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UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

 

 

 

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME
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FUND GIVEN IN I89I BY
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Libr:
PA 4275. <EEM99 1892.

win
TIE ODEXto# PINDAR
 
THE EXTANT

ODES OF PINDAR

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH
WITH

_ AN INTRODUCTION AND SHORT NOTES

BY

ERNEST MYERS, M.A.

Late Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford

VT ondon

MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK

1892

9
[AL rights reserved]
ACEH
635 Erp

First edition printed 1874.
Reprinted (with corrections) 1884, 1888, 1892.

Cee

OXFORD: HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
SON OF THE LIGHTNING, FAIR AND FIERY STAR,

STRONG-WINGED IMPERIAL PINDAR, VOICE DIVINE,

LET THESE DEEP DRAUGHTS OF THY ENCHANTED WINE
LIFT ME WITH THEE IN SOARINGS HIGH AND FAR
PROUDER THAN PEGASEAN, OR THE CAR

WHEREIN APOLLO RAPT THE HUNTRESS MAID.

SO LET ME RANGE MINE HOUR, TOO SOON TO FADE
INTO STRANGE PRESENCE OF THE THINGS THAT ARE.

YET KNOW THAT EVEN AMID THIS JARRING NOISE
OF HATES, LOVES, CREEDS, TOGETHER HEAPED AND HURLED,
SOME ECHO FAINT OF GRACE AND GRANDEUR STIRS
FROM THY SWEET HELLAS, HOME OF NOBLE JOYS.
FIRST FRUIT AND BEST OF ALL OUR WESTERN WORLD ;
WHATE’ER WE HOLD OF BEAUTY, HALF IS HERS.
INTRODUCTION.

PROBABLY no poet of importance equal or approaching to
that of Pindar finds so few and so infrequent readers. The
causes are not far to seek: in the first and most obvious place
comes the great difficulty of his language, in the second the fre-
quent obscurity of his thought, resulting mainly from his exceed-
ing allusiveness and his abrupt transitions, and in the third place
that amount of monotony which must of necessity attach to a
series of poems provided for a succession of similar occasions.

It is as an attempt towards obviating the first of these hind-
rances to the study of Pindar, the difficulty of his language, that
this translation is of course especially intended. To whom and
in what cases are translations of poets useful? To a perfect
scholar in the original tongue they are superfluous, to one wholly
ignorant of it they are apt to be (unless here and there to a
Keats) meaningless, flat, and puzzling. There remains the third
class of those who have a certain amount of knowledge of a
language, but not enough to enable them to read unassisted its
more difficult books without an expenditure of time and trouble
which is virtually prohibitive. It is to this class that a transla-
tion ought, it would seem, chiefly to address itself. An intelli-
gent person of cultivated literary taste, and able to read the
easier books in an acquired language, will feel himself indebted
to a hand which unlocks for him the inner chambers of a temple
in whose outer courts he had already delighted to wander.
Without therefore saying that the merely ‘English reader’ may
never derive pleasure and instruction from a translation of a
foreign poet, for to this rule our current version of the Hebrew
psalmists and prophets furnish one marked exception at least—
still, it is probably to what may be called the half-learned class
that the translator must preeminently look to find an audience,
8 INTRODUCTION.

 

The other causes of Pindar’s unpopularity to which reference
was made above, the obscurity of his thought and the monotopy
of his subjects, will in great measure disappear by means of at-
.tentive study of the poems themselves, and of other sources from
which may be gathered an understanding of the region of-
thought and feeling in which they move. In proportion to our
familiarity not only with Hellenic mythology and history, but
with Hellenic life and habits of thought generally, will be our
readiness and facility in seizing the drift and import of what
Pindar says, in divining what has passed through his mind:
and in his case perhaps even more than in the case of other
poets, this facility will increase indefinitely with our increasing
acquaintance with his works and with the light thrown on each
part of them by the rest}.

The monotony of the odes, though to some extent unques-
tionably and unavoidably real, is to some extent also superficial
and in appearance only. The family of the victor, or his country,
some incident of his past, some possibility of his future life,
suggest in each case some different legendary matter, some dif-
ferent way of treating it, some different application of it, general
or particular, or both. Out of such resources Pindar is inex-
haustible in building up in subtly varying forms the splendid
structure of his song.

Yet doubtless the drawbacks in reading Pindar, though they
may be largely reduced, will always in some degree exist: we
shall always wish that he was easier to construe, that his allu-
sions to things unfamiliar and sometimes undiscoverable to us
were less frequent, that family pride had not made it customary
for him to spend so many lines on an enumeration of prizes won
elsewhere and at other times by the victor of the occasion or by
his kin. Such drawbacks can only fall into insignificance when
eclipsed by consideration of the far more than counterbalancing
attractions of the poems, of-their unique and surpassing interest,
poetical, historical, and moral.

 

1 The importance and interest to a student in Hellenic literature of
a collateral study of whatever remains to us of Hellenic plastic art—

statues, vases, gems, and coins—can hardly be too strongly insisted on.
=

a
INTRODUCTION. 9

 

Of Pindar as a poet it is hard indeed to speak adequately, and
almgst as hard to speak briefly, for a discussion of his poetical
characteristics once begun may wander far before even a small
part has been said of what might be. To say that to his poetry
in supreme degree belong the qualities of force, of vividness, of
intoxicating splendour, of the majesty of a lofty style, the ex-
pression of a high personality, of a mastery of rhythm and metre
and imaginative diction, of an intensely Hellenic spirit modified
by an unmistakable individuality; above all of a pre-eminent ra-
pidity as of an eagle’s flight or of very lightning—to say all
this would be to suggest some of the most obvious features of
these wonderful odes; and each of these qualities, and many
more requiring exacter delineation, might be illustrated with
numberless instances which even in the faint image of a transla-
tion would furnish ample testimony®. But as this introduction
is intended for those who purpose reading Pindar’s poetry, or
at any rate the present translation of it, for themselves, I will
leave it to them to discover for themselves the qualities which
have given Pindar his high place among poets, and will pass on
to suggest briefly his claims to interest us by reason of his plate
in the history of human action and human thought.

We know very little of Pindar’s life. He was born in or about
the year B.C. 522, at the village of Kynoskephalai near Thebes.
He was thus a citizen of Thebes and seems to have always had
his home there. But he travelled among other states, many of
which have been glorified by his art. For his praise of Athens,
‘bulwark of Hellas,’ the city which at Artemision ‘laid the
foundation of freedom,’ the Thebans ‘are said to have fined him;
but the generous Athenians paid the fine, made him their Pro-
xenos, and erected his statue at the public cost. For the magni-
ficent Sicilian princes, Hieron of Syracuse and Theron of
Akragas, not unlike the Medici in the position they held, Pindar
wrote five of the longest of his extant odes, and probably visited
them in Sicily. But he would not quit his home to be an orna-

 

2 In Mr. J. A. Symonds’ ‘Studies of the Greek Poets’ there is an
essay on Pindar which dwells with much appreciative eloquence upon the
poet's literary characteristics.
10 INTRODUCTION.

 

ment of their courts: When asked why he did not, like
Simonides, accept the invitations of these potentates to make his
home with them, he answered that he had chosen to live his
own life, and not to be the property of another. He died at the
age of 79, that is, probably, in the year 443, twelve years before
the Peloponnesian war began. Legend said that he died in the
theatre of Argos, in the arms of Theoxenos, the boy in whose
praise he wrote a Skolion of which an immortal fragment remains
to us. Other myths gathered round his name. It was said that
once when in childhood he had fallen asleep by the way ‘a bee
had settled on his lips and gathered honey,’ and again that ‘he
saw in a dream that his mouth was filled with honey and the
honeycomb;” that Pan himself learnt a poem of his and rejoiced
to sing it on the mountains; that finally, while he awaited an
answer from the oracle of Ammon, whence he had enquired
what was best for man, Persephone appeared to him in his sleep -
and said that she only of the gods had had no hymn from him,
but that he should make her one shortly when he had come to
her; and that he died within ten days of the vision.

Two several conquerors of Thebes, Pausanias of Sparta and

Alexander of Macedon,
: ‘bade spare

The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground.’

At Delphi they kept with reverence his iron chair, and the
priest of Apollo cried nightly as he closed the temple, ‘Let Pindar
the poet go in unto the supper of the god.’

Thus Pindar was contemporary with an age of Greek history
which justifies the assertion of his consummate interest for the
student of Hellenic life in its prime. It was impossible that a
man of his genius and temperament should have lived through
these times without representing to us with breadth and intensity
the spirit that was in them, and there are several points in
Pindar’s circumstances which make his relation to his age pecu-
liarly interesting. We may look on him as in some points sup-
plementary to the great Athenian dramatists, whose works are
dcubtless far the most valuable literary legacy of the time, Per-
INTRODUCTION. It

 

haps however the surpassing brilliance of Athenian literature and
history has made us somewhat prone to forget the importance
of non-Athenian elements in the complex whole of Hellenic life
and thought. Athens was the eye of Hellas, nay, she had at
Marathon and Salamis made good her claim to be called the
saving arm, but there were other members not to be forgotten if
we would picture to ourselves the national body in its completeness.

Pindar was a Boeotian, of a country not rich in literary or
indeed any kind of intellectual eminence, yet by no means to be
ignored in an estimate of the Hellenic race. Politically indeed
it only rises into pre-eminence under Epameinondas; before and
afterwards Boeotian policy under the domination of Thebes is
seldom either beneficent or glorious: it must be remembered,
however, that the gallant Plataeans also were Boeotians. The
people of Boeotia seem to have had generally an easy, rather
sensually inclined nature, which accorded with their rich country
and absence of nautical and commercial enterprise and excite-
ment, but in their best men this disposition remains only in the
form of a genial simplicity. Pelopidas in political, and Plutarch
and Pausanias in literary history, will be allowed to be instances
of this, That the poetry which penetrated Hellenic life was not
wanting in Boeotia we have proof enough in the existence of
the Sacred Band, that goodly fellowship of friends which seems
to have united what Hallam has called the three strongest
motives to enthusiastic action that have appeared in history,
patriotism, chivalric honour, and religion. Nor is there any nobler
figure in history than that of Epameinondas.

One fact indeed there is which must always make the thought
of Pindar’s Theban citizenship painful to us, and that is the
shameful part taken by Thebes in the Persian war, when com-
pulsion of her exposed situation, and oligarchical cabal within her
walls, drew her into unholy alliance with the barbarian invader.
Had it been otherwise how passionately pure would Pindar’s joy
have uttered itself when the ‘stone of Tantalos’ that hung over
the head of Hellas was smitten into dust in that greatest crisis
of the fortunes of humanity. He exults nobly as it is, he does
all honour to Athens, ‘bulwark of Hellas,’ but the shame of his
12 INTRODUCTION.

 

own city, his ‘mother’ Thebes, must have caused him a pang as
bitter as a great soul has ever borne.

For his very profession of song-writer to all Hellenic states
without discrimination, especially when the songs he had to write
were of the class which we still possess, triumphal odes for
victories in those great games which drew to them all men
of Hellenic blood at the feet of common deities, and which with
each recurring festival could even hush the clamour of war in an
imperious Truce of God—such a profession and such associations
must have cherished in him the passion for Panhellenic brother-
hood and unanimity, even had there not been much else both
within and without him to join to the same generous end, It
was the time when Panhellenic feeling was probably stronger
than ever before or after. Before, the states had been occupied
in building up their own polities independently; the Hellenic
activity had been dispersing itself centrifugally among the trans-
marine colonies, and those of Italy and Sicily seemed at one time
to make it doubtful whether the nucleus of civilization were to
be there or in the mother-country. But by the time of the
Persian war the best energies of the race had concentrated
themselves between the Aegean and Ionian seas; and the su-
preme danger of the war had bound the states together against
the common enemy and taught them to forget smaller differences
in the great strife between Hellene and barbarian. Yet again
when that supreme danger was past the old quarrels arose anew
more deadly and more complicated: instead of a Persian there
was a Peloponnesian war, and the Peloponnesian war in its
latter stages came, by virtue of the political principles involved,
to partake much of the character of a civil war. But the
time of Pindar, of Aeschylus, of Sophocles, of Pheidias, of
Polygnotos, was that happy interval when Hellas had beaten off
the barbarian from her throat and had not yet murdered
herself. And Pindar’s imagination and generosity were both
kindled by the moment; there was no room in his mind for
border squabbles, Sr commercial jealousies, for oligarchic or
democratic envy: these things were overridden by a sentiment of
nationality wanting indeed in many circumstances which modern
INTRODUCTION. 13

 

nationalities deem essential to the existence of such sentiment,
and many of which are really essential to its permanence—yet a
sentiment which no other nation ever before or since can have
possessed in the peculiar lustre which it then wore in Hellas; for
no other nation has ever before or since known what it was to
stand alone immeasurably advanced at the head of the civilization
of the world.

Pindar was of a noble family, of the house of the Aigeidai, and
it is probable that his kinsmen, or some of them, may have taken
the side of oligarchy in the often recurring dissensions at Thebes,
but of this we know nothing certain. He himself seems to have
taken no part in politics, When he speaks on the subject in his:
odes it is not with the voice of a partisan. An ochlocracy is’
hateful to him, but if he shows himself an ‘aristocrat’ it is in the)
literal and etymological meaning of the word. Doubtless if
Pindar had been asked where the best servants of the state in|
public life were most likely to be found he would have answered
that it would be among those ancient families in whose veins
ran the blood of gods and demigods, who had spent blood and
money for the city’s honour, championing her in war or in the
mimic strife of the games, who had honourable traditions to
be guided by and an honourable name to ‘lose or save. These
things were seldom undervalued by Hellenic feeling: even in
Athens, after it was already the headquarters of the democratic
principle, the noble and wealthy families obtained, not probably
without wisdom of their own in loyally accepting a democratic
position, as fair a place and prospects as anywhere in Hellas.
But that, when the noble nature, the dperj, which traditions of.
nobility ought to have secured, was lacking, then wealth and birth.
were still entitled to power, this was a doctrine repugnant utterly
to Pindar’s mind: nor would his indignation slumber when he
saw the rich and highborn, however gifted, forgetting at any time
that their power was a trust for the community and using it for
their own selfish profit. An ‘aristocrat’ after Pindar’s mind
would assuredly have a far keener eye to higgduties than to his
rights, would consider indeed that in his larger share of duties
lay his infinitely most precious right.
14 INTRODUCTION.

 

excellence of some kind was in his eyes essential; but on this he
would fain shed outward radiance and majesty. His imagination
rejoiced in splendour—splendour of stately palace-halls where the
columns were of marble and the entablature of wrought gold,
splendour of temples of gods where the sculptor’s waxing art had
brought the very deities to dwell with man, splendour of the
white-pillared cities that glittered across the Aegean and Sicilian
seas, splendour of the holy Panhellenic games, of whirlwind
chariots and the fiery grace of thoroughbreds, of the naked
shapely limbs of the athlete man and boy. On this characteristic
of Pindar it is needless to dwell, for there are not many odes of
those remaining which do not impress it on our minds.

And it is more with him than a mere manner in poetical
style. The same defect which we feel more or less present in
all poets of antiquity—least of all perhaps in Virgil and Sophokles,
but even in them somewhat—a certain want of widely sympa-
_thetie-tenderness, this is unquestionably present in Pindar. What
of this quality may have found expression in his lost poems,
especially the Dirges, we can scarcely guess, but in his triumphal
odes it hardly appears at all, unless in the touches of tender
gracefulness into which he softens when speaking of the young.
And we find this want in him mainly because objects of pity,
such as especially elicit that quality of tenderness, are never or
seldom present to Pindar’s mind. {| He sees evil only in the shape
of some moral baseness, falsehood, envy, arrogance, and the like,
to be scathed in passing by the good man’s scorn, or else in
the shape of a dark mystery of pain, to be endured by those on
whom it causelessly falls in a proud though undefiant silence. It
was not for him, as for the great tragedians, to ‘purge the mind
by pity and fear,’ for those passions had scarcely a place in his
own mind or in the minds of those of whom he in his high
phantasy would fain have had the world consist. And as in this
point somewhat, so still more in others, does Pindar remind us,
even more than might have been expected in a contemporary, of
Aeschylus. The latter by virtue of his Athenian nurture as well
as of his own greater natural gifts reveals to us a greater number

But he ‘loved that beauty should go beautifully;” personal
INTRODUCTION. 15

 

of thoughts, and those more advanced and more interesting than
we find in Pindar, but the similarity in moral temper and tone
is very striking, as also is the way in which we see this temper
acting on their beliefs. Both hold strongly, as is the wont
of powerful minds in an age of stability as opposed to an age of
transition, to the traditions and* beliefs on which the society
around them rests, but both modify these traditions and beliefs
according to the light which arises in them, and which is as
much moral as intellectual light. In so doing they are indeed in
harmony with the best instincts of the society around them, but
they lead and guide such instincts and give them shape and
definiteness. In the Oresteain trilogy of Aeschylus we have an
ever-memorable assertion of the supreme claims of human moral-
ity to human allegiance, of the eternal truth that; humanity can...
know no object of reverence and worship except ‘itself idealised,
its own virtues victorious over its own vices, and existing in the~
greatest perfection which it can at any given time conceive.
Somewhat the same lesson as that of the Oresteia is taught later,
with more of sweetness and harmony, but not with more force,
in the Oedipus Coloneus of Sophokles. And in Pindar we see
the same tendencies inchoate. Like Aeschylus he does by im-
plication subordinate to morality both politics and religion. He
ignores or flatly ‘denies tales that bring discredit on the gods; he
will only bow down to them when they have the virtues he
respects in man. Yet he, like Aeschylus and Sophokles, does
so bow down, sincerely and without hesitation, and that poets of
their temper could do so was well indeed for poetry. By rare
and happy fortune they were inspired at once by the rich and
varied presences of mythology, ‘the fair humanities of old re-
ligion,’ and also by the highest aspirations of an age of moral and
intellectual advance. We do not of course always, or even often,
find the moral principles clearly and consciously expressed or
consistently supported, but we cannot but feel that they are
present in the shape of instincts, and those instincts pervading
and architectonic.

And if we allow so much of ethical enlightenment to these
great spokesmen of the Hellenic people, we cannot deny something

.
16 INTRODUCTION.

 

of like honour to the race among whom they were reared, Let us
apportion our debt of gratitude to our forerunners as it is justly
due. There would seem to be much of fallacy and of the in-
justice of a shallow judgment in the contrast as popularly drawn
between ‘Hellenism’ and ‘Hebraism,’ according to which the
former is spoken of as exclusively proclaiming to the world the
value of Beauty, the latter the value of Righteousness. In this
there is surely much injustice done to Hellas. Because she taught
the one, she did not therefore leave the other untaught. It
may have been for a short time, as her other greatness was
for a short time, though its effects are eternal, but for that
short time the national life, of Athens at any rate, is at least as
full of high moral feeling as that of any other people in the
world. Will not the names of Solon, of Aristeides, of Kallikratidas,
of Epameinondas, of Timoleon and many more, remind us that
life could be to the Hellene something of deeper moral import
than a brilliant game, or a garden of vivid and sweet sights and
sounds where Beauty and Knowledge entered, but Goodness was
forgotten and shut out? For it is not merely that these men,
and very many more endowed with ample portion of their spirit,
were produced and reared among the race; they were honoured
and valued in a way that surely postulated the existence of high
ethical feeling in their countrymen. And even when the days of
unselfish statesmen and magnanimous cities were over, there were
philosophers whose schools were not the less filled because they
claimed a high place for righteousness in human life. To Solon
and Aristeides succeeded Socrates and Plato, to Epameinondas
and Timoleon succeeded Zeno and Epictetus. That the morality
of the Hellenes was complete on all sides, it would of course be
irrational to maintain. They had not, for instance, any more than
the Hebrews, or any other nation of antiquity, learnt to abhor
slavery, though probably it existed in a milder form at Athens
than anywhere else in the old or new world: they were more
implacable in revenge and laxer in sexual indulgence than the
Christian ethics would allow in theory, though not perhaps much
more so than Christendom has shown itself in practice. And
though undoubtedly the greatest single impulse ever given to
INTRODUCTION. 7

 

morality came from Palestine, yet the ground which nurtured
the seeds of Christianity was as much Hellenic as Hebrew. It
would be impossible here to enter on an exhaustive comparison
of the ethical capacities of the two races, but before we pronounce
hastily for the superiority of the Hebrew there are surely some
difficulties to surmount. We may well ask, for example, Would
Hellas ever have accepted as her chief national hero such a man
as David, a man who in his life is conspicuous by his crimes not less
than by his brilliant gifts, and who dies with the words of blood and
perfidy on his lips, charging his son with the last slaughterous satis-
faction of his hate which he had sworn before his God to forego?
And though the great Hebrew prophets teach often a far loftier
morality than this, they cannot have been nearly so representative
of the feeling of this nation as were Aeschylus and Sophocles
and Pindar of the feeling of theirs. The Hebrews of the prophets’
age ‘slew the prophets,’ and left it to the slayers’ descendants to
‘build their sepulchres,’ and at the same time to show their in-
herited character still more unmistakeably by once more slaying
the last prophet and the greatest.’ ;

In truth in the literature, the art, the life generally of Hellas in
her prime, the moral interest whenever it appears, and that is not
seldom, claims for itself the grave and preponderant attention
which it must claim if it is to appear with fit dignity. But it is
not thrust forward unseasonably or in exaggeration, nor is it
placed in a false opposition to the interests of the aesthetic in-
stincts, which after all shade into the moral more imperceptibly than
might be generally allowed. There must be a moral side to all
societies, and the Hellenic society, the choicest that the world
has seen, the completest, that is, at once in sensibilities and in
energies, could not but show the excellence of its sensibilities in re-
ceiving moral impressions, the excellence of its energies in achieving
moral conduct.

 

1 In thus touching on the obligations of our morality to the Hebrew and
to the Hellene respectively, I have insisted more exclusively on the weak
points of the former than I should have done in a fuller discussion of the
subject: here I am merely concerned to question in passing what seems to
be a popular one-sided estimate,

b
18 INTRODUCTION.

 

This, however, is no place to discuss at length questions in the
history of ethics. Yet it must be remembered that in the ancient
world departments of thought, and the affairs of men generally,
were far less specialized than in modern times. If the philosophy
of Hellas be the most explicit witness to her ethical development,
her poetry is the most eloquent. And scarcely at any time, scarcely
even in Aristotle, did Hellenic philosophy in any department lose
most significant traces of its poetical ancestry. But enough here
if I have succeeded in pointing out that in the great poet with
whom we are concerned there is an ethical as well as a poetical
and historical interest, supplying one more reason against neglect of
his legacy of song.

Yet indeed even now there remains a further question which to
the mind of any one who at present labours in this field of classical
scholarship must recur persistently if not depressingly, and on which
it is natural if not necessary to say a few words. If the selection of
Pindar in particular as a Greek poet with claims to be further
‘popularized among Englishmen may be defended, there is still a
more general count to which all who make endeavours to attract
or retain attention to Greek literature will in these times be called
upon to plead by voices which command respect. To such pleas.
this is not the place to give large room, or to discriminate in detail
between the reasonable and unreasonable elements in the attacks
on a system of education in which a preeminent position is allotted
to the literature of antiquity. While fully admitting that much
time and labour are still wasted in efforts to plant the study of
ancient and especially of Greek literature in uncongenial soil,
while admitting also most fully the claims, and the still imperfect
recognition of the claims, of physical science to a rank among the
foremost in modern education, I should yet be abundantly willing
that this attempt to help in facilitating the study of a Greek author’
should be looked on as implying adhesion to the protest still some-
times raised, that in the higher parts of a liberal education no
study can claim a more important place than the study of the
history and the literature of Hellas. The interest which belongs
to these is far wider and deeper than any mere literary interest.
To the human mind the most interesting of phcnomena are and
INTRODUCTION. 19

 

ought to be the phenomena of the human mind, and this granted,
can there be any knowledge more desirable than the knowledge
of the most vigorous and sensitive and in some ways also the
most fruitful action of human minds that the world has known
hitherto?

But again, we are told that the age we seek thus toilsomely
to illustrate aud realize is too remote to justify the attempt, that
our civilisation is of too different a type from the Hellenic, and
that a gulf of three-and-twenty centuries is too much for our
sight to strain across. But is not the Hellenic life at least less
remote now to Western Europe than it has ever been since the
Northern invasions? Though the separation in time widens does
not the separation in thought decrease? Is not one civilisation
more like another than it can be to any barbarism? And shall
not this same Physical Science’ herself by accustoming us to look
on men in large masses at once, and on the development of
humanity as a process of infinite duration, as a sectional growth
included in universal evolution—Science, in whose eyes a thousand
years are as a watch in the night—shall she not thereby quicken
our sympathies with the most giited race that has appeared in our
short human history, and arouse the same feeling toward it as
a family may cherish toward the memory of their best and choicest,
who has died young?

Only let us take heed that such regret shall make us not more but
less unworthy of those noble forerunners. One symptom of the
renewed influence of antiquity on the modern world is doubtless
and has been from time to time since the Revival of Letters a
tendency to selfish and somewhat sickly theories so-called of life,
where sensibility degenerates through self-consciousness into affec-
taiion, and efforts to appreciate fully the delightfulness of life
and art are overstrained into a wearisome literary voluptuousness,
where duty has already disappeared and the human sympathies
on which duty is based scarcely linger in a faint aesthetic form,
soon to leave the would-be exquisiteness to putrify into the
vulgarity of egoism. Such tendencies have less in common with
the Hellenic prime than with the court of Leo the Tenth, though
even that had perhaps an advantage over them as being in some

ba
20 INTRODUCTION.

 

ways a more real thing. But that the Hellenic prime with all
its exquisite sensibility was deficient in recognition of a high
ideal of duty can never be believed among those who have
studied it candidly and attentively; I have endeavoured above to
suggest that in this point, take it all in all, it yields to no age
or race. It would indeed be a mistaken following of those noble
servants of humanity to draw from their memories an argu-
ment for selfish isolation or for despair of the commonwealth of
man. He who has drunk deeply of that divine well and gazed
long at the fair vision of what then was, will, if his nature be
capable of true sympathy with the various elements of that
wonderful age, turn again without bitterness to the confused
modern world, saddened but not paralysed by the comparison,
grieving, but with no querulous grief, for the certainty that those
days are done.

1874.
PREFATORY NOTE.

THE few notes appended to this translation are not intended to
supply the place of such reference to Dictionaries of Mythology,
Antiquities and Geography, as is needful to the student of Pindar
who is not already somewhat accomplished in knowledge of the
customs, history and legendary traditions of Hellas. And although
it may reasonably be supposed that the chief of these will be
already known to most readers of Pindar, yet so profusely allusive
is this poet that to understand his allusions will very often require
knowledge which would not have been derived from a study of
the more commonly read Hellenic writers.

Nor have I attempted to trace in detail the connection of the
parts in each ode which binds them into one harmonious whole
with many meanings—a connection so consummately contrived
where we can trace it that we may suppose it no less exquisite
where we cannot. Study and thought will generally suggest ex-
planations, though these will sometimes approve themselves differ-
ently to different minds. Too often we must acknowledge, as
elsewhere in ancient literature, that the key is lost beyond all
certain hope of recovery.

Still less have I attempted to discuss questions of critical scholar-
ship. Sometimes where there are more than one plausible reading
I have signified which I adopt; once only (Ol. 2. 56.) I have
ventured on an emendation of my own. For the most part I
have, as was natural, followed the text of Béckh and Dissen. _

In the spelling of names I remain in that inconsistency which
at present attaches to most modern writers who deal with them.
22 PREFATORY NOTE.

 

Olympus, Athens, Corinth, Syracuse, and the like are naturalized
among us by long familiarity; it seems at present at least pedantic
to change them. In the case of other less familiar names I have
concurred with the desire, which seems in the main a reasonable
one, that the names of Hellenic persons and places should be re-
produced, as far as possible, without Latin mediation.

Of the Fragments I have translated six of the longest and most
interesting. They are 289 in all, but the greater part are not
longer than a line or two, and very many even shorter.

The odes are unequal in poetical merit, and many readers may
not unreasonably wish to have those pointed out which, in the
judgement of one acquainted with all, are among the best worth
reading; though of course the choice of individual readers will

not always be the same. To those therefore who would wish
to begin with a selection, the following may be recommended as
at any nate among those of ea merit ; ,Pyth. 45 95 i, Io, 4; ;
O15, 6, , 4 13, 8, a; Nem. $, 10; Isthm. 273 all the Fragments
eranislated,

In the arrangement of the odes I have adhered to the traditional
order, I should much have liked to place them in what must
always be the most interesting and rational arrangement of a
poet’s works, that is, in chronological order. This would have
been approximately possible, as we know the dates of the greater
part of them. But convenience of reference and of comparison
with the Greek text seems to supply a balance of reasons on the
other side. Subjoined however is a list of the odes in their
probable chronological order so far as it can be obtained,

Pythian 10... B.c. 502. Isthmian 3
35 6... 4» 494. Pythian 8... Bc. 478.
” 12.6% 5, 494 OF 490. 8 Qees » 478.
” Jewe wy 490. 5 Ie oy 478.
3.26 5 486 or 482. és Bees w ATFs
Olympian 10 Olympiant4... 4 476.
a aft o » 484. e
Isthmian . 5 se ‘ } s+ 476.
Nemean 5 Pythian 1

Isthmian 7... 5, 480. Nemean 1.4. » 473.
PREFATORY NOTE. 23

 

Olympian 1... B.C. 472. Nemean 7
% 2 as. pe 7S ” 3
Nemean 9 ” 4
Isthmian 2 es 6
Olympian 6... ,, 468. ‘a 8
Pythian al 66 Olympian 9... Bc. 456.
‘i 5 SEB Isthmian 6
Olympian 7... » 464. Olympian 4
* ” 452.
» TZ - ++ » 464. ” 5

The Olympic games were held once in four years, in honour
of Zeus. The prize was a wreath of wild olive.

The Pythian games were held once in four years, in honour
of Apollo, The prize was a wreath of bay.

The Nemean games were held once in two years, in honour
of Zeus, The prize was a wreath of wild parsley.

The Isthmian games were held once in two years, in honour
of Poseidon. The prize was a wreath of wild parsley or of pine.
OLYMPIAN ODES.
OLYMP. I. 1-18. 3

 

I.

FOR HIERON OF SYRACUSE,

WINNER IN THE HORSE-RACE,

This ode seems to owe its position at the head of Pindar's extant
works to Aristophanes the grammarian, who placed it there on
account of its being specially occupied with the glorification of the
Olympic games in comparison with others, and with the story of
Pelops, who was their founder.

Hieron won this race B.C. 472, while at the height of his power at
Syracuse. Probably the ode was sung at Syracuse, perhaps, as has
been suggested, at a banquet.

1 —SSSeee

Best is Water of all, and Gold as a flaming fire in the night
shineth eminent amid lordly wealth; but if of. prizes in the games
thou art fain, O my soul, to tell, then, as for no bright star
more quickening than the sun must thou search in the void fir-
mament by day, so neither shall we find any games greater than
the Olympic whereof to utter our voice: for hence cometh the
glorious hymn and entereth into the minds of the skilled in song,
so that they celebrate the son? of Kronos, when to the rich and
happy hearth of Hieron they are come; for he wieldeth the
sceptre of justice in ‘Sicily of many flocks, culling the choice
fruits of all kinds of excellence: and with the flower of music
is he made splendid, even such strains as we sing blithely at the
table of a friend.

Take from the peg the Dorian lute, if in any wise the glory

 

1 The Olympic games were sacred to Zeus.
B2
4 OLYMP. I. 18-42.

 

of Pherenikos? at Pisa hath swayed thy soul unto glad thoughts,
when by the banks of Alpheos he ran, and gave his body un-
goaded in the course, and brought victory to his master, the
Syracusans’ king, who delighteth in horses.

Bright is his fame in Lydian Pelops’ colony%, inhabited of a,
goodly race, whose founder mighty earth-enfolding Poseidon loved,’
what time from the vessel of purifying* Klotho took him with
the bright ivory furnishment of his shoulder.

Verily many things are wondrous, and haply tales decked out
with cunning fables beyond the truth make false men’s speech
concerning them. For Charis*, who maketh all sweet things: for
mortal men, by lending honour unto such maketh oft the un-
believable thing to be believed; but the days that follow after
are the wisest witnesses.

Meet is it for a man that concerning gods he speak honourably;
for the reproach is less. Of thee, son of Tantalos, I will speak
contrariwise to them who have gone before me, and I will tell
how when thy father had bidden thee to that most seemly feast
at his beloved Sipylos, repaying to the gods their banquet, then
did he of the Bright Trident ®, his heart vanquished by love, snatch
thee and bear thee behind his golden steeds to the house of august

 

2 The horse that won this race for Hieron.

3 Peloponnesos.

* Ie. immediately on his birth, for among the Fates Klotho was
peculiarly concerned with the beginning of man's life. Pindar refuses
to accept the legend which made Pelops’ ivory shoulder a substitute for
his fleshly one eaten at Tantalos’ table by the gods; for thus the gods
would have been guilty of an infamous act.

