. A smaller history of Greece, from the earliest times to the Roman conquest. hens was closed with the victory which he gained withthe dithyrambic chorus in 477, making the 56th prize thathe had carried oft. Shortly after this event he repaired to Syracuseat the invitation of Hiero. Here he spent the remaining ten yearsof his life, not only entertaining Hiero with his poetry, but in-structing him by his wisdom ; for Simonides was a philosopher aswell as a poet, and is reckoned amongst the sophists. Pindar, though the contemporary of Simonides, was considerablyjtg^^ his junior. He was born
. A smaller history of Greece, from the earliest times to the Roman conquest. hens was closed with the victory which he gained withthe dithyrambic chorus in 477, making the 56th prize thathe had carried oft. Shortly after this event he repaired to Syracuseat the invitation of Hiero. Here he spent the remaining ten yearsof his life, not only entertaining Hiero with his poetry, but in-structing him by his wisdom ; for Simonides was a philosopher aswell as a poet, and is reckoned amongst the sophists. Pindar, though the contemporary of Simonides, was considerablyjtg^^ his junior. He was born either at, or in the^(^fTp^^, neighbourhood of, Thebes in Boeotia, about £r - ■ . ^ states and princes of the Hellenic race to com- Pindar Pose cnora^ £onos- 2e was courted especially by Alexander, king of Macedonia, and byHiero, despot of Syracuse. The praises which he bestowed uponAlexander are said to have been the chief reason which led hisdescendant, Alexander the Great, to spare the house of the poetwhen he destroyed the rest of Thebes. The estimation in which /. Chap. XXI]. PINDAR — HERODOTUS. 227 Pindar -was held is also shown by the honours conferred uponhim by the free states of Greece. Although a Theban, he wasalways a great favourite with the Athenians, whom he fre-quently praised in his poems, and who testified their gratitude bymaking him their public guest, and by giving him 10,000 only poems of Pindar which have come down to us entireare his Epinicia or triumphal odes, composed in commemoration ofvictories gained in the great public games. But these were onlya small portion of his works. He also wrote hymns, paeans, dithy-rambs, odes for processions, songs of maidens, mimic dancingsongs, drinking songs, dirges, and encomia, or panegyrics onprinces. The Greeks had arrived at a high pitch of civilization beforethey can be said to have possessed a History, Thefirst essays in literary prose cannot be placed earlierthan the sixth century before th
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