said that once when in childhood he had fallen asleep by the way 'a
bee had settled on his lips and gathered honey,' and again that
'he saw in a dream that his mouth was filled with honey and the
honeycomb;' that Pan himself learnt a poem of his and rejoiced to sing
it on the mountains; that finally, while he awaited an answer from
the oracle of Ammon, whence he had enquired what was best for man,
Persephone appeared to him in his sleep and said that she only of the
gods had had no hymn from him, but that he should make her one shortly
when he had come to her; and that he died within ten days of the
vision.

Two several conquerors of Thebes, Pausanias of Sparta and Alexander of
Macedon,

'bade spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground.'

At Delphi they kept with reverence his iron chair, and the priest of
Apollo cried nightly as he closed the temple, 'Let Pindar the poet go
in unto the supper of the god.'

Thus Pindar was contemporary with an age of Greek history which
justifies the assertion of his consummate interest for the student of
Hellenic life in its prime. It was impossible that a man of his
genius and temperament should have lived through these times without
representing to us with breadth and intensity the spirit that was in
them, and there are several points in Pindar's circumstances which
make his relation to his age peculiarly interesting. We may look on
him as in some points supplementary to the great Athenian dramatists,