5 Goddess of Grace or Beauty. Often there are three Charites or
Graces. Pindar means here that men are prone to be'ieve an untrue
tale for the sake of the beauty of the form in which it is presented, but
that such tales will not stand the test of time.

§ Poseidon,
OLYMP. I. 42-77. 5

 

Zeus in the highest, whither again on a like errand came Ganymede
in the after time.

But when thou hadst vanished, and the men who sought thee
long brought thee not to thy mother, some one of the envious
neighbours said secretly that over water heated to boiling they had
hewn asunder with a knife thy limbs, and at the tables had shared
among them and eaten sodden fragments of thy flesh. But to me
it is impossible to cali one of the blessed gods cannibal; I keep

loof; in telling ill tales is often little gain.

ow if any man ever had honour of the guardians of Olympus,
Tarttalos was that man; but his high fortune he could not digest,
and by excess thereof won him an overwhelming woe, in that the
Father hath hung above him a mighty stone that he would fain
ward from his head, and therewithal he is fallen from joy.

This hopeless life of endless misery he endureth with other
three”, for that he stole from the immortals and gave to his fel-
lows at a feast the nectar and ambrosia, whereby the gods had
made him incorruptible. But if a man thinketh that in doing
aught he shall “be hidden from God, he erreth.

Therefore also the immortals*sent back again his son to be
once more counted with the short-lived race of men. And he
when toward the bloom of his sweet youth the down began to
shade his darkening cheek, took counsel with himself speedily to
take to him for his wife the noble Hippodameia from her Pisan
father’s hand.

And he-came and stood upon the margin of the hoary sea,
voiced Wielder of the Trident; and he appeared unto him ‘nigh
at his foot.

Then he said unto him: ‘Lo now, O Poseidon, if the kind
gifts of the Cyprian goddess are anywise pleasant in thine eyes,
restrain Oinomaos’ bronze spear, and send me unto'Elis upon a

 

7 Sisyphos, Ixion, and T: ityos.
6 OLYMP. I. 77-116.

 

chariot exceeding swift, and give the victory to my hands.
Thirteen lovers already hath Oinomaos slain, and still delayeth
to give his daughter in marriage. Now a great peril alloweth
not of a coward: and forasmuch as men must die, wherefore
should one sit vainly in the dark through a dull and nameless
age, and without lot in noble deeds? Not so, but I will dare this
strife: do thou give the issue I desire.’

Thus spake he, nor were his words in vain: for the god made
him a glorious gift of a golden car and winged untiring steeds:
so he overcame Oinomaos and won the maiden for his bride.

And he begat six sons, chieftains, whose thoughts were ever of
brave deeds: and now hath he part in honour of blood-offerings
in his grave beside Alpheos’ stream, and hath a frequented tomb,
whereto many strangers resort: and from afar off he beholdeth
the glory of the Olympian games in the courses called of Pelops,
where is striving of swift feet and of strong bodies brave to
labour; but he that overcometh hath for the sake of those
games a sweet tranquillity throughout his life for evermore.

Now the good that cometh of to-day is ever sovereign unto

every man, My part it is to crown Hieron with an equestriar
strain in Aeolian mood: and sure am I that no host among men
that now are shall I ever glorify in sounding labyrinths of song
more learned in the learning of honour and withal with more
might to work thereto. A god hath guard over thy hopes, O
Hieron, and taketh care for them with a peculiar care: and if
he fail thee not, I trust that I shall again proclaim in song a
sweeter glory yet, and find thereto in words a ready way, when
to the fair-shining hill of Kronos I am come. Her strongest-
wingéd dart my Muse hath yet in store.
‘ Of many kinds is the greatness of men; but the highest is to
be achieved by kings. Look not thou for more than this. May
it be thine to walk loftily all thy life, and mine to be the friend
of winners in the games, winning honour for my art among
Hellenes everywhere.
OLYMP. II. 1-19. 7

 

II.

FOR THERON OF AKRAGAS,

WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE,

 

Theron’s ancestors the Emmenidai migrated from Rhodes to Sicily and
first colonized Gela and then Akragas (the Latin Agrigentum and
Italian Girgenti). His chariot won this victory B.C. 476.

Lorps of the lute’, my songs, what god, what hero, or what
man, are we to celebrate? Verily of Zeus is Pisa the abode, of
Herakles the Olympian feast was founded from. the chief spoils
of war, and Theron’s-‘name must we proclaim for his victory with
the four-horse-car, a righteous and god-fearing host, the stay of
, Akragas, of famous sires the flower, a saviour of the state.

; They after long toils bravely borne took by a river’s side a
sacred dwelling place, and became the eye of Sicily, and a life of
good luck clave to them, bringing them wealth and honour to
crown their inborn worth.

O son of Kronos and of Rhea, lord of Olympus’ seat, and of
the chief of games and of Alpheos’ ford, for joy in these my
songs guard ever graciously their native fields for their sons that
acu after them.

Now of deeds done whether they be right or wrong not even
Time the father of all can make undone the accomplishment,
yet with happy fortune forgetfulness may come, For by high

 

1In Hellenic music the accompaniment was deemed subordinate to
the words.
2 Here are three questions and three answers.
8 OLYMP. II. 19-54.

 

delights an alien pain is quelled and dieth, when the decree of
God sendeth happiness to grow aloft and widely.

And this word is true concerning Kadmos’ fair-throned daughters,
whose calamities were great, yet their sore grief fell before greater
good. Amid the Olympians long-haired Semeéle still liveth, albeit
she perished in the thunder’s roar, and Pallas cherisheth her
ever, and Father Zeus exceedingly, and her son, the ivy-bearing
god. And in the sea too they say that to Ind, among the sea-
maids of Nereus, life incorruptible hath been ordained for ever-
more.

Ay but to mortals the day of death is certain never, neither at

what time we shall see in calm the end of one of the Sun’s
children, the Days, with good thitherto unfailing; now this way
and now that run currents bringing joys or toils to men.
7 Thus destiny which from their fathers holdeth the happy fortune
of this race*, together with prosperity heaven-sent bringeth ever
at some other time better reverse: from the day when Laios
was slain by his destined son* who met him on the road and
made: fulfilment of the oracle spoken of old at Pytho. Then
swift Erinys when she saw it slew by each other’s hand his war-
like sons: yet after that Polyneikes fell Thersander® lived after
him and won honour in the Second Strife® and in the fights of
war, a saviour scion to the Adrastid house.

From him they have beginning of their race : meet is it that
Ainesidamos receive our hymn of triumph on the lyre. For at
Olympia he himself received a prize and at Pytho, and at the
Isthmus to his brother of no less a lot did kindred Graces bring
crowns for the twelve rounds of the four-horse chariot-race.

: Victory setteth free the essayer from the struggle’s griefs, yea

; and the wealth that a noble nature hath made glorious bringeth

\ power for this and that, putting into the heart of man a deep

 

8 The Emmenidai. * Oedipus.
5 Son of Polyneikes. Theron traced his descent from him.
®* The War of the Epigonoi against Thebes.
OLYMP. II. 54-84. i

 

and eager mood, a star far seen, a light wherein a man shall
trust, if but? the holder thereof knoweth the things that shall
be, how that of all who die the guilty souls pay penalty, for all
the sins sinned in this realm of Zeus One judgeth under earth,
pronouncing sentence by unloved constraint.

But evenly ever in sunlight night and day an unlaborious life
the good receive, neither with violent hand vex they the earth’
nor the waters of the sea, in that new world; “but with the
honoured of the gods, whosoever had pleasure in keeping of
oaths, they possess a tearless life: but the other part suffer pain
too dire to look upon.

Then whosoever have been of good courage to the abiding
steadfast thrice on either ‘side of death and have refrained their
souls from all iniquity, travel the road of Zeus unto the tower
of Kronos: there round the islands of the blest the Ocean-breezes
blow, and golden flowers are glowing, some from the land on
trees of splendour, and some the water feedeth, with wreaths
whereof they entwine their hands: so ordereth Rhadamanthos’
just decree, whom at his own right hand hath ever the father
Kronos, husband oft Rhea, throned above all worlds®.

Peleus and Kadmos are counted of that company; and the
mother of Achilles, when her prayer had moved the heart of
Zeus, bare thither her son, even him who overthrew Hector,
Troy’s unbending invincible pillar, even him who gave Kyknos
to death and the Ethiop son® of the Morning.

Many swift arrows have I beneath my bended arm within my

 

7 Reading ef yé pv éxav. The old readings were ef 8 wy Zywv, and
el 8 pu Exar; «& 3€ pv Exwy has also been suggested; but of these
three none seems to me to be at all satisfactory. In the reading I
suggest the change is very slight, and it makes good sense.

8 For Pindar’s ideas as to a future life see especially the fragments
of his Dirges which remain to us. He seems to have been influenced
by Pythagoreanism. ,

°® Memnon.

€
Io OLYMP. II. 84-100.

 

quiver, arrows that have a voice.for the wise, but for the multitude
they need interpreters. His art is true who of his nature hatt
knowledge; they who have but learnt, strong in the multitude o;
words, are but as crows that chatter vain things in strife against
the divine bird of Zeus.

Come bend thy bow on the mark, O my soul—at whom agair
are we to launch our shafts of honour from a friendly mind:
At Akragas will I take aim, and will proclaim and swear it witt
a’mind of truth, that for a hundred years no city hath brought
forth a man of mind more prone to well-doing towards friend:
or of more liberal mood than Theron.

Yet praise is overtaken of distaste, wherewith is: no justice
“but from covetous’° men it cometh, and is fain to babble against
and darken the good man’s noble deeds.

The sea-sand_ none hath numbered; and the joys that Theror
hath gi given to others—who shall declare the tale thereof?
OLYMP. III. 1-13. IL

 

TII.

FOR THERON OF AKRAGAS,

WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE,.

This ode celebrates the same victory as the preceeding one. It was
sung at the feast of the Theoxenia, given by Theron in the name of
the Dioskouroi (Kastor and Polydeukes) to the other gods. Hence
the epithet hospitable (¢:Aofeivais) applied to the Dioskouroi in the
first line. The clan of the Emmenidai to which Theron belonged was
especially devoted to the worship of the Twins.

TYNDAREUS’ hospitable sons and lovely-haired Helen shall I
please assuredly in doing honour to renownéd Akragas by a hymn
upraised for Theron’s Olympian crown; for hereunto hath the
Muse been present with me that I should find out a fair new*
device, / fitting to feet that move in Dorian time| the Komos-
voices’ splendid strain. /

For crowns entwined about his hair demand from me this god-
appointed debt, that for Ainesidamos’ son I join in seemly sort
the lyre of various tones with the flute’s cry and ordering of
words, 2
' “And Pisa bids me speak aloud, for, from her come to men
songs of divine assignment, when the just judge of games the
Aitolian? man, fulfilling Herakles’ behests of old, hath laid upon
one’s hair above his brows pale-gleaming glory of ‘olive.

 

1 I.e, probably a new combination of lyre and flute to accompany the
singing.
2 When the Dorians invaded Peloponnesos one of their leaders is said

ae
~

12 OLYMP. III. 13-34.

 

That tree from Ister’s shadowy springs did the son of Amphi-
tryon bear to be a memorial most glorious of Olympian triumphs,
when that by his words he had won the Hyperborean folk, who
serve Apollo. In loyal temper he besought for the precinct of
Zeus, whereto all men go up, a plant that should be a shadow of
all folk in common, and withal a crown for valorous deeds.

For already, when the altars had been sanctified to his sire,
the midmonth Moon riding her golden car lit full the counter-
flame of the eye of Even, and just judgment of great games did
he ordain, and the fifth year’s feast beside the holy steeps of
Alpheos?.

But no fair trees were nursed upon that place in Kronian Pelops’
glens; whereof being naked his garden seemed to him to be given
over to the keen rays of the sun.

Then was it that his soul stirred to urge him into the land of
Ister; where ,Leto’s horse-loving daughter* received him erst
when he was come from the ridged hills and winding dells of
Arcady, what time his father laid constraint upon him to go at
Eurystheus’ bidding to fetch the golden-hornéd hind, which once
Taygete vowed to her® of Orthion and made a sign thereon of
consecration. For in that chase he saw also the land that lieth
behind the blast of the cold North-wind: there he halted and
marvelled at the trees: and sweet desire thereof possessed him
that he might plant them at the end of the course which the
race-horses should run twelve times round.

 

to have been Oxylos, 4 man of Elean descent but living in Aitolia. As
a result of the invasion he became king of Elis; and the judge at the
Olympic’ games seems to have been considered a descendant of him or
of some Aitolian who came with him.

8 The Olympic games were held in the middle of the month Heka-
tombaion, when the moon was full. It is here implied that Herakles
wished to institute them when the moon was full, as that was a season
of good luck.

* Artemis. 5 Artemis,
OLYMP. III. 34-45. 13

 

--30 now to this feast cometh he in good-will in company with
the Twins Divine, deep-girdled Leto’s children. For to them he
gave charge when he ascended into Olympus to order the spec-
tacle of the games, both the struggle of man with man, and the
driving of the nimble car.

Me anywise my soul stirreth to declare that to the Emmenidai
and to Theron hath glory come by gift of the Tyndaridai of
goodly steeds, for that beyond all mortals they do honour to them
with tables of hospitality, keeping with pious spirit the rite of
blessed gods, :

Now if Water be the Best®, and of possessions Gold be the
most precious, so now to the furthest bound doth Theron by his
fair deeds attain, and from his own home touch the pillars of
Herakles, Pathless the things beyond, pathless alike to the un-
wise and the wise. Here I will search no more; the quest were
vain,

 

®§ See OL i 1.
14 OLYMP. IV. 1-16;

 

IV.

FOR PSAUMIS OF KAMARINA,

WINNER IN THE MULE-CHARIOT-RACE.

Psaumis won this race in the year 452; therefore this ode and its com-
panion, the next following, are the latest work of Pindar possessed
by us to which we can assign a date.

The mule-chariot-race was introduced at Olympia B.C. 500 and abolished
BC. 444, according to Pausanias.

This ode seems to have been written immediately on Psaumis’ victory,

to be sung the same night beneath the moon by the company of

friends who escorted the winner to return thanks at the altar of Zeus.

HUuRLER of thunderbolts unfaltering, the most high Zeus, for
that thy chosen hour recurrent hath sent me with a song set to
the music of the subtle lute for a witness to the greatest of all
games—and when friends have good hap the good are glad forth-
with at the sweet tidings—now therefore, O son of Kronos, unto
whom Aetna belongeth, the wind-beaten burden that crusheth
fierce Typhon’s hundred heads, receive thou this band of triumph
for an Olympian victory won by the Graces’ aid, a most enduring
light of far-prevailing valorous deeds.

For for the sake of Psaumis’ mule-chariot it draweth nigh to_
thee—Psaumis, who, crowned with Pisan olive, hasteth to raise up
glory for Kamarina, May God be gracious to our prayers for ,
what shall be! For I praise him as a man most zealous in the |
rearing of horses, and delighting in ever-open hospitality, and

bent on peace and on the welfare of his city, with guileless soul.
i
OLYMP. IV. 17-28. 15

 

With no lie will I tinge my tale: trial is the test of men; this
it was that delivered the son of Klymenos from the Lemnian
women’s slight. He, when he had won the foot-race in bronze
armour!, spake thus to Hypsipyle as he went to receive his
crown: ‘For fleetness such am I: hands have I and a heart to
match. So also on young men grow oftentimes grey hairs even
before the natural season of man’s life?,’

 

1 See introduction to Pythian ix.
2 We may suppose that Psaumis probably had grey hair.
16 OLYMP. V. 1-12.

 

V.

FOR PSAUMIS OF KAMARINA,

WINNER IN THE MULE-CHARIOT-RACE.

This ode is for the same victory as the foregoing one, but was to be
sung after Psaumis’ return home, at Kamarina, and probably at, or in
procession to, a temple of either Pallas, Zeus, or the tutelary nymph
Kamarina, all of whom are invoked. The city is called ‘ new-peopled’
(véotxos) because it had been destroyed by Gelo, and was only restored
BC. 461, nine years before this victory, the first which had been’ won
by any citizen since its restoration.

OF lofty deeds and crowns Olympian this sweet delight, O
daughter? of Ocean, with glad heart receive, the gift of Psaumis
and his untiring car. He to make great thy city, Kamarina,
with its fostered folk, hath honoured six twin altars in great
feasts of the gods with sacrifices of oxen and five-day contests of
games, with chariots of horses and of mules and with the steed .
of single frontlet®.

To thee hath the victor consecrated the proud token® of his
fame, and hath glorified by the herald’s voice his father Akron
and this new-peopled town.

Also, returning from the gracious dwelling place of Oinomaos and
Pelops, thy sacred grove, O city-guarding Pallas, doth he sing, and
the river Oanis, and the lake of his native land, and the sacred
channels wherethrough doth Hipparis give water to the people, —

 

‘1 Kamarina,
2 Te. probably with horses ridden, not driven,
3 His Olympian crown of wild olive.
OLYMP. V. 13-24. 17
and build* with speed a lofty forest of stedfast dwellings, bring-
ing from perplexity to the light this commonwealth of citizens.

Now ever in fair deeds must toil and cost contend toward an
accomplishment hidden in perilous chance: yet if men have good
hap therein, even to their own townsfolk is their wisdom ap-
proved.

O guardian Zeus that sittest above the clouds, that inhabitest
the Kronian hill and honourest the broad river of Alpheos and
Ida’s holy cave, suppliant to thee I come, making my cry on
Lydian flutes, to pray thee that thou wilt glorify this city with
brave men’s renown.

For thee also, Olympian victor, I pray that, joying in the
steeds Poseidon® gave, thou mayest bear with thee to the end a
serene old age, and may thy sons, O Psaumis, be at thy side. If
a man cherish his wealth to sound ends, having a sufficiency of
goods and adding thereto fair repute, let him not seek to become
a god.

 

* This seems to mean that the new city was built with wood brought
down the stream of the river Hipparis.

5 When Poseidon and Athene were contending for the protectorate of
Athens, Poseidon brought the first horse up out of the earth, Athene
the first olive-tree,
18 OLYMP. VI. 1-12.

 

VI.

FOR AGESIAS OF SYRACUSE,

WINNER IN THE MULE-CHARIOT-RACE.

One of the Iamid clan, to which belonged hereditary priestly functions
in-Arcadia and at Olympia, had come with the first colonists to Sy-
racuse, and from him ‘the present victor Agesias was descended. Thus
the ode is chiefly concerned ‘with the story of his ancestor Iamos.
Agesias was a citizen of Stymphalos in Arcadia, as well as of Syra-
cuse, where he lived, and the ode was sung by a chorus in Stym-
phalos, B.C. 468.

GOLDEN pillars will we set up in the porch of the house of our
song, as in a stately palace-hall; for it beseemeth that in the
fore-front of the work the entablature shoot far, its splendour.

Now if one be an Olympian conqueror and treasurer to the
prgphetic altar of Zeus at Pisa, and joint founder* of glorious
Syracuse, shall such an one hide him from hymns of praise, if his
lot be among citizens who hear without envy the desired sounds
of song? For in a sandal of such sort let the son of Sostratos
know that his fortunate foot is set. Deeds of no risk are
honourless whether done among men or among hollow ships;
but if a noble deed be wrought with labour. many make men-
tion thereof.

For thee, Agesias, is that praise prepared which justly and

 

1 Agesias is so called because an Iamid ancestor of his had gone
with Archias when he planted the Corinthian colony of Syracuse.
OLYMP. VI. 13-38. 19

 

openly Adrastos spake of old concerning the seer Amphiaraos the
son of Oikleus, when the earth had swallowed him and his
shining steeds. For afterward, when on seven pyres dead men
were burnt, the son? of Talaos spake on this wise: ‘I seek the
eye of my host, him who was alike a good seer and a good
fighter with the spear” _

This praise also belongeth to the Syracusan who is lord of’
this triumphal song. I who am no friend of strife or wrongful
quarrel will bear him ‘this witness even with a solemn oath, and
the sweet voice of the Muses shall not say me nay.

O Phintis? yoke me now with all speed the strength of thy
mules that on the clear highway we may set our car, that I may
go up to the far beginning of this race. For those. mules know
well to lead the way in this course as in others, who at Olympia
have won crowns: it behoveth them that we throw open to them
the gates of song, for to Pitane by Eurotas’ stream must I
begone betimes to-day.

Now Pitane‘, they say, lay with Poseidon the son of Kronos
and bare the child Euadne with tresses iris-dark. The fruit of
her body unwedded she hid by her robe’s folds, and in the month
of her delivery she sent her handmaids and bade them give the
child to the hero sonof. Elatos to rear, who was lord of the
men of Arcady who dwelt at Phaisane, and had for his lot
Alpheos to dwell beside.-  ~.,

There was the child Euadne™ nurtured, and by Apollo’s ‘side
she first knew the joys of Aphrodite.

But she might not always hide from” Aipytos the seed of the
god within her; and he in his heart struggling with bitter strain
against a grief too great for speech betook him to Pytho that
he might ask of the oracle concerning the intolerable woe.

 

2 Adrastos. 8 Phintis was Agesias’ charioteer.
‘ Le. the nymph who gave her name to the place.
5 Aipytos.

C2
20 OLYMP. VI. 39-63.

 

But she beneath a thicket’s shade put from her her silver
pitcher and her girdle of scarlet web, and she brought forth a boy
in whom was the spirit of God. By her side the gold-haired god
set kindly Eleutho and the Fates, and from her womb in easy
travail came forth Iamos to the light. Him in her anguish she
left upon the ground, but by the counsel of gods two bright-
eyed serpents nursed and fed him with the harmless venom® of
the bee.

But when the king came back from rocky Delphi in his
chariot he asked all who were in the house concerning the child
whom Euadne had born; for he said that the sire whereof he.
was begotten was Phoibos, and that he should be a prophet unto
the people of the land excelling all mortal men, and that his
seed should be for ever.

Such was his tale, but they answered that they had neither
seen nor heard of him, though he was now born five days. For
he was hidden among rushes in an impenetrable brake, his tender
body all suffused with golden and deep purple gleams of iris
flowers; wherefore his mother prophesied saying that by this
holy name? of immortality he should be called throughout all
time.

But when he had come to the ripeness of golden-crowned
sweet youth, he went down into the middle of Alpheos and
called on wide-ruling Poseidon his grandsire, and on the guardian
of god-built Delos, the bearer of the bow’, praying that honour
might be upon his head for the rearing of a people; and he
stood beneath the heavens, and it was night.

Then the infallible Voice of his father answered and said unto
him: Arise, my son, and come hither, following my voice, into
a place where all men shall meet together.

 

® Honey.

* Tamos, from ‘ov: the iris was considered a symbol of immortality.
§ His father, Apollo.
OLYMP. VI. 64-88. 21

 

So they came to the steep rock of lofty Kronion; there the
god gave him a twofold treasure of prophecy, that for the time
then being he should hearken to his voice that cannot lie; but
when Herakles of valorous counsels, the sacred scion of the
Alkeidai, should have come, and should have founded a multi-
tudinous feast and the chief ordinance of games®, then again .on
the summit of the altar of Zeus he bade him establish yet
another oracle, that thenceforth the race of Iamidai should be
glorious among Hellenes.

Good luck abode with them; for that they know the worth *
of valour they are entered on a glorious road.

The matter proveth the man, but from the envious calumny
ever threateneth them on whom, as they drive foremost in the
twelfth?® round of the course, Charis sheddeth blushing beauty
to win them fame more fair.

Now if in very truth, Agesias, thy mother’s ancestors dwelling
by the borders of Kyllene did piously and oft offer up prayer
and sacrifice to Hermes, herald of the gods, who hath to his
keeping the strife and appointment of games, and doeth honour
to Arcadia the nurse of goodly men,—then surely he, O son of
Sostratos, with his loud-thundering sire, is the accomplisher of
this thy bliss.

"Methinks I have upon my tongue a whetstone of loud sounding
speech, which to harmonious breath constraineth me nothing
loth. Mother of my mother was Stymphalian Metope™ of fair
flowers, for she bare Thebe the charioteer, whose pleasant

«fountain I will drink, while I weave for warriors the changes of
my song.

Now rouse thy fellows, Ainéas, first to proclaim the name of

 

® At Olympia.

10 The course in the chariot-race was twelve times round the Hippo-
drome.

4 The nymph of the lake Metopé near Stymphalos.
22 OLYMP. VI. 88-105.

 

maiden” Hera, and next to know for sure whether we are es-
caped from the ancient reproach that spake truly of Boeotian
swine. For thou art a true messenger, a writing-tally’? of the
Muses goodly-haired, a bowl wherein to mix high - sounding
songs.

And bid them make mention of Syracuse and of Ortygia,
which Hieron ruleth with righteous sceptre devising true
counsels, and doth honour to Demeter whose footsteps make
red the corn, and to the-feast of her daughter with white steeds,
and to the might of Aetnjean Zeus. Also he is well known of
the sweet voices of the song and lute. Let not the on-coming
time break his good fortune. And with joyful welcome may
he receive this triumphal song, which travelleth from home
to home, leaving Stymphalos’ walls, the mother-city of Arcadia,
rich in flocks.

Good in a stormy night are two anchors let fall from a swift
ship. May friendly gods grant to both peoples** an illustrious
lot: and thou O lord and ruler of the sea, husband of Amphi-
trité of the golden distaff, grant this my friend straight voyage
and unharmed, and bless the joyous flower of my song.

 

Hera was worshipped in her prenuptial as well as her postnuptial
state.

* It was a custom between correspondents who wished for secrecy
to have duplicate oxurddAau, or letter-sticks. The writer wrote on a roll
wrapt round his stick, and the receiver.of the letter read it wrapt
similarly on his. And thus Aineas the bearer of this ode would teach
the chorus of Stymphalians how rightly to sing and understand it. See
oxvtadn in Dict. Ant.

“Te. of Stymphalos and Syracuse. Agesias was a citizen of both,
and thus his two homes are compared to two anchors.
OLYMP. VII. 1-6. 2

 

VIL.

FOR DIAGORAS OF RHODES,

WINNER IN THE BOXING-MATCH.

 

Rhodes is said to have been colonised at the time of the Dorian migr:
tions by Argive Darians from Epidauros, who were Herakleidai 4
of the family of Tlepolemos, They founded a confederacy of thre
cities, Kameiros, ‘Lindos, and _Talysos. Talysos was then ruled t
the dynasty of the Eratidai. Their kingly power had now been extin:
two hufdred years, but the family was still pre-eminent in the stat
Of this family was Diagoras, and probably the ode was sung at
family festival; but it commemorates the glories of the island generall-
The Rhodians caused it to be engraved in letters of gold in tt
temple of Athene at Lindos.

There is a noteworthy incident of the Peloponnesian war which shoul
be remembered in connection with this ode. In the year 406, fifty-eigl
years after this victory of Diagoras, during the final and most en
bittering agony of Athens, one Dorieus, a son of Diagoras, and hin
self a famous athlete, was captured by the Athenians in a sea-figh
It was then the custom either to release prisoners of war for a ranso)
or else to put them to death. The Athenians asked no ransom «
Dorieus, but set him free on the spot.

As when from a wealthy hand one lifting a cup, made glad with
in with the dew of the vine, maketh gift thereof to a youth hi
daughter’s spouse, a largess of the feast from home to home, a
all-golden choicest treasure, that the banquet may have grace
and that he may glorify his kin; and therewith he maketh hit
24 OLYMP. VII. 6-34.

 

envied in the eyes of the friends around him for a wedlock
wherein hearts are wedded—

So also I, my liquid nectar sending, the Muses’ gift, the sweet
fruit of my soul, to men that are winners in the games at Pytho
or Olympia make holy offering. Happy is he whom good report
encompasseth; now on one man, now on another doth the Grace
that quickeneth look favourably, and tune for him the lyre and
the pipe’s stops of music manifold.

Thus to the sound of the twain am I come with Diagoras
sailing home, to sing the sea-girt Rhodes, child of Aphrodite and
bride of Helios, that to a mighty and fair-fighting man, who by
Alpheos’ stream and by Kastalia’s hath won him crowns, I may
for his boxing make award of glory, and to his father Demegetos :
in whom Justice hath her delight, dwellers in the isle of three
cities with an Argive host, nigh to a promontory of spacious
Asia.

Fain would I truly tell from the beginning from Tlepolemos
the message of my word, the common right of this puissant seed
of Herakles. For on the father’s side they claim from Zeus,
and on the mother’s from Astydameia, sons of Amyntor.

Now round the minds of men hang follies unnumbered—this
is the unachievable thing, to find what shall be best hap for a
man both presently and alsp at the last. Yea for the very
founder* of this country once on a time struck with his staff of
tough wild-olive-wood Alkmene’s bastard brother Likymnios in
Tiryns as he came forth from Midea’s chamber, and slew him
in the kindling of his wrath. So even the wise man’s feet are
‘turned astray by tumult of the soul.

Then he came to enquire-of the oracle of God. And he of
the golden hair from his sweet-incensed shrine spake unto him
of a sailing of ships that should be from the shore of Lerna unto

a pasture ringed with sea, where sometime the great king of

 

4 Tlepolemos,
OLYMP. VII. 34-60.

 

sods rained on the city golden snow, what time by Hephaistos’
aandicraft beneath the bronze-wrought axe from the crown of
aer father’s head Athene leapt to light and cried aloud with an
exceeding cry; and Heaven trembled at her coming, and Earth,
the Mother,

Then also the god who giveth light to men, Hyperion, bade
his beloved sons see that they guard the payment of the debt,
that they should build first for the goddess an altar in the sight.
of all men, and laying thereon a holy offering they should make
glad the hearts of the father and of his daughter of the sounding
spear. Now Reverence, Forethought’s child, putteth valour and
the joy of battle into the hearts of men; yet withal, there
cometh upon them bafflingly the cloud of. forgetfulness and
maketh the mind to swerve from the straight path of action.
For they though they had brands burning yet kindled not the
seed of flame, but with fireless rites they made a grove on the
hill of the citadel. For them Zeus brought a yellow cloud into
the sky and rained much gold upon the land; and Glaukopis her-
self gave them to excel the dwellers upon earth in every art of
handicraft. For on their roads ran the semblances of beasts and
creeping things: whereof they have great glory, for to him that
hath knowledge the subtlety that is without deceit? is the greater
altogether.

Now the ancient story of men saith that when Zeus and the
other gods made division of the earth among them, not yet was
island Rhodes apparent in the open sea, but in the briny depths
lay hid. And for that Helios was otherwhere, none“ drew a lot for
him; so they left him portionless of land, that holy god. And

 

2 That is, probably, without magic, or the pretence of being anything
but machines. This is considered an allusion to the Telchines who
lived before the Heliadai in Rhodes, and were magicians as well as
craftsmen. For illustrations of Rhodian art at various times the British
Museum may be consulted, which is particularly rich in vases from
Kameiros and Ialysos.
26 OLYMP. VII. 61-89.

 

when he spake thereof Zeus would cast lots afresh; but he suf-
fered him not, for that he said that beneath the hoary sea he
saw a certain land waxing from its root in earth, that should
bring forth food for many men, and rejoice in flocks. And
straightway he bade her of the golden fillet, Lachesis, to stretch
her hands on high, nor violate the gods’ great oath, but with the
son of Kronos promise him that the isle sent up to the light of
heaven should be thenceforth a title of himself alone.
“nd in the end of the matter his speech had fulfilment; there
‘sprang up from the watery main an island, and the father who
begetteth the keen rays of day hath the dominion thereof, even
the lord of fire-breathing steeds. There sometime having lain
with Rhodos he begat seven sons, who had of him minds wiser
than any among the men of old; and one begat Kameiros, and
Talysos his eldest, and Lindos: and they held each apart their
shares of cities, making threefold division of their father’s land,
and these men call their dwelling-places. There is a sweet
amends for his piteous ill-hap ordained for Tlepolemos leader
of the Tirynthians at the beginning, as for a god, even the lead-
ing thither of sheep for a savoury burnt-offering, and the award
of honour in games?.

Of garlands from these games hath Diagoras twice won him
crowns, and four times he had good luck at famous Isthmos and
twice following at Nemea, and twice at rocky Athens. And at
Argos the bronze shield knoweth him, and the deeds of Arcadia
and of Thebes and the yearly games Beeotian, and Pellene and
Aigina where six times he won; and the pillar of stone at Me-
gara hath the same tale to tell.

But do thou, O Father Zeus, who holdest sway on the moun-
tain-ridges of Atabyrios glorify the accustomed Olympian winner’s
hymn, and the man who hath done valiantly with his fists: give

 

® That is, he presides over the celebration of games, as tutelar hero
of the island.
OLYMP. VII. 89-95. 27

 

him honour at the hands of citizens and of ‘strangers; for he
walketh in the straight way that abhorreth ‘insolence, having
learnt well the lessons his true soul hath taught him, which hath
come to him from his noble sires. Darken not thou the light of
one who springeth from the same stock of Kallianax. Surely
with the joys of Eratidai the whole city maketh mirth. But the
varying breezes even at the same point of time speed each upon
their various ways.
28 OLYMP. VIII. 1-19.

 

VIII.

