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is a larger and grander aspect of Pindar's poetry in regard to the politics of Hellas. The epic poets had sung the glories of war. Pindar celebrates the rivalries of peace. Aegina—which claims a larger number of his odes than any other one city—was a great seat of commerce: he describes it as a "heaven-set pillar for strangers of every clime[1], wherein Saving Themis hath worship by the side of Zeus the god of the stranger." Corinth, "vestibule of the Isthmian Poseidon," is a city "wherein dwelleth Eunomia, and her sister, the upholder of cities, and unfailing Dicè, and like-minded Eirenè, watchers over wealth for men, golden daughters of wise-counselling Themis[2]" At Opus, again, there is a home for "Themis and her daughter, glorious Eunomia, who saveth[3]." Tranquillity is the friend of cities (Ἁσυχία φιλόπολις); and Tranquillity is the daughter of Justice[4]. We can often feel in Pindar that new sense of leisure for peaceful pursuits and civilising arts which came after the Persian Wars; there breathes in his poetry such a message of sacred peace as the Olympic festival itself proclaimed every year to Hellas by "the heralds of the seasons, the Elean truce-bringers of Zeus son of Cronus[5]"—κάρυκες ὡρᾶν,...σπονδοφόροι Κρονίδα Ζηνὸς Ἀλεῖοι.

§ 6. Pindar's attitude towards religion is that of a man who held devoutly the received national creed of Greece, but with whose faith were blended certain

  1. Ol. viii. 26.
  2. Ol. xiii. 8.
  3. Ol. ix. 15.
  4. Ol. iv. 16; Pyth. viii. 1.
  5. Isthm. ii. 23.