SOURCE: Two Types of Humanism: Pindar and Herodotus." In The Greek Genius and Its Meaning to Us, pp. 139-159. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912, pp. 139-59.

In the following excerpt, Livingstone comments on Pindar's thought as representative of Hellenism.

Pindar is writing for the society that existed in the early part of the fifth century; for the society that fought and beat the Persians, conceived the ideal of a united Greek nation, made a few generous, unpractical efforts to achieve it, failed and resigned the attempt. It was a society in which aristocracies were supreme; but Pindar saw democracy arise in one state after another, in some dispossess its hereditary lords, in almost all wage against them internecine war. Of these two great movements, the national and the democratic, there is hardly a trace in him. He has no interest in politics, either at home or abroad; he has...