that he honestly believed in the intrinsic goodness of his patron—or how could he hope that his admonitions would take effect? But it is not surprising that the poet's caution should have exposed him in some quarters to the charge of servility; or that his mingling of open praise and covert censure should have puzzled later readers, and led them to form strangely different estimates of Hiero's character: some describing him as the ideal king—brave, generous, trustful, and affectionate; while to others he appears as a vulgar tyrant—mean, grasping, and treacherous. A right understanding of Pindar's language presents us with another and probably a truer view. Hiero had great qualities and great faults; his position was one of great advantages, but also of great temptations: he was necessarily exposed to the machinations of evil counsellors, but his ears were not closed to the admonitions of honest friends. He was not an Alfred, but neither was he a Tiberius or a Caligula.
The moral lessons of the Second Pythian reappear to some extent in the Third and First Odes of the same group, also addressed to Hiero. In each we find the same mingling of praises and warnings,—warnings against ambition, avarice, rashness, seductions of evil counsellors, and the like. But, unlike the Second Pythian, neither the first nor the third is mainly occupied with these topics. In the third we find a prominent place assigned to the myth of Asclepius (Æsculapius), the legendary inventor of medicine. And, though certain points in the narrative seem introduced with a didactic purpose—hinting at the evil
