Eleventh Pythian he contrasts the solid advantages of "the modest mean," of peaceful unassuming citizenship with the treacherous enticements of "the tyrant's lot." And in the opening of the Third Isthmian he finds his highest type of political virtue in the noble who can rise superior to the temptations of his position:—
"If crowned with high success in glorious game,
Or with rich store of plenty blest,
Man yet can curb within his breast
The demon Pride. Oh, let his name
Sound proudly in his townsmen's high acclaim."—(S.)
The ideal of life, which he suggests to his hearers, and which he would fain realise in his own case, is to dwell—honoured and beloved—among fellow-citizens, in dignified but unassuming ease, and to die in peace, bequeathing an unsullied name to a posterity who should reflect in their own lives the virtues of their parent. Thus it was, he says, that the heroes of old, Iolaus, Castor, Polydeuces, won their title to divine honours,[1] and such is the lot in the hope of which he can look tranquilly forward to his own approaching end:—
"Now, thanks to Neptune! whose kind sway
Cheers with calm our clouded day.
Now will I bind my brow with wreaths, and sing.
Kind Heaven, no cloud of trouble fling
In wrath athwart my new-recovered peace!
So may I wait Death's calm release,
Wearing out my aged years
Until the destined day appears." [2]—(S.)
