[106] Translated by Conington, from Fragment ii. of _Dirges_. [107] _Purg._, ix. 19. [108] _Carm._, iv. 2. Translated thus by Conington: Pindar, like torrent from the steep Which, swollen with rain, its banks o'erflows, With mouth unfathomably deep, Foams, thunders, glows. [109] 7th Ol. [110] Compare this with the passage in Pythian, iii. 68, where Pindar describes himself #Ionian temnôn thalassan#. [111] Bergk, _Poetæ Lyrici_, p. 1301. [112] Pyth. iv. 263. [113] These pregnant words imply self-government and self-restraint in obedience to a high ideal of order and symmetry, as opposed to the perils and the uncomeliness of extravagance. [114] "Hateful of a truth, even in days of old, was treacherous blandishment, attendant of wily words designing guile, mischief-making slander, which loves to wrest the splendor of fame and to maintain the unreal honors of ignoble men. Never may such be my temper, Zeus, my father! but may I follow the plain paths of life, that, dying, I may leave no foul fame to my children. Some pray for gold, and some for vast lands; but I to please my countrymen, and so to hide my limbs beneath the earth, praising where praise is due, and sowing blame for sinful men. Virtue grows and blooms, like a tree that shoots up under fostering dews, when skilled men and just raise it towards the liquid air." ... "Among my fellow-citizens I look with brightness in my eye, not having overstepped due bounds, and having removed from before my feet all violence. May future time come kindly to me." ... "May I obtain from Heaven the desire of what is right, aiming at things within my powers in my prime of life. For finding, as I do, that the middle status in a city flourishes with more lasting prosperity, I deprecate the lot of kings." ... "Passing the pleasure of the days, I gently glide towards old age and man's destined end; for all alike we die: yet is our fortune unequal; and if a man seek far, short is his strength to reach the brazen seat of the gods: verily winged Pegasus cast his lord Bellerophon, who sought to come into the dwellings of the heaven, unto the company of Zeus." ... "Seek not to be Zeus, ... mortal fortunes are for mortal men." [115] Compare for a similar freedom of judgment Antigone's famous speech on the unwritten Laws. [116] The conscience forms a strong point in the ethical systems of many of the ancients, especially of Plato, of Lucretius, of Persius--authors otherwise dissimilar enough as representing three distinct species of thought. In mythology it receives an imperfect embodiment in the Erinnyes, who, however, are spiritual forces acting from without, rather than from within, upon the criminal. Purifying rites belonged to the Mysteries, or #teletai#; they formed a prominent feature in the ethics of Empedocles and Pythagoras, and an integral part of the cult of Apollo and the nether deities. Philosophers like Plato rejected them as pertaining to ceremonial superstition.