vantages. The titles of the four Books give a very inadequate idea of their contents. As we have seen, the actual occasion of an Ode is one thing, its real theme is frequently another. A modern reader, again, will care little for the distinctions, which to a Greek seemed so important, of chariot-race, mile-race, wrestling-match, and the like, and will wish for some classification less dependent on what he will regard as insignificant accidents of the particular Odes. Something might be said for chronology as the basis of such a classification. There would be a certain interest in attempting to trace the development and decline of Pindar's genius through the fifty years which separate his earliest from his latest Ode. Yet the results of such an attempt would probably be inconsiderable. We may, indeed, distinguish certain variations of force in Pindar's poetry at the various stages of its development, but there is no marked change in its general character from time to time; none in its choice of themes; scarcely any in its method of handling them. His general conception of the proper form of an Ode seems to have been fixed during the period of his early education, his "Lehr-jähre" under Scopelinus and Lasus, and no subsequent influences can be shown to have substantially modified it. Thus a classification of his Odes based on chronology would be unsatisfactory, from the absence of sufficiently marked epochs.[1]
- ↑ This, however, is the method adopted by Leop. Schmidt in his elaborate work, Pindar's Leben und Dichtung (Bonn, 1862).
