Olympian and Pythian Odes

For those who know nothing of Pindar, except by the hearing of the ear, the great games of Greece have been brought nearer by the recent excavations at Olympia, and the brilliant scene of the Olympian festival is more vivid than ever to the imagination. We see the troops of pilgrims and the hosts of traffickers wending their way to the banks of the Alpheios, the rhetorician conning his speech, the poet hugging his roll of verse, the painter nursing his picture, all seeking gold or glory at the festival. Few landscapes are as familiar now as the plain of Pisa, with its sacred river and his mischievous brother, Kladeos. The fancy can clothe the Altis the sacred precinct at Olympia again with the olive, and raise sunny Kronion to its pristine height, and crown it with the shrine to which it owes its name. We see again temples and treasure-houses, the flashing feet of the runners, the whirlwind rush of the chariots, the darting of the race-horses, the resolute faces of the men who ran in armor, the gleaming flight of the javelins, the tough persistence of the wrestlers, each striving to put off on his antagonist the foulness of defeat. The scene is lighted up by the mid-month moon, and the revolving Horai goddesses of the seasons seem to have brought back the music of the past to which they danced more than two thousand years ago. Everything that has been brought to light in Olympia has brought with it new light for the scene, for the games. The Hermes of Praxiteles is henceforth for us the impersonation of the youthful athlete, whose physical prowess has not made him forget tenderness and reverence. The Nike of Paionios revives for us the resistless rush of victory; the breeze that fills her robe quickens the blood in our veins. Stadion the foot race, the oldest of all the games, most characteristic of all, as it symbolized Greek nimbleness of wit, Greek simplicity of taste, pentathlon, pancration an athletic contest combining boxing and wrestling, the chariot race, the race with horses, all these become more real to us for statue and vase and votive tablet. We mingle in the eager crowds, we feel the tremulous excitement, we too become passionate partisans, and swell the volume of cheers. Many masters of style have pictured to us the Olympic games, but these things belong to masters of style, and no

The games.

Olympia.