Pindar (Morice)/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI.
ATHENS.—CORINTH.—ARGOS.—OPUS.—ARISTAGORAS OF TENEDOS.
Remembering the tradition of Pindar's friendly relations with, the Athenians, one is a little inclined to wonder that only two of his extant Odes, and those among the least important in the whole collection, are addressed to Athenian victors. Nor does it appear that any of the lost Isthmian Odes came under this category. It is probably useless to attempt an explanation of the circumstance; but it certainly deserves explanation, if such were possible.
Not less remarkable is the silence of these two Odes as to the stirring events of contemporary Athenian history. The Seventh Pythian, written apparently just after the great battle of Marathon, makes not the faintest shadow of an allusion to that crowning glory of Athenian history. And the Second Nemean, composed soon after the victory at Salamis, does, indeed, mention Salamis, but actually without a hint that the place was known to fame in any other capacity than as the birthplace of Ajax! Yet we know that Pindar was profoundly interested in the magnificent exploits of the Athenians during their struggle against Persia. He can find no higher praise for Hiero's victory at Himera than to compare it with the Athenian triumph at Salamis. A fragment[1] has been preserved from a lost poem referring to an occasion "when the sons of Athenians laid the bright foundation of freedom for the Greeks." And in writing to an Æginetan victor,[2] he loudly applauds the part taken by Ægina in the fight at Salamis. But to Athenian victors he writes twice. Each time the Athenians were exulting in a great recent victory; and each time Pindar leaves the victory unmentioned.
We can perhaps explain his silence in the one case; in the other it must remain an unsolved riddle. The Seventh Pythian was addressed to Megacles, a member of the noble Alcmæonid family; and it was gravely suspected that the sympathy of this family with the expelled Athenian tyrant Hippias, who fought and (as some say) fell on the Persian side at Marathon, had not merely made them lukewarm in their country's cause, but had led them into actual treachery. Whether this suspicion was true or false, it produced a feeling of no little odium against the Alcmæonids; and the events of Marathon would naturally long remain a sore subject with members of the family, reminding them rather of their own discredit, whether deserved or no, than of the glory of their city. But as to the Second Nemean, we have no knowledge of the victor's family which will enable us to explain Pindar's obviously intentional silence on the subject of the sea-fight at Salamis.
In both Odes the element of mythology is conspicuous by its absence; and indeed neither Ode contains any feature of special interest, except, perhaps, the allusion in the Seventh Pythian to the restoration (in B.C. 512) of Apollo's temple at Delphi. Some exiled members of the Alcmæonid family, who had contracted to build its front with common Porine stone, substituted for this, at their own expense, a façade of costly Parian marble:—
"Ay, sounded are they through all the lands,—
Those labours of Erecthid hands,
On Pytho's steep divine
Rearing Apollo's shrine!"
The Second Pythian is the merest sketch of an Ode, and contains nothing that requires quotation.
Very unlike these trifles is Pindar's only Ode to a Corinthian victor, the Thirteenth Olympian, addressed to Xenophon, a member of the great aristocratical house of the Oligæthids, who had achieved a success which Pindar describes as unparalleled—victory both in the foot-race and in the Pentathlum.[3] This fine poem contains the principal account in ancient literature, if we except a passage in Homer, of the adventures of the great Corinthian hero Bellerophon. We hear how he toiled in vain to tame the winged horse Pegasus, till Pallas appeared in a vision and presented him with a golden bridle:—
"The powers of Heaven can lightly deign boons that Hope's self despairs to gain:
And bold Belleroplion with speed won to his will the winged steed,
Binding that soothing spell his jaws around.
Mounting all mailed, his courser's pace the dance of war he taught to trace,
And, borne of him, the Amazons he slew,
Nor feared the bows their woman-armies drew,
Chimæra breathing fire, and Solymi,—
Swooping from frozen depths of lifeless sky.
Untold I leave his final fall!—
His charger passed to Zeus' Olympian stall."
