tion of prophetic gifts. His predictions were at first to be guided by direct intimations vouchsafed to him by the god; afterwards he was to read the future in the sacrifices which Heracles should ordain at Olympia.
Then come allusions to the after-glory of the Iamids, and especially to their pious observance of the rites of Hermes at Stymphalus, which had won Agesias the special favour of Hermes and his father Zeus. But the thought of Stymphalus reminds Pindar of a legendary connection between his own city and Stymphalus; for was not Thebè, whose pleasant waters he is drinking even now, a daughter of the Stymphalian nymph Metopa? Here is a theme on which he cannot be silent—
"Meseemeth a whetstone shrills at my tongue!"
And, full of this patriotic fervour, he bursts into an ardent protest against the scornful nickname which their livelier neighbours had fixed on the proverbially slow-witted Bœotians.[1] "Surely, Æneas," he cries, apostrophising the chorus-master who superintends the performance of the Ode—"surely we shall now escape that ancient jeer—Bœotian swine!" Then, in two far-fetched but ingenious metaphors, he describes the functions of Æneas, who is charged with the commis-
- ↑ Themistius says: "Men called Bœotia 'a sow,' mocking the people, I suppose, for their want of culture. However, Pindar and Corinna and Hesiod were not defiled by contact with the sow."—(Orat. xxvii.) Dionysius of Halicarnassus thus enumerates the characteristics ot various tribes: "An Athenian—sharp, talkative, clever; an Ionian—luxurious; a Bœotian—stupid."
