PINDAR[1]
§ 1. Pindar is a classic of whom the study may be expected to grow with the growth of an interest in Greek archaeology. Not, indeed, because it is indebted to him, so largely as to many other authors, for direct illustration. Rather because his "Odes of Victory" are lit up in a new way by a fuller knowledge of the places with which they are concerned, of the contests which they celebrate, of the art and religion by which they were inspired. To take a single instance—the discoveries at Olympia, which have restored for us the main features of the altis, have given a new meaning for every modern reader to the beautiful, but hitherto indistinct, picture suggested by Pindar's description of "all the holy place resounding with festal joy," when "the lovely light of the fair-faced moon shone forth" after a day of contests. Pindar's odes are poems of occasion, magnificent expressions of Hellenic life in its most distinctively Hellenic phases. Hitherto the real drawback to his popularity has not been obscurity of language, but the strain which he was felt to place on the modern imagination. Every step gained in the reconstruction of old Greek life is an addition
- ↑ Reprinted from the Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. iii. p. 144.
