presents the priestly attitude on the question, with this difference, that his external position exempts him from all suspicion of conscious imposture.
Reverence for the divine power is a strongly marked and ever-present characteristic of his work: everything must be ascribed to the gods as its author; "from the gods are all means of human excellence"; "it is the god who gives every accomplishment to men's hopes; the god can overtake the winged eagle; he is swifter than the dolphin in the sea; he bends the necks of the haughty; he gives to others a glory that never grows old[1]." Pindar's reluctance to relate aught that is unseemly concerning the gods appears in touches that, at a first glance, might remind us of Plato, or even of Euhemerus: yet his feeling as to the mythical theology seems to be essentially different from that of either. A typical case is his treatment of the story that, when the gods dined with Tantalus, they ate the flesh of his son Pelops. Pindar will not represent the gods as cannibals (γαστριμάργους): he prefers to believe that Poseidon, enamoured of Pelops, carried him away, like Ganymede, to Olympus; then the envious neighbours of Tantalus invented the story that Pelops had been devoured. The supposed conduct of the neighbours is, in itself,
- ↑ Pyth. i. 41: ii. 49.