FOR ALKIMEDON OF AIGINA,

WINNER IN THE WRESTLING-MATCH OF BOYS.

Tue date of this victory is B.C. 460. Long as the ode is, it would seem
however to have been written, like the fourth Olympian, to be sung
in the procession to the altar of Zeus on the night of the victory.

Of the forty-four odes remaining to us no less than eleven are in honour
of winners from Aigina.

O MOTHER of gold-crowned contests, Olympia, queen of truth;
where men that are diviners observing burnt-offerings make trial
of Zeus the wielder of white lightnings, whether he hath any
word concerning men who seek in their hearts to attain unto
great prowess and a breathing-space from toil; for it is given in
answer to the reverent prayers of men—do thou, O tree-clad
precinct of Pisa by Alpheos, receive this triumph and the carry-
ing of the crown.

Great is his glory ever on whom the splendour of thy honour
waiteth. Yet this good cometh to one, that to another, and
many are the roads to happy life by the grace of gods.

Thee, O Timosthenes', and thy brother hath Destiny assigned
to Zeus the guardian of your house, even to him who hath made
thee glorious at Nemea, and Alkimedon by the hill of Kronos a
winner in Olympic games.

Now the boy was fair to look upon, neither shamed he by his

 

1 Alkimedon’s brother. He had won a victory at the Nemean games.
OLYMP. VIII. 19-51. 29

 

deeds his beauty, but in the wrestling match victorious made
proclamation that his country was Aigina of long oars, where
saviour Themis who sitteth in judgment by Zeus the stranger’s
succour is honoured more than any elsewhere among men?.

For in a matter mighty and bearing many ways to judge with
unswayed mind and suitably, this is a hard essay, yet hath some
ordinance of immortals given this sea-defended land to be to
strangers out of every clime a pillar built of God, May coming
time not weary of this work.

To a Dorian folk was the land given in trust from Aiakos,
even the man whom Leto’s son and far-ruling Poseidon, when
they would make a crown for Ilion, called to work with them
at the wall, for that it was destined that at the uprising of wars
in city-wasting fights it should breathe forth fierce smoke.

Now when it was new-built three dragons fiery-eyed leapt at
the rampart: two fell and perished in despair; but the third
sprang in with a war-cry*, f

Then Apollo pondering the sign spake straightway unto Atskos
by his side: ‘Hero, where thy hands have wrought is Pergamos
taken: thus saith this sign, sent of the son of Kronos, loud-
thundering Zeus. And that not without thy seed; but with the
the first and fourth it shall be subdued*’.

Thus plainly spoke the god, and away to Xanthos and the
Amazons of goodly steeds and to Ister urged his car.

And the Trident-wielder for Isthmos over seas harnessed his
swift chariot, and hither? first he bare with him Aiakos behind the

 

2 Aigina had a high commercial reputation, and strangers were equit-
ably dealt with in her courts.

3 The two first dragons typify the Aiakids, Aias and Achilles, who
failed to enter Troy, the third typifies Achilles’ son, Neoptolemos, who
succeeded.

* Aiakos’ son, Telamon, was with Meaklex when he took Troy: his
great-grandson Neoptolemos was in the Wouden Horse.

5 To Aigina,
30 OLYMP. VIII. 51-85.

 

goldsn mares, and so on unto the mount of Corinth, to behold
his feast of fame.

Now shall there never among men be aught that pleaseth ali
alike. If I for Melesias* raise up glory in my song of his boys,
let not envy cast at me her cruel stone. Nay but at Nemea too
will I tell of honour of like kind with this, and of another ensuing
thereon, won in the pankration of men,

Verily to teach is easier to him that knoweth: it is folly if
one hath not first learnt, for without trial the mind wavereth.
And beyond all others can Melesias declare all works on that
wise, what method shall advance a man who from the sacred
games may win the longed-for glory.

Now for the thirtieth time is honour gained for him by the
victory of Alkimedon, who by God’s grace, nor failing himself in
prowess, hath put off from him upon the bodies of four striplings
the loathed return ungreeted of fair speech, and the path ob-
scure“; and in his father’s father he hath breathed new vigour to
wrestle with old age. A man that hath done honourable deeds
taketh no thought of death.

But I must needs arouse memory, and tell of the glory of
their hands that gave victory to the Blepsiad clan, to whom this
is now the sixth crown that hath come from the wreathed
games to bind their brows. °

Even the dead have their share when paid them with due
rites, and the grace of kinsmen’s honour the dust concealeth not.
From Hermes’ daughter Fame shall Iphion® hear and tell to
Kallimachos this lustre of Olympic glory, which Zeus hath granted
to this house. Honour upon honour may he vouchsafe unto it,

 

®& Alkimedon’s trainer.

™ Te. Alkimedon has escaped the disagreeable circumstances of defeat
and transferred them to the four opponents against whom he was
matched in four successive ties. on

* Iphion seems to have been the father and Kallimachos the uncle of
Alkimedon,

a
OLYMP. VIII. 85-88. 31

 

and shield it from sore disease®, I pray that. for the share of
glory fallen to them he raise against them no contrary dis-
‘content, but granting them a life unharmed may glorify them and
their commonwealth,

 

* Perhaps Iphion and Kallimachos died of some severe illness.
32 OLYMP. IX. 1-19.

 

TX.

FOR EPHARMOSTOS OF OPOUS,

WINNER IN THE WRESTLING-MATCH.

The date of this ode is uncertain. Its last line seems to imply that it
was sung at a banquet at Opous, after crowning the altar of Aias
Gileus, tutelar hero of the Lokrians. From the beginning we gather
that on the night of the victory at Olympia Epharmostos’ friends had
sung in his honour the conventional triple strain of Archilochos—

(® KaddAtnixe yxatp’ dvat “Hpaxdréns
airés Te #’ “Iodads, aixunrda advo.
Thveha Kaddinite)
to which perhaps some slight additions had been made, but. not by
Pindar.

 

Tue strain of Archilochos sung without. music at Olympia, the
triple resonant psalm of victory, sufficed to lead to the hill of
Kronos Epharmostos triumphing with his comrade friends: but
now with darts of other sort, shet fromthe Muses’ far-delivering
bow, praise Zeus of the red lightning, and Elis’ holy headland,
which on a time Pelops the Lydian hero chose to be Hippo-
dameia’s goodly dower.

And shoot a feathered arrow of sweet song Pythoward, for.
thy words shall not fall to the ground when thou tunest the
throbbing lyre to the praise of the wrestlings of a man from
famous Opous, and celebratest her and her son. For Themis and
her noble daughter Eunomia the Preserver have made her their
own, and she flourisheth in excellent deeds both at Kastalia and
beside Alpheos’ stream: whence come the choicest of all crowns
OLYMP. IX. 20-50, 33

 

to glorify the mother city of Lokrians, the city of beautiful
trees.

I, to illuminate the city of my friends with eager blaze of
song, swifter than high-bred steed or winged ship will send
everywhere these tidings, so be it that my hand is blessed at all
in labouring in the choice garden of the Graces; for they give
all pleasant things to men.

By fate divine receive men also valour and wisdom: how else!
might the hands of Herakles have wielded his club against the
trident, when at Pylos Poseidon took his stand and prest hard on
him, ay, and there prest him hard embattled Phoibos with his
silver bow, neither would Hades keep his staff unraised, where-
with he leadeth down to ways beneath the hollow earth the
bodies of men that die?

O my mouth, fling this tale from thee, for to speak evil of
gods is a hateful wisdom, and loud and unmeasured words strike
a note that trembleth upon madness, Of such things talk thou
not; leave war of immortals and all strife aside; and bring thy
words to the city of Protogeneia, where by decree of Zeus of
the bickering lightning-flash Pyrrha and Deukalion coming down
from Parnassos first fixed their home, and without bed of
marriage made out of stones a race to be one folk: and hence
cometh the name of peoples”. Awake for them the clear-toned
gale of song, and if old wine be best, yet among songs prefer
the newer flowers.

Truly men say that once a mighty water swept over the dark

 

1 This is the common interpretation, implying that Herakles in con-
tending with the gods here mentioned must have been helped by other
gods. But perhaps it might also be translated ‘therefore how could the
hands, &c.,’ meaning that since valour, as has just been said, comes
from a divine source, it could not be used against gods, and that thus
the story ought to be rejected.

2 Perhaps the story of the stones arose from the like sound of dads
and Adas, words here regarded in the inverse relation to each other.

D
34 OLYMP. IX. 50-90,

 

earth, but by the craft of Zeus an ebb suddenly drew off the
flood. From these first men came anciently your ancestors of the
brazen shields, sons of the women of the stock of lapetos and of
the mighty Kronidai, Kings that dwelt in the land continually ;
until the Olympian Lord caught up the daughter* of Opéeis from
the land of the Epeians, and lay with her in a silent place among
the ridges of Mainalos; and afterward brought her unto Lokros,
that age might not bring him* low beneath the burden of child-
lessness. But the wife bare within her the seed of the Mightiest,
and the hero saw the bastard born and rejoiced, and called him
by the name of his mother’s father, and he became a man pre-
eminent in beauty and great deeds: and his father gave unto him
a city and a people to rule over.

Then there came unto him strangers, from Argos and from
Thebes, and from Arcadia others, and from Pisa. But the son of
Aktor and Aigina, Menoitios, he honoured above all settlers, him
whose son® went with the Atreidai to the plain of Teuthras
and stood alone beside Achilles, when Telephos had turned the
valiant Danaoi to flight, and drave them into the sterns of their
sea-ships; so proved he to them that had understanding that
Patroklos’ soul was strong. And thenceforward the son of
Thetis persuaded him that he should nevef in murderous battle
take his post far from his friend’s conquering spear.

Fit speech may I find for my journey in the Muses’ car; and
let me therewith have daring and powers of ample scope. To
back the prowess of a friend 1 came, when Lampromachos won
his Isthmian crown, when on the same day both he and his
brother overcame. And afterward at the gates® of Corinth two
triumphs again befell Epharmostos, and more in the valleys of
Nemea. At Argos he triumphed over men, as over boys at
Athens. And I might tell how at Marathon he stole from among
the beardless and confronted the full-grown for the prize of

 

5 Protogencia. * Lokros. 5 Patroklos.
6 The Isthmus, the gate between the two seas,
OLYMP. IX. go-112. 35

 

silver vessels, how without a fall he threw his men with swift and
cunning shock, and how loud the shouting pealed ‘when round
the ring he ran, in the beauty of his youth and his fair form
and frésh from fairest deeds.

Also before the Parrhasian host was he glorified, at the as-
sembly of Lykaian Zeus, and again when at Pellene he bare away
a warm antidote of cold winds’. And the tomb of Iolaos, and
Eleusis by the sea, are just witnesses to his honours.

The natural is ever best: yet many men by learning of
prowess essay to achieve fame. The thing done without God is '
better kept in silence. For some ways lead further than do
others, but one practice will not train us all alike. Skill of all
kinds is hard to attain unto: but when thou bringest forth this
prize, proclaim aloud with a good courage that by fate divine
this man at least was born deft-handed, nimble-limbed, with the
light of valour in his eyes, and that now being victorious he hath
crowned at the feast Oilean Aias’ altar.

 

7 A cloak, the prize.
36 OLYMP. X. 1-13.

 

X.

FOR AGESIDAMOS OF EPIZEPHYRIAN
LOKRIS,

WINNER IN THE BOYS’ BOXING-MATCH.

This ode bears somewhat the same relation to the next that the fourth
does to the fifth. It was to be sung at Olympia on the night after
the victory, and Pindar promises the boy to write a longer one for
the celebration of his victory in his Italian home. The date is
B.C. 484.

SomETIMES have men most need of winds, sometimes of
showered waters of the firmament, the children of the cloud.

But when through his labour one fareth well, then are due
honey-voiced songs, be they even a prelude to words that shall
come after, a pledge confirmed by oath in honour of high
excellence.

Ample is the glory stored for Olympian winners: thereof
my shepherd tongue is fain to keep some part in fold. But
only by the help of God is wisdom! kept ever blooming in the
soul.

Son of Archestratos, Agesidamos, know certainly that for thy
boxing I will lay a glory of sweet strains upon thy crown of

 

‘ Perhaps gopés (which means often rather clever or skilful than
wise) has here the special reference to poetic skill, which it often has
in Pindar.
OLYMP. X. 13-21. 37

 

golden? olive, and will have in remembrance the race of the
Lokrians’ colony in the West.

There do ye, O Muses, join in the song of triumph: I pledge
my word that to no stranger-banishing folk shall ye come, nor
unacquainted with things noble, but of the highest in arts and
valiant with the spear. For neither tawny fox nor roaring lion
may change his native temper.

 

2 Golden here means supremely excellent, as in the first line of the
eighth Olympian.
38 OLYMP. XI. 1-17.

 

XI.

FOR AGESIDAMOS OF EPIZEPHYRIAN
LOKRIS,

WINNER IN THE BOYS’ BOXING-MATCH.

It would seem by his own confession that Pindar did not remember till
long afterwards the promise he made to Agesidamos in the last ode.
We do not know how long afterwards this was written, but it must
have been too late to greet the winner on his arrival in Italy; prob-
ably it was to be sung at the anniversary or some memorial cele-
bration of his victory.

READ me the name of the Olympic winner Archestratos’ son

that 1 may know where it is written upon my heart: for I had
forgotten that I owed him ‘a sweet strain.
“But do thou, O Muse, and thou Truth, daughter of Zeus, put
forth your hands and keep from me the reproach of having
wronged a friend by breaking my pledged word. For from afar
hath overtaken me the time that was then yet to come, and
hath shamed my deep debt.

Nevertheless from that sore reproach I may be delivered by
payment with usury: behold how! the rushing wave sweepeth’
down the rolling shingle, and how we also will render for our
friend’s honour a tribute to him and to his people.

Truth inhabiteth the city of the Lokrians of the West, and
Kalliope they hold in honour and mailéd Ares; yea even con-
quering Herakles was foiled by that Kyknean combat”.

Now let Agesidamos, winner in the boxing at Olympia, so

 

1 Reading dpar’ dv Sma.
2 This Kyknos seems to have been a Lokrian freebooter, said to have
fought with success against Herakles.
OLYMP. XI. 17-51. 39

 

render thanks to Ilas? as Patroklos of old to Achilles. If one be
born with excellent gifts, then may another who sharpeneth his
natural edge speed him, God helping, to an exceeding weight of
glory. Without toil there have triumphed a very few.

Of that light in the life of a man before all other deeds, that
first of contests, the ordinances of Zeus* have stirred me to
sing, even the games which by the ancient tomb of Pelops the
mighty Herakles founded, after that he slew Kleatos, Poseidon’s
goodly son, and slew also Eurytos, that he might wrest from
tyrannous Augeas against his will reward for service done®.

Lying in ambush beneath Kleonai did Herakles overcome them
on the road, for that formerly these same violent sons of Molos
made havoc of his own Tirynthian folk by hiding in the valleys
of Elis, And not long after the guest-betraying king of the
Epeans saw his rich native land, his own city, beneath fierce fire
and iron blows sink down into the deep moat of calamity. Of
strife against stronger powers it is hard to be rid. Likewise
Augeas last of all in his perplexity fell into captivity and escaped
not precipitate death.

Then the mighty son of Zeus having gathered together all his
host at Pisa, and all the booty, measured a sacred grove for his
sovereign Father; and having fenced round the Altis he marked
the bounds thereof in a clear space, and the plain encompassing
it he ordained for rest and feasting, and paid honour to the river
Alpheos together with the twelve greatest gods. And he named
it by the name of the Hill of Kronos; for theretofore it was
without name, when Oinomaos was king, and it was sprinkled
with much snow’.

 

3 His trainer.

“ Probably because Zeus was especially concerned, both with the
fulfilment of promises and with the Olympic games.

5 For the story of these Moliones see Nestor’s speech, Hom. II. xi.
670-761.

* Perhaps this implies a t:adition of a colder climate anciently
40 OLYMP. XI. 51-86,

 

And at this first-born rite the Fates stood hard at hand, and
he who alone proveth sure truth, even Time. He travelling
onward hath told us the clear tale of how the founder set apart
the choicest of the spoil for an offering from the war, and
sacrificed, and: how he ordained the fifth-year feast with the
victories of that first Olympiad.

Who then won to their lot the new-appointed crown by hands
or feet or chariot, setting before them the prize of glory in the
games, and winning it by their act? In the foot-race down the
straight course of the stadion was Likymnios’ son COionos first,
from Nidea had he led his host: in the wrestling was Tegea
glorified by Echemos: Doryklos won the prize of boxing, a
dweller in the city of Tiryns, and with the four-horse cha-
riot, Samos of Mantinea, Halirrhothigs’ , son : with the javelin
Phrastor hit the mark: in distance Enikeus beyond all others
hurled the stone with a circling sweep, and all the warrior
company thundered a great applause.

Then on the evening the lovely shining of the fair-faced moon
beamed forth, and all the precinct sounded with songs of festal
glee,,after-the manner which is to this day for triumph.

So following the first beginning of \ old time, we likewise in a
song named of proud victory will Celebrate the thunder and
the flaming bolt of loud-pealing Zeus, the fiery lightning that
goeth with all victory’.

And soft tones to the music of the flute shall meet and
mingle with my verse, which beside famous Dirke hath come to
light after long time.

But even as a son by his lawful wife is welcome to a father

 

prevailing in Peloponnesos: perhaps the mention of snow is merely
picturesque, referring to the habitual appearance of the hill in winter,
and the passage should then rather be rendered ‘ when Oinomaos was king
its snow-sprinkled top was without name.’

™ The Lokrians worshipped Zeus especially as the Thunderer, as
certain coins of theirs, stamped with a thunderbolt, still testify,
OLYMP. XI. 87-105. 41

 

who hath now travelled to the other side of youth, and maketh
his soul warm with love—for wealth that must fall to a strange
owner from without is most hateful to a dying man—so also,
Agesidamos, when a man who hath done honourable deeds goeth
unsung to the house of Hades, this man hath spent vain breath,
and won but brief gladness for his toil.

On thee the pleasant lyre and the sweet pipe shed their grace,
and the Pierian daughters of Zeus foster thy wide-spread fame.

I with them, setting myself thereunto fervently, have embraced
the. Lokrians’ famous race, and have sprinkled my honey upon
a city of goodly men: and I have told the praises of Arches-
tratos’ comely son, whom I beheld victorious by the might of his
hand beside the altar at Olympia, and saw on that day how fair
he was of form, how gifted with that spring-tide bloom, which
erst with favour of the Cyprian queen warded from Ganymede
unrelenting death.
42 OLYMP. XII. 1-14.

 

XII.

FOR ERGOTELES OF HIMERA,

WINNER IN THE LONG FOOT-RACE.

Ergoteles was a native of Knosos in Crete, but civil dissension had
compelled him to leave his country. He came to Sicily and was
naturalized as a citizen of Himera. Had he stayed in Crete he
would not have won this victory; nor the Pythian and Isthmian
victories, referred to at the end of the ode, for the Cretans seem to
have kept aloof, in an insular spirit, from the Panhellenic games.

The date of the ode is BC. 472, the year after the Himerzans had
expelled the tyrant Thrasydaios of Akragas. The prayer to Fortune
would seem to have reference specially to this event. The ode was
probably sung in a temple either of Zeus or of Fortune.

I pray thee, daughter of Zeus the Deliverer, keep watch over
wide-ruling Himera, O saviour Fortune.

By thee upon the sea swift ships are piloted, and on dry land
fierce wars and meetings of councils.

Up and down the hopes of men are tossed as they cleave the
waves of baffling falsity: and a sure token of what shall come to
pass hath never any man on the earth received from God: the
divinations of things to come are blind.

Many the chances that fall to men when they look not for
them, sometimes to thwart delight, yet others after battling with
the surge of sorrowful pain have suddenly received for their afflic-
tion some happiness profound.

Son of Philanor, verily even the glory of thy fleet feet would
have fallen into the sere leaf unrenowned, abiding by the hearth
OLYMP. XII. 14-19. 43

 

of thy kin, as a cock that fighteth but at home, had not the
strife of citizen against citizen driven thee from Knosos. thy
native land.

But now at Olympia hast thou won a crown, O Ergoteles, and
at Pytho twice, and at Isthmos, whereby thou glorifiest the hot
springs where the nymphs Sicilian bathe, dweiling in a land that
is become to thee as thine own.
44 OLYMP, XIII. 1-17.

 

XIII..

FOR XENOPHON OF CORINTH,

WINNER IN THE STADION RACE AND IN THE PENTATHLON,

The date of this victory is B.C, 464, when Xenophon won both the Stadion,
or short foot-race of about a furlong or 220 yards, and also the Pen-
tathlon, that is, probably, he won at least three out of the five contests
which composed the, Pentathlon—the Jump, Throwing the Disk, Throwing
the Javelin, the Foot-race, and Wrestling, (Apa modwxésav Sicxoy dxovra
mdAnv). -For details, see Dict. Antiq. and Note on Nem. vii. 71-73. —

This ode and. the speech of Glaukos in the sixth Book of. the Iliad are
the most conspicuous passages in poetry which refer to the. great
Corinthian hero Bellerophon. ;

It is thought that this ode was sung on the winner’s public entrance into
Corinth,

Turice winner in Olympic games, of citizens beloved, to strangers
hospitable, the house in whose praise will. 1 now celebrate happy’
Corinth, portal of Isthmian Poseidon and nursery of splendid
youth. ‘For therein dwell Order, and her sisters, sure foundation
of states, Justice and likeminded Peace, dispensers of -wealth to
men, wise Themis’ golden daughters. And they are minded to
keep ‘far from them Insolence the braggart mother of Loathing.

I have fair witness to bear of them, and.a just boldness stirreth
my tongue to speak, Nature inborn none shall prevail to hide.
Unto you, sons! of Aletes, ofttimes have the flowery Hours given
splendour of victory, as to men excelling in valour, pre-eminent
at the sacred games, and ofttimes of old have they~put subtleties

 

1 The clan of the Oligaithidai, fo which Xenophon belonged.
OLYMP. XIII. 17-47. 45

 

into your men’s hearts to devise; and of an inventor cometh
every work.

‘Whence were revealed the new graces of Dionysos with the
dithyramb that winneth the ox?? Who made new means of
guidance to the harness of horses, or on the shrines of gods set
the twin images of the king of birds?? Among them thriveth the
Muse of dulcet breath, and Ares in the young men’s terrible
spears. Sovran lord of Olympia, be not thou jealous of my words
henceforth for ever, O father Zeus; rule thou this folk unharmed,
and keep unchanged the favourable gale of Xenophon’s good hap.
Welcome from him this customary escort of his ¢rown, which
from the plains of Pisa he is bringing, having won with the five
contests the stadion-race beside; the like whereof never yet did.
mortal man.

Also two parsley-wreaths shadowed his head before the people
at the games of Isthmos, nor doth Nemea tell a different tale.
And. of his father Thessalos’ lightning feet is record by the streams
of -Alpheos, and at Pytho he hath renown for the single and for
the double stadion gained both in.a single day, and in the same
month at rocky Athens a day of swiftness crowned his hair for
three illustrious deeds, and the Hellotia* seven times, and at the
‘games of Poseidon between seas longer hymns followed his father
Ptoiodoros with Terpsias and Eritimos. And how often ye were
first at Delphi or in-the Pastures of the Lion , though with full
many do. I match your crowd of honours, yet can I no more
surely tell than the tale of pebbles on the sea-shore. But in

 

2Leasa prize. But the passage may be taken differently as refer-
ring to the symbolical identification of Dionysos with the bull. Dithy-
rambic poetry was said to have been invented or r improved. by Arion of
Corinth. ©

8 This refers to the introduction into architecture by the Corinthians
of the pediment, within or above which were at that time constantly
placed images of eagles.

* The feast of Athene Hellotis. 5 Nemea.
46 OLYMP. XIII. 47-78,

 

everything is there due measure, and most excellent is it to have
respect unto fitness of times.

I with your fleet sailing a privateer will speak no lie concerning
the valour of Corinth’s heroes, whether I proclaim the craft of
her men of old or their might in war, whether of Sisyphos of
subtlest cunning even as a god, and Medea who made for herself
a marriage in her sire’s despite, saviour of the ship Argo and her
crew: or whether how of old in the struggle before the walls of
Dardanos the sons of Corinth were deemed to turn the issue of
battle either way, these with Atreus’ son striving to win Helen
back, those to thrust them utterly away °.

Now when Glaukos was come thither out of Lydia the Danaoi
feared him. To them he proclaimed that in the city of Peirene
his sire bare rule and had rich heritage of land and palace, even
he who once, when he longed to bridle the snaky Gorgon’s son,
Pegasos, at Peirene’s spring, suffered many things, until the time
when maiden Pallas brought to him a bit with head-band of gold,
and from a dream behold it was very deed.

For she said unto him ‘Sleepest thou O Aiolid king? Come,
take this charmer of steeds, and show it to thy father’ the tamer
of horses, with the sacrifice of a white bull.’

Thus in the darkness as he slumbered spake the maiden wielder
of the shadowy aegis—so it seemed unto him—and he leapt up
and stood upright upon his feet. And he seized the wondrous
bit that lay by his side, and found with joy the prophet of the
land, and showed to him, the son of Koiranos, the whole issue
of the matter, how on the altar of the goddess he lay all night
according to the word of his prophecy, and how with her own
hands the child of Zeus whose spear is the lightning brought
unto him the soul-subduing gold.

 

® The Lykians who fought under Glaukos on the Trojan side were of
Corinthian descent.
7 Poseidon.
OLYMP. XIII. 79-109. 47

 

Then the seer bade him with all speed obey the vision, and
that, when he should have sacrificed to the wide-ruling Earth-
enfolder the strong-foot beast®, he should build an altar straight-
way to Athené, queen of steeds.

Now the power of Gods bringeth easily to pass such things as
make forecast forsworn. Surely with zealous haste did ‘bold
Bellerophon bind round the winged steed’s jaw the softening
charm, and make him his: then straightway he flew up and dis-
ported him in his brazen arms.

In company with that horse also on a time, from out of the bosom
of the chill and desert air, he smote the archer host of Amazons, and
slew the Solymoi, and Chimaira breathing fire. I will keep silence
touching the fate of him: howbeit Pegasos hath in Olympus found
a home in the ancient stalls of Zeus.

But for me who am to hurl straight the whirling javelin it is
not meet to spend beside the mark my store of darts with
utmost force of hand: for to the Muses throned in splendour
and to the Oligaithidai a willing ally came I, at the Isthmos and
again at Nemea. In a brief word will I proclaim the host of
them, and a witness sworn and true shall be to mein the sweet-
tongued voice of the good herald®, heard at both places sixty
times.

Now have their acts at Olympia, methinks, been told already:
of those that shall be hereafter 1 will hereafter clearly speak.
Now I live in hope, but the end is in the hands of gods. But if
the fortune of the house fail not, we will commit to Zeus and
Enyalios, the accomplishment thereof.

Yet other glories won they, by Parnassos’ brow, and at Argos
how many and at Thebes, and such as nigh the Arcadians’ the
lordly altar of Zeus Lykaios shall attest, and Pallene, and Sikyon,
and Megara, and the well-fenced grove of the Aiakidai, and

 

* A bull.
® Proclaiming the name and city of the winner in the games.
10 Reading "Apxdow accor,

sfc
48 OLYMP., XIII. 109-115.

 

Eleusis, and lusty Marathon, and the fair rich cities beneath
Aetna’s towering crest, and Euboea. Nay over all Hellas if
thou searchest, thou shalt find more than one sight can view.

O king Zeus the Accomplisher, grant them with so light feet
to move through life, give them all honour, and sweet hap of
their ‘goodly things.

 

1 As in their foot-races.
OLYMP. XIV. 1-19. 49

 

XIV.

FOR ASOPICHOS OF ORCHOMENOS,

WINNER IN THE BOYS’ SHORT FOOT-RACE.

This ode was to be sung, probably by a chorus of boys, at the winner’s
city Orchomenos, and most likely in the temple of the three Xdp:res
or Graces, Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia,

The date of the victory is B.C. 476.

 

O ye who haunt the land of goodly steeds that drinketh of
Kephisos’ waters, lusty Orchomenos’ queens renowned in song, O
Graces, guardians of the Minyai’s ancient race, hearken, for unto
you I pray. For by your gift come unto men all pleasant things
and sweet, and the wisdom of a man and his beauty, and the
splendour of his fame. Yea even gods without the Graces’ aid
rule never at feast or dance; but these have charge of all things
done in heaven, and beside Pythian Apollo of the golden bow
they have set their thrones, and worship the eternal majesty of the
Olympian Father.

O lady Aglaia, and thou Euphrosyne, lover of song, children of
the mightiest of the gods, listen and hear, and thou Thalia delight-
ing in sweet sounds, and look down upon this triumphal company,
moving with light step under happy fate. In Lydian mood of
melody concerning Asopichos am I come hither to sing, for that
through thee, Aglaia, in the Olympic games the Minyai’s home

is winner, .
50 OLYMP. XIV. 20-24.

 

Fly, Echo, to Persephone’s dark-walled home, and to his father
bear the noble tidings, that seeing him thou mayest speak to him
of his son, saying that for his father’s honour in Pisa’s famous
valley he hath crowned his boyish hair with garlands from the
glorious games,
THE PYTHIAN

ODES.
PYTH. I. 1-11. 53

 

I,

FOR HIERON OF AITNA,

WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE.

The date of this victory is B.C. 474.

‘In the year 480, the year of Salamis, the Syracusans under Hieron had
defeated the Carthaginians in the great battle of Himera.

In 479 @ great eruption of Etna (Aitna) began. In 476 Hieron founded,
near the mountain but we may suppose at a safe distance, the new
city of Aitna, in honour of which he had himself proclaimed as an
Aitnaian after this and other victories in the games.

And in this same year, 474, he had defeated the Etruscans, or Tuscans,
or Tyrrhenians in a great sea-fight -before Cumae.

Pindar might well delight to honour those who had been waging so
well against the barbarians of the South and West the same war
which the Hellenes of the mother-country waged against the bar-
barians of the East.

O GoLDEN Lyre, thou common treasure of Apollo and the Muses
violet-tressed, thou whom the dancer’s step, prelude of festal
mirth, obeyéth, and the singers heed thy bidding, what time with
quivering strings thou utterest preamble of choir-leading overture—
lo even the sworded lightning of immortal fire thou quenchest, and
on the sceptre of Zeus his eagle. sleepeth, slackening his swift
wings either’ side, the king of birds, for a dark mist thou hast
distilled on his arched head, a gentle seal upon his eyes, and he
in slumber heaveth his supple back, spell-bound beneath thy
throbs.

Yea also violent Ares, leaving far off the fierce point of his
54 PYTH. I. 11-39.

 

spears, letteth his heart have joy in rest, for thy shafts soothe
hearts divine by the cunning of Leto’s. som_and the deep-
bosomed ase,

But whatsoever things Zeus loveth not fly frighted from the
voice of the Pierides, whether on earth or on the raging sea;
whereof is he who lieth in dreadful Tartaros, the foe of the gods,
Typhon of the hundred heads, whom erst the den Kilikian of
many names, dig breed, but now verily the sea-constraining cliffs
beyond mae; and Sicily, lie heavy on his shaggy breast: and
he is fast bound by a pillar of the sky, even by snowy Etna,
nursing the whole year’s length her frozen snow:

Whereout pure springs of unapproachable fire are vomited «
from the inmost depths: in the daytime the lava-streams pour
forth a lurid rush of smoke: but in the darkness a red rolling
flame sweepeth rocks with uproar to the wide deep sea.

That dragon-thing? it is that maketh issue from beneath the
terrible fiery flood, a monster marvellous to look upon, yea a
marvel to hear of from such as go thereby and tell what thing
is prisoned between the dark-wooded tops of Etna and the plain,
where the back of him is galled and furrowed by the bed
whereon he lieth.

O Zeus, be it ours to find favour in thy sight, who art defender
of this mountain, the forehead of a fruitful land, whose namesake
neighbour city hath been ennobled by her glorious founder, for
that on the race-course at the Pythian games the herald made
proclamation of her name aloud, telling of Hieron’s fair victory
in the chariot-race.

Now the first boon to men in ships is that a favourable breeze.
come to them as they set forth upon the sea; for this is promise
that in the end also they shall come with good hap home. So
after this good fortune doth reason show us hope of crowns to
come for Aitna’s horses, and honour in the banquet-songs.

O Phoibos, lord of Lykia and of Delos, who lovest the spring

 

1 Typhon.
PYTH. I. 39-66. 55

 

of Castaly on thy Parnassos,.be this the purpose of thy will,
and grant the land fair issue of her men,

‘For from gods come all means of mortal valour, hereby come
bards and men of mighty hand and eloquent speech.

This is the man I am fain to praise, and trust that not outside
the ring shall I hurl the bronze-tipped javelin I brandish in my
hand, but with far throw outdo my rivals in the match.

Would that his whole life may give him, even as now, good
luck and wealth right onward, and of his pains forgetfulness.

Verily ‘it shall remind” him in what fightings of wars he’ stood
up with steadfast soul, when the people found grace of glory at
the hands of gods, such as none of the Hellenes hath reaped, a
proud crown -of wealth.

