In cool Cephisis’ flowery grove.
That reads pleasantly; but what of this more stately flow in prose?
When it passes through the slender brass and through the reeds, which grew near the city Charites, the city with beautiful places for the dance.
How charmingly that lingers on the tongue, “the city with beautiful places for the dance.” When will it be so said of our great city? Is it a picture past praying for;—past hoping for?
Pindar, as we know, came of a family of flute players. He was born at Thebes, or at an adjacent village, about 522 B.C. His family, we are told, excelled in flute playing, the national art of Bœotia; and he himself, in one of his odes, boasts of a descent from Spartan ancestors, and on his mother’s side from an Arcadian nymph, Metope, mother of Thebe, the mythical foundress of the Theban nation. Through the country of Bœotia, the river Cephisus ran into the Copaic Lake, and both river and lake were celebrated for the reed beds, from which the Theban flute makers obtained their materials. So that our poet was an authority upon flutes, and a critic in the art of playing the instruments. A legend records that when a boy, a swarm of bees settled on his lips whilst he was asleep and filled his mouth with honey. He was also believed to be a familiar guest with the priests of Delphi, where an iron chair, on which he sat to conduct his hymns, was shown as one of the curiosities of the temple; whilst at Athens a statue was erected to him, and the Rhodians engraved one of his odes in golden letters on their temple to Minerva, and the site of his house beside the fountain of Dirce was respected for centuries afterwards.
Flute playing was believed to be of Phrygian origin, and that it was brought from Asia Minor into Greece may perhaps be indicated by the fact that Pindar had in his house at Thebes (Grecian Thebes) a small temple to the Mother of the Gods and Pan, the Phrygian deities to whom the first hymns to the flute were supposed to have been sung. Dion notices that at Thebes all but the Cadmea was in ruins, and that a small votive statue of Hermes, set up for some victory in flute playing, still stood up out of the weeds among the ruins in the ancient Agora. The Pythic contests were held in the plains of Crissa, hard by which stood the temple and oracle of Apollo, the especial god of the Dorian race, and the patron of music and the arts. It was in the years 494 and 490 B.C. that Midas won his laurel crowns, and he had also won once at the Panathenea. Curiously, we find that the first notable flute player at the Pythian games, Sacadas, was victor on the first (586 B.C.) and two subsequent occasions after the performance on that instrument had been introduced as a regular part of the solemnity.
Pindar’s ode to Midas was sung at Agrigentum when the victor entered the city in triumphal procession, and the whole town poured out to meet him. The victor and his friends visited in proud succession the altars of his religion, and the titular deities of the city were thanked for their favour, and again his exploits were chanted in notes of solemn joy.
We have one or two flute players who possibly have some idea of their surpassing merits; but they would be aghast if they found themselves recipients of such public honours as these in a modern city,—we are so civilized. Yet stay, did we not receive intelligence how that Sarasate received some such jubilee welcome on returning to his native place in Spain, not very long ago! What an old-fashioned corner of the earth that must be, where the old atmosphere remains unsmoked, and where the peasants remain and get richly browned in the sun, and dance with goatskins over their shoulders, and to them there are days of out-door life still going on, such as are by our race clean forgotten.
To parallel Pindar and Midas, we should have to imagine Tennyson writing an ode to Sarasate the passionate, the great artist, the dark browed fiddler on the platform of St. James’s Hall, London! Ah! no, it will not do; the parallel would be too shaky. We can run excursion trains, and cram Albert Halls, and our people can shout themselves hoarse in Fleet Street over the three o’clock winner, and the names of Patti and Sims Reeves, and Melba, and Jean de Reszke may exhaust our refined fervour, and the grandeur of heads fitted with unseen crowns may raise a flickering illusion of glory, and the dazzling crush of ladies plated with diamonds, may exalt the senses with the pride of wealth,—but all this, the utmost of the get-up of modern effects, will pale beside that uprising of citizens, that grand acclaim in open air over the plain of Crissa to “glorious Midas!”