To ravage what they should not: they for safe return
Unto their homes must bend them back again, adown
The double race-track’s other leg.”
To make selections from Pindar is to pry out jewels from an antique setting. But his Olympic odes give the best interpretation of the best meaning of the games. Some were impromptu odes crystallized under the stress of the victory and sung in the Altis while the full moon shone upon the hero of the day. Some were longer and written at leisure for the supplementary celebration at the victor’s home. But in any case the thought was not impromptu. The Theban eagle soared habitually and paused for a moment only at Olympia, sent by—
“the Hours, circling in the dance to music of the lyre’s changing notes, to be a witness to the greatest of all games.”
Yet with all his soaring Pindar never forgot the gracious beauty of human life. The Graces are ever near. Victory, he tells us, by the Graces’ aid is won, and the charioteers—
“Charis transfigures with the beauty of their fame, as they drive foremost in the twelfth round of the race.”
Pindar calls his song “a writing tally of the Muses.” Not he that runs may read, but whoever will be at pains to wrap the Greek scroll around the tally-stick can read the cypher and can find the clue to lead him safely through “the sounding labyrinths of song.”[[40]] Pindar could presuppose an acquaintance with mythology at least as familiar as was to every child of a generation ago the knowledge of the Old Testament. Conflicting myths lived side by side in the popular consciousness. The sculptor and the poet could choose or reject at will. However recondite may seem at times the application of the myth to the Olympic victor in question, the pages of Pindar are constantly illuminated by some flash-light that photographs upon the particular a glimpse of the universal. From Olympia in Elis we are transported to Olympus. Heracles brought from Olympus the charter for the games; there, too, is both the starting-line and finish of the poet’s courser: “Pegasus is stabled in Olympus.” Pindar does not belittle the mysteries of the unseen. When the fame of Theron of Acragas (Girgenti) is said to over-pass Sicily and to touch the pillars of Heracles, the thought of the pathless ocean suggests a wider and uncharted Cosmos. His search-light projects for a moment its stare into infinity, but it is forthwith checked with characteristic restraint:—
“What lies beyond nor foot of wise man nor unwise has
ever trod. I will not follow on. My quest were vain.”