The Extant Odes of Pindar | Page 4

border squabbles, for commercial
jealousies, for oligarchic or democratic envy: these things were
overridden by a sentiment of nationality wanting indeed in many
circumstances which modern nationalities deem essential to the
existence of such sentiment, and many of which are really essential to
its permanence--yet a sentiment which no other nation ever before or
since can have possessed in the peculiar lustre which it then wore in
Hellas; for no other nation has ever before or since known what it was
to stand alone immeasurably advanced at the head of the civilization of
the world.
Pindar was of a noble family, of the house of the Aigeidai, and it is
probable that his kinsmen, or some of them, may have taken the side of
oligarchy in the often recurring dissensions at Thebes, but of this we
know nothing certain. He himself seems to have taken no part in
politics. When he speaks on the subject in his odes it is not with the
voice of a partisan. An ochlocracy is hateful to him, but if he shows
himself an 'aristocrat' it is in the literal and etymological meaning of the
word. Doubtless if Pindar had been asked where the best servants of the
state in public life were most likely to be found he would have
answered that it would be among those ancient families in whose veins
ran the blood of gods and demigods, who had spent blood and money
for the city's honour, championing her in war or in the mimic strife of
the games, who had honourable traditions to be guided by and an
honourable name to lose or save. These things were seldom
undervalued by Hellenic feeling: even in Athens, after it was already
the headquarters of the democratic principle, the noble and wealthy
families obtained, not probably without wisdom of their own in loyally
accepting a democratic position, as fair a place and prospects as
anywhere in Hellas. But that, when the noble nature, the [Greek: aretae],
which traditions of nobility ought to have secured, was lacking, then
wealth and birth were still entitled to power, this was a doctrine
repugnant utterly to Pindar's mind: nor would his indignation slumber
when he saw the rich and highborn, however gifted, forgetting at any

time that their power was a trust for the community and using it for
their own selfish profit. An 'aristocrat' after Pindar's mind would
assuredly have a far keener eye to his duties than to his rights, would
consider indeed that in his larger share of duties lay his infinitely most
precious right.
But he 'loved that beauty should go beautifully;' personal excellence of
some kind was in his eyes essential; but on this he would fain shed
outward radiance and majesty. His imagination rejoiced in
splendour--splendour of stately palace--halls where the columns were
of marble and the entablature of wrought gold, splendour of temples of
gods where the sculptor's waxing art had brought the very deities to
dwell with man, splendour of the white-pillared cities that glittered
across the Aegean and Sicilian seas, splendour of the holy Panhellenic
games, of whirlwind chariots and the fiery grace of thoroughbreds, of
the naked shapely limbs of the athlete man and boy. On this
characteristic of Pindar it is needless to dwell, for there are not many
odes of those remaining which do not impress it on our minds.
And it is more with him than a mere manner in poetical style. The same
defect which we feel more or less present in all poets of antiquity--least
of all perhaps in Virgil and Sophokles, but even in them somewhat--a
certain want of widely sympathetic tenderness, this is unquestionably
present in Pindar. What of this quality may have found expression in
his lost poems, especially the Dirges, we can scarcely guess, but in his
triumphal odes it hardly appears at all, unless in the touches of tender
gracefulness into which he softens when speaking of the young. And
we find this want in him mainly because objects of pity, such as
especially elicit that quality of tenderness, are never or seldom present
to Pindar's mind. He sees evil only in the shape of some moral baseness,
falsehood, envy, arrogance, and the like, to be scathed in passing by the
good man's scorn, or else in the shape of a dark mystery of pain, to be
endured by those on whom it causelessly falls in a proud though
undefiant silence. It was not for him, as for the great tragedians, to
'purge the mind by pity and fear,' for those passions had scarcely a
place in his own mind or in the minds of those of whom he in his high
phantasy would fain have had the world consist. And as in this point

somewhat, so still more in