the greatest of the Greek lyric poets, was a native of Boeotia, and was born either in Thebes, the capital of that country, or at Cynocephalae, a little village between Thebes and Thespia. His father's name is variously given as Daiphantus, Pagondas, or Scopelus, and his mother's as Cleidice or Myrto. He was born, as he himself mentions (*Fragm. Incert.*, 102), at the time of the Pythian games, which fell in the beginning of July. Clinton fixes the year as Ol. 653, or n.c. 518; Böckh as Ol. 643, or n.c. 522. Both of these dates are uncertain; but Böckh's computation is now regarded as more probably the correct one. The time of his death is equally doubtful. If it be true, as is commonly believed, that he lived eighty years, Clinton's calculation would give 489 n.c., and Böckh's 442 n.c., as the date of his death. His wife was Megacleia, the daughter of Lysitheus and Callina. Another account gives his wife's name as Timoxena; but it is not unlikely that this Timoxena may have been a second wife, whom he married on the death or divorce of the first. He had one son, named Daiphantus, and two daughters, Eunetis and Protomache.

The family to which Pindar belonged was one of the noblest in Thebes, as is proved by the fact, that the poet wrote the ode which his son Daiphantus sang on his election as *daphnephorus*, an office open to none but members of the highest families in the city. (See DAPHNEPHORIA.) They were famed for their skill in flute-playing, a profession held in much esteem at Thebes. Pindar inherited the family talent, and something more. His father, seeing the bent of his genius, sent him to Athens, where, under the celebrated dithyrambist, Lasos of Hermione, he learned music, dancing, and all the mysteries of the chorus requisite for his training as a lyric poet. He also attended the schools of Agathocles and Apollodorus, and, though a mere lad, was allowed by them to instruct the cyclic choroi. How much he owed to these preceptors we do not know. Probably it was not much; at least enough is known of Lasos to show that he had little share in forming Pindar's style. The best part of the young poet's training was probably that which he received on his return from Athens, in his Pindar, twentieth year, from his countrywomen, Myrtis and the Tanagrean Corinna. To the instruction and example of the latter, in particular, he was deeply indebted. Corinna was, like Pindar himself, a teacher of choruses. Plutarch relates that she encouraged her pupil to select the themes for his muse from the mythology of his country, and to devote his chief attention to the subject-matter of his song, treating the music and other accessories as of merely secondary importance. On one occasion, when, in compliance with her suggestion, he brought her an ode in which were inwoven all the mythic legends of Thebes, she told him, with a smile, that he "ought to sow with the hand, but not with the whole sack." The pupil became in course of time ambitious enough to enter the lists with his teacher. She accepted the challenge, and, either from her beauty or the superiority of her verse, was five different times declared victor. She was by no means pleased, however, when her rival Myrtis followed her example: "I blame the clear-voiced Myrtis,—I, that she, born a woman, should enter into the contest with Pindar."

Between the age of twenty and twenty-two Pindar began his professional career as a poet. His earliest poem that has come down to us is an Epinician ode (the 10th Pythian) in honour of Hippocles, a noble youth of Peliuma in Thessaly, who had won the prize at the Pythian games. His fame soon grew so great, that he was engaged to compose similar hymns by Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse; Thero, tyrant of Agrigentum; Arcesilaus IV., king of Cyrene; and many other rich and powerful men in Greece and the Greek colonies. About 473 B.C., in compliance with urgent and repeated invitations, Pindar paid a visit to Hiero at Syracuse. It was intended that he should take up his abode permanently with that "tyrannus," but the arts of court-life soon became distasteful to his independent spirit, and he returned home after an absence of four years. Among his most active patrons was Alexander, son of Amyntas, king of Macedonia. In the praises which he bestowed on this potentate may be found the reasons why, a century and a half later, at the capture of Thebes,

"The great Emathian conqueror bade spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower Went to the ground."

Nor were the free states of Greece backward in doing honour to his merits. Foremost in the number was Athens, which, in allusion to her heroism during the Persian wars, he had celebrated in one of his dithyrambs as "the pillar of Greece, glorious Athens, the divine city." The Athenians gave him, though a Theban, the proxenia, or complimentary franchise of their town, and on one occasion a present of 10,000 drachmae. After his death they erected a statue in his honour. Similar compliments were paid him by Opus and Ægina, and a still more delicate one by the inhabitants of Ceos, who once employed him, in preference to their own illustrious poets Simonides and Bacchylides, to write a procession-ode for them. The Rhodians inscribed his 7th Olympian ode in characters of gold on the temple of Minerva at Lindus.

In the great events that took place in Greece during his time, Pindar, unlike his contemporary Æschylus, seems to have taken no share. He watched with keen interest the struggle of Athens against Persia, and his countrymen, whose conduct in that struggle was not actively patriotic, were far from pleased with the praises which he lavished on the Athenian victors. The story, that they fined him, and that the Athenians paid the fine, rests on no good foundation. The most marked feature of the poet's personal character was his veneration for the gods. His profession, indeed, demanded that he should show great reverence for their worship and religious observances. That these were not to him mere vain ceremonies we may safely infer. He not only consecrated a temple to the Great Mother and Pan near his own house in Thebes, and statues to Jupiter Ammon in Libya, and to Mercury of the Agora in his native city, but he also rejected or toned down in his odes such myths as represented gods or heroes in undignified or immoral situations.