For after the exsample of Philoktetes he went; but now to
war:~and when necessity was upon them even they of proud
spirit sought of him a boon.

To Lemnos once they say came godlike heroes| to fetch thence
the archer son of Paian,. vexed of an ulcerous wound; and he
sacked ‘the city of Priam and made an end of the Danaoi’s
labotrs, for the body wherewith he went was sick, but this was
destined from the beginning.

Even thus to Hieron may God he a guide for the time
approaching, and give him to lay hold upon the things of his
desire.

Also in the house of Deinomenes do me grace, O Muse, to
sing, for sake of our four-horsed car: no alien joy to him is his
sire’s victory.

Comé then and next for Etna’s king let us devise a friendly
song, for whom with god-built freedom after the laws of Hyllic
pattern hath that city been founded of Hieron’s hand: for the
desire of the sons of Pamphylos and of the Herakleidai dwelling
beneath the heights of Taygetos is to abide continually in the
Dorian laws of Aigimios. At Amyklai they dwelt prosperously,
when they were come down out of Pindos and drew near in
56 PYTH. I. 66-88.

 

honour to the Tyndaridai who ride on white horses, and the
glory of their spears waxed great. ;

Thou Zeus, with whom are the issues of things, grant that the
true speech of men ever bear no worse report of citizens and
kings beside the water of Aménas, By thine aid shall a man
that is chief and that instructeth his son after him give due
honour unto his people and move them to be of one voice
peacefully.

I pray thee, son of Kronos, grant that the Phenician and the
Tuscan war-cry be hushed at home, since they have beheld the
calamity of their ships that befell them before Cumae, even how
they were smitten by the captain of the Syracusans, who from
their swift ships hurled their youth into the sea, to deliver
Hellas from the bondage of the oppressor.

From Salamis shall I of Athenians take reward of thanks, at
Sparta when I shall tell? in a song to come of the battle* before
Kithairon, wherein the Medes that bear crooked bows were over-
thrown, but by the fair-watered banks of-Himéras it shall be for
the song I have rendered to the sons of Deinomenes, which by
their valour they have earned, since the men that warred against
them are overthrown.

If thou shalt speak, in season, and comprehend in brief the
ends of many matters, less impeachment followeth of men; for
surfeit blunteth the eagerness of expectancy; and city-talk of
others’ praise grieveth hearts secretly.

Nevertheless, for that envy is preferred before pity‘, let slip not
fair occasion: gitide with just helm thy people and forge the
sword of thy speech on an anvil whereof cometh no lie. Even
a word falling lightly is of import in that it proceedeth from
thee. Of many things art thou steward: many witnesses are
there to thy deeds of either kind.

 

2 Reading épéav. 5 Plataea.
* Le. it is better to be envied than to be pitied,
PYTH. I. 89-100. 57

 

But abiding in the fair flower of this spirit, if thou art fain to
be continually of good report, be not too careful for the cost:
loose free like a mariner thy sail unto the wind. &

Friend, be not deceived by time-serving words of guile. The
voice of the report that liveth after a man, this alone revealeth
the lives of dead men to the singers and to the chroniclers: the
loving-kindness of Craesus fadeth not away; but him who burned
men with fire within a brazen bull, Phalaris that had no pity,
men tell of everywhere with hate, neither will any lute in
hall suffer him in the gentle fellowship of young boys’ themes
of songs.

..To be happy is the chiefest prize; to be glorious the next lot:
if a man have lighted on both and taken them to be his, he hath \”
attained unto the supreme crown.
58 PYTH. II. 1-4.

 

II.

FOR HIERON OF SYRACUSE,

WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE,

The classification of this ode as Pythian is probably a mistake: perhaps
the victory was won at the Theban festival in honour of Herakles, or
of Iolaos.

Anaxilaos, tyrant of Rhegium and Messana, had been deterred by Hieron’s
threats from attacking the Epizephyrian Lokrians, and the ode is partly
occupied with congratulations of Hieron on this protective act. As
Anaxilaos died B.C. 476, and Hieron was only placed at the head of
the Syracusan state two years before, this seems to fix the date some-
where in these two years. As Pindar talks of sending his song across
the sea, we may suppose that it was sung at Syracuse.

There is much obscurity about the significances of this ode. The poet’s
motive in telling the story of Ixion’s sins has been variously guessed
at. Some think it was meant to deter Hieron from contriving the
death of his brother Polyzelos in battle in order to get possession of
Polyzelos’ wife (and if Hieron was to be suspected of such a thought
it would be quite in Pindar’s manner to mingle warning and reproof
with praise): some think that it refers to the ingratitude of Anaxilaos
toward Hieron. And most probably the latter part of the ode, in
which sincerity is approved, and flattery and calumny are condemned,
had some special and personal reference, though we need not suppose,
as the commentators are fond of doing here and elsewhere, that it
was aimed at Bacchylides or other rival poets.

GREAT city of Syracuse, precinct of warrior Ares, of iron-armed
men and steeds the nursing-place divine, to thee I come’, bearing

 

1 Pindar here identifies himself with his ode, which he sent, not took,
to Syracuse.- Compare Ol. vii. 13, &c.
PYTH. II. 4-33. 59

 

from my bright Thebes this song, the tidings of earth-shaking
racing of the four-horse car, wherein hath Hieron with his goodly
chariot overcome, and decked with far-seen splendour of crowns
‘rtygia the dwelling-place of Artemis of the rjver, her by whose
help he tamed with soothing hand his colts of spangled rein.
For the archer maiden with both hands fitteth the glittering
-rappings, and Hermes, god of games, whensoever Hieron to the
polished car and bridle-guided wheels? yoketh the strength of his
steeds, calling on the wide-ruling god, the trident-wielder.

Now ‘unto various kings pay various men sweet song, their -

valour’s meed, So the fair speech of Cyprus echoeth around the
name of Kinyras, him whom Apollo of the golden hair loved
fervently, and who dwelt a priest in the house of Aphrodite: for

to,such praise are men moved by the thankfulness that followeth °

the recompense of friendly acts. But of thee, O thou son of
Deinomenes, the maiden daughter of the Lokrian in the “west
before the house-door telleth in her song, being out of bewildering
woes of war by thy might delivered, so that her eyes are not
afraid for anything.

5 Ixion, they say, by order of the gods, writhing on his winged

wheel, proclaimeth this message unto men: Zo him who doeth ;

thee service make recompense of fair reward.

This lesson learned he plainly ; for when that among the friendly
Kronidai he had gotten a life of pleasantness, his bliss became
greater than he could bear, and with mad heart he lusted after
Hera, whose place was in the happy marriage-bed of Zeus:
yet insolence drove him to the exceeding folly; but quickly
suffering his deserts the man gained to himself a misery most
rare. j

Two sins are the causes of his pain; one that he first among
the heroes shed blood of kindred®-craftily, the other that in the

 

2 Properly dppyara would seem to include all except the body of the
chariot (8i¢pos) in which the charioteer stood.
8 His father-in-law Deioneus.

|
60 PYTH. II. 33-60.

 

chambers of the ample heavens he attempted the wife of Zeus~—
for in all things it behoveth to take measure by oneself‘.

Yet a mocking love-bed hurried him as he approached the
couch® into a sea of trouble; for he lay with a cloud, pursuing
the sweet lie, fond man: for its form was as the form of the
most highest among the daughters of heaven, even the child of
Kronos; and the hands of Zeus had made it that it might be a
snare unto him, a fair mischief. Thus came he unto the four-
spoked wheel, his own destruction; and having fallen into chains
without escape he became proclaimer of that message® unto
many.

His mate’, without favour of the Graces, bare unto him a
monstrous son, and like no other thing anywhere, even as its
mother was, a thing with no place or honour, neither among men,
neither in the society of gods. Him she reared and called by the
name Kentauros, and he in the valleys of Pelion lay with Mag-
nesian mares, and there were born thence a wondrous tribe, like
unto both parents, their nether parts like unto the dams, and
their upper parts like unto the sire. :

God achieveth all ends whereon he thinketh—God who over-
taketh even the winged eagle, and outstrippeth the dolphin of the
sea, and bringeth low many a man in his pride, while to others
he giveth glory incorruptible.

For me it is meet to eschew the sharp tooth of bitter words;
for, though afar off, I have seen the fierce Archilochos lacking
most things and fattening but on cruel words of hate. Of most
worth are riches when joined to the happy gift of wisdom. And
this lot hast thou, and mayest illustrate it with liberal soul, thou
sovereign chief over many streets filled with goodly garlands, and
much people. If any saith that ever yet was any man of old

 

* Le. to estimate rightly one’s capacities, circumstances, rights, duties.
5 Reading mort kotrov ixdvr’.

® The message spoken of above, v. 24.

7 The cloud, the phantom-Hera.
PYTH. II. 60-83. 6r

 

time throughout Hellas who excelled thee in honour or in the
multitude of possessions, such an one with vain purpose essayeth
a fruitless task.

Upon the flower-crowned prow® will I go up to sing of brave
deeds done. Youth is approved by valour in dread wars; and
hence say I that thou hast won boundless renown in thy battles,
now with horsemen, now on foot: also the counsels of thine
elder years give me sure ground of praising thee every way.

All hail! This song like to Phenician merchandize is sent
across the hoary sea: do thou look favourably on the strain of
Kastor in Aeolian mood®, and greet it in honour of the seven-
stringed lute.

Be what thou art, now I have told thee what that is: in the
eyes of children the fawning ape is ever comely: but the good
fortune of Rhadamanthos hath come to him because the fruit
that his soul bare was true, neither delighteth he in deceits
within his heart, such as by whisperer’s arts ever wait upon
mortal man.

An overpowering evil are the secret speakings of slander, to
the slandered and to the listener thereto alike, and are as foxes
in relentless temper. Yet for the beast whose name is of gain’?
what great thing is gained thereby? For like the cork above
the net, while the rest of the tackle laboureth deep in the sea,
I am unmerged in the brine.

Impossible is it that a guileful citizen utter potent words
among the good, nevertheless he fawneth on all and useth every:
subtlety. No part have I in that bold boast of his, ‘Let me be a

 

8 The prow of the ship carrying this ode, with which Pindar, as has
been said, identifies himself.

® It is supposed that another ode, more especially in honour of the
chariot-victory, is here meant, which was to be sent later.

From this point to the end the ode reads like a postscript of private
import and reference.

10 Tt is at least doubtful whether «epi a fox is really connected with
xépSos gain,
62 PYTH. II. 83-96.

 

friend to my friend, but toward an enemy I will be an enemy,
and as a wolf will cross his path, treading now here now there
in crooked ways". For every form of polity is a man of direct
speech best, whether under a despotism, or whether the wild
multitude, or the wisest, have the state in their keeping.

Against God it is not meet to strive, who now upholdeth
these, and now again to those giveth great glory. But not
even this cheereth the heart of the envious; for they measure
by an unjust balance, and their own hearts they afflict with
bitter pain, till such time as they attain to that which their
hearts devise.

To take the car’s yoke on one’s neck and run on lightly, this
helpeth; but to kick against the goad is to make the course
perilous. Be it mine to dwell among the good, and to win their
love.

 

41 It appears to me to be an absurdity to suppose that Pindar means
to express in this sentence his own rule of conduct, as the commentators
have fancied. He is all thrdugh this passage condemning ‘crooked

’
ways.
PYTH. IIL. 1-15, 63

 

III.

FOR HIERON OF SYRACUSE,

WINNER IN THE HORSE-RACE,

The dates both of the victory and of the ode are uncertain. But as
Pherenikos, the horse that won this race at Pytho, is the same that
won at Olympia B.C. 472, in honour of which event the First Olympian
was written, the victory cannot have been very long before that date,
though the language of the ode implies that it was written a good
deal later, probably for an anniversary of the victory. It must at
least have been written before Hieron’s death in 467. It is much
occupied with his illness.

Fain were I (if meet it be to utter from my mouth the prayer
conceived of all) that Cheiron the son of Philyra were alive and
had not perished among men, even the wide-ruling seed of
Kronos the son of Ouranos; and that there still lorded it in
Pelion’s glens that Beast untamed, whose soul was loving unto
men, even such as when of old he trained the gentle. deviser of
limb-saving anodynes, Asklepios, the hero that was a defence
against all kind of bodily plague.

Of him was the daughter’ of Phlegyas of goodly steeds not yet
delivered by Eileithuia aid of mothers, ere by the golden bow
she was slain at the- hands of Artemis, and ‘from her child-bed
chamber went down into the house of Hades, by contriving of
Apollo. Not idle is the wrath of sons of Zeus.

She in the folly of her heart had set Apollo at nought, and
taken another spouse without knowledge of her sire, albeit ere
then she had lain with Phoibos of the unshorn hair, and bare
within her the seed of a very god.

 

1 Koronis.
64 PYTH. III. 16-45.

 

Neither awaited she the marriage-tables nor the sound of many
voices in hymeneal song, such as the bride’s girl-mates are wont
to sing at eventide with merry minstrelsy: but lo, she had
longing for things otherwhere, even as many before and after. For
a tribe there is most foolish among men, of such as scorn the
things of home, and gaze on things that are afar off, and chase a-
cheating prey with hopes that shall never be fulfilled.

Of such sort was the frenzied strong desire fair-robed Koronis
harboured in her heart, for she lay in the couch of a stranger
that was come from Arcady. ?

But one that watched beheld her: for albeit he was at sheep-
gathering Pytho, yet was the temple’s king Loxias aware thereof,
beside his unerring partner?, for he gave heed to his own wisdom,
his mind that knoweth all things; in lies it hath no part, neither
in act or thought may god or man deceive him.

Therefore when he was aware of how she lay with the stranger
Ischys son of Elatos, and of her guile unrighteous, he sent his
sister fierce with terrible wrath to go to Lakereia—for by the
steep shores of the Boibian lake was the home of her virginity—
and thus a doom adverse blasted her life and smote her down:
and of her neighbours many fared ill therefore and perished with
her: so doth a fire that from one spark has leapt upon a moun-
tain lay waste wide space of wood.

But when her kinsfolk had laid the damsel upon the pile of
wood, and fierce brightness of Hephaistos ran around it, then said
Apollo: ‘Not any longer may I endure in my soul to slay mine
own seed by a most cruel death in company with its mother’s
grievous fate.’

He said, and at the first stride he was there, and from the
corpse ceught up the child, and the blaze of the burning fiery
pile was cloven before him asunder in the midst.

age hen to the Kentaur of Magnes he bare the child, that he

 

2 His father, Zeus.
PYTH. III. 45-76. 65

 

should teach him to be a healer of the many-plaguing maladies
of men, And thus all that came unto him whether plagued with
self-grown sores or with limbs wounded by the lustrous bronze
or stone far-hurled, or marred by summer heat or winter cold—
these he delivered, loosing each from his several infirmity, some
with emollient spells and some by kindly potions, or else he
hung their limbs with charms, or by surgery he raised them up
to health.

“Yet hath even wisdom been led captive of desire of gain.
Even him did gold in his hands glittering beguile for a great
reward to bring back from death a man already prisoner thereto:
wherefore the hands of the son of Kronos smote the twain of
them through the. midst, and bereft their breasts of breath, and
the bright lightning dealt them doom.

It behoveth to seek from gods things meet for mortal souls,
knowing the things that are in our path and to what portion we
are born. Desire not thou, dear my soul, a life immortal, but
use the tools that are to thine hand.

Now were wise Cheiron in his cavern dwelling yet, and had
our sweet-voiced songs laid haply some fair magic on his soul,
then had I won him to grant to worthy men some healer of
hot plagues, some offspring of Leto’s son, or of her son’s sire?,

And then in a ship would I have sailed, cleaving the Ionian
sea, to the fountain of Arethusa, to the home of my Aitnaian
friend, who ruleth at Syracuse, a king of good will to the citizens,
not envious of the good, to strangers wondrous fatherly. Had I
but landed there and brought unto him a twofold joy, first golden
health and next this my song of triumph to be a splendour in
his Pythian crown, which of late Pherenikos*® won by his victory
at Kirrha—I say that then should I have come unto him, after
that I had passed over the deep sea, a farther-shining light than
any heavenly star.

 

? Some Asklepios or Apollo. 3 Hieron’s horse.
F
66 PYTH. III. 77-104.

 

But I am minded to pray to the Mother* for him, to the awful
goddess unto whom, and unto Pan, before, my door nightly the
maidens move in dance and song.

Yet, O Hieron, if thou art skilled to apprehend the true
meaning of sayings, thou hast learnt to know this from the men
of old; The immortals deal to men tao ill things for one good. The
foolish cannot bear these with steadfastness but the good only,
putting the fair side forward.

But thee a lot of happiness attendeth, for if on any man hath
mighty Destiny looked favourably, surely it is on a chief and’
leader of a people.

A life untroubled abode not either with Peleus, son of Aiakos,
or with godlike Kadmos: yet of all mortals these, they say, had
highest . bliss, who both erewhile listened to the singing of the
Muses golden-filleted, the one in seven-gated Thebes, when
he wedded large-eyed Harmonia, the other on the mountain-
side, when he took to him Thetis to be his wife, wise Nereus’
glorious daughter. And with both of them gods sate at meat,
and they beheld the sons of Kronos sitting as kings on thrones
of gold, and they received from them gifts for their espousals;
and by grace of Zeus they escaped out of their former toils and
raised up their hearts to gladness.

Yet again in the after time the bitter anguish of those daughters
robbed Kadmos of a part of bliss: howbeit the Father Zeus came
to white-armed Thyone’s® longed-for couch.

And so did the son of Peleus whom Thetis bare at Phthia,
her only son, die by an arrow in war, and moved the Danaoi
to lament aloud, when his body was burning in fire.

Now if any by wisdom hath the way of truth he may yet lack
good fortune, which cometh of the happy gods.

 

* Rhea or Kybele, the mother of the gods. ‘Next door to Pindar’s
house was a temple of the mother of the gods and of Pan, which he
had built himself.’ Scholiast.

5 Ino, Agaué, and Autonoé. ® Semele.
PYTH, III. 104-115. 67

 

: i
The blasts of soaring winds blow various ways at various

times. Not for long cometh happiness to men, when it accom-
panieth them in exceeding weight. i

Small will I be among the small, and great among the great.
Whatever fortune follow me, I will work therewith, and wield it -
as my power shall suffice. If.God should offer me wealth and
ease, I ‘have hope that I should first have won high honour to
be in the times afar off.

Nestor and Lykian Sarpedon, who live in the speech of men,
we know f.om tales of sounding song, built up by cunning
builders.

By songs of glory hath virtue lasting life, but to achieve them
is easy to but few.

is

Se
68 PYTH. IV. 1-11.

 

IV.

FOR ARKESILAS OF KYRENE,

WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE.

Pindar has made this victory of Arkesilas, King of the Hellenic colony
of Kyrene in Africa, an occasion for telling the story of Jason’s ex-
pedition with the Argonauts’. The ostensible reason for introducing
the story is that Kyrene had been colonised from the island of Thera
by the descendants of the Argonaut Euphemos, according to the™pro-
phecy of Medea related at the beginning of the ode. But Pindar had
‘another reason. He wished to suggest an analogy between the relation
of the Iolkian king Pelias to Jason and the relation of Arkesilas to
his exiled kinsman Demophilos*#Demophilos had been staying at
Thebes, where Pindar wrote this ode, to be afterwards recited at
Kyrene. It was written nc. 466, when Pindar was fifty-six years of

_ age, es is unsurpassed in his extant works, or indeed by anything
; in all*extant poetry.

‘

Tu1s day O Muse must thou tarry in a friend’s house, the house
of the king of Kyrene of goodly horses, that with Arkesilas at
his triumph thou mayst swell the favourable gale of song, the due
of Leto’s children, and of Pytho. For at Pytho of old she who
sitteth beside the eagles of Zeus—nor was Apollo absent then—
the priestess, spake this oracle, that Battos should found a power in
fruitful Libya, that straightway departing from the holy isle he
might lay the foundations of a city of goodly chariots upon a
white breast of the swelling earth, and might fulfil in the seven-
teenth generation the word of Medea spoken at Thera, which
of old the passionate child of Aietes, queen of Colchians, breathed
from immortal lips.
PYTH. IV. 11-37. 69:

 

For on this wise spake she to the warrior Jason’s god-begotten
crew: ‘Hearken O sons of high-hearted mortals and of gods. Lo
I say unto you that from this sea-lashed land the daughters of
Epaphos shall sometime be planted with a root to bring forth
cities that shall possess the minds of men, where Zeus Ammon’s
shrine is builded.

And instead of short-finned dolphins they shall take to them
fleet mares, and reins instead of oars shall they we and speed
the whirlwind-footed car.

By that augury shall it come to pass that Thera shall be
mother-city of mighty commonwealths, even the augury that once
at the outpourings of the Tritonian lake Euphemos leaping from
‘the prow took at the hands of a god who in the likeness of
man tendered this present to the stranger of a clod of earth;
and the Father Kronian Zeus confirmed it with a peal of thunder.

‘What time he came suddenly upon them as they were hang-
ig against the ship the bronze-fluked anchor, fleet Argo’s bridle;

«for now for twelve days had we borne from Ocean over long
backs of desert-land our sea-ship, after that by my counsel we
drew it up upon the shore.

Then came to us the solitary god, having put on the splendid
semblance of a noble man; and he began friendly speech, such
as well-doers use when they bid new-comers to the feast.

But the plea of the sweet hope of home suffered us not to
stay. Then he said that he was Eurypylos son of the earth-
embracer, immortal Ennosides; and for that he was aware that

*we hasted to be gone, he straightway caught up of the chance
earth at his feet a gift that he would fain bestow. Nor was the
hero unheeding, but leaping on the shore and striking hand in
hand he took to him the fateful Bad

 

1 Libya. Epaphos was son of Zeus by Io.
2 This incident happened during the wanderings of the Argonauts on
their return with the Golden Fleece from Kolchis to Iolkos,
70 PYTH. IV. 38-60.

 

But now I hear that it was washed down from the ship and
departed into the sea with the salt spray of evening, following
the watery deep. Yet verily often did I charge the labour-
lightening servants that they should keep it safe, but they forgat:
and now upon this island® is the imperishable seed of spacious
Libya strown before the time appointed; for if the royal son* of
Poseidon, lord of horses, whom Europa Tityos’ child bare him on
Kephisos’ banks, had in his own home thrown it down beside
the mouth of Hades’5 gulf, then in the fourth generation of his
sons his seed would have taken that wide continent of Libya,
for then they would have gone forth from mighty Lakedaimon,
and from the Argive gulf, and from Mykenai.

But now he shall in wedlock with a stranger-wife raise up a
chosen seed, who coming to this island with worship of their
gods shall beget one to be lord of the misty plains®, Him some-
time shall Phoibos in his golden house admonish by oracles,
when in the latter days he shall go down into the inner shrine
at Pytho, to bring a host in ships to the rich Nile-garden of
the son of Kronos”.’

So ran Medea’s rhythmic utterance, and motionless in silence
the godlike heroes bowed their heads as they hearkened to the

counsels of wisdom. ;
Thee, happy son* of Polymnestos, did the oracle of the

 

8 Thera. ‘4 Euphemos.

5 At Tainaros there was a cave supposed to be a mouth of Hades.

® Of Libya.

7 The purport of this is: If Euphemos had taken the clod safely home
to Tainaros in Lakonia, then his great-grandsons with emigrants from
other Peloponnesian powers would have planted « colony in Libya.
But since the clod had fallen into the sea and would be washed up on
che shore of the island of Thera, it was necessary that Euphemos’ de-
scendants should first colonize Thera, and then, but not till the seven-
‘eenth’ generation, proceed, under Battos, to found the colony of Kyrene
uu Libya. -® Battos.
PYTH. IV. 60-87. 71

 

Delphian bee® approve with call unasked to be the man whereof
the word was spoken, for thrice she bid thee hail and declared
thee by decree of fate Kyrene’s king, what time thou enquiredst
what help should be from heaven for thy labouring speech. And
verily even now long afterward, as in the bloom of rosy-bioSsomed
spring, in the eighth descent from Battos the leaf of Arkesilas is
green. To him Apollo and Pytho have given glory in the
chariot-race at the hands of the Amphiktyons: him will I com-
mend to the Muses, and withal the tale of the all-golden fleece;
for this it was the Minyai sailed to seek when the god-given
g:ories of their race began.

What power first drave them in the beginning to the quest ?
What perilous enterprise clenched them with strong nails of
adamant? ; t

a: There was an oracle of God which said that Pelias should die
by force or by stern counsels of the proud sons of Aiolos, and
there had come to him a prophecy that froze his cunning heart,
spoken at the central stone of tree-clad mother Earth, that by
every means he should keep safe guard against the man of one
sandal, whensoever from a homestead on the hills he shall have
come to the sunny land of glorious Iolkos, whether a stranger or
a citizen he be.

So in the fulness of time he came, wielding two spears, a wondrous
man; and the vesture that was upon him was twofold, the garb
of the Magnetes’ country close fitting to his. splendid limbs, but
above he wore a leopard-skin to turn the hissing showers; nor
were the bright locks of his hair shorn from him but over all
his back ran rippling down. Swiftly he went straight on, and
took his stand, making trial of his dauntless soul, in the market-
place when the multitude was full.

Him they knew not; howbeit some one looking reverently on
him would speak on this wise: ‘Not Apollo surely is this, nor

 

® The priestess.
72 PYTH. IV. 87-115.

 

yet Aphrodite’s lord of the brazen car; yea and in glistening
Naxos died ere now, they say, the children of Iphimedeia, Otos
and thou, bold king Ephialtes: moreover Tityos was the quarry
of Artemis’ swift arrow sped from her invincible quiver, warning
men to touch only the loves within their power,”

They answering each to each thus talked; but thereon with
headlong haste of mules and polished car came Pelias; and he
was astonied when he gazed on the plain sign of the single
sandal nae right foot. But he dissembled his fear within his
heart and said unto him, ‘What land, O stranger, dost thou claim
to be thy country, and who of earth-born mortals bare thee of
her womb out of due time’? Tell me thy race and shame it
not by hateful lies.’

And him with gentle words the other answered undismayed,
‘I say to thee that I bear with me the wisdom of Cheiron, for
from Chariklo and Philyra I come, from the cave where the
Centaur’s pure daughters reared me up, and now have I fulfilled
twenty years among them without deceitful word or deed, and I
am come home to seek the ancient honour of my father, held
now in rule unlawful, which of old Zeus gave to the chief Aiolos
and his children. For 1 hear that Pelias yielding lawlessly to evil
thoughts hath robbed it from my fathers whose right it was from
the beginning; for they, when first I looked upon the light, fearing
the violence of an injurious lord, made counterfeit of a dark
funeral in the house as though I were dead, and amid the
wailing of women sent me forth secretly in purple swathing-
bands, when none but Night might know the way we went, and
gave me to Cheiron the son of Kronos to be reared.

 

10 The epithet roA:ds is impossible to explain satisfactorily. It has been
suggested to me by Professor S. H. Butcher, that xaparyevys may have
been equivalent to -yn'yerqs, and that Pelias may thus mean, half ironically,
to imply that Jason’s stature, garb and mien, as well as his mysteriously
sudden appearance, argue him a son of one of the ancient giants who had
been seen of old among men.
PYTH. IV. 116-142. 73

 

But of these things the chief ye know. Now therefore kind
citizens show me plainly the ‘house of my fathers who drave
white horses; for it shall hardly be said that a son of Aison,
born in the land, is come hither to a strange and alien soil.
And Jason was the name whereby the divine Beast™ spake
to me.’

Thus he said, and when he had entered in, the eyes of his
father knew him; and from his aged eyelids gushed forth tears,
for his soul was glad within him when he beheld his son, fairest
of men and goodliest altogether.

Then came to him both brothers, when they heard that Jason
was come home, Pheres from hard by, leaving the fountain
Hypereis, and out of Messena Amythaon, and quickly came
Admetos and Melampos to welcome home their cousin. And at
a common feast with gracious words Jason received them and
made them friendly cheer, culling for five long nights and days
the sacred flower of joyous lite,

But on the sixth day he began grave speech, and set the
whole matter before his kinsmen from the beginning, and they
were of one mind with him.

Then quickly he rose up with them from their couches, and
they came to Pelias’ hall, and they made haste and entered and
stood within.

And when he heard them the king himself came forth to them,
even the son of Tyro of the lovely hair. Then Jason with
gentle voice opened on him the stream of his soft speech, and
laid foundation of wise words: ‘Son of Poseidon of the Rock,
too ready are the minds of mortal men to choose a guileful gain
rather than righteousness, howbeit they travel ever to .a stern
reckoning. But thee and me it behoveth to give law to our
desires, and to devise weal for the time to come. Though thou
knowest it yet will I tell thee, how that the same mother bare

 

4 The Kentaur Cheiron.
74 PYTH. IV. 142-172.

 

Kretheus and rash Salmoneus, and in the third generation we
again were begotten and look upon the strength of the golden
sun. Now if there be enmity between kin, the Fates stand
aloof and would fain hide the shame. Fxot with bronze-edged
swords nor with javelins doth it beseem us twain to divide our
forefathers’ great honour, nor needeth it, for lo! all sheep and
tawny herds of kine I yield, and all the lands whereon thou
feedest them, the spoil of my sires wherewith thou makest fat
thy wealth, That these things furnish forth thy house moveth
me not greatly; but for the kingly sceptre and throne whereon
the son of Kretheus sate of old and dealt justice to his chivalry,
these without wrath between us yield to me, lest some new evil
arise up therefrom.’

Thus he spake, and mildly also did Pelias make reply: ‘I will
be even as thou wilt, but now the sere of life alone remaineth to
me, whereas the flower of thy youth is but just burgeoning; thou
art able to take away the sin that maketh the powers beneath the
earth wroth with us: for Phrixos biddeth us lay his ghost, and that
we go to the house of Aietes, and bring thence the thick-fleeced
hide of the ram, whereby of old he was delivered from the deep
and from the impious weapons of his stepmother. This message
cometh to me in the voice of a strange dream: also I have sent
to ask of the oracle at Kastalia whether it be worth the quest,
and the oracle chargeth me straightway to send a ship on the
sacred mission. This deed do thou offer me to do, and I swear
to give thee up the sway and kingly rule. Let Zeus the
ancestral god of thee and me be witness of my oath and stablish
it surely in thine eyes.’

So they made this covenant and parted; but Jason straightway
bade heralds to make known everywhere that a sailing was.toward.
And quickly came three sons of Zeus, men unwearied in battle,
whose mothers were Alkmene and Leto of the glancing eyes”,

 

2% T.e. one son of Zeus and Alkmene, Herakles, and two sons of
Zeus and Leto, Kastor and Polydeukes.
PYTH. IV. 172-204. “75

 

and two tall-crested men of valour, children of the Earth-shaker,
whose honour was perfect as their might, from Pylos and from
farthest Tainaros: hereby was the excellence ‘of their fame
established—even Euphemos’ fame, and thine, wide-ruling Perikly-
menos. And at Apollo’s bidding came the minstrel father of
song, Orpheus of fair renown.

(7 And Hermes of the golden staff sent two sons to the toilsome
task, Echion and Eurytos in the joy of their eae they
came, even from their dwelling at the foot of,’ Pangaios: and
willingly and with glad heart their father Boreas, king of winds,
harnessed Zetes and Kalais, men both with bright wings shooting
from their ee For Hera kindled within those sons of gods
the all-persuading sweet desire for the ship Argo, that none
should be left behind and stay by his mother’s side in savourless
and riskless life, but each, even were death the price, achieve in
company with his peers a magic potency of his valour.

Now when that goodly crew were come to Iolkos, Jason
mustered them with thanks to each, and the seer Mopsos
prophesied by omens and by sacred lots, and with good will sped
the host on board.

And when they had hung the anchors over the prow, then
their chief taking in his hands a golden goblet stood up upon the
stern and called on Zeus whose spear is the lightning, and on
the! rush of waves and winds ‘and the nights and paths of the
deep, to speed them quickly over, and for days of cheer and
friendly fortune of return, And from the clouds a favourable
voice of thunder pealed in answer; and there came bright light-
ning flashes bursting through. ,

Then the heroes took heart in obedience to the heavenly
signs; and the seer bade them strike into the water with their
oars, while he spake to them of happy hopes; and in their rapid
hands the rowing sped untiringly.

And with breezes of the South they came wafted to the
mouth of the Axine sea; there they founded a shrine and sacred
76 PYTH. IV. 204-231.

 

close of Poseidon, god of seas, where was a red herd of Thracian
bulls, and a new-built altar of stone with hollow top”.

Then as they set forth toward an exceeding peril they prayed
the lord of ships that they might shun the terrible shock of the
clashing rocks: for they were twain that had life, and plunged
along more swiftly than the legions of the bellowing winds; but
that travel of the seed of gods made end of them at last™*.

After that they came to the Phasis; there they fought with
dark-faced Kolchians even in the presence of Aietes. And there
the queen of keenest darts, the Cyprus-born, first brought to
men from Olympus the frenzied bird, the speckled wry-neck”,
binding it to a four-spoked wheel without deliverance, and taught
the son of Aison to be wise in prayers and charms, that he
might make Medea take no thought to honour her parents, and
longing for Hellas might drive her by persuasion’s lash, her heart
afire with love.

