Laudator Temporis Acti

Basil L. Gildersleeve, ed., Pindar, The Olympian and Pythian Odes (New York: American Book Company, 1885), p. x:

On another occasion Korinna is said to have blamed Pindar for having used an Attic word. This, also, is not a bad invention. It accords with the conservative character of woman; it accords with the story that Korinna won a victory over Pindar by the familiar charm of her Boeotian dialect as well as by the beauty of her person, a beauty not lost in the picture at Tanagra, which represented her in the act of encircling her head with a fillet of victory. Aelian, an utterly untrustworthy scribbler, adds that Pindar, in the bitterness of his heart, called his successful rival a swine. If Pindar used the phrase at all, it must be remembered that Βοιωτία ὗς (O. 6, 90) was a common expression—half spiteful, half sportive—and that the moral character of the swine stood higher with the Greeks than it stands with us. The swine-woman of Phokylides, who was neither good nor bad, was not the sow of the Old Testament or the New. The Greeks were brotherly to the lower animals. Bull, cow, heifer, cock, ass, dog, were at all events not beneath the level of the highest poetry.