always as conferring distinction on the recipient, with duties somewhat analogous to those of our modern "consuls." He was Proxenus for Athens, and also for some Achæan town,[1] perhaps Dyme.
In Thebes Pindar lived, and in Thebes he was buried, yet he died (we are told) in a foreign city. At the age of eighty (B.C. 442) he had left his home to attend a festival at Argos. And there, in the public theatre, surrounded by the favourite and most familiar associations of his life, the pageantry of religion and the "flower of music," the old man fell suddenly into the arms of a youthful friend, and expired. His daughters Protomache and Eumetis, who seem to have inherited some portion of their father's talents, conveyed his ashes to Thebes; and an ancient epigram commemorates the loudness of their lamentation, and pays a compliment to their musical attainments. Of his wife Megacleia, and his son Daiphantus, this epigram says nothing. Perhaps both were dead. There is a story of a proposed marriage between one of these daughters and a prosperous citizen. But the father's caution broke off the match. The suitor might be prosperous now, he said, but he was not the sort of man to prosper long. However, we hear of descendants of Pindar at Thebes at the time of its destruction by Alexander. So perhaps the father relented, or the lady may have found a more eligible suitor, or Pindar's family may have been larger than his biographers were aware.
The great poet was gone, but his fame survived him.
- ↑ Nem. vii. 65.