Other legendary glories of Corinth find place in this Ode—the invention of the Aëtoma, an important feature in Greek architecture; the introduction of the Dionysiac festival, and of the Dithyramb which accompanied it; the prowess of Glaucus, king of Lycia, a descendant of Bellerophon; the tales of Sisyphus and Medea. And the poem ends with a long enumeration of Oligæthid victories, and anticipations of others yet to come. At Nemea and the Isthmus alone they had triumphed sixty times! Pindar's statement is positive; but he feels that it sounds incredible, and appeals for confirmation to the sworn heralds who had proclaimed these victories. Yet this was not all.
"Well, ere now, my song hath told
Of their Olympic victories;
And what shall be, must coming lays unfold.
Yet hope have I,—the future lies
With Fate,—yet bless but Heaven still their line,
Ares and Zeus shall all fulfil! For, by Parnassus' frowning hill,
Argos, and Thebes, their fame how fair! And oh, what witness soon shall bear,
In Arcady, Lycæus' royal shrine!
Pellene, Sicyon, of them, tell,—Megara, and the hallowed dell
Of Æacids; Eleusis; Marathon bright;
And wealthy towns that bask 'neath Ætna's height;
Eubœa's island. Nay, all Greece explore,—
Than eye can see, you'll find their glories more!
Through life, great Zeus, sustain their feet;
And bless with piety, and with triumphs sweet!"
An extremely fine Ode, also, is the Tenth Nemean, to Theæus of Argos, the only champion from that city whose triumph is recorded by Pindar. As has been already stated, Argos was in ancient times one of the greatest powers in Greece,—unrivalled save by Thebes. Naturally her legendary memories were of especial splendour. Perseus and the Gorgon; Epaphus, the supposed founder of great cities in Egypt; Diomede, the Argive champion in the Trojan war—hardly inferior as a warrior to Achilles himself; Adrastus and Amphiaraus, one the leader, the other the associate-prophet, of the Seven Champions in the famous expedition against Thebes; Amphitryon, the stepfather of Heracles, who had been trained in Argos to feats of arms;—such were the myths which at once presented themselves for the poet's choice, as lie approached the theme of an Argive's victory.
None of these legends are neglected by Pindar, but he throws his main strength into another, and surely a most beautiful myth, connected, though remotely, with the family traditions of his patron, the myth of Castor and Pollux.
These heroic brethren were twins, alike in all points save one—Pollux was immortal, his brother a mere man. To save Castor from death, Pollux voluntarily resigned to him the half of his own immortality, and thenceforward the brethren passed alternate periods of life in heaven and death in the sepulchres of their native Therapne.
"To them in turn the lot is given
For one short day to taste the bliss of Heaven,
Guest of the gods around the throne of Jove;
The next, in dark Therapne's grove,
The silence of the tomb—the lot of man—to prove.
So blent in wondrous love, the godlike pair
One fortune share.
For such the lot immortal Pollux chose,
What time to his free choice 'twas given
To live the life of gods in heaven,
Or share his brother's woes."—(S.)
The struggle in which Castor fell is described with great vigour and picturesqueness of detail. The Twins were returning from a successful foray against their neighbours Lynceus and Idas, two brothers who in other legends appear as comrades of Jason in his voyage to Colchos. They lay down to rest beneath an oak, but Lynceus (keenest-eyed of mortal men) saw them from a distant mountain height, and hastened with his brother to revenge the raid. Castor was soon overpowered, but—
"Not long their triumph: on the twain
Came the dread wrath of Jove amain;
Jove willed: each warrior fell!
For deathless Pollux all afire
Rushed on the foe to wreak his vengeance dire.
They from the tomb, where lay their buried sire,
The pillared stone that decked the grave uptore:
And, as the dread avenger came,
The mighty mass—his speed to tame—
Full on his breast the brethren bore.
In vain! nor bruise nor blow the hero knew:
Nor might the huge and flying rock
One moment check the furious shock
Which pierced sad Lynceus through.
