specially venerated on account of the connection of his own ancestry, the Aegeidae, with Cyrene, which he describes as founded Διὸς ἐν Ἄμμωνος θεμέθλοις, "on the ground where Zeus Ammon hath his seat,"—i.e. near the oasis and temple (Pyth. iv. 16). A lost hymn by Pindar began, Ἄμμων Ὀλύμπου δέσποτα (frag. 11). The statue and shrine of Cybele, also dedicated by Pindar at Thebes, are ascribed to the Theban artists, Aristomedes and Socrates. These, with another of the same period, Ascarus, are the names by which Thebes first takes a place in the history of Greek art[1]; and it is an interesting fact that her earliest known sculptors should have been the contemporary of her greatest poet.
§ 26. The mythical material of sculpture in or just before Pindar's age is not, as a rule, taken directly from our Homer, but more largely from episodes treated in other and (as I believe) chiefly later poems. Many of these subjects come within the range of Pindar's treatment or allusion. I may give a few instances, by way of showing how Pindar and the sculptors were working in the same field. The Gigantomachia (Pindar, Nem. i. 67) adorned the pediment of the Megarian "Treasury" at Olympia; next to Zeus, Poseidon, and Ares, the chief figure was Heracles, whom Pindar also makes prominent. The wedding of Heracles with Hebe (Pind. ib. and Isthm. iii. 78) was the subject of a relief (of Pindar's age) on the low wall round the mouth of a well (περιστόμιον) found at Corinth. Pindar may have
- ↑ Cp. Perry's Greek and Roman Sculpture, p. 92.
