ndar
was held is also shown by the honours conferred upon him by the free
states of Greece. Although a Theban, he was always a great favourite
with the Athenians, whom he frequently praised in his poems, and who
testified their gratitude by making him their public guest, and by
giving him 10,000 drachmas. The only poems of Pindar which have come
down to us entire are his Epinicia or triumphal odes, composed in
commemoration of victories gained in the great public games. But these
were only a small portion of his works. He also wrote hymns, paeans,
dithyrambs, odes for processions, songs of maidens, mimic dancing
songs, drinking songs, dirges and encomia, or panegyrics on princes.

The Greeks had arrived at a high pitch of civilization before they can
be said to have possessed a HISTORY. The first essays in literary
prose cannot be placed earlier than the sixth century before the
Christian aera; but the first writer who deserves the name of an
historian is HERODOTUS, hence called the Father of History. Herodotus
was born in the Dorian colony of Halicarnassus in Caria, in the year
484 B.C., and accordingly about the time of the Persian expeditions
into Greece. He resided some years in Samos, and also undertook
extensive travels, of which he speaks in his work. There was scarcely
a town in Greece or on the coasts of Asia Minor with which he was not
acquainted; he had explored Thrace and the coasts of the Black Sea; in
Egypt he had penetrated as far south as Elephantine; and in Asia he had
visited the cities of Babylon, Ecbatana, and Susa. The latter part of
his life was spent at Thurii, a colony founded by the Athenians in
Italy in B.C. 443. According to a well-known story in Lucian,
Herodotus, when he had completed his work, recited it publicly at the
great Olympic festival, as the best means of procuring for it that
celebrity to which he felt that it was entitled. The effect is
described as immediate and complete. The delighted audience at once
assigned the names of the nine Muses to the nine books into which it is
divided. A still later author (Suidas) adds, that Thucydides, then a
boy, was present at the festival with his father Olorus, and was so
affected by the recital as to shed tears; upon which Herodotus
congratulated Olorus on having a son who possessed so early such a zeal
for knowledge. But there are many objections to the probability of
these tales.

Herodotus interwove into his history all the