22
PINDAR.
Wine. Yet, since Love and Wine were personified by Greek fancy in Aphrodite and Dionysus, we need not consider even the scoliastic poet as wholly precluded from availing himself of the chief fountain of Greek lyric inspiration—the Myths.
Speaking generally, and not dwelling on unimportant exceptions, it may be stated that, whatever was the especial occasion of a Choral Ode, the chief materials of its themes were supplied by sources, of which all classes of Choral poetry availed themselves alike. And chief among these were the legendary world of gods and heroes, and the unseen world of spirits, which Greek religion conceived as embracing and underlying all the material universe.