Then speedily she showed him the accomplishment of the
tasks her father set, and mixing drugs «with oil gave him for his
anointment antidotes of cruel pain, and they vowed to be joined
together in sweet wedlock.

But when Aietes had set in the midst a plough of adamant,
and oxen that from tawny jaws breathed flame of blazing fire,
and with bronze hoofs smote the earth in alternate steps, and
had led them and yoked them single-handed, he marked out in a
line straight furrows, and for a fathom’s length clave the back of
the loamy earth; then he spake thus: ‘This work let your king,
whosoever he be that hath command of the ship, accomplish me,
and then let him bear away with him the imperishable coverlet,
the fleece glittering with tufts of gold.’

 

18 For the blood of the victims,

* The Symplegades having failed to crush the ship Argo between
them were themselves destroyed by the shock of their encounter with
each other. Probably a tradition of icebergs survived in this story.

4 Used as a love-charm.
PYTH. IV. 232-258. 97

 

He said, and Jason flung off from him his saffron mantle, and
outting his trust in God betook himself to the work; and the
ire made him not to shrink, for that he had had heed to the
vidding of the stranger maiden skilled in all pharmacy. "So he
drew to him the plough and made fast by force the bulls’ necks
in the harness, and plunged the wounding goad into the bulk of
their huge sides, and with manful strain fulfilled the measure of
his work.. And a cry without speech came from Aietes in his
agony, at the marvel of the power he beheld.

Then to the strong man his comrades stretched forth their
hands, and crowned him with green wreaths, and greeted him
with gracious words. And thereupon the wondrous son!® of Helios
told him in what place the knife of Phrixos had stretched the
shining fell; yet he trusted that this labour at least should never
be accomplished by him. For it lay in a thick wood and grasped
by a terrible dragon’s jaws, and he in length and thickness was
larger than their ship of fifty oars, which the iron’s blows had
welded.

Long were it for me to go by the beaten track, for the time
is nigh out, and I know a certain short path, and many others
l6ok 6 me for skill. The glaring speckled dragon, O Arkesilas,
he slew by subtlety, and by her own aid he stole away Medea,
the murderess of Pelias. And they went down into the deep of
Ocean and into the Red Sea, and-to the Lemnian race of husband-
slaying wives; there also they had games and wrestled for a
prize of vesture, and lay with the women of the land.

, And then it was that in a stranger womb, by night or day, the
fateful seed was sown of the bright fortune of thy race. For
there began the generations of Euphemos, which should be
thenceforth without end.: And in time mingling among the
homes of Lakedaimonian men they made their dwelling in the

 

16 Aietes,
78 PYTH. IV. 258-288.

 

isle that once was Kalliste!”; and thence the son of Leto gave
thy race the Libyan plain to till it and to do honour therein to
your gods, and to rule the divine city of golden-throned Kyrene
with devising of the counsels of truth.

Now hearken to a wise sayin even as the wisdom of Oedipus.
If one with sharp axe lop the hats of a great ‘oak and mar the
glorious form, even in the perishing of the fruit thereof it yet
giveth fakes of that it was; whether at the last it come even
to the winter fire, or whether with upright pillars in a, master’s
house it stand, to serve drear service within alien walls,” and the
place thereof knceweth it no more”.

But thou art a physician most timely, and the god of healing
maketh thy light burn brightly. A gentle hand must thou set to
a festering wound. It is a small thing even for a slight man to
shake a city, but to set it firm again in its place this is hard
struggle indeed, unless with sudden aid God guide the ruler’s
hand. For thee are prepared the thanks which these deeds win.
Be strong to serve with all thy might Kyrene’s goody destiny.

And of Homer’s words take this to ponder in thy heart: Of
a good messenger, he saith, cometh great honour to every deed. Even
to the Muse is right messengership a gain. Now good cause
have Kyrene and the glorious house of Battos to know the
righteous mind of Demophilos. For he was a boy with boys, yet
in counsels an old man of a hundred years: and the evil tongue
he robbeth of its loud voice, and hath learnt to abhor the
insolent, neither will he make strife against the good,/nor tarry
when he hath a deed in hand. For a brief span hath oppor-
tunity for men, but of him it is known surely when it cometh,
and he waiteth thereon a servant but no slave.

Now this they say is of all griefs the sorest, that one knowing

 

v Thera.
,8 In this parable the oak is the state, the boughs its best men, the
fire and the alien house destruction and servitude.
PYTH. IV. 288-299. 65)

 

good should of necessity abide without lot therein. Yea thus
doth Atlas struggle now against the burden of the firmament, far
from his native land and his possessions. Yet the Titans were
set free by immortal Zeus. As time runneth on the breeze
abateth and there are shiftings of the sails. And he hath hope
that when he shall have endured to the end his grievous plague
he shall see once more his home, and at Apollo’s fountain ?®
joining in the feast give his soul to rejoice in her youth, and
amid citizens who love his art, playing on his carven lute, shall
enter upon peace, hurting and hurt of none. Then shall he tell
how fair a fountain of immortal verse he made to flow for
Arkesilas, when of late he was the guest of Thebes.

 

19 The fountain Kyra in the heart of the city Kyrene.
80 PYTH. V. 1-20.

 

Vi

FOR ARKESILAS OF KYRENE,

WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE,

This ode celebrates the same victory as the foregoing. It would seem
that the chariot had been consecrated to Apollo and left in the temple
at Delphi, but the horses were brought home to Kyrene and led in
procession through the sacred street of Apollo, with their charioteer
Karrhotos, brother of Arkesilas’ wife.

WIDE-REACHING is the power of wealth, whensoever a mortal
man hath received it at the hands of Fate with pure virtue
mingled, and bringeth it to his home, a follower that winneth
him many friends. Arkesilas, thou favourite of the gods, thou
verily seekest after it with good report from the first steps
of thy glorious life, with aid of Kastor of the golden car,
who after the wintry storm hath shed bright calm about thy
happy hearth’.

Now the wise bear better the power that is given of God.
And thou walkest in righteousness amid thy prosperity which is
now great; first, for that thou art king of mighty cities, thy
inborn virtue hath brought this majestic honour to thy soul, and
again thou art now blessed in that from the famous Pythian

 

1 Kastor was not only. a patron of charioteers, but also, with his
twin-brother Polydeukes, a protector of mariners and giver of [air
weather.
PYTH. V. 20-49. 81

 

games thou hast won glory by thy steeds, and hast received this
triumphal song of men, Apollo’s joy.

Therefore forget not, while at Kyrene round Aphrodite’s
pleasant garden thy praise is sung, to set God above every other
as the cause thereof: also love thou ‘Karrhotos? chiefest of thy
friends; who hath not brought with him Excuse the daughter of
late-considering Afterthought back to the house of the just-
ruling sons of Battos; but beside the waters of Kastalia a
welcomed guest he crowned thy hair with the crown of the
conquering car, for the reins were safe® in his hands throughout
the twelve swift turns along the sacred course.

Of the strong harness brake he no whit: but there is hung
up‘ all that cunning work of the artificers that he brought with
him when he passed over the Krisaian hill to the plain within
the valley of the god: therefore now the chamber of cypress-
wood possesseth it, hard -by the statue which the bow-bearing
Kretans dedicated in the Parnassian shrine, the natural image in
one block®. Therefore with eager heart it behoveth thee to go
forth to meet him who hath done thee this good service.

Thee also, son® of Alexibios, the Charites of lovely hair make
glorious. Blessed art thou for that after much toil thou hast a
monument of noble words. Among forty charioteers who fell?
thou didst with soul undaunted bring thy car unhurt, and hast
now come back from the glorious games unto the plain of Libya
and the city of thy sires.

 

2 The charioteer.

3 T.e. well-handled and un-broken in the sharp turns round the goal.

*T.e.in Apollo’s temple at Delphi.

5 This would seem to have been a piece of wood growing naturally
in thé form of a man. ® Karrhotos.

7™ This seems great havoc among the starters. Probably besides the
forty who fell there were others who were not actually upset but yet
did not win. No doubt the race must have been run in heats, but these
must still have been crowded enough to make the crush at the turns

exceedingly dangerous,
G
82 PYTH. V. 50-78.

 

Without lot in trouble hath there been never any yet, neither
shall be: yet still the ancient bliss of Battos followeth the race,.
albeit with various fortune; a bulwark is it to the city, and to
strangers a most welcome light.

From Battos even deep-voiced lions® fled in fear when he
uttered before them a voice from overseas: for the captain and
founder Apollo gave the beasts over to dire terror, that he might
not be false to his oracles which he had delivered to the ruler
of Kyrene.

Apollo it is who imparteth unto men and women cures for
sore maladies, and hath bestowed on them the lute, and giveth
the Muse to whomsoever he will, bringing into their hearts fair
order of peace; and inhabiteth the secret place of his oracles;
whereby at Lakecaimon and at Argos and at sacred Pylos he
made to dwell the valiant sons of Herakles and Aigimios®,

From Sparta they say came my own dear famous race’:
thence sprang the sons of Aigeus who came to Thera, my
ancestors, not without help of God; but a certain destiny brought
thither a feast of much sacrifice", and thence receiving, O Apollo,
thy Karneia’ we honour at the banquet the fair-built city of
Kyrene, which the spear-loving strangers haunt, the Trojan

 

® Pausanias says that Battos, the founder of Kyrene, was dumb when
he went to Africa, but that on suddenly meeting a lion the fright gave
him utterance. According to Pindar the lions seem to have been still
more alarmed, being startled by Battos’ foreign accent.

® The Dorians.

10 There were Aigidai at Sparta and Spartan colonies, of which
Kyrene was one, and also at Thebes; to the latter branch of the family
Pindar belonged.

ul The Karneia, a Dorian feast of which we hear often in history.

13 These Trojan refugees were supposed to have anciently settled on
the site where Kyrene was afterwards built. Battos (or Aristoteles)
and his new settlers honoured the dead Trojans as tutelar heroes of the
spot.
PYTH. V. 78-101. 83

 

seed of Antenor. For with Helen they came thither after they
had seen their native city smoking in the fires of war.

And now to that chivalrous race do the men whom Aristoteles™
-brought, opening with swift ships a track through the deep sea,
give greeting piously, and draw nigh to them with sacrifice and
gifts. ,

He also planted greater groves of gods, and made a paved
road'* cut straight over the plain, to be smitten with horsehoofs
in processions that beseech Apollo’s guardianship for men; and
there at the end of the markét-place he lieth apart in death.
Blessed was he while he dwelt among men, and since his death
the people worship him as their hero.

And apart from him before their palace lie other sacred, kings
that have their lot with Hades; and even. now perchance they
hear, with such heed as remaineth to the dead, of this great deed
sprinkled with kindly dew of outpoured song triumphal, whence
have they bliss in common with their son Arkesilas unto whom
it falleth due.

Him it behoveth by the song of the. young men to celebrate
Phoibos of the golden sword, seeing that from Pytho he hath
won a recompense of his cost in this glad strain of glorious
victory.

Of him the wise speak well: I but repeat their words saying

 

18 Battos, ;

1% The sacred street of Apollo, along which the procession moved
which sang this ode. The pavement, and the tombs cut in the rock on
each side are still to be seen, or at least were in 1817, when the Italian
traveller Della Cella visited the place. Béckh quotes from his Viaggio
da Tripoli di Barberia alle frontiere occedentali dell’ Egitto, p. 139:
‘Oggi ho passeggiato in una delle strade (di Cirene) che serba ancora
Yapparenza di essere stata fra le pit cospicue. Non solo @ tutta intag-
liata nel vivo sasso, ma a due lati @ fiancheggiata da lunga fila di tombe
quadrate di dieci circa piedi di altezza, anch’ esse tutte d’un pezzo sca-

vate nella roccia,
G2
84 PYTH. V. 102-116.

 

that he cherisheth understanding above his years, that in eloquent
speech and boldness he is as the wide-winged eagle among birds,
and his strength in combat like a tower. And he hath wings to
soar with the Muses, as his mother before him, and now hath
he proved him a cunning charioteer: and by all ways that lead
to honour at home hath he adventured.

As now the favour of God perfecteth his might, so for the time
to come, blest children of Kronos, grant him to keep it in counsel
and in deed, that never at any time the wintry blast of the late
autumn winds® sweep him away. Surely the mighty mind of
Zeus guideth the destiny of the men he loveth. I pray that to
the seed of Battos he may at Olympia grant a like renown.

 

5 Le., probably, calamity in old age,
PYTH. VI. 1-14. 85

 

VI.

FOR XENOKRATES OF AKRAGAS,

WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE.

This victory was won B.C. 494, when Pindar was twenty-eight years
old, and the ode was probably written to be sung at Delphi im-
mediately on the event. Thus, next to the tenth Pythian, written
eight years before, this is the earliest of Pindar’s poems that remains
to us.

Xenokrates was a son of Ainesidamos and brother of Theron. The
second Isthmian is also in his honour.

HeEarRKEN! for once more we plough the field’ of Aphrodite of
the glancing eyes, or of the Graces call it if you will, in this our
pilgrimage to the everlasting centre-stone of deep-murmuring*
earth.

For there for the blissful Emmenidai, and for Akragas by the
riverside, and chiefliest for Xenokrates, is builded a ready
treasure of song within the valley of Apollo rich in golden.
gifts.

That treasure of his shall neither wind nor wintry rain-storm
coming from strange lands, as a fierce host born of the thunder-
ous cloud, carry into the hiding places of the sea, to be beaten
by the all-sweeping drift: i ‘ ,

 

1 The field of poesy.
2 An epithet appropriate to volcanic soils.
86 PYTH. VI. 14-54.

 

But in clear light its front shall give tidings of a victory won
in Krisa’s dells, glorious in the speech of men to thy father
Thrasyboulos, and to all his kin with him.

Thou verily in that thou settest him ever at thy right hand
cherishest the charge which once upon the mountains they say
the son® of Philyra gave to him of exceeding might, even to the
son of Peleus, when he had lost his sire: first that of all gods he
most reverence Kronos’ son, the deep-voiced lord of lightnings
and of thunders, and then that he never rob of like honour a
parent’s spell of life.

Also of old time had mighty Antilochos this mind within him,
who died for his father’s sake, when he abode the murderous
onset of Memnon, the leader of the Ethiop hosts.

For Nestor’s chariot was stayed by a horse that was stricken
of the arrows of Paris, and Memnon made at him with his
mighty spear. Then the heart of the old man of Messene was
troubled, and he cried unto his son; nor wasted he his words in
vain; in his place stood up the godlike man and bought his
father’s flight by his own death. So by the young men of that
ancient time he was deemed to have wrought a mighty deed,
and in succouring of parents to be supreme.

These things are of the past; but of men that now are Thrasy-
boulos hath come nearest to our fathers’ gauge. And following
his uncle also ‘he. hath made glory to appear for him; and with
wisdom doth he handle wealth, neither gathereth the fruit of an
unrighteous , or, overweening youth, but rather. of knowledge
amid the secret places of the Pierides. And to thee, Earth-
shaker, who didst devise ventures of steeds, with right glad heart
he draweth nigh. Sweet is his spirit toward the company of his
guests, yea sweeter than the honeycomb, the toil of bees,

 

8 Cheiron.
PYTH. VII. 1-22. 87

 

VII.

FOR MEGAKLES OF ATHENS,

WINNER IN THE FOUR-HORSE CHARIOT-RACE,

Megakles won this victory B.C. 490, the year of the battle of Mara-
thon He was a member of the great house of the Alkmaionidai, to
which Kleisthenes and Perikles belonged. Megakles was a frequent
name in the family: this Megakles was probably the nephew, possibly
the son, of Kleisthenes. Sey

FarrEsT of preludes is the great name of Athens to whosoever
will lay foundation of songs for the mighty race of Alkmaionidai
and for their steeds. What country, what house among all lands
shall I name more glorious throughout Hellas?

For unto all cities is the fame familiar of the citizens of
Erechtheus, who at divine Pytho have wrought thee, O Apollo,
a glorious house’,

And I hereto am led by victories, at Isthmos five, and one
pre-eminent, won at Olympia at the feast of Zeus, and two at
Kirrha, which thou, O Megakles, and thy sire have won.

Now at this new good fortune I rejoice; yet somewhat also I
grieve, even to behold how envy requiteth noble deeds*. Yet
thus ever, they say, must fair hap abiding with a man engender
bad with good.

 

' The Alkmainodai had lately been spending large sums on the re-
building of Apollo’s temple at Delphi,
2 Megakles was twice ostracized.
88 PYTH. VIII. 1-17,

 

VIII.

FOR ARISTOMENES OF AIGINA

WINNER IN THE WRESTLING-MATCH,

The precise date of this ode is uncertain, but there is strong internal
evidence of its having been written soon after the battle of Salamis,
after which, as is well known, the dproreta, or first honours for valour,
were awarded to Aigina. ‘The insolence of the barbarian despot
seems to be symbolized by that of the giants Typhon and Porphyrion.

The ode was apparently to be sung on the winner’s return to Aigina.
No less than eleven of the extant odes were written for winners from
that island.

O KINDLY Peace, daughter of Righteousness, thou that makest
cities great, and holdest the supreme keys of counsels and of
wars, welcome thou this honour to Aristomenes, won in the
Pythian games.

Thou knowest how alike to give and take gentleness in due
season: thou also, if any have moved thy heart unto relentless
wrath, dost terribly confront the enemy’s might, and sinkest In-
solence in the sea.

Thus did Porphyrion provoke thee unaware. Now precious is
the gain that one beareth away from the house of a willing
giver. But violence shall ruin a man at the last, boast he never
so loudly. He of Kilikia, Typhon of the hundred heads, escaped
not this, neither yet the king of giants‘: but by the thunderbolt

 

1 Porphyrion,
PYTH. VIII. 17-47. 89

 

they fell and by the bow of Apollo, who with kind intent hath
welcomed Xenarches home from Kirrha, crowned with Parnas-
sian wreaths and Dorian song.

Not far from the Graces’ ken falleth the lot of this righteous
island-commonwealth, that hath attained unto the glorious deeds
of the sons of Aiakos*: from the beginning is her fame perfect,
for she is sung of as the nurse of heroes foremost in many
games and in violent fights: and in her mortal men also is she
pre-eminent.

But my time faileth me to offer her all I might tell at length
by lute and softer voice of man, so that satiety vex not.

So let that which lieth in my path, my debt to thee, O boy,
the youngest of thy country’s glories, run on apace, winged by
my art.

For in wrestlings thou art following the footsteps of thy
uncles, and shamest neither Theognetos at Olympia, nor the vic-
tory that at Isthmos was won by Kleitomachos’ stalwart limbs, .

And in that thou makest great the clan of the Midylidai thou
attainest unto the very praise which on a time the son of Oikleus
spake in a riddle, when he saw at seven-gated Thebes the sons
of the Seven standing to their spears, what time from Argos
came the second race on their new enterprise*. Thus spake he
while they fought: ‘By nature, son, the noble temper of thy
sires shineth forth in thee. I see clearly the speckled dragon
that Alkmaion weareth on his bright shield, foremost at the
Kadmean gates.

 

2 Aiakos and his descendants, especially Aias, were the chief national
heroes of Aigina.

2 It seems doubtful what this legend exactly was. Either Amphiaraos,
during the attack of the first Seven against Thebes, saw by prophetic
vision the future battle of the second Seven, the Epigonoi. among whom
were his own son Alkmaion, and Adrastos, the sole survivor of the first
Seven; or else these are the words of his oracle after his death, spoken
when the battle of the Epigonoi had begun but was not yet ended. .
90 PYTH. VIII. 48-78.

 

And he who in the former fight fared il], hero Adrastos, is now
endowed with tidings of a better omen. Yet in his own house
his fortune shall be contrariwise: for he alone of all the Danaan
host, after that he shall have gathered up the bones of his dead
son, shall by favour of the gods come back with unharmed folk-
to the wide streets of Abas*.’

On this wise spake Amphiaraos. Yea and with joy I too my-
self throw garlands on Alkmaion’s grave, and shower it withal
with songs, for that being my neighbour and guardian of my
possessions® he met me as I went up to the earth’s centre-stone,
renowned in song, and showed forth the gift of prophecy which
belongeth unto his house *

But thou, far-darter, ruler of the glorious temple whereto all
men go up, amid the glens of Pytho didst there grant this the
greatest of joys: and at home before didst thou bring to him at
the season of thy feast the keen-sought prize of the pentathlon.
My king, with willing heart I make avowal that through thee is
harmony before mine eyes in all that I sing of every conqueror.

By the side of our sweet-voiced song of triumph hath
Righteousness taken her stand, and I pray, O Xenarches’, that
the favour of God be unfailing toward the fortune of thee and
thine. For if one hath good things to his lot without long toil,
to many he seemeth therefore to be wise among fools and to be
crowning his life by right devising of the means. But these
things lie not with men: it is God that ordereth them, who
setteth up one and putteth down another, so that he is bound
beneath the hands of the adversary.

 

* Abas was an ancient king of Argos.

® Probably there was a shrine of Alkmaion near Pindar’s house at
Thebes, so ‘that he considered his household to be under the hero's pro-
tection: perhaps he had deposited money in the shrine, for temples were
often used as treasuries.

® Probably in some vision seen by Pindar on his journey to Delphi.

7 Father of Aristomenes,
PYTH. VIII. 78-100. o1

 

Now at Megara also hast thou won a prize, and in secluded
Marathon, and in the games of Hera in thine own land, three
times, Aristomenes, hast thou overcome.

And now on the bodies of four others® hast thou hurled thy-
self with fierce intent, to whom the Pythian feast might not
award, as uuto thee, the glad return, nor the sweet smile that
welcometh thee to thy mother’s side; nay but by secret ways
they shrink from meeting their enemies, stricken down by their
evil hap.

Now he that hath lately won glory in the time of his sweet
youth is lifted on the wings of his strong hope and soaring
valour, for his thoughts are above riches.
~ In a little moment groweth up the delight of men; yea and in
like sort falleth it to the ground, when a doom adverse hath
shaken it.

Things of a day—what are we, and what not? Man is a
dream of shadows.

Nevertheless when a glory from God hath shined on them, a
clear light abideth upon men, and serene life.
™ Aigina®, mother dear, this city in her march among the free,
with Zeus and lordly Aiakos, with Peleus and valiant Telamon
and with Achilles, guard thou well.

 

® His competitors in ‘four ties of the wrestling-match,
- ® The nymph, protectress of the island,
92 PYTH. IX. 1-9.

 

IX.

FOR TELESIKRATES OF KYRENE,

WINNER OF THE FOOT-RACE IN FULL ARMOUR,

The Hellenic heavy-armed soldier was often called upon to advance at
a run, as for instance in the charge at Marathon. With a view no
doubt to such occasions this race in full armour had been instituted
at Pytho in 498, and in 478 it was won by Telesikrates. The ode
was probably sung in a procession at Thebes, before Telesikrates had,
gone back to Kyrene, but the legends related are mainly connected
with Kyrene. Probably the commentators are right in supposing that
Telesikrates was to take home with him a bride from the mother-
country, a fact which makes the legends told specially appropriate.

I HAVE desire to proclaim with aid of the deep-vested Graces a
victory at Pytho of Telesikrates bearing the shield of bronze, and
to speak aloud his name, for his fair fortune and the glory
wherewith he hath crowned Kyrene, city of charioteers.

Kyrene? once from Pelion’s wind-echoing dells Leto’s son, the
flowing-haired, caught. up and in a golden car bore away the
huntress-maiden to the place where he made her queen of a
land rich in flocks, yea richest of all lands in the fruits of the
field, that her home might be the third part? of the mainland of
earth, a stock that should. bear lovely bloom. And silver-foot

 

1 A Thessalian maiden, from whom, according to this legend, the
colony of Kyrene in Africa took its name.
* Ie. Libya, the continent which we now call Africa.
PYTH. IX. 9-43. 93

Aphrodite awaited the Delian stranger issuing from his car divine,
and lightly laid on him her hand: then over their sweet bridal-
bed she cast the loveliness of maiden shame, and in a common wed-
lock joined the god and the daughter of wide-ruling Hypseus, who
then was king of the haughty Lapithai, a hero whose father’s
father was the Ocean-god—for amid the famous mountain-dells
of Pindos the Naiad Kreiisa bare him after she had delight in
the bed of Peneus, Kreiisa, daughter of Earth.

Now the child he reared was Kyrene of the lovely arms: She
was not one who loved the pacings to and fro before the loom,
neither the delights of feastings with her fellows within the
house, but with bronze javelins and a sword she fought against
and slew wild beasts of prey; yea and much peace and sure she
gave thereby to her father’s herds, but for sleep, the sharer of
her bed, short_spent she it and sweet, descending on her eyelids
as the dawn drew near.

Once as she struggled alone, without spear, with a terrible
lion, he of the wide quiver, far-darting Apollo, found her: and
straightway he called Cheiron from his hall and spake to him
aloud: ‘Son of Philyra, come forth from thy holy cave, and
behold and wonder at the spirit of this woman, and her great
might, what strife she wageth here with soul undaunted, a girl
with heart too high for toil to quell; for her mind shaketh not_y-
in the storm of fear. What man begat her? From what tribe '
was she torn to dwell in the secret places of the shadowing
hills? She hath assayed a struggle unachievable. Is it lawful
openly to put forth my hand to her, or rather on a bridal-bed
pluck the sweet flower?’

To him the Centaur bold with a frank smile on his mild brow
made answer straightway of his wisdom: ‘Secret are wise Love-
craft’s keys unto love’s sanctities, O Phoibos, and among gods
and men alike all deem this shame, to have pleasure of marriage
at the first openly. Now even thee, who mayest have no part in
lies, thy soft desire hath led to dissemble in this thy speech.
94. PYTH. IX. 43-75.

 

The maiden’s lineage dost thou, O king, enquire of me—tho
who knowest the certain end of all things, and all ways? Hoy
many leaves the earth sendeth forth in spring, how many grain
of sand in sea and river are rolled by waves and the wind:
stress, what shall come to pass, and whence it shall be, thou dis
ernest perfectly. But if even against wisdom I must mate.
“myself, I will speak on.|) To wed ,this damsel camest thou unt:
this glen, and thou art’ destined to bear her beyond the sea to
chosen garden of Zeus, where thou shalt make her a city’
queen, when thou hast gathered together an island-people to |
hill in the plain’s midst. And now shall queenly Libya of broa
meadow-lands well-pleased receive for thee within a golden hous:
thy glorious bride, and there make gift to her of a portion in
the land, to be an inhabiter thereof with herselt, neither shal
it be lacking in tribute of plants bearing fruit after all kinds
neither a stranger to the beasts of chase. There shall she brin;
forth a son, whom glorious Hermes taking up from his mother’
arms shall bear to the fair-throned Hours and to Earth: anc
they shall set the babe upon their knees, and nectar and am
brosia they shall distil upon his lips, and shall make him as ar
immortal, a Zeus or a holy Apollo, to men beloved of him ;
very present help, a tutelar of flocks, and te some Agreus anc
Nomios, but to others Aristaios shall be his name.’

By these words he made him ready for the bridal’s swee
fulfilment. And swift the act and short the ways of gods wh
are eager to an end. That same day made accomplishment o
the matter, and in a golden chamber of Libya they lay together
where now she haunteth a city excellent in beauty and gioriou:
in the games.

And now at sacred Pytho hath the son of Karneadas weddec
that city to the fair flower of good luck: for by his victory ther
he hath proclaimed Kyrene’s name, even her’s who shall receiv
him with glad welcome home, to the country of fair wome
bringing precious honour out of Delphi.
PYTH. IX. 75-100. 95

 

Great merits stir to many words: yet to be brief and skilful
on long themes is a good hearing for bards: for fitness of times
is in everything alike of chief import.

That Iolaos had respect thereto® seven-gated Thebes knoweth
well, for when he had stricken down the head of Eurystheus
beneath the edge of the sword, she buried the slayer beneath the
earth in the tomb of Amphitryon the charioteer, where his
father’s father was laid, a guest of the Spartoi, who had left his
home to dwell among the streets of the sons of Kadmos who
drave white horses. To him and to Zeus at once did wise
Alkmene bear the strength of twin sons prevailing in battle.

Dull is that’ man who lendeth not his voice to Herakles, nor
hath in remembrance continually the waters of Dirke that nur-
tured him and Iphikles. To them will I raise a song of
triumph for that I have received good at their hands, after that
I-had prayed to them that the pure light of the voiceful Graces
might not forsake me. For at Aigina and on the hill of Nisos
twice ere now I say that I have sung Kyrene’s praise, and by
my act have shunned the reproach of helpless dumbness,

Wherefore if any of the citizens be our friend, yea even if he
be against us, let him not seek to hide the thing that hath been
well done in the common cause, and so despise the word of the
old god of the sea*. He biddeth one give praise with the whole
heart to noble deeds, yea even to an enemy, so be it that justice
be on his side.

Full many times at the yearly feast of Pallas have the maidens
seen thee winner, and silently they prayed each for herself that
such an one as thou, O Telesikrates, might be her beloved

 

8 Le. by seizing the moment left to him before it should be too late
to act. Thebes and Kyrene were connected by the fact that members
of the Aigid family lived at both places.

4 Nereus. Powers of divination and wisdom generally are often at-
tributed to sea-deities.
96 PYTH. IX. roo-125.

 

husband or her son; and thus also was it at the games c
Olympia and of ample-bosomed Earth®, and at all in thine ow:
land.

Me anywise to slake my thirst for song the ancient glory o
thy forefathers summoneth to pay its due and rouse it yet agai:
—to tell how that for love of a Libyan woman there went u;
suitors to the city of Irasa to woo Antaios’ lovely-haired daughte
of great renown; whom many chiefs of men, her kinsmen, sough
to wed, and many strangers also; for the beauty of her wa
marvellous, and they were fain to cull the fruit whereto he
gold-crowned youth had bloomed.

But her father gained for his daughter a marriage more gloriou
still. Now he had heard how sometime Danaos at Argos devise:
for his forty and eight maiden daughters, ere mid-day was upo
them, a wedding of utmost speed—for he straightway set thi
whole company at the race-course end, and bade determine by ;
foot-race which maiden each hero should have, of all the suitor
that had come.

Even on this wise gave the Libyan a bridegroom to hi
daughter, and joined the twain. At the line he set the damsel
having arrayed her splendidly, to be the goal and prize, am
proclaimed in the midst that he should lead her thence to be hi
bride who, dashing to the front, should first touch the robes shi
wore..

Thereon Alexidamos, when that he had sped through the swif
course, took by her hand the noble maiden, and led her throug]
the troops of Nomad horsemen. Many the leaves and wreath
they showered on him; yea and of former days many plumes o
victories had he won.

 

® Le at Delphi or Pytho. As being the supposed centre of the Eartl
it was the place of the worship of the Earth-goddess.
PYTH. X. 1-9. 97

 

x.

FOR HIPPOKLEAS OF THESSALY,

WINNER IN THE TWO-STADION FOOT-RACE OF BOYS,

 

The only reason we know for the digression about Perseus which oc-
cupies great part of this ode seems to be that Thorax, who engaged
Pindar to write it for Hippokleas, and perhaps Hippokleas himself,
belonged to the family of the Aleuadai, who were descended through
Herakles from Perseus.

This ode is the earliest entire poem of Pindar’s which survives. He
wrote it when he was twenty years old. The simplicity of the style
and manner of composition are significant of this. But there can
scarcely be said to_be traces here of Pindar’s early tendency in dealing
with mythological allusions to ‘sow not with the hand but with the
whole sack,’ which Korinna advised him to correct, and which is
conspicuous in a fragment remaining to us of one of his Hymns,

Happy is Lakedaimon, blessed is Thessaly : in both there reigneth
a race sprung from one sire, from Herakles bravest in the fight.
What vaunt is this unseasonable? Nay, now, but Pytho calleth
me, and Pelinnaion’, and the sons of Aleuas who would fain lead
forth the loud voices of a choir of men in honour of Hippokleas.

For now hath he tasted the joy of games, and to the host of
the dwellers round about hath the valley beneath Parnassos pro-
claimed him best among the boys who ran the double race?.

 

1 Hippokleas’ birth-place.
* Down the stadion (220 yards) and back.
98 PYTH. X. 10-44.

 

O Apollo, sweet is the end when men attain thereto, and the
beginning availeth more when it is speeded of a god. Surely
of thy devising were his deeds: and this his inborn valour hath
trodden in the footsteps of his father twice victor at Olympia in
panoply of war-affronting arms®: moreover the games in the deep
meadow beneath Kirrha’s cliff gave victory to the fleet feet of
Phrikias*.

May good luck follow them, so that even in after days the
splendour of their wealth shall bloom. Of the pleasant things of
Hellas they have no scanty portion to their lot; may they happen
on no envious repentings of the gods. A god’s heart, it may
be, is painless ever; but happy and a theme of poet’s song
is that man who for his valiance of hands or feet the chiefest
prizes hath by strength and courage won, and in his life-time
seen his young son by good hap attaining to the Pythian crown.
Never indeed shall he climb the brazen heaven, but whatsoever
splendours we of mortal race may reach, through such he hath
free course even to the utmost harbourage./“But neither by
taking ship, neither by any travel on foot, to the Hyperborean
folk shalt thou find the wondrous way.

