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Updated: June 25, 2025
Carey's "Legends of the French Provinces," Andrew Lang's Green, Blue and Red fairy books, Laboulaye's "Last Fairy Tales," Hauff's "The Inn in the Spessart," Julia Goddard's "Golden Weathercock," Frere's "Eastern Fairy Legends," Asbjornsen's "Folk Tales," Susan Pindar's "Midsummer Fays," Nisbit Bain's "Cossack Fairy Tales," etc., etc.
But this city-festival, so intimately bound up with the manners and exercises of the Romans, coincides in all essentials with the Hellenic national festivals: more especially in the fundamental idea of combining a religious solemnity and a competition in warlike sports; in the selection of the several exercises, which at the Olympic festival, according to Pindar's testimony, consisted from the first in running, wrestling, boxing, chariot-racing, and throwing the spear and stone; in the nature of the prize of victory, which in Rome as well as in the Greek national festivals was a chaplet, and in the one case as well as in the other was assigned not to the charioteer, but to the owner of the team; and lastly in introducing the feats and rewards of general patriotism in connection with the general national festival.
That night-ride had come back to Horace several years ago when he was writing his ode on Pindar, but to-day's memory seemed strangely different. Then he had remembered what a revelation Pindar's lyric art had been to him amid the severe and lofty beauty of Greek scenery.
I had sooner be in hell a good deal at any rate in one of the upper circles, where the climate and company are not too trying. I wonder if you are plagued in this way." He was repeating the experience of the old Greeks as it is expressed in Pindar's Fourth Pythian: "Now this, they say, is of all griefs the sorest, that one knowing good should of necessity abide without lot therein."
We know very little of Pindar's life. He was born in or about the year B.C. 522, at the village of Kynoskephalai near Thebes. He was thus a citizen of Thebes and seems to have always had his home there. But he travelled among other states, many of which have been glorified by his art.
But this city-festival, so intimately bound up with the manners and exercises of the Romans, coincides in all essentials with the Hellenic national festivals: more especially in the fundamental idea of combining a religious solemnity and a competition in warlike sports; in the selection of the several exercises, which at the Olympic festival, according to Pindar's testimony, consisted from the first in running, wrestling, boxing, chariot-racing, and throwing the spear and stone; in the nature of the prize of victory, which in Rome as well as in the Greek national festivals was a chaplet, and in the one case as well as in the other was assigned not to the charioteer, but to the owner of the team; and lastly in introducing the feats and rewards of general patriotism in connection with the general national festival.
That he could succeed tolerably in the mock-heroic vein, may be seen in his parody on Pindar's ariston men hydor, entitled Gooseberry Pie, and in some of the occasional pieces called Nondescripts.
The only reason we know for the digression about Perseus which occupies great part of this ode seems to be that Thorax, who engaged Pindar to write it for Hippokleas, and perhaps Hippokleas himself, belonged to the family of the Aleuadai, who were descended through Herakles from Perseus. This ode is the earliest entire poem of Pindar's which survives. He wrote it when he was twenty years old.
Pindar's great odes were occasional poems, just as much as our Commencement and Phi Beta Kappa poems are, and yet they have come down among the most precious bequests of antiquity to modern times.
Accordingly, the aforesaid connections had appealed to the chief of secret police for information about their relative; but in a few days he had been able to tell them confidently that the Marchese del Prato was in good health and quite free, that he was an enthusiastic scholar, and was writing an exhaustive work on the mythology of Pindar's Odes, and that there was no cause for any anxiety about him.
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