Another yet more marvellous legend told how the god Pan had been heard by belated wayfarers singing a Pæan of Pindar's between the peaks of Helicon and Cithæron. His death was made an occasion for other myths. The oracle of Ammon promised him the greatest earthly boon, and his death was the fulfilment of the promise. The goddess of the nether world, Persephone, appeared to him in a dream; and, complaining that she alone of deities had been left unhonoured by his muse, added that he should praise her yet in the land of the dead. In ten days the promise was fulfilled. The poet died at Argos, and immediately after, his spectre appeared to an aged dame in Thebes, recited a new hymn to Persephone, some portion of which she was able to commit to writing, and then vanished for ever into the spirit-world from which it had come.
A late poet, Leonidas, sums his character up in a brief epitaph, which may be rendered thus:—
"To strangers kind, yet to his townsmen dear,
Pindar, the Muses' minister, rests here."
Such is the traditional biography of Pindar. But how much of it may be regarded as trustworthy? We might naturally have supposed that the contemporaries who cherished so proudly and so fondly the fame of Pindar, would have been careful to preserve and transmit to posterity a full and trustworthy record of his life. And, in fact, we possess at least four professed biographies of the poet, agreeing fairly even in their minuter details, and appearing at first sight to sup-
