CHAPTER II.
GREEK CHORAL POETRY—ITS MATTER.
From the form of a Choral Ode we pass now to consider its matter,—the occasions which produced it, and the sources from which its themes were drawn. It might, perhaps, have been expected that these would have been identical, that the occasion which produced an Ode would itself have supplied the poet's theme, and that an Ode of Pindar, composed (let us say) to commemorate a chariot victory at the Olympian games, would have been occupied mainly with a description of the circumstances and consequences of the victory. But such, as we shall see, is by no means usually the case. The actual occasion of such a Triumphal Ode is sometimes touched upon so lightly, as to leave it open to dispute whether the victory which it commemorates was won at the Isthmus or at Nemea, at Delphi or at Thebes; whether the victorious car was driven by its owner or by a professional charioteer; whether the commemoration followed instantly upon the victory, or whether days, months, or even years had elapsed between them. These topics are not, indeed, actually excluded from the Ode. The poet touches upon them,
