(as Ol. vi. 17, ἀμφότερον, μάντιν τ' ἀγαθὸν καὶ δουρὶ μάρνασθαι), but also in such touches as his tacit correction of Hesiod (Pyth. iii. 28). Hesiod (frag. 225 Goettl.) had said that a crow was the messenger who announced the infidelity of Coronis to Apollo; Pindar refers the discovery to Apollo's "all-knowing mind" (πάντα ἴσαντι νόῳ), and represents him, with Homeric vigour, as reaching the scene "at the first stride" of his immortal feet (βάματι ἐν πρώτῳ): cp. Il. xiii. 20, of Poseidon,—τρὶς μὲν ὀρέξατ' ἰών, τὸ δὲ τέτρατον ἵκετο τέκμωρ. Thoroughly Homeric, too, in spirit is Pindar's derivation of the name Aias from αἰετός, the eagle which was the omen of his birth, rather than from the plaintive αἶ αἶ to which another legend pointed: Isthm. v. 53, καί νιν ὄρνιχος φανέντος κέκλετ' ἐπώνυμον εὐρυβίαν Αἴαντα. In the same ode, 47, it may be remarked that ἄρρηκτον φυάν means "stalwart," not "invulnerable," and that, therefore, Pindar has not departed from Homeric sobriety by adopting the later tradition.
§ 11. Pindar's personal sympathies are strongly knit to that heroic age in which his ancestry claimed a part, and in which his own imagination could still move with such noble freedom. All the more he feels the change which has come over the motives of poetry. "The men of old lightly sent forth shafts of song that told their loves" (οἱ πάλαι...ῥίμφα παιδείους ἐτόξευον...ὕμνους). Here he is thinking, not of Homeric epos, but of the lyric poetry which came after it,—of Alcaeus, Sappho,