The poems of Pindar that have descended to us entire belong, with one exception, to the class of Epinician or triumphal odes. That exception is the 11th Nemean, in which the bard celebrates the installation of Aristogoras as prytanis at Tenedos. His extant remains, however, prove him to have excelled in many other departments of lyric poetry; and the ancients themselves do not seem to have attached any special importance to those of his works by which alone we can rightly estimate his powers. Horace no doubt spoke the opinion of antiquity when he attributed to Pindar an unrivalled skill in the kinds of verse specified in the well-known lines:

"Sea per asanas nova dithyrambos Verba devolvit, numerisque fertur Leges salutis, Sea deos regere causit decorem Sanguinem, per quos coelere justa Morte centauri, cecidit tremenda Flamma Chimaera; Sive quos Elsa domum redactit Palma celestis, pugnarem equumve Dicit et centum postero signis Munere donat; Plebeii sponsae juvenemve raptum Phorai."

In the first of these stanzas are mentioned the dithyrambs, or cyclic choruses; in the second, the hymns and paens; in the third, the Epinikia, or songs of triumph; and in the last, the threnoi, or dirges; in all of which styles alike Pindar's eminence was unquestioned. The Epinikia, on which we mainly form our estimate of Pindar, are divided into four books. To value them aright it is necessary to appreciate duly the occasions which called them forth. They were written in honour of a victory gained at one of the four great national festivals of Greece—the Olympic, Isthmian, Pythian, and Nemean games. A victory in any of the great contests at these games shed a lustre not only on the conqueror himself, but also on the family and state to which he belonged. On the evening of the day of victory, the conqueror walked in state to the altar of the god of the games, attended by the festive train, which sang his praises. On his return home, a solemn reception was prepared for him by his native town; sacrifices and thanksgivings were offered in his behalf to some god; and the whole proceedings ended in a public banquet and a comus. Hence arises the apparent incongruity of the Epinician odes, in which outpourings of the deepest devotion are found side by side with the wildest utterances of frantic revelry. The victory itself is seldom described; sometimes it is not even mentioned. The glory of the conqueror; his valour,—for none of the contests were without danger; and even his wealth,—for none but persons of at least considerable means could afford the time and money required for the training as fixed by law,—were the themes on which the poet enlarged. The birth of the conqueror is also praised, and, where possible, a parallel drawn between his exploits and those of the mythic founder of the state or city to which he belonged. Indeed the mythic element is a leading feature of the Pindaric odes. Far from being merely ornamental or digressional, it is closely inwoven with the general texture and design of the poems, though its purport is sometimes difficult enough to trace. The structure and distribution of the Epinikia were very intricate; and the chorus which performed them had to be taught their parts either by the bard himself or by some master of the lyric art. The personality of the poet appears in all his odes; he speaks through the mouths of the chorus as if in his own proper person. It may be questioned how far such a license is consistent with true art; but it gave Pindar what he wanted, an opportunity, namely, of criticising and denouncing his rivals, of defending himself from their attacks, and now and then of sounding his own praises. This latter practice, as in OL ii. 83, he occasionally indulges in to an extent scarcely reconcilable with modesty. It is to be remembered, however, that these touches of strong personal feeling, and the sometimes seeming extravagance of his mirth, were by no means inconsistent with the wild revelry of the banquets at which his odes were intended to be sung. The style of Pindar is wonderfully vivid and picturesque. His best English expositor, J. W. Donaldson (in his essay De Stylo ac Dictione Pindari), declares that in this quality Pindar had no rival among his own countrymen, and no equal or superior till the age of Dante: "Vivido vigore ingenii fere omnes Graecos superat, atque in ea facultate, qua res non visse depictit, et quasi sensibus subjicit, neminem cum eo contendere, praeter Duranternium illum Aligerum." The general morale of his writings, too, is high and pure. In the moments of his wildest hilarity he uses no improper word or phrase: "Yates deorum ac sacerdotes, sic ut oraculum loquatur." No evil deed is by him once defended; no divinity scoffed at or denounced.

The editions of Pindar are numerous. The princeps was published at Venice at the Aldine press in 1513; another by Calliergi appeared at Rome two years later, with the Scholi. The first critical edition is that of Erasmus Schmidius, Wittemberg, 1616. The other editions of the seventeenth century are that of Joannes Benedictus Salimuri, 1620; and the Oxford edition of 1697. Heyne's celebrated first edition was published at Göttingen in 1773; a second version of this work, with a valuable essay on the Pindaric metres by Hermann, appeared at the same place in 1798. The best German edition of Pindar is that of August Böckh, Leipzig, 1811–21, in 3 vols. 4to, which has thrown an entirely new light on the music of the Greeks, and the artistic construction of their lyric poetry. Dissen's edition, published in the Bibliotheca Graeca, Gotha, 1830, 2 vols. 8vo, is nothing more than a rather masterly abridgment of Böckh's great work. The illustrative matter is exceedingly good; but as the fragments are not given complete, it cannot be said to supersede its immediate predecessor. Thiersch's Pindar, Leipzig, 2 vols. 8vo, 1820, has a valuable introduction; and the text of the poet, as given in Bergk's Poetar Lyrici Graeci, is very accurate. Of English editions, by far the best is that of the Rev. John William Donaldson, London, 1841, in 1 vol. 8vo. It contains the cream of the best German editions, and besides embodying in the notes the results of great original research and scholarship, possesses a learned and masterly Latin essay, De Stylo ac Dictione Pindari. The English translations of Pindar are not numerous. The oldest is that of West, which has little to recommend it; Moore's exhibits much more taste and vigour. Better than either is that of the Rev. H. F. Cary, London, 1833, which, however, has the disadvantage of being founded on Heyne's somewhat antiquated edition of the poet.