people, whose sympathies and hopes lay the other way.

The reputation of Pindar early became so great that he was employed,
by various states and princes, to compose choral songs for special
occasions. Like Simonides, he "loved to bask in the sunshine
of courts;" but he was frank, sincere, and manly, assuming a
lofty and dignified position toward princes and others in authority
with whom he came in contact. He was especially courted by Hiero,
despot of Syracuse, but remained with him only a few years, his
manly disposition creating a love for an independent life that
the courtly arts of his patron could not furnish. As his poems
show, he was a reserved man, learned in the myths and ceremonies
of the times, and specially devoted to the worship of the gods.
"The old myths," says a Greek biographer, "were for the most part
realities to him, and he accepted them with implicit credence,
except when they exhibited the gods in a point of view which
was repugnant to his moral feelings; and he accordingly rejects
some tales, and changes others, because they are inconsistent
with his moral conceptions." As a poet correctly describes him,
using one of the names commonly applied to him,

Pindar, that eagle, mounts the skies,
While virtue leads the noble way.
--PRIOR.

The poems of Pindar were numerous, and comprised triumphal odes,
hymns to the gods, paeans, dirges, and songs of various kinds.
His triumphal odes alone have come down to us entire; but of
some of his other compositions there are a few sublime and beautiful
fragments. The poet and his writings cannot be better described