the prince of lyric poets, was born at Thebes, about 520 years B.C. He received his first musical instructions from his father, who was a flutist-player by profession; after which, according to Suidas, he was placed under Myrtila, a lady of distinguished abilities in lyric poetry. It was during this period that he became acquainted with the poetess Corinna, who was likewise a student under Myrtila. Plutarch tells us, that Pindar profited from the lessons which Corinna, more advanced in her studies, gave him at this school. It is very natural to suppose, that the first poetical effusions of a genius so full of fire and imagination as that of Pindar would be wild and luxuriant; and Lucian has preferred six verses, said to have been the exordium of his first effay; in which he crowded almost all the subjects for song which ancient history and mythology then furnished. Upon communicating this attempt to Corinna, she told him smiling, that he should sow with the hand, and not empty his whole sack at once. Pindar, however, soon quitted the leading strings of these ladies, his poetical nurses, and became the disciple of Simonides, now arrived at extreme old age: after which he soon surpassed all his masters, and acquired great reputation over all Greece; but, like a true prophet, he was less honoured in his own country than elsewhere; for at Thebes he was frequently pronounced to be vanquished, in the musical and poetical contests, by candidates of inferior merit.
The custom of having these public trials of skill in all the greatest cities of Greece was now so prevalent,
Vol. XIV. Part II.
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(a) Pausanias says, that Corinna was one of the most beautiful women of her time, as he judged by a picture of her which he saw at Tanagris at the place where the public exercises were performed. She was represented with her head ornamented by a ribbon as a memorial of the victories she had obtained over Pindar at Thebes. There is no great poet in antiquity whose moral character has been less censured than that of Pindar. Plutarch has preserved a single verse of his *Epicedium* or *Dirge* that was sung at his funeral; which, short and simple as it is, implies great praise: *This man was pleasing to strangers, and dear to his fellow-citizens.* His works abound with precepts of the purest morality; and it does not appear that he ever traduced even his enemies; comforting himself, for their malignity, by a maxim which he inferred in his first *Pythia*, and which afterwards became proverbial, *That it is better to be envied than pitied.*
Pausanias says, that the character of poet was truly consecrated, in the person of Pindar, by the god of verse himself; who was pleased, by an express oracle, to order the inhabitants of Delphi to set apart for Pindar one half of the first-fruits offerings brought by the religious to his shrine, and to allow him a conspicuous place in his temple, where in an iron chair he used to sit and sing his hymns in honour of that god. This chair was remaining in the time of Pausanias, several centuries after, and shown to him as a relic not unworthy of the sanctity and magnificence of that place.
But though Pindar's muse was pensioned at Delphi, and well paid by princes and potentates elsewhere, the seems, however, sometimes to have sung the spontaneous strains of pure friendship. Of this kind were, probably, the verses bestowed upon the musician Midas, of Agrigentum in Sicily, who had twice obtained the palm of victory by his performance on the flute at the Pythic games (a). It is in his 12th *Pythia* ode that Pindar celebrates the victory of Midas over all Greece, upon that instrument which Minerva herself had invented (c).
Fabricius tells us, that Pindar lived to the age of 90; and, according to the chronology of Dr Blair, he died 435 years B.C. aged 86. His fellow-citizens erected a monument to him in the Hippodrome at Thebes, which was still subsisting in the time of Pausanias; and his renown was so great after his death, that his posterity derived very considerable honours and privileges from it. When Alexander the Great attacked the city of Thebes, he gave express orders to his soldiers to spare the house and family of Pindar. The Lacedemonians had done the same before this period; for when they ravaged Boeotia and burned the capital, the following words were written upon the door of the poet: *Forbear to burn this house, it was the dwelling of Pindar.* Respect for the memory of this great poet continued so long, that, even in Plutarch's time, the best part of the sacred victim at the Thesmophoria festival was appropriated to his descendants.
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(a) This Midas is a very different personage from his long-eared majesty of Phrygia, whose decision in favour of Pan had given such offence to Apollo; as is manifest, indeed, from his having been contemporary with Pindar.
(c) The most extraordinary part of this musician's performance that can be gathered from the scholiast upon Pindar, was his finishing the solo, without a reed or mouth-piece, which broke accidentally while he was playing. The legendary account given by the poet in this ode, of the occasion upon which the flute was invented by Minerva, is diverting: "It was (says he) to imitate the howling of the Gorgons, and the hissing of their snakes, which the goddess had heard when the head of Medusa (one of these three anti-graces) was cut off by Perseus." pierced full of little holes. The matter, when taken out of the mould, is laid on a trivet, under which is a large vessel full of water; and the whole being covered with an earthen head, a fire is made around it.
The mercury still remains in the mass and is thus reduced into fumes, and, at length condensing, it is precipitated into the water, leaving behind it a mass of silver grains of different figures, which, only joining or touching at the extremes, render the matter very porous and light. This, therefore, is the pinea, or pigne, which the workmen endeavour to sell secretly to vessels trading to the South Sea; and from which those, who have ventured to engage in so dangerous a commerce, have made such vast gains. Indeed the traders herein must be very careful; for the Spanish miners are arrant knaves, and to make the pignes weigh the more, they often fill the middle with sand or iron.