Cronus; there the breezes of Ocean breathe around the Islands of the Blest; and flowers of gold are bright, some on the fair trees of that land, and some in the waters, with chains and wreaths whereof they twine their hands, by the righteous decrees of Rhadamanthys[1]." The ἐς τρὶς ἑκατέρωθι μείναντες brings before us the mystical doctrine of the myth in the Phaedrus. Here we see that Pindar was at least familiar with the idea of metempsychosis; how far he was a disciple of Pythagoreanism is less certain. Another passage has been taken to imply the Pythagorean doctrine of a relative ethical mean; another, a Pythagorean division of virtue as fourfold—temperance, courage, justice, prudence[2] The impression which such utterances of Pindar leave on the mind is that he was acquainted with the teaching of Mysteries, especially, perhaps, the Orphic; that he held this doctrine as an esoteric supplement to the popular religion, harmonising them in some way which satisfied his own religious sense; but that his speculations had not taken any shape so clear or definite as to deserve the name of a philosophy. A contradiction has sometimes been felt between those passages in which he anticipates a fully conscious existence for the soul after death, determined by the moral character of the earthly life, and other passages in which he might seem rather to echo the popular language in
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