In both Odes the element of mythology is conspicuous by its absence; and indeed neither Ode contains any feature of special interest, except, perhaps, the allusion in the Seventh Pythian to the restoration (in B.C. 512) of Apollo's temple at Delphi. Some exiled members of the Alcmæonid family, who had contracted to build its front with common Porine stone, substituted for this, at their own expense, a façade of costly Parian marble:—
"Ay, sounded are they through all the lands,—
Those labours of Erecthid hands,
On Pytho's steep divine
Rearing Apollo's shrine!"
The Second Pythian is the merest sketch of an Ode, and contains nothing that requires quotation.
Very unlike these trifles is Pindar's only Ode to a Corinthian victor, the Thirteenth Olympian, addressed to Xenophon, a member of the great aristocratical house of the Oligæthids, who had achieved a success which Pindar describes as unparalleled—victory both in the foot-race and in the Pentathlum.[1] This fine poem contains the principal account in ancient literature, if we except a passage in Homer, of the adventures of the great Corinthian hero Bellerophon. We hear how he toiled in vain to tame the winged horse Pegasus, till Pallas appeared in a vision and presented him with a golden bridle:—
- ↑ A combination of five distinct sports—as leaping, javelin-throwing, &c.
