have as little liking for absolutism as for the rule of the mob; and that Pindar felt such reverence is well seen in the passage which speaks of Hiero as having founded Aetna (the restored Catana) Ὑλλίδος στάθμας ἐν νόμος, in the laws of the Hyllic rule: "yea," adds the poet, "and the Dorian sons of Pamphylus and of the Heracleidae, dwelling under the cliffs of Taygetus, are ever content to abide by the ordinances of Aegimius" (Pyth. i. 63)[1]. When Pindar speaks of the royal lot
- ↑ The Ὑλλὶς στάθμα is identical with the τεθμοὶ Αἰγιμιοῦ. Pindar means: "At the new Aetna, as at Sparta, Dorians are true to their ancestral usages." Hyllus, son of Heracles, was said to have been adopted by Aegimius, the father of Pamphylus and Dymas. (In Isthm. vii. 43 note νεικέων πέταλα, alluding to the μεταλισμός.)
