of the Olympian group. Thus the Eighth, addressed to an Æginetan, deals with legends which form the staple of the Nemean Odes. Four other important Olympian Odes respectively introduce us to the mythical annals of Arcadia, Rhodes, Corinth, and Northern Greece; but these must be reserved for future consideration, and the present chapter may close with a notice of four short Odes addressed to conquerors at Olympia,—mere trifles as compared with Pindar's greatest poems, yet trifles which, like the sketches of a Dürer or a Michelangelo, exhibit in their every line the hand of a master.
The Fourth and Fifth Olympian Odes were written to commemorate a single victory, that of Psaumis of Camarina in the race of mule-cars. The fourth appears to have been sung on the evening of the race by the band of revellers who escorted Psaumis to offer his thanks at the altar of Olympian Zeus. The fifth was performed after the conqueror's return home in solemn procession to the shrine of his city's local patroness, the Nymph Camarina, whom the poet invokes as a daughter of Ocean.
The first of these two little poems (Ol. iv.) contains one of Pindar's most audacious metaphors. He wishes to convey in a single word a picture of the doomed giant Typho writhing in unavailing struggles beneath the roots of Ætna, pinioned and crushed by the huge mass that soars above him. Now in the species of mouse-trap which Greek householders favoured, it was provided that a heavy piece of wood called the "ipos" or "press" should drop upon the rash intruder.
