CHAPTER X.
The Isles of Greece.
MIDAS THE GLORIOUS.
“The Glorious!” So Pindar names the flute player Midas the Sicilian, who had twice obtained the laurel wreath by his performance on the flutes at the Pythic games. It is in his twelfth ode that Pindar celebrates the victory of Midas over all Greece upon that instrument which Athene herself had invented, and he inscribes the ode thus:—
To Midas of Agragas, winner of
the Prize for Flute Playing.
How strangely this sounds to us, and how little able are we to estimate at its true significance the esteem in which flute players were held by all the people of Greece.
Many records there are, telling unmistakably of the passion the Greeks had for this music; of the wealth lavished on the famous players; of the temples in which their names were cut in marble with every token of pride and exultation; and of statues raised to their honour. But greater tribute than any that was given, or than remains, is this,—that Pindar thought the flute player worthy of one of his odes, and immortalized him. His voice was the voice of national feeling, and, as I have said, it sounds strangely to us. We are so civilized, have gone so utterly beyond
“Earth’s early days,
When simple pleasures pleased,”
that we should not recognize the voice of Saturn; and if