Page:Pindar and Anacreon.djvu/260

To aid, while sojourning on earth,
His spouse at the Herculean birth,
Or of Tiresias' counsels wise,
Or Iolaus, skilful charioteer,
Or earth-sown heroes,^[1] wielding as they rise 15
The indefatigable spear:
Or when thou sent'st Adrastus far
From the rude shout and din of war,
Reft of his numerous friends, to roam
Back to equestrian Argos home: 20
Or when from distant Doris' land
Thou gavest on foot erect to stand
The colony of Spartan line—
Thy sons besieged Amyclæ's wall,
Ægidæ, faithful to the call 25
Of the prophetic Pythian shrine. 22

But mighty deeds of old renown
Sleep unremember'd and unknown,
Save when enrich'd the record lie
In the sweet dews of poetry. 30
Then lead the pomp, the hymn's soft lays
Awake, Strepsiades to praise,

fame than Hesiod, Pindar, Pelopidas, Epaminondas, Plutarch, and Sextus Chæronensis. The dulness, therefore, which the rest of the Grecians ascribed to the Bœotians, on account of the density of their atmosphere, was not always agreeable to truth or consonant with experience. The conscious sublimity of Pindar repelled the imputation."

1. This origin of the Thebans, who were fabled to spring from the sown teeth of the dragon, is frequently alluded to by the ancient poets. So Ovid: (Amor., iii., 12. 35:)—

   "Protea quid referam, Thebanaque semina, dentes?"

   and Euripides: (Herc. F. 4, 5:)—

   "ενθ᾽ δ γηγενης
   Σπαρτων σταχυς εβλαστεν."

   See also Eur., (Phœn., 953 ;) and Ovid, (Met., iii., 110:)—

   "Crescitque seges clypeata virorum."

   Virg., (Georg., ii., 140,) &c.