as over Tantalus,—a torment greater than Hellas could bear[1]. But now the fear hath gone by, and eased me from sore anguish." Still, indeed, there is grief in his heart (καίπερ ἀχνύμενος θυμόν); since Thebes, the native city which he loved so well, had no part in the glory. Elsewhere his feeling on this point comes out clearly, and in a way which is not without pathos. "In which of the fair deeds of yore done in thy land, immortal Thebe, didst thou take most delight?" When thou broughtest forth Dionysos with the flowing locks, who sits beside Demeter; when Zeus came to Alcmene's bed; when Teiresias had fame for prophecy, and Iolaos for the driving of chariots? "But the grace of the old time sleeps, and men forget it, save what hath been wedded to the glorious tide of song, and hath won the perfect meed of minstrel's skill." The greatness of Thebes, Pindar felt, belonged to the past, not to the present. As he exults in the deliverance of Greece Proper from the Persians, so he celebrates the nearly simultaneous deliverance of Sicilian and Italian Greece from the Carthaginians, by that victory of Hiero at Cumae which "drew Hellas out of heavy servitude[2]."
§ 4. Though his poetry has no immediate concern with politics, we can, I think, discern the outlines of his own political creed. His family belonged to a noble house of ancient renown in Greece,—the Aegeidae, who traced their descent
