Telamon, Ajax, Peleus, Achilles. In the fifth Isthmian ode, Pindar gives a most brilliant treatment to the initial episode of the very theme which occupied the east pediment of the temple at Aegina,—Heracles coming to seek the aid of Telamon against Troy, when Telamon gave his guest "a wine-cup rough with gold," and Heracles prophesied the birth and the prowess of Ajax. Here then, is a case in which we can conceive that the poet's immediate theme may have occurred to his mind as he gazed on the sculptor's work in the splendid entablature of the temple; and we recall Pindar's own comparison of an opening song to the front of a stately building—ἀρχομένον δ' ἔργου χρὴ πρόσωπον θέμεν τηλαυγές.
The contrast in style between the work on the western and eastern pediments at Aegina would correspond with the difference between the older, stiffer school of Gallon and that fresher impulse which in Pindar's day was represented at Aegina by Onatas. If Onatas had indeed a chief hand in the eastern pediment, then the praise of the Aeacidae associated Onatas and Pindar at Aegina as the praise of Hiero's victory in the chariot-race—which Onatas commemorated by a group—associated them at Olympia. Bronze race-horses, one of which, with a boy-rider, stood on each side of the chariot wrought by Onatas, were the work of Calamis, who represents Athenian art just before it reached its greatest perfection under Pheidias. It was Calamis whom Pindar chose to Calamis. execute a statue which he dedicated at Thebes. The subject was Zeus Ammon, whom Pindar may have
