To do justice to Pindar's power of narrative by extracts and translations is impossible. No author suffers more by mutilation and by the attempt to express in another language and another rhythm what he has elaborately fashioned. Yet it may be allowed me to direct attention to the rapidity with which the burning of Coronis (Pyth. iii. 38) and the birth of Rhodes from the sea (Ol. vii. 54) are told in words the grandest, simplest, and most energetic that could be found. This is the birth of Iamos (Ol. vi. 39):
Nor could she hide from Æpytus the seed
Divine: but he to Pytho, chewing care,
Journeyed to gain for this great woe some rede;
She loosening her crimson girdle fair,
And setting on the ground her silver jar,
Beneath the darksome thicket bare a son,
Within whose soul flamed godhead like a star;
And to her aid the golden-haired sent down
Mild Eleithuia and the awful Fates,
Who stood beside, while from the yearning gates
Of childbirth, with a brief and joyous pain,
Came Iamos into the light, whom she therewith
Sore-grieving left upon the grass: amain
By gods' decree two bright-eyed serpents lithe
Tended, and with the harmless venom fed
Of bees, the boy; nor ceased they to provide
Due nurture. But the king, what time he sped
Homeward from rocky Pytho, to his side
Called all his household, asking of the son
Born of Evadne, for he said that none
But Phœbus was the sire, and he should be
Chief for his prophecy 'mid mortal men,
Nor should his children's seed have end. Thus he
Uttered the words oracular: and then
They swore they had not heard or seen the child,
Now five days old; but he within the reed
And thick-entangled woodland boskage wild,
His limbs 'mid golden beams and purple brede
Of gillyflowers deep-sunken, lay; wherefore
He by his mother's wish for all time bore
That deathless name. But when he plucked the flower
Of golden-wreathéd youth, he went and stood
Midmost Alpheus, at the midnight hour,
And called upon the ruler of the flood,
His ancestor Poseidon, and the lord
Of god-built Delos, praying that he might
Rear up some race to greatness. Then the word
Responsive of his sire upon the night
Sounded:—'Arise, my son, go forth and fare
Unto the land whereof all men shall share!'
So came they to the high untrodden mound
Of Cronion; and there a double meed
Of prophecy on Iamos was bound,
Both from the voice that knows no lie to heed
Immortal words, and next, when Herakles,
Bold in his counsels, unto Pisa came,
Founding the festivals of sacred peace
And mighty combats for his father's fame,
Then on the topmost altar of Jove's hill,
The seat of sooth oracular to fill.
After so much praise of Pindar's style, it must be confessed that he has faults. One of these is notoriously tumidity—an overblown exaggeration of phrase. For example, when he wants to express that he cannot enlarge on the fame of Ægina, but will relate as quickly as he can the achievements of Aristomenes which he has undertaken, he says: "But I am not at leisure to consecrate the whole long tale to the lyre and delicate voice, lest satiety should come and cause annoy; but that which is before my feet shall go at running speed—thy affair, my boy—the latest of the noble deeds made winged by means of my art."[124] The imaginative force which enabled him to create epithets like Φιλάγλαος, παμπόρφυρος, and to put them exactly in their proper places, like blocks of gleaming alabaster or of glowing porphyry—for the architectural power over language is eminent in Pindar; the Titanic faculty of language which produced such phrases as ἐξ ἀδάμαντος ἢ σιδάρου κεχάλκευται μέλαιναν καρδίαν ψυχρᾷ φλογί, did also betray him into expressions as pompous and frigid as these: ποικιλοφόρμιγγος ἀοιδᾶς ... σχοινοτένειά τ' ἀοιδὰ διθυράμβων. These, poured forth by Pindar in the insolence of prodigality, when imitated by inferior poets, produced that inflated manner of lyrical diction which Aristophanes ridicules in Kinesias. The same may be said about his mixed metaphors, whereof the following are fair examples:
δόξαν ἔχω τιν' ἐπὶ γλώσσᾳ ἀκόνας λιγυρᾶς
ἅ μ' ἐθέλοντα προσέλκει καλλιρόοισι πνοαῖς.—Ol. vi. 82.
Κώπαν σχάσον ταχὺ δ' ἄγκυραν ἔρεισον χθονὶ
πρῴραθε χοιράδος ἄλκαρ πέτρας
ἐγκωμίων γὰρ ἄωτος ὕμνων
ἐπ' ἄλλοτ' ἄλλον ὧτε μέλισσα θύνει λόγον.—Pyth. x. 51.
Nor are these the worst, perhaps, of the sort which might be chosen: for Pindar uses images like precious stones, setting them together in a mass, without caring to sort them, so long as they produce a gorgeous show. Apparent incoherences, involving difficulty to the reader, and producing a superficial effect of obscurity, constitute another class of his alleged faults—due partly to his allusive and elliptical style, partly to his sudden transitions, partly to the mixture of his images. Incapable of what is commonplace, too fiery to trudge, like Simonides, along the path of rhetorical development, infinitely more anxious to realize by audacity the thought that seizes him than to make it easy to his hearer, Pindar is obscure to all who are unwilling to assimilate their fancy to his own. La Harpe called the Divine Comedy une amplification stupidement barbare: what, if he had found occasion to speak the truth of his French mind, would he have said about the Odes of Pindar? Another difficulty, apart from these of verbal style and imagination, is derived from the fact that the mechanism of Pindar's poetry, carefully as it is planned, is no less carefully concealed. He seems to take delight in trying to solve the problem of how slight a suggestion can be made to introduce a lengthy narrative. The student is obliged to maintain his attention at the straining-point if an ode of Pindar's, even after patient analysis, is to present more than a mass of confused thoughts and images to his mind. But when he has caught the poet's drift, how delicate is the machinery, how beautiful is the art, which governs this most sensitive fabric of linked melodies! What the hearers made of these odes—the athletes for whom they were written, the handsome youths praised in them, the rich men at whose tables they were chanted—remains an impenetrable mystery. Had the Greek race perceptions infinitely finer than ours? Or did the classic harmonies of Pindar sweep over their souls, ruffling the surface merely, but leaving the deeps untouched, as the soliloquies of Hamlet or the profound philosophy of Troilus and Cressida must have been lost upon the groundlings of Elizabeth's days, who caught with eagerness at the queen's poisoned goblet or the by-play of Sir Pandarus? That is a problem we cannot solve. All we know for certain is, that even allowing for the currency of Pindar's language and for the familiarity of his audience with the circumstances under which his odes were composed, as well as with their mythological allusions, these poems must at all times have been more difficult to follow than Bach's fugue in G minor to a man who cannot play the organ.