of his superhuman ancestor. The god is invoked to rejoice in his descendant's prowess, and the highest compliment which the poet can pay to the descendant is to recall the legendary achievements of the ancestor, and compare them with those of the descendant. Again, the misfortunes of ancient gods and heroes, and their ultimate triumph over them, are employed to console their supposed descendants for baffled projects, and to encourage them to new aspirations in the future. And if, as sometimes happens, the poet desires to convey to his patron some lesson of warning or advice which he fears may be unwelcome, a reference to ancient legends, and usually to those connected with the house or city of his patron, enables him often to point his moral under the guise of paying a compliment. We shall see hereafter how, in the hands of a great poet like Pindar, the legends of antiquity became a potent instrument for instilling lessons of practical and political wisdom, of morality, and of generous ambition, into the minds of his patrons. Less skilful artists doubtless employed the myths with less discrimination and less earnest purpose, using them merely as "purple patches" to conceal the nakedness of their fancy, and heaping them together without order or selection to swell their odes into the required number of stanzas. It is said by Plutarch that Pindar himself, in his early days, was jestingly rebuked by his countrywoman, the poetess Corinna, for a similar undiscriminating use of mythology. "One should sow," she said, "with the hand, and not with the whole sack." If this tale be true, he seems, if we may judge from his earli-
