will mount the flower-crowned prow." Another place where the same image occurs affords a striking example of two incongruous metaphors brought close together:—κώπαν σχάσον, ταχὺ δ' ἄγκυραν ἔρεισον χθονὶ | πρῴραθε, χοιράδος ἄλκαρ πέτρας. | ἐγκωμίων γὰρ ἄωτος ὕμνων | ἐπ' ἄλλοτ' ὧτε μέλισσα θύνει λόγον (Pyth. x. 51): "stay the oar; let the anchor from the prow quickly grip the earth, that we strike not on a sunken reef; for the bright wing of the songs of praise is darting like a bee from flower to flower." The poet's province is "the choice garden of the Graces" (ἐξαίρετον χαρίτων νέμομαι κᾶπον, Ol. ix. 27); he tills the field of Aphrodite or the Graces (Ἀφροδίτας ἄρουραν ἢ Χαρίτων ἀναπολίζομεν, Pyth. vi. i). An image for a digression is suggested by those "Branching Roads"—the σχιστὴ ὁδός near Daulis in Phocis—which Pindar must so often have passed on his way from Thebes to Delphi: ἦ ῥ, ὦ φίλοι, κατ' ἀμευσίπορον τρίοδον ἐδινάθην, ορθὰν κέλευθον ἰὼν τοπίν (Pyth. xi. 38): "verily, friends, I have lost my bearings at such a meeting of three roads as leadeth men to change their course, though before I was wending on a straight path":—where ἐδινάθην seems to suggest the idea of turning quickly round and round until one no longer knows the points of the compass. The thought which inspires a strain is compared to the whetstone which sharpens the knife,—and here, again, note the mixture of metaphors: δόξαν ἔχω τιν' ἐπὶ γλώσσᾳ ἀκόνας λιγυρᾶς, | ἅ μ' ἐθέλοντα προσέρπεικαλλιρόοισι πνοαῖς (Ol. vi. 82): "I have
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