CHAPTER VI.
SICILY.—THE LEGENDS OF OLYMPIA.
It has already been stated that the received classification of Pindar's Odes into the four groups of Olympian, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian, gives us little clue to the contents of any particular Ode. Yet the Nemean group, if we exclude from it those Odes which have been wrongly reckoned by grammarians as Nemean—the Ninth, the Tenth, and the Eleventh—exhibits a certain unity of subject. For out of the eight remaining Odes six are devoted to victories of Æginetan athletes, and are mainly occupied with legends of the Æginetan hero Æacus and his family; while a seventh, though written for a Sicilian, dwells chiefly on the tale of Heracles, the friend and comrade of Æacus. In the Isthmian group also, two closely connected sets of legends predominate, the legends of Thebes and Ægina,—sister-states, according to Greek tradition, deriving their origin respectively from Thebe and Ægina, the daughters of Asopus. Seven Isthmian Odes are all that now remain from the original collection of Aristophanes. Three are addressed to Thebans, three to Æginetans, one to a Sicilian (and
