and that beyond that there was nothing much worth living for. These opinions, which he held in common with Homer, make us reflect how late in man's history is any notion of a spiritual life, or of a higher end than human aggrandisement. There is only one great theological passage, so to call it, in Pindar, and that is the remarkable and very explicit statement in Ol. ii. 55-75, of a final judgment[1] and of the happier lot of the good than of the bad hereafter. The ideas are materialistic, derived, probably, from the teachings of Orpheus and Pythagoras. But Pindar had a reverent and even superstitiously pious mind, and he not unfrequently dwells earnestly on the penalties incurred by presumption, on the danger of too great prosperity, on speaking disparagingly or rashly about the gods, and on prying into or aspiring to things too high for man,[2] in terms evidently intended to inculcate humility in the mind of the victor whom he is addressing.
2. Pindar was fond of imparting indirect advice, by allusions to events, real or mythical, which furnished a moral suitable to the occasion. In this way he seems to have now and then touched safely
