Pindar's Theban citizenship painful to us, and that is the shameful
part taken by Thebes in the Persian war, when compulsion of her
exposed situation, and oligarchical cabal within her walls, drew her
into unholy alliance with the barbarian invader. Had it been otherwise
how passionately pure would Pindar's joy have uttered itself when the
'stone of Tantalos' that hung over the head of Hellas was smitten into
dust in that greatest crisis of the fortunes of humanity. He exults
nobly as it is, he does all honour to Athens, 'bulwark of Hellas,' but
the shame of his own city, his 'mother' Thebes, must have caused him a
pang as bitter as a great soul has ever borne.

For his very calling of song-writer to all Hellenic states without
discrimination, especially when the songs he had to write were of the
class which we still possess, triumphal odes for victories in those
great games which drew to them all men of Hellenic blood at the feet
of common deities, and which with each recurring festival could even
hush the clamour of war in an imperious Truce of God--such a calling
and such associations must have cherished in him the passion for
Panhellenic brotherhood and unanimity, even had there not been much
else both within and without him to join to the same generous end. It
was the time when Panhellenic feeling was probably stronger than ever
before or after. Before, the states had been occupied in building
up their own polities independently; the Hellenic activity had been
dispersing itself centrifugally among the trans-marine colonies,
and those of Italy and Sicily seemed at one time to make it doubtful
whether the nucleus of civilization were to be there or in the
mother-country. But by the time of the Persian war the best energies
of the race had concentrated themselves between the Aegean and Ionian
seas; and the supreme danger of the war had bound the states together
against the common enemy and taught them to forget smaller differences