Olympian and Pythian Odes

Boeotia.Pindar was born at Thebes, the head of Boeotia—Boeotia, a canton hopelessly behind the times, a slow canton, as the nimble Attics would say, a glorious climate for eels, but a bad air for brains. Large historical views are not always entertained by the cleverest minds, ancient and modern, transatlantic and cisatlantic; and the annals of politics, of literature, of thought, have shown that out of the depths of crass conservatism and proverbial sluggishness come, not by any miracle, but by the process of accumulated force, some of the finest intelligences, some of the greatest powers, of political, literary, and especially religious life. Modern illustrations might be invidious, but modern illustrations certainly lie very near. Carrière compares Boeotia with Austria and the Catholic South of Germany at the close of the eighteenth century, with their large contributions to the general rise of culture in song and music. If such parallels are not safe, it may be safe to adduce one that has itself been paralleled with the story of the Island of the Saints, and to call attention to the part that the despised province of Cappadocia played in the history of the Christian Church. A Cappadocian king was a butt in the time of Cicero; the Cappadocians were the laughing-stock of the Greek anthology, and yet there are no prouder names in the literary history of the Church than the names of the Cappadocian fathers, Basil and the Gregories. But, apart from this, Boeotia has been sadly misjudged. Pindar, Pelopidas, and Epameinondas were not all, nor yet the presbeira Kopadon koran eldest of the Copaean maidens of the Acharnians. There is no greater recommendation of the study of Greek lyric poetry than this—that it enfranchises the reader from Athenian prejudice and Athenian malice, while Athens herself is not less dear than before. Pindar, then, was an aristocrat in a canton¹ that a modern census-taker might have shaded with select and special blackness. Himself born at Thebes, his

¹ Of course it may be said that Pindar was a Boeotian only in name, not in blood—belonging, as he did, to the old pre-Boeotian stock; but as he himself accepts the name with the responsibility (Boiotia hus Boeotian sow), we need go no further.