of state (1795), each of which he declined, but in 1796 he succeeded James Monroe as minister to France. The Directory refused to receive him, and he retired to Holland, but in the next year, Elbridge Gerry and John Marshall having been appointed to act with him, he again repaired to Paris, where he is said to have made the famous reply to a veiled demand for a “loan” (in reality for a gift), “Millions for defence, but not one cent for tribute,”—another version is, “No, not a sixpence.” The mission accomplished nothing, and Pinckney and Marshall left France in disgust, Gerry (q.v.) remaining. When the correspondence of the commissioners was sent to the United States Congress the letters “X,” “Y” and “Z,” were inserted in place of the names of the French agents with whom the commission treated-hence the “X Y Z Correspondence,” famous in American history. In 1800 he was the Federalist candidate for vice president, and in 1804 and again in 1808 for president, receiving 14 electoral votes in the former and 47 in the latter year From 1805 until his death, on the 16th of August 1825, he was president-general of the Society of the Cincinnati.
PINCKNEY, THOMAS (1750–1828), American statesman and diplomat, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on the 23rd of October 1750, a younger brother of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (q.v.). Educated in England, he returned to Charleston in 1773, and was admitted to the bar in 1774. During the War of Independence his early training at the French military college at Caen enabled him to render effective service to General Benjamin Lincoln in 1778–1779, to Count d’Estaing (1779), to
General Lincoln in the defence of Charleston and afterwards to General Horatio Gates. In the battle of Camden he was badly wounded and captured, remaining a prisoner for more than a year. Subsequently he was governor of South Carolina in 1787–1789; presided over the state convention which ratified the Federal constitution in 1788; was a member of the state
legislature in 1791; and was United States minister to Great Britain in 1792–1796. During part of this time (1794–1795) he was also envoy extraordinary to Spain, and in this capacity negotiated (1795) the important Treaty of San Lorenzo el Real; by that treaty the boundary between the United States and East and
West Florida and between the United States and “Louisiana ”
was settled (Spain relinquishing all claims east of the Mississippi
above 31° N. lat), and the United States secured the freedom
of navigation of the Mississippi to its mouth with the right of
deposit at New Orleans for three years, after which the United
States was to have the same right either at New Orleans or at
some other place on the Mississippi to be designated by Spain.
In 1796 Pinckney was the Federalist candidate for vice-president,
and in 1797–1801 he was a Federalist representative in Congress.
During the War of 1812 he was a major-general. In 1825 he
succeeded his brother as president-general of the Society of the
Cincinnati He died in Charleston on the 2nd of November
1828 Pinckney, like many other South Carolina revolutionary
leaders, was of aristocratic birth and politics, closely connected
with England by ties of blood, education and business relations.
This renders the more remarkable their attitude in the War
of Independence, for which they made great sacrifices. Men
of Pinckney’s type were not in sympathy with the progressive
democratic spirit of America, and they began to withdraw from
politics after about 1800.
Sec C. C. Pinckney, Life of General Thomas Pinckney (Boston, 1895).
PINDAR (Gr Πίνδαρος, c. 522–443 B.C.), the great lyric poet of ancient Greece, was born at Cynoscephalae, in Boeotia, at the time of the Pythian games (fr. 175, Bergk4, 193),[1] which is taken by Bockh to be 522 B.C. He would thus be some thirty-four years younger than Simonides of Ceos. He was the son of Daiphantus and Cleodice (or Cleidice). The traditions
of his family have left their impress on his poetry, and are not
without importance for a correct estimate of his relation to his
contemporaries The clan of the Aegidae-tracing their line
from the hero Aegeus-belonged to the “ Cadmean ” element
of Thebes, i.e. to the elder nobility whose supposed date went
back to the days of the founder Cadmus A branch of the
Theban Aegidae had been settled in Achaean times at Amyclae
in the valley of the Eurotas (Pind. Isthm. vi. 14), and after
the Dorian conquest of the Peloponnesus had apparently been
adopted by the Spartans into one of the three Dorian tribes.
The Spartan Aegidae helped to colonize the island of Thera
(Pyth. v. 68–70). Another branch of the race was settled at
Cyrene in Africa; and Pindar tells how his Aegid clansmen at
Thebes “showed honour” to Cyrene as often as they kept the
festival of the Carnea (Pyth. v. 75). Pindar is to be conceived,
then, as standing within the circle of those families for whom the
heroic myths were domestic records. He had a personal link
with the memories which everywhere were most cherished by
Dorians, no less than with those which appealed to men of
“Cadinean” or of Achaean stock. And the wide ramifications
of the Aegidae throughout Hellas rendered it peculiarly fitting
that a member of that illustrious clan should celebrate the glories
of many cities in verse which was truly Panhellenic.
Pindar is said to have received lessons in flute-playing from one Scopelinus at Thebes, and afterwards to have studied at Athens under the musicians Apollodorus (or Agathocles) and Lasus of Hermione. In his youth, as the story went, he was defeated in a poetical contest by the Theban Corinna-who, in reference to his profuse employment of Theban mythology, is said to have advised him “to sow with the hand, not with the sack.” There is an extant fragment in which Corinna reproves another Theban poetess, Myrtis, “for that she, a woman, contended with Pindar” (ὅτι βανὰ φοῦσ’ ἔβα Πινδάροιο ποτ’ ἔριν)—a sentiment which hardly fits the story of Corinna’s own victory. The facts that stand out from these meagre traditions are that Pindar was precocious and laborious. Preparatory labour of a somewhat severe and complex kind was, indeed, indispensable for the Greek lyric poet of that age Lyric composition demanded studies not only in metre but in music, and in the adaptation of both to the intricate movements of the choral dance (ὀρχηςτική). Several passages in Pindar’s extant odes glance at the long technical development of Greek lyric poetry before his time, and at the various elements of art which the lyrist was required to temper into a harmonious whole (see, e.g. Ol. iii. 8, vi. 91, xiii. 18, xiv. 15; Pyth. xii. 23, &c.). The earliest ode which can be dated (Pyth. x.) belongs to the twentieth year of Pindar’s age (502 B.C.), the latest (Olymp. v.) to the seventieth (452 B.C.).[2] He visited the court of Hiero at Syracuse; Theron, the despot of Acragas, also entertained him; and his travels perhaps included Cyrene. Tradition notices the special closeness of his relations with Delphi: “He was greatly honoured by all the Greeks, because he was so beloved of Apollo that he even received a share of the offerings; and at the sacrifices the priest would cry aloud that Pindar come in to the feast of the god.”[3] His wife's name was Megacleia (another account says Timoxena, but this may have been a second wife), and he had a son named Daiphantus and two daughters, Eumetis and Protomache. He is said to have died at Argos, at the age of seventy-nine, in 443 B.C.)
Among the Greeks of his own and later times Pindar was pre-eminently distinguished for his piety towards the gods. He tells us that, “near to the vestibule” of his house (Pyth. iii. 78), choruses of maidens used to dance and sing by night in praise of the Mother of the Gods (Cybele) and Pan-deities peculiarly associated with the Phrygian music of the flute, in which other members of Pindar's family besides the poet himself are said to have excelled. A statue and shrine of Cybele, which he dedicated at Thebes, were the Work of the Theban artists, Aristomedes and Socrates. He also dedicated at Thebes a statue to Hermes Agoraios, and another, by Calamis, to Zeus Ammon. The latter god claimed his especial veneration because Cyrene, one of the homes of his Aegid ancestry, stood “where Zeus Ammon hath his seat,” i.e. near the oasis and temple