Yet of old the chieftain Perseus entered into their houses and

feasted among them, when that he had lighted on them as they
" were sacrificing ample hecatombs of asses to their god. For ever
in their feasts and hymns hath Apollo especial joy, and laugheth
to see the braying ramp of the strange beasts. Nor is the Muse
a stranger to their lives, but everywhere are stirring to and fro
dances of maidens and shrill noise of pipes: and binding golden
bay-leaves in their hair they make them merry cheer. Nor pesti-
lence nor wasting eld approach that hallowed race: they toil not
neither do they fight, and dwell unharmed of cruel Nemesis.

 

3 T.e. in the race run in full armour, like that at Pytho which Telesi-
krates of Kyrene won, celebrated in the fore-going ode.

* Probably a horse with which Hippokleas’ father won a race at
Pytho.
PYTH. X. 44-72. 99

 

In the eagerness of his valiant heart went of old the son of Danaé,
for that Athene led him on his way, unto the company of that
blessed folk. Also he slew the Gorgon and bare home her head
with serpent tresses decked, to the island folk a stony death. I
ween there is no marvel impossible if gods have wrought thereto.

Let go the oar, and quickly drive into the earth an anchor
from the prow, to save us from the rocky reef, for the glory of
my song of praise flitteth like a honey-bee from tale to tale.

I have hope that when the folk of Ephyra pour forth my sweet
strains by Peneus’ side, yet more glorious shall I make their
Hippokleas for his crowns and by my songs among his fellows
and his elders, and I will make him possess the minds of the
young maidens.

For various longings stir secretly the minds of various men;
yet each if he attain to the thing he striveth for will hold his
eager desire for the time present to him, but what a year shall
bring forth, none shall foreknow by any sign.

My trust is in the kindly courtesy of my host Thorax, of him
who to speed my fortune hath yoked this four-horse car of the
Pierides, as friend for friend, and willing guide for guide.

As gold to him that trieth it by a touch-stone, so is‘a true
soul known. :

His noble brethren also will we praise, for that they exalt and
make great the Thessalians’ commonwealth. For in the hands
of good men lieth the good piloting of the cities wherein their
fathers ruled. “OA
100 PYTH. XI. 1-16.

 

XI.

FOR THRASYDAIOS OF THEBES,

WINNER IN THE BOYS’ SHORT FOOT-RACE.

The date of this victory was B.C. 478, nearly two years after the battle
of Plataea, and the deliverance of Thebes from Persian influence and
the sway of a tyrannous oligarchy. But beyond this we have nothing
certain to which we can refer the allusions to Theban affairs, public
and private, which we have reason to think present in the ode.

DAUGHTERS of Kadmos, thou Semele whose goings are with the
queens of Olympus, and thou Ino Leukothea who housest with
the Nereids of the sea, come ye up with the mother‘ of a mighty
son, even of Herakles, unto the temple of Mélia” and into the
holy place of the golden tripods, which beyond all others Loxias
hath honoured, and named it the shrine Ismenian, a truthful seat of
seers; where now, O children of Harmonia, he calleth the whole
heroic sisterhood of the soil to assemble themselves together, that
of holy Themis and of Pytho and the Earth-navel of just judg-
ments ye may sing at early evening, doing honour to seven-gated
Thebes, and to the games at Kirrha, wherein Thrasydaios hath
made his father’s house glorious by casting thereon a third wreath
for his victory in the rich cornlands*® of Pylades, who was the
host of Lakonian Orestes.

 

1 Alkmene. ? Mother of Ismenios and Teucros, by Apollo.
* Jn Phokis.
PYTH. XI. 17-45. IoL

 

Orestes, on the murder of his father, Arsinoé his nurse saved
from the violent hands of Klytaimnestra and out of the ruinous
treason, what time the daughter of Dardanid Priam, Kassandra,
was by the glittering bronze in company with Agamemnon’s soul
sped to the shadowy shore of Acheron by the woman who had
no pity.

Did then the slaughter of Iphigenia far from her own land on
Euripos’ shore so sting her mother to the arousal of a wrath of
grievous act? Or had nocturnal loves. misguided her, in thraldom
to a paramour’s embrace? a sin in new-wed brides most hateful,
and that cannot be hidden for the talk of stranger tongues: for
the citizens repeat the shame. For prosperity must sustain an
envy equalling itself: but concerning the man of low place the
rumour is obscure.

Thus died the hero himself*, the son of Atreus, when after
long time he came unto famous Amyklai, and drew down with
him to death the maiden prophetess, after that he consumed with
fire the Trojans’ habitations of softness.

And thus Orestes, in the tenderness of his youth, came and
was the guest of the old man Strophios, who dwelt at the foot of
Parnassos: but with long-tarrying sword he slew his mother, and
left Aigisthos’ body in its blood.

Verily, my friends, by triple roads of interchanging ways I have
wound about, though heretofore I had kept on a straight track.
Or hath some wind blown me out of my course, as when it
bloweth a boat upon the sea? But thine it is, my Muse, since
thou for reward didst promise the loan thereof, to raise thy voice
for silver now on this tale, now on that, so that for this time at
least it is on behalf either of Thrasydaios or of his sire who
conquered at Pytho: for of both are the joy and glory burning
lights.

 

* Agamemnon. It is a strange variety of the tale that he is spoken
of as having been murdered at Amyklai and not at Argos or Mykenai.
So above Orestes is called Lakonian, 5 Kassandra.
102 PYTH. XI. 46-64.

 

Of old for victo1ies in the chariot-race they had bright glory
at Olympia in the famous games for the swiftness of their steeds:
and now have they gone down among the naked runners in the
stadion, and have put to rebuke the host of the Hellenes by
their speed.

God grant me to desire things honourable, seeking things
possible in my life’s prime.

The middle course I find to prosper most enduringly in the
commonwealth, and a state of tyranny I condemn. On well-
doing for the common good® I bestow my pains: so are the
envious baffled, if one hath excelled in such acts to the utter-
most, and- bearing it modestly hath shunned the perilous reproach
of insolence: so also at the end shall he find black death more
gracious unto him, to his dear children leaving the best of posses-
sions, even the glory of an honourable name.

This it is that beareth abroad the name of Iolaos in song, and
the names of the mighty Kastor and of thee, king Polydeukes, ye
sons of gods, who one day in Therapnai and the next in Olympus
have your dwelling-place. ,

 

° (Not for a party.)
PYTH. XII. 1-13. 103

 

XII.

FOR MIDAS OF AKRAGAS,

WINNER IN THE FLUTE-PLAYING MATCH,

This is an early ode: the victory was won either in 494 or 490. It
was to be sung, it would seem, at Akragas, and very probably in «
procession to the shrine of the tutelar divinity of the city, with an
address to whom it seemingly begins, though it is difficult to say
what degree of personification is intended.

I pray thee, lover of splendour, most beautiful among the cities
of men, haunt of Persephone, thou who by the banks of Akragas?
stream that nourisheth thy flocks, inhabitest a citadel builded
pleasantly—O queen, graciously and with goodwill of gods and
men welcome this crown that is come forth from Pytho for
Midas’ fair renown; and him too welcome therewithal who hath
overcome all Hellas in the art which once on a time Pallas
Athene devised, when she made music of the fierce Gorgon’s
death-lament.

That heard she pouring from the maiden heads and heads of
serpents unapproachable amidst the anguish of their pains, when
Perseus had stricken the third sister, and to the isle Seriphos
and its folk bare thence their doom.

Yea also he struck with blindness the wondrous brood of
104 PYTH. XII. 13-32.

 

Phorkos!, and to Polydektes’ bridal brought a grievous gift, and
grievous eternally he made for that man his mother’s slavery and
ravished bed: for this he won the fair-faced Medusa’s head, he
who was the son of Danaé, and sprung, they say, from a living
stream of gold.

But the Maiden®, when that she had delivered her well-beloved
from these toils, contrived the manifold music of the flute, that
with such instrument she might repeat the shrill lament that
reached her from Euryale’s* ravening jaws.

A goddess was the deviser thereof, but having created it for a
possession of mortal men, she named that air she played the
many-headed* air, that speaketh gloriously of folk-stirring games,
as it issueth through the thin-beat bronze and the reeds which
grow by the Graces’ city of goodly dancing-ground in the precinct
of Kephisos’ nymph, the dancers’ faithful witnesses.

~ But if there be any bliss among mortal men, without labour

it is not made manifest: it may be that God will accomplish it
even to-day, yet the thing ordained is not avoidable: yea, there
shall be a time that shall lay hold on a man unaware, and shall
give him one thing beyond his hope, but another it shall bestow
not yet,

 

1 The three Grey Sisters, whose one common eye Perseus stole,
Snvarat xépat
tpeis xuxvdpoppor Kowov pp’ éxtnpeva
povdbovres, &s ov" Hios mpoodépxerat
axriow, ov6' 4 vieTepos pyyvn tore.
Aesch. Prom. 813.
This must mean some kind of twilight, not total darkness, or they coulk
hardly have missed their eye.
? Athene. 5 One of the Gorgons.
“A certain vézos abAnrinés was known by this name.
THE NEMEAN ODES.
NEM. I. 1-12. 107

 

I.

FOR CHROMIOS OF AITNA,

WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE,

This Chromios was a son of Agesidamos and brother-in-law of Hieron,
and the same man for whom the ninth Nemean was written. He had
become a citizen of Hieron’s new city of Aitna, and won this victory
B.C. 473.

This ode seems to have been sung before his house in Ortygia, a
peninsula on which part of Syracuse was built, and in which was
the fountain Arethusa. The legend of Arethusa and Alpheos ex-
plains the epithets of Ortygia with which the ode opens. The greater
part of the ode is occupied with~the story of Herakles, perhaps
because Chromios was of the Hyllean tribe and thus traced his de-
scent to Herakles.

O RESTING-PLACE. august of Alpheos, Ortygia, scion of famous
Syracuse, thou that art a couch of Artemis and a sister of
Delos}, from thee goeth forth a song of sweet words, to set
forth the great glory of whirlwind-footed steeds in honour of
Aitnaian Zeus.

For now the car of Chromios, and Nemea, stir me to yoke to
his victorious deeds the melody of a triumphal song. And thus
by that man’s heaven-sped might I lay my foundations in the
praise of gods. In good fortune men speak well of one
altogether: and of great games the Muse is fain to tell.

 

1 Tie. so honoured by Artemis as to rank with her native Delos.
108 NEM. I. 13-45.

 

Sow then some seed of splendid words in honour of this isle,
which Zeus, the lord of Olympus, gave unto Persephone, and
bowed his hair toward her in sign that this teeming Sicily he
would exalt to be the best land in the fruitful earth, with
gorgeous crown of citadels. And the son of Kronos gave unto
her a people that wooeth mailéd war, a people of the horse and
of the spear, and knowing well the touch of Olympia’s golden
olive-leaves. Thus shoot I arrows many, and without falsehood
I have hit the mark.

And now at the doors of the hall of a hospitable man I stand
to sing a goodly song, where is prepared for me a friendly feast,
and not unwonted in that house are frequent stranger-guests:
thus hath he found good friends to pour a quenching flood on
the mouldering fire of reproach.

Each hath his several art: but in straight paths it behoveth
him to walk, and to strive hard wherein his nature setteth him.
Thus worketh strength in act, and mind in counsels, when one
is born to foresee what shall come after. In thy nature, son of
Agesidamos, are uses both for this and that.

I love not to keep hidden in my house great wealth, but to
have joy of that 1 have, and to have repute of liberality to my
friends: for the hopes of much-labouring men seem to me even
as mine.

Now I to Herakles cleave right willingly, among high deeds of
valour rousing an ancient tale; how that when from his mother’s
womb the son of Zeus escaping the birth-pang came quickly into
the glorious light with his twin-brother, not unobserved of Hera
did he put on the saffron swaddling bands; but the queen of gods
in the kindling of her anger sent presently the two snakes, and
they when the doors were opened went right on into the wide
bedchamber, hasting to entwine the children, that they should
be a prey to their fierce teeth.

But the boy lifted up his head upright and was first to essay
the fight, seizing with inevitable grasp of both his hands the
NEM. I. 45-72. 109

 

“two serpents by the necks, and time, as he strangled them,
forced the breath out of their monstrous forms,

But a shock unendurable startled the women about Alkmene’s
bed, yea and herself too started to her feet from the couch half-
robed, and would fain have beaten back the fierce beasts’
violence.

And quickly ran thronging thither with bronze arms the
captains of the sons of Kadmos; and brandishing in his hand his
sword bare of its sheath came Amphitryon smitten with sharp
pain; for everyone alike is grieved by the ills of his own house,
but the heart is soon quit of sorrow that careth but for
another’s care.

And he stood in amazement, and gladness mingled with his
fear; for he saw the marvellous courage and might of his son,
since the immortals had turned to the contrary the saying of the
messengers unto him.

Then he called a man that lived nigh to him, a chosen pro-
phet of the most high Zeus, Teiresias the true seer: and he set
forth to him and to all his company with what manner of for-
tune should the child have his lot cast, how many lawless
monsters on the dry land, how many on the sea he should
destroy.

Others moreover, of men the hatefullest, who walked in guile
and insolence, he prophesied that he should deliver over unto
death: saying that when on Phlegra’s plain the gods should meet
the giants in battle, beneath the rush of his arrows their bright
hair should be soiled with earth; but he in peace himself should
obtain a reward of rest from his great toils throughout all time
continually within the house of bliss, and after that he had re-
ceived fair Hebe to be his bride, and made his marriage-feast,
should remain beside Zeus, the son of Kronos, well-pleased with
his dwelling-place divine.
IIo NEM. II. 1-12.

 

II.

FOR TIMODEMOS OF ATHENS,

WINNER IN THE PANKRATION.

The date of this ode is unknown. It would seem to have been sung
at Athens on the winner’s return homée.. He belonged to the clan
of the Timodemidai of Salamis, but to the deme of Acharnai.

As to the nature of the Pankration see Dict. Ant. It was a combina-
tion of wrestling and boxing, probably with wide license of rules.
The best extant illustration of it in sculpture is the famous group of
the Pankratiasts (commonly called the Luttatori) in the Tribune of
the Uffizi at Florence.

From the self-same beginning whence the Homerid bards draw
out the linkéd story of their song, even a prelude calling upon
Zeus—so also Nemeaian Zeus it is in whose far-famous grove
this man hath attained unto laying his first foundation of victory
in the sacred games.

And yet again must the son of Timonoés, if in the way of his
fathers’ guiding him straight this age hath given him to be a
glory of great Athens—yet again and often must he pluck the
noble flower of Isthmian games, and in the Pythian conquer.
Like is it that not far from the mountain-brood of Pleiads'* shall
be the rising of Orion.

 

1 The Pleiads were daughters of Atlas. One victory betokens
another to come, as the rising of a constellation betokens the rising
of its neighbour.
NEM. II. 13-25. 11

 

Well able verily is Salamis to rear a man of battles: so at
Troy was Hektor aware of Aias; and so now, O Timodemos,
art thou glorified by thy stubborn prowess in the pankration.

Acharnai of old was famous for its men, and as touching
games the Timodemidai rank there pre-eminent. Beneath Par-
nassos’ lordly height they won four victories in the games;
moreover in the valleys of noble Pelops they have obtained eight
crowns at the hands of the men of Corinth, and seven at Nemea;
and at home more than may be numbered, at the games
of Zeus:

To whose glory, O citizens, sing for Timodemos a song of
triumph, and bring him in honour home, and chant our prelude
tunefully.
112 NEM. III. 1-17.

 

III.

FOR ARISTOKLEIDES OF AIGINA,

WINNER IN THE PANKRATION.

 

The date of the victory is unknown: the ode seems to have been

written long afterwards, probably for some anniversary celebration of
the event.

 

O DIVINE Muse, our mother, I pray thee come unto this Dorian
isle Aigina stranger-thronged, for the sacred festival of the Nemean
games!: for by the waters of Asopos? young men await thee,
skilled to sing sweet songs of triumph, and desiring to hear thy
call.

For various recompense are various acts athirst; but victory
in the games above all loveth song, of crowns and valiant deeds
the fittest follower. Thereof grant us large store for our skill,
and to the king of heaven with its thronging clouds do thou who
art his daughter begin a noble lay; and I will marry the same to
the voices of singers and to the lyre.

A pleasant labour shall ‘be mine in glorifying this land where
of old the Myrmidons dwelt, whose ancient meeting-place Aris~
tokleides through thy favour hath not sullied with reproach by
any softness in the forceful strife of the pankration; but a

 

1 T.e. commemorating the Nemean games and the victories obtained
by citizens of Aigina there.

? There seems to have been a stream of this name in Aigina, as well
as in Boeotia.
NEM. III. 17-44. 113

 

healing remedy of wearying blows he hath won at least in this
fair victory in the deep-lying plain of Nemea.

Now if this son of Aristophanes, being fair of .form and
achieving deeds as fair, hath thus attained unto the height of
manly excellence, no further is it possible for him to sail un-
traversed sea beyond the pillars of Herakles, which the hero-god
set to be wide-famed witnesses of the end of voyaging: for
he had overcome enormous wild-beasts on the seas, and tracked
the streams through marshes to where he came to the goal that
turned him to go back homeward, and there did he mark out the
ends of the earth.

But to what headland of a strange shore, O my soul, art thou
carrying aside the course of my ship? To Aiakos and to his
race I charge thee bring the Muse. Herein is perfect justice, to
speak the praise of good men: neither are desires for things
alien the best for men to cherish: search first at home: a fitting
glory for thy sweet song hast thou gotten there in deeds of
ancient valour. ‘

Glad was King Peleus when he cut him his gigantic spear, he
who took Iolkos by his single arm without help of any host,
he who held firm in the struggle Thetis the daughter of the sea.

Also the city of Laomedon did mighty Telamon sack, when
he fought with Iolaos by his side, and again to the war of the
Amazons with brazen bows he followed him; neither at any time
did man-subduing terror abate the vigour of his soul.
~ By inborn worth doth one prevail mightily; but whoso hath
but precepts is a vain man and is fain now for this thing
and now again for that, but a sure step planteth he not at
any time, but handleth countless enterprises with a purpose that
achieveth naught.

Now Achilles of the yellow hair, while he dwelt in the house of
Philyra’, being yet a child made mighty deeds his play; and

 

8 Cheiron’s mother.
II4, NEM. III. 44-76.

 

brandishing many a time his little javelin in his hands, swift as
the wind he dealt death to wild lions in the fight, and boars he
slew also and dragged their heaving bodies to the Centaur, son of
Kronos, a six years’ child when he began, and thenceforward
continually. And Artemis marvelled at him, and brave Athene,
when he slew deer without dogs or device of nets; for by
fleetness of foot he overcame them.

7vhis story also of the men of old have I heard: how within
his cavern of stone did deep-counselled Cheiron rear Jason, and
next Asklepios, whom he taught to apportion healing drugs with
gentle hand:/after this it was that he saw the espousals of
Nereus’ daughter of the shining wrists, and fondling nursed her
son, strongest of men, rearing his soul in a life of harmony;
until by blowing of sea winds wafted to Troy he should await
the war-cry of the Lykians and of the Phrygians and of the
Dardanians, cried to the clashing of spears; and joining in battle
with the lancer Ethiops hand to hand should fix this purpose in
his soul, that their chieftain Memnon, Helenos’ fiery cousin,
should go back again to his home no more.

Thenceforward burneth ever a far-shining light for the house
of Aiakos; for thine O Zeus is their blood, even as thine also
are the games whereat my song is aimed, by the voice of
the young men of the land proclaiming aloud her joy. For
victorious Aristokleides hath well earned a cheer, in that he hath
brought new renown to this island, and to the Theoroi* of the
Pythian god, by striving for glory in the games.

By trial is the issue manifest, wherein may one be more
excellent than his fellows, whether among boys a boy, or among
men a man, or in the third age among elders, according to the
nature of our mortal race. Four virtues doth a long life bring,
and biddeth one fit his thought to the things about him®. From
such virtues this man is not far.

 

* Sent from Aigina to Apollo’s temple at Delphi.
5 This is very obscure: Béckh said that the longer he considered it
NEM. IIL. 76-84. 115

 

Friend, fare thee well: I send to thee this honey mingled with
white milk, and the dew of the mixing hangeth round about it,
to be a drink of minstrelsy distilled in breathings of Aiolian
flutes; albeit-it come full late.

Swift is the eagle among the birds of the air, who seizeth
presently with his feet his speckled prey*, seeking it from afar
off; but in low places dwell” the chattering daws, To thee
at least, by the will of thronéd Kleio, for sake of thy zeal in the
games, from Nemea and from Epidauros and from Megara hath
a great light shined,

 

the more obscure it became to him. Donaldson ‘is inclined to think
that Pindar is speaking with reference to the Pythagorean division of
virtue into four species, and that he assigns one virtue to each of the
four ages of human life (on the same principle as that which Shake-
speare has followed in his description of the seven ages) namely tem-
perance as the virtue of youth, courage of early manhood, justice of
mature age, and prudence of old age.’ ® Snakes.
7 Or ‘on vile things feed.’
116 NEM. IV. 1-18.

 

IV.

'

FOR TIMASARCHOS OF AIGINA,

WINNER IN THE BOYS’ WRESTLING-MATCH.

The date of this ode is unknown: we can only infer, from the way in
which Athens is spoken of, that it was written before the war be-
tween that state and Aigina. It seems to have been sung on the
winner’s return home, very likely in a procession through the streets.

Best of physicians for a man’s accomplished toil is festive joy:
and the touch of songs, wise daughters of the Muses, hath
power of comforting. Less doth warm water avail to bathe limbs
for soothing than words of praise married to the music of the
lyre. For speech is longer-lived than act, whensoever by favour
of the Graces the tongue hath drawn it forth out of the depth
of the heart.

Be it the prelude of my hymn to dedicate it to Zeus the son
of Kronos, and to Nemea, and to the wrestling of Timasarchos;
and may it have welcome in the Aiakids’ stronghold of goodly
towers, the common light of all, which aideth the stranger with
justice}.

Now if thy sire Timokritos were still cheered by the quicken-
ing sun, full oft with music manifold of the lute would he
have bent him unto this my theme, and sounded a hymn for the
fair triumphs that have brought thee a chain of wreaths, even

 

1 Aigina. See OL. viii. 21; Pyth. viii. 22.
NEM. IV. 18-51. 117

 

from the games of the Kleonaians? now, and erewhile from
the bright and famous Athens, and at seven-gated Thebes: for
beside Amphitryon’s splendid sepulchre the sons of Kadmos
nothing loth sprinkled the winner with flowers ‘for Aigina’s sake.
For thither as a friend to friends he came, though to a city not
his own, and abode in the fortunate hall of Herakles.

With Herakles on a time did mighty Telamon destroy the
city of Troy, and the Meropes, and the man of war, the
great and terrible Alkyoneus, yet not until by hurling of stones
he had subdued twelve four-horse chariots, and horse-taming
heroes twice so many thereupon. Unversed in battles must he be
who understandeth not this tale, for whoso will do aught is like
to suffer also.

But to tell the tale at length custom forbiddeth me, and the
constraining hours: and a love-spell draweth me to put forth my
hand to the feast of the new moon.

Albeit the deep brine of the sea hold thee even to thy waist,
nevertheless bear bravely up against conspirings; assuredly shall
we shine forth above our enemies as we sail home in open day;
while another man of envious eye turneth about in darkness an
empty purpose that falleth to the ground. For me I know
certainly that whatsoever excellence Fate that is our lord hath
given me, time creeping onward will bring to its ordained
fulfilment.

Weave then this woof too presently, sweet my lute, a strain
with Lydian harmony that shall be dear to Oinone*, and to
Cyprus, where Teukros, son of Telamon, holdeth rule in a
new land.

But Aias hath the Salamis of his father: and in the Euxine
Sea Achilles hath a shining isle, and at Phthia hath Thetis power,

 

2 Kleonai was very near Nemea, and the Kleonaians were for a long
time managers of the Nemean games.
3 Seemingly the same personage as Aigina,
118 NEM. IV. 51-83.

 

and Neoptolemos in wide Epeiros, where cattle-pasturing head-
lands, from Dodona onwards, slope forward to the Ionian Sea,
And beside the foot of Pelion did Peleus set his face against
Iolkos, and deliver it over to be a servant to the Haimones, after
that he had proved the guileful counsels of Hippolyte, Akastos’
wife.

For by (stealing) his sword of cunning workmanship the son*
of Pelias prepared death for him in an ambush; but Cheiron
delivered him out of his hand; and thus he fulfilled the destiny
ordained him of Zeus, and having escaped the violence of the fire
and the dauntless lion’s claws exceeding keen, and the bitings of
teeth most terrible’, he espoused one of the Nereids high-
enthroned, and beheld the circle of fair seats whereon were
sitting the kings of heaven and of the sea, as they revealed unto
him their gifts, and the kingdom that should be unto him
and unto his seed.

Nightward® beyond Gadeira none may pass. Turn back again
to the mainland of Europe the tackle of our ship; for it were
impossible for me to go through unto the end all the tale of the
sons of Aiakos.

For the Theandrid clan came I a ready herald of games that
make men’s limbs wax strong, to Olympia and to Isthmos, and to
Nemea according to my promise, where having put themselves to
the proof they are returning homeward, not without wreaths
whose fruitage is renown; and there report hath told us,
O Timasarchos, that thy clan’s name is preeminent in songs
of victory.

Or if further for thy mother’s brother Kallikles thou biddest
me set up a pillar whiter than Parian stone, lo as the refining of
gold showeth forth all his splendours, so doth a song that singeth

 

* Akastos,

® Thetis, resisting her wooer Peleus, changed herself into fire and wild
beasts. See Dict. Myth, ® Westward.
NEM. IV. 83-96. 119g

 

a man’s rare deeds make him as the peer of kings. Let
Kallikles in his dwelling beside Acheron find in my tongue a
minstrel of his praise, for that at the games’ of the deep-voiced
wielder of the trident his brows were green with parsley of
Corinth; of him, boy, did Euphines, thy aged grandsire, rejoice
erewhile to sing.

Each hath his own age-fellow; and what each hath seen for
himself that may he hope to set forth best of all. How for
Melesias’® praise must such an one grapple in the strife, bending
the words beneath his grasp, yielding not his ground as he
wrestleth in speech, of gentle temper toward the good, but to
the froward a stern adversary.

 

™ The Isthmian games.
8 Timasarchos’ trainer in wrestling. He is here praised in terms bor-
rowed from the wrestling-school,
120 NEM. V. 1-14.

 

V.

FOR PYTHEAS OF AIGINA,

WINNER IN THE BOYS’ PANKRATION.

The date of this ode is uncertain. The winner’s brother Phylakidas,
gained the two victories, also in the pankration, which are celebrated
in the fourth and fifth Isthmians.

No statuary I, that I should fashion images to rest idly on their
pedestals, nay but by every trading-ship and plying boat forth
from Aigina fare, sweet song of mine, and bear abroad the news,
how that Lampon’s son, the strong-limbed Pytheas, hath won at
Nemea the pankratiast’s crown, while on his cheeks he showeth
not as yet the vine-bloom’s mother, mellowing midsummer.

So to the warrior heroes sprung from Kronos and Zeus and
from the golden nymphs, even to the Aiakidai, hath he done
honour, and to the mother-city, a friendly field to strangers.
That she should have issue of goodly men and should be famous
in her ships, this prayed they of old, standing beside the altar of
their grandsire, Zeus Hellenios, and together stretched forth their
hands toward heaven, even the glorious sons of Endais* and the
royal strength of Phokos, the goddess-born, whom on the sea-
beach Psamatheia? bare. Of their deed portentous and unjustly

 

1 Wife of Aiakos and mother of Peleus and Telamon, They killed
Phokos.

* A sea-nymph, mother of Phokos by Aiakos,
NEM. V. 14-43. 121

 

dared I am loth to tell, and how they left that famous isle, and
of the fate that drove the valiant heroes from Oinone. I will °
make pause: not for every perfect truth is it best that it discover
its face: silence is oft man’s wisest thought.

But if the praise of good hap or of strength of hand or of
steel-clad war be my resolve, let one mark me a line for a long
leap hence: in my knees I have a nimble spring: even beyond
the sea the eagles wing their way.

With goodwill too for the Aiakidai in Pelion sang the Muses’
choir most fair, and in the midst Apollo playing with golden
quill upon his seven-toned lyre led them in ever-changing strains.
They first of all from Zeus beginning sang of holy Thetis and
of Peleus, and how that Kretheus’ dainty daughter Hippolyte
would fain have caught him by her wile, and persuaded his friend
the king of the Magnetes her husband by counsels of deceit, for
she forged a lying tale thereto devised, how that he essayed to
go in unto her in Akastos’ bridal bed. But’the truth was wholly
contrary thereto, for often and with all her soul she had besought
-him with beguiling speech; but her bold words vexed his spirit ;
and forthwith he refused the bride, fearing the wrath of the
Father who guardeth host and guest. And he, the cloud-com-
pelling Zeus in heaven, the immortal’s king, was aware thereof,
and he promised him that with all speed he would find him a
sea-bride from among the Nereids of golden distaffs, having per-
suaded thereto Poseidon, their kinsman by his marriage, who
from Aigai to the famous Dorian Isthmus cometh oftentimes,
where happy troops with the reed-flute’s noise welcome the god,
and in bold strength of limb men strive.

The_fate_that_isbora—with- aman ..is.arbiter~ef—all-his.acts.
Thou, Euthymenes*, at Aigina falling into the goddess victory’s
arms didst win thee hymns of subtle strain: yea and:now too
to thee, O Pytheas, who art his kinsman of the same stock and

 

8 Maternal uncle of Pytheas.
122 NEM. V. 43-54.

 

followest in his footsteps, doth thy mother’s brother honour.
Nemea is favourable unto him, and the month* of his country
that Apollo loveth: the youth that came to strive with him he
overcame, both at home and by Nisos’ hill of pleasant glades®. 1]
have joy that the whole state striveth for glory. Know that
through Menander’s® aid thou hast attained unto sweet recom-
pense ,of toils. And meet it is that from Athens a fashioner of
4 athlets ‘gon ac

But if thou comest to Themistios’, to sing of him, away with
chill reserve, shout aloud, hoist to the top-yard of the mast the
sail, and tell how in the boxing and the pankration at Epidauro:
he won a double prize of valour, and to the portals of Aiakos
bare fresh wreaths of flowers, led by the Graces of the yellow
hair.

 

* The month called in Aigina Delphinios (April-May) when the
Nemean games took place.

5 At Megara. § Pytheas’ trainer, an Athenian.

™ Maternal grandfather of Pytheas.
NEM. VI. 1-13. 123

 

VI.

FOR ALKIMIDAS OF AIGINA,

WINNER IN THE BOYS’ WRESTLING-MATCH.

The date of this ode is unknown, but from the mention of the trainer
Melesias it has been inferred that it was among Pindar’s later works.
It would seem to have been sung at Aigina, perhaps at some feast of
the Bassid clan given in honour of the victory.

ONE race there is of men and one of gods, but from ‘one mother?
draw we both our breath, yet is the strength of us diverse al- ‘
together, for the race of man is as nought, but the brazen
heaven abideth, a habitation steadfast unto everlasting.

Yet withal have we somewhat in us like unto the immortals
bodily shape or mighty mind, albeit we know not what course
hath Destiny marked out for us to run, neither in the daytime,
neither in the night.

And now doth Alkimidas give proof that it is with his kindred
as with fruitful fields: for they in turn now yield to man his
yearly bread upon the plains, and now again they pause, and
gather back their strength?

From the pleasant meeting-places of Nemea hath the athlete

 

1 Earth.
? The ancients understood little of the rotation of crops, and often let
their fields lie fallow alternate years.
124 NEM. VI. 13-44.

 

boy come back, who following the ordinance* of Zeus hath now
approved him no baffled hunter in his wrestling-quest, and hath
guided his feet by the foot-prints of Praxidamas, his father’s
father, of whose blood he sprang.

For Praxidamas also by his Olympian victory first won the
olive-wreath from Alpheos for the Aiakidai, and five times being
crowned at Isthmos, and at Nemea thrice, he took away thereby
the obscurity of Sokleides, who was the eldest of the sons of
Agesimachos‘,

For these three warriors attained unto the topmost height of
prowess, of all who essayed the games, and by grace of God to
no other house hath the boxing-match given keeping of so many
crowns in this inmost place of all Hellas. I deem that though
my speech be of high sound I yet shall hit the mark, as it were
an archer shooting from a bow.

Come, Muse, direct thou upon this house a gale of glorious
song: for after that men are vanished away, the minstrel’s story
taketh up their noble acts, whereof is no lack to the Bassid clan;
old in story is the race and they carry cargo of home-made
renown, able to deliver into the Muses’ husbandmen rich matter
of song in honour of their lofty deeds.