The bolt of Jove laid Idas low.
There lay the brethren dead in lonely woe."—(S.)
Pollux hastened back to his fallen brother, and found him in desperate case:—
"Not yet the thrall of stiffened death,
But shuddering with short gasp of weak and struggling breath."—(S.)
With passionate tears, Pollux besought Zeus to take back the cruel gift of immortality, and let him share his brother's death. The god appeared, and offered him another favour. Let him balance two alternative lots, and make his choice. If he would reign for ever as a god in heaven—so should it be!
"But if thou still
Art bent with fond fraternal care
Thy brother's lot in all to share,
I grant thy love its will:
Half of thy days to thee the lot is given
Deep in the silent earth to breathe
The dark and joyless life of death,
And half—to reign in heaven."—(S.)
"No doubt," says Pindar, "clouded the hero's mind." In an instant his choice was made, and forthwith
"From Castor fell
From eye and tongue the prison-bonds of hell."—(S.)
So ends this charming legend of fraternal affection, and with it the Ode reaches a worthy close.
Among Pindar's more important Odes must be reckoned also the Ninth Olympian, addressed to Epharmostus, a Locrian of Opus in Northern Greece. Pour distinct Greek communities bore the name of Locrians, three in Greece proper and one in Italy. Opus, however, was regarded as the cradle of the whole Locrian stock, and its inhabitants claimed a certain pre-eminence among their brethren in consequence. Yet they never attained a position of much consideration among the States of Greece. Their country was rich and beautiful, but its inhabitants were little distinguished in the arts of war or peace. In the struggle against Persia their attitude was wavering and undignified. We find them first submitting to the invaders, then flocking to join Leonidas in Thermopylae, and lastly at the critical moment retiring from that dangerous post. The Locrians of Opus, however, were not without traditions of a glorious past which consoled them for their present insignificance. And naturally it is in these traditions that Pindar finds his chief materials for a panegyric upon Opus.
The Ode was clearly intended as a specimen of the poet's best and most careful work. Pindar expresses, in its opening, his intention to produce a lay more worthy of Epharmostus's triumph than the antique and simple strains of Archilochus, which had been deemed sufficient to greet it on the actual occasion of its achievement. And in a similar tone he proceeds to describe its purposed character:—
"His city dear will I adorn
With fiery songs of loudest strain.
Swifter than noblest courser borne,
Or sail-fledged ships that cleave the main:
Afar will I the tale recite.
If, Graces sweet, 'tis mine in humblest share
To cull the blossoms of your garden rare—
For yours is all that charms: and Heaven sends skill and might."
From this prelude he dashes at once into the world of mythology with a tale of "war in heaven"—Heracles resisting the combined assault of Apollo, Hades, and Poseidon. But the introduction of this legend is a "feint." The poet is purposely delaying the myths which are to form the real substance of the Ode, in order to introduce them at last with greater effect. And soon in one of his favourite bold transitions he reveals his scheme. "Quit such theme, tongue of mine!" he cries, and springs forthwith to the local legends of Opus,—the tale of Deucalion's deluge, and of the glorious reign of a mythical prince, to whom the Opuntian Locrians loved to trace the name of their city, Opus, the son of Zeus by a princess of Elis, who afterwards became the wife of the Locrian monarch Locrus. The following is Pindar's version of the well-known legend of Deucalion, who with his wife Pyrrha escaped the deluge that had overwhelmed his contemporaries, and who, by casting stones behind him in obedience to the directions of an oracle, had peopled Locris with a new race called Laians, from the Greek word Laas, "a stone."
"Where led of Zeus, that hurls the lightnings bright,
Down from Parnassian heights Deucalion came
With Pyrrha, Man's primeval home to frame,
And there, sans travail, won
Descendants sprung from stone,
'Laians' thence named. Let these inspire your voice;
And of old wine, but new-blown song make choice!
For earth, 'tis told in story, sank
Whelmed 'neath a dark and raging main,
But sudden, cleft of Zeus, she drank—
The swollen surge was pent again!"
Then follows the tale of Opus's birth, and of the heroes who flocked to his court, foremost among whom was Menœtius, the famous father of a yet more famous son—Patroclus, the friend of Achilles.
"Him that went
With Atreus' sons to Troy, sole faithful found
To wronged Achilles, when the fleet around
'Mid rout of valiant Greeks
Raged Telephus. Still speaks
His fame, and wise men know Patroclus' might
Thenceforth, amid the crash of furious fight
The son of Thetis bade him stand
The nearest ever to his side,
Sheltered of his victorious brand."
The poet professes himself willing to linger for ever on such themes; but the immediate occasion of the Ode must not be forgotten, and so he proceeds to enumerate the athletic successes of Epharmostus and liis kinsman Lampromachus, dwelling especially on one scene of triumph, which he seems himself to have witnessed.
"But oh, when now to manhood newly grown
He sought the silver prize in Marathon,
And there with footing true
And rapid feint o'erthrew
Each senior tried, what shouts rang round to greet
The fair young hero of so fair a feat!"
Lastly, Pindar enlarges on a favourite thesis of his philosophy of life, that glory is no external good to be grasped at by every chance aspirant, but the visible outcome of an innate capacity for greatness vouchsafed by Providence to certain favoured mortals. Ambition in inferior natures is presumption, a rash intrusion upon a sphere into which they have no right to enter. In contrast to such, Pindar describes the nature which may lawfully aspire to glory, and finds it exemplified in Epharmostus:—
"The victor, graced with blessings from on high,
Strong arm, lithe limb, and spirit-speaking eye,
Whose hand at Ajax' feast[4] the Ilian altar crowned."
We have now noticed all the extant Odes which Pindar has addressed to conquerors at the Four Great Games, and those also which—though really referring to successes in minor competitions—have been mistakenly included in the Pythian or Nemean group, and have thus by a happy accident escaped unmerited oblivion. We have to thank a similar accident for the preservation of the one extant Ode of Pindar which was not composed to celebrate an equestrian or athletic triumph —the so-called Eleventh Nemean—the Installation Ode (to which reference has more than once been made), for Aristagoras, "President" of Tenedos. Aristagoras had been in his day a distinguished athlete, and the frequent allusions of the Ode to his successes have occasioned the mistake which has preserved it.
The closing stanzas of this poem—like those of the Ninth Olympian described above—afford a specimen of Pindar's quasi-philosophical speculation on the problems of life. If the attainment of success be the result of an innate and inherited capacity for success, how comes it that the annals of a given family contain the record of failures as well as of successes? This difficulty Pindar meets with the favourite argument of poets—an analogy. The procreative capacities of Nature do not operate continuously through time: summer alternates with winter, fields lie fallow in certain years, blossom succeeds to bud, and fruit to blossom. So is it with the inborn gifts, which at stated intervals generate success.
"But not in every age successive born
Doth its full strength ancestral virtue show,
Nor year by year with crops of golden corn
Doth the rich furrow glow;
Nor are the laden trees unfailing drest
With their sweet burthen hour by hour,
Swoln bud and fragrant flower,
But all alike they own alternate wealth and rest.
E'en so alternate is the race of man."—(S.)
Thus does Pindar give a consolatory turn to the old simile of Homer, "The race of man is as the race of leaves." Other ancient poets adapted it to teach a gloomier lesson, the shortness and misery of life. This was all that Mimnermus[5] saw in it, when he expanded it into an elaborate and melancholy allegory; or Simonides,[6] when he applauded and quoted it in condemnation of the Fallacies of Hope. Pindar's doctrine is more cheerful, and more unselfish. He sees that the leaves fall, but he remembers that the tree will bud again. The individual aspirant to fame may fail, but the poet consoles him with the hope that he may live again in his descendants, and triumph in the reflected glories of their successes.