The Extant Odes of Pindar | Page 3

temperament should have lived through these times without
representing to us with breadth and intensity the spirit that was in them,
and there are several points in Pindar's circumstances which make his
relation to his age peculiarly interesting. We may look on him as in
some points supplementary to the great Athenian dramatists, whose
works are doubtless far the most valuable literary legacy of the time.
Perhaps however the surpassing brilliance of Athenian literature and
history has made us somewhat prone to forget the importance of
non-Athenian elements in the complex whole of Hellenic life and
thought. Athens was the eye of Hellas, nay, she had at Marathon and
Salamis made good her claim to be called the saving arm, but there
were other members not to be forgotten if we would picture to
ourselves the national body in its completeness.
Pindar was a Boeotian, of a country not rich in literary or indeed any
kind of intellectual eminence, yet by no means to be ignored in an
estimate of the Hellenic race. Politically indeed it only rises into
pre-eminence under Epameinondas; before and afterwards Boeotian
policy under the domination of Thebes is seldom either beneficent or
glorious: it must be remembered, however, that the gallant Plataeans
also were Boeotians. The people of Boeotia seem to have had generally
an easy, rather sensually inclined nature, which accorded with their rich
country and absence of nautical and commercial enterprise and
excitement, but in their best men this disposition remains only in the
form of a genial simplicity. Pelopidas in political, and Plutarch and
Pausanias in literary history, will be allowed to be instances of this.
That the poetry which penetrated Hellenic life was not wanting in
Boeotia we have proof enough in the existence of the Sacred Band, that
goodly fellowship of friends which seems to have united what Hallam
has called the three strongest motives to enthusiastic action that have
appeared in history, patriotism, chivalric honour, and religion. Nor is
there any nobler figure in history than that of Epameinondas.

One fact indeed there is which must always make the thought of
Pindar's Theban citizenship painful to us, and that is the shameful part
taken by Thebes in the Persian war, when compulsion of her exposed
situation, and oligarchical cabal within her walls, drew her into unholy
alliance with the barbarian invader. Had it been otherwise how
passionately pure would Pindar's joy have uttered itself when the 'stone
of Tantalos' that hung over the head of Hellas was smitten into dust in
that greatest crisis of the fortunes of humanity. He exults nobly as it is,
he does all honour to Athens, 'bulwark of Hellas,' but the shame of his
own city, his 'mother' Thebes, must have caused him a pang as bitter as
a great soul has ever borne.
For his very calling of song-writer to all Hellenic states without
discrimination, especially when the songs he had to write were of the
class which we still possess, triumphal odes for victories in those great
games which drew to them all men of Hellenic blood at the feet of
common deities, and which with each recurring festival could even
hush the clamour of war in an imperious Truce of God--such a calling
and such associations must have cherished in him the passion for
Panhellenic brotherhood and unanimity, even had there not been much
else both within and without him to join to the same generous end. It
was the time when Panhellenic feeling was probably stronger than ever
before or after. Before, the states had been occupied in building up their
own polities independently; the Hellenic activity had been dispersing
itself centrifugally among the trans-marine colonies, and those of Italy
and Sicily seemed at one time to make it doubtful whether the nucleus
of civilization were to be there or in the mother-country. But by the
time of the Persian war the best energies of the race had concentrated
themselves between the Aegean and Ionian seas; and the supreme
danger of the war had bound the states together against the common
enemy and taught them to forget smaller differences in the great strife
between Hellene and barbarian. Yet again when that supreme danger
was past the old quarrels arose anew more deadly and more
complicated: instead of a Persian there was a Peloponnesian war, and
the Peloponnesian war in its latter stages came, by virtue of the
political principles involved, to partake much of the character of a civil
war. But the time of Pindar, of Aeschylus, of Sophocles, of Pheidias, of

Polygnotos, was that happy interval when Hellas had beaten off the
barbarian from her throat and had not yet murdered herself. And
Pindar's imagination and generosity were both kindled by the moment;
there was no room in his mind for