For at sacred Pytho in like wise did a scion of the same stock
overcome, with the thong of the boxer bound about his hand,
even Kallias in whom were well-pleased the children of Leto of
the golden distaff, and beside Kastaly in the evening his name
burnt bright, when the glad sounds of the Graces rose. -

Also the Bridge® of the untiring sea did honour unto Kreontidas
at the triennial sacrifice of bulls by the neighbour states in the
holy place of Poseidon; and once did the herb® of the lion

 

* Of the celebrity of alternate generations.

* The order is descent was: Agesimachos, Sokleides, Praxidamas,
Theon, Alkimidas. Of these the first, third, and fifth, were distinguished
athletes, the others not. 5 The Isthmos.

6 The parsley which grew near the lair of the Nemean lion.
NEM. VI. 45-69. 125

 

shadow his brows for a victory won beneath the shadeless primal
hills of Phlious.

Wide avenues of glory are there on every side for chroniclers
to draw nigh to do honour unto this isle: for supreme occasion
have the children of Aiakos given them by the showing forth of
mighty feats.

Over land and beyond the sea is their name flown forth from
afar: even unto the Ethiopians it sprang forth, for that Memnon
came not home: for bitter was the battle that Achilles made
against him, having descended from his chariot upon the earth,
what time by his fierce spear’s point he slew the son of the
bright Morn.

And herein found they of old time a way wherein to drive
their car: and I too follow with my burden of song: and all
men’s minds, they say, are stirred the most by whatsoever wave
at the instant rolleth nearest to the mainsheet of the ship.

On willing shoulders bear I this double load, and am come a
messenger to proclaim this honour won in the games that men
call holy to be the five-and-twentieth that the noble house of
Alkimidas hath shown forth: yet were two wreaths in the
Olympian games beside the precinct of Kronion denied to thee,
boy, and to Polytimidas, by the fall of the lot’.

Peer of the dolphin hurrying through the brine—such would I
call Melesias* by whom thy hands and strength were guided, as
a chariot by the charioteer.

 

7 This can hardly mean, as some commentators take it, the drawing
of any particular tie; for if better men than any given competitor were
entered for the match, his defeat would be inevitable whether they were
encountered sooner or later.

8 Alkimidas’ trainer.
126 NEM. VII. 1-15.

 

VII.

FOR SOGENES OF AIGINA,

WINNER IN THE BOYS’ PENTATHLON.

This victory was probably won B.C. 462. The ode would seem to be
full of allusions, which however we cannot with any certainty explain.
It is partly occupied with the celebration of Achilles’ son Neoptole-
mos, and Pindar seems anxious to repel the charge of having on some
occasion depreciated that hero.

O EILEITHUIA that sittest beside the deep-counselling Moirai,
child of the mighty Hera, thou who bringest babes to the birth,
hearken unto us! Without thee looked we never on the light
or on the darkness of the night, nor came ever unto her who
is thy sister, even Hebe of the comely limbs.

But we receive our breath not all for a like life; each to his
several lot is kept apart by the yoke of fate.

Now by thy grace hath Sogenes the son of Thearion been
foremost in prowess, and his glory is sung aloud among the
winners of the five-game prize.

For he is a dweller in a city that loveth song, even this city
of the spear-clashing sons of Aiakos, and exceeding fain are they
to cherish a spirit apt for the strife of the games.

If a man have good hap in his attempt, he throweth into the
Muses’ stream sweet cause of song: for even deeds of might
for lack of song fall into deep darkness, and in but one way
have we knowledge of a mirror for fair deeds, if by the grace of
NEM. VII. 15-41. 127

 

Mnemosyne of the shining fillet they attain unto a recompense
of toils by the sound of voice and verse.

Wise shipmates know that the wind which tarrieth shall come
on the third day, nor throw away their goods through greed of
more’: the rich and the poor alike fare on their way to death.

Now I have suspicion that the fame of Odysseus is
become greater than his toils, through the sweet lays that
Homer saug; for over the feigning of his winged craft some-
thing of majesty abideth, and the excellence of his skill per-
suadeth us to his fables unaware.

Blind hearts have the general folk of men; for could they
have discovered the truth, never would stalwart Aias in anger for
the arms have struck through his midriff the sharp sword—even
he who after Achilles was best in battle of all men whom, to win
back his bride for fair-haired Menelaos, the fair breeze of
straight-blowing Zephyros wafted in swift ships toward Ilos’ town.

But to all men equally cometh the wave of death, and falleth
on the fameless and the famed: howbeit honour ariseth for them
whose fair story God increaseth to befriend them even when
dead, whoso have journeyed to the mighty centre-stone of wide-
bosomed earth.

There now beneath the floor of Pytho lieth Neoptolemos,
dying there when he had sacked the city of Priam where the
Danaoi toiled with him. He sailing thence missed Skyros, and
they wandered till they came to Ephyra, and in Molossia he
was king for a little while: howbeit his race held this state?
continually. Then was he gone to the god’s home’, carrying

 

1 Retaining the reading éwd xépde: Bdédov. I conjecture it to mean,
‘do not in their eagerness for trade choose an unfavourable and danger-
ous time for their voyage, but wait for the xa:pds, the right opportunity.’

2 The kingdom of Epeiros. Pyrrhos, the invader of Italy, called
himself a descendant of Neoptolemos (who was also called Pyrrhos),

* Delphi.
128 NEM. VII. 41-66.

 

an offering of the chief spoils from Troy: and there in quarrel
concerning meats a man smote him with a knife,

Thereat were the Delphian entertainers of strangers grieved
exceedingly: nevertheless he but paid a debt to destiny: for
it was needful that in that most ancient grove someone of the
lords the sons of Aiakos should abide within thenceforward,
beside the goodly walls of the god’s house, and that when with
plenteous sacrifice the processions do honour to the heroes, he
should keep watch that fair right be done. Three words shall
be enough: when he presideth over the games there is no lie
found in his testimony thereof.

O thou Aigina, of thy children that are of Zeus I have good
courage to proclaim that as of inheritance they claim the path
to glory, through splendour of their valorous deeds: howbeit in
every work a rest is sweet, yea even of honey cometh surfeit
and of the lovely flowers of Love.

“Now each of us is in his nature diverse, and several are
the lots of life we draw, one this and one another: but that
one man receive perfect bliss, this is impossible to men. I
cannot find to tell of any to whom Fate hath given this award
abidingly.

—~To thee, Thearion*, she giveth fair measure of bliss, first
daring in goodly deeds, and then understanding and sound mind.
Thy friend am I, and I will keep far from the man I love the
secret slander, and bring nigh unto him praise and true glory, as
it were streams of water : for meet is such recompense for the good.

If there be near me now a man of the Achaians who dwelleth
far up the Ionian sea, he shall not upbraid me: I have faith in
my proxeny®: and among the folk of my own land I look forth

 

* Father of Sogenes.

5 Pindar would seem to have been zpéfevos at Thebes for some state
of Epeiros, to which fact he appeals as a proof that he stood well with
the Epirot descendants of Neoptolemos.
NEM. VII. 66-82. 129

 

with clear gaze, having done naught immoderate, and having put
away all violence from before my feet. So let the life that
remaineth unto me run cheerly on.

He who knoweth shall say if indeed I come with slanderous
speech upon my lips to strike a jarring note. To thee, Sogenes
of the house of the sons of Euxenos, I swear that without over-
stepping the bound I have sent forth the swift speech of my
tongue as it were a bronze-headed javelin, such as saveth from
the wrestling the strong neck sweatless yet, or ever the limbs
be plunged in the sun’s fire ®

If toil there were, delight more abundant followeth after. Let
be; if somewhat over far I soared when I cried aloud, yet am I
not froward, that I should deny his glory unto one that
conquereth.

The weaving of wreaths is an easy thing: tarry a little: behold
the Muse fasteneth together gold and white ivory, and a lily
flower withal, that she hath plucked from beneath the deep sea’s
dew’. ;

Of Zeus be mindful when thou tellest of Nemea, and guide
the multitudinous voices of our song with a quiet mind: meet
is it that with gentle voice we celebrate in this land the king of

 

6 The Pentathlon was composed of five contests, namely, the jump,
throwing the disk, throwing the javelin, the foot-race, and wrestling.
The prize was for the best man in three contests out of the five. These
came in the order in which they are enumerated above; thus if the best
javelin-thrower had already won two of the other matches he would
not be challenged to wrestle, as the prize of the Pentathlon would be
already his. Very probably this had been the case with Sogenes, so
that it would naturally occur to Pindar thus allusively to expand his
not unfrequent comparison of his own art of poetry to that of a javelin-
thrower or archer. On the Pentathlon may be consulted an article by
Professor Percy Gardner in the Journal of Hellenic Studies for October,
1880, and a supplementary one by me in the following number.

™ Coral.
K
130 NEM. VII. 82-105.

 

gods: for they tell how he begat Aiakos of a mortal mother,
to be for his own fortunate land a ruler of cities, and for thee,
Herakles, a loving friend. and brother.

And if man receiveth aught from man, then may we say that
neighbour is to neighbour a joy worth all else, if he loveth him
with steadfast soul: now if even a god will consent hereto, then
in such bond with thee, O conqueror of the giants*, is Sogenes
fain to dwell happily in the well-built sacred street of his ances-
tors, cherishing a mind of tenderness toward his sire: for as
when four horses are yoked together in a car, so hath he his
house in the midst of thy holy places, and goeth in unto them
both on the right hand and on the left®.

O blessed spirit, thine is it to win hereto the husband of Hera,
and the grey-eyed maid?°; and thou art able to give to mortals
strength ever and again against baffling perplexities. Make thou
to cleave to them” a life of steadfast strength, and wind the bliss
thereof amid both youth and a serene old age, and may their
children’s children possess continually the honours that they
now have, and greater in the time to come.

Never shall my heart confess that I have outraged Neoptole-
mos with irreclaimable words. But thrice and four times to tell
over the same tale is emptiness in the end thereof, even as he of
‘the proverb that babbleth among children how that Korinthos
was the son of Zeus.

.

 

® Herakles,

® Thearion’s house seems to have had a shrine, or at least some
sacred ground, of Herakles at each side of it, so that he might regard
that hero as his neighbour. 10 Athene.

41 Thearion and Sogenes.

4A proverbial equivalent for vain and wearisome repetition.
NEM. VIII. 1-17. 131

 

VIII.

FOR DEINIS OF AIGINA,

WINNER IN THE SHORT FOOT-RACE,

The date of this ode is unknown. It was probably sung before the
shrine of Aiakos at Aigina.

Spir1T of beautiful youth, thou herald of Aphrodite’s loves am-
brosial, who on the eyes of girl or boy alighting, with tenderly
constraining hands dost handle one, but other otherwise—it is
enough if one not swerving from the true aim, in his every act
prevail to attain to the fulfilment of his worthier loves.

Auch loves were they that waited on the bridal-bed of Zeus
and Aigina, and were dispensers unto them of the Cyprian’s!
gifts: and thence sprang there a son? to be king of Oinone#,/“in
might of hand and in counsel excellent, and many a time did
many pray that they might look on him: for the chosen among
the heroes that dwelt around him were fain of their own will to
submit them unto his sovereignty, both whoso in rocky Athens
were leaders of the host, and at Sparta the children of Pelops.

So Aiakos’ holy knees clasp I a suppliant for a city well-
beloved and for these citizens, and I bear a Lydian crown
wrought cunningly with the sound of song, a glory out of Nemea
for two races run, of, Deinis and of his father Meges.

Behold, the happiness that is planted with the favour of God

 

1 Aphrodite. 2 Aiakos. 5 Aigina.

K 2
132 NEM. VIII. 17-42.

 

is most abiding among men; even such as once in the isle of
Cyprus loaded Kinyras with riches.

With poiséd feet I stand, and take breath for a little ere I
speak. For much and in many ways hath been said ere now;
and the contriving of new things and putting them to the touch-
stone to be tried is perilous altogether.

In words find the envious their dainties: envy fasteneth ever
on the good, and careth not to strive against the base.

Yea thus did envy slay the son of Telamon, thrusting him
through with his own sword. Verily if one be of stout heart
but without gift of speech, such an one is a prey unto forgetful-
ness in a bitter strife, and to the shiftiness of lies is proffered the
prize of the greatest. For in the secret giving of their votes
the Danaoi courted Odysseus, and thus did Aias, robbed of the
golden arms, wrestle in the grip of a bloody death.

Yet diverse verily were the strokes wherewith those twain
had cloven the warm flesh of the foe, what time they bare up
the war against the hedge of spears, whether about Achilles newly
slain, or in whatsoever labours else of those wide-ruining days.

Thus was there even of old the treacherous speech of hate,
that walketh with the subtleties of tales, intent on guile, slander
that breedeth ill: so doth it violence on the thing that shineth,
and uplifteth the rottenness of dim men’s fame.

Never in me be this mind, O our father Zeus, but to the
paths of simplicity let me cleave throughout my life, that being
dead I may set upon my children a name that shall be of no
ill report.

For gold some pray, and some for limitless lands: mine be it
amid my townsfolk’s love to shroud my limbs in earth, still
honouring where honour is due, and sowing rebuke on the
evildoers.

Thus groweth virtue greater, uplifted of the wise and just, as
when a tree watered by fresh dew shooteth toward the moist air
on high.
NEM. VIII. 42-51. 133

 

Manifold are the uses of friends, chiefest truly amid the press
of toil, yet doth joy also desire to behold his own assurance.*

Ah Meges, to bring back thy spirit to earth is to me impos-
sible, and of empty hopes the end is naught. Yet for thy house
and the clan of Chariadai I can upraise a lofty column of song
in honour of these two pairs of fortunate feet 5,

I have joy to utter praise meet for the act, for by such
charms of song doth a man make even labour a painless thing.
Yet surely was there a Komos-song even of old time, yea
before strife began between Adrastos and the sons of Kadmos°.

 

* Through celebration in song, which a friendly poet can give.

5 Of Meges and Deinis.

© The invention of encomiastic hymns was attributed by legend to
the time of the expedition of Adrastos and the other six against
Thebes. :
134 NEM. IX. I-11.

 

TX.

FOR CHROMIOS OF AITNA,

WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE.

This ode is placed by usage among the Nemeans, but the victory was
not won at Nemea, but at Sikyon, in the local games called Pythian.
Its date is unknown: it must have been after the founding of Aitna,
B.C. 476. Probably the ode was sung in a procession at Aitna,
some length of time after the victory. The Chromios is the Chro-
mios of the first Nemean, Hieron’s brother-in-law.

\

From Apollo at Sikyon will we lead our triumph forth, ye
Muses, unto the new-made city of Aitna, where doors are
opened wide to greet the invading guests, even to the fortunate
house of Chromios. Come claim for him a song of sweetness:
for he goeth up into the chariot of his victory, and biddeth us
sing aloud to the mother! and her twin children who keep
watch over high Pytho in fellowship.

Now there is a saying among men, that one hide not in
silence on the ground a good deed done: and meet for such
brave tales is divine song.

Therefore will we arouse the pealing lyre and rouse the flute,
in honour of the very crown of all contests of steeds, which
Adrastos in honour of Phoibos ordained beside Asopos’ stream.

Whereof when I make mention with voiceful honour I will
celebrate withal the Hero’, who then being king in that place

 

1 Leto. 2 Adrastos.
NEM. IX. 11-20. 135

 

did by the founding of a new feast and struggles of the strength
of men and of carven cars make his city known abroad and
glorious.

For he was flying before Amphiaraos of bold counsels, and
before a dangerous civil strife, from Argos and his father’s
house: for no longer were the sons of Talaos lords therein,
for a sedition had thrust them forth. The stronger man endeth
the contention that hath been before.

But when they had given to the son of Oikleus for his wife,
as one should give surety of an oath, Eriphyle, the slayer of her
husband, they became the greatest of the fair-haired Danaoi.
So thereafter led they on a time against seven-gated Thebes a
nost of men, but not by a road of signs propitious: nor would
the son of Kronos speed them on their mad journey from their
homes, but by the quivering lightnings he darted forth he bade
them hold from their road °.

But unto a revealed calamity hasted that company to go forth
with bronze shields and the gear of steeds; and on the banks
of Ismenos, stayed from their sweet return, they fed the white
smoke with their bodies,

For seven pyres devoured the young men’s limbs, but for
Amphiaraos Zeus by almighty thunderbolt clave the deep-
breasted earth, and buried him with his steeds, or ever the
warrior’s soul should be shamed by the smiting of him in the
back by Periklymenos’ spear. For when the terror cometh of
heaven, then flee even the sons of gods.

If it be possible, O son of Kronos, this trial of valour
against Phenician spears* for life or death I would fain defer
unto the utmost: and I beg of thee to grant unto the sons of

 

% Lightning and thunder were often an encouraging sign (there is
an instance in the fourth Pythian), byp this would depend on the
manner of them.

* War with the Carthaginians, who were still threatening the Hel-
lenic colonists in Sicily, in spite of their recent defeat,
136 NEM. IX. 30-52.

 

the men of Aitna for long time a portion in good laws, a
to make their people to dwell among glories that the citize
have won. Men are there here that love steeds and that ha
souls above desire of wealth. Hard of credence is the word
have spoken; for the spirit of honour which bringeth glory
stolen secretly by lust of gain.

Hadst thou been shield-bearer to Chromios among foot a
horse and in fightings of ships, thou hadst judged concerning .
jeopardy in the fierce fray, for in war did that divine honc
stir his warrior-soul to ward off havoc of Enyalios. Few <
there who may prevail by strength or valour to contrive a tur
ing of the cloud of imminent death against the ranks of t
enemy. Howbeit they tell how Hektor’s glory flowered besi
Skamander’s streams, and thus on the steep cliffs of Helor
banks*®, where men call the ford the Fountain of Ares, hz
this light shined for Agesidamos’ son in the beginning of |
praise. ef

And other deeds on other days will I declare, many do
amid the dust on the dry land, and yet others on the neig
bouring sea. Now out of toils which in youth have be
done with righteousness there ripeneth toward old age a ¢
of calm.

Let Chromios know that he hath from the gods a lot
wondrous bliss. For if one together with much wealth h:
won him glorious renown, it is impossible that a mortal’s fi
touch any further mountain-top.

The banquet loveth peace, and by a gentle song a victc
flourisheth afresh, and beside the bowl the singer’s voice wax«
brave. Let one mix it now, that sweet proclaimer of 1
triumphal song, and in silver goblets hand the grapes’ pote
child, even the goblets which for Chromios his mares erst wi

 

5 About B.C. 492 a battle was fought on the Heloros between
Syiacusans and the army of Hippokrates, tyrant of Gela.
NEM. IX. 52-55. 137

 

and sent to him from sacred Sikyon, entwined with well-earned
crowns of Leto’s son.

Now claim I, father Zeus, to have well sung this excellent
deed by aid of the Charites, and beyond many to do honour

to this victory by my words, for the javelin that I throw falleth
nearest to the Muses’ mark,
138 NEM. X. 1-12.

 

X.

FOR THEAIOS OF ARGOS,

WINNER IN THE WRESTLING-MATCH.

This ode, like the last, is improperly called Nemean. It commemo-
rates a victory won at the feast of the Hekatombaia at Argos. The
date is unknown.

THE city of Danaos and of his fifty bright-throned daughters,
Argos the home of Hera, meet abode of gods, sing Graces! for
by excellencies innumerable it is made glorious in the deeds of
valiant men.

Long ‘is the tale of Perseus!, that telleth of the Gorgon
Medusa: many are the cities in Egypt founded by the hands
of Epaphos?: neither went Hypermnestra’s choice astray when
she kept sheathed her solitary sword’,

Also their Diomedes did the grey-eyed goddess make incor-
ruptible and a god: and at Thebes, the earth blasted by the
bolts of Zeus received: within her the prophet*, the son of
Oikleus, the storm-cloud of war.

Moreover in women of beautiful hair doth the land excel.
Thereto in days of old Zeus testified, when he followed after
Alkmene and after Danaé.

And in the father of Adrastos and in Lynkeus did Argos

 

1 Son of the Argive Danaé. 2 Son of the Argive Io.
> Or perhaps: ‘Neither were Hypermnestra’s story misplaced here,
how she, &c.’ * Amphiaraos.
NEM. X. 12-37. 139

 

mingle ripe wisdom with upright justice: and she reared the
warrior Amphitryon. Now he came to the height of honour in
his descendants, for in bronze armour he slew the Téleboai, and
in his likeness the king of the immortals entered his hall, bearing
the seed of fearless Herakles, whose bride’in Olympos is Hebe,
who by the side of her mother, the queen of marriage, walketh
of all divinities most fair. .

My tongue would fail to tell in full the honours wherein the
sacred Argive land hath part: also the distaste® of men is ill to
meet. Yet wake the well-strung lyre, and take thought of
wrestlings; a strife for the bronze shield stirreth the folk to
sacrifice of oxen unto Hera and to the issue of games, wherein
the son of Oulias, Theaios, having overcome twice, hath obtained
forgetfulness of the toils he lightly bore.

Also on a time at Pytho he was first of the Hellenic host, and
won crowns at Isthmos and at Nemea, led thither by fair hap,
and gave work for the Muses’ plough by thrice winning at the
Gates® of the Sea and thrice on the famous plains in the pastures
ot Adrastos’ home’. Of that he longeth for, O Father Zeus, his
mouth is silent, with thee are the issues of deeds: but with a
spirit strong to labour and of a good courage he prayeth thy grace.
Both Theaios, and whosoever struggleth in the perfect consum-
mation of all games, know this, even the supremacy of the
ordinance of Herakles that is holden at Pisa*: yet sweet pre-
luding strains are those that twice have welcomed his triumph at
the festival of the Athenians: and in earthenware baked in the
fire, within the closure of figured urns, there came among the
goodly folk of Hera® the prize of the olive fruit’.

On the renowned race of thy mother’s sires there waiteth

 

® Disgust at hearmg anything profusely praised.

® At Corinth, in the Isthmian games. 7 Nemea.

® The Olympic games. 9 The Argives.
> 1 The Athenian prize seems to have been an olive-bough in a vase
of burnt clay.
140 NEM. X. 38-65.

 

glory of games by favour of the Graces and the sons of Tyn-
dareus together. Were I kinsman of Thrasyklos and Antias
I would claim at Argos not to hide mine eyes. For with how
many victories hath this horse-breeding city of Proitos flourished !
even in the Corinthian corner and from the men of Kleonai”™
four times, and from Sikyon they came laden with silver, even
goblets for wine, and out of Pellene clad in soft woof of wool!?.
But to tell over the multitude of their prizes of bronze is a
thing impossible—to count them longer leisure were needed—
which Kleitor and Tegea and the Achaians’ high-set cities and
the Lykaion set for a prize by the race-course of Zeus for the
conquerors by strength of hands or feet.

And since Kastor and his brother Polydeukes came to be the
guests of Pamphaes, no marvel is it that’ to be good athletes
should be inborn in the race. For they’ it is who being
guardians of the wide plains of Sparta with Hermes and
Herakles mete out fair hap in games, and to righteous men they
have great regard. Faithful is the race of gods.

Now, changing climes alternately, they dwell one day with
their dear father Zeus, and the next in the secret places under
the earth, within the valleys of Therapnai, fulfilling equal fate:
because on this wise chose Polydeukes to live his life rather than
to be altogether god and abide continually in heaven, when that
Kastor had fallen in the fight.

Him did Idas, wroth for his oxen, smite with a bronze spear-
head, when from his watch upon Taygetos Lynkeus had seen
them sitting within a hollow oak; for he of all men walking
the earth had keenest eyes. So with swift feet they were
straightway come to the place, and compassed speedily a dreadful
deed,

But terrible also was the vengeance which by the devising of

 

i Near Nemea. @ Le with prizes of cloaks.
18 An ancestor of Theaios. Probably he had given Theoxenia. See
OQ}. IIT. ™ Kastor and Polydeukes. 4 They slew Kastor.
NEM. X. 65-90. 141

 

Zeus those sons?® of Aphareus suffered: for on the instant came ,
Leto’s son™? in chase of them: and they stood up against him
hard by the sepulchre of their father. Thence wrenched they a
carved headstone that was set to glorify the dead, and they
hurled it at the breast of Polydeukes. But they crushed him
not, neither made him give back, but rushing onward with fierce
spear he drave the bronze head into Lynkeus’ side. And against
Idas Zeus hurled a thunderbolt of consuming fire.

So were those brothers in one flame? burnt unbefriended: for
a strife with the stronger is grievous for men to mix in.

Then quickly came back the son of Tyndareus® to his great
brother, and found him not quite dead, but the death-gasp rattled
in his throat. Then Polydeukes wept hot tears, and groaned, andi —
lifted up his voice, and cried: ‘Father Kronion—ah! what shall |
make an end of woes? Bid me, me also, O king, to die with him.
The glory is departed from a man bereaved of friends. Few are
they who in a time of trouble are faithful in companionship of toil.’

Thus said he, and Zeus came, and stood before his face, and
spake these words: ‘Thou art my son: but thy brother afterward
was by mortal seed begotten in thy mother of the hero that was
her husband. But nevertheless, behold I give thee choice of
these two lots: if, shunning death and hateful old age, thou
desirest for thyself to dwell in Olympus with Athene and with
Ares of the shadowing spear, this lot is thine to take: but if in
thy brother’s cause thou art so hot, and art resolved in all to
have equal share with him, then half thy time thou shalt be alive
beneath the earth, and half in the golden house of heaven,’

Thus spake his father, and Polydeukes doubted not which
counsel he should choose. So Zeus unsealed the eye, and
presently the tongue also, of Kastor of the brazen mail,

 

16 Idas and Lynkeus. 17 Polydeukes.

18 Either of the thunderbolt, or of a funeral-pile.

® Both brothers were nominally sons of Tyndareus, but really only
Kastor was: Polydeukes was a son of Zeus.
142 NEM. XI. 1-13.

 

XI.

FOR ARISTAGORAS OF TENEDOS,

ON HIS ELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY OF THE SENATE,

This ode again was written neither for a Nemean nor for any other
athletic victory, but for the ee:r#pia or initiatory ceremonies at
the election of a new mpvravs of Tenedos. The Prytanis would seem
to have been a kind of President of the Senate. The date is unknown.

DavuGuTER of Rhea, who hast in thy keeping the city halls},
O Hestia! sister of highest Zeus and of Hera sharer of his throne,
with good-will welcome Aristagoras to thy sanctuary, with good-
will also his fellows? who draw nigh to thy glorious sceptre, for
they in paying honour unto thee keep Tenedos in her place
erect, by drink-offerings glorifying thee many times before the
other gods, and many times by the savour of burnt sacrifice; and
the sound of their lutes is loud, and of their songs: and at
their tables never-failing are celebrated the rites of Zeus, the
stranger’s friend.

So with fair fame and unvexed heart may Aristagoras fulfil his
twelve-month term. 3

Blessed among men I count his father Arkesilas, and himself
for his splendid body and his heritage of a dauntless heart.

But if any man shall possess wealth, and witaal surpass his

 

1 The sacred fire of the state, over which Hestia watched, was kept
in the Prytaneion. ? The other Senators.
NEM. XI. 13-42. 143

 

fellows in comely form, and in games have shown his strength to
be the best, let such an one remember that his raiment is upon
mortal limbs, and that the earth shall be his vesture at the
end.

Yet in good words of his fellow-citizens is it meet that his
praise be told, and that we make his name comely with notes of
honey-sounding song.

Now among the neighbouring peoples sixteen illustrious vic-
tories have crowned Aristagoras and his famous clan in the
wrestling-match and in the pankration of weighty honour. But
hopes too diffident of his parents kept back the might of their
son from essaying the Pythian or Olympian strife: yet verily by
the God of Truth I am persuaded that both at Castaly and
at the tree-clad hill of Kronos, had he gone thither, he should
have turned back home with more honour than any of his rivals
who had striven with him, when that he had kept the fifth year’s
feast® ordained of Herakles with dance and song, and with the
shining shoots had bound his hair.

But thus among mortals is one cast down from weal by empty
boasts, while another through overmuch mistrusting of his strength
is robbed of his due honours, for that a spirit of little daring
draggeth him backward by the hand.

This were an easy thing to divine, that Peisander’s* stock was
from Sparta in the time of old (for from Amyklai he came®
with Orestes, bringing hither an army of Aiolians in bronze mail):
and also that the blood of his mother’s brother Melanippos was
blended with Ismenos’ stream’,

The virtues of an old descent repeat their vigour uncertainly
in the generations of men. Neither doth the black-soiled tilth bring
forth fruit continually, neither will the trees be persuaded to
bear with every year’s return a fragrant flower of equal wealth,
but in their turns only.

 

8 The Olympic. * Ancestor of Aristagoras and head of his clan.
5 «In the loms of his father.’ 6 T.e.a Theban alliance.
144 NEM. XI. 42-48.

 

Thus also doth destiny lead on the race of mortals. From
Zeus there cometh no clear sign to men: yet nevertheless we
enter on high counsels, and meditate many acts: for by un-
tameable hope our bodies are enthralled: but the tides of our
affairs are hidden from our fore-knowledge. Meet is it to pursue
advantage moderately : fiercest is the madness that springeth from

unappeasable desires.
THE ISTHMIAN ODES.
ISTHM. I. 1-15. 147

 

a

IL

FOR HERODOTOS OF THEBES,

WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE.

The date of this ode is unknown. We gather from the first strophe that
Pindar was engaged at the time to write an ode in honour of the
Delian Apollo to be sung at Keos, but that he put this off in order first
to write the present ode in honour of a victory won for his own native
state of Thebes.

 

O MOTHER, Thebe of the golden shield, thy service will I set
even above the matter that was in my hand. May rocky Delos,
whereto I am vowed, be not therefore wroth with me. Is there
aught dearer to the good than noble parents?

Give place O Apollonian isle: these twain fair offices, by the
grace of God, will I join together in their end, and to Phoibos
of the unshorn hair in island Keos with men of her sea-race will
I make my choral song, and therewithal this other for the sea-
prisoning cliffs of Isthmos.

For six crowns hath Isthmos given from her games to the people
of Kadmos, a fair glory of triumph for my country, for the land
wherein Alkmene bare her dauntless son, before whom trembled
aforetime the fierce hounds of Geryon.

“But I for Herodotos’ praise am fain to do honour unto his
four-horsed car, and to marry to the strain of Kastoreian or
lolaic song the fame that he hath earned, handling his reins in

his own and no helping hand. .
2
148 ISTHM. I. 15-46.

 

For these Kastor and Iolaos were of all heroes the mightiest
charioteers, the one to Lakedaimon, the other born to Thebes,
And at the games they entered oftenest for the strife, and with
tripods and caldrons and cups of gold they made fair their houses,
attaining unto victorious crowns: clear shineth their prowess in
the foot-race, run naked or with the heavy clattering shield; and
when they hurled the javelin and the quoit: for then was there
no five-fold game’, but for each several feat there was a prize.
Oft did they bind about their hair a crowd of crowns, and
showed themselves unto the waters of Dirke or on Eurotas’ banks?,
the son of Iphikles a fellow-townsman of the Spartoi’s race, the
son of Tyndareus inhabiting the upland dwelling-place of Therapna®
among the Achaians.

So hail ye and farewell: I on Poseidon and holy Isthmos, and on
the lake-shores of Onchestos will throw the mantle of my song,
and will among the glories of this man make glorious also the
story of his father Asopodoros’ fate, and his new country Orcho-
menos, which, when he drave ashore on a wrecked ship, harboured
him amid his dismal hap*. But now once more hath the fortune
of his house raised him up to see the fair days of the old time:
and he who hath suffered pain beareth forethought within his
soul.

If a man’s desire be wholly after valour, and he give thereto
both wealth and toil, meet is it that to such as attain unto it we
offer with ungrudging heart high meed of praise. For an easy
gift it is for a son of wisdom®, by a good word spoken in re-
compense for labour manifold to set on high the public fame.

 

1 The Pentathlon. See Introduction to Ol. xiii, and note on Nem. vii, p. 129.

? Rivers were xoupo7pépo: (nurterers of youth), and thus young men
who had achieved bodily feats were especially bound to return thanks
to the streams of their native places. * In Lakonia, ,

* Asopodoros seems to have been banished from Thebes and kindly
received in his banishment by Orchomenos.

® Here, as elsewhere, probably in the special sense of a poet.
ISTHM. I. 47-68. 149

 

For diverse meeds for diverse works are sweet to men, to the
shepherd and to the ploughman, to the fowler and to him whom
the sea feedeth—howbeit all those strive but to keep fierce famine
from their bellies; but whoso in the games or in war hath won
delightful fame, receiveth the highest of rewards in fair words of
citizens and of strangers,

Us it beseemeth to requite the earth-shaking son of Kronos,
who is also neighbour unto us, and to sound his praise as our
well-doer, who hath given speed to the horses of our car, and
to call upon thy sons*, Amphitryon, and the inland dwelling’ of
Minyas, and the famous grove of Demeter, even Eleusis, and
Euboia with her curving race-course. And thy holy place, Prote-
silas, add I unto these, built thee at Phylake by Achaian men.

But to tell over all that Hermes lord of games hath given to
Herodotos by his horses, the short space of my hymn alloweth
not. Yea and full oft doth the keeping of silence bring forth a
larger joy.

