and its quays, swarming with foreign traders and loaded with bales of costly merchandise, presented a lively and exciting spectacle to the visitor from the inland towns of Greece. In the age which preceded the rise of Athens, Ægina had been the foremost naval power on the Greek side of the Ægæan Sea. To the Æginetan traders was ascribed the introduction into Greece of gold and silver coin, and of a uniform scale of weights and measures. The wealth of individual citizens seems to have been enormous, and it was lavished on public objects and the encouragement of art and athleticism. Remembering Pindar's views on this point, we do not wonder to find him describing Ægina as the model state, in which, above all others, his ideals of life were realised.
The bold and commanding situation of Ægina, and the crowds of strangers who flocked to its hospitable port, seem to have produced a strong impression on Pindar's imagination. Thus he says in the Eighth Olympian—
"Heaven's command draws the sons of every land
Around this isle, set in the girdling main
As a pillar sublime."
In the Fourth Isthmian he addresses Ægina as "a tower, walled of old with high-climbing virtues," and so in the Fourth Nemean he describes the island as the "towering throne of the Æacids," where justice is ever ready to protect the stranger, "the light of all men's eyes." Himself a Dorian, he greets Ægina as a typical Dorian state:—
