Greek Lands and Letters

by Francis Greenleaf Allinson; Anne C. E. Allinson

Pindar’s description of the ancient consecration of the Altis may serve to justify the Labours of Heracles carved upon the Zeus temple:—

“Heracles there measured off a sacred grove unto the sovereign father and he ordained the plain around for rest and feasting. He honoured the Alpheus stream together with the twelve lord gods and he gave utterance to the name of Kronos hill, till then unnamed.”

His praise of the discus victor comes to mind when we see a copy of Myron’s Discobolus or the graceful throw of a contemporary Greek in the Stadium of modern Athens:—

“In distance passing all, Enikeus hurled the stone with circling hand and from his warrior mates a mighty cheer swept by.”

And we seem ourselves to share in the evening celebration in the Altis when—

“the lovely shining of the fair-faced moon illumined it and all the precinct rang with song and festal mirth.”

We can share too in the undertone of pathos in Pindar’s reference to the dead father of a young athlete. Asopichus is winner in the boys’ footrace, and the news of his victory is sent to his father in Hades. The Arcadian nymph Echo is the messenger:—

“Fly, Echo, to the dark-walled palace of Persephone and to his father bear the tidings glorious. Seek Cleodamus, tell him how for him his son hath crowned his boyish hair with wreaths of th’ ennobling games in famous Pisa’s vale.”

Perhaps the most radiant picture of “festal mirth” is called up by Pindar’s seventh Olympian, written for Diagoras of Rhodes. Diagoras’s two sons and his grandson were also Olympic victors. This acted, on at least two occasions, as a family prophylactic. His daughter, as we have seen, was pardoned by reason of this for her intrusion in disguise at the Olympic games, and Dorieus, his son, when captured by the Athenians in a sea-fight, escaped the only alternatives usual in the case of a prisoner of war. He was neither put to death nor forced to pay a ransom, but set free, just as Balaustion, the Rhodian girl, was set free by the Syracusans because she delighted her captors by repeating a new drama of Euripides. And the Rhodians wrote up Pindar’s ode in letters of gold in the Athena temple on the acropolis of Lindus. The modern visitor to this enchanting island climbs up the lofty headland that rises abruptly between the shining water of the two indenting bays, and, before he passes through the ruins of the ancient propylæa and the still imposing portals of the fortress of the Knights of St. John, he sees upon the solid rock the after part of a huge trireme with the steering-oar and the rippling water carved in stone. He can imagine a trireme of a former day entering the harbour below with triumphal sweep of oars, bringing Diagoras and his victory back to his townsfolk in this far-off corner of the Greek world. He can picture the procession of Lindians to Athena’s temple; the brilliant colouring of robes and chitons; the choral music; the exultation in their townsman’s physical prowess and their intoxication of delight because the greatest of lyric poets is reaching out to them, as to the bridegroom at a wedding-feast, a chalice of pure gold resplendent, brimming with the “distilled nectar” of his song.

But Pindar soars beyond the pride of life even as he universalizes the individual experience. It was not only St. Paul’s idealism that perceived the great contest in which humanity is forever engaged. In Pindar’s second Olympian the athlete’s triumph suggests the victory over Death, and the Kronos hill becomes the “tower of Kronos” to which the victor travels over “the highway of Olympian Zeus.” So the arch-idealist Plato, in closing his great constructive vision of the Ideal State, can find no more fitting comparison for him that overcometh than by likening him to the victors in the Games: “If we take my advice, believing that the soul is immortal, we shall ever hold to that upward pathway and at every turn shall practice justice joined to intelligence that we may be at once friends of ourselves and of the gods and may fare well ... both while we abide here and when, like the prize-winners, we come to gather in the prizes of the games.”