Now may Herodotos, up-borne upon the sweet-voiced Muse’s
shining wings, yet again with wreaths from Pytho and choice
wreaths from Alpheos from the Olympian games entwine his hand,
and bring honour unto seven-gated Thebes.

Now if one at home store hidden wealth, and fall upon other
men to mock them, this man considereth not that he shall give
up his soul to death having known no good report.

 

6 Herakles and Iolaos. 7 Orchomenos.
150 ISTHM. II. 1-10.

 

V IL

FOR XENOKRATES OF AKRAGAS,

WINNER IN THE CHARIOT-RACE.

This is the same winner for whom the sixth Pythian ode was written.
Its date would seem to be 476, while that of the sixth Pythian was
494. Yet the opening passage of this ode seems to imply that Xeno-
krates’ son Thrasyboulos was still little more than a boy, whereas in
494 he had been old enough to be his father's charioteer, and this
would be eighteen years later. But perhaps the passage is only an
allusion to Thrasyboulns’ boyhood as a time past. And certainly
both Xenokrates and his brother Theron seem to be spoken of in
this ode as already dead, and we know that Theron did not die till
473. Perhaps -therefore Thrasyboulos was celebrating in 472 the
anniversary of his deceased father’s victory, four years after thé victory
itself.

 

THE men of old, Thrasyboulos, who went up into the Muse’s
car to give welcome with the loud-voiced lyre, lightly for honour
of boys shot forth their honey-sounding songs, whensoever in
one fair of form was found that sweetest summer-bloom that
turneth hearts to think on fair-throned Aphrodite.

For then the Muse was not yet covetous nor a hireling, neither
were sweet lays tender-voiced sold with silvered faces by Terpsi-
chore of honeyed speech. But now doth she bid heed the word
of the Argive man! which keepeth nigh to the paths of truth:

 

1 Aristodemos.
i

ISTHM. II. 11-39. 151

 

‘Money, money maketh man,’ he said, when robbed of goods
at once and friends,

Forasmuch as thou art wise it is nothing hidden to thee that
I sing, while I do honour to the Isthmian victory won by speed
of horses, which to Xenokrates did Poseidon give, and sent to
him a wreath of Dorian parsley to bind about his hair, a man
of goodly chariot, a light of the people of Akragas.

Also at Krisa did far-prevailing Apollo look upon him, and
gave him there too glory: and again when he attained unto the
crowns of the Erectheidai in shining Athens he found no fault
in the chariot-saving hand of the man Nikomachos who drave
his horses, the hand wherewith in the instant of need he bare on
all the reins?.

Moreover the heralds of the seasons’, the Elean truce-bringers
of Zeus the son of Kronos, recognized him, having met belike
with hospitality from him, and in a voice of dulcet breath they
gave him greeting for that he had fallen at the knees of golden
Victory in their land which men call the holy place of Olympic
Zeus, where the sons* of Ainesidamos attained unto honour
everlasting.

For no stranger is your house, O Thrasyboulos, to pleasant
shouts of triumph, neither to sweet-voiced songs. For not uphill
neither steep-sloped is the path whereby one bringeth the glories
of the Helikonian maidens to dwell with famous men.

By a far throw of the quoit may I hurl even so far as did
Xenokrates surpass all men in the sweetness of his spirit. In
converse with citizens was he august, and upheld horse-racing
after the Hellenes’ wont: also worshipped he at all festivals of the

 

? T.c. either tightened the near or slackened the off reins to the utmost
in turning the goal, or perhaps, gave full rein to his horses between
each turn or after the final one.

3 The heralds who proclaimed throughout Hellas the approach of
the Olympic games, and an universal solemn truce during their celebration,

* Theron, the tyrant of Akragas, and Xenokrates.
152 ISTHM. II. 39-48.

 

gods, nor ever did the breeze that breathed around his hospitable
board give him cause to draw in his sail, but with the summer-
gales he would fare unto Phasis, and in his winter voyage unto
the shores of Nile®.

Let not Thrasyboulos now, because that jealous hopes beset
the mind of mortals, be silent concerning his father’s prowess,
nor from these hymns: for not to lie idle have I devised them.
That message give him, Nikesippos, when thou comest unto my
honoured friend.

 

® Metaphorically, in the extent of his hospitality.
ISTHM. III. 1-8. 153

 

III.

FOR MELISSOS OF THEBES,

WINNER IN THE PANKRATION,

The date of this ode is uncertain, though some on the hypothesis that
the battle alluded to is the battle of Plataiai, have dated it 478
or 474. In this battle, whatever it was, the Kleonymid clan to which
Melissos belonged had lost four men. The celebrity of the clan in
the games seems to have been eclipsed for some time, but Melissos
revived it by a chariot-victory at Nemea and this pankration-victory
at the Isthmus, won in spite of his small stature which might have
seemed to place him at a disadvantage. The ode compares his match
against his antagonists with that of Herakles against the African
giant Antaios.

Very probably this ode was sung at a night meeting of the clan, while
the altars of Herakles were blazing.

IF any among men having good fortune and dwelling amid
prizes of renown or the power of wealth restraineth in his heart
besetting insolence, this man is worthy to have part in his
citizens’ good words.

But from thee, O Zeus, cometh all high excellence to mortals;
and longer liveth their bliss who have thee in honour, but with
minds perverse it consorteth never steadfastly, flourishing through-
out all time.

In recompense for glorious deeds it behoveth that we sing the
valiant, and amid his triumphal company exalt him with fair
honours,
154 ISTHM. III. 9-37.

 

Of two prizes is the lot fallen to Melissos, to turn his heart
unto sweet mirth, for in the glens of Isthmos hath he won
crowns, and again in the hollow vale of the deep-chested lion
being winner in the chariot-race he made proclamation that his
home was Thebes.

Thus shameth he not the prowess of his kinsmen. Ye know
the ancient fame of Kleonymos with the chariot: also on the
mother’s side being akin to the Labdakidai his race hath been
conversant with riches, and bestowed them on the labours of the
four-horse car.

But time with rolling days bringeth changes manifold: only the
children of gods are free of wounds.

By grace of God I have ways countless everywhere open unto
me}: for thou hast shown forth to me, O Melissos, in the
Isthmian games an ample means to follow in song the excellence
of thy race: wherein the Kleonymidai flourish continually, and in
favour with God pass onward through the term of mortal life:
howbeit changing gales drive all men with ever-changing drift.

These men verily are spoken of as having honour at Thebes
from the beginning, for that they cherished the inhabitants round:
about, and had no part in loud insolence; if there be borne
about by the winds among men aught of witness to the great
honour of quick or dead, unto such have they attained altogether.
By the brave deeds of their house they have touched the pillars
of Herakles, that are at the end of things. Beyond that follow
thou no excellence.

Horse-breeders moreover have they been, and found favour
with mailed Ares; but in one day the fierce snow-storm of war
hath made a happy hearth to be desolate of four men.

But now once moré after that wintry gloom hath it blossomed,
even as in the flowery months the earth blossometh with red
roses, according to the counsels of gods,

 

' «Many themes on which I can justly praise the clan,’
ISTHM. III. 37-64. 155

 

For the Shaker of Earth who inhabiteth Onchestos and the
Bridge? between seas that lieth before the valley of Corinth, now
giveth to the house this hymn of wonder, and leadeth up out of
her bed the ancient glory of the famous deeds thereof: for she
was fallen on sleep; but she awaketh and her body shineth pre-
eminent, as among stars the Morning-star.

For in the land of Athens proclaiming a victory of the car,
and at Sikyon at the games of Adrastos did she give like wreaths
of song for the sons of Kleonymos that then were. For neither
did they refrain to contend with the curved chariot in the great
meetings of the people, but they had delight to strive with
the whole folk of Hellas in spending their wealth on steeds.

Touching the unproven there is silence, and none knoweth
them: yea and even from them that strive Fortune hideth her-
self until they come unto the perfect end; for she giveth of
this and of that.

The better man hath been ere now overtaken and overthrown
by the craft of worse. Verily ye know the bloody deed of Aias,
that he wrought beneath the far-spent night, when he smote
himself through with his own sword, whereby he upbraideth yet
the children of the Hellenes, as many as went forth to Troy.

But lo! Homer hath done him honour among men, and by
raising up his excellence in the fulness thereof hath through the
rod? of his divine lays delivered it to bards after him to sing.

For the thing that one hath well said goeth forth with a
voice unto everlasting: over fruitful earth and beyond the sea
hath the light of fair deeds shined, unquenchable for ever.

May we find favour with the Muses, that for Melissos too we
kindle such beacon-blaze of song, a worthy prize of the pan-
kration for this scion of Telesias’ son.

He being like unto the roaring lions in courage taketh unto

 

2 The Isthmus.
>’ The rod or staff carried anciently by poets and reciters of poems,
156 ISTHM. III. 64-90.

 

him their spirit to be his own in ‘the struggle: but in sleight he
is as the fox that spreadeth out her feet* and preventeth the
swoop of the eagle: for all means must be essayed by him that
would prevail over his foe. For not of the stature of Orion was
this man, but his presence is contemptible, yet terrible is he to
grapple with in his strength.

And verily once to the house of Antaios came a man to
wrestle against him, of short stature but of unbending soul, front
Kadmean Thebes even unto corn-bearing Libya, that he might
cause him to cease from roofing Poseidon’s temple with the
skulls of strangers—even the son of Alkmene, he who ascended up
to Olympus, after that he had searched out the surface of the
whole earth and of the crag-wailed hoary sea, and had made
safe way for the sailing of ships. And now beside the aegis-
bearer he dwelleth, possessing happiness most fair, and hath
honour from the immortals as their friend, and hath Hebe to
wife, and is lord of a golden house, and husband of Hera’s child,

Unto his honour upon the heights Elektrai we of this city
prepare a feast and new-built altar-ring, where we offer burnt
sacrifice in honour of the eight mail-clad men that are dead,
whom Megara, Kreon’s daughter, bore to be sons of Herakles.

To them at the going down of the day there ariseth a
flame of fire and burneth all night continually, amid a savoury
smoke hurling itself against the upper air: and on the second
day is the award of the yearly games, a trial of strength.

Therein did this our man, his head with myrtle-wreaths made
white, show forth a double victory, after another won already
among the boys, for that he had regard unto the many counsels
of him who was the pilot of his helm®. And with Orseas’ name I
join him in my triumphal song, and shed over them a glory of delight.

 

* I.e, throwing herself on her back with feet upward. If it is meant
that she counterfeits death, then of course the parallel with the pankratiast
will only hold good to the extent of the supine posture. .

5 His trainer, Orseas.
ISTHM. IV. 1-16, 157

 

IV.

FOR PHYLAKIDAS OF AIGINA,

WINNER IN THE PANKRATION.

 

v

This Phylakidas was a son of Lampon, and a brother of the Pytheas
for whom the fifth Nemean was written. This ode must have been
written shortly after the battle of Salamis, probably B.C. 478, and was
to be sung at Aigina, perhaps at a festival of the goddess Theia who
is invoked at the beginning. She, according to Hesiod, was the
mother of the Sun, the Moon, and the Morning, and was also called
Eipugdeooa and xpvo%, from which latter name perhaps came her
association with gold and wealth.

MorTHER of the Sun, Theia of many names, through thee it is
that men prize gold as mighty above all things else: for ships
that strive upon the sea and horses that run in chariots, for the
honour that is of thee, O queen, are glorified in swiftly circling
struggle.

And that man also hath won longed-for glory in the strife of
games, for whose strong hand or fleet foot abundant wreaths
have bound his hair. Through God is the might of men
approved,

Two things alone there are that cherish life’s bloom to its
‘utmost sweetness amidst the fair flowers of wealth—to have good
success and to win therefore fair fame. Seek not to be as Zeus;
if the portion of these honours fall to thee, thou hast already all.
The things of mortals best befit mortality.
158 ISTHM. IV. 17-50.

 

For thee, Phylakidas, a double glory of valour is at Isthmos
stored, and at Nemea both for thee and for Pytheas a pank-
ratiast’s crown, .

Not without the sons of Aiakos will my heart indite of song:
and in company of the Graces am I come for sake of Lampon’s
sons to this commonwealth of equal laws! If then on the clear.
high road of god-given deeds she hath set her feet, grudge
not to mingle in song a seemly draught of glory for her
toil.

For even the great men of old that were good warriors have
profited of the telling of their tale, and are glorified on the lute
and in the pipe’s strains manifold, through immeasurable time:
and to the cunning in words? they give matter by the grace
of Zeus.

Thus by their worship with the blaze of burnt-offerings among
Aitolians have the mighty sons? of Oineus honour, and at Thebes
Iolaos the charioteer, and at Argos Perseus, and by the streams
of Eurotas Polydeukes and Kastor’s spear:

But in Oinone the great souls of Aiakos and his sons, who
after much fighting twice sacked the Trojans’ town, first when
they went with Herakles, and again with the sons of Atreus.

Now drive me upward still; say who slew Kyknos, and who
Hektor, and the dauntless chief of Ethiop hosts, bronze-mailéd
Memnon. What man was he who with his spear smote noble
Telephos by Kaikos’ banks? Even they whose home my mouth
proclaimeth to be Aigina’s glorious isle: a tower is she, builded
from long ago, to tempt the climb of high-adventuring valour.

Many arrows hath my truthful tongue in store wherewith
to sound the praises of her sons: and even but now in war
might Aias’ city, Salamis, bear witness thereto in her deliverance
by Aigina’s seamen amid the destroying tempest of Zeus, when
death came thick as hail on the unnumbered hosts,

 

' Aigina, * Poets. 8 Meleager and his brothers.
ISTHM. IV. 51-63. 159

 

Yet let no boast be heard. Zeus ordereth this or that, Zeus,
lord of all.

Now in pleasant song even these honours also of the games
welcome the joy for a fair victory. Let any strive his best in
such, who hath learnt what Kleonikos’ house can do. Undulled
is the fame of their long toil, nor ever was their zeal abated by
any counting of the cost.

Also have I praise for Pytheas, for that he guided aright* the
course of Phylakidas’ blows in the struggle of hands that bring
limbs low, an adversary he of cunning soul.

Take for him a crown, and bring the fleecy fillet, and speed
him on his way with this new wingéd hymn.

 

* Pytheas had " given his brother example, and very probably precept
also, in the pankration.
160 ISTHM. V. 1-13.

 

V.

FOR PHYLAKIDAS OF AIGINA

WINNER IN THE PANKRATION,

This ode seems to be of earlier date than the last, though placec
it in our order. The occasion is similar. Probably it was sun
banquet at Lampon’s house.

As one may do amid merry revel of men, so mingle
second time the bowls of Muses’ melody in honour of Lam
athlete progeny.

Our first, O Zeus, was unto thee, when at Nemea we!
thy excellent crown, and now is this second unto the lor
Isthmos and unto the fifty daughters of Nereus, for that Ph
das the youngest son is winner in the games. And be it
to make ready yet a third for the Saviour’, thé Olympian
and in honour of Aigina make libation of our honey-spe
song.

For if a man rejoice to suffer cost and toil, and ac
god-builded excellence, and therewithal fate plant for hin
renown, already at the farthest bounds of bliss hath such a:
cast anchor, for the glory that he hath thereby from God.

 

1 Te. Pytheas. See Nem. v. 2 Poseidon.

3 Zets Swrjp, to whom the third cup at a feast was drunk.
here invoked also to give a third victory to the family at the O.
games,
ISTHM. V. 14-45. 161

 

With such desires prayeth the son* of Kleonikos that he may
fulfil them ere he meet death or hoary eld.

Now I call on high-throned Klotho and her sister Fates to
draw nigh unto the praying of the man I love.

And upon you also, golden-charioted seed of Aiakos, I say it is
clear law to me to shed the dew of my good words, what time
I set my foot® upon this isle.

For innumerable hundred-foot® straight roads are cleft for your
fair deeds to go forth, beyond the springs. of Nile, and through
the Hyperboreans’ midst: neither is any town so barbarous and
strange of speech that it knoweth not the fame of Peleus, that
blissful son-in-law of gods, or of Aias son of Telamon, and of
Aias’ sire; whom unto brazen war an eager ally with Tirynthian
men Alkmene’s son took with him in his ships to Troy, to the
place of heroes’ toil, to take vengeance for Laomedon’s un-
truth,

There did Herakles take the city of Pergamos, and with help
of Telamon slew the nations of the Meropes, and the herdsman
whose stature was as a mountain, Alkyoneus whom he found at
Phlegrai, and spared not of his hands the terrible twanging bow-
string.

But when he went to call the son of Aiakos to the voyage he
found the whole company at the feast. And as he stood there
in his lion’s skin, then did Telamon their chief challenge Amphi-
tryon’s son of the mighty spear to make initiative libation of
nectar, and handed on unto him the wine-cup rough with
gold.

And Herakles stretched forth to heaven his invincible hands
and spake on this wise: ‘If ever, O father Zeus, thou hast heard
my prayer with willing heart, now, even now, with strong entreaty
I pray thee that thou give this man a brave child of Eriboia’s

 

* Lampon. 5 Figuratively said, as elsewhere.
®° A hundred feet wide, seemingly.
162 ISTHM. V. 46-72.

 

womb, that by award of fate my friend may gain a son of body
as staunch’ as this hide that hangeth about me, which was of the
beast that I slew at Nemea, first of all my labours; and let his
soul be of like sort.’

And when he had thus spoken, the god sent forth the king of
birds, a mighty eagle, and sweet delight thrilled him within, and
he spake aloud as a seer speaketh: ‘ Behold, the son whom thou
askest shall be born unto thee, O Telamon:’ also after the
bird’s name that had appeared unto them he said that the child’s
name should be the mighty Aias®, terrible in the strife of warring
hosts: so he spake, and sate him down straightway.

But for me it were long to tell all those valiant deeds. For
for Phylakidas am I come, O Muse, a dispenser of thy triumphal
songs, and for Pytheas, and for Euthymenes®; therefore in Argive
fashion my tale shall be of fewest words.

Three victories have they won in the pankration of Isthmos,
and others at leafy Nemea, even these noble sons and their
mother’s brother: how fair a portion of song have they brought
to light! yea and they water with the Charites’ delicious dew
their clan of the Psalychidai, and have raised up the house of
Themistios, and dwell here in a city which the gods love
well.

And Lampon, in that he bestoweth practice on all he doth,
holdeth in high honour the word of Hesiod which speaketh
thereof, and exhorteth thereunto his sons, whereby he bringeth
unto his city a general fame: and for his kind entreating of
strangers is he loved, to the just mean aspiring, to the just mean
holding fast; and his tongue departeth not from his thoughts:

 

7 Not ‘invulnerable. A magic invulnerability was anly attributed
to heroes by later legend.

8 From alerds an eagle.

® Maternal uncle of Pytheas and Phylakidas,

10 peréty bE Te Epyov SpeAAe. Opp. 411.
ISTHM. V. 72-75. 163

 

and among athlete men he is as the bronze-grinding Naxian
whetstone amid stones”.

Now will I give him to drink of ‘the holy water of Dirke,
which golden-robed Mnemosyne’s deep-girdled daughters made

once to spring out of the earth, beside the well-walled gates of
Kadmos.

 

lt T.e, he stimulates their zeal and skill. The Naxian whetstone seems
to be emery.
164 ISTHM. VI. 1-17.

 

VI.

FOR STREPSIADES OF THEBES,

WINNER IN THE PANKRATION.

The date of this ode is not fixed, but it has been supposed that the
battle referred to—apparently a defeat—in which the winner's uncle
was killed was the battle of Oinophyta, fought B.c. 457. But this,
and the notion that the democratic revolution at Thebes is referred
to, are only conjectures.

WHEREWITHAL of the fair deeds done in thy land, O divine
Thebe, hath thy soul had most delight? Whether when thou
broughtest forth to the light Dionysos of the flowing hair, who
sitteth beside Demeter to whom the cymbals clang? or when at
midnight in a snow of gold thou didst receive the mightiest of
the gods, what time he stood at Amphitryon’s doors and beguiled
his wife, to the begetting of Herakles? Or when thou hadst
honour in the wise counsels of Teiresias, or in Iolaos the cunning
charioteer, or the unwearied spears of the Spartoi? or when out
of the noise of the strong battle-cry thou sentest Adrastos home
to horse-breeding Argos, of his countless company forlorn? or
when thou madest the Dorian colony of the men of Lakedaimon
stand upright upon its feet}, and the sons of Aigeus thy progeny
took Amyklai, according to the oracles of Pytho?

Nay, but the glory of the old time sleepeth, and mortals are

 

1 The Theban Aigidai helped the mythical ‘return of the Herakleidai.’
ISTHM. VI. 17-57. 165

 

unmindful thereof, save such as married to the sounding stream
of song attaineth unto the perfect meed that wisdom? giveth.
New triumph now lead for Strepsiades with melodious hymn: for
at Isthmos hath he borne away the pankratiast’s prize. Wondrous
in strength is he, and to look upon of goodly shape, and his
valour is such as shameth not his stature.

So shineth he forth by grace of the Muses iris-haired, and to
his uncle of like name hath he given to share his crown, for
albeit bronze-shielded Ares gave him over unto death, yet re-
maineth there for the valiant a recompense of renown. For let
whoso amid the cloud of war from his beloved country wardeth the
bloody shower, and maketh havoc in the enemy’s host, know as-
suredly that for the race of his fellow-citizens he maketh their renown
wax mightily, yea when he is dead even as while he was yet alive.

So didst thou, son® of Diodotos, following the praise of the
warrior Meleagros, and of Hektor, and of Amphiaraos, breathe
forth the spirit of thy fair-flowering youth amid the company of
fighters in the front, where the bravest on slenderest hopes bare
up the struggle of war.

Then suffered I a pang unspeakable, but now hath the earth-
grasper* granted unto me a calm after the storm: I will set
chaplets on my hair and sing. Now let no jealousy of immortals
mar whatever sweet thing through a day’s pursuit I follow, as it
leadeth on up to old age, and unto the term of life appointed.

For all we in like manner die, albeit our lots be diverse. If
any lift up his eye to look upon things afar off, yet is he too
weak to attain unto the bronze-paved dwelling of the gods. Thus
did winged Pegasos throw his lord Bellerophon, when he would
fain enter into the heavenly habitations and mix among the com-
pany of Zeus, Unrighteous joyance a bitter end awaiteth.

But to us, O Loxias of the golden-flowing hair, give also at
thy Pythian games a new fair-flowering crown.

 

* Wisdom of bards. % Strepsiades the uncle. * Poseidon.
166 ISTHM. VII. 1-13.

 

VII.

FOR KLEANDROS OF AIGINA,

WINNER IN THE PANKRATION.

All that we can be certain of as to the date of this ode is that it was
written soon after the final expulsion of the Persians. From the first
strophe we learn that Kleandros had won a Nemean as well as an
Isthmian victory, and perhaps this ode really belongs to the former.
It was to be sung, it seems, before the house of Telesarchos the winner's
father, at Aigina.

For Kleandros in his prime let some of you, ye young men,
go stand before the shining portal of his father Telesarchos, and
rouse a song of triumph, to be a glorious recompense of his
toils, for that he hath achieved reward of victory at Isthmos, and
hath showed his strength in the games of Nemea.

For him I also, albeit heavy at heart?, am bidden to call upon

Vf the golden Muse. Yea since we are come forth from our sore
troubles let us not fall into -the desolation of crownlessness,
neither nurse our griefs; but having ease from our ills that are
past mending, we will set some pleasant thing before the people,
though it follow hard on pain: inasmuch as some god hath put
away from us the Tantalos-stone that hung above our heads, a
curse intolerable to Hellas.

But now hath the passing of this terror ended my sore dis-

 

1 Because, though the Persians had been defeated, Thebes, Pindar’s
city, had not shared the glory.
ISTHM. VII. 13-38. 167

 

quietude, and ever it is better to look only on the thing hard
by. For the guile of time hangeth above the heads of men, and
maketh the way of their life crooked, yet if Freedom abide with
them, even such things may mortals cure.

But it is meet that a man cherish good hope: and meet also
that I, whom seven-gated Thebes reared, proffer chiefly unto
Aigina the choicest of the Graces’ gifts, for that from one sire
were two daughters? born, youngest of the children of Asopos,
and found favour in the eyes of the king Zeus.

One by the fair stream of Dirke he set to be the queen of a
city of charioteers, and thee the other he bare to the Oinopian
isle, and lay with thee, whence to the sire of great thunderings
thou didst bear the godlike Aiakos, best of men upon the earth.

This man even among divinities became a decider of strife:
and his godlike sons and his sons’ sons delighting in battle
were foremost in valour when they met in the ringing brazen
melley: chaste also were they approved, and wise of heart.

Thereof was the god’s council mindful, what time for the
hand of Thetis there was strife between Zeus and_ glorious
Poseidon, each having desire that she should be his fair bride,
for love had obtained dominion over them.

Yet did not the wisdom of the immortal gods fulfil for them
such marriage, when they had heard a certain oracle. For
Themis of wise counsels spake in the midst of them of how it
was pre-destined that the sea-goddess should bear a royal off-
spring mightier than his father, whose hand should wield a bolt
more terrible than the lightning or the dread trident, if she came
ever into the bed of Zeus, or of brethren of Zeus,

‘Cease ye herefrom: let her enter a mortal’s couch and see
her son fall in war, who shall be as Ares in the might of his
hands, and as the lightning in the swiftness of his feet. My
counsel is that ye give her to be the heaven-sent prize of Peleus

 

2 Thebe and Aigine.
168 ISTHM. VII. 39-65.

 

son of Aiakos, whom the speech of men showcth to be their most
righteous, an offspring of Iolkos’ plain. Thus straightway let
the message go forth to Cheiron’s cave divine, neither let the
daughter of Nereus put a second time into your hands the ballot-
leaves of strife. So on the evening of the mid-month moon shall
she unbind for the hero the fair girdle of her virginity.’

Thus spake the goddess her word to the children of Kronos,
and they bowed their everlasting brows. Nor failed her words of
fruit, for they say that to Thetis’ bridals came those twain kings
even with the rest.

Out of the mouths of the wise hath the young valour of
Achilles been declared to them that beheld it not. He it was
who stained the vine-clad Mysian plain with the dark blood of
Telephos that he shed theregn, and made for the sons of Atreus
a safe return across the sea, and delivered Helen, when that he
had cut asunder with his spear the sinews of Troy, even the
men who kept him back as he plied the work of slaughterous
battle on the plain, the strength of Memnon and high-hearted
Hektor, and other chiefs of pride. Unto all these did Achilles,
champion of the Aiakid race, point the way to the house of
Persephone, and thereby did he glorify Aigina and the root
whence he was sprung.

Neither in death was he of songs forsaken, for at his funeral
pyre and beside his tomb stood the Helikonian maiden-choir, and
poured thereon a dirge of many melodies. For so the immortals
willed, to give charge unto the songs of goddesses over that
valorous man even in his death.

And now also holdeth such charge good, and the Muses’ chariot
speedeth to sound the glories of Nikokles the boxer*®, Honour
to him who in the Isthmian vale hath won the Dorian parsley :
for he even as Achilles overcame men in battle, turning them
to confusion, with hand from which flight was vain. Him shameth

 

5 Uncle of the winner.
ISTHM. VII. 65-70. 169

 

not this kinsman’ of his father’s noble brother. Wherefore let
some one of the young men his fellows twine for Kleandros a
wreath of tender myrtle for his pankratiast victory. For the
games whose name is of Alkathoos‘, and the youth of Epidauros®,
have ere now entertained him with good hap. To praise him is
given unto the good:. for in no hidden corner quenched he his
youth, unproven in honourable deeds,

 

* A son of Pelops: he slew the lion of Kithairon.
5 The Epidaurian games were in honour of Asklepios.
FRAGMENTS.
FRAGMENTS.

Nearly two-thirds of the Fragments cannot be assigned to any distinct
class: the rest are divided among (1) “Emwima, or Triumphal Odes
(such as are the odes remaining to us entire), (2) "Yyvo, or Hymns
sung by a choir in honour of gods, (3) Ma:d@yes, or Hymns of a like
kind but anciently addressed especially to Apollo and Artemis for
their intervention against pestilence, (4) AcOvpayBor, or choral songs of
more general compass, verging sometimes on the drama, (5) Mpoaddic,
or Processional Songs, (6) Map0éa, or Songs for a Choir of Maidens,
(7) ‘Lropxjpara, or Songs with Accompaniment of Dance, (8) Evadpua,
or Odes sung by a x@pos in praise of some person but not necessarily
on any special occasion, (9) S«éAta, or Songs to be sung at Banquets,
(10) @pjvor, or Dirges.

FRAGMENT OF A DITHYRAMB,

TO BE SUNG AT ATHENS,

HITHER! Olympian gods to our choice dance, and make your
grace to descend thereon and to glorify it, ye who in sacred
Athens visit the city’s incensed centre-stone, and her famed
market-place of splendid ornament; receive ye violet-entwinéd
crowns and drink-offerings of spring-gathered herbs, and look on
me who am come from the house of Zeus with my bright song
a second time unto the ivy-crownéd god, whom we call Bromios,
even the god of clamorous shout.

To sing the offspring! of the Highest and of Kadmean mothers
am I come.

In Argive Nemea the prophet of the god overlooketh not the

 

Dionysos, son of Zeus and of Semele, daughter of Kadmos.
174 FRAGMENTS.

 

branch of palm, what time with the opening of the chamber of
the Hours, the nectarous plants perceive the fragrant spring?.
Then, then are strown over the face of the eternal earth the
lovely violet-tufts, then are roses twined in hair, then sound to
the flute’s accompaniment voices of song, then sound our choice
hymns unto the honour of bright-filleted Semele r . .

? Béckh has suggested the following ingenious explanation of this
passage. In the temple of Zeus at Nemea grew a sacred palm, and a
branch of this was given, together with his crown, to a winner in the
Nemean games. Pindar had been at those games in the winter, and
means that he, like the priest of the temple, could foresee from the
tokens of the branch that spring was approaching, and with spring the
vernal Dionysia at Athens.

FRAGMENTS OF A PROCESSION-SONG (mpocdécor),
IN HONOUR OF DELOS.

HaiL! god-reared daughter of the sea, earth-shoot most dear
to bright-haired Leto’s children, wide earth’s immoveable marvel,
who of mortals art called Delos, but of the blessed gods in
Olympus the dark earth’s far-seen star’. # ey ols oR
fe . i. 7 For of old time it? drifted before the waves
and stress of winds from every side; but when she® of Koios set
foot thereon, as the swift pains of her travailing drew nigh, then
verily. from roots deep down in earth there sprang upright four
pillars with adamantine base, and on their capitals they held up the
rock: there was the goddess delivered, and looked upon her
blessed brood. . : . ; ‘ . . .

 

1 The old mythical name of Delos was Asteria,
2 The island. = Leto.
FRAGMENTS, 175

 

FRAGMENT OF A SONG wITH ACCOMPANIMENT OF DANCE
(orépxynua), WRITTEN ON OCCASION OF AN ECLIPSE OF THE
SUN, PROBABLY THAT OF APRIL 30, B.C. 463.

WHEREFORE, O Light of the Sun, thou that seest all things and
givest bounds unto the sight of mine eyes—wherefore O star
supreme hast thou in the daytime hidden thyself, and made useless
unto men the wings of their strength and the paths that wisdom
findeth, and hastest along a way of darkness to bring on us some
strange thing?

Now in the name of Zeus I pray unto thee, O holy Light,
that by thy swift steeds thou turn this marvel in the sight of all
men to be for the unimpaired good hap of Thebes. Yet if the
sign which thou showest us be of some war, or destruction of
harvest, or an exceeding storm of snow, or ruinous civil strife, or
emptying of. the sea upon the earth, or freezing of the soil, or
summer rains pouring in vehement flood, or whether thou wilt
drown the earth and make anew another race of men, then will
I suffer it amid the common woe of all - a ‘ g és
4

176 FRAGMENTS.

 

FRAGMENTS OF DIRGES (6pjvo).

1

. ‘ ; . For them shineth below the strength of the
sun while in our world it is night, and the space of crimson-
flowered meadows before their city is full of the shade of frank-
incense-trees, and of fruits of gold. And some in horses, and in
bodily feats, and some in dice, and some in harp-playing have
delight ; and among them thriveth all fair-flowering bliss; and fra-
grance streameth ever through the lovely land, as they mingle
incense of every kind upon the altars of the gods. . ‘

I.

<i : c . By happy lot travel all unto an end that giveth
them rest from toils, And the body indeed is subject unto ‘the
great power of death, but there remaineth yet alive a shadow of
life; for this only is from the gods; and while the limbs stir, it
sleepeth, but unto sleepers in dreams discovereth oftentimes the
judgment that draweth nigh for sorrow or for joy. . .

Ill.

- » «  . Bur from whomsoever Persephone accepteth
atonement made for an ancient woe, their souls unto the light of
the sun above she sendeth back again in the ninth year. And
from those souls spring noble kings, and men swift and strong
and in wisdom very great: and through the after-time they are
called holy heroes among men. . © . . oe

THE END.
WORKS BY ERNEST MYERS.

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