liked to write for 'the real nobility,' the descendants of Aeacus and Heracles; his Sicilian kings are exceptions, but who could criticise a friendly king's claim to gentility? This ancient Dorian blood is evidently at the root of Pindar's view of life; even the way he asserts his equality with his patrons shows it. Simonides posed as the great man of letters. Pindar sometimes boasts of his genius, but leaves the impression of thinking more of his ancestry. In another thing he is unlike Simonides. Pindar was the chosen vessel of the priesthood in general, a votary of Rhea and Pan, and, above all, of the Dorian Apollo. He expounded the rehabilitation of traditional religion, which radiated from Delphi. He himself had special privileges at Delphi during his life, and his ghost afterwards was invited yearly to dine with the god. The priests of Zeus Ammon in the desert had a poem of his written in golden letters on their shrine.
These facts explain, as far as it needs explanation, the great flaw in Pindar's life. He lived through the Persian War; he saw the beginning of the great period of Greek enlightenment and progress. In both crises he stood, the unreasoning servant of sacertdotal tradition and racial prejudice, on the side of Boeotia and Delphi. One might have hoped that when Thebes joined the Persian, this poet the friend of statesmen and king in many countries, the student from Athens, would have protested. On the contrary, though afterwards when the war was won he could write Nemean iv. ad the Dithyramb for Athens, in the crisis itself he made what Polybius calls (iv.31) "a most shameful and injurious refusal": he wrote a poem of which two large dreamy lines are preserved, talking of peace and neutrality! It [112]
