The Athenians raised his statue in their city; the Rhodians engraved his Seventh Olympian Ode in golden letters on the temple of the Lindian Athene. We have already noticed the preservation at Delphi of his iron chair; and there too, long after his death, a singular custom connected with the temple services guaranteed the continuance of his fame. Either, as some say, at every sacrifice the priest invoked the shade of Pindar to take his share of the offerings, or, according to another version of the legend, every evening as the temple was closed for the night the sacristan paused: "Pindar to supper with the god!" he cried. Then the doors were shut, and there in the solemn darkness of the sanctuary, screened from mortal eye by walls through which no window was suffered to admit, even in daytime, one ray of profane light, the god and his poet-guest, as was piously believed, sat banqueting together till the morning.
The authority of Chamæleon (circ. B.C. 330) is cited for the following legend of Pindar's boyhood: Tired with hunting on the slopes of Helicon, he had flung himself down to sleep, when a swarm of bees settled on his lips, and filled his mouth with their honey. Some accounts transform this incident into a dream. But in fact the myth, for myth it plainly is—an allegory of the simplest kind—is told, not of Pindar only, but of Homer, of Plato, and even of St Ambrose.[1]
- ↑ M. Villemain compares the well-known legend of Horace's boyhood, related by himself—Odes, iii. 4. We might add the tale of Stesichorus and the nightingale—Anthol. Gr. vol. i. p. 31 (Tauchnitz ed.)
