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 flute-player by profession; after which, according to Suidas, he was placed under Myrtis, 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 Myrtis. 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 preserved six verses, said to have been the exordium of his first essay; 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 great cities of Greece was now so prevalent, that but little fame was to be acquired by a musician or poet any other way than by entering the lists; and we find, that both Myrtis and Corinna publicly disputed the prize with him at Thebes. He obtained a victory over Myrtis, but was vanquished five different times by Corinna. The judges, upon occasions like these, have been frequently accused of partiality or ignorance, not only by the vanquished, but by posterity; and if the merit of Pindar was pronounced inferior to that of Corinna five several times, it was, says Pausanias, because the judges were more sensible to the charms of beauty than to those of music and poetry (A). Was it not strange, said the Scythian Anacharsis, that the Grecian artists were never judged by artists, their peers?

Pindar, before he quitted Thebes, had the vexation to see his Dithyrambic traduced, abused, and turned into ridicule, by the comic poets of his time; and Athenaeus tells us, that he was severely censured by his brother lyrics, for being a lipogrammatist, and composing an ode from which he had excommunicated the letter S. Whether these censures proceeded from envy or contempt cannot now be determined; but they were certainly useful to Pindar, and it was necessary that he should be lashed for such puerilities. Thebes seems to have been the purgatory of our young bard: when he quitted that city, as his judgment was matured, he avoided most of the errors for which he had been chastised, and suddenly became the wonder and delight of all Greece. Every hero, prince, and potentate, desirous of lasting fame, courted the muse of Pindar.

He seems frequently to have been present at the four great festivals, of the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian games, as may be inferred from several circumstances and expressions in the odes which he composed for the victors in them all. Those at Olympia, who were ambitious of having their achievements celebrated by Pindar, applied to him for an ode, which was first sung in the Prytaneum or town-hall of Olympia, where there was a banqueting room, set apart for the entertainment of the conquerors. Here the ode was rehearsed by a chorus, accompanied by instruments. It was afterwards performed in the same manner at the triumphal entry of the victor into his own country, in processions, or at the sacrifices that were made with great pomp and solemnity on the occasion.

(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 riband, as a memorial of the victories she had obtained over Pindar at Thebes. Pindar, in his second Isthmian ode, has apologized for the mercenary custom among poets, of receiving money for their compositions. "The world (says he) is grown interested, and thinks in general with the Spartan philosopher Aristodemus, that money only makes the man: a truth which this sage himself experienced, having with his riches lost all his friends." It is supposed that Pindar here alludes to the avarice of Simonides, who first allowed his muse to sell her favours to the highest bidder.

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 inserted in his first Pythic, 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 Delphos to set apart for Pindar one half of the first-fruit 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 Delphos, and well paid by princes and potentates elsewhere, she 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 (b). It is in his 12th Pythic 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 95; 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 Theoxenian festival was appropriated to his descendants.