With better right and greater force Æschylus, himself warrior of Marathon and Salamis, in the “Agamemnon” covertly warns his Athenian contemporaries, then engaged in imperial schemes of expansion in Egypt and elsewhere, against the haughty spirit that goeth before a fall. His words easily connect themselves with this Pindaric ode because the return of the Greek host from Troy brings out on Clytemnestra’s lips the metaphor drawn from the double racecourse—the δίαυλος. Ilium is but the turning-post at the farther end; Argos is both the starting-point and the goal; the stadium is the Ægean sea:— “But beware lest some desire May fall upon our men, succumbing to their greed, To ravage what they should not: they for safe return Unto their homes must bend them back again, adown The double race-track’s other leg.” To make selections from Pindar is to pry out jewels from an antique setting. But his Olympic odes give the best interpretation of the best meaning of the games. Some were impromptu odes crystallized under the stress of the victory and sung in the Altis while the full moon shone upon the hero of the day. Some were longer and written at leisure for the supplementary celebration at the victor’s home. But in any case the thought was not impromptu. The Theban eagle soared habitually and paused for a moment only at Olympia, sent by— “the Hours, circling in the dance to music of the lyre’s changing notes, to be a witness to the greatest of all games.” Yet with all his soaring Pindar never forgot the gracious beauty of human life. The Graces are ever near. Victory, he tells us, by the Graces’ aid is won, and the charioteers— “Charis transfigures with the beauty of their fame, as they drive foremost in the twelfth round of the race.”