γενεθλίῳ (Ol. viii. 15), "Destiny hath given you for his own to Zeus, your fathers' god": i.e. you are under his peculiar care. ἔδωκ' Ἀπόλλων θῆρας αἰνῷ φόβῳ (Pyth. v. 60), "Apollo made the fierce beasts a prey to terror." κράτει προσέμιξε δεσπόταν (Ol. i. 22), "he brought his master to the goal of victory." It will be seen that the distinctive character of such expressions depends on a personification, not express, but implied; or (as in the last instance) on the conception of an abstract idea—such as κράτος—in the form of a concrete object, such as a goal (or perhaps a person) awaiting the runner at the end of the race-course.
§ 18. Pindar is especially fertile in similitudes for poetical effort. The most striking class of such effort, images is that derived from the contests of the festivals. Thus:—(i) javelin-throwing. αἰνῆσαι μενοινῶν ἔλπομαι | μὴ χαλκοπάρᾳον ἄκονθ' ὡσείτ' ἀγῶνος βαλεῖν ἔξω παλάμᾳ δονέων (Pyth. i. 43), "fain to praise, I have hope not to go wide of due aim, when I hurl the javelin, bronze-armed, that quivers in mine hand." (ii) The chariot-race. ὦ Φίντις, ἀλλὰ ξεῦξον ἤδη μοι σθένος ἡμιόνων . . . χρὴ τοίνυν πύλας ὕμνων ἀναπιτνάμεν αὐταῖς (Ol. vi. 27). Phintis was the charioteer who had gained the victory. Characteristically Pindaric is the identification of the actual chariot with the chariot of song in which the poet is to be borne:—"Ho, Phintis, yoke for me the strength of thy mules, that we may urge our chariot in swift and free career, till I come e'en to the lineage of the race (the victor's ancestry);
