a kingdom without end,—and the title on which that kingdom rests is the wisdom and virtue of its possessors.
Thus closes the second division of the Ode, and now Pindar begins to point his moral. He addresses Arcesilas with an allegory, designed to show the vanity of attempting to crush a noble foe by severity. Oppression and misery can never destroy true greatness; the noble oak may be hewn to serve ignoble uses, or even burnt as firewood on the hearth, but it will still assert its inborn worth, still prove itself superior to all meaner timbers:—
"E'en in decay it testifies its worth,
Whether in flames it end on winter's hearth,
Or, matched with comrade pillars tall, it prop a lordly palace wall,
Painfully doomed in alien homes to toil,
Banished from its native soil."
From this simple parable Pindar passes to exhortation. Let Arcesilas act the true king's part, to heal and not to widen the gaping wounds of his kingdom! Feeble hands can shake a nation's peace, but hard it is to restore the tottering fabric of civil order. A famous English writer has expressed the same idea in words which strikingly recall the language of the Theban poet:—
