regard to Hades, as peopled by shadows whose being is "the lowest degree of existence above annihilation"; such a being as the Homeric Achilles conceives:—ἦ ῥά ἔστι καὶ εἰν Ἀΐδαο δόμοισιν | ψυχὴ καὶ εἴδωλον, ἀτὰρ φρένες οὐκ ἔνι πάμπαν[1] On a closer examination, the supposed contradiction seems to me to depend on the sense which we are to attach to a phrase in Pyth. v. 90f., where he is speaking of "holy kings who have passed to Hades" (λαχόντες Ἀΐδαν):—ἀκούοντί που χθονίᾳ φρενὶ | σφὸν ὄλβον υἱῷ τε κοινὰν χάριν: "they hear, I ween, with the mind of the nether world, their own good fortune and the fame which their son shares with them." If χθονίᾳ φρενί meant, "with such imperfect consciousness as the dead possess," then Pindar would be speaking like the Homeric Achilles. But surely this would be a strained and arbitrary construction. It is more in accord with Pindar's manner to regard χθονίᾳ as conveying a shadowy suggestion that the intelligence which belongs to the unseen world is of a different order from the intelligence of the living.
§ 8. The elastic word ἀρετή, as used by Pindar, covers all excellence, physical, moral, and mental: though, as might have been expected, his most frequent use of the word relates to "prowess," especially at the festivals. One of Pindar's dominant thoughts is that φυή, native temperament—the direct gift of the gods—is the grand source of ἀρετή[2], and that training is of comparatively